#79277 - 07/01/03 06:38 AM
A DVD versus 4 Cds
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 Knight
Registered: 06/17/03
Posts: 1049
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I was wondering if Larian Studios have this suggestion as an option. In fact, I would love to have a single DVD from which the game runs automatically without any installation else than installing the saved-games directory along with the options set-up configuration file. I may put this as a suggestion now. If L. S. made the game to run from the DVD with minimal registration file and HD usage it shall be an unprecedented product, and that might double its sales. On the other hand there is no thinkable way to avoid producing the game on CDs as the user-base is still far from standardising DVDs as the preferable media. I would love to hear a reply from Swen on this question. Shall there be DVD versions of  or no? Cheers.
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#79279 - 07/01/03 07:27 AM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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 Warlord
Registered: 06/26/03
Posts: 3553
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
If L. S. made the game to run from the DVD with minimal registration file and HD usage it shall be an unprecedented product, and that might double its sales.
If you're interested, go check out the sales for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance on PC. The 2nd week after the game was out, the price dropped by half.
Still, each time I walk in the stores, I still see the 4 copies of the game, untouched. Why? Because it is on DVD. The surest way to worsen 's sales, is to publish a DVD. Most people won't upgrade their computers because of one game, so don't expect people buy a DVD-player with RiftRunner.
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#79280 - 07/01/03 07:38 AM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Orc Chief
Registered: 03/10/03
Posts: 1947
Loc: Planet Earth
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Maybe you GET a DVD player with the special edition?  but i think that DVD is going too slow to be the new standard. it's not bad at this time, but it could be faster..
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Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
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#79281 - 07/01/03 07:52 AM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Knight
Registered: 06/17/03
Posts: 1049
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Quote:
Quote:
If L. S. made the game to run from the DVD with minimal registration file and HD usage it shall be an unprecedented product, and that might double its sales.
If you're interested, go check out the sales for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance on PC. The 2nd week after the game was out, the price dropped by half.
Still, each time I walk in the stores, I still see the 4 copies of the game, untouched. Why? Because it is on DVD. The surest way to worsen 's sales, is to publish a DVD. Most people won't upgrade their computers because of one game, so don't expect people buy a DVD-player with RiftRunner.
The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
The DVD shall be native to play sound tracks and movie clips at highest quality per data-memory-media cost.
You never run code from a hard disk or a cd directly, so the issue here is data streaming not running code. Streaming the audio music track data from DVD to sound card directly saves CPU time by the advanced architectures available today.
Streaming the video movie clip directly to the graphics card too would be fantastic when it is compressed, for example by MPEG3 or whatever is compatible.
Metal Gear was never at the same rank of  to make a comparison and in my opinion it would never sell good even if they printed it on a gold dish.
I think that and the following Divinity II may be the best reason to push the market to upgrade.
Cheers.
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#79282 - 07/01/03 10:39 AM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Warlord
Registered: 06/26/03
Posts: 3553
Loc: Canada
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[quote The Executable code MUST be in RAM. The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy? The DVD shall be native to play sound tracks and movie clips at highest quality per data-memory-media cost. You never run code from a hard disk or a cd directly, so the issue here is data streaming not running code. Streaming the audio music track data from DVD to sound card directly saves CPU time by the advanced architectures available today. Streaming the video movie clip directly to the graphics card too would be fantastic when it is compressed, for example by MPEG3 or whatever is compatible. Metal Gear was never at the same rank of to make a comparison and in my opinion it would never sell good even if they printed it on a gold dish. I think that and the following Divinity II may be the best reason to push the market to upgrade. Cheers.
What I mean is: very few people have DVD players in their computers.
Also about MGS2: you like it or not, the MGS franchise was one of the most popular ever, considered by most, the best stealth game ever made for computer or PlayStation. If people don't buy MTG because it was on DVD, the chances are that even less people buy DVD. How many people have heard of ? Everyone has heard of MGS. We have 1679 registered members, Konami of America has 7958 users on their forums. Will NOT sell if it will be made on DVD. Besides, which game company publshes games on DVD?
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#79283 - 07/01/03 02:42 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Orc Chief
Registered: 03/10/03
Posts: 1947
Loc: Planet Earth
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on a side note. there was an earlier version of the forum before this one. and it had more then 5000 members and this was for only 1 game instead of lot's of games on the konami website
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Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
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#79285 - 07/01/03 03:12 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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 Knight
Registered: 03/11/03
Posts: 579
Loc: Belgium
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It's too early for games being in DVD format. I'm sure many people don't accept it yet. I for instance, don't have a DVD drive in my computer yet. I don't see the point, it's wasted money. If I want to see a DVD movie, I'll use my Playstation 2. And there's hardly any software for PC that requires a DVD drive.
I won't buy a DVD drive until I REALLY need it, or my CD-ROM drive fails.
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 Tovi
May Raan refresh you!
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#79286 - 07/01/03 04:01 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Warlord
Registered: 06/26/03
Posts: 3553
Loc: Canada
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Quote:
on a side note.
there was an earlier version of the forum before this one.
and it had more then 5000 members
and this was for only 1 game instead of lot's of games on the konami website
Sorry mate, I didn't meant to be disrespectful to DD or Larian or you or your best friend's neighbour's gray cat.
I just wanted to say that MGS2 was popular...
I know about the DVDroms. I have one. I bought if for one reason(hint: Jack the ___) but I didn't used it yet. So here I am, wasted $50 Can for nothing.
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#79288 - 07/01/03 04:38 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Knight
Registered: 03/11/03
Posts: 579
Loc: Belgium
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Ofcourse they will. I mean, I don't think you can buy CD-ROM drives anymore, and sooner or later, they will all malfunction, forcing people to buy replacements. And since there are no more CD-ROM drives, they'll buy DVD-drives. And only when this happens, will games go DVD, instead of multiple CD-ROMs.
But I think that we haven't come to that time yet.
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Tovi
May Raan refresh you!
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#79289 - 07/01/03 10:26 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Angel
Registered: 03/27/03
Posts: 5016
Loc: Melbourne, Australia
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Quote:
The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
The DVD shall be native to play sound tracks and movie clips at highest quality per data-memory-media cost.
You never run code from a hard disk or a cd directly, so the issue here is data streaming not running code. Streaming the audio music track data from DVD to sound card directly saves CPU time by the advanced architectures available today.
Streaming the video movie clip directly to the graphics card too would be fantastic when it is compressed, for example by MPEG3 or whatever is compatible.
Metal Gear was never at the same rank of to make a comparison and in my opinion it would never sell good even if they printed it on a gold dish.
I think that and the following Divinity II may be the best reason to push the market to upgrade.
Cheers.
But who has 2.7Gb of RAM in their machine? (Keep quite, I know you're out there waiting to gloat!)
Sure you must load the executable and any commonly used media into RAM, but many game leave it at that. They only load the sounds and animations of those characters currently in use, which may mean the player and Orcs, or player and townsfolk. With increasing resolutions, you can load less characters into RAM as before and so games only remember the most immediately essential characters at any one time. My DVD drive can take a whole three or four seconds to respond to a load command, and that's assuming the data is sequential. I would hate to have that everytime I shifted between the wilderness and villages.
Also, conversations are clasically only played from disc in these cases. Again with the four second delay just to say "Hi" to a merchant. RiftRunner is going to have full speech (Which is going to be good, but very quickly annoying. Remember Deckard Cane in Diablo I?) and hence a lot of loading of sound files.
To my (limited) knowledge, Metal Gear Solid is the best selling game ever on PlayStation, and most certainly one of the most critically acclaimed. It doesnt mean you or I like it, but it was a very popular game. I'm surprised people didn't upgrade their machines. I remember getting more memory just for The Sims and a better video card just for StarTopia, and then finding I needed a whole new machine to supply data to the graphics card fast enough.
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#79290 - 07/01/03 10:46 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Warlord
Registered: 06/26/03
Posts: 3553
Loc: Canada
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I am still with a Pentium 3 666mhz, 256 PC-133 RAM and GeForce 2 GTS... Ah, btw, I am no big fan of MGS2  .
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#79291 - 07/01/03 11:47 PM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Knight
Registered: 06/17/03
Posts: 1049
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Quote:
Quote:
The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
Money.
If a game is published exclusively on DVD, then I'll have to buy a DVD drive - and I can be *very* conservative on things. My burner, for example, is only one year old.
I'd prefer games on CD-ROM, because a CD-ROM drive is what nowadays everybody has.
Publishing a game on DVD ONLY is good for hardware manufacturers, but not for the one who has to spend the money.
Are you telling us that you do not have a 1.44 MB floppy drive!
Why not install it from 2000 floppies?
Ridiculous, right?
I have freakingly installed software that came on 26 floppies some years ago. 
CDs came in for the rescue.
Now the pattern is repeating itself.
With fabulous graphics and cheaper memories as well as gigantic software teams working under coordination, one expects software to inflate in size to multiples giga bytes very soon, and we are witnessing the beginning here and now, or do you not realise that is a 2.6 GB software, or perfectly a DVD-full size application?
Hard disks are going to jump to a 40GB as the standard average while 60, 80, 100 and 120GB shall be common place and quite available if not already.
A game simulating reality while porting it to fantasy shall consume memory media like a hungry Orc consumes a chicken leg.
So do expect your next favourite title to come on six CDs (600 MB each) or two DVDs as an available variety. One DVD shall be the install DVD and the other shall be the run-time DVD. It is only a matter of time until you witness my prophecy to come true.
I started programming on Holerith Cards which I doubt if you have even heard of them.
Then came in the paper tapes then the magnetic tapes and finally (then) we rejoiced when we had the 8 inch floppies that stored 160 K bytes.
I have witnessed that pattern of media becoming obsolete to give way to a more compact media.
We almost disbelieved it when we were told that a 3.5 inch floppy could hold 360 k bytes.
Then they told us there is yet a DOUBLE DENSITY and all our eyebrows went up.
No way, you mean 720 K bytes on one single floppy?
Then the quad density was announced and the name was changed to High Density for the 1.44 MB which is still surviving due to the size compatibility with office work and filing systems upgrade and for no other reason.
An application on 26 floppies was a cry from hell to find out an alternative for distributing that much on one platter.
There you go and CDs came into the market.
It is the demand that pushes the manufacturers to comply and not vice versa.
Now we do have DVDs available, thus it is a very wise decision to make the game available on 3 or 4 CDs as well as on one DVD as in a transitional period for the market to move on.
In 1986 I paid dearly to obtain a memory expansion card that was a mere 32 K byte to which I was grateful to have.
Today, my graphics work station holds 4 memory modules each of which is 256 MB totalling One Giga Byte RAM.
Progress is unstoppable and the Larians would regret not to share in making history and rather wait and watch.
I call for a poll.
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#79296 - 07/02/03 03:08 AM
Re: A DVD versus 4 Cds
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Prophet
Registered: 03/10/03
Posts: 588
Loc: Netherlands
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Quote:
The Executable code MUST be in RAM.
The graphical background on which you shall be able to zoom in/ out MUST be in RAM, what difference does it make to load it from the DVD or the Hard Disk except wasted media and redundancy?
The executable needs to be in RAM, but it's a rather small exe file and it's main tasks are checking for the disc and load all the rest. As to loading it from harddisk or DVD, well last time I checked my harddisk is a hell of a lot faster than my DVD player. You would be looking at longer loading times because of that. This was less of an issue for BGII as it had relative small areas, but for Divinity/Riftrunner this would mean that you might get screen freezes every now and then when something needds to be loaded from the DVD.
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Puzzling out if the correct CD is in there? The joy if it works - the despair if you just can't find the correct one, cause your table is cluttered? 
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