Tech Relics: Now integrating PIII processors for the wank factor.

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mattfl: Aug 27, 2004

Not Operator posted:

Speaking of tech relics, every so often I remember that the Dreamcast came out at a time when CD burners were becoming super cheap and didn't even try to implement copy protection.

Like, I know the PSX could be defeated with a blu-tack and a shred of timing, but it still strikes me as pretty loving wild that the Dreamcast would just play whatever you put in it.

I still have my dreamcast with binder full of burned CDs sitting in my misc junk bin in my closest.

Anyone want it?

# ? Apr 10, 2018 14:27

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 06:04

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

Not Operator posted:

Like, I know the PSX could be defeated with a blu-tack and a shred of timing

I couldn't get this to work reliably. I played though the first disc of Final Fantasy VIII doing the trick but couldn't get the second disc to boot worth poo poo. Wasted like 8 hours of my life.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 14:35

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

Star Man posted:

And the greatest video game console ever was the result of that.

Dreamcast?

e:fb

# ? Apr 10, 2018 16:21

Chairman Mao: Apr 24, 2004; The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot be victorious.

spog posted:

Nah, the DC had copy protection and would not simply play a burned CD unless you modded it first (or ran a boot disc)

I have a stack of burned Dreamcast games and a completely stock out of the box Dreamcast that would disagree with you. Boot discs were a thing but only for a short amount of time.

You needed a special hardware setup to rip the discs though, so it was mostly left to a few specific groups. Echelon was particularly notable for ripping a no-swap version of Skies of Arcadia. In this case no swap doesn't refer to a boot disc, but rather the fact that they were able to fit the entire game on a single cd.

That doesn't sound terribly impressive until you take into account that Dreamcast games didn't come on CD-Roms, they used a proprietary disc format; GD-Roms which held over a gigabyte of data and were supposed to be Segas answer to the whole issue of piracy on disc based systems. It's a good idea in theory, nobody can burn your games if there's no burners that can write your discs.

Of course they left a glaring vulnerability, the ability to execute code from CDs, this was mostly supposed to be used for stuff like karaoke enhanced discs but obviously it found it's niche more as a piracy tool.

This meant that a number of later Dreamcast games would be intentionally packed to the brim with as much vital data as possible. This led to weird swap points with minor spoilers as part of the guide (eg wait until x cutscene plays then save and swap to disc 1b, if you need to return to location a, b or c save and reinsert disc 1a). On older titles FMV and audio data would be reencoded at a much lower bitrate or removed entirely.

Echelons rip of Skies of Acadia was something special though. They compressed the games data and wrote their own homebrew code to decompress it on the fly. It stutters a little during cutscenes but it's still one of the most clever workarounds to the disc space issue I've seen.

A few late era Dreamcast games would have additional built-in copy protection because they knew the Dreamcast lacked it on its own. D2 was probably the most successful at what it did. It stored it's opening cutscene on the 4th disc so you couldn't do much with the game even if you did remove it. It checked the length and bitrate of the audio files and if they didn't match up it would freeze. It basically did everything possible to ensure that there was nothing you could do to rip enough data to fit it on a CD. Eventually you could buy these weird Chinese 900mb CDrs that a group managed to fit it on but they weren't terribly reliable and not all of them worked with every Dreamcast (or burner). This was years after the death of the Dreamcast though, so D2's copy protection was more or less 100% successful when it was needed. Didn't stop WARP from immediately going under though.

Chairman Mao has a new favorite as of 20:07 on Apr 10, 2018

# ? Apr 10, 2018 17:01

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

I saw a video that said the PSX was possibly planned to use physically larger discs to prevent piracy, since no one would have a drive large enough to fit the disc, but they could make the PSX and whatever machine pressed discs any shape they wanted.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 19:10

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

Cojawfee posted:

I saw a video that said the PSX was possibly planned to use physically larger discs to prevent piracy, since no one would have a drive large enough to fit the disc, but they could make the PSX and whatever machine pressed discs any shape they wanted.

I've seen that video too and it's an interesting speculation, but it also stated that it was just easier to use CDs as they were because bigger CDs were going to need new equipment to make.

But seriously, all hail the PlayStation.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 19:23

Queen_Combat: Jan 15, 2011

My favorite anecdote about the PS1:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4111/dirty_coding_tricks.php?page=3

quote:

Meet My Dog, Patches
There's an old joke that goes something like this:

Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
Doctor: "Then stop doing it."

Funny, but are these also wise words when applied to the right situation? Consider the load of pain I found myself in when working on a conversion of a 3D third person shooter from the PC to the original PlayStation.

Now, the PS1 has no support for floating point numbers, so we were doing the conversion by basically recompiling the PC code and overloading all floats with fixed point. That actually worked fairly well, but were it fell apart was in collision detection.

The level geometry that was supplied to us worked reasonably well in the PC version of the game, but when converted to fixed point, all kinds of seams, T-Junctions and other problems were nudged into existence by the microscopic differences in values between fixed and floats. This problem would manifest itself by the main character (called "Damp") simply falling through those tiny holes, into the abyss below the level.

We patched the holes we found, tweaking the geometry until Damp no longer fell through. But then the game went into test at the publisher, and suddenly a flood of "falling off the world" bugs were delivered to us. Every day a fresh batch of locations were found with these little holes that Damp could slip through. We would fix that bit of geometry, then the next day they would send us ten more. This went on for several days. The publisher's test department employed one guy whose only job was to jump around the world for ten hours a day, looking for places he could fall through.

The problem here was that the geometry was bad. It was not tight and seamless geometry. It worked on the PC, but not on the PS1, where the fixed point math vastly magnified the problems. The ideal solution was to fix the geometry to make it seamless.

However, this was a vast task, impossible to do in the time available with our limited resources, so we were relying on the test department to find the problem areas for us.

The problem with that approach was that they never stopped finding them. Every day bought more pain. Every day new variants of the same bug. It seemed like it would never end.

Eventually the penny dropped. The real problem was not that the geometry had small holes in it. The problem was that Damp fell through those holes. With that in mind, I was able to code a very quick and simple fix that looked something like:

IF (Damp will fall through a hole()) THEN
Don't do it

The actual code was not really much more complex than that (see Listing 2).

Listing 2: Meet My Dog, Patches
code:
damp_old = damp_loc;
move_damp(); 
if (NoCollision()) 
{ 
damp_loc = damp_old; 
}
In one swoop a thousand bugs were fixed. Now instead of falling off the level, Damp would just shudder a bit when he walked over the holes. We found what was hurting us, and we stopped doing it. The publisher laid off their "jump around" tester, and the game shipped.

Well, it shipped eventually. Spurred on by the success of "if A==bad then NOT A", I used this tool to patch several more bugs -- which nearly all had to do with the collision code. Near the end of development the bugs became more and more specific, and the fixes became more and more "Don't do thispreciseandexacthing" (see Listing 3, actual shipped code).

Listing 3: Meet My Dog, Patches
code:
if (damp_aliencoll != old_aliencoll && 
strcmpi("X4DOOR",damp_aliencoll->enemy->ename)==0 && 
StartArena == 6 && damp_loc.y<13370) 
{ 
damp_loc.y = damp_old.y; // don't let damp ever 
touch the door.. (move away in the x and y) 
damp_loc.x = damp_old.x; 
damp_aliencoll = NULL; // and say thusly!!! 
}
What does that code do? Well, basically there was a problem with Damp touching a particular type of door in a particular level in a particular location, rather than fix the root cause of the problem, I simply made it so that if Damp ever touched the door, then I'd move him away, and pretend it never happened. Problem solved.

Looking back I find this code quite horrifying. It was patching bugs and not fixing them. Unfortunately the real fix would have been to go and rework the entire game's geometry and collision system specifically with the PS1 fixed point limitations in mind. The schedule was initially aggressive, so we always seemed close to finishing, so the quick patch always won over the comprehensive, expensive fix

"if A==bad then NOT A"

# ? Apr 10, 2018 19:32

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

Randaconda posted:

Yes, the best video game console of all time has less than ten good exclusives.

Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Iggy's Reckin' Balls, the entire Turok series, both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the only proper console port of the original Quake, both Zelda games, Space Station Silicon Valley, Mario Party 2 and 3

that's 16 right there

# ? Apr 10, 2018 19:39

Cojawfee: May 31, 2006; I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

You forgot about WCW vs NWO Revenge.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 19:55

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Iggy's Reckin' Balls, the entire Turok series, both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the only proper console port of the original Quake, both Zelda games, Space Station Silicon Valley, Mario Party 2 and 3

that's 16 right there

Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie and Blast Corps and Lylat Wars.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 21:48

Carth Dookie: Jan 28, 2013

F zero X not listed? Shame. SHAME.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 21:52

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Carth Dookie posted:

F zero X not listed? Shame. SHAME.

Dear Nintendo: YOUR COCKSUCKING PRODUCT HAS REDUCED ME TO A GIBBERING MAN-APE WHOSE ONLY RESORT TO DEALING WITH THE ALMIGHTY loving GRIEF IT�S BESTOWED UPON ME IS TO SCREAM AND HURT MYSELF. etc

# ? Apr 10, 2018 22:00

flavor.flv: Apr 18, 2008; I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches

Chairman Mao posted:

This meant that a number of later Dreamcast games would be intentionally packed to the brim with as much vital data as possible. This led to weird swap points with minor spoilers as part of the guide (eg wait until x cutscene plays then save and swap to disc 1b, if you need to return to location a, b or c save and reinsert disc 1a).

I first played Grandia II on a multi-disc rip. The encoders had set it up like the PS1 final fantasy games, with the entire game on both discs and only different FMV cutscenes between them.

I got it from a friend and I had no guide telling me when to swap discs or even any idea that it was supposed to all be on one disc, my only indication was the fact that at a tense moment (and after a hard boss fight with no save point in between) the game looked like it was about to load a cutscene and instead the screen just flashed and jumped immediately back to a character saying "Wait, [BIG PLOT TWIST OF THE GAME] the whole time??"

Later on I bought the PS2 version which is still sitting on my shelf in the shrink wrap because drat it, it was a good game and I wanted to support the developers.

# ? Apr 10, 2018 22:53

Brute Hole Force: Dec 25, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

the only proper console port of the original Quake

To be fair it's only competing against the Saturn port, which honestly shouldn't even exist, let alone be reasonably playable.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 00:07

Queen_Combat: Jan 15, 2011

Wasn't there a Dreamcast port?

# ? Apr 11, 2018 00:35

GutBomb: Jun 15, 2005; Dude?

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

Wasn't there a Dreamcast port?

There was of quake 3 but I don't think there was an official quake 1. The Saturn port is interesting because it's a port of the quake levels to a non quake engine. I think the Saturn version of quake is actually running in the engine created for powerslave.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 00:41

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

GutBomb posted:

There was of quake 3 but I don't think there was an official quake 1. The Saturn port is interesting because it's a port of the quake levels to a non quake engine. I think the Saturn version of quake is actually running in the engine created for powerslave.

Yeah. The Duke 3D port ran on the SlaveDriver engine too.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 02:01

Brute Hole Force: Dec 25, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

GutBomb posted:

There was of quake 3 but I don't think there was an official quake 1. The Saturn port is interesting because it's a port of the quake levels to a non quake engine. I think the Saturn version of quake is actually running in the engine created for powerslave.

Lobotomy Software all so made a PSX port but couldn't find a publisher for it, I suspect the taint of the Saturn had something to do it with it.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 02:24

WeedlordGoku69: Feb 12, 2015; by Cyrano4747

Tony Snark posted:

To be fair it's only competing against the Saturn port, which honestly shouldn't even exist, let alone be reasonably playable.

yeah, that's why I specified "proper," because the Saturn version is a weird hackjob that's basically a total conversion of Powerslave whereas the N64 version is straight-up a direct port of the Quake engine

e: Quake 64 is seriously cool as gently caress if you've never checked it out, it's one of the best PC-to-console ports ever I'd say

# ? Apr 11, 2018 02:40

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

e: Quake 64 is seriously cool as gently caress if you've never checked it out, it's one of the best PC-to-console ports ever I'd say

Yeah it was my first exposure to Quake and there are a few things I like about it over the PC version. The soundtrack by Aubrey Hodges is bonechilling (and rivals Reznor's work on the original, IMO) and playing split-screen deathmatches was a blast.

They had to cut some levels and textures to make it work, but it honestly wasn't a lot. Most of the game was there and that was pretty impressive for its time.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 02:58

Brute Hole Force: Dec 25, 2005; by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

yeah, that's why I specified "proper," because the Saturn version is a weird hackjob that's basically a total conversion of Powerslave whereas the N64 version is straight-up a direct port of the Quake engine

All so why I brought up the unpublished PSX version. With Doom you could at least argue "trueness" of the PSX port vs N64 being original (and mocking the Saturn port), or all three ports of Duke having their own particular flaws but none being clearly better. Quake didn't have that.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 03:28

SCheeseman: Apr 23, 2003

Mak0rz posted:

Yeah it was my first exposure to Quake and there are a few things I like about it over the PC version. The soundtrack by Aubrey Hodges is bonechilling (and rivals Reznor's work on the original, IMO) and playing split-screen deathmatches was a blast.

They had to cut some levels and textures to make it work, but it honestly wasn't a lot. Most of the game was there and that was pretty impressive for its time.

Going from PC -> N64 left a much different impression of it.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 04:47

ProjektorBoy: Jun 18, 2002; I FUCK LINEN IN MY SPARE TIME!; Grimey Drawer

N64's version of Doom is absolutely bonkers and I'm kind of surprised that it didn't find its way elsewhere. (Except as a fanmade PC port that rips the assets from the N64 ROM). We had this crazy Galapagos Islands ecosystem of 3D games going on in the 90's where everyone was trying whatever they could with new games & PC ports to see what could actually function.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 14:10

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

I loved SiN so much. It was well-lit, unlike the murky brown and green of Quake.

Then Half-Life 1 came along and did stuff better wrt weapons and faster loading times and welp

# ? Apr 11, 2018 21:51

Mak0rz: Aug 2, 2008; 😎🐗🚬

SwissCM posted:

Going from PC -> N64 left a much different impression of it.

Heh, yeah I can appreciate that.

ProjektorBoy posted:

N64's version of Doom is absolutely bonkers and I'm kind of surprised that it didn't find its way elsewhere. (Except as a fanmade PC port that rips the assets from the N64 ROM). We had this crazy Galapagos Islands ecosystem of 3D games going on in the 90's where everyone was trying whatever they could with new games & PC ports to see what could actually function.

It's a real shame Doom 64 never really got the recognition it deserved. It got dicked with the cartridge space and couldn't have revenants, archviles, and spider masterminds but what they made with the remaining monster lineup was excellent. I still like it more than Doom 2.

Laserjet 4P posted:

I loved SiN so much. It was well-lit, unlike the murky brown and green of Quake.

Then Half-Life 1 came along and did stuff better wrt weapons and faster loading times and welp

I was oddly never really bothered by Quake's brutalist aesthetic. It just seemed to fit so well with the gritty tetanus-infested vibe they were going for.

# ? Apr 11, 2018 22:37

KozmoNaut: Apr 23, 2008; Happiness is a warm
Turbo Plasma Rifle

Mak0rz posted:

I was oddly never really bothered by Quake's brutalist aesthetic. It just seemed to fit so well with the gritty tetanus-infested vibe they were going for.

I absolutely loved it, and still do. The chunky, raw, grimy nature of it is just perfect.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 08:41

GutBomb: Jun 15, 2005; Dude?

Laserjet 4P posted:

I loved SiN so much. It was well-lit, unlike the murky brown and green of Quake.

Then Half-Life 1 came along and did stuff better wrt weapons and faster loading times and welp

I really liked sin with it's interactive computer terminals, ridiculous plot, and fun battles. I liked it more than half life. Half life came out like, 3 weeks later and overshadowed sin a bit.

At e3 2000 I came in 3rd in the Ritual booth's Sin tournament and won a Rio MP3 player with a 32MB compact flash card. Fun times.

GutBomb has a new favorite as of 13:39 on Apr 12, 2018

# ? Apr 12, 2018 13:36

Aardvark Barber: Sep 7, 2007; Delivery in less than two minutes or your money back!

mattfl posted:

I still have my dreamcast with binder full of burned CDs sitting in my misc junk bin in my closest.

Anyone want it?

You serious? Got any legit games as well?

# ? Apr 12, 2018 15:40

Croccers: Jun 15, 2012

GutBomb posted:

I really liked sin with it's interactive computer terminals, ridiculous plot, and fun battles. I liked it more than half life. Half life came out like, 3 weeks later and overshadowed sin a bit.

At e3 2000 I came in 3rd in the Ritual booth's Sin tournament and won a Rio MP3 player with a 32MB compact flash card. Fun times.

Half Life didn't need a 30mb patch (Hey, it was 1998) to make it playable either.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 15:44

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

30 MEGS? Jesus. Did they forget to include a whole set of levels or something?

Better set the thing to download overnight and hope it doesnt stall

# ? Apr 12, 2018 15:54

mattfl: Aug 27, 2004

Aardvark Barber posted:

You serious? Got any legit games as well?

I think there may be 1, possibly 0 legit games, I'll check tonight.

But for the cost of shipping it's yours.

Shoot me an email, mattfl at the gmail

# ? Apr 12, 2018 16:10

Quote-Unquote: Oct 22, 2002

FilthyImp posted:

30 MEGS? Jesus. Did they forget to include a whole set of levels or something?

Better set the thing to download overnight and hope it doesnt stall

My good man let me introduce you to a little thing called GetRight, to ensure your downloads always get completed!

poo poo, I'm 15-20 years too late, aren't I?

edit: lol GetRight still exists.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 16:43

The_Franz: Aug 8, 2003

FilthyImp posted:

30 MEGS? Jesus. Did they forget to include a whole set of levels or something?

Better set the thing to download overnight and hope it doesnt stall

It was really broken when they shipped it. Levels would double load and then the game would crash because the system ran out of memory.

Sin was fun once they fixed it though. It was a better sequel to Duke3D than DNF.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 16:47

Eela6: May 25, 2007; Shredded Hen

KozmoNaut posted:

I absolutely loved it, and still do. The chunky, raw, grimy nature of it is just perfect.

That game doesn't really have a coherent aesthetic, but somehow it all works.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 16:51

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

I never really found Quake's single player to be very engaging (the same has been true for me with most of iD's games) and I always treated it more like a platform for online gaming. It was one of the first FPS games with native TCP/IP support and with the advent of Quakeworld, client side prediction made twitch gaming on dial up posible.

Mods for Quake let you play so many different games. DM, Team DM, Runes, CTF, TF, Superheros, Pain Keep, Headhunters, and so on. I absolutely love the variety and creativity that was explored with these early mods.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 17:16

3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Lowen SoDium posted:

I never really found Quake's single player to be very engaging

That would be because it's literally poo poo.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 17:23

barbecue at the folks: Jul 20, 2007

I always thought that Quake's single player was more of an afterthought, even back in 1996 everyone knew that online gaming was the whole point. Playing TF on a 36,6k modem was mind blowing. It feels weird to think that Half-Life came out only two years later, and Counterstrike a year after that.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 17:26

Sweevo: Nov 8, 2007; i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

Jerry Cotton posted:

That would be because it's literally poo poo.

Yep. Someone needs to tell iD that good level design isn't an endless series of monster closets.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 18:15

Trabant: Nov 26, 2011; All systems nominal.

We do have Quake to thank for SA, he posted appropriately enough in the Tech Relics thread.

barbecue at the folks posted:

Counterstrike

I was baffled that CS became the phenomenon it did when Action HL was soooo much more fun.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 18:19

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 06:04

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

barbecue at the folks posted:

I always thought that Quake's single player was more of an afterthought, even back in 1996 everyone knew that online gaming was the whole point.

The entire "game" part of Quake had a lot less time in the oven than the "technology" part. A lot of work was changed, thrown out, and redone, and in the end they scrapped a lot of over-ambitious plans and created a Doom-style game in order to get something actually out the door.

David L Craddock's Rocket Jump is a brilliant history of Id's habit of constantly revolutionising the genre while also constantly crippling themselves in the process, and well worth the five bucks to read. He's also trying to crowdfund a print version, if you prefer your stories of bickering and politicking in dead tree format.

# ? Apr 12, 2018 18:19

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