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GTA 3 on Sega Dreamcast? The classic console had been discontinued by the time the game first launched on PlayStation 2, but today it is a reality - thanks to a hardcore development team worked from a reverse-engineered, rebuilt version of the Rockstar engine. It's early days with this port, but already it's looking very impressive - as John reveals in this new DF Retro video.

00:00 - Introduction
01:20 - GTA Returns to Dreamcast
03:25 - Comparison to PlayStation 2 - Motion Blur
05:39 - More Comparisons to PlayStation 2
10:19 - Sound Comparison
11:45 - Performance Analysis
15:04 - The Wrap-Up

 

[RedC]

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Watching now.

 

[Alexios]

I skimmed it to see if it shows anything not in other videos and there seemed to be little if anything, except this big bit I first missed: they're running it from a burned CD (slower than an impossible to make nowadays GD-Rom would be too)! Nice they mention the improved frame pacing makes the lower fps (than that one version you know gets compared every time, despite content, resolution etc. differences) not quite as bad. Crazy a game for completely different architecture (yes, despite early prototypes pitched on DC), reverse engineered in again less than ideal for DC ways got this good.

Edit: love some of the ignorant comments even on DF's channel. Oh, it only runs on Dreamcast modded with double ram/SSD, oh, it's a downgade because it's based on the PC port (ignoring all the ways that's an upgrade in & the higher res), oh, of course it works since it started life on DC but Vice City & San Andreas totally wouldn't (when Rockstar devs have already said Vice City was essentially the exact same thing, all over again) etc., hah. A lot like some frothing haters here, that then blame said frothing on those "fanboys" they see everywhere that there isn't blind hate expressed for DC

 

[RoboFu]

It's not a " miracle " it could have been done back in the day. It's just they didn't want to put forth the time and money on a dead system.

 

[od-chan]

It's not a " miracle " it could have been done back in the day. It's just they didn't want to put forth the time and money on a dead system.

This story really gets milked way more than it should. It's a nice fan project, yes. Don't need another 20 minute video on it (didn't need or watch the first)

 

[MadchesterManc]

I've always considered it a possibility given we have had GTA Liberty City & Vice City Stories released on the PSP of all things.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It is hardly a miracle for a game using renderware and would have been possible back in the day, never mind now with all the advanced tools and knowledge base even to indie coders of today.
I'm getting quite tired of people using today's tech and knowledgebase as proof of what old consoles could do when even most of the free stuff on the web is a hell of a lot better than most developers had access to back in the day

I am much more interested in the wonderful fan translation of Japanese games myself. If only someone would translate 3X3 Eye's and Shadowrun on the Mega CD

 

[SEGAvangelist]

SEGA should rerelease the Dreamcast and reopen development.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

The comments on this are fascinatingly divisive.
Most are either “lololol, it runs at 10fps, there’s a reason it skipped the DC, get over it Sega fanboys” or “yawn, we’ve known for a while this could’ve been done, it’s just the Dreamcast was dead by that time, nothing miraculous about this on the technical side”.

 

[ReBurn]

I love to see fan projects like this. It's great to see people build things just because they love to do it. It doesn't have to be perfect.

 

[Hugare]

I'm getting quite tired of people using today's tech and knowledgebase as proof of what old consoles could do when even most of the free stuff on the web is a hell of a lot better than most developers had access to back in the day

I dont see what point you were trying to make here

If it runs on original hardware, than it is proof of what it could do. Doesnt matter if newer tools were used to make it happen.

Making new software to old hardware is such a cool concept, imo. Shows untapped potential for something that you havent imagined being possible before. How is it something that you could get tired of? To each their own, I guess

This story really gets milked way more than it should. It's a nice fan project, yes. Don't need another 20 minute video on it (didn't need or watch the first)

Digital Foundry havent covered it like this. Them being the biggest gaming tech channel on Youtube, its cool to see what they think of it

 

[Alexios]

Making new software to old hardware is such a cool concept, imo. Shows untapped potential for something that you havent imagined being possible before. How is it something that you could get tired of? To each their own, I guess

Nah, those programmers should just go learn Japanese to make his wishes come true instead of do shit they like, lol.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I dont see what point you were trying to make here

If it runs on original hardware, than it is proof of what it could do. Doesnt matter if newer tools were used to make it happen.

Making new software to old hardware is such a cool concept, imo. Shows untapped potential for something that you havent imagined being possible before. How is it something that you could get tired of? To each their own, I guess


Digital Foundry havent covered it like this. Them being the biggest gaming tech channel on Youtube, its cool to see what they think of it

Overlooking GTA 3 is one of the PS2 games I always thought was possible on the DC . I just tire of people using today's tools and tech saying this is what a system could do when even professional developers didn't have access to the advanced tech of today that even indie coders do.

I think Matt Furniss summed it up perfectly a few years where he said you can download a sound program today in less than 2 seconds for free that way better than anything his team could have come up with after 2 months of coding back in the 90s

 

[squidilix]

See.. this is a better comparison than most of Sega hard fanboy doing the last week.

we can see they contraint to reduce textures, bug alpha textures, view distance and trails due to low bandwitch. Also, the audio was extremely compressed to fit on Disc. Then the framerate is better on PS2 (wich some people claim Dreamcast running better)

And keep it mind this is not a PC port of GTA 3 but a port of re3 wich the game run much, MUCH faster than the original 2002 PC port. (+300fps)

So thanks DF for making a better comparison video than most we saw on YouTube.

That proove that Dreamcast cannot render perfectly GTA3 as a PS2, but with lower asset, lower audio and fidelity, it can but with a lot cut...

At 2001? IDK, Rockstar dind't have so much more advenced Devkit than today and the tools today was more more efficient that's 2000/2001 tool.

And if for Rockstar it required much more time, money to optimize a console port that was going to die to have the few sales (GTA was not a popular license how now) and you have your answer to why the Dreamcast port was canceled.
Also, the PC version don't existe at 2001 but 2002 when Vice City was released...)

 

[SweetTooth]

I would like to thank the team that worked on it for proofing yet again that DC is less powerful than PS2

 

[ReBurn]

I would like to thank the team that worked on it for proofing yet again that DC is less powerful than PS2

 

[SomeGit]

See.. this is a better comparison than most of Sega hard fanboy doing the last week.

we can see they contraint to reduce textures, bug alpha textures, view distance and trails due to low bandwitch. Also, the audio was extremely compressed to fit on Disc. Then the framerate is better on PS2 (wich some people claim Dreamcast running better)

And keep it mind this is not a PC port of GTA 3 but a port of re3 wich the game run much, MUCH faster than the original 2002 PC port. (+300fps)

So thanks DF for making a better comparison video than most we saw on YouTube.

That proove that Dreamcast cannot render perfectly GTA3 as a PS2, but with lower asset, lower audio and fidelity, it can but with a lot cut...

At 2001? IDK, Rockstar dind't have so much more advenced Devkit than today and the tools today was more more efficient that's 2000/2001 tool.

And if for Rockstar it required much more time, money to optimize a console port that was going to die to have the few sales (GTA was not a popular license how now) and you have your answer to why the Dreamcast port was canceled.
Also, the PC version don't existe at 2001 but 2002 when Vice City was released...)

You are comparing apples to oranges and extrapolating a lot, it runs better on modern hardware because it has a newer multithreaded rendered backends (OGL 2 and Direct3D9) but on contemporary hardware it actually runs worse (or not at all). Neither this of this improvements would apply to contemporary ports like PPC MacOS port or the experimental PS2 build that runs much worse than the original port or the current Dreamcast port.

The rest as explained by the team is, well, temporary the texture quality is still being worked on, the audio quality is to fit it on a CD at the moment since the
GDEMU build is ~900MB (below what a GDROM would store) and the fidelity is really the renderer still being worked on, it's all there just with the wrong depth values at the moment. But hey what can we expect a few months ago all they could do was less than 10 fps with pink cars on a modded 32MB dreamcast, guess they could never do better than that.

The tools part is also misleading, and I see it mentioned a lot, besides a more modern C++ compiler, which doesn't really improve performance all that much especially taking advantage of the custom SIMD of the SH4, we don't have miracle tools to jump the DC performance exponentially, the base dev environment KallistiOS is in a lot of ways behind what the original Sega SDK could provide and part of the team's work has been to improve KallistiOS to the point where it could support a high end commercial releases like GTA3, this is great as it could be the rising tide that lift all boats but compare this port to other efforts using KallistiOS and the quality is night and day.

 

[crazyriddler]

See.. this is a better comparison than most of Sega hard fanboy doing the last week.

we can see they contraint to reduce textures, bug alpha textures, view distance and trails due to low bandwitch. Also, the audio was extremely compressed to fit on Disc. Then the framerate is better on PS2 (wich some people claim Dreamcast running better)

And keep it mind this is not a PC port of GTA 3 but a port of re3 wich the game run much, MUCH faster than the original 2002 PC port. (+300fps)

So thanks DF for making a better comparison video than most we saw on YouTube.

That proove that Dreamcast cannot render perfectly GTA3 as a PS2, but with lower asset, lower audio and fidelity, it can but with a lot cut...

At 2001? IDK, Rockstar dind't have so much more advenced Devkit than today and the tools today was more more efficient that's 2000/2001 tool.

And if for Rockstar it required much more time, money to optimize a console port that was going to die to have the few sales (GTA was not a popular license how now) and you have your answer to why the Dreamcast port was canceled.
Also, the PC version don't existe at 2001 but 2002 when Vice City was released...)

To be fair, the PC port needs much more powerful hardware than the PS2 to work. I think an official port would have been possible, and probably of decent quality if dreamcast wasn't dead at the time.

 

[Esppiral]

I would like to thank the team that worked on it for proofing yet again that DC is less powerful than PS2

You can still sleep tranquil at night the PS2 is more powerful than the Dreamcast no one needed this video to prove that, and your comment is irrelevant.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

I would like to thank the team that worked on it for proofing yet again that DC is less powerful than PS2

Took ya 2 decades to realize that? Dear manchild, the DC community is focused on making justice to the system and proving it is way more capable than the limits of mere 2 years at the market could had shown. Why does this fact hurt your fanboys ass that much?

 

[Wolzard]

What a habit people have of making conclusions based on a product in alpha. There's still a lot to improve, at first the developers must have just focused on making the game run on the Dreamcast. Now the optimizations must come.

For example, the game uses PC geometry, you can probably use less without losing quality. Textures need to be redesigned with memory limits in mind. Something similar to what Angel Studios did in RE2 for N64, they were made smaller but still maintained a similar appearance.

Audio can be better encoded. At least the songs, I believe you can take lossless files and reconvert them.

And the developers have already said that the DC's GPU is very idle in this game, the CPU does almost everything. Who knows, maybe you can make some kind of primitive CPGPU.

At the same time, it's asking a lot of a group of amateur developers. You also have to keep this in mind when judging the work.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Normal people:

- "Cool, they manage to run GTA 3, an open world demanding game for 2001 standards, on a Dreamcast, a system that wasnt supposed to run it, because is the weaker of the 6th gen home consoles."

- "DC was just for two years on the market, it´s great community is taking full advantage of it"

- "I see this pointless, or i don´t care about the Dreamcast or GTA 3, and that´s fine either. I´m just gonna ignore this thread/video/news or whatsoever".


Manchilds and people with lack of attention at home:

- "Dreamcast is a N64 Pro and could never run GTA 3"
- "Purple graphics and not even 10 fps. It´s useless"
- "10 fps"
- "Two pederastians, no cars, all empty and 15 fps"
- "No speculars, no trailights, no facial animations, flat lighting. This is the further it will reach. DC can´t do more"
- "Will never have have transparent windows on cars"
- "This just runs on modded DC with 32 MB RAM. Will never run on a retail console"
- "This just runs on modded DC with GD EMU. Will never run on a disc".
- "This proves PS2 is more poweful than Dreamcast"
- "You omitting 33% of the view"
- "It will remain at alpha state forever and they will drop the project eventually when they see DC can´t just do more and just my beloved PS2 is the only "128 bit" gen console which can do properly GTA 3. Xbox was a PC in disguise and GCN is a pointless child console anyway "

All that crap means: "I´m not adult enough to accept i have being proved wrong and you know what? that´s ok! I´m gonna prefer always the OG PS2 version, and it´s nothing wrong with that"

 

[nkarafo]

I would like to thank the team that worked on it for proofing yet again that DC is less powerful than PS2

Yeah i mean GTA 3 is nice and all but i think the Dreamcast already has a few more advanced looking official games of it's own. I never thought of GTA 3 as "impossible" for the Dreamcast. Or at least any compromises to fit the hardware aren't big enough to give it that label.

Now something like San Andreas though, that would be a different story.

 

[nkarafo]

Normal people:

- "Cool, they manage to run GTA 3, an open world demanding game for 2001 standards, on a Dreamcast, a system that wasnt supposed to run it, because is the weaker of the 6th gen home consoles."

- "DC was just for two years on the market, it´s great community is taking full advantage of it"

- "I see this pointless, or i don´t care about the Dreamcast or GTA 3, and that´s fine either. I´m just gonna ignore this thread/video/news or whatsoever".


Manchilds and people with lack of attention at home:

- "Dreamcast is a N64 Pro and could never run GTA 3"
- "Purple graphics and not even 10 fps. It´s useless"
- "10 fps"
- "Two pederastians, no cars, all empty and 15 fps"
- "No speculars, no trailights, no facial animations, flat lighting. This is the further it will reach. DC can´t do more"
- "Will never have have transparent windows on cars"
- "This just runs on modded DC with 32 MB RAM. Will never run on a retail console"
- "This just runs on modded DC with GD EMU. Will never run on a disc".
- "This proves PS2 is more poweful than Dreamcast"
- "You omitting 33% of the view"
- "It will remain at alpha state forever and they will drop the project eventually when they see DC can´t just do more and just my beloved PS2 is the only "128 bit" gen console which can do properly GTA 3. Xbox was a PC in disguise and GCN is a pointless child console anyway "

All that crap means: "I´m not adult enough to accept i have being proved wrong and you know what? that´s ok! I´m gonna prefer always the OG PS2 version, and it´s nothing wrong with that"

What about the Sega fanboys? You forgot to quote those.

Alexios
Damn boy, i must be living rent free in your head or something

 

[Panajev2001a]

Textures need to be redesigned with memory limits in mind

You will admit that having to redesign texture for memory limits is not what people used to say it was an expectation of DC to PS2 ports, but then again having 32 MB of main RAM and a very very very fast connection for the time to VRAM (EE —> GS <—> eDRAM), streaming textures was it appreciated by the gaming community enough back then.

 

[SweetTooth]

Yeah i mean GTA 3 is nice and all but i think the Dreamcast already has a few more advanced looking official games of it's own. I never thought of GTA 3 as "impossible" for the Dreamcast. Or at least any compromises to fit the hardware aren't big enough to give it that label.

Now something like San Andreas though, that would be a different story.

True .. now imagine MGS2 Tanker level with full rain effects, or a GoW2

DC will surely manage the dev splash screen only

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

True .. now imagine MGS2 Tanker level with full rain effects, or a GoW2

DC will surely manage the dev splash screen only

Time to go to bed, kid.

And by the way, PS2 couldn´t run HL 2, Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Riddick, DOA 3, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 1 and 2 amongst others Xbox and a few GCN games...and i haven´t see anyone saying "PS2 is trash for not having enough muscle to run something like that". So why tha fuck DC it´s trash all of the sudden for being less powerful than PS2. Like or not, facts back in the day and currently proves DC is system with enough muscle to at least being on the other 6th gen systems league...Probably one year ago you thought DC coudnt even run GTA 3, and yet here we are, so...

 

[Moses85]

Give us a GCN Version

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

What about the Sega fanboys? You forgot to quote those.

Alexios
Damn boy, i must be living rent free in your head or something

Put here actual examples of Sega fanboys quotes.

 

[SweetTooth]

Time to go to bed, kid.

And by the way, PS2 couldn´t run HL 2, Halo 1 and 2, Doom 3, Riddick, DOA 3, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 1 and 2 amongst others Xbox and a few GCN games...and i haven´t see anyone saying "PS2 is trash for not having enough muscle to run something like that". So why tha fuck DC it´s trash all of the sudden for being less powerful than PS2. Like or not, facts back in the day and currently proves DC is system with enough muscle to at least being on the other 6th gen systems league...Probably one year ago you thought DC coudnt even run GTA 3, and yet here we are, so...

Stop the attacks, DC is trash because it was trash in 1998, still trash today! the world knew better back then. No matter how much smelly autistic furries try to prove this reality wrong.

Now take your meds and hug your Sonic pillow and fuck off...

What a sad legacy for DC, its best offerings were a mediocre Shenmu and Crazy Taxi .. lol and now you are showing me an down resed MGS2 which looks like PS1.5 version to proof a point? Lol

 

[Esppiral]

Stop the attacks, DC is trash because it was trash in 1998, still trash today! the world knew better back then. No matter how much smelly autistic furries try to prove this reality wrong.

Now take your meds and hug your Sonic pillow and fuck off...

What a sad legacy for DC, its best offerings were a mediocre Shenmu and Crazy Taxi .. lol and now you are showing me an down resed MGS2 which looks like PS1.5 version to proof a point? Lol

Are you twelve years old? Btw if that tanker stages looks like ps1,5 you'll be pleased to know that it is the exact same model used on PS2, but with better textures

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Stop the attacks, DC is trash because it was trash in 1998, still trash today! the world knew better back then. No matter how much smelly autistic furries try to prove this reality wrong.

Now take your meds and hug your Sonic pillow and fuck off...

What a sad legacy for DC, its best offerings were a mediocre Shenmu and Crazy Taxi .. lol and now you are showing me an down resed MGS2 which looks like PS1.5 version to proof a point? Lol

Ohhh i get it! Hahahaha you´re a troll. Feeling empowered from mom´s basement today, aint ya?

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

Are you twelve years old? Btw if that tanker stages looks like ps1,5 you'll be pleased to know that it is the exact same model used on PS2, but with better textures

BOOOOOOOM!!!