flaws of dreamcast games

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chao2
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flaws of dreamcast games

Post by chao2 »

What were some flaws in dreamcast games that could have been fixed if the dreamcast survived the 6th gen. An example would be loading times in Shenmue. Im not sure whether that could have been fixed but you should get what Im trying to say.
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Re: flaws of dreamcast games

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Well, a lot of the tech seemed to run smoother in Shenmue 2, so maybe that's not totally unbelievable. I don't really know though.
I'm not sure if this counts, but one thing that maybe could have happened would be a 2 a-stick controller. I mean Sony introduced the Dualshock kind of late in the PS lifespan, so that might not be too hard to imagine Sega doing the same with the Dreamcast. Naturally not all games would support it, but later games might add in compatibility. Also not too different from the 3D controller and the Saturn. That's a hardware thing though
I imagine that some of the graphics could have been optimized a bit too, as developers learned how to use the hardware more efficiently.
Maybe using more of the effects supported by the DC hardware (if you read a list of graphical effects supported you'll notice that almost none of them were used). Examples would be bump mapping and bloom (though bloom was used in Skies of Arcadia, and I think bump mapping might have been used minimally in either Shenmue or Shenmue 2)
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chao2
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Re: flaws of dreamcast games

Post by chao2 »

I wonder why no used most of the dreamcast graphical effects at the time.I heard it was a very easy console to program and would have probably been maxxed out by 2003 or 2004. A 2-stick controller would have definitely made porting titles easier.
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Re: flaws of dreamcast games

Post by TheRedFox »

Yeah, I don't know. If I were to guess, it'd be either that using them was too resource intensive, or just that they weren't really in fashion yet. That last one is definately the case, I think, for bloom, because that, while super popular today, was not used very often in the 1999-2001 timeframe.
FWIW, I've heard Sturmwind uses some graphical effects, which is neat. I think I've noticed a lot of bloom (though, I'm not positive), but otherwise, I'm not sure. I'd be interested to know. I wish that Duranik had just listed all of the graphical effects used in the opening credits, like zyrinx did at the beginning of The Red Zone for the Genesis.
If nothing else, Sturmwind has some sweet lookin' 'splosions.
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Re: flaws of dreamcast games

Post by Sultan of Saturn »

I think that the Dreamcast did a lot well. I think one of my gripes, though, was the limitation of the VMU and the 200 blocks. I remember some games were just huge gobblers of space on those VMUs. Record of Lodoss War, I believe, was one of those. The noise of the GD-Rom was just ridiculous sometimes. If there were 2 wishes I could have been granted, it would be backwards compatibility with the Saturn, and no region lock.
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