PDA

View Full Version : GC PSO Loading Time

haterade
10-17-2002, 06:12 PM
Just wondering... is the loading time (for telepipes, logging on, etc.) much shorter, or about the same as the DC version?
Darrin
10-17-2002, 06:22 PM
I hope its better
PlatinumGame
10-17-2002, 07:32 PM
It's the same as the dc versions.
Ness
10-17-2002, 07:39 PM
Oh. Oh well. Aleast it's not longer.
Rhete
10-17-2002, 07:46 PM
What about loading other people in the lobby (or in something like challenge mode)? Version 2 was unbearably slow at that


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rhete on 2002-10-17 17:49 ]</font>
Cube
10-17-2002, 07:59 PM
I've heard from some websites that it's a lot shorter...
SkyHawkX
10-17-2002, 08:05 PM
Plat is on crax. Loading times are much quieter and faster. The only thing that remains the same perhaps may be log on for 56k and telepiping.
ginko990
10-17-2002, 08:35 PM
The onyl problem I had with loading was when I was In a game but it took my characters body about 1-2 minutes to appear. Pissed me right off.
Cube
10-17-2002, 08:47 PM
On 2002-10-17 18:05, SkyHawkX wrote:
Plat is on crax. Loading times are much quieter and faster. The only thing that remains the same perhaps may be log on for 56k and telepiping.



Oh ya!

Cube : 100
plat : -2
Barubary6
10-17-2002, 09:55 PM
The pirate version of US Version 2 is the best console-based one (at least until Xbox, which I'm sure will be the fastest). For some reason, Echelon decided to optimize the layout of the disk, and it turned out MUCH better than the version Sonic Team released here.

I analyzed what Echelon did to the CD layout and figured out why it was so fast. What they actually optimized the most was the loading of character data, at the memory card screen and in the lobby. Their secret was very simple from a technical perspective.

PSO uses compressed stream music - think CD-ROM XA from the PSX era. Rather than load a whole song to RAM and play from there, it streams off the disk. This works great under the tight memory and CPU usage limits of a console, but has a problem: loading while music is playing. In the lobby, the game must keep playing the lobby music while it loads the character textures for new players. What PSO does is switch back and forth between loading portions of character data and loading more of the music. This is why you hear that back-and-forth sound from the Dreamcast CD-ROM drive.

What Echelon did is very creative. They put the song data for the character load music and the lobby music right in the middle of all the character data. This way, the laser head moves minimally when going back and forth between music and texture data. The result is a huge improvement in loading times where the game needed it the most - in the lobby.

The loading time is Sonic Team's fault. They could easily have prevented the slow loading of Version 2, but they didn't. Are pirates smarter than Sonic Team?

-- Barubary
PlatinumGame
10-17-2002, 10:44 PM
On 2002-10-17 18:05, SkyHawkX wrote:
Plat is on crax. Loading times are much quieter and faster. The only thing that remains the same perhaps may be log on for 56k and telepiping.




On 2002-10-17 16:12, haterade wrote:
Just wondering... is the loading time (for telepipes, logging on, etc.) much shorter, or about the same as the DC version?



WTF N00b LEaRn hoW 2 R3@1)

Cube, 4l~le@R //3
rena-ko
10-18-2002, 04:14 AM
@ barubary6

the loading noises got worse with v2 compared to v1. was the v1 disklayout different? did they pack it in another way or was the v2-disklayout just lazily done?

pso-v2 and soulcalibur are dc-drive-killers... -_-;;
Wewt
10-18-2002, 09:20 AM
HAHA! Plat pwned.
Barubary6
10-18-2002, 04:14 PM
On 2002-10-18 02:14, rena-ko wrote:
the loading noises got worse with v2 compared to v1. was the v1 disklayout different? did they pack it in another way or was the v2-disklayout just lazily done?


In both Version 1 and 2, Sonic Team did not sort the files, so they defaulted to alphabetical order. In Version 2, there were more files, so the default sort happened to be worse than Version 1.

-- Barubary
gallaugher
10-18-2002, 05:34 PM
I saw a very long winded description of loading times on DC & this disc compression & that, xbox will be faster, etc. Sorry, I didn't read it.
Did anyone have the PC version? I did/do. With broadband & EVERYTHING loads faster. It is awesome. You can log off with one character & be back in like 20 seconds.
diospadre
10-19-2002, 01:44 AM
On 2002-10-18 15:34, gallaugher wrote:
You can log off with one character & be back in like 20 seconds.



no you can't. loading times are pretty much the same, except for character model loading, which seems to take only half as long.

p.s. baru, did you 'analyze' echelon's release or just read the .nfo they put out along with it?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: diospadre on 2002-10-18 23:45 ]</font>