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+--- Thread: New GC demo impressions (/showthread.php?tid=778)
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Have any of you played the new GC store demos yet? They have playable demos of Mario Golf and PN 03, among others. I'm sick of this never-ending debate crap so I thought it would be nice to have a regular conversation about video games.
Mario Golf looks great and plays fine, but the camera is horrendous. IGN and everyone else mentioned how bad the camera was at E3, and it doesn't look like they fixed it for the new store demo which is a real shame since it will turn a lot of people off. I really want this game but if they don't fix the camera before release I probably won't get it. :(
PN03 was pretty fun, and I'd actually consider buying it if it wasn't so short and repetitive like all of the reviews have been stating. The dancing stuff looks cool and the controls aren't quite as bad as I thought they would be. Maybe I'll get it when it drops down in price.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
I just got the first NGC demo disc today. Its good... all of those games look okay. Sonic Adventure definitely looks like a rent at best, though... its such a short games and the port isn't exactly perfect. :)
As for the new store demo disc... yes, I have played it. Didn't play Mario Golf, just P.N.03 of the new demos. It looks okay... but the controls are strange, as everyone has said. Not that hard to deal with, but a bit strange. It does look fun though...
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2003
I played the demo disk in a store, but didn't actually try the golf or PN 03 demos. I was there for the Soul Calibur 2 demo, and Sonic Adventure DX demo. It takes such a long time for the system to reset (they really should have a reset button on that system display), that I didn't do anything else after playing SC2 again. First off, SC2, amazing game, though Link only having a demonstration kinda sucked, but oh well.
Second off, Sonic Adventure DX was pretty much what I thought it would be, a direct port. I didn't see the frame rate problems OB1 saw, but that's normal. Anyway, having not played any extra features in the demo (likely because they weren't in the demo), they didn't sell me on it. Then again, I've always been less than inclined to buy remakes. Ah, the term "Director's Cut". Just like the old PS1 RE games, it's still funny...
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Soul Calibur 2 is on the demo disc you can buy. Its not new to the new store demo disc.
Saying that, Soul Calibur 2 looks like a great game... and I'd expect no Link in the demo. You don't just give out free the big draw to the game!
As for Sonic Adventure, yeah, I saw no framerate issues either. And I thought it was very cool that they included 6 levels in the demo... very nice. Demos usually have just one level... :)
But it is a port of a Dreamcast game and looks it. Other than that, the porting issue I was talking about is the camera. The horrible, horrible camera...
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
You guys would definitely notice the framerate problem if you had played the Dreamcast version. The Gamecube version doesn't even run at a constant 30 fps while the DC one runs at 60.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
I've played the Dreamcast version. Just the demo (which means just that one Sonic level), but I HAVE played it. And it seemed the same to me...
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Well that just shows how poor a judge of framerate you are. It's a pretty well-known fact that the DC version runs at 60 fps and the GC one not even 30 fps.
New GC demo impressions - Great Rumbler - 18th June 2003
That's pathetic that Sega couldn't do a better job than that.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Well all I can say is that the framerate was steady. 30 or 60, how could I tell? I couldn't... I can see if it drops a lot or something, but if its static and not like 15 frames or something? Big difference.
Anyway... it did feel kind of odd. The controls were really tight or something... it felt hard to control somehow. Maybe I needed to get used to it, but none of the other demos felt that way... and the horrible camera sure didn't help...
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2003
Point 1: I never once denied my ability to decern frame rate is VERY poor. I simply deny that it matters when you can't tell, as in my case.
Point 2: I OWN the original. Oh yeah, I played it too.
Point 3: According to IGN (since obviously I don't have the skill to determine it for myself), on the DC section of the site, the original was in fact just 30 FPS except during the racing mini-game, and occasionally stuttered in heavy load areas then too. Well, according to the SA1 review at the DC section of the IGN site anyway. I do remember reading an SA2 review a bit before that game came out that they were impressed that they managed to bump the frame rate to 60 FPS with no slow down.
Now, the 3rd point is fact. It's a fact that IGN SAID those things that is. Whether what IGN said is fact however is debatable. The point is that I can't really tell the diff myself. No reason to go on about it. I'm not saying a difference doesn't exist, just that I can't tell.
I must ask this, why would you force it down my throat? I'm not even trying to argue with you. I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm saying I can't tell. Somehow however, I think I know you will respond saying "IT IS TOO DIFFERENT". Do not do that, because I'm not saying it's not, just that I can't tell. There is nothing to say here. Nothing. Just say "okay, you can't tell". Also don't forget the rude little comment about me being blind I know you will say, but nothing else is needed.
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
20 and 60 isn't a big difference??!! Hoo boy....
The problem is that the framerate isn't static (if by static you meant constant). It jumps from about 15 or 20 to 30 or 40.And who knows how fast the game runs? I do, as does everyone else that can tell the difference between 20 and 60 frames per second.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
20 and 60 are, but not 30 and 60. If is smooth at 30, I really couldn't tell you if is 30 or 60 or 100... and neither could most people.
Oh, and neither of us said 20=60, so I have no idea where you got that from...
You don't know its 60. You think it is, but don't know. As DJ said, IGN itsself (Framerate-watchers Inc.) said that its 30 and stutters sometimes on the DC! Will you say IGN is lying, and its acutually a smooth 60?
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Quote:Originally posted by Dark Jaguar
[B]Point 1: I never once denied my ability to decern frame rate is VERY poor. I simply deny that it matters when you can't tell, as in my case.
Point 2: I OWN the original. Oh yeah, I played it too.
Point 3: According to IGN (since obviously I don't have the skill to determine it for myself), on the DC section of the site, the original was in fact just 30 FPS except during the racing mini-game, and occasionally stuttered in heavy load areas then too. Well, according to the SA1 review at the DC section of the IGN site anyway. I do remember reading an SA2 review a bit before that game came out that they were impressed that they managed to bump the frame rate to 60 FPS with no slow down.
Now, the 3rd point is fact. It's a fact that IGN SAID those things that is. Whether what IGN said is fact however is debatable. The point is that I can't really tell the diff myself. No reason to go on about it. I'm not saying a difference doesn't exist, just that I can't tell.
I must ask this, why would you force it down my throat? I'm not even trying to argue with you. I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm saying I can't tell. Somehow however, I think I know you will respond saying "IT IS TOO DIFFERENT". Do not do that, because I'm not saying it's not, just that I can't tell. There is nothing to say here. Nothing. Just say "okay, you can't tell". Also don't forget the rude little comment about me being blind I know you will say, but nothing else is needed.
Sure Sonic Adv stutters once in a great while, but for most of the game it runs at a smooth 60 or so fps. The GC version is almost twice as slow.
Oh and ABF, even your precious Gamespot complained about Sonic DX's framerate. Here's a quote from their preview of the game: "The game's frame rate fluctuates quite a bit, which can be jarring." So it's those of us that notice these framerate issues that are normal, not people like you.
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Quote:Originally posted by A Black Falcon
20 and 60 are, but not 30 and 60. If is smooth at 30, I really couldn't tell you if is 30 or 60 or 100... and neither could most people.
You don't know its 60. You think it is, but don't know. As DJ said, IGN itsself (Framerate-watchers Inc.) said that its 30 and stutters sometimes on the DC! Will you say IGN is lying, and its acutually a smooth 60?
There is a very big difference between 30 and 60 fps. You just can't notice it. And if IGN ever said that about Sonic's framerate, they were mistaken. The DC site did have a few idiotic editors, after all.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Maybe it does and I don't notice it as that, or maybe it does but not in the 6 levels of the demo... I don't know...
Oh, you know you could edit your post to respond to a post you missed instead of writing another one... that's what I usually do...
Also, if there is such a huge difference between 30 and 60 why is it that me, and almost all normal people, see absolutely no difference at all? Huh?
And I note you dodge the issue about whether SA on DC is 30 or 60... :)
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Sonic on DC definitely does not run at 30 fps. It runs at around 60. Maybe 40 or 50. I haven't played it in a while. But I do remember that it's a lot faster than the GC version, as does everyone else. Well, everyone that reviews games for a living, at least.
There is heavy slowdown in the recent demos of Sonic DX. You just can't notice it for some reason.
I didn't want to edit my post since so many of you are posting all at once.
And to end this crap, there is a very big difference between 30 and 60 fps, but some people simply aren't sensitive enough to notice it. I play a lot of FPS's and can very easily tell the difference between 30, 60, and even 90 frames per second. Just admit that there is a difference but that you simply cannot notice it and be over with this.
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2003
I ALREADY DID DO THAT! I also said there's no reason for you to continue insisting it's there. All I said was I couldn't tell. You NEVER read anyone's posts EVER do you?
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Ah.. I was responding to ABF, DJ.
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2003
SURE you were :D.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Yeah, that part of the thread got kind of ... confused ... :)
Yes, there is a difference. Of course. But to almost everyone a game running at a STEADY, NOT SLOWING DOWN 30 looks PERFECTLY SMOOTH. It doesn't look slow. That is my point.
Oh, and to compare the DC and NGC ones speed I'd need to play them one after another... comparing a game you play now to one you haven't played more than three or four times scattered across the past four years isn't exactly a good idea. :)
It might run slower, I don't know. I don't remember how the DC one ran...
But that's not what my point is, my point is that it seemed steady and if it slowed down it did it in a way that I didn't notice -- it didn't do sudden drops where I could see things speeding up and then slowing down, or anything. Or if it did I didn't notice... I did only play it for a little while and haven't played 2 of the 6 demo levels (didn't play Big the Cat or Knuckles' levels).
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Look, every review site has mentioned the inferior framerate of the Gamecube version, okay? I also noticed it even though I haven't played the DC version in about a month.
30 fps is acceptable for certain games. For games like F-Zero, Battlefield, and any other fast-paced or first-person game, it's not acceptable.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Fine, maybe it is slower. And fine, it'd be more fun if it ran faster.
There, happy now?
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
Very.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
Why? Its not like I admitted some huge thing... I said that the game didn't feel right. Who knows, maybe that was because of framerate issues as well as what seems to be somewhat bad control and a awful camera?
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 18th June 2003
:stupid:
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2003
New GC demo impressions - Nintendarse - 19th June 2003
Wasn't this thread created to AVOID worthless debating? Oh well. I think the only debatable point is what percentage of the video game community can detect a difference between 30 fps and 60 fps in a game like Sonic Adventure DX. But since there is no solid data, all of this debate would be conjecture, which firmly puts it into the "worthless" category.
New GC demo impressions - Great Rumbler - 19th June 2003
Something I noticed about Sonic Adventure DX was the collision detection, which was horrendous. If you even so much as just barely touched a wall or a rock or something you immediatly stopped and had to maneuver Sonic away from the obstacle to get him going again. I don't remember if this was a problem on the DC, but it can't have been that bad.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 19th June 2003
Yeah, that game has issues with collision detection, play control, and camera. All of those things need major work...
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 19th June 2003
Unless they reworked the very physics, then I'm pretty sure it was also in the DC version. In fact, unless my memory fails me, that was exactly the case.
Anyway, so you edit your posts to respond to things you've missed? Wish I knew that. I think it would be more helpful to the rest of us if you just posted a new message though, unless you were correcting something you said. I know I myself almost never ever re-read an old message I thought I already read to see if it's been changed. Oh well, no matter.
I'll say this. I may not be here for a while. Something bad happened to my computer (not this thingy). My computer has essetially bombed on me. I know if I could just get it to something software related, I could actually do something to fix it, but it seems to be hardware, not software. My motherboard itself seems to be the problem. My hard drive may also be a problem. It all started when I tried putting it in my old machine to test some things. Nothing came of it, so I returned it, and boom, the thing won't even flash on my moniter. I can't even see the POST screen! No confirmation beep, though everything else sounds to be in perfect order, and no error lights are activated on the mother board. Trying different moniters and video cards was to no avail. Trying a different hard drive didn't help either. Testing my HD in another machine to make sure the HD wasn't a motherboard killer now for some reason, I find it doesn't in fact kill them, but it seems none of the older mother boards I have around here can read an 80 GB hard drive (they aren't THAT old, but they are first pentium level boards). Anyway, I may end up having to just buy a new motherboard, as my old one may be fried due to something simple like static shock. I'll try each and every other part of my machine on another mother board to make sure they all work, including the processor (a much newer motherboard will be available to me then so I can actually do that). Oh yes, I already tried removing the watch battery for several minutes to see if that reset something and fixed it, no dice.
If anyone has any help, I'll try being at this machine again to check on it to read it. Thanks anyway, and I think if I need a new motherboard I'll need to cancel a pre-order sadly... Oh well...
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 19th June 2003
Yeah, I frequently edit my posts and add stuff after posting them... not hours after or anything, but a little bit after. I do it more since coming to the VBulletin where it only shows one 'edit' tag instead of one for every edit like the UBB did... its much easier and looks better to me... its kind of strange to make a new post, it just confuses everyone (like OB1 did. :) ).
Owch, computer problems.
Uhh... the good news is its a bulletin board so you can access it from any computer? :)
Our older computers' harddrive (our P800) went bad a few years ago... it was the main harddrive (a 40 gig main drive). The secondary 80gb drive worked, though, and the Linux part of the main disc (which is all my dad uses on it) was mostly okay so we didn't fix it for quite some time... but now we're working on it. With a new 80gb HDD that will eventually replace the bad 40... the 40 has bad sectors, you see. Its garbage. :(
Lets just say that installing windows is a pain... and getting all the hardware in that thing to work is very hard. Its not fun at all... that stupid thing is still messed up in windows... :(
Oh, if a HDD is new it probably won't be able to be read by a old motherboard's bus. You see, modern HDD's are often ATA133 drives... while older comps do NOT have 133 buses. For example... the P800 has a ATA66 main bus and neither of our 80gb HDDs can be read when attached to it. We have to use a PCI ATA133-bus card that we've plugged into the computer... it was the only way to get them readable on that comp.
If you had a fast new PCI bus card for IDE devices it would probably fix your problem of attaching that harddrive to old PCs.
New GC demo impressions - CartoonDevil - 19th June 2003
Quote:Originally posted by OB1
Well that just shows how poor a judge of framerate you are. It's a pretty well-known fact that the DC version runs at 60 fps and the GC one not even 30 fps.
Maybe you have super-human eyesight, but while I can tell when a games framerate is smooth or not, I can't tell you if the game is running at 81 fps or 46 fps unless I'm running FRAPS on my PC. Glad to know you've developed software to gauge the GameCube's exact fps count.
Care to share your 'program'?
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 19th June 2003
I can't tell if a game is running 24 or 45 fps, but I can tell if it's running at around 20, 30, 60, etc. frames per second. Spending long hours tweaking the graphics settings (while using framerate counters on and off) of many PC games trained my eye. I've always (well ever since I started playing 3D games) been able to tell if a game is running at around 30 or 60 fps, but I now I can get more specific.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 19th June 2003
Yeah, right.
Look. You clearly can tell more about framerate differences than most people. Okay. But telling that its 30 or 60? I doubt it. You know.. what if its 50, not 60? You'd never know... but its still "60".
I certainly would think you'd see any slowdown or framerate issues in a game, but framerate itsself... maybe not. I don't know, I'm not sure how much the human eye can actually tell about that stuff.
Oh, and I'd far, far rather see a smooth 30 than a 60 that drops to 45 or something sometimes!
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 20th June 2003
You seem to think that just because you're not good at something, everyone else must be bad. I can very easily tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps, or even 50 and 60 fps for that matter. The easiest way to do it is by spinning the camera around, or turning around if it's a FPS. I can tell how many frames (like 30, 40, 50, 60, etc.) a game is running at by how smooth the surroundings look depending on how fast I move the camera. It's really easy to tell, actually.
You ever notice when the camera in a movie moves across a scene? How things get blurred? Well that's because cameras film at 24 fps. Whenever they pan the camera fast enough everything gets blurred. Our eyes can detect over 60 frames per second, so that's why it looks blurry to us. Most games require higher framerates than film because the player controls the action and the camera. For some games 30 fps is alright, relatively slow-paced games like OoT where the camera basically follows the character at all times. But if OoT were a FPS or a really fast-paced game, 30 fps just wouldn't be acceptable.
New GC demo impressions - Dark Jaguar - 22nd June 2003
Anyway, I've done a bunch of checks today when I had the time. The good news is that both of my hard drives seem to work fine (though my main drive had to be set to "slave" in order to be read at all on this machine, but I'll attribute that to dumb luck, plus it's nothing that isn't fixable with a simple backup of all the files I want to keep (like my precious game save files, which I had thought lost, oh horrors) and a reformatting of the disk and setup (though that is a day's work, well, 30 minutes of actual work spread across a day's time of waiting :D).
Also, testing the video card in another machine, works fine, so that's not what went horribly wrong. There are only three things left that could cause an error like what I have, where nothing happens at all on bootup. It's either the motheboard (I'm hoping this most of all, it's one of the cheaper things I can get replaced), the processor (though on examination, it seems to be in working order), or the RAM (though I'm not sure that could cause this kind of error, and it seems in good condition too). If it's not that, then I accidently unplugged some stupid wire and missed it, or, and this is very likely, I'm just too stupid to figure out what went wrong.
In any case, tomorrow, in order to test the rest of this stuff, I need access to a P4 board to test the chip. For that, I think I'll go to the place I bought this stuff from (possibly a good idea from the start, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself, which I couldn't, but at least I didn't make the problem WORSE, I've learned enough that I usually can avoid thinking about doing anything that might do THAT). Hopefully the place I bought it from will be willing to test out the rest of the stuff to identify the problem. I'm sure hoping it's a very cheap problem :D. The last option ALWAYS works. I'll call my dad. He seems to be the patron saint of computers, using his mighty sceptre to cast out demons of stupidity, and laying his right hand upon computers to heal them of the damage stupidity has caused them.
New GC demo impressions - A Black Falcon - 22nd June 2003
You can tell that there's a difference but not that its 59 or 61. :)
Oh, and plenty of games are just fine at 30... lots of racing games are 30 and they play just as well as the ones at 60...
New GC demo impressions - OB1 - 23rd June 2003
Uh, no they do not. Something like F-Zero X would be practically unplayable at 30 fps. For some of those really crappy and slow racing games that you love so much (like Cruisin' USA), 30 is fine, but not for the fast ones.
And I never said that I could tell the difference between 59 and 61 fps. I said that I could tell if it's running at 30, 40, 50, 60, etc. fps.