Retro Games Analysis Technical Discussion *spawn*
- Thread starter BitByte
- Start date
You would figure Sony saw the GPU writing on the wall with the PS2 rivals and PC GPUs, especially by 2002. When did Sony bring RSX into the fold? 2004?
It's easy to think that, but again, with PS2 what they had is lots of math from the VU's and lots of flexibility from a very basic, but very fast (and ironically wide) graphics chip. If you look at first party games on PS2 , they never looked to be limited in the way that the paper specs may have lead you to believe, or that multiplatform 3rd party games would as well. While I do believe that Sony would have been totally outmatched had they gone with whatever they were planning pre RSX, I'm sort of sad we never got to see it.
I don't think it was that obvious. Bear in mind that GPUs continued to evolve where PS2's approach was capped at its creation for PS2 and not explored. Hence we've no idea what an evolutionary progression of PS2's strategy would actually achieve, but we do know PS2's design was quite competitive and managed to scale down small and cheap. Ultimately being software compatible with developers is the main reason to stick with what's working elsewhere - the tools and existing knowledge-base is worth more than 10-20% extra performance (imagining that was possible on a 2006 PS2-like arch). One of the problems with exploring non AMD/nVidia solutions was having to start from scratch, not being able to profile and optimise for a final solution, and then running out of time to fully develop and explore a viable alternative if one was possible. Perhaps Toshiba's mythical GPU design that failed to provide enough oomph could have been refined into a version 2 that'd have trumped other GPUs of the period? That again is not impossible. GPUs of the era weren't hitting 90+% utilisation so there's scope for some other arch to balance between between raw paper-spec maths power and actual obtainable work. Plus of course the whole concept of the 'software renderer' allowing alternative rendering paradigms. Which would never see the light of day due to economics of software development.
Clearly Sony had an agenda with Cell and honestly I don't really knock them for it, even in hindsight. It expanded on the design philosophy of the PS2 (as top dog, why self reflect?), and even influenced the entire industry when it came to vector and SIMD performance. In an era where mainstream game development was still cheap but rising in cost, I'd like to know if developers were voicing there opinions about PS2 development vs the Xbox and PC in particular. Cerny's PS4 presentation and "time to triangle" for the PS2 and PS3 come to mind as asset development cost was gauranteed to balloon for the HD era. But you'd figure that "time to triangle" itself should theoretically be able to stay similar.
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I thought it would be kinda cool to take a look back at a little franchise called Dragon Warrior (Quest) on the NES, and how it evolved throughout 4 games over the life of the NES, using a somewhat modern perspective and appreciation.
Here's a quick comparison image I made:
Now the first thing you'll notice with this image is that I'm not a graphic designer and that I probably shouldn't quit my day job.. but if you take a look at it, you can see the various sizes of game roms, and some basic information about each game as well as a few points about things each game successively added/changed over the previous games.
It's a pretty basic image, and to be honest it doesn't really do a good job of accurately quantifying the differences/improvements each game brought forth. Sure we can see that the games grew in size over the course of the series, we can see that the amount of items/monsters/spells and other such things increased in quantity as well, but those numbers don't exactly tell the whole story. For one, back in those days, things like weapons, shields, and armors were usually simple values that changed and weren't necessarily represented through visuals which would change the character sprites or add things like new animations.. thus increasing memory requirements. Enemies were often duplicated with stronger versions of those enemies usually represented by different color pallets. The music tracks are another aspect which doesn't tell the whole story either. The music not only increased in variety and quantity, but the compositions became much more complex and layered as the series went on as well.
The chart also contains the map sizes in tiles for each of the games. The original game was quite small, and each subsequent game increased in size drastically. Not only that but each game significantly increased the number of locations and various points of interest. The 2nd game's overworld map actually includes a slightly compressed version of the original's map within its expanded world as just one small part of the sequel's map... showing just how much more massive in scope the sequel was. The maps not only grew in size and complexity but there were also multiple overworld maps in the later games.
Dragon Warrior 3 even has a town that gets built up from scratch which you can influence by interacting with certain NPCs which will eventually move there and set up shop if you tell them about it. Very cool stuff.
As the series went on they integrated a day and night cycle which would affect where and when NPCs would show up, or when certain items would be discoverable. When you really think about it, these games were doing the open world day/night cycle thing LONG ago. You would get different methods of transportation, such as ship and weather balloon, as well as fast travel teleporting.
As the NES games went on they evolved from having a single player character to multiple party members with different classes and specialties which you could even change and swap in an out. Each game's gameplay systems grew more complex, and Dragon Warror 4 changed things up even further by introducing a chapter based system where you played 4 prelude chapters each following a different character or duo of characters, eventually cumlimating in the 5th chapter where they all converge and join the game's main Hero to save the world. Yes.. you don't actually see or play as the game's hero until around half way through the massive game!
Each game grew in complexity. There were more flourishes added to every aspect of the game: Visuals, Sounds, Music, animations.. increasing the memory requirements. The early NES carts actually had a size limit of just 40KBs. They consisted of a single 32KB PRG ROM for the game data and sound, and an 8KB ROM for graphics data. Of course, as the NES matured, developers would gain access to carts with more ROM capacity for data and graphics, as well as specialized chips which aided the NES' ability to switch between ROM banks which could allow them to push visual variety well past the base spec of the machine, while also allowing the NES to do things it couldn't do before.
Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 would utilize a massive 512KB cartridges. Compared to the original game's 81KB. That's a massive increase of ~6x the data. Quite an increase when you think about it modern terms. If a modern AAA game were to be only 50GB (they're actually far larger).. using the same jump in capcity, that would put a sequel at 300GBs... WOW.
There's just something I love so much about cartridges as a storage medium and how they could change and improve the capabilities of a console through added capacity and processors. When you think about the limitations developers had back in these days.. what they managed to do in some cases is nothing short of incredible. These are some of the smartest and most clever people, utilizing every possible bit (literally) to their advantage, working within the strict limitations of a fixed platform. It required real ingenuity and creativity.
Just 81KBs to create that first game.. hours and hours of content. 81KB is ~5 seconds of MP3 audio at standard bitrates.. If you took all 4 of the NES games and added them together, you get just 1.36MB of data. That's hundreds of hours of gameplay right there. 4 games worth of different characters, stories, worlds, and dungeons to explore, items to find, enemies to fight, and music to listen to.. in a measly 1.36MB.
In fact the image I posted at the beginning of this post does serve a purpose. That image is 7.07MB by itself.. that's over 5x the amount of data than all 4 Dragon Warrior games combined. Your web browser loaded it up instantly. It was loaded before you could probably even scroll down to get to it. Every web page we view has multile images on it that load instantly which can be many times the size of all these games put together... and lets not even consider video and animated files which automatically play as you visit some of them.
It's kinda crazy when you think about that.. just how exponentially things have increased. How much actual data there is inside modern games. I love looking back at games like that.. taking into consideration just how advanced they were for their time, how they evolved, what limitations they had, and how they solved those problems.
As a bonus, I'm going to post a video from the developers of a game called Micro Mages. It's a relatively recent game created for the NES detailing how the team created their game with the 40KB limit in mind. The game was physically released on carts which can be played on actual NES hardware.. it can also be purchased digitally and put on flash cartridges. It can be emluated on PC, and it's also available on STEAM.
Here's a quick comparison image I made:
Now the first thing you'll notice with this image is that I'm not a graphic designer and that I probably shouldn't quit my day job.. but if you take a look at it, you can see the various sizes of game roms, and some basic information about each game as well as a few points about things each game successively added/changed over the previous games.
It's a pretty basic image, and to be honest it doesn't really do a good job of accurately quantifying the differences/improvements each game brought forth. Sure we can see that the games grew in size over the course of the series, we can see that the amount of items/monsters/spells and other such things increased in quantity as well, but those numbers don't exactly tell the whole story. For one, back in those days, things like weapons, shields, and armors were usually simple values that changed and weren't necessarily represented through visuals which would change the character sprites or add things like new animations.. thus increasing memory requirements. Enemies were often duplicated with stronger versions of those enemies usually represented by different color pallets. The music tracks are another aspect which doesn't tell the whole story either. The music not only increased in variety and quantity, but the compositions became much more complex and layered as the series went on as well.
The chart also contains the map sizes in tiles for each of the games. The original game was quite small, and each subsequent game increased in size drastically. Not only that but each game significantly increased the number of locations and various points of interest. The 2nd game's overworld map actually includes a slightly compressed version of the original's map within its expanded world as just one small part of the sequel's map... showing just how much more massive in scope the sequel was. The maps not only grew in size and complexity but there were also multiple overworld maps in the later games.
Dragon Warrior 3 even has a town that gets built up from scratch which you can influence by interacting with certain NPCs which will eventually move there and set up shop if you tell them about it. Very cool stuff.
As the series went on they integrated a day and night cycle which would affect where and when NPCs would show up, or when certain items would be discoverable. When you really think about it, these games were doing the open world day/night cycle thing LONG ago. You would get different methods of transportation, such as ship and weather balloon, as well as fast travel teleporting.
As the NES games went on they evolved from having a single player character to multiple party members with different classes and specialties which you could even change and swap in an out. Each game's gameplay systems grew more complex, and Dragon Warror 4 changed things up even further by introducing a chapter based system where you played 4 prelude chapters each following a different character or duo of characters, eventually cumlimating in the 5th chapter where they all converge and join the game's main Hero to save the world. Yes.. you don't actually see or play as the game's hero until around half way through the massive game!
Each game grew in complexity. There were more flourishes added to every aspect of the game: Visuals, Sounds, Music, animations.. increasing the memory requirements. The early NES carts actually had a size limit of just 40KBs. They consisted of a single 32KB PRG ROM for the game data and sound, and an 8KB ROM for graphics data. Of course, as the NES matured, developers would gain access to carts with more ROM capacity for data and graphics, as well as specialized chips which aided the NES' ability to switch between ROM banks which could allow them to push visual variety well past the base spec of the machine, while also allowing the NES to do things it couldn't do before.
Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 would utilize a massive 512KB cartridges. Compared to the original game's 81KB. That's a massive increase of ~6x the data. Quite an increase when you think about it modern terms. If a modern AAA game were to be only 50GB (they're actually far larger).. using the same jump in capcity, that would put a sequel at 300GBs... WOW.
There's just something I love so much about cartridges as a storage medium and how they could change and improve the capabilities of a console through added capacity and processors. When you think about the limitations developers had back in these days.. what they managed to do in some cases is nothing short of incredible. These are some of the smartest and most clever people, utilizing every possible bit (literally) to their advantage, working within the strict limitations of a fixed platform. It required real ingenuity and creativity.
Just 81KBs to create that first game.. hours and hours of content. 81KB is ~5 seconds of MP3 audio at standard bitrates.. If you took all 4 of the NES games and added them together, you get just 1.36MB of data. That's hundreds of hours of gameplay right there. 4 games worth of different characters, stories, worlds, and dungeons to explore, items to find, enemies to fight, and music to listen to.. in a measly 1.36MB.
In fact the image I posted at the beginning of this post does serve a purpose. That image is 7.07MB by itself.. that's over 5x the amount of data than all 4 Dragon Warrior games combined. Your web browser loaded it up instantly. It was loaded before you could probably even scroll down to get to it. Every web page we view has multile images on it that load instantly which can be many times the size of all these games put together... and lets not even consider video and animated files which automatically play as you visit some of them.
It's kinda crazy when you think about that.. just how exponentially things have increased. How much actual data there is inside modern games. I love looking back at games like that.. taking into consideration just how advanced they were for their time, how they evolved, what limitations they had, and how they solved those problems.
As a bonus, I'm going to post a video from the developers of a game called Micro Mages. It's a relatively recent game created for the NES detailing how the team created their game with the 40KB limit in mind. The game was physically released on carts which can be played on actual NES hardware.. it can also be purchased digitally and put on flash cartridges. It can be emluated on PC, and it's also available on STEAM.
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I thought it would be kinda cool to take a look back at a little franchise called Dragon Warrior (Quest) on the NES, and how it evolved throughout 4 games over the life of the NES, using a somewhat modern perspective and appreciation.
Here's a quick comparison image I made:
Now the first thing you'll notice with this image is that I'm not a graphic designer and that I probably shouldn't quit my day job.. but if you take a look at it, you can see the various sizes of game roms, and some basic information about each game as well as a few points about things each game successively added/changed over the previous games.
It's a pretty basic image, and to be honest it doesn't really do a good job of accurately quantifying the differences/improvements each game brought forth. Sure we can see that the games grew in size over the course of the series, we can see that the amount of items/monsters/spells and other such things increased in quantity as well, but those numbers don't exactly tell the whole story. For one, back in those days, things like weapons, shields, and armors were usually simple values that changed and weren't necessarily represented through visuals which would change the character sprites or add things like new animations.. thus increasing memory requirements. Enemies were often duplicated with stronger versions of those enemies usually represented by different color pallets. The music tracks are another aspect which doesn't tell the whole story either. The music not only increased in variety and quantity, but the compositions became much more complex and layered as the series went on as well.
The chart also contains the map sizes in tiles for each of the games. The original game was quite small, and each subsequent game increased in size drastically. Not only that but each game significantly increased the number of locations and various points of interest. The 2nd game's overworld map actually includes a slightly compressed version of the original's map within its expanded world as just one small part of the sequel's map... showing just how much more massive in scope the sequel was. The maps not only grew in size and complexity but there were also multiple overworld maps in the later games.
Dragon Warrior 3 even has a town that gets built up from scratch which you can influence by interacting with certain NPCs which will eventually move there and set up shop if you tell them about it. Very cool stuff.
As the series went on they integrated a day and night cycle which would affect where and when NPCs would show up, or when certain items would be discoverable. When you really think about it, these games were doing the open world day/night cycle thing LONG ago. You would get different methods of transportation, such as ship and weather balloon, as well as fast travel teleporting.
As the NES games went on they evolved from having a single player character to multiple party members with different classes and specialties which you could even change and swap in an out. Each game's gameplay systems grew more complex, and Dragon Warror 4 changed things up even further by introducing a chapter based system where you played 4 prelude chapters each following a different character or duo of characters, eventually cumlimating in the 5th chapter where they all converge and join the game's main Hero to save the world. Yes.. you don't actually see or play as the game's hero until around half way through the massive game!
Each game grew in complexity. There were more flourishes added to every aspect of the game: Visuals, Sounds, Music, animations.. increasing the memory requirements. The early NES carts actually had a size limit of just 40KBs. They consisted of a single 32KB PRG ROM for the game data and sound, and an 8KB ROM for graphics data. Of course, as the NES matured, developers would gain access to carts with more ROM capacity for data and graphics, as well as specialized chips which aided the NES' ability to switch between ROM banks which could allow them to push visual variety well past the base spec of the machine, while also allowing the NES to do things it couldn't do before.
Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 would utilize a massive 512KB cartridges. Compared to the original game's 81KB. That's a massive increase of ~6x the data. Quite an increase when you think about it modern terms. If a modern AAA game were to be only 50GB (they're actually far larger).. using the same jump in capcity, that would put a sequel at 300GBs... WOW.
There's just something I love so much about cartridges as a storage medium and how they could change and improve the capabilities of a console through added capacity and processors. When you think about the limitations developers had back in these days.. what they managed to do in some cases is nothing short of incredible. These are some of the smartest and most clever people, utilizing every possible bit (literally) to their advantage, working within the strict limitations of a fixed platform. It required real ingenuity and creativity.
Just 81KBs to create that first game.. hours and hours of content. 81KB is ~5 seconds of MP3 audio at standard bitrates.. If you took all 4 of the NES games and added them together, you get just 1.36MB of data. That's hundreds of hours of gameplay right there. 4 games worth of different characters, stories, worlds, and dungeons to explore, items to find, enemies to fight, and music to listen to.. in a measly 1.36MB.
In fact the image I posted at the beginning of this post does serve a purpose. That image is 7.07MB by itself.. that's over 5x the amount of data than all 4 Dragon Warrior games combined. Your web browser loaded it up instantly. It was loaded before you could probably even scroll down to get to it. Every web page we view has multile images on it that load instantly which can be many times the size of all these games put together... and lets not even consider video and animated files which automatically play as you visit some of them.
It's kinda crazy when you think about that.. just how exponentially things have increased. How much actual data there is inside modern games. I love looking back at games like that.. taking into consideration just how advanced they were for their time, how they evolved, what limitations they had, and how they solved those problems.
As a bonus, I'm going to post a video from the developers of a game called Micro Mages. It's a relatively recent game created for the NES detailing how the team created their game with the 40KB limit in mind. The game was physically released on carts which can be played on actual NES hardware.. it can also be purchased digitally and put on flash cartridges. It can be emluated on PC, and it's also available on STEAM.
Really cool write-up there @Remij . I enjoyed it very much. Do you have a blog or something with other stuff like that? Thanks for sharing it.
As for your picture. The design was ok. Nothing to be embarrassed by. Looked perfectibly professional. The only think I'd change would be some visual aid to connect some of the items listed to the left with their respective number on the right. A dotted line would do the trick just fine, like often used in a book index, or in reataurant menus.
Thanks so much for the comments, that's very nice of you to say! You're quite welcome!
Valid criticism of the pic as well haha. I will remember that for the future.
No, I don't have a blog or anything, well not yet anyway. Sometimes I just get into a nostalgic mood where I think about this kind of stuff quite a bit, and figure that I should jot it down because maybe some people would find it interesting. I love talking about stuff like this whether it's hardware, software, developers, as well as stories from my youth, and how videogames and tech shaped me into who I am. Hearing/reading other people's gaming stories is fascinating and I definitely encourage anyone else to put them out there. I love the technical aspect to videogames and development so much. There's a bunch of stories worth telling, because quite frankly, it was a magical time in gaming. I think it's important to look back and appreciate what came before, and consider what limitations developers were working within even way back then. You'll find that they were dealing with a lot of the same constraints and issues developers even today deal with. So I find that looking back like that with a modern perspective and drawing a lot of parallels that exist between them is interesting.
I'm happy you enjoyed my babbling, so thanks again! I will consider doing it more often in the future
Thanks
Nah, that's not me. That's actually from the studio themselves which created the game from the video. They're Morphcat Games, and they're based in Berlin, Germany. http://morphcat.de/
That video, which I had seen years ago, stuck with me because of how they depicted and visualized how they were able to "compress" or in this case get rid of, unnecessary data by using the hardware features of the NES to reduce the amount of tiles required. I thought the video did an AMAZING job of clearly explaining and demonstrating their design process, which in turn influenced how I myself visualized and thought about how developers worked back in those days.
PS2 was more powerful at particles and transparencies, other than that I don't remember any notorious advantage. The Gamecube vs Xbox comparison was a more difficult one where a clear winner wasn't obvious although the Xbox was the most powerful overall.
never heard about NBA 07, it looks fine for a first time effort, except those little hiccups in framerate performance. Too bad that the only basketball game available is NBA 2k, it's not that fun as a game, and it doesn't evolve either, but that's a different matter.
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Yeah in practice that's were it excelled. But someone somewhere mentioned that the hardware had some specific hardware design choices that were never utilized.
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Yes, I believe it may have been. I don't know if this is all the videos combined or if it's new commentary.
I thought it would be kinda cool to take a look back at a little franchise called Dragon Warrior (Quest) on the NES, and how it evolved throughout 4 games over the life of the NES, using a somewhat modern perspective and appreciation.
Here's a quick comparison image I made:
Now the first thing you'll notice with this image is that I'm not a graphic designer and that I probably shouldn't quit my day job.. but if you take a look at it, you can see the various sizes of game roms, and some basic information about each game as well as a few points about things each game successively added/changed over the previous games.
It's a pretty basic image, and to be honest it doesn't really do a good job of accurately quantifying the differences/improvements each game brought forth. Sure we can see that the games grew in size over the course of the series, we can see that the amount of items/monsters/spells and other such things increased in quantity as well, but those numbers don't exactly tell the whole story. For one, back in those days, things like weapons, shields, and armors were usually simple values that changed and weren't necessarily represented through visuals which would change the character sprites or add things like new animations.. thus increasing memory requirements. Enemies were often duplicated with stronger versions of those enemies usually represented by different color pallets. The music tracks are another aspect which doesn't tell the whole story either. The music not only increased in variety and quantity, but the compositions became much more complex and layered as the series went on as well.
The chart also contains the map sizes in tiles for each of the games. The original game was quite small, and each subsequent game increased in size drastically. Not only that but each game significantly increased the number of locations and various points of interest. The 2nd game's overworld map actually includes a slightly compressed version of the original's map within its expanded world as just one small part of the sequel's map... showing just how much more massive in scope the sequel was. The maps not only grew in size and complexity but there were also multiple overworld maps in the later games.
Dragon Warrior 3 even has a town that gets built up from scratch which you can influence by interacting with certain NPCs which will eventually move there and set up shop if you tell them about it. Very cool stuff.
As the series went on they integrated a day and night cycle which would affect where and when NPCs would show up, or when certain items would be discoverable. When you really think about it, these games were doing the open world day/night cycle thing LONG ago. You would get different methods of transportation, such as ship and weather balloon, as well as fast travel teleporting.
As the NES games went on they evolved from having a single player character to multiple party members with different classes and specialties which you could even change and swap in an out. Each game's gameplay systems grew more complex, and Dragon Warror 4 changed things up even further by introducing a chapter based system where you played 4 prelude chapters each following a different character or duo of characters, eventually cumlimating in the 5th chapter where they all converge and join the game's main Hero to save the world. Yes.. you don't actually see or play as the game's hero until around half way through the massive game!
Each game grew in complexity. There were more flourishes added to every aspect of the game: Visuals, Sounds, Music, animations.. increasing the memory requirements. The early NES carts actually had a size limit of just 40KBs. They consisted of a single 32KB PRG ROM for the game data and sound, and an 8KB ROM for graphics data. Of course, as the NES matured, developers would gain access to carts with more ROM capacity for data and graphics, as well as specialized chips which aided the NES' ability to switch between ROM banks which could allow them to push visual variety well past the base spec of the machine, while also allowing the NES to do things it couldn't do before.
Dragon Warrior 3 and 4 would utilize a massive 512KB cartridges. Compared to the original game's 81KB. That's a massive increase of ~6x the data. Quite an increase when you think about it modern terms. If a modern AAA game were to be only 50GB (they're actually far larger).. using the same jump in capcity, that would put a sequel at 300GBs... WOW.
There's just something I love so much about cartridges as a storage medium and how they could change and improve the capabilities of a console through added capacity and processors. When you think about the limitations developers had back in these days.. what they managed to do in some cases is nothing short of incredible. These are some of the smartest and most clever people, utilizing every possible bit (literally) to their advantage, working within the strict limitations of a fixed platform. It required real ingenuity and creativity.
Just 81KBs to create that first game.. hours and hours of content. 81KB is ~5 seconds of MP3 audio at standard bitrates.. If you took all 4 of the NES games and added them together, you get just 1.36MB of data. That's hundreds of hours of gameplay right there. 4 games worth of different characters, stories, worlds, and dungeons to explore, items to find, enemies to fight, and music to listen to.. in a measly 1.36MB.
In fact the image I posted at the beginning of this post does serve a purpose. That image is 7.07MB by itself.. that's over 5x the amount of data than all 4 Dragon Warrior games combined. Your web browser loaded it up instantly. It was loaded before you could probably even scroll down to get to it. Every web page we view has multile images on it that load instantly which can be many times the size of all these games put together... and lets not even consider video and animated files which automatically play as you visit some of them.
It's kinda crazy when you think about that.. just how exponentially things have increased. How much actual data there is inside modern games. I love looking back at games like that.. taking into consideration just how advanced they were for their time, how they evolved, what limitations they had, and how they solved those problems.
As a bonus, I'm going to post a video from the developers of a game called Micro Mages. It's a relatively recent game created for the NES detailing how the team created their game with the 40KB limit in mind. The game was physically released on carts which can be played on actual NES hardware.. it can also be purchased digitally and put on flash cartridges. It can be emluated on PC, and it's also available on STEAM.
As a kid in the 80s I loved Dragon Warrior. Nintendo Power actually gave it away with subscriptions to push the franchise in the states.
The games were great and like Final Fantasy were inspired by wizardry and ultima from the west. Such a great accomplishment
I loved my 32x
My dad was watching me and took my to toys r us and there on sale for $50was the 32x and games were $10-$20 each. So my dad was like why not and grabbed it for me and a few games. I loved Virtua racing , after burner , Knuckles , MK2 , star trek , virtua fighter . star wars and wwf were all games I ended up owning for it. Oh and I ended up getting the 32x version of night trap that required the genesis/sega cd/ 32x to work lol. That was a good year for me because the saturn came out later that year and I got that for my birthday.
I still ahve my tower of power in my parents basement.
I think a lot of the games looked better than their counter parts on other consoles however there just wasn't enough content and was priced too high. I wish we got to see people use all 3 systems a bit better