Resident Evil: Behind the Mask [+Hazardous Battle]

[Gemini]

1) Any full motion videos forthcoming?
2) Also, is it safe to assume that there will be no artificial region locks, pardon me for sounding stupid. Are region locks in general a mandatory part of the Playstation's standards?

1) Sonic and I still haven't decided the style of those, however there should be a few once things are sorted out. While the new backgrounds provide a rock-solid base, we don't have any CG models for characters (they take some time to create, obviously). One thing is 100% sure: we won't use pre-recorded real time scenes like GS does.
2) The only unusual region lock I can think of is on the PSone (early modchips couldn't boot games with a license sequence from another region). I won't include any software region locks myself.

Gemini, how will you handle the alligator bosses? If I remember right, survivor had two of them. Exploding barrels like 2 or simple bullets?

That will require some thorough replanning because the original was a fast paced struggle, which came at the price of dumbing down the AI and both alligator's health parameters. Methinks the labyrinth of Crete could be a good lead on how the new battle should be structured.

[Drake]

Perhaps, with a bit of tweaking, the boss fight could end with both alligators ramming into each other's and Ark electrocuting them?

[Zombie_X]

Perhaps the Alligator boss fight could be you fighting against a smaller Alligator first, then later on you confront the larger Gator. The first fight would server as a primer to the bigger fight, heck you could even have smaller Alligators through out the sewers as standard enemies, like in 1.5. Maybe have the first fight right after you enter the sewers, then have the second fight when you are going to leave the sewers. I think that would work.

[Necron]

About the NTSC/PAL issues. Wouldn't one of those generic patchers work? Not for the horizontal lines, but for the 50Hz.

[Jimmy_Jazz]

As a European gamer I've always wondered how the REs would feel when running in NSTC.

[Gemini]

About the NTSC/PAL issues. Wouldn't one of those generic patchers work? Not for the horizontal lines, but for the 50Hz.

They force the game to run in 50 Hz, but you get issues in return. If you're lucky the only problem is just the slower speed and frame-based timers working still to account 60 frames for one second (it should be 50 frames), but if a game checks for specific synchrony variables then you're screwed and more than likely will get an infinite loop error somewhere, specifically while XA audio streams are played. The European RE2 randomly does that when forced to work on NTSC, with cutscenes locking at some point and the player left there alone, unable to progress while the game simply idles trying to detect the end of the stream. When it doesn't do the idle-freeze thing, the major issue is voices being cut off prematurely.

[Carnivol]

When it doesn't do the idle-freeze thing, the major issue is voices being cut off prematurely.

Or like the PS3 does when it's forced to run disc based PS1 games from a different region; stutters like hell on all streamed assets.

(Also, man, just got reminded of how stuff like Silent Hill can't be played with fast-loading on a PS2, 'cause the speech tracks are affected by it during cutscenes)

[Gemini]

(Also, man, just got reminded of how stuff like Silent Hill can't be played with fast-loading on a PS2, 'cause the speech tracks are affected by it during cutscenes)

This should be a common issue with games using SPU streams instead of XA. Most games manage sync of SPU and CD transfers with a sorta guessed timing, rather than something precise based on disk seek, sound ram transfer rate, and just-in-case error detection. Games like Chrono Cross have similar issue during movie playback because they interleave SPU chunks and BS frames, much like regular STR, but with all-software-based callback processing to keep synchrony and parallel transfers in background.

Speaking of SPU+CD issues, I've been trying to replicate Dino Crisis' implementation of data transfers, which partially caches data and sends it to destination on demand with some clever tricks (i.e. volatile data, such as textures or sound, won't flood ram with all the segment stored). So far I was only able to process literal data with callbacks monitoring transfers; whenever I try and transfer SPU data while keeping synchrony, SPU DMA would simply fail on synchronizing (it seems to be disabled during those callbacks or callbacks in general). :| I suspect it might be an issue caused by transfers from the CD-Rom sector buffer, an operation more than likely locking away other DMA calls. What a lovely way to waste another day on API programming.

[EDIT] Found a fix, finally. Seems like setting up an SPU transfer complete callback was the way to go (not what Dino Crisis does, but whatever). Everything seems to work now and I don't have to waste one extra byte of ram to transfer sound samples, unless the code turns out to be messed up somewhere on hardware. At least VAB samples don't go anal about it anymore, which resulted in audio tracks not working. Hooray? Hurray.

[Ultimacloud123]

Wow a week with no updates or discussion. Gemini you must be typing away since not even your Facebook's been updated.

[Guest]

How's the project coming Gemini?

[Gemini]

You guys probably don't check twitter that much. I post there micro-updates when there isn't really much to show in terms of new assets.

tl;dr: I'm working on the engine core, mainly procedures for optimizing ram usage. The code is currently almost as advanced as Dino Crisis 2's.

[Ultimacloud123]

That's Awesome! Are you saying you could make it even more advanced then Dino Crisis 2?

[Drake]

And then, we will have dinosaurs in space.

[Gemini]

That's Awesome! Are you saying you could make it even more advanced then Dino Crisis 2?

More advanced than DC2 could be realistic (I'm using a similar streaming+caching method), but for now it still lacks a few pieces to be comparable. If anything, when Kingcom and I are done with relocatable code modules, then that's probably the point where it gets way more advanced in terms of core procedures.

Meanwhile I can finally enjoy the one feature I wanted to have since I realized how it worked on Final Fantasy VII: chunk-based decompression. All I need now to complete the puzzle is swizzled gfx combined with chunk compression.

[Aleff]

You guys probably don't check twitter that much. I post there micro-updates when there isn't really much to show in terms of new assets.

tl;dr: I'm working on the engine core, mainly procedures for optimizing ram usage. The code is currently almost as advanced as Dino Crisis 2's.

MY BODY IS READY.
(also what's your twitter id chap?)