Hey Everyone, I know that for HuCards there are limits in terms of the size binaries can be due to physical space limitations. However, for CD-ROM format you have all the space in the world. Do most PCE CD-ROM games make use of this space for code? Or are they all still around 4-8mbits in size, with the rest just being wasted on CD music and tracks to simulate voice overs?
CD code is usually about the same size as code in cart games. What is different is the data - instead of having all the data for all levels like a cart has, CD games often break data for levels into different files to load as the game progresses. Programmers can get kind of sloppy about "optimizing" storage of data on CDs since they are usually not close to running out of room. Who cares if two levels share 80% of the same tiles? Just include them in both files since there's plenty of room. No need to try to optimize the files to take advantage of that overlap between levels.
Ah, so the games are broken down into parts. Are CD-Games more lengthy than HuCard games considering they could have as many parts as they want? Or is the game lengths about the same as HuCard counterparts? I'm assuming the game lengths are similar as they probaby wouldn't want to spend time developing more levels and such.
Depends on the game and whether it was written for a specific cd/card... different cds/cards had different amounts of ram that could be used by CD games. I couldn't give you specifics on games as I haven't looked into it to that level. It also depends on how the game was designed. Some CD games do the same for code as they do for data - different (and maybe redundant) code loaded for each level. That way they could tailor the game code to what a level specifically needs. That's handy for special levels that are often nothing like normal levels. I've never calculated it, but I'd say the average game length (excluding things like streamed audio) is almost certainly longer for CDs than for hucards. The hucard is a rather small cart (which is generally more expensive than the same thing in a larger format), and more importantly, has to use VERY fast rom to allow the console to run in hi-speed mode. Roms that can keep up with a 7MHz 6502 were very expensive, so they'd want to keep the size as low as possible. Just look at the sizes of many games. The very biggest (and there's only one that size) was 20 Mbit. Most are under 8 Mbits, with a handful of 8Mbit games. Even given redundant data and code on the CD, CD games are often much larger. It's partly why the CD expansion or Duo is considered a must.
I always just thought the base game wasn't much smaller but the music tracks and video were the things that took up the majority of the room.
My understanding is the actual program data is roughly the same as on hucard but there are more provisions to swap data since the data track is treated as one giant rom using hard coded pointers to redbook audio and PCM audio within the data track.
If a game DOES stream video and/or audio off the CD, those will normally be the majority of the disc. When it's just a game, even with tons of levels, the data won't consume much of the CD space. That's why the "standard" back-up method for old systems like the PCE-CD or Sega-CD was dumping the data track as ISO, then using mp3 on the audio (if any).
CD games have a different limitation though. They are limited in how much they can load or hold at any given time/instance. The cd 'ram' is treated as a virtual cart that you refill/reload. If you go by the most popular format of the PCE CD, the Super CD 3.0, then that 256k or 2megabits virtual cart (2.5megabits if you use ADPCM as non audio storage like some games do). The original CD 1.0 and 2.0 spec'd at 64k of CD ram for virtual card space. This was very limiting and usually limited the type of levels (limited tiles for the BG, limited sprite animation for the main character and enemies). Storage for code is usually much-much smaller than that of graphic and other game data. I'd say Red Book audio (and sometimes ADPCM streams) took up the most, followed by graphic data (bg/sprites/etc). Like Chilly Willy stated, there are redundant segments of code and data through out most PCE CD games because storage wasn't an issue. But if you removed and added up the code/data size, it's usually more than an 8megabit cart. But then again, unique detail tends to take up a lot more space without the perception of it being much more... superior or better. Gate of Thunder would probably fit in a 16-20megabit cart without cutting anything. Lords of Thunder would probably be about 20-24Mbit range. The Tengai Makyou series of games (RPGs, the Final Fantasy equiv on the PCE) are quite large. Probably well over 100megabits for those (excluding the ADPCM data).
Even more so, it is advantageous to have data for a given part of the game in a single area of the disc even if that means having the same data at dozens of parts of the disc. This is why NeoGeo CD games often had painfully long load times compared to the AES version, The AES cartridges had cartridge capacities comparable to CDs so such duplication couldn't be done.
