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NEC PC-Engine/SuperGrafx => PC Engine/SuperGrafx Discussion => Topic started by: kakutolives on April 10, 2012, 06:51:57 PM
Title: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kakutolives on April 10, 2012, 06:51:57 PM
So I was checking youtube and found something very interesting and I was wondering how well known this tidbit of information was:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/PME4T6RQT8I
you can check after minute 6:55 when they start talking about faster loading times (during cutscenes) and they even do a video comparison side by side. Any veteran PC engine expert know titles off the top of their head that take advantage of this?
Thanks
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: SignOfZeta on April 10, 2012, 07:35:12 PM
Well, first off, the Arcade Card does not have 17.5 megabytes of RAM. That would be awesome for sure, but...anyway, whatever. A byte is not a bit.
Also, its Gate of Thunder. Not Gates. That's a common and forgivable mistake most of the time, but when you have a video clip of the title screen that appears just as the guy says, "Gates", it's pretty dumb.
The 3x3 Eyes thing is unique. No other PCE game has a cut scene like the opening for this game. There are other games that are Super CDs with special features only accessible when running the AC, but they are nowhere near as impressive. Some are nearly impossible to detect.
As for faster load times...if you've actually run 3x3 Eyes on a real system you'd see that the load times for the AC version opening scene are HUUUUUUGE. Like, probably a minute or so. The SCD version loads way way quicker. The AC doesn't change the speed of the bus, the CDROM2, or anything else, it just gives you more RAM. If all of that RAM is going to be used, then its going to take more time to fill it. This is why most SCD games have pretty good load times; there just isn't that much to load. Compare this with, say, a PS1, which has about the same amount of RAM as an AC equipped PCE, and you'll see that the load times are still pretty horrific because the PS1 only has a 2x drive.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Keranu on April 10, 2012, 07:48:36 PM
Watching this and cringing a little on their history of the Turbo Grafx 16. Some if it sounds very sujbective: "Is actually an 8-bit machine.", "Has a 16-bit graphic processor", "In many ways looks better than a Genesis, but still feels like a NES."
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kakutolives on April 10, 2012, 07:54:07 PM
Well, first off, the Arcade Card does not have 17.5 megabytes of RAM. That would be awesome for sure, but...anyway, whatever. A byte is not a bit.
Also, its Gate of Thunder. Not Gates. That's a common and forgivable mistake most of the time, but when you have a video clip of the title screen that appears just as the guy says, "Gates", it's pretty dumb.
The 3x3 Eyes thing is unique. No other PCE game has a cut scene like the opening for this game. There are other games that are Super CDs with special features only accessible when running the AC, but they are nowhere near as impressive. Some are nearly impossible to detect.
As for faster load times...if you've actually run 3x3 Eyes on a real system you'd see that the load times for the AC version opening scene are HUUUUUUGE. Like, probably a minute or so. The SCD version loads way way quicker. The AC doesn't change the speed of the bus, the CDROM2, or anything else, it just gives you more RAM. If all of that RAM is going to be used, then its going to take more time to fill it. This is why most SCD games have pretty good load times; there just isn't that much to load. Compare this with, say, a PS1, which has about the same amount of RAM as an AC equipped PCE, and you'll see that the load times are still pretty horrific because the PS1 only has a 2x drive.
Hey thanks for clearing that up. I learned something new today. quite a bit of good info there. Thanks
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: SignOfZeta on April 10, 2012, 08:02:36 PM
Watching this and cringing a little on their history of the Turbo Grafx 16. Some if it sounds very sujbective: "Is actually an 8-bit machine.", "Has a 16-bit graphic processor", "In many ways looks better than a Genesis, but still feels like a NES."
Yeah, there is no way I'd be able to watch this entire thing. I only skipped to the point the OP was referencing.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Keranu on April 10, 2012, 08:21:37 PM
"In the end these animations rival [referring to 3X3 Eyes] any animations for the Sega CD or any other console system until the Playstation and Saturn were released."
Yikes, bold statement. Sega CD had some titles that could definitely hold a candle to 3X3 Eyes, not to mention the 3DO, Jag CD, and other FMV-capable systems available before PS1/Saturn.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 10, 2012, 08:46:52 PM
Yeah, for example Urusei Yatsura on the MCD looks fantastic (I honestly have to admit).
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shubibiman on April 10, 2012, 09:41:15 PM
"In many ways looks better than a Genesis, but still feels like a NES."
Yeah, I really feel like I'm playing an NES game when I play Art Of Fighting :D
Let alone a sapphire or even non ACD game like Winds of Thunder..LOL. totally NES-a-Like!
Most peeps are not aware of the later SCD and ACD releases and rely for their statements on early Huey games experience only. I say "go back and play the right stuff again".
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Samurai Ghost on April 10, 2012, 10:28:47 PM
Yeah, the early Hueys are just basically souped up NES style games because developers at the time didn't know how to take advantage of the hardware yet or hadn't thought about new styles of gameplay. Similar to how early PS2 titles were basically PS1 titles with better textures and a few more polygons. I see what he's saying, but it's pretty silly to judge an entire console by it's early releases alone, especially considering how much gaming progressed between the late 80's and early 90's...
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 10, 2012, 10:39:52 PM
Absolut right. The world and developers were not ready for games like winds of thunder or sapphire back in '87. those were just still an unknown, non-developed and unevolutioned kind of games back then, hence most stuff WAS FORCED to look like polished NES or were at best good adaption of the that time popular arcade games (R-Type, Galaga '88, Monter lair etc.). The SFC in the other hand came out when games like street fighter II was about to hit the market. a quite different era of games compared to back in '87. There were a lot of changes in terms of games, gameplay, graphics (but not so much graphical capability) within this short but yet long 3 years. the pce did damn well for the time when it came out, and did even much better in its later years.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Black Tiger on April 11, 2012, 01:02:10 AM
It's one thing to talk about the PCE as being unimpressive or being 8-bit like when completely ignorant of the games. But it's kinda dumb to do so while showing games like Gate of Thunder.
Even the earliest PCE HuCard games weren't all NES like, only some were more more basic. Many hold up well compared to later 16-bit console games. The thing to keep in mind is that Mega Drive and Super Famicom games were much more basic back then in that they didn't exist at all.
The way that the Arcade card can shorten load times in Super CD games is when it preloads several areas which you'd be traveling to and from repeatedly for a while. Like the fight scenes, tiwns, dungeons and map of a zone in a RPG. Bicompatible CD2/SCD games can do the same in theory, but I've never seen what exactly the difference is in SCD mode for any of them.
EDIT: Aw man, I just watched that video. I seriously think that it may be a parody video. I've considered doing something similar. I think that literally every sentence contains either wrong facts or terribly misguided musings. It's pretty bad when you're only about 20% as accurate as wikipedia. When they started out name dropping NEC as though it was to the PCE what Sega and Nintendo are to their consoles, with no mention of Hudson Soft during the entire video, it wasn't a good sign. It's cool when someone posts a thread on a forum or does an article for a site that is quickly corrected by others, but videos like this are what people like the video's authors (if it is indeed not a joke) rely on when learning about console they aren't familiar with. Even if the PCE is before your time, I don't know how you can get pretty much everything about it wrong... and say that it's your favorite system. You never hear Keranu talking out of his ass like that.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: SignOfZeta on April 11, 2012, 06:23:10 AM
"In the end these animations rival [referring to 3X3 Eyes] any animations for the Sega CD or any other console system until the Playstation and Saturn were released."
Yikes, bold statement. Sega CD had some titles that could definitely hold a candle to 3X3 Eyes, not to mention the 3DO, Jag CD, and other FMV-capable systems available before PS1/Saturn.
Well...this is complicated.
When you are talking about actual FMV, the traditional video recordings of actual anime created in the normal way and shot to film before being converted to Sega CD...that stuff is pretty impressive since there is no technical limitation to speak of, its just pure (shitty) video. You could put Akira on that or you could put Crayon Shin-chan there, its not different to the game machine.
However, if you are talking about sprite/background based digital art like the cut scenes in Ys...that's another thing entirely.
The cutscenes in 3x3 eyes are sort of in between these two (as are the ones in Aim for the Top! 1&2). If you view them as sprite/background based digital animations they do beat the Sega CD stuff, but looking at them it seems to me that they aren't actually that. Its pretty obvious this stuff was made by TV/OVA animators and manually turned into what is essentially half way between FMV and real-time digital animation. It doesn't have the constant grainy haze of FMV, but it more or less was made the same way.
Its a grey area. It really wouldn't be a sustainable method of making cinemas (as proven by 3x3 Eyes itself, which only uses this technique for the intro). After the Mega CD and PCE era, cutscenes almost disappeared from games completely, and when they did come back they were usually FMV, sadly usually from pre-rendered CG animations. Sometimes you get something like Sakura Wars but usually its more like FFVII type shit.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Black Tiger on April 11, 2012, 06:30:51 AM
Popful Mail for Sega-CD renders cinemas in realtime and is very impress, but it's also streaming and the art is simplified and low color. Lunar EB has very nice realtime cinemas that is OVA/TV quality, fully detailed and colored/shaded very well.
Gunbusters for PCE have anime quality animation in realtime, but it's kinda like stop and go fmv.
Tengai Makyou The Apocalypse IV was one of the last console games to go all out with quality real time PCE-style cinemas... Except they were reserved for the battles.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: esteban on April 11, 2012, 07:03:27 AM
Concerning the video (Retroware TV): At least he uses Dungeon Explorer PSG tunes! I appreciated that aspect. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
As for the entire video...well, contrary to what folks have said here (about it being garbage), it certainly wasn't complete drivel. I've seen truly horrendous garbage out there, and this "Retroware" wasn't nearly as bad. Flawed? Yes. Entertaining to watch? Yes. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: td741 on April 11, 2012, 07:15:14 AM
EDIT: Aw man, I just watched that video. I seriously think that it may be a parody video. I've considered doing something similar
The biggest and easiest to verify claim was that "Mad Stalker" was a "Shooter"... yeah... a shooter where you walk on a two dimensional plane and jump, punch and kick... :P
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Black Tiger on April 11, 2012, 08:40:34 AM
Concerning the video (Retroware TV): At least he uses Dungeon Explorer PSG tunes! I appreciated that aspect. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
As for the entire video...well, contrary to what folks have said here (about it being garbage), it certainly wasn't complete drivel. I've seen truly horrendous garbage out there, and this "Retroware" wasn't nearly as bad. Flawed? Yes. Entertaining to watch? Yes. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
I don't think that anything will ever top the anti-PCE/PCE fan propaganda videos that those guys made after a flame war with several customers.
EDIT: Aw man, I just watched that video. I seriously think that it may be a parody video. I've considered doing something similar
The biggest and easiest to verify claim was that "Mad Stalker" was a "Shooter"... yeah... a shooter where you walk on a two dimensional plane and jump, punch and kick... :P
That's kinda like the 1up Turbo retrospective in which the most clueless guy aggressively led the conversation and corrected the one guy who was actually familiar with Turbo/PCE, who had made the mistake of saying that Gate of Thunder had a heavy hard rock soundtrack. He was like "No! It's all techno music! Only one part of one song has any guitar!" :P
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Keranu on April 11, 2012, 10:19:22 AM
Quote from: Black_Tiger
You never hear Keranu talking out of his ass like that.
I'm a ass talking pro! But in all sincerity I do believe JJ & Jeff is the holy grail of video games.
Concerning the video (Retroware TV): At least he uses Dungeon Explorer PSG tunes! I appreciated that aspect. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
As for the entire video...well, contrary to what folks have said here (about it being garbage), it certainly wasn't complete drivel. I've seen truly horrendous garbage out there, and this "Retroware" wasn't nearly as bad. Flawed? Yes. Entertaining to watch? Yes. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
I agree, I still enjoyed watching the video. I appreciated the music selection too, they used my favorite track from Ys!
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kazekirifx on April 11, 2012, 01:50:25 PM
You're talking about Popful Mail SCD right? That's one of the games I can remember that gets rid of some of the load times between cut scenes when using the Arcade Card.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: RegalSin on April 11, 2012, 03:08:09 PM
Mad Stalker is the only game I encountered with the pre-load. I think it loads all the material, used in game, not including the stages. I really love the game, it holds a candle to Knight SaberS/bUBBLEGUM cRISIS.
You know what, Popful mail on the Sega Cd cut scenes looks terrible. That just my opinon. It was like they did not really think things out at all. It is even worst then the original ( which is the original, so their is no harm ), original, original game. The PCE game feel like I am actually watching an animation.
Also with less colors, the Sega game bonus is the bigger sprites, and alternative enemies. Nothing else. It is basically the SNES game but advanced. Ever wonder why the series never took off???
The animation pilot also made no sense at all. They pretty much turned Popful into Beast Master, and just like BM2 the animation made no sense. It would have made a nice series, popful mail in the real world, simular to Geomon in the real world.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Keranu on April 11, 2012, 04:08:18 PM
I like the art style and colors of the PCE Popful Mail cutscenes much more, but the Sega CD version has nicer animation.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: BigusSchmuck on April 11, 2012, 05:21:28 PM
Makes you wonder if someone out there has created a vcd player on the pcengine or sega cd... Hmm
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Joe Redifer on April 11, 2012, 05:58:53 PM
Can't be done. VCD uses MPEG 1 which neither system can support. VCD also uses MP2 audio files at (I think) 224kbps and even the 32X isn't powerful enough to play back MP2 files, though it can play back MOD files.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Black Tiger on April 12, 2012, 12:36:31 AM
Makes you wonder if someone out there has created a vcd player on the pcengine or sega cd... Hmm
That is possible. The problem would be the CD-speed, and memory. The PCE would have to stream the data and destroy it at the same time. The SEGA cd, hardware is capable of using VCD, as well.
I have a Sega Saturn Card. It works nicely with my matching Saturn. The Saturn definently has the power to even run DVD's as well. In fact a programmer could actually load a pre-loader program to various video files on the Saturn.
The PCE can run video, but not MPEG directly. Who really knowns.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 12, 2012, 01:23:27 AM
HuVideo FTEW!
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kazekirifx on April 12, 2012, 02:19:08 PM
Makes you wonder if someone out there has created a vcd player on the pcengine or sega cd... Hmm
That is possible. The problem would be the CD-speed, and memory.
No, it's totally not possible and those wouldn't be the only problems. What about the graphic capabilities of the PCE and Sega CD? I doubt the color palette or graphic resolution on either system would be up to the task. Any sort of clever processing to get around this by approximating the color palette/downscanning the resolution on either system would probably require processing power that neither system has as well.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 12, 2012, 02:44:39 PM
Galaxy Fäulein HuVideo:
Gulliver Boy HuVideo:
and a HuVideo hack by our tom:
I wonder know, if it would have been possible to realize QTE games like dragon's lair, time gal with HuVideo? Would have been awesome and much superior to the available MCD stuff.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kazekirifx on April 12, 2012, 02:56:30 PM
and a HuVideo hack by our tom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNw9ccJHS4&feature=related
I wonder know, if it would have been possible to realize QTE games like dragon's lair, time gal with HuVideo? Would have been awesome and much superior to the available MCD stuff.
Wow. That's awesome. I hadn't seen that hack before. Has he released a tool for this? Is it possible to get an ISO of that hacked Gulliver Boy? I'd like to see it running on my own PCE. I'm sure it would have been possible to make Dragon's Lair etc. with this. Hell, probably wouldn't even be that difficult as a homebrew (pirate) project.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: RegalSin on April 12, 2012, 03:20:56 PM
Note: I already stated that Dragon Lair could run on the PCE, On another forum.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 12, 2012, 04:23:06 PM
but also in amazing HuVideo? And how do you know?
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 12, 2012, 04:25:07 PM
and a HuVideo hack by our tom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNw9ccJHS4&feature=related
I wonder know, if it would have been possible to realize QTE games like dragon's lair, time gal with HuVideo? Would have been awesome and much superior to the available MCD stuff.
Wow. That's awesome. I hadn't seen that hack before. Has he released a tool for this? Is it possible to get an ISO of that hacked Gulliver Boy? I'd like to see it running on my own PCE. I'm sure it would have been possible to make Dragon's Lair etc. with this. Hell, probably wouldn't even be that difficult as a homebrew (pirate) project.
yeah, would be very cool. and Time Gal as well.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Black Tiger on April 12, 2012, 04:51:53 PM
John Madden also uses HuVideo, some of which is doubled or whatever to be full screen. The quality is good but the source material isn't.
The Gulliver Boy cinemas are pretty high color, I think around 85 colors or something. The dithering looks like film grain and it's nice and clear without any chunking.
HuVideo could do nice versions of any fmv game for SCD, but it would have been cool to see if the Arcade Card could have expanded it a bit further. At least some nice preloaded clips would have been possible, like the pre-title screen clip in Sapphire.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kazekirifx on April 12, 2012, 07:10:09 PM
HuVideo could do nice versions of any fmv game for SCD...
Yeah. Imagine what could of been, had the technology been developed sooner. The Turbo could have had more of those FMV-based games the Sega CD had. It sounds stupid now, but back in the day it was a cool gimmick, and I was kind of jealous of the Sega CD's wealth of FMV games. All the FMV games released on the Turbo outside Japan had noticeable issues, and the problems with the technology is probably what kept most of the games from getting made. There could have at least been Time Gal, Road Blasters, and Thunder Storm FX in Japan on the PCE had HuVideo been around sooner.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Bonknuts on April 12, 2012, 07:53:21 PM
Wow. That's awesome. I hadn't seen that hack before. Has he released a tool for this? Is it possible to get an ISO of that hacked Gulliver Boy? I'd like to see it running on my own PCE. I'm sure it would have been possible to make Dragon's Lair etc. with this. Hell, probably wouldn't even be that difficult as a homebrew (pirate) project.
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: esteban on April 13, 2012, 06:43:50 PM
Wow. That's awesome. I hadn't seen that hack before. Has he released a tool for this? Is it possible to get an ISO of that hacked Gulliver Boy? I'd like to see it running on my own PCE. I'm sure it would have been possible to make Dragon's Lair etc. with this. Hell, probably wouldn't even be that difficult as a homebrew (pirate) project.
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
I had never seen that HuVideo demo before. Awesome. (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: NightWolve on April 13, 2012, 07:30:23 PM
and a HuVideo hack by our tom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNw9ccJHS4&feature=related
Hm, I kinda enjoyed that 3:00 minutes into it when the Jap rockstar babe starts doing her thing. Sounds like it's a good pop/rock'n'roll song based on beat, music, etc. despite not understanding a word of it.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: kazekirifx on April 14, 2012, 01:39:31 AM
Hm, I kinda enjoyed that 3:00 minutes into it when the Jap rockstar babe starts doing her thing. Sounds like it's a good pop/rock'n'roll song based on beat, music, etc. despite not understanding a word of it.
and a HuVideo hack by our tom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNw9ccJHS4&feature=related
Hm, I kinda enjoyed that 3:00 minutes into it when the Jap rockstar babe starts doing her thing. Sounds like it's a good pop/rock'n'roll song based on beat, music, etc. despite not understanding a word of it.
Priss...is so cool. So cool.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: SignOfZeta on April 14, 2012, 04:31:38 AM
What about the graphic capabilities of the PCE and Sega CD? I doubt the color palette or graphic resolution on either system would be up to the task. Any sort of clever processing to get around this by approximating the color palette/downscanning the resolution on either system would probably require processing power that neither system has as well.
The color of the PCE is adequate, the color of the MD is never adequate.
The output resolution of both systems is plenty, but only if they could render video across their entire resolution at full speed without running out of buffer which I assume they probably can't, otherwise the Yuna video would have been full screen.
The other problem is that since VCD is different color/resolution-wise than a PCE there will (I assume) have to be a little bit of conversation going on, which is going to hit the CPU pretty hard.
So...HuVideo yes, actual MPEG1 VCD, no.
I would love to buy Dragon's Lair for the 100th time as a PCE game. I bought the DSi one (and DL2, and Space Ace) and its really good. One of the very few home conversions that has as little scene lag as the LD one.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shubibiman on April 14, 2012, 06:12:21 AM
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace should have been released as LD-Rom² games. It would have made sense.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: SignOfZeta on April 14, 2012, 12:41:16 PM
It would have made a LOT of sense. Its ironic because Digital Leisure has pooped out ports of Dragon's Lair for basically every other system in existence.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: soop on April 15, 2012, 10:30:49 PM
I lol'd the other day at the Samurai Jack Dragons Lair reference. "Where the road forks, the path to the left will lead to the dragons lair." "and the path to the right?" "Space Ace!"
I can see so many people not getting that :D
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shawnji on April 17, 2012, 11:39:26 PM
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
Any chance you could provide a link to that? I checked romhacking.net, but couldn't seem to find anything; either that or I'm looking in the wrong place.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Sadler on April 18, 2012, 03:25:28 AM
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
Any chance you could provide a link to that? I checked romhacking.net, but couldn't seem to find anything; either that or I'm looking in the wrong place.
I'd really like to see this too. I did some googling last night and couldn't find it. I have a sneaking suspicion I've asked you before and you already hooked me up, but I can't find any copy on my computer so maybe that never happened.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Tatsujin on April 18, 2012, 04:56:43 AM
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
Any chance you could provide a link to that? I checked romhacking.net, but couldn't seem to find anything; either that or I'm looking in the wrong place.
I'd really like to see this too. I did some googling last night and couldn't find it. I have a sneaking suspicion I've asked you before and you already hooked me up, but I can't find any copy on my computer so maybe that never happened.
I didn't release my tools, but I did release the HuVideo file format spec - so anyone could make their own Huvideos and converter.
Any chance you could provide a link to that? I checked romhacking.net, but couldn't seem to find anything; either that or I'm looking in the wrong place.
http://www.pcedev.net/huvideo/huvideo_format.txt
A quick explanation of the ... explanation ;>_> The tiles are uncompressed normal 4bit 8x8 BG tiles (15 colors + BG color 0). They are stored/setup in linear horizontal raster order (left to right). The palette data is the whole BG block (256 colors) - uncompressed. The 'tilemap' only has the palette association data. It doesn't have the tile number because that's redundant, since the tiles are stored in sequential fashion. There are only 16 BG subpalettes, so you only need 4bits to represent 0-15. Thus the subpalette map entries are bit packed as 4bit chunks. So the first 4bits is for tile 0, next 4bits for tile 1, next 4bits tile 2, and so on. The sound data is straight PCE compatible ADPCM (you can use the SOX utility to convert wave or other sound files to this specific ADPCM format. Beware, there are other ADPCM formats out there that are not compatible with the PCE CD ADPCM chip). The rest of of the frame packet is garbage. They game never reads from it.
So each frame is 0x3000 bytes. The huvideo player has a custom CD read routine (it bypasses the system card) and reads in a 122k a second for 10 frames per second video. The system card bios CD_Read function is too slow (~96k) among other problems with it, so they bypass it (a number of other later gen CD titles do this too). Ah.. what else... oh, the header is easy to identify inside the 'cooked' ISO file. But you *can't* change the frame size for Gulliverboy and Luna by changing the header. The players are hardcoded to the frame size *and* packet frame format, so you'd have to hack the player itself to make any such changes to those attributes.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shawnji on April 18, 2012, 10:26:24 PM
A quick explanation of the ... explanation ;>_> The tiles are uncompressed normal 4bit 8x8 BG tiles (15 colors + BG color 0). They are stored/setup in linear horizontal raster order (left to right). The palette data is the whole BG block (256 colors) - uncompressed. The 'tilemap' only has the palette association data. It doesn't have the tile number because that's redundant, since the tiles are stored in sequential fashion. There are only 16 BG subpalettes, so you only need 4bits to represent 0-15. Thus the subpalette map entries are bit packed as 4bit chunks. So the first 4bits is for tile 0, next 4bits for tile 1, next 4bits tile 2, and so on. The sound data is straight PCE compatible ADPCM (you can use the SOX utility to convert wave or other sound files to this specific ADPCM format. Beware, there are other ADPCM formats out there that are not compatible with the PCE CD ADPCM chip). The rest of of the frame packet is garbage. They game never reads from it.
So each frame is 0x3000 bytes. The huvideo player has a custom CD read routine (it bypasses the system card) and reads in a 122k a second for 10 frames per second video. The system card bios CD_Read function is too slow (~96k) among other problems with it, so they bypass it (a number of other later gen CD titles do this too). Ah.. what else... oh, the header is easy to identify inside the 'cooked' ISO file. But you *can't* change the frame size for Gulliverboy and Luna by changing the header. The players are hardcoded to the frame size *and* packet frame format, so you'd have to hack the player itself to make any such changes to those attributes.
Thank you sir! You're a gentleman and a scholar. :)
So, maybe this is a stupid question, but is there a set allocation of space for the cutscenes in something like Gulliver Boy? In other words, is there a cap for how many minutes of footage you can insert in place of a cutscene? Do you have to match the time exactly or is it more free-form (depending on the available space on the disc naturally)?
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: soop on April 18, 2012, 11:44:56 PM
That was a really good explanation. I understood it, and I haven't been paying attention to the rest of the thread.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: geise on April 19, 2012, 01:43:45 AM
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace should have been released as LD-Rom² games. It would have made sense.
Sense yes, but not a fraction as cool as they would have been released on the pce in Huvideo tech.
Holy hell Tats! That would've been amazingly awesome! In all it's grainy glory. Would've been better than the Sega CD ones. I do need to pick up the whole collection that's on Blu-ray.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Sadler on April 19, 2012, 03:52:04 AM
A quick explanation of the ... explanation ;>_> The tiles are uncompressed normal 4bit 8x8 BG tiles (15 colors + BG color 0). They are stored/setup in linear horizontal raster order (left to right). The palette data is the whole BG block (256 colors) - uncompressed. The 'tilemap' only has the palette association data. It doesn't have the tile number because that's redundant, since the tiles are stored in sequential fashion. There are only 16 BG subpalettes, so you only need 4bits to represent 0-15. Thus the subpalette map entries are bit packed as 4bit chunks. So the first 4bits is for tile 0, next 4bits for tile 1, next 4bits tile 2, and so on. The sound data is straight PCE compatible ADPCM (you can use the SOX utility to convert wave or other sound files to this specific ADPCM format. Beware, there are other ADPCM formats out there that are not compatible with the PCE CD ADPCM chip). The rest of of the frame packet is garbage. They game never reads from it.
So each frame is 0x3000 bytes. The huvideo player has a custom CD read routine (it bypasses the system card) and reads in a 122k a second for 10 frames per second video. The system card bios CD_Read function is too slow (~96k) among other problems with it, so they bypass it (a number of other later gen CD titles do this too). Ah.. what else... oh, the header is easy to identify inside the 'cooked' ISO file. But you *can't* change the frame size for Gulliverboy and Luna by changing the header. The players are hardcoded to the frame size *and* packet frame format, so you'd have to hack the player itself to make any such changes to those attributes.
Thank you sir! You're a gentleman and a scholar. :)
So, maybe this is a stupid question, but is there a set allocation of space for the cutscenes in something like Gulliver Boy? In other words, is there a cap for how many minutes of footage you can insert in place of a cutscene? Do you have to match the time exactly or is it more free-form (depending on the available space on the disc naturally)?
Thanks Bonknuts! :D As far as length of a clip, the number of frames is specified by 2 bytes in the header, so that would mean up to 65536 frames. Both Yuna and Gulliver are at 10 frames a second, so thats 6553.6 seconds, or a little over 109 minutes. If my math is correct, each frame is about 12KB, so if there are 700 MB on a CD, that means about 59733 frames. Again, at 10 frames/second that's about 99.5 minutes.
Another thought: this appears to only use background tiles, so presumably sprites could be overlaid on top of huvideo?
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: Bonknuts on April 21, 2012, 12:58:14 PM
Quote
So, maybe this is a stupid question, but is there a set allocation of space for the cutscenes in something like Gulliver Boy? In other words, is there a cap for how many minutes of footage you can insert in place of a cutscene? Do you have to match the time exactly or is it more free-form (depending on the available space on the disc naturally)?
The player goes by the frame length in the huvideo header. So yeah, you can change the length of that video by changing that in the corresponding header. (I tested that)
Another thought: this appears to only use background tiles, so presumably sprites could be overlaid on top of huvideo?
Correct.
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shawnji on April 21, 2012, 09:07:47 PM
Thanks guys! Very helpful information. Hopefully I'll be able to put it to use at some point down the road...
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: grahf on April 22, 2012, 02:19:10 AM
I wonder what Hudson was charging to license HuVideo back then... Or if they even did. All the games that used it were published by Hudson, weren't they?
Title: Re: advantages of loading times during cutscene on arcade card pro/duo over 3.0 card
Post by: shubibiman on April 22, 2012, 02:50:54 AM