Unlocking features of Geist Force, for people who have tested it (potential spoilers)

I was wondering about the Japanese launch model, since the system would have been produced in 1998, and many files on the GF disc have "last modified" dates in Spring 1999. Since the Japanese launch system had already been sold at retail for several months by this point, I wonder if there would be some sort of greater compatibility as the game could have been tested on the 1998 DC or modified according to the early retail spec. Although as Bad_Ad and CD Ages suggest, if it has the exact same bios and guts as the July '99 US DCs, you may have a similar testing experience to me.

Much appreciated

Some people, including myself, think that at least some of the slowdown and bugs in the game may be caused by a failure to stream data from the disc in time. This could be due to an unoptimized disc file structure and GDrom drive issue (GD drive reads CDs at 6x, but GDroms at 12x) rather than the DC lacking processor power. The game is constantly loading new graphics and scenarios and streaming sound and music as a level is in progress. The GDrom drive is constantly moving the laser to keep up.

 

I know that, and I want to emphasize to people that I don't think it is fair for anyone to come after the Assembler community with pitchforks or blame assembler for the fact that this is not a complete, polished, and playable game like Propeller Arena or Half-Life. But there is definitely game data and scenarios on the disc that appear completely inaccessible for various reasons, and I'd like to help provide information and get suggestions and brainstorming so we can explore more of the game, and this seems in line with the aim of the site.

 

Wow, really? That would be awesome.

 

What this guy said!

 

Okay, so I discovered something pretty much instantly upon turning the system on: the game does not support RGB SCART. It's not an issue with my DC - it runs other games fine, and the problem exists on both of my DCs. I get a black screen with sound, but no image. Obviously the game doesn't support RGB, although it does support VGA. This is unfortunate for me, but not a big deal.

Now, as for the game itself: I won't say much, because I don't feel like writing an essay, but I'll say that the game is obviously far from finished. There's definitely a good deal of content there, but a large amount of it is unplayable or close to it, and it has glitches and problems galore. I'm still glad this was released, but even glitches aside it needed some work before this could've been considered finished enough to be released as a retail game. I will say that it's pretty amazing that it runs at all on a retail DC, some serious respect is due to all the people who made that happen. Maybe I'll do a video review of it.

 

I agree, but at the same time, there were plenty of other reasons to be optimistic and anticipate a more developed experience. A good variety of the old '98, '99 videos show many diverse areas and situations and Geistforce was a 1st party title with real money and Sega's reputation behind it before it was dumped. It was also in development for a fair bit of time with many diverse locations and gameplay being shown off not only at the 98 TGS, but also a year later in 99.

Within this context, the Monkfish disc was among the latest if not -the- latest build, and this was a game that Sega was promoting heavily for awhile, even shipping sample game boxes to Japanese game stores to increase the hype, and optimistically showing a close release date in one of the advertising videos (Winter 1998!). I figured before testing the disc myself, that the developed parts of the game (levels, graphics, bosses, etc) would be greater than they are - and from looking at the disc and seeing the file names, it does actually indeed look like there is lots of content on the disc that reflects areas and bosses that are inaccessible for various reasons, whether its the hardware differences and syscall issues, or how this particular beta build is written. I firmly believe there simply is a great deal more to the game that is yet to be explored, if it can be explored.

But for the moment, aside from the obvious historical value of preserving potentially the first dreamcast game, I'm very happy that these almost 15 year old files themselves are preserved and accessible to users for the future so we have the opportunity to try and investigate the game, and not languishing on a random single ancient GDR somewhere. We might have been within 4 or 5 years of the media being completely unreadable and Geist Force lost forever :wink-new:

 

I know a few of you think/know/whatever an overclocked DC will crash quicker - but I'll be trying it on my overclocked one. It's 240Mhz (switchable) - ive added loads of extra coolong etc so we shall see.

 

I played through all stages apart from 3 which won't load. I had a very strange thing happen on stage two though. I got to the boss only to have my ship stick in to the floor. After breaking free I was back at the beginning of the level with dark lighting and no background sky. I could fly right through the level, past the boss until the end. There was nothing to kill though so I had to reset the DC.

Can anyone get past the first hill on stage 4? The hill seems too big so the ship just gets stuck in it resulting in having to reset the DC again.

Stage 6 seems to only contain 3 badly textured ships the you hit an invisible wall. Anyone else had any other luck?

I made a video right here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWscwusyIME

You can access that area in Mike's Room. Just keep flying past that big hole where the boss should be on stage one. Fly up past the waterfall and you'll soon find it.

 

Hey Yakumo, I saw your video and your descriptions of your experiences. Each of your experiences was par for the course relative to mine, including restarting the 2nd level with no skybox, enemies, and dark lighting, and the hilltop problem in stage 4.

Are you talking about the floating island? That's definitely in level 1 after the waterfall/boss hole.


Here's the screenshot I haven't seen anywhere in game yet:


I also haven't seen the top rightmost screenshot on the back, with the cave/mouth looking thing. Based on videos, it leads to a lava area.


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Looking at the very short level 6 again, I have some speculation. There is a dark untextured ship facing towards the player at the very end of the level. In the level 6 files on the disc, there is a folder for boss data with some files titled "queenalien" and in the object files for stage 6 on the disc are files referencing "alienbattleship". My speculation is that stage 6 puts us right at the end of the level, and potentially there is more to stage 6 albeit behind the player's starting point.

I've heard of a version of nulldc that can list what files are being accessed in a GDI at what time. I don't know how to go about compiling the data on the cd into a GDI for purposes of this utility though.

 

good to hear. I was going to buy a new mouse because I can't find mine. I'll just pick up a keyboard tomorrow instead.

 

Cool! Get one that has the "S3" button on it (it's in the cluster of keys around right ctrl and right alt). The mini keyboards might not have that button, but it looks like it's definitely on the larger jpn keyboard. Apparently pressing that button brings up some more menus in kana/kanji. I don't know if you can navigate them though, just going on what I've heard in a few places from people experimenting.

 

Seems that there's no difference between the hardware then, that's for sure.

Yeah, the one that's just past a big waterfall. It's also featured on the videos. I never actually got that far when playing the normal game because the mole boss thing wouldn't die

 

This is the video I linked on the 1st page in one of my replies, its from an earlier build from 1998 (note the different cross hairs and some other differences, like the wingman's avatar at 1:56) from 0:55 - 1:08, it shows the mouth/cave screenshot area and how it leads to some lava stuff, and interestingly enough, this cave mouth appears to be on a floating island that is floating over the black hole skybox from stage 6!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGQcmrV4-YI

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You can kill the mole boss pretty easily with the B button volley of missiles. On a stock DC, the console resets after the mole boss writhes around a bit. On nulldc another cutscene is activated, the mole/worm turns into a flying creature, and you have another short on rails section to go up the waterfall and into the second large hole area where you have to kill the flying version of the boss. After killing that, there is a short cutscene and you've beaten the level - level 2 then loads with a display problem and crashes the emulator a few seconds into the level.

 

I just saw the video Nd can see where you mean. Hmm, the video also shows a section based on the photo above. This makes me want to get a keyboard even faster now but I doubt I'll have time tonight. The earliest would be tomorrow some time. I think the key to access is in the debug options. Also, is it 100% confirmed that the mouse does nothing even with the debug menu?

 

Really? Good to hear. I'll give that a shot right now.