Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi everyone. It's been a while since I've posted! Hope everyone's good.
Earlier I happened to stumble upon this page: http://tasvideos.org/Bisqwit/InitialWikiPages/RecentChanges.html
Note that this is a different page than this: http://tasvideos.org/RecentChanges.html
When opening the first link, it downloads a whopping 16MB page that seems to even error out the server, giving me this error message at the top (although the page works):
error_handler:
errstr=unlink(/dev/shm/lck96B07276): No such file or directory
errfile=/home/tasvideos/public_html/inc/smallcache.php
errline=376
It seems to print out the entire history of the wiki, and I'm not sure how well it's cached.
Might it be an idea to add a |limit=50 to the changelog tag? Seems like a waste of server resources for a page that probably only gets hit by googlebot and other crawlers.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Unfortunately all the images in the author's comments are gone due to Imageshack ending its free service. :(
If anyone's interested in fixing, the images were archived on the IA.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I don't think that's the case. When you look at official screenshots using the CRT emulation mode, you can tell it doesn't have different sized pixels. It's visible even without zooming in. Besides, that would be an extremely weird creative decision anyway. No game from the 80s ever had anything like this.
The game seems to simply set a convenient, compatible resolution and then scales to that resolution. 640x480 is a common and compatible resolution, but 640x400 or even 640x360 are not. This also happens in the browser version. Setting the canvas to 320x200 causes the game to have square pixels. Anything else that isn't a multiple of that and the pixels are not square. If you set it to a high resolution 4:3 size, the pixels naturally look much more even.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying someone has to go and immediately redo this encode. But it seems clear to me that the game was meant to be rendered as square pixels, then scaled to 4:3.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi everyone. I have a question about the encode. I noticed that the pixels aren't all the same size—I think they've been point upscaled by a float value rather than an integer value. So some lines are 3 physical pixels in size, and others 2. Is this intended?
Judging by the frequency of the larger pixels (one every two lines) it seems the game is 320x180 (16:9) and was point upscaled to 320x240. I get that this is designed to be displayed at 4:3 since it's designed as a late 80s game (although I'm sure the 320x180 size was also intentional to be able to nicely fill today's TVs and monitors) but wouldn't it be preferable to physically upscale it to 2560x1440 and then down to the final dimensions?
It's been a long time since I encoded anything for this site, so I apologize for barging in and asking this question. :) I'm just confused because back then it was considered important to always keep the pixels square physically and use meta-info to force it to a specific aspect ratio if that was desirable.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I don't know how but this publication seems to have been given a screenshot of Samurai Shodown II (I think?) by accident. https://i.imgur.com/2jNGbM1.png
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Dada wrote:
Is it just me, or is this movie different from the old one in that there's no reverb? MGS has pretty heavy reverb on a console, and the SPU settings from the old encode are more accurate I believe.
Hi everyone. :) This is a post from almost 3 years old now, but recently stumbling upon this run has made me think about this again. I still think my comment is possibly something to consider...
I don't have a recording from a real PSX handy, but I'm pretty sure the old recording (which used a different reverb setting) is more accurate to the real thing. The current recording seems to have (almost?) no reverb in the sound effects at all. Who knows, maybe SPU code has improved since this encode was made—assuming it would sync on newer versions of PSXjin.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
There hasn't been much activity here. :) But I'd still love to see this game. It's one of my favorites (and these days it's very hard to get this game except at a pretty high price).
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi there, since Ilari is no longer around I thought I'd post this here instead of sending a PM. I think there might be something wrong with the Youtube encode, which was made by Ilari. It appears to be an upscaled version of a chroma subsampled source.
You can clearly see it in the numbers here. (Screenshot taken at the highest quality setting.) But do check out the video itself, you'll see what I mean.
Just thought I'd put this here so that some perfectionist can come in and redo this movie someday.
The video looks too fast. And indeed, the run is supposed to be 27 minutes, but the video is only 22 minutes long.
That's to do with the emulator. It can't handle the game at the right speed. I bet if someone encoded it using the method I posted yesterday it will be smoother and at the right timing.
I very sincerely doubt that my input is needed (I've been gone for so long, I don't know whether this is still known), but back when I encoded the first Abe run ever, I found that the emulator apparently skips frames in certain places, most notably when Abe goes into a corridor. This causes things to be sped up pretty significantly in the long run. It's not a constant speedup, though, just in certain places if I recall correctly.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Is it okay if we talk about variations on this theme? I ask since TPP kinda made me want to see something where a group of eight or so people are each assigned a button of a controller - like one person is in charge of A, another B, four people to each direction on the d-pad , and so on - , meaning they'd have to work together to complete a game. It'd allow for more action oriented stuff, while the Twitch method is best suited for grid-oriented RPGs.
Yeah, that'd be cool, but you'd need to go through the trouble of getting a different streaming solution with a much smaller amount of lag. Or possibly you could do it via some kind of netplay solution where all the players have a virtually lag-free environment while the people watching the stream have the delayed version.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Nach wrote:
I've given this some thought. I don't think typical action games would work out too well. Even for RPGs, you need games were you can't ever truly get game over, or get stuck into an impossible non-winnable situation.
Yeah, exactly...I heard that someone actually did FF1, but it ended because you just can't win unless you're constantly saving. Pokémon worked super well because not only do you never get a game over, you actually keep all your gained experience.
Nach wrote:
Therefore the following RPGs seem like good ideas:
EarthBound
Chrono Trigger
Lufia
Lufia 2 (E)
Earthbound and Chrono Trigger would be good, though maybe they'd be better if you made the directional keys stick for more frames than one?
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Was thinking about this just now. (Also, hi! I've been gone for a while. Should check around here more often!)
Of course, jRPGs probably work best for this. I'd love to see NES FF3 since that's one of my favorite games. I'd probably have to make a custom lua script, though, since you actually get set back to whenever you last saved when you die. I'd envision a script that saves a state whenever you enter a town, and loads the state a little while after all your characters' HP reaches zero. (Maybe RAM research exists that could help me?)
Maybe a strategy RPG game would work well too, like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Tub wrote:
Dada wrote:
It also applies to situations where the administrator of the website didn't personally sign off on some file upload to the site, so if the upload happened through an automatic process without site staff verifying the content prior to its online publication.
Yeah, that argument worked very well for rapidshare and other file hosters, didn't it?
I'm not gonna be Rapidshare. C'mon man.
I very much appreciate the concern regarding copyright, but let's put that aside for the moment. I don't foresee many problems—direct lawsuits sans warning are virtually unheard of when it comes to websites like this. Here in the Netherlands, even The Pirate Bay received warning upon warning upon warning before action was finally undertaken against them. For now I want to focus on how to actually build this website, how the processes are going to work, et cetera.
erokky wrote:
Dada wrote:
And there are indie game soundtracks that the devs are selling by themselves, we should avoid those just because it's not cool towards them.
What hypocrisy.
There's a difference between the two. For an indie dev this could be a very big deal, but not so for large studios. I don't really care if you think it's hypocrisy.
There's also http://www.vgmpf.com/
I'm aware of the fact that these already exist and that flac soundtracks get posted on various places, but there's no good central archive where you can find all of them, all in one place, in flac, with proper tags and easily downloadable. Take gh.ffshrine.org—you can't even download all the files at once. And most of them are in MP3 anyway.
The reason I'm thinking about making this site is because the soundtracks do exist, but they're scattered and half the time you can't be sure of the quality or of the tags being proper.
Tub wrote:
Two disclaimers: IANAL, and I don't know about copyright laws in the netherlands.
But as far as I know, takedown notices only apply to server hosters that have no knowledge about the illegal content on the servers, i.e. the guys with a few hundred server racks.
There's the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA (it's called the "mere conduit" provision in Europe). It also applies to situations where the administrator of the website didn't personally sign off on some file upload to the site, so if the upload happened through an automatic process without site staff verifying the content prior to its online publication.
Tub wrote:
What I'm saying is: don't bet your financial existence on the assumption that "it'll never happen". Find a local copyright lawyer, discuss the legal backgrounds and worst-case-scenarios with him. He may charge 200€, but that's a good investment. And if it isn't viable in your country of residence, then don't do it, but leave it to someone in a country with different copyright laws.
This is sound advice—actually, one of the things I've been thinking about is limiting the site to soundtracks that were not separately released (and thus are very unlikely to have people looking for them).
Still, I think it's safe enough to offer other soundtracks as well, if we're only offering flac-rendered versions of tracked music (e.g. psf/spc/etc), since these seem to already exist in various other places with impunity. Obviously there can't be any certainty—but the same applies to this website's videos (to a lesser degree, but still).
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
VG soundtracks are already readily available everywhere.
Availability does not somehow nullify or lessen copyright. Copyright is not like trademarking.
Since other places don't have much of a problem, there's no reason to expect this site would in particular.
Warp wrote:
In some cases we might get takedown requests and we'll honor them, most likely only from the largest studios and latest games.
In theory they could go even further than that. I don't think there's any law anywhere that says that they must give you a chance to take it down before they take legal action.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I don't suppose it'll be much of a problem. VG soundtracks are already readily available everywhere. In some cases we might get takedown requests and we'll honor them, most likely only from the largest studios and latest games. I suppose most of our soundtracks will be from older games—I actually think we should limit ourselves chiefly to tracker/midi-based music.
And there are indie game soundtracks that the devs are selling by themselves, we should avoid those just because it's not cool towards them.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Hi everyone. I wanted to get some feedback on an idea I have, and this seems like a good place.
So the idea is, I want to make a website for storing video game soundtrack archives in FLAC (and MP3/OGG/something for regular consumption). The idea behind it is to have archives that are 100% tested, verified to be correct and without glitches, and as high quality as possible, with all correct ID tags. And in FLAC/MP3 just so everyone can play the files on all hardware (as opposed to PSF/SPC/NSF/etc files). So basically, an authoritative vg music archive. I don't think something like this exists yet.
We'd have a forum on which most discussion takes place and where people can "reserve" a game that they want to rip (just to prevent people from accidentally working on the same thing), and where errors in existing packs can be discussed.
In addition to that it seems like a cool idea to also offer flac versions of remixes of and (modplug) tributes to vg music, in separate packages. But that's pretty optional, I don't know if it's interesting enough to do.
Storage would probably be through torrents, although I do have an online ~5TB storage unit at my disposal. A lot of details still have to be worked out (and there's no name yet), but just generally I'm curious what people here think and whether you have any ideas to offer.
edit: oh yeah, and I just wanted to add: while a lot of soundtracks for SNES, NES, PSX, etc. are readily available, I sorta wanted to focus particularly on PC game soundtracks, and then particularly older ones that aren't so easily ripped. Even though any vg soundtrack will be accepted. I've already ripped a whole bunch of games.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Oh! Geez, I missed that. Thanks.
edit: I read a bit more and apparently the patch isn't complete because of the checksums being everywhere, so fixing the emulator was the better option. So I guess no patch exists after all.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
It looks fantastic, and I'm glad we can get this game TAS'ed now!
Speaking of the copy protection, does anyone know if a patch exists that permits the game to work on a modchipped PSX? I've read that all available patches fail in some way.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
A good way to get a dedicated server cheap is by getting an actual machine yourself (get a slightly older one, they lose value quickly) and then negotiating a price to put it up in a data center.
If you want a heavy duty server (without owning it yourself) then I think this is a good choice: http://www.100tb.com/
edit: also have good experience with Leaseweb: http://leaseweb.com/
I know it's a 10 year old submission, but still :)
