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/vr/ - Retro Games

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8130102 No.8130102 [Reply] [Original]

If they could cram everything together and release it in a 64MB cartridge, could someone explain why didn't they release everything in one disc for the PS1?

>> No.8130109

Fitting all that content in a cartridge was an incredibly difficult feat, it's impressive they managed to do it at all.

>> No.8130124

>>8130102
Laziness.

>> No.8130129

>>8130102
It's a good port and playable but they cut back on a number of things to get it to work. Like >>8130109 said.

This poster >>8130124 is an absolute idiot and should be ridiculed.

>> No.8130134

>TWO discs? holy shit, that's like double the game!
It's that simple.

>> No.8130143

>>8130109
>Fitting all that content in a cartridge was an incredibly difficult feat, it's impressive they managed to do it at all.

I owned RE2 for the N64, and have completed it using every scenario option, unlocked the Hunk and Tofu bonus stuff. It is am impressive port of Vanilla RE2, with maybe a few seconds worth of FMV actually cut. The developers at Angel/ Rockstar Sandiego did an impressive job with the port. But they had to make sacrifices to get it all into a 64MB cartridge. Half the video frames are missing, video is more compressed, audio samples are more compressed. Game model textures were resized as well. I would imagine that the higher quality audio and video of the PS1 game takes up the most room on the Discs. Both discs contain a lot of duplicate data for the maps, game models and game code, etc.

>> No.8130147

>>8130102
Because the N64 version looks and sounds like dogshit compared to every other version

>> No.8130150

>>8130147
N64 version actually looks really good for a 5th gen hardware port of RE2. The sound quality takes a hit, though is serviceable.

>> No.8130151

>>8130102
Kind of this >>8130134 People had a super hardon for multi-disc games back then. Why make an effort for compression ingenuity and general resource austerity if CD production was dirt-cheap and you could create the bonus illusion of "more content"?

>> No.8130153

>>8130102
The cost of 11 cents per disc outweighed the cost of programming a character select for one disc. The n64 port also took demoscene autism optimizations, was severely cut down and two extra years to develop.

The bigger question is, will we ever see the saturn version?

>> No.8130159

>>8130151
Why compress your game to make it look and sound like shit when you can just print another disc?

>> No.8130163

>>8130159
Because he has no idea what he's talking about.

>> No.8130165

>>8130129
You're an idiot. There's no reason any 90s game needed to be on 5 CDs. As proved by the fact that re-releases of many PC games cut down the number drastically.

>> No.8130171

>>8130165
Resident Evil 2 only has 2 discs...

>> No.8130173
File: 70 KB, 800x600, T_2016912_3c97721a-e1db-4cc8-b67d-08db9ad2e722.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8130173

>>8130165
>There's no reason any 90s game needed to be on 5 CDs
Tell that to FMV adventures

>> No.8130175

>>8130153
>and two extra years to develop

No, it took 12 months to port.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/postmortem-angel-studios-i-resident-evil-2-i-n64-version-

>> No.8130179

>>8130165
The PS1 games costed the same amount whether they were on 1 or 10 discs. What the fuck are you bitching about? You sound like Bernie Stolar when he lays off thousands of employees

>> No.8130183

>>8130165
The selling point of CD based systems was CD fuckin audio you dip shit. Which takes up alot of space. So shut the fuck up and go fuck yourself with your cartridge based dildo

>> No.8130185

>>8130129
Not necessarily laziness, but I read in a developer interview they intended to optimize the game's assets to fit them on one disc but I guess they ran out of time so just released it on two discs.

>> No.8130187

Isn't the second disc completely unnecessary for DMC2? I'm pretty sure there's an exploit that lets you access all the content on one disc.

>> No.8130192

>>8130179
Because, Anon, he's one of the idiots on this site that argues for the sake of arguing. If Capcom compressed the shit out of the game and put it on one disc, he would be on this board bitching about the graphics and sound quality and asking why Capcom didn't just print the second disc.

>> No.8130198

OP here. Thank you everyone for your replies.
Same question goes again: why was metal gear solid released in two discs and not one? I believe it's even more streamlined than resident evil 2.
PS: I'm high, don't slam me if anything sounds out of place

>> No.8130232

>>8130183
Try popping any late era multi-disk game in a CD player, it isn't using CD Audio. It has compressed audio files on disk, and it doesn't take up that much space.

>> No.8130246

>>8130198
>I believe it's even more streamlined than resident evil 2.

Have you actually played Metal Gear Solid all the way through? Like, took your time, and listened to all of the character dialogue through the audio codec? The game has like, 10 times the amount of spoken dialog that Resident Evil 2 has. Contact Mei Ling and listen to all her Chinese philosophy sayings. The audio in MGS takes up the most room.

>> No.8130257

>>8130246
ohh I see. I said it's more streamlined but what I meant was that it would be easier to port because there's no B scenario.

>> No.8130323

>>8130257
>>>8130246 (You)
>ohh I see. I said it's more streamlined but what I meant was that it would be easier to port because there's no B scenario.

yeah, I get what you are saying. But, Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 was a very cut-scene heavy game for its day. The cut scenes in RE2 are brief in comparison. Metal Gear Solid has a lot of recorded dialog for those cut scenes. But it also has a lot more dialog in the codec screen. All of Snakes contacts have context sensitive dialog. Call up the Russian chick and she will have 1-2 minutes of recorded dialog talking about the current weapon you have equipped. The colonel will have different recorded lines of dialog for certain events/ moments in the games. Going into a vent will open up different conversations. There are probably a few hours worth of recorded dialog for the game, just for the codec conversations. There are some impressive examples of recorded dialog in N64 games. perfect dark comes to mind. In RE2, they were compressed, though never bothered me, when playing it on a CRT TV with a decent speaker set-up.

>> No.8130373

they fucked up by realizing too late that there were redundant audio files between discs that would have taken the total game size under 700mb

>> No.8130379

>>8130102
what really took up space on cds was high quality audio (particularly voice acting and recorded music) and pre-rendered video, both of which were used pretty liberally on cd games back then in order to show off what the medium was capable of and grab players' attention
devs weren't limited to one cd either, so a lot of times they went all in with the stuff

>> No.8130521

>>8130379
>what really took up space on cds was high quality audio (particularly voice acting and recorded music) and pre-rendered video, both of which were used pretty liberally on cd games back then in order to show off what the medium was capable of and grab players' attention
>devs weren't limited to one cd either, so a lot of times they went all in with the stuff

Multi-disc games were not uncommon with the Sega CD add-on. Resident Evil 2 does have the same game data on both discs, but contain different audio and video tracks. Uncompressed. The N64 game used an audio driver that was licensed from Factor 5. The developer said the audio driver took up quite a few MB'sin the cartridge. The N64 soundtrack was redone in a MOD music style (I don;t know what to call it?). Chris Hülsbeck from Factor 5 did all the audio tracks himself. Though the Factor 5 audio engine did add Doubly Surround support to the game, which the PS1 game does not have.

>> No.8130529
File: 2.86 MB, 960x720, Biohazard_2_PlayStation_Calico.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8130529

>>8130102
Because

>they cut a lot of content
>FMVs are cropped AND compressed
>all the textures are lower resolution

Quantity is quality.

>> No.8130534

>>8130529
Forgot to mention but all the backgrounds are not only cropped and stretched, and were converted to JPEG

>> No.8130545

>>8130529
>>8130534
I'm also pretty sure that on top of the cropping and the lower resolution, and on top of all the FMV pieces which were straight out taken out, they cut the framerate of those FMVs by half and used interpolation

>> No.8130557
File: 487 KB, 1023x464, riven.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8130557

>>8130165
>re-releases of many PC games cut down the number drastically
Usually re-releases would be on DVD which could hold 4.7GB (or 8.5GB on a double-layer disc).
CDs were limited to 700MB. You could fit 5 CDs into a DVD with room to spare.

>> No.8130587

>>8130102
N64 has 200% the RAM and multiple times the load time of the PS1. They compressed the game to hell and back, on top of omitting a ton stuff. It's just like how super mario bros needed a 40KB cartridge while the huge open world Star Raiders on Atari 8-bit fits inside an 8KB cartridge. You couldn't decompress any data on the NES' puny 2KB RAM, while the Atari has 16K-128K.

>> No.8130596

>>8130150
many things were downgraded going from ps1 to n64. All the praise for it now is post-mortem cope for fitting a "two CD" game on a cartridge.

>> No.8130617

>>8130557
Example I'm specifically thinking of is Planescape Torment came on 4 CDs. I later bought my own copy that is on 2 CDs. It never needed 4.

>> No.8130618

Here's a list of the reasons, some already mentioned:

1. It takes less work to create something with arbitrary size than to make it smaller. As can be seen by ISO rips of PS1 games, most games can fit on less than 64 megabytes just by stripping out audio and FMVs. Meanwhile they worked very hard to make it smaller for the N64 and had software compression. The N64 had substantial cpu and memory to spare for compressing/decompressing that the PS1 did not.

2. Hardware compression. This is not the same as the last point and is important to consider as a separate point. They couldn't just have the same compression on PS1 if they worked hard at it, even if the PS1 had the same specs as the N64 it hasn't got built-in hardware compression. This hardware compression on the fly reduces the amount of storeage needed for some data to a small fraction and requires not CPU.

3. Marketing - I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of claims that something was done for "marketing" but an extra disc certainly sounds like a good gimmick. To say it was so big it needed two discs, while costing almost nothing extra, is going to be good marketing in my view.

>> No.8130628

>>8130618
Screw 64MB, most 3D games on the amiga could be fitted in a 512KB RAM. 3D graphics should've consumed less memory than 2D, there are fewer pixels to draw on the screen.

>> No.8130642

>>8130587
Counterpoint. the Atari 8-bit Donkey Kong had to cut some features to fit in a 16k cartridge. the programmer talked about this. his prototype was 20k and he had to leave out the game intro sequence to fit.

>> No.8130651

>>8130617
Planescape: Torment's size reduction is credited to better compression methods on the 2 CD version. It was likely considered a better trade-off to have shorter installation/loading times with more discs in 1999, but by the time the 2 CD version released, compression methods were more advanced and CPUs were faster so it was more feasible.

>> No.8130654

I think Star Raiders had procedurally generated game levels though?

>> No.8130674

>>8130654
It did and you can't do that on the NES with its tiny RAM. Well, you could if you used a mapper and added cartridge RAM. Same's true of Castle Wolfenstein. The maps were randomly generated and that's impossible on a bare NES.

>> No.8130684

>>8130654
But it still has a lot of text, colour, and particle data. On SMB, 8K was taken by the graphics data alone.

>> No.8130846

>>8130684
actually though since SMB is a CHR ROM game the graphics are uncompressed. in CHR RAM games like Mega Man 1 and LOZ they would be compressed.

>> No.8130862

>>8130102
Because they wanted uncompressed audio and actual cut scenes.

>> No.8130873

>>8130102
All the quests and story and events in FFVII can fit on one disc. If you use GameShark, you'll find that you can access stuff like the Nibelheim flashback on disc 2 or 3. You can access the Huge Materia quests on disc 1 or 3. You can access the final dungeon on disc 1. The entire game fits on one disc and was copy/pasted across 3 discs. The reason for the 3 discs is simply because of the FMVs. You can't fit all of those on one disc. So I'm gonna take a guess that Resident Evil 2 is the same way.

>> No.8130875

Because they didn't have to, idiot.

>> No.8130986

>>8130102
N64 didn't cram everything. It was a jank version.

>> No.8131197

On top of the PS1 having terrible support for file compression, RE2 had poorly optimized files that couldn't be optimized in time for release so it was easier to just release it as a 2 disc game. It's goddamn Resident Evil they knew they'd make their money back on it.

Compared to the N64 version which had a development cycle that was literally nothing but the devs optimizing file sizes and redudancies, and on a console with way better options for compression.

>> No.8131810

Going with carts really did fuck Nintendo in the ass, huh...

>> No.8131817

>>8130153
>The bigger question is, will we ever see the saturn version?
Never, Capcom stated that the Shiturn couldn't handle a port of RE2 which is why it had to be postponed for the chad Dreamcast.

>> No.8131821

>>8130846
They would require a more expensive cart containing extra RAM too.

>> No.8131823

Weird that the Gamecube version fits onto one mini disc.

>> No.8131828

>>8131821
>They would require a more expensive cart containing extra RAM too
Extra RAM required a mapper and that wasn't even available yet when SMB was developed.

>> No.8131829

>>8131823
Minidisc has 2.5GB of capacity, almost quadruple of that of a disc.

>> No.8131835

>>8131829
>disc
CD*

>> No.8131840

>>8131828
The point of decompressing games into the RAM was to fit them inside a more inexpensive cart. SMB with a mapper and SRAM addition would be expensive.

>> No.8131980

>>8131817
>Never, Capcom stated that the Shiturn couldn't handle a port of RE2 which is why it had to be postponed for the chad Dreamcast.

RE2 was turned into Code Veronica for the Dreamcast. The RE2 and RE3 for the Dreamcast were direct ports of the PC games, and use Windows CE.\

>> No.8131985

>>8130373

This is the true answer. Can’t believe how long it too for it to be said.

>> No.8132595

This has got to be one of the contenders for threads where people with no clue speak confidently about the topic and there is this many conflicting posts.

>> No.8132670

>>8131835
dvd*

>> No.8132690

>>8130102
I read a RE2-related interview with one of the jap dev dudes recently and he admitted that it was in fact possible to release RE2 on a single disc. They miscalculated some data but it was too late to repack the files. Especially funny because Capcom was pissed off when devs initially informed them that the game will not only be late to release but also come on 2 discs.

>> No.8132756

>>8130596
It runs at a higher resolution than the PSX version in some areas.

>> No.8132775

>>8130165
compression methods got better over time, who would have thought? Fucking retard.

>> No.8132861

>>8132756
The texture resolution was still cut in half for the most part.

>> No.8133245

>>8130102
Impressive but It cost a million $ to port this, I bet Rare would have made Banjo Kazooie 3 if given that much $.

>> No.8133847

>>8130165
Rereleases of PC games used DVDs instead of CDs, thus having much greater storage capacity.

>> No.8133961

>>8130102
Marketing. Having 2 discs meant the game was perceived as being longer on the PS1.

>> No.8136149

Half res textures aren't 2x smaller files, they're 4x smaller. Every increase in dimension is worth more than the last, the pixel count is quadratic. You get massive filesize returns from doing this, way more than is obvious to most people.

>> No.8136201

>>8130557
Fun fact, CDs ~3GB but most of the bits are for error correction. Source: https://youtu.be/oS4UWgHtRDw?t=290

>> No.8136217

>>8130232
If it plays in the cd player that confirms it's uncompressed

>> No.8136374

>>8136201
his math is way off.

>> No.8136474

>>8130873
I remember there was a pirate ripped version of FF7 PC with most FMVs cut that only need less than 700MB of HDD space.
Metal Gear Solid PC also had a ripped version that uses less than 500MB.

>> No.8136631

>>8132756
The "game runs in higher res!" is bullshit marketing.

For one thing, backgrounds are upscaled; so it only makes a difference for 3D models. Not only that, but when using higher resolutions the backgrounds are cropped and stretched further than they already were.

Secondly, the meme is that "the N64 version switches from 240 to 480p", but in reality the game uses many different internal resolutions, I've counted 5-6 different ones in between 240 and 480, and crazy resolutions too.
The game constantly switches back&forth between those resolutions at camera angle transitions and in reality it only very plays in 480p, only less than a handful of small rooms with no enemies in them are affected. Usually it goes something like this
>enemies are in the room
>play in 240
>switch to a smaller camera angle where you can only see 2-3 enemies at most, now it's 280
>kill all the enemies in the room, leave the room and come back to an empty room, now it's 320

The N64 version also look a lot worse in 240p than the PS1 does

>> No.8136652

>>8136631
Point being while it is true that "it can run in higher res"
>the difference is small in most cases and you're hardly ever getting the higher res where it matters
>the game looks worse in 240p than the PS1 version does
>only the 3D models gain a little from it, but let's not forget they all have had their textures resolution cut down in half
>all the backgrounds are cropped, stretched, the higher the res, the more cropped and stretched they are. Oh and they were converted to JPEG so there is quality
>the resolution constantly changes back&forth, during gameplay you're getting res changes every 10-20secs. Nobody does this, and for a reason, it's an uncanny and distracting mess
>let's also not forget all the effects, electricity, muzzle flashes, smoke, fire, which all look awful aslo

tl;dr yes the game *sometimes* runs in higher res, no it doesn't look better. All that shit was good for was so they could take screenshots of the 2-3 areas in the game where it's 480p and send those to magazines for marketing. Which is what they did and people are still baited by that today.

>> No.8136745

>>8136652
The higher res output was mostly pointless, but it was at least something unique to the N64. RE2 didn't even push the PS1, losing the graphical quality due to compression would leave the N64 with nothing, but giving it "high res" and stable polygons (and relative controls, even if it wasn't great) was something.

>> No.8136980

>>8130232
>>8136217
Alot of music and other audio at the time was done in a format that took very little space in the first place and didn't need to be compressed. You can put the synth they made RE or FF games in pretty much full quality without needing to compress it as it's a very small amount of data in the first place straight from the synth. If it was played live and recorded with a mic it would be much bigger.

>> No.8137003

>>8130102
They'd already rereleased it once, you don't have to swap mid-game so who cares, with the tech of the era any cuts would have been at the render quality's expense, and it's more work for an old title they had future projects and RE3 to worry about. It's possible as you said, probably with minimal cuts to quality in fact, but why would they have bothered? I'm 200% sure a user could do it, though. Perhaps (You)

>> No.8137021

>>8132690
It's funny that they couldn't be bothered when they released the Dual Shock version.

>> No.8137080

>>8130102
when are we getting FF7 for N64?

>> No.8138950

>>8130102
The game being on 2 discs on PS1 was actually an accident. One of the developers miscalculated how much space the audio was going to take up towards the end of development and in a fast "fix it now as we need to hit our deadline" decision, they made it 2 discs.

https://www.denofgeek.com/games/resident-evil-2-accidentally-two-disc-game/

>> No.8138989

People didn't understand how to compress audio or video back then to fit on a CD efficiently. By the time we had good compression for this shit DVDs were taking over in gaming, so they had many more GBs to work with per disc.

>> No.8139125

>>8130102
Because it would have looked worse and loaded slower
Compression isn't magic and decompression takes CPU cycles

>> No.8140467

>>8137080
>when are we getting FF7 for N64?

If that ever happened back then, Nintendo would probably have to find larger capacity ROM chips and go for a 128MB or higher cartridge.

>> No.8140471

>>8140467
just remove the fmvs to be honest
Mgs1 and silent hill was totally doable especially with no voice acting. Itd also be far more atmospheric without voice acting but that's just me

>> No.8140501

>>8140471
Silent Hill seems like the easiest to port? Not an expert but MGS seems like a challenge and FF7 seems almost impossible, even if you take away the FMV's which would have pissed people off royally, there's alot of other shirmt including the huge amount of pre-renders, the soundtrack having to be slightly reworked, etc...

>> No.8140567

>>8136631
>The "game runs in higher res!" is bullshit marketing.
I said "in some areas" and it is a factual statement. I'm not reading the rest of your "well askshually" post.

>> No.8141012

u r fucking idiots, there is no reason for a game to be on so many cds, why 5 cds if all it takes is 1 download, retards

>> No.8141995

>>8130628
>most 3D games on the amiga could be fitted in a 512KB RAM
they were really basic 3d games, anon. most often comprising of light shaded polygons. they take up very little ram but the amiga couldn't draw that many at once without slowing to a crawl.

>> No.8142591
File: 268 KB, 648x486, NMoynkY-2.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8142591

>>8130147

>> No.8142812

>>8130873
Wow, imagine if they had fucking h.265 back then.

>> No.8142814
File: 93 KB, 453x451, niEGgRC.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8142814

>>8142591

actual texture rip of Leon.

>> No.8142815

>>8142812
The CPU would most likely not be able to decompress it. MPEG1 and MJPEG at this time required hardware acceleration to be viable. Software codecs were limited to things like Cinepak and Truemotion because that's what the CPUs could decode.

>> No.8142818
File: 98 KB, 510x327, GXPfPGf.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8142818

>>8142814

>> No.8142819

>>8142815
Very good point I did not consider that

>> No.8142853

>>8142591
gee don't you think you could have gotten even shittier screenshot for your comparison?

Funny how every RE2 N64 comparison is like this.

>> No.8143143

>>8142853
Both are from actual real hardware faggot. Cry more.

>>8142818

These textures are ripped directly from the PS1 disc , not from the console RAM , the reason to this is the lack of a z-buffer and perspective correction, when the playstation renders the texture on the model it fucks the source quality toma degree that even the N64 textures being lower in resolution , the N64 filters make it look better.

>> No.8143293

>>8142814
The N64 face actually looks like a 21 year old

>> No.8143307

>>8143143
N64 is way blurrier. Show us an environment shot now

>> No.8143379

>>8130102
The biggest consumers of data in that era was audio and FMVs. Look at Sega CD games (sometimes a few hundred MB), if you strip out the audio and FMVs the filesize is often within the limits of the meatier Genesis games (a few MB).

>> No.8143383

>>8130153
>The cost of 11 cents per disc
And jewel case, and insets, and the manual, and distribution?

>> No.8143412
File: 195 KB, 968x1256, file.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8143412

>>8136149
It depends also on the pallet size. Shining Force CD for example only uses 16 colors for the entire set of overworld sprites, including alpha. Formats like this (PNG especially) yield better sizes than jpg for things with flat colors.

>> No.8143417
File: 1.10 MB, 813x595, file.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8143417

>>8130102
Why did they have to lie about it being exclusive? It even came out two years later.