Malefactor wrote on 11/28/15 at 04:20:51:
Finally, while widescreen hacks can be amusing to see, and interesting, the originally game and its frame rate was not optimzed for that kind of processing going on at once. While I'd take widescreen if there was no trade off in performance, from a technical perspective, without optimization, that's impossible, and this has been born out by Aced's usage of it in our games.
PS2 widescreen hacks generally have little to no discernible performance impacts in the vast majority of games. Running games in PCSX2 will almost always improve performance and most likely reduce any potential bottlenecks caused by widescreen hacks. Having said that, many people have used widescreen hacks on real PS2 hardware without a problem
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TMB and TMBO aren't exactly known for perfect, flawless performance under all circumstances (especially the latter...). I've always found TMB to perform more smoothly than TMBO. In the old days of TMBO I can recall regularly running into pretty bad slowdown. From time to time I play TMB with widescreen hacks in PCSX2 and my real PS2 and don't really perceive anything I'd consider to be unusual slowdown, even when my viewport is jam-packed with battling cars. But I've rarely played it without widescreen hacks in recent years.
Regarding TMBO widescreen performance, I think more testing is warranted. If TMB is anything to go by, TMBO's 3D engine probably isn't the bottleneck. My guess is that the network code bogs the game down when too many cars are on-screen at once. As a result of widescreen hacks, that scenario is more common - and consequently, its performance impacts. But there's nothing stopping a 4:3 viewport from containing all 8 cars at once and running into similar snags. Just speculation on my part in any case.
It might be possible to modify TMBO's widescreen hacks to improve performance, but it'll necessitate extensive testing with large groups of players (ideally 8) under controlled circumstances.
Malefactor wrote on 11/28/15 at 04:20:51:
True backwards compatibility is what all of us dream about so that if our PS2 busts it's no big deal because we have a PS4. Sadly, while there are rumors out right now of PS2 backwards compatibility all evidence points to you being able to PURCHASE a PS2 digital copy, but nothing where you'd stick in your old game and have it run.
The PS4's disc drive doesn't support CD-based media. So PS1 and various PS2 discs are physically incapable of being read by it
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Malefactor wrote on 11/28/15 at 04:20:51:
Finally, did No. 47 really spend a ton of time working on the widescreen stuff? Hell people. The server is what most people care about.
I think you're getting No23 confused with No.47:
- No23 is primarily responsible for having gotten the TMBO revival server off the ground from a development standpoint. He's been kind of like a mentor to our other developers (me and DARKFORCE - along with other contributors).
- Long ago, No.47 developed field of view (FOV) widescreen hacks for the NTSC-U version of TMB. I later added a bunch of additions/fixes and ported the hacks to most variants of the game. He's not a TMA member.
Different people have different hobbies and interests. Like it or not, the developers that come up with these kinds of things in their free time don't owe anything to anyone. Their priorities are their call.
The TMBO revival server certainly isn't complete nor perfectly stable, but it's advanced quite a bit overtime. Fixing current stability issues is likely to be substantially more difficult than adding support for features was earlier on.
Btw props to DARKFORCE for all his recent notable development contributions
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