JB0

Holy flaming assgoblins, Batman! Sheesh, the battle wasn't even SNES VS PlayStation. It was PlayStation VS Saturn. And the PS won that battle PRIMARILY on price. Edit: Bovine U's alumnus is back? Color me dissapointed. True, the Saturn's US launch was screwy. BUt even after, Tom made weird choice after bad choice. And the advertising didn't help...Coneheads? One of the Saturn's primary problems was price, though. Sony launched a hundred dollars cheaper, and Sega couldn't really afford to keep up, though they tried. The PS1 was cheap hardware, the Saturn was dang expensive hardware, and Sega was bleeding red ink all over the place trying to keep pace with Sony's rapid-fire price cuts. At one point, they actually asked retailers to sell the decks at a loss, in an attempt to stem the gushing flow of red ink. That's when the Saturn lost most of it's shelf space, not surprisingly.

Holy flaming assgoblins, Batman! Sheesh, the battle wasn't even SNES VS PlayStation. It was PlayStation VS Saturn. And the PS won that battle PRIMARILY on price. Edit: Bovine U's alumnus is back? Color me dissapointed.

I hope Rare has secretely cancelled Perfect Dark and is hard at work developing a sequel to Taboo. Forget both of those games. I wouldn't mind seeing them remake Conker again for the 360! (It's probably the only game franchise that I like by Rare.) Calling Taboo a game is being a tad generous.

I hope Rare has secretely cancelled Perfect Dark and is hard at work developing a sequel to Taboo.

All I ever heard about it was that it was going to suck.

Ummm... the PS2 is a notoriously crappy DVD player. Hardly the thing to compare to when determining if something's a "pretty decent" player.

No, actually, it's even easier than that..what I meant is that the rendering program itself can convert the model into a "cartoony" looking model. There is a demo with Open Scene Graph that does this. Basically, it just does solid shading and emphasises the edges. The "cartoon" renderer uses the exact same model, it just changes the way it is drawn. I'm not sure exactly how this works, I just know that the renderer itself on the client side is responsible and that it works with the same model that the normal rendering routines use. It doesn't apply texture-maps, and then it cel-shades the model. But it'd make more sense to have a seperate set of models explicitly designed to look good when cel-shaded, IMO. If nothing else, you'd need a new set of texture maps to provide new detail.

Is there a way to hack the game and get the source code? Nope. They only distribute compiled binaries. And all you can get from those is uncommented assembly code, which is near-impossible to read. Back in the days before the PlayStation, uncommented assembly was close to source code, because console games were written in assembly. If you knew your stuff you could trace the code and figure out what was going on, though it would take some work(even fully commented source is hard to figure out sometimes). But modern games are written in a high-level language and then compiled. And compiler-generated assembly is totally insane from a human point of view. I would bet that they watch the RAM to see what addresses change with what game effects, much like you do if you make your own codes. But they've got better equipment for the task(say, a deck with a memory monitor in it), making it easier to find codes as well as to find more complex codes. Without knowing what was going on there, I can't make more than a guess as to what they did. I'm betting there weren't any changes made to the exectuable, though. That depends VERY greatly on the programming style used. But hacking the executable can be pretty much discarded outright in terms of feasability. What you likely CAN do is skim through the data files. Find where it keeps fighter information and check if the rumored VFs are in the list. That'll at least answer if they're there. If they're there, the EASY thing to do would be hack a RAM code to replace an existing fighter with the desired one. I strongly suspect they were thrown out of the game; but it is quite possible that while the mechanism to unlock them was removed, the models, texture maps, and data entries were left on the disk(it's happened before).

ALL Playstation and PS2 games are region-coded. Not just Macross. So you will need a japanese deck or a region-lockout bypass of one form or another(modchips, disk swaps, etc).

Irony: I bought a Macross CD for the specific purpose of having some legal Macross MP3s. Then found out hte disk was a bootleg.

Can't access the source code unless you're on teh dev team. It's not shipped out on the game disks. Disassembling the binary would leave you with a heap of uncommented assembly code, and hypothetically you COULD hunt codes down in that. But it'd be a royal pain in the butt. So yeah, getting ahold of hte dev team would be the way to go.

Funny, first thing I thought when I saw this thread up top again was "Another one?" Then I realized we couldn't have generated 21 pages of posts(yes, I did in fact change the posts per page setting in my profile) if it was a new thread.

But, but... I LIKE cartoony graphics. That was one of Robotech: Battlecry's best features, IMO. lol, yeah for cartoony graphics! Actually, it could probably be setup so that each player can decide if they want cartoony or "regular" renderings. I believe the renderer can actually be changed so that it "converts" regular into cartoon, although I'm not sure how well it works. Remember, online games don't send graphical data back and forth. Just the information your client needs to assemble what everyone's character looks like from it's own models. Just make 2 diffrent sets of everything, one for realistic texture-mapped graphics and one for cartoony cel-shaded graphics. From there, it doesn't make SENSE to send a bit saying if it's cartoony or realistic, because having a mix would destroy the game's environment totally. So it'd be a simple matter of picking what set you want to see and there ya go.

BECUZ I AM HARDCORE OLDSKOOOL YO!111111

That reminds me. I saw an ancient thread from 2003 bumped recently on another board. A "most anticipated games" discussion. Perfect Dark Zero came up, which was "coming out for the XBox in 2004." Needless to say, I laughed when I saw it again. It's actually funny that, in the article, they were talking about that. They started for Gamecube, but they quit because of Nintendo's lack of online planes (so they say). After being bought by Microsoft, they went back to work, because Microsoft had Live. But the current Xbox lacked the power to do the very large maps with the 50+ people (they're aiming for 64) they want in multiplayer, so they quit again (again, so they say). So they switched to the 360. Hopefully, they don't come up with anything like, "The 360 doesn't include support for players to control the game with their minds, so we're going to move this to development for the Xbox 720." And then XBox 720 lacks full-immersion holodeck capabilities, so we're moving to the Nintendo GameKlienBottle.

I'd argue it's an artform. He's young enough to want to show off a bit, and good enough to get away with it. Roy and Hikaru were speaking specifically from the perspective of a civilian pilot that'd never seen a giant robot before, not in terms of absolute simplicity. GERWALK being so close to a regular plane meant it would be great for Hikaru, who'd sorta busted his plane mode but had no clue how to drive a robot. Having said that, I DID get the impression that battroid mode was a more complex control setup, but not MASSIVELY so.

I will cause a major internet scandal by bribing people to ask for a custom title for me, thereby corrupting the system.

That reminds me. I saw an ancient thread from 2003 bumped recently on another board. A "most anticipated games" discussion. Perfect Dark Zero came up, which was "coming out for the XBox in 2004." Needless to say, I laughed when I saw it again.

Of the four of that particular style (Sympony of the Night, Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, and Aria of Sorrow), I found all but Circle to be on the easy side. Especially Symphony... only Galamoth provided any real challenge, but he was optional. And Dracula himself was a joke. At least in Aria, Death puts up a good fight. That's my take on it too, really. Only if I recall my Death battle correctly, I just slapped him with the Valkyrie PokeSoul untill he died. Honestly, though, I thought SotN put up more of a fight, at least during the starting phase, than Aria did. Just as a note, I never played Harmony of Dissonance. Can you argue differently for the other three? Even if it was a little obvious, at least Aria tried to have a plot twist. True. I just found myself not really giving a crap about anything they said in Aria. It seemed worse than usual. Again, of the four, none of them had great endings. So, to my way of thinking, your gripes with Aria are pretty much par for the course. But none of the others I've played inspired just plain old hatred like Aria. ... Or maybe it was just because the "bad" ending was too interesting. I tend to get a kick out of that sort of thing(exception: Vanguard Bandits. ARGH!) I think they lost me totally when I spent the entire game wanting a dash ability, and I got it right at the end of the stinking game. It was like they were actively mocking me at that point.

I opt to speak up for the opposing viewpoint again. I hated Aria of Sorrow. It was too easy, fairly dull writing, and the only decent ending was the "bad" one.

*blinks* I'm not sure how to take this. I HOPE it's a joke... But if it isn't... Yes. All the Metal Slug games to date, with the exception of the 2 NGPC and 1 GBA game, have started in the arcades, on SNK'S NeoGeo hardware. Never seen em. I've just seen 1, 2, 3 and X. Then I heard SNK was going under and stopped paying attention. Ah. They came back. They're like a pheonix, they always rise again from their ashes.

They're both.

I hope SNK buys Sony. But it won't happen. Oh hell no. I like SNK on multiplatforms. That woudl be if Sony bought SNK. If SNK buys Sony we'll get Metal Slug movies.

Funny thing is that when I was a kid I never noticed how choppy some parts were animated. I just resaw that episode today after who knows how many years and that fight was... Yah. When I was a kid it was "WOW! MOVING PICTURES! Now where's the transforming jets that blow stuff up?" But now? It's just hideous. I REALLY want to like that episode too, but ithurts to watch.

I hope SNK buys Sony. But it won't happen.