why so little burned?

[Mo Threat]

The model1 is nothing to brag about quality-wise. Both are fairly study, but feel "lightweight". My model1 has issues, my model2 doesn't. I use my model1 more, but only because it's compatible with the ProCDX convertor I have and fits better on the shelf. Otherwise I like my model2 a bit more - it never freezes or has loading problems.

 

[megametalgreymon]

id like a model 1 actually, since it takes up less space more than anything

 

[lancastoor]

bigger isnt always better.. a cd at the time was practically a gimmick, much like the use of dvd is today..

back then when the average 16 bit game was a couple megabytes, what real use was a 650 meg medium, apart from cd-audio and grainy fmvs?

and now we have 8 gig dvd-rom based games.. when you know the code is mebbe 100-200 megs.. the rest is filled with mpeg2 fmvs..

chinsey little games with 2 hours of cartoons in between levels.. bah

so of course most of that space is always 'wasted'.. its not needed.. i remember when the dreamcast came out, I predicted the thing would be booting backups, and was flamed to oblivion with people saying 'NO THE GAMES ARE 1 GIGABYTE'.. of course, having my out of my ass, I knew that very few games would break the 700 meg barrier... and the ones that did would do it with CDDA or video that could easily be ripped or downsampled out.. but of course at the time i was a big ass for suggesting that 1 gigabyte was a wasteful size that would hardly be utilized..

but i digress..

its just a trick to lure in the weakminded and the ignorant.. i really dont want to sit and watch a movie or listen to a cd, I want to play a game..

and truth is, if your out to enjoy the game, all of those genny-to-segacd ports play just as well in cartridge form.. worse in some cases.. you gain cd audio at the expense of load times..

and all the dvds in the world didnt make the PS2 port of crazy taxi any more fun than it already was on dreamcast..

i guess thats why i like sega cd and turbo duo so much.. they both failed so poorly, cuz back then us gamers were much harder to trick..

 

[ganjafarmer]

ho guys.

Due to some dreamcast-iso-burning experience,

i might be able to answer that question.

A CD-Drive reads data faster (or with a more constant stream) on the outer areas of a CD.

thats the reason y burners for DC games start writing

from the outer sections.

in the DC scene ppl just burn a dummy-file onto the cdr first, so the dummy+cdr would match exactly the cdr's max capacity.

-> faster loading time; longer lifetime for the CD-lens (not confirmed)

 

[JCTango]

hey 🙂! cool stuff... how do u burn a dummy file then? Is it safe to do? Won't it mess up the game's ordering of files or whathave you?

 

[lancastoor]

ok now we're talking CAV vs CLV..

older cd-rom technology (rule of thumb, less than 4x speed) used CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) technology..

in short, this means the spindle of the drive speeds up/slows down depending on where the carraige is on the cd, thus keeping the data transfer rate constant..

your sega cd and saturn do this.. thus a dummy file will make no difference whatsoever.. if it did you probably have a screwed up drive..

newer cdroms use CAV (Constant Angular Velocity).. The CD spins at a fixed rate, thus the further out towards the edge of the cd the faster the data is read.. (think of a rock on a string you spin above your head.. your hand moves relatively slowly while the rock is moving really fast).. Only a handful of cdroms denote this properly.. you'd see it as a 14/40x cd drive (14x at the inside, 40x at the extreme outter edge).. most just sell this as a 40x drive..

Anyways.. the DC has a CAV drive.. thus the farther 'out' on the disc the data is, the faster it streams.. this makes a difference on a few games (crazy taxi comes to mind) since the data isnt coming of the drive fast enough during gameplay and you lose textures, clipping, etc.. I've also found through my DC experience that when you make a self-booting disc, the 1st session dummy audio track and lead out push the actual 'data' session far enough out on the disc to avoid these kinds of problems..

Anyhow, in a nutshell, thats why theres no point in pushing dummy sectors onto any cdrom thats rated 4x or less.. And a little insight on how the CD-ROM manufacturers hosed you somewhat on that 78x cdrom drive you just bought (cuz 99% of cds dont write to the extreme outer edge.. you pretty much never hit 78x throughput)

 

[ganjafarmer]

Guess you're right, didnt know about that.

Never had a Saturn or Sega CD :/

About the DC games

CT1 was the only game that had those texture probs

without dummy.

the only use for dummy files with other games

is the faster loading times,

and maybe longer lifetime for your CDR.

about the sega cd/saturn games..

i also felt a bit like cheated when i saw that

Crazy Taxi for DC was only 40MBs..

how would you have felt if you knew some

games only took a tenth of the space of a CDR,

or could have been released on cartridges without probs?

 

[CommanderBubba]

Well, wait a minute, wasted space just means there's room for expansion. Everybody these days has a huge hard drive if they buy a new computer. You think most of the yahoos out there that just use it for word processing and email actually USE the whole 40 GB? No...

But that's not the point, right? I was always into this stuff for the 'less is more' aspect of games, and the fact that with room to 'maneuver' you could do neat stuff like have voices or CD music or film clips or whatever, but that those were always enhancements and generally more fun. I really like a good sound track, but without a core game, it makes no difference. It's the proper implementation of your technology, not necessarily how much space you use, isn't it?

But you know, I always figured that systems failed due to stupid marketing strategies and other factors. Or stuff like the whole Saturn vs. Jupiter debate that resulted in the disasterous 32X fiasco. If Sega had been really smart they'd have put both technologies into the Saturn units and made Saturns compatible with both Genesis and Sega CD games. And continued the trend with the Dreamcast. Then they wouldn't have made zillions of dollars only to have to give up. <sigh>