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Post by lukester on Mar 13, 2019 3:22:06 GMT
I'm a big fan of Strider...one of my all-time favorite games. But the PCE port is like playing a B+ instead of an A+
I'm curious if anyone has taken a look at the code? I think two of the most glaring issues are the buttload of omitted songs (which I assume could be put in with .WAV recordings of the arcade music?) and the color choices, which some should be swapped
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fragmare
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 116
Homebrew skills: Graphics, Music, Level Design, Annoying Programmers
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Post by fragmare on Mar 13, 2019 6:18:58 GMT
I think my main issue with PCE AC Strider is the fact the whole game runs at 30hz instead of 60hz. Even the arcade Strider felt a little bit clunky and disjointed. Cutting the screen update in half just made it 2x as bad, seemingly.
Colors could probably be tweaked fairly easily, via hex editing, even by someone like me. Unless the palettes are kept compressed in the ISO via RLE compression or something. Then it's a little more involved.
Adding more redbook tracks would depend on if there is room on the disc for it. If so, I don't see why it couldn't be done. Bonknuts and I did just that with Super Raiden.
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Post by spenoza on Mar 13, 2019 16:57:16 GMT
I have to say, I think at least part of the problem is Strider itself. It is a game that looks slick and has a lot of promise, but in practice still wants for a little polish or refinement. Only reason the Genesis version is any good is because they stuck SO closely to the arcade's mechanical feel. That kept it from being sucky, but given the arcade still wants for a little improvement, the best a port will ever be is just OK, at least without attempting to fix some of the core jank.
Note that Run Saber and Cannon Dancer do fix the core mechanical jank and are arguably better games as a result.
Anyone know why Strider AC runs at a lower response rate?
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Post by Black_Tiger on Mar 13, 2019 18:51:50 GMT
Tom has looked under the hood and suspects that the color palette might have been corrupted, as much of the colors don't make sense and some which are part of the detail have been made invisible.
One of the big problems is that like other NEC(Ave) ports of CPS games, they layered the sprites the same way as the arcade and were sloppy with how they built them from PC Engine sizes. So the player sprite sword slash eats up something like 3/4 of the horizontal babdwidth, when a properly composed sprite would take up maybe 1/3.
So a fixed version of the existing port would need to begin with:
bump to 60fps new palettes new sprite compositions
Then it would be good to at least restore some missing detail, if adding parallax is too much work.
In the end it would probably be easier to just do a new port from scratch.
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Post by lukester on Mar 13, 2019 19:01:44 GMT
Tom has looked under the hood and suspects that the color palette might have been corrupted, as much of the colors don't make sense and some which are part of the detail have been made invisible. One of the big problems is that like other NEC(Ave) ports of CPS games, they layered the sprites the same way as the arcade and were sloppy with how they built them from PC Engine sizes. So the player sprite sword slash eats up something like 3/4 of the horizontal babdwidth, when a properly composed sprite would take up maybe 1/3. So a fixed version of the existing port would need to begin with: bump to 60fps new palettes new sprite compositions Then it would be good to at least restore some missing detail, if adding parallax is too much work. In the end it would probably be easier to just do a new port from scratch. Crazy how well Forgotten Worlds turned at least, despite the lack of parallax. Dynasty Wars and Chiki Chiki Boys turned out fine but have their own minor issues. Would putting in the missing music tracks be easy?
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Post by Black_Tiger on Mar 13, 2019 22:29:01 GMT
Tom has looked under the hood and suspects that the color palette might have been corrupted, as much of the colors don't make sense and some which are part of the detail have been made invisible. One of the big problems is that like other NEC(Ave) ports of CPS games, they layered the sprites the same way as the arcade and were sloppy with how they built them from PC Engine sizes. So the player sprite sword slash eats up something like 3/4 of the horizontal babdwidth, when a properly composed sprite would take up maybe 1/3. So a fixed version of the existing port would need to begin with: bump to 60fps new palettes new sprite compositions Then it would be good to at least restore some missing detail, if adding parallax is too much work. In the end it would probably be easier to just do a new port from scratch. Crazy how well Forgotten Worlds turned at least, despite the lack of parallax. Dynasty Wars and Chiki Chiki Boys turned out fine but have their own minor issues. Would putting in the missing music tracks be easy? You can swap redbook tracks yourself by editing the new tracks to match the same duration as the ones they're replacing. You'd need to rip the disc to a wav/cue format or download an iso in that kind of format.
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Post by elmer on Mar 14, 2019 0:20:02 GMT
In the end it would probably be easier to just do a new port from scratch. That definitely makes the most sense to me!
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Post by dshadoff on Mar 14, 2019 0:22:49 GMT
In the end it would probably be easier to just do a new port from scratch. That definitely makes the most sense to me! Considering all the delays, rumours of bugs/problems/etc., and eventual platform change... I suspect that it might be code that you might not want to dig too deep into.
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gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Mar 14, 2019 1:41:20 GMT
Personally I am not really concerned about the colours, as I have already accepted it as an artistic choice(even the greenish skin), specifically, a steam-punk-everything-is-corroded style, which IMO does fit this game, as reflected by the cutscenes. However, I wouldn't mind if the colours stick to the original ones either.
This game has a lot of problems. Most of the stuff in the original arcade game are there, but nearly every single aspect felt off. One particular thing is that in the original game there is an upgrade to increase the length of your slashes and at max level it covers half the width of the screen which was really cool. But in this version, possibly due to the shrunken sprites, flickering and ambiguous hit detection it seems that this upgrade isn't as effective. In fact, it seems that this upgrade doesn't do anything at all(or just extended your reach a little bit) a I cannot even make out whether the slash animation has changed. So, fixing the colours and adding music tracks are good, but the game is still way off, which could be hard to fix.
The cutscenes and musics are still good, though.
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Post by ccovell on Mar 14, 2019 4:58:04 GMT
Yeah, the skin-tones and murky colour choices match those of Download 2, both NEC Avenue games. Alfa System worked on the latter, did they work on Strider too? Such a waste, considering the Alfa guys seemed to have really talented programmers and did decent conversions.
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touko
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 106
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Post by touko on Mar 14, 2019 9:17:05 GMT
The best part is the use of scdrom²+AC for this awful result,how to kill a fly with a big hammer.
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gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Mar 14, 2019 9:58:35 GMT
Maybe. But... Dice Creative. Citing they had worked on planning, programming, graphics and sound of this game. About the colour choice, considering some details couldn't be seen as a result (I presume using too similar or identical colours in the palette?) it's possible that it was original meant to look like the original arcade version, but last minute executive meddling* caused it to be changed, maybe to fit the steam punk style as I mentioned? *The higher up responsible for this could be Tabeda Toshio. Though it's not a good thing to blame a specific person without proof(and it's quite likely not him, in fact), he's known to have a trolling personality and had put out controversial comments from his own mouth, so people started attributing to him any questionable choice made by/with/within/in NEC Avenue (and by extension its successor NEC Interchannel and beyond).
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Post by lukester on Mar 14, 2019 17:46:46 GMT
Crazy how well Forgotten Worlds turned at least, despite the lack of parallax. Dynasty Wars and Chiki Chiki Boys turned out fine but have their own minor issues. Would putting in the missing music tracks be easy? You can swap redbook tracks yourself by editing the new tracks to match the same duration as the ones they're replacing. You'd need to rip the disc to a wav/cue format or download an iso in that kind of format. I meant as in adding extra tracks...more than the original game has. Is that possible?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2019 19:36:54 GMT
It's possible if you're willing to reverse engineer the level logic to get how events are triggered and insert one that calls CD_PLAY with the correct track # in places that would have had music transitions inside the level. Good luck with that lol.
Not to mention that seeking CD tracks can have some super awkward pauses. Maybe that's the reason they cut some tracks, ala some Neo Geo games?
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2019 23:36:45 GMT
Tom has looked under the hood and suspects that the color palette might have been corrupted, as much of the colors don't make sense and some which are part of the detail have been made invisible. I watched a video of it (playing that port? lol no) and the palette comment makes total sense just by eyeing some sprites. For example...
you can tell that the green coloring in his face and uniform (see: gloves, shoulder, buttons) is 100% not supposed to be actually green. There are many other examples (and other ones not actually visible like palette entries having the same color as BT mentioned).
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