PS2 never had a version of Shenmue AFAIK
Could Dreamcast et al handle this/that game/effect? *DC tech retrospective *spawn
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God damn. There's a particular type of response - we've all seen it repeated many times over the decades - where some someone breaks apart a comprehensive response into fragments of arguments and discards the meat and the context, and responds only to those fragments which mean they don't have to accept they were wrong, or allow them to pretend that they were right.
The people handling the port have already talked about all the issues I raised, either directly or quoted in this thread. You know this. You've responded to some of the posts. You've been told some of the things you're feigning ignorance about. Additional geometry, additional barriers requiring physics calculations, additional objects in the world, additional CPU workload due to the home-brew environment, more than double the resolution, higher render output quality in all output modes. You were here in this thread for all this stuff.
An equally meaningless or churlish post would be someone asking to you "provide a timestamp" of PS2 playing the official version of GTA3 in 640 x 480 32-bit RGB progressive scan. Absolute dickery.
A work in progress was made, but it was never shown or released.
... but it was a hypothetical. For the sake of argument.
Mittens0407
Newcomer
It's not handling a 3D GTA game. It's handling GTA 3.
N64 cannot handle the PS1 version of Resident Evil 2. That's why there exists an N64 version of Resident Evil 2. Fun fact!
davis.anthony
Veteran
17-30fps with audio, streaming, texture and graphical downgrades is 'handling' ??
davis.anthony
Veteran
unprofessional conduct, this breaks our community rules. Do not respond to this.
If you're not willing to provide timestamps or evidence in this technical section of the forum perhaps don't post.
All you've done is posted your feelings about what I've posted rather than tried to break it down and debate/counter it with your own video and timestamps.
I've tried to evidence what I'm saying/seeing, and it's not a big thing to expect others who are posting and replying to do the same.
Mittens0407
Newcomer
What's this habit of yours, judging every new build like the be-all and end-all of the system's capabilities? It feels like you don't understand how software development works, or the purpose of a public alpha.
"It currently needs the 32MB mod" - So that kills any argument of it being able to run on a DC then
EsppiraK
Newcomer
A short clip between PS2 (left) and Dreamcast (right) since the Dreamcast Version is based on the PC version it has more stuff on the streets, and that means it has to procees also collisions and physics for objects that are absent on PS2, so not very fair to compare between both versions, the DC one is based on the PC version and that has more stuff going on on screen plus some models are higher polycount too, there are areas that are literally barren on PS2 compared to PC, and the DC version is the PC version NOT the PS2 one.
Both captures are from real hardware.
Both captures are from real hardware.
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Cloofoofoo
Regular
You could actually go to the menu and turn down ped and car activity to something like PS2 level. Currently is at two ticks by default. To more or less ps2 you can to go down to one tick. Even then it's pc roots show. Walk around enough and even on one tick you will find 7 or 8 peds bunched up in a random corner or cars at one tick sit on the road long enough 6 to 8 cars spawn. The default 2 tick setting does more traffic than the above. Cars and some other models have a few extra polies and extra dumb little details that are Absent from the PS2 version.
I've stressed tested the setting to maximum ticks expecting DC to crash. The opposite happened. Basically I had 25 or more car pile up in an intersection with like 20 peds or even more walking around. Fps dropped to around a steady 8 to 9 fps and the environment maps shut off( iam guessing the vertex buffer for the scene ate all the memory. ) . Took around an hour for it to crash. All this in that dense part of the game with the times square like buildings .And this is alpha.
The stutter actually comes from the sound fix not making to the alpha. So in the homebrew sdk streaming the sfx ( ped voices) audio might lock up the game for a sec , they found a fix for that but didn't make it in time for release. Sure bring locked at half speed of a retail disc hurts as well but turns out it's less of an issue when the disc is built right. Just gotta wait for the sfx fix .
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EsppiraK
Newcomer
Another video showcasing all the extra geometry from the PC version that the Dreamcast has to handle compared to the PS2.
Left PS2 right Dreamcast
Left PS2 right Dreamcast
EsppiraK
Newcomer
is it not possible to use black bars to effectively reduce the resolution? like RE4 on GC? Shenmue 2 used black bars in cutscenes and the lighting and animations were better in cutscenes.
Very good port of GTA3 in any case, It would be nice if there were more projects like this on Dreamcast which died too soon.
There are other folks in the thread who can answer this better than me, but yeah, using black bars you could potentially reduce the cost of drawing. However, AFAIK internally the DC would still render at 640 x 480 and it would still allocate a full size front buffer (or half if using interlaced and the hardware flicker filter).
Trouble is, you'd either end up losing stuff from the camera view, or you'd end up increasing the FOV to make sure the full vertical view was maintained. And if you increased the FOV you'd end up with more detail in the view frustum/volume and ultimately put more load on the CPU (and likewise the sorting and binning part of the GPU).
Black bars are great for cutscenes because you know exactly what you have to work with, and so you can reduce the number of pixels to e.g. do lighting calculations for, and so add more lights.
Ok, thank you
A short clip between PS2 (left) and Dreamcast (right) since the Dreamcast Version is based on the PC version it has more stuff on the streets, and that means it has to procees also collisions and physics for objects that are absent on PS2, so not very fair to compare between both versions, the DC one is based on the PC version and that has more stuff going on on screen plus some models are higher polycount too, there are areas that are literally barren on PS2 compared to PC, and the DC version is the PC version NOT the PS2 one.
Another video showcasing all the extra geometry from the PC version that the Dreamcast has to handle compared to the PS2.
Left PS2 right Dreamcast
The people doing this port are really playing on hard mode.
Less memory, no vector co-processors, no access to full speed optical media ... and a more complex version of the gameworld.
DCA3 is one the absolute coolest things to appear on the console horizon in the last decade. It's also how I personally found out that the DC was built to support more complex controllers that Sega never got the chance to release.
Lod transition is configurable on the menu. The main reason it was cut down, is because of vram usage for vertex lists, which is already at 4.5 MB (out of 8)
Pretty fantastic work by the dev team overall. I wonder what enhancements they themselves realistically could make to the PS2 version, or even port the PC version over to the PS2.