Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn

Here's the Digital Foundry video showing that DC has when compared to PS2.


- Obvious colour banding
- Lower quality textures
- Texture artifacts
- Less geometry
- Lower performance
- Much longer loading

Important to note that while the DC version is unreleased, it is the final build, as the game was canned just before release, so it's not some pre-alpha build of the game.

As noted by John, a 30fps cap would have been better on both systems but would have also given PS2 some extra head room to increase visuals further.

But it's not surprising that the technically superior platform (PS2) is running the game better than a technically slower system (DC) and nothing to do with fanboy propaganda.
 
Fun fact : I installed Half life on my P.C in 1998 I still have that original install (patched to 1.1.1.0 last patch that didn't require steam) so it's been on my p.c for 25 years
Fun fact 2 : The original game had a bug so if you uninstalled it it would also delete the parent directory not a problem if you installed to the default C:\program files\sierra\half life
but if you installed to C:\half life say goodbye to the contents of your C: drive.
 
Sonicfan said:
Plus, coders are fixing the textures and even replacing models with ps2 models. The resolution is higher on DC by default as well. The fps and loading are getting fixed too. Gotta love fanboy propaganda, lol
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Yeah but still missing like 50% of the visuals. We could get surprised who knows. But let's wait and see how everything will impact the performance once everything is said and done. The need to replace the models with PS2 ones is there because it is expected to free performance but also allow room for the rest. The lighting might have a big impact on performance
 
Sonicfan said:
I believe it's on both simulant and Ian Michaels' discords.

The game was obviously not finished. The textures weren't VQ, loading wasn't optimized, memory card wasn't set up correctly, etc, etc,
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1. The leaked version of the game was the final version. So final in fact that reviews had already been published and strategy guide had already been printed for it

2. The game was using VQ textures, hence the artifacts John from Digital Foundry pointed out in his video. Did you ven watch the Digital Foundry video?

3. There's no evidence loading wasn't optimised
 
I don't think it was gold build. They could work on it for at least two next weeks before gold was ready so some bugs with saves and loading times could get fixed.
 
davis.anthony said:
1. The leaked version of the game was the final version. So final in fact that reviews had already been published and strategy guide had already been printed for it

2. The game was using VQ textures, hence the artifacts John from Digital Foundry pointed out in his video. Did you ven watch the Digital Foundry video?

3. There's no evidence loading wasn't optimised
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How can it be final? Memory cards blocks usage is not optimized and some save games can use significantly more space than others. I know it NOT for a video, i know it because i actually played and completed the damned game. I suggest to you actually get a Dreamcast and play it by yourself and see if its actually a final release. Very close to final, yes, but game still had issues and specially that one with the memory card wasnt something a serious company wouldn´t let it realease like that.
 
xaeroxcore said:
How can it be final?
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Speak to those reporting on it.

xaeroxcore said:
Memory cards blocks usage is not optimized and some save games can use significantly more space than others.
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The game has a feature where you use a code system for loading when looking at a few YouTube videos about the game.

xaeroxcore said:
I suggest to you actually get a Dreamcast
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I suggest you look at my signature.

xaeroxcore said:
Very close to final, yes, but game still had issues and specially that one with the memory card wasnt something a serious company wouldn´t let it realease like that.
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So your argument against it not being final (as John at DF said) is because you've played the game and you say so?
 
Maximqad has been working on porting a DC port of the HL1 compatible engine Xash3D-FWGS ( https://github.com/maximqaxd/xash3d-fwgs_dc.git ), which should hopefully pave the way for a HL1 port that isn't garbo.
davis.anthony said:
1. The leaked version of the game was the final version. So final in fact that reviews had already been published and strategy guide had already been printed for it

2. The game was using VQ textures, hence the artifacts John from Digital Foundry pointed out in his video. Did you ven watch the Digital Foundry video?

3. There's no evidence loading wasn't optimised
Click to expand...
Ian Michael has improved performance and cut loading times approximately in half by repacking textures as PVR VQ (many textures previously were still in their original PC format), replacing player and map models with ones that use triangle-strips, and using newer WINCE DLLs to replace the older versions used in the prototype. He's since stopped working on it due to hopes that a 2002 HL1 DC build will soon be released ( "Real shame it was not released retail final build, they kept working on it for pvr based cable boxes for a year after and that version also not released. I was told to stop working on what i was doing since there is a final build but still waiting for that." )
 
Another consideration here for these hobby ports is the benefit from subsequent learning and better practices. To be entirely fair, you'd need the same retrospective efforts to be applied to other platforms, particularly for launch software. Given a year 1 game running at :love:0 fps on a machine, if hobbiests were to take a crack at it now, could they get it to a stable 30, or even 60 fps? For example, you could look at those titles from From that a guy patched to run so much faster. If you were to take those games at 30 fps on PS4 and homebrew port it to some other machine and get 60 fps, you'd think that machine far faster than PS4, but in reality the PS4 version was not running as well as it could.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Another consideration here for these hobby ports is the benefit from subsequent learning and better practices. To be entirely fair, you'd need the same retrospective efforts to be applied to other platforms, particularly for launch software. Given a year 1 game running at :love:0 fps on a machine, if hobbiests were to take a crack at it now, could they get it to a stable 30, or even 60 fps? For example, you could look at those titles from From that a guy patched to run so much faster. If you were to take those games at 30 fps on PS4 and homebrew port it to some other machine and get 60 fps, you'd think that machine far faster than PS4, but in reality the PS4 version was not running as well as it could.
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On the other side of the coin, remember that hobbyists aren't organized into teams getting paid for what they do, which means they cannot dedicate as much time to what they do, and while they may have some knowledge that teams did not have in the past they don't have any support whatsoever from the hardware manufacturer. The devs of KallistiOS (the library that powers GTA 3 for DC along with many other projects) aren't even allowed to look at the official docs due to an (outdated) fear of legal action from Sega lol.

D32xR (an upgraded port of Doom for the Sega 32x) was programmed without a proper debugger, and from what I've gathered the dev believes that there's no reason they couldn't have released a version of the same quality back in the day if they were given a proper amount of time.
 
Mittens0407 said:
Ian Michael has improved performance and cut loading times approximately in half.
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I found his thread where he posted performance numbers.

FPS results:

Dreamcast:

Min: 10.00
Max: 60.00
Average: 37.22
1st Percentile: 11.00
5th Percentile: 16.00

PS2:

Min: 18.00
Max: 60.00
Average: 48.10
1st Percentile: 19.00
5th Percentile: 26.00
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PS2 is still substantially faster while offering graphical improvements over DC.

Even with experienced coders spending months/years optimising the game it's still not touching PS2.

Imagine if PS2 had that same level of mod work done for its performance.
 
davis.anthony said:
I found his thread where he posted performance numbers.



PS2 is still substantially faster while offering graphical improvements over DC.

Even with experienced coders spending months/years optimising the game it's still not touching PS2.

Imagine if PS2 had that same level of mod work done for its performance.
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That comparison is using the original leaked DC prototype.
It's kinda hard to quote this guy lol so I'll just send some Discord screenshots:
1724961580123.png
1724961752884.png
 
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