Killing Time on PS1 - found and eboot’ed

[awbacon]

figured people here might enjoy this. The PS1 cancelled port was found and dumped. I created a custom eboot file and signed it so it’ll run on real hardware (PSP and Vita / PSTV)

 

great Halloween game!

[Leeroy ST]

Looks like it runs at a similar frame rate as the 3DO version.

[zetastrike]

On 9/20/2020 at 4:03 PM, Leeroy ST said:

Looks like it runs at a similar frame rate as the 3DO version.

Are you blind?

 

Here's a proper capture of the PS1 version

[Austin]

14 hours ago, zetastrike said:

Are you blind?

 

Here's a proper capture of the PS1 version

Yeah, it looks infinitely more playable than the 3DO version. Shame it wasn't released back in the day.

[Leeroy ST]

16 hours ago, zetastrike said:

Are you blind?

 

Here's a proper capture of the PS1 version

No, if I was you wouldn't have posted the "proper capture" showing it was better.

 

2 hours ago, Austin said:

Yeah, it looks infinitely more playable than the 3DO version. Shame it wasn't released back in the day.

Arguably the 3DO version could have been faster after games like Blazerion, which had FMV elements in a first person style game, ran smoother. But I recall the PSX version not being released because of some issue getting the FMV characters moving and appearing on the play field not working properly and made it hard to keep the frames up and not jutter the game?

 

That's what I heard, but there may be some truth to that given the video quality and animation of the characters in the link Zetastrike posted and the original 3DO version:

 

3DO

 

PSX

 

 

Some of the other moments like this in the PSX port are heavily tinted red for some reason, and they don't animate as smoothly. I figured issue with this part of the game contributed to the reasons why it was never brought over and the worst image and texture quality in the graphics, plus their limited animated version of the FMV characters allowed it to run smoother during this port most likely, that and it wasn't finished so there wasn't much more of the game to load since 3DO loads parts of the game ahead of time.

 

Also for some reason the PSX port is a bit muddier and brighter. Which seems to be a theme with actually released cross-platform games between the PSX and the 3DO, the PSX version would usually look muddier, grainy, and occasionally N64 vaseline-lite + warping + jaggies while the 3DO would do the opposite with the biggest weakness that the games usually ran slower on 3DO than PSX with the exception of Need for speed which stripped down so much it's basically a different game.

 

[awbacon]

I spoke with the CEO of Torus Games a few years ago about the port. It was 100% and ready to replicate / ship when it was cancelled. 
 

so it wasn’t any technical issues. It was purely cancelled due to lack of confidence in sales 

[Rick Dangerous]

Damn.....they really should have released that one...bummer. 

[Silanda]

On 9/22/2020 at 3:51 PM, Leeroy ST said:

That's what I heard, but there may be some truth to that given the video quality and animation of the characters in the link Zetastrike posted and the original 3DO version:

Late to the party, but it looks like another 3DO to PS1 port that would have suffered from the Playstation's texture format limitations. AFAIK the 3DO was more flexible in terms of texture/sprite colour formats than the PS1. If I understand things correctly, on the PS1 you had a choice of 16, 256, or 32768 colour textures/sprites. Trouble was that the 3DO could use other colour depths such as 64 colour, necessitating format conversion. The PS1 usually didn't have enough VRAM to allow all textures and sprites to be converted to 256 colour though, so 16 colour had to suffice instead and detail was lost accordingly. The texture and sprite work in virtually every 3DO to PS1 port took a hit even if the games themselves ran better. Hell, even the UI in Psychic Detective on the PS1 looks less colourful than its 3DO equivalent.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Silanda

[BladeJunker]

So the frame rate was better, it was the same performance level on both platforms for PO'ed according to the developer, different gains and drawbacks per hardware but the same average frame rate. Maybe the smaller more interior level design of KT helps. Yeah that is true about the 3DO, it was quite adept at various pixel resolutions and color depths while the PS1 is much more rigid and formatted for texture maps.

 

I definitely would have ended up getting KT more so if it was on PS1 bitd. There's a 3DO copy at my local shop but I tend to spread out my purchases for that platform since they don't come cheap or boxed usually. ?Heard about the PC port a few years ago and nice to see it get out of exclusive digital download and onto Steam and GOG too.

[Silanda]

Played a bit of this now, and it's pretty much as I thought. The Playstation version runs better, the 3DO version looks better. The 3DO version is more colourful and it uses LOD textures so that the textures are replaced by low detail ones when they get far from the viewport. I'm not convinced doing that looks great in this case, but perhaps there was a technical reason for it. Whatever the case, this technique appears to be missing in the Playstation version. Also missing in the Playstation version is the seamless loading between stages. There are no obvious load times on the 3DO version so all the stages connect together and feel like one large map. The Playstation version has "now loading" pauses between stages.

 

It's a shame this wasn't released though. I've never understood why they did that with completed disc based games where the manufacturing costs weren't that high. It wasn't like with cartridges where there was a large, up-front,  manufacturing cost.

[+jgkspsx]

I always wanted to play this but have never had a 3DO. Neat to see this! Is the game complete-ish?

[Silanda]

On 4/11/2021 at 3:30 AM, jgkspsx said:

I always wanted to play this but have never had a 3DO. Neat to see this! Is the game complete-ish?

I haven't played very far but I believe so. It's got what basically amounts to a trainer menu at the start, so you can turn invulnerability, infinite ammo, debug info, etc, off if you want to play it properly.

 

I did notice one bug: it's possible to throw yourself out of bounds if you strafe at the same time as turn 180 (i.e. L1 or R1 + L2 or R2). You seem to be able to just walk yourself back into the map again though.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Silanda

[RREDDWARFF]

On 1/28/2021 at 12:06 AM, BladeJunker said:

So the frame rate was better, it was the same performance level on both platforms for PO'ed according to the developer, different gains and drawbacks per hardware but the same average frame rate. Maybe the smaller more interior level design of KT helps. Yeah that is true about the 3DO, it was quite adept at various pixel resolutions and color depths while the PS1 is much more rigid and formatted for texture maps.

 

I definitely would have ended up getting KT more so if it was on PS1 bitd. There's a 3DO copy at my local shop but I tend to spread out my purchases for that platform since they don't come cheap or boxed usually. ?Heard about the PC port a few years ago and nice to see it get out of exclusive digital download and onto Steam and GOG too.

Thanks, I didn't know this was available on Steam!

[Silanda]

I'll just mention that the PC version isn't a port, it isn't really the same game at all. It has the same plot and setting, and uses some of the FMV from the 3DO version, but it appears to have been pretty much built from the ground up. The engine's different, the maps are entirely different, it plays differently, the enemies look completely different, etc.

[RREDDWARFF]

1 hour ago, Silanda said:

I'll just mention that the PC version isn't a port, it isn't really the same game at all. It has the same plot and setting, and uses some of the FMV from the 3DO version, but it appears to have been pretty much built from the ground up. The engine's different, the maps are entirely different, it plays differently, the enemies look completely different, etc.

That's what's exciting about it. I have the 3do version and live it. I'm excited to try something different, but the same, but different, but the same...

[Austin]

6 hours ago, RREDDWARFF said:

That's what's exciting about it. I have the 3do version and live it. I'm excited to try something different, but the same, but different, but the same...

I played it for the first time recently and loved it (PC version). Ended up finishing it multiple times within one week, I enjoyed it that much. It is very much a remake as opposed to a port. It follows the same story along with a fully interconnected world, except now all the familiar locations are on a much more grand scale. It's also more akin to PC FPS games from the era with fast gameplay if you want it to be. The engine feels a lot like the Build engine (Duke 3D, Blood, Powerslave, etc), but apparently it is a brand new engine built from the ground up for this version of the game. Pretty impressive. Be warned, it does have some control quirks and you have to adapt to them. The modern ports may also exhibit extra control quirks depending on your system (when I ran the GOG game on my main PC, my mouse would randomly do a 180 on me; this never happened when I played the same version on other PCs). There are some gameplay progression differences too, like it being required to have everything to finish it (in the 3DO version, at least on Easy and Normal, you do not need everything to beat the game). I mapped out all the locked doors and vessel locations I came across on my first playthrough which helped a ton. I recommend something similar, or having a walkthrough up, if you don't want to be running around in circles forever. Fortunately the world has a fairly logical layout (pay attention for instance to the dirt paths in the forest, they generally take you where you need to go).