Is it possible to port GTA 3 to the Dreamcast?

[cloofoofoo]

You dont see crazy taxi run lower than 60 on dreamcast.

It runs at 60 but it's variable, not locked. It chugs along lower than 60 quite a bit, in my experience.

Are you running a legit copy? Even my burned copies run 60 fps almost exclusively. Both crazy taxi never dip during gameplay, i would the only dips i see are during the intro. Even then its a slight jitter. Yours chugging along is not normal.

Psp version has crazy dips at the most random times.

Edit: u dont have to take my word for it, heres a real hardware recording

[MondoGecko]

You dont see crazy taxi run lower than 60 on dreamcast.

It runs at 60 but it's variable, not locked. It chugs along lower than 60 quite a bit, in my experience.

Are you running a legit copy? Even my burned copies run 60 fps almost exclusively. Both crazy taxi never dip during gameplay, i would the only dips i see are during the intro. Even then its a slight jitter. Yours chugging along is not normal.

Psp version has crazy dips at the most random times.

Edit: u dont have to take my word for it, heres a real hardware recording

Playing Tosec release through GDemu so that's likely the problem, but I haven't seen anyone else mention it running poorly on GDemu. The SD card is nearly full and I've been pretty active with adding and removing images so that might also be the issue as well.

[cloofoofoo]

It runs at 60 but it's variable, not locked. It chugs along lower than 60 quite a bit, in my experience.

Are you running a legit copy? Even my burned copies run 60 fps almost exclusively. Both crazy taxi never dip during gameplay, i would the only dips i see are during the intro. Even then its a slight jitter. Yours chugging along is not normal.

Psp version has crazy dips at the most random times.

Edit: u dont have to take my word for it, heres a real hardware recording

Playing Tosec release through GDemu so that's likely the problem, but I haven't seen anyone else mention it running poorly on GDemu. The SD card is nearly full and I've been pretty active with adding and removing images so that might also be the issue as well.

Ive actually heard some people complain of slowdowns on some games that normally dont have on a normal disc drive while using those drive replacement. Could just be it doesn't like your sd card or its not formatted right. You might have to fiddle with it or try another sd.

But thats on your end, not dc hardware or crazy taxi 1 or 2. They run flawless. Not the norm like you werr trying to insinuate .

[MondoGecko]

Are you running a legit copy? Even my burned copies run 60 fps almost exclusively. Both crazy taxi never dip during gameplay, i would the only dips i see are during the intro. Even then its a slight jitter. Yours chugging along is not normal.

Psp version has crazy dips at the most random times.

Edit: u dont have to take my word for it, heres a real hardware recording

Playing Tosec release through GDemu so that's likely the problem, but I haven't seen anyone else mention it running poorly on GDemu. The SD card is nearly full and I've been pretty active with adding and removing images so that might also be the issue as well.

Ive actually heard some people complain of slowdowns on some games that normally dont have on a normal disc drive while using those drive replacement. Could just be it doesn't like your sd card or its not formatted right. You might have to fiddle with it or try another sd.

But thats on your end, not dc hardware or crazy taxi 1 or 2. They run flawless. Not the norm like you werr trying to insinuate .

I wasn't meaning to insinuate it was the norm, which is why I clarified "in my experience." The card is formatted correctly, and I've tested another card. Crazy Taxi 2 runs at a flawless locked 60, and Crazy Taxi 1 is still chugging at times. I'm not at all trying to say the problem isn't on my end though.

EDIT: Here's a video comparing Crazy Taxi 1 on GDemu and GD-ROM, both captures are confirming the issues I've been seeing. Note the Crazy Dash in both captures when the game first starts. On closer inspection this seems like it could be more of an issue with really poor frame pacing as opposed to frame rate but either way I would describe this as chugging. You can see it happen again at a few points, but notably when the taxi is going through the grass at around the 1:20 mark. Everything just seems to slow down for a bit, like the actual speed of the game slows down.

[gilvan666]

everyone talking about gta3, but will the simpson hit and run game run perfect on the dreamcast?

[dkrazor]

Yes. GTA 3 would be possible yes... with some graphical differences and content cuts.

We must remember that in 1999 (mid-development) there were not the same techniques for modeling and texturing 3D objects as today. Super optimized audio and image compressors etc. This was only used in Vice City.

The size of the city was not the problem. But the quality of it!

I think it would look like the image from the game below

[Alextended]

Here's a video comparing Crazy Taxi 1 on GDemu and GD-ROM, both captures are confirming the issues I've been seeing. Note the Crazy Dash in both captures when the game first starts. On closer inspection this seems like it could be more of an issue with really poor frame pacing as opposed to frame rate but either way I would describe this as chugging. You can see it happen again at a few points, but notably when the taxi is going through the grass at around the 1:20 mark. Everything just seems to slow down for a bit, like the actual speed of the game slows down.

And here's a video (like countless others online) where this doesn't happen.

With a similar route from the start of the video to that patch of grass at around 1:15 (and beyond) there's no such stutter or slowdown. Maybe a badly burnt disc without the duplicated data meant to aid with loading or a failing drive after all these years is the reason for it above. Or it's a fluke where the drive just didn't keep up at some random point that wouldn't be replicated even on that set up. Even if there's some slowdown in this video that I missed while skimming it, it's hardly frequent, notable or even repeatable vs GTAIII's issues:

To me it's clear with an engine like Crazy Taxi's (and 2's) and its often very dense traffic or parked cars or pedestrians where relevant they had room to do things like reduce the target frame rate to half, half the traffic density and even the overall game speed to increase individual asset detail or the pop in or add other game elements. The cities are also more diverse than given credit for (though the default city is quite small and almost a circuit in design there's always the others in both games to show it could do more), it's cool seeing less visited locations that are quite different to the central stuff most see in 5 minutes of play. Idk if they could do a GTA back then (what developer could do it with good gameplay, I don't even like GTAIII's on foot stuff) but there could have been some sleek, more grounded and less arcadey game a la Driver 1 or 2 (I never liked the sequels) with ease. And of course if Dreamcast had lasted longer there could definitely be some real sandbox games. Even DS got some and it was not as powerful, closer to N64 quality except with good framerates.

Here's a Dreamcast using an SD card and serial port adapter with Dreamshell, it stutters and hangs all over the place. These games constantly stream data off the disc, similar to GTAIII on PS2. Any external problems with the read speed lead to abnormalities like yours.

[Anthony817]

The Driver projects have had some great updates to it in the past few months. Here is the other project called OpenDriver where it combines the first 2 games cities into 1 and differs from the original decompiled Driver 2.

[runkthepunk]

I think Driver 2 would be a great addition to the Dreamcast library if someone was to take up the task.

[panzer86]

Shenmue managed to handle an open world game with better graphics than GTA 3, so I don't see a problem there.