Toejam & Earl 3 - Dreamcast Beta

Oh this is how it looks on the emulator
(Couldn't post it in the main post, I've reached the max amount of attachments)

 

You are new here. People donate here for publically released downloads, no disc or donator only requirements.

Collectors likely aren't all that interested - its preservationists that will donate with no requirement of pressed discs or exclusivity and we have lots of those.

Id suggest looking back through previous donation drives and see how those were handled.

 

Could it be released digitally first and then after it's all said and done you could do a head count for who would pay for a disc?

 

I was already impressed by how the game looked in the direct feed screenshots, but this game definitely looks very good running on a emulator too!

 

This forum is a real Ali Baba's cave.

That's the best place to find gems.
Another piece of history will be released soon, you can count on me for the donation.

 

I would defiantly be in for a disc version of this.

 

Geist Force managed to last some time but we had someone on U-G actively deleting and banning anyone who tried to upload it. It was put out publicly but very quietly.

 

Nice disc art.

 

Preservation > performance, though as a sort.txt is so easy to do, even you could do it within minutes. Heck, if Sega cared they wouldn't have released Virtua Fighter 3TB and others with the files in alphabetical order!

The simple fact is if it was released digitally first very few people would bother to buy the pressed disc.

Reducing the demand reduces the number of discs needed, which means not so much less profit as it would be a commemorative item likely run at cost, but it means relative costs would go up due to economy of scale and as such it may not be economically viable to press discs any more.

A digital only release certainly makes life somewhat simpler, though as for legal issues you may get them with or without a pressed disc, so for what it is worth you may as well press it anyway, unless you CBA with the headache of delays, tinfoil hat crazies, people complaining that a game full of bugs is buggy etc.

Oh and good news on getting the game up and running!

 

I was certainly thinking the same about it being released digitally first but what are your thoughts on a pre-order disc scheme? £30-40 per disc with covers etc run at maybe 100-150 and it only happens once the numbers are hit, if not everyone just gets refunded and business as usual?

I dont want to sound pushy, just a shame for it not to have a nice disc version sat in collections across the world
either way though, it's cool enough just to be able to play it on DC.

 

Still with Kevin not responding (I know he has other business, sad truth of real life hah), the idea should be to push ahead with a standard release like the majority of what is done here

 

Yeah, a disc release is only worth the hassle if the seller is motivated enough. For GF, Kevin was very motivated and the game had a historical background (never released, in production pre-release of the DC). All in all, it proves a big hassle for him anyway!

 

x

 

About cracking: Turns out it was quite similar to the 2k sports protections.

About sorts: A first order "optimization" would simply be to put larger files at the outer edge of the discs i.e. sort them by size. This would be both simple and fast to do, a python script should do it... More complex optimisation methods take a lot of time (basically playing the game in an emulators for hours, logging GD access) and I'm not sure if ZakhooiTM got the time, I sure ain't.

 

That isn't how a Katana works. Whilst you may not notice in it Windows explorer, optimized or not, the GD Workshop project loaded on the GD-M contains the intended structure / sort order of the game. The .VDS/.HCD files aren't there just to look pretty you know!

If it was desirable, the simplest thing to do would be just to load GD Workshop and use it to make a new sort file.

 

I'd favour a digital release, this time.

 

Luckily I already got access logs of me playing the first 10 levels (until it lock up ofcourse
I have to look how long the loading times are on an normal dreamcast. I can do this in a few days.

 

x

 

Bullseye!

 

Looks like this is shaping up to be pretty a pretty amazing thing for worldwide dreamcast fans!