Author Topic: multi-disc games?  (Read 4765 times)

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Offline theaveng

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multi-disc games?
« on: February 07, 2003, 01:57:09 PM »
Besides Resident Evil, do any other games use multiple discs?
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1 disc vs. 2 discs: I suppose it's a trade-off in cost. (1) Do you want to spend an extra $1 per game to publish a second disc? (2) Or do you want to pay an engineer $40/hr for several weeks to crunch the data to only 1.5 gigabytes?

Apparently Capcom decided it was cheaper to just purchase a second disc. Nothing wrong with that.



TROY'S GAMING HISTORY
1977- Atari 2600 (primitive)
1985- Atari 7800/Commodore=128 (8-bit)
1989- Commodore=Amiga 500 (16-bit)
2002- Playstation2/GameCube (64-bit)

Offline Jamesinclair

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2003, 02:08:06 PM »
I beleive its just RE and RE0 for now.
Taking over the boards one post at a time

Offline spartus

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2003, 02:11:50 PM »
I don't know of any other games that use more than one disc than "Resident Evil" & "Resident Evil Zero".
I would just use a second disc and say the heck with it. I don't know why. Just would.  
My systems: Jaguar/Jaguar CD, Saturn, 3DO, N64, Dreamcast, Genesis, NES, SNES, GameCube, PS2, Xbox.

Offline theaveng

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2003, 02:12:10 PM »

Any word on how many discs Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles will use?

Offline manunited4eva22

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2003, 02:28:17 PM »
2533434 discs... seems enough for a live action game...

Offline theaveng

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2003, 05:58:30 AM »
Thanks... that was terribly insightful.
/end sarcasm




I think I'll pick up RE1.  With multiple discs the graphics should look absolutely gorgeous.

Offline Bishman

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #6 on: February 08, 2003, 07:21:06 AM »
It will be 2-3 discs.

Offline Sith

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #7 on: February 08, 2003, 08:51:03 AM »
When you say an extra $1 to make the disc, imagine how many they make. Multiply that by 500,000 and you got an extra $500,000 to spend for an extra disc. Companies would rather compress, and maybe eliminate some of the features to save that cash. Bigger companies like Capcom, may go the extra mile.

Offline nolimit19

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #8 on: February 08, 2003, 10:40:49 AM »
dont those discs only cost like 12 cents each? where do u get the 1 dollar figure from? i am sure it isnt a dollar because like u said that would be like 1.1million dollars that they lost on re1. thats cant be true.
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Offline epicac

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #9 on: February 08, 2003, 10:41:56 AM »
I don't think pressing extra discs is $1 each. The figure I've always heard was $0.20, which is still a large number when you multiply it by 500,000.

Offline Kulock

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multi-disc games?
« Reply #10 on: February 08, 2003, 04:08:03 PM »
Not to mention you've got to organize the game so that the data is correctly split across at least two discs. That often requires a lot of data duplication, which can make a game that might've fit in 2.8 Gig into a 3.7 Gig game, which would still require compression or a third disc. For RE, it's easy to split the games up since there's two character quests, each one with unique FMVs, but imagine FMV-heavy games that are fairly non-linear, it really creates some design issues when a gamer could, at any time on any disc, go here and do this, go there and do a sub-plot, or go over there and play a complex mini-game, these things not only probably requiring voice samples to be available, but often FMV.

For instance, if you remember it, think back to FF7. On Disc 3 the Golden Saucer is unaccessible. Was that necessary for the plot? I don't think so. It's so they didn't have to keep the extra FMVs and data on that third disc and would have space for what they needed for the ending (and what non-linear action that was still possible even then). Splitting up the data over multiple discs can physically affect gameplay anyway. That's part of the reason why the GC gets the shaft on complex games being ported over, some games would need some physical restructing in order to work right for a multi-disc format, and that's expensive to a developer.

If the discs were dual-layered (like many DVDs), this wouldn't be an issue, cost would still be there, but the data would always physically be accessible by the game, even if it needed extra time to tell the laser to switch layers back and forth. But sadly, the GC doesn't seem to have any ability to read dual-layered discs, from what I remember of the interviews. It's a shame, but it's a fact of life. Unless someone (Factor 5, I'm looking at you ;D) works out a compression technique that can kick GC discs up to at least 3 Gig losslessly (This would probably have to be in addition to the DivX functionality they've already worked out, as well), unless a game is specifically designed for the Gamecube like RE or RE0,  developers are either going to compress it down to one disc, or not port it at all. But I agree, some games like SSX Tricky and Tony Hawk could have the extras on a second disc that gamers just pop in when they want to watch them. You don't need the game data on the disc as well when you're just watching skater videos or developmental videos.