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Post by Gilder on Jul 27, 2012 9:36:37 GMT -5
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Post by Narushima on Jul 29, 2012 11:31:20 GMT -5
It is a bit daft to release this on dead consoles as opposed to PC/Mac, isn't it?
Also, "lot's of cyborgs", "inconspicious"
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Jul 29, 2012 11:55:45 GMT -5
I know Last Hope was very flawed but it was still technically impressive for how it squeezed the Neo Geo. AFAIK the later (and cheaper) Dreamcast conversion was almost an afterthought, while with Gunlord at least they released both versions at the same time. Nothing bad in making a game for those consoles first but for them only... seeing those screenshots - the quality is a bit inconsistent here and there but still very impressive - I cannot help but pronounce just two words: "wasted talent". I also really dig the artworks.
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Post by derboo on Jul 30, 2012 13:28:16 GMT -5
The corrections for this and the Turrican article are in now.
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Post by dark1x on Aug 7, 2012 8:41:44 GMT -5
One more correction to consider; I received the game last night and put it through its paces across various displays and equipment and found that the Dreamcast version actually DOES display in proper 240p.
The image quality itself made it seem pretty obvious to my eyes, but my hardware also points to this. On my CRT, 480i is handled very differently and results in a smaller, flickery TV GUI - that does not occur when Gunlord is running.
More importantly, in my home theater setup, I use a Marantz receiver which, when fed 240p material, displays corrupted visuals over HDMI output. 480i/480p display perfectly, but all 240p material displays incorrectly. Gunlord, like other 240p material, runs into this same issue (one of the only Dreamcast games I've tested which does this).
Also, over VGA, the image is razor sharp just as it should be and completely unlike scaled 480i (ala 3DO or filtered 2D games upscaled).
The captures from the DC version in the article seem like a product of the capture method to me. If you run 240p into a capture card you'll end up with similar results every time.
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Post by Sturat on Aug 13, 2012 12:41:22 GMT -5
I just read the article and have a few thoughts:
The article says "and save his wife who went missing after saving the universe from a threat we don't know jack shit about." His wife is actually the protagonist from Last Hope.
The article was absolutely right about this Amiga-inspired game feeling out of place on Dreamcast and Neo-Geo, but it actually reminds me a lot of Magician Lord, so it isn't completely out of left field.
I totally agree that this is one of the best indie games released on a dead console, and I think it's a little harsh to talk about "collector-gouging" when games like Treasures of the Caribbean are so much worse, but the way some levels suddenly ended by falling through a screen change seemed inconsistently low-budget. (Is that something Turrican players would consider normal?)
I would have liked to see a paragraph comparing the different updates to the game that can be added through the usb port on the cartridge.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 7, 2012 16:33:22 GMT -5
One more correction to consider; I received the game last night and put it through its paces across various displays and equipment and found that the Dreamcast version actually DOES display in proper 240p. Bumping this to address it - I believe Derboo used an emulator to snag screenshots, which is why it seems like it ran at 480, upscaled and filtered. He'll have to verify though. I've used DC emulators for 2D games before (like Bangai-O) and while I'm not sure how that game outputs video, it definitely wasn't filtered, so it shouldn't be an emulator issue. |
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Post by derboo on Sept 7, 2012 16:58:34 GMT -5
Oh, I missed this when the issue was adressed the first time... looking around the web, the Game definitely does seem to do some weird stuff with the video mode that no (or almost none) official releases did.
It actually could be an emulator issue, if nulldc doesn't properly support that specific mode. So if a game uses 480p for 320x240 graphics, then the game's code handles the upscaling, and it displays fine in the emulator, but maybe because nulldc doesn't know how to properly deal with the mode, it just ends up upscaling and filtering it.
Anyway, that's just a theory. My TV connection isn't good enough to really tell the difference... gotta research some more, maybe email ng.dev Team about it to clarify...
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Post by romzito on Sept 10, 2012 1:46:10 GMT -5
Gunlord on the DC absolutely runs in 240p, just like the NG version, even in VGA mode. I've run the game both on a SD CRT via RGB and a CRT monitor via VGA. The rigid scanlines visible on a CRT set not capable of 480p makes it doubtless when a game is running in 240p. In both cases the game looks sharp and there is no filtering. There is no upscaling over VGA; isn't that asking a lot of 1998 hardware, or the devteam, to make that happen at 60 frame per second? The Devteam makes this clear on their website. "Dreamcast What's the games resolution? 240p (progressive lowres)" I have a tremendous amount of respect for this site and the depth of the research that goes into the articles and podcasts; but this is one time where I felt let down by the article. I've many games that I purchased after reading about them on this site. I ordered a cart of Soulless for the C64 immediately after reading the article on it, for example. But I also care a lot about the image quality of the games I play, and try to avoid 2D games that don't run in a standard low-res. The small bit of misinformation in this article caused me to hold off on buying Gunlord for several weeks. I could find no other website or discussion corroborating or refuting the article's claims about resolution; it simply was not a talking point elsewhere. So I hope you do make the correction to the article and continue to adhere to the standard of excellence that you have set for yourselves. Because there is no other website that contains the wealth of data about classic games anywhere on the net. |
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Post by derboo on Sept 10, 2012 5:30:00 GMT -5
But I also care a lot about the image quality of the games I play, and try to avoid 2D games that don't run in a standard low-res. The small bit of misinformation in this article caused me to hold off on buying Gunlord for several weeks. I could find no other website or discussion corroborating or refuting the article's claims about resolution; it simply was not a talking point elsewhere. Sorry about that. It's clear now that this was a fuckup, and I've fixed it in the article. |
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Post by romzito on Sept 10, 2012 5:37:01 GMT -5
Street Fighter 3: Third Strike is another 240p game that supports VGA. While it normally defaults to 480i (for some reason), 240 is enabled by holding start+Y during boot-up. In VGA mode it would have to default to 240p, and I've tested that it does. I'm betting that Gunlord uses the same mode that 3rd Strike does.
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Post by derboo on Sept 11, 2012 10:03:22 GMT -5
Incidentally, 3rd Strike's graphics are also messed up in nullDC, though in an entirely different-looking way (no need to press the keys for 240p mode, either, it always looks the same).
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Post by derboo on Sept 7, 2013 11:38:35 GMT -5
There is now a funding campaign for 3DS an WiiU ports:
I've got mixed feelings about this. Usually, I'm on the other end of "why does this need (so much) funding?"-arguments, but I have to say in this case EUR40,000 seems a but much for ports of an indie game, which itself was created out of the developer's pockets.
On the other hand, the 3DS is in desperate need of more good games...
Either way, this will have a rough time reaching its goal.
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