VOGONS

Common searches


G-Nome

Topic actions

First post, by Carrera

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Hi Folks,
I couldn't log on to NTcompatible for some reason so here is a bit about G-Nome, another mecha game.
System:
WinXP Home SP2
Pentiun 4 3.4 Ghz
1024 DDR RAM
C drive NTFS 30 GB (Samsung)
Pioneer DVD-Drive
DirectX 9 installed.
Game installs and runs fine. The beginning, ending and credit movies don't work.
I actually found the game quite fun and could get it to work.

Reply 1 of 15, by eL_PuSHeR

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I don't understand your post. What is exactly your problem? Video movies not playing?

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 2 of 15, by Zup

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

He can't share this piece of information in NTCompatible, so he does it here 😉

By the way... I recall a warning in The Underdogs saying that their download is a CD-Rip, maybe the movies aren't there after all.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 3 of 15, by HunterZ

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Usually the point of a CD Rip (as opposed to an ISO) is that movies and whatnot have been removed to reduce download size. It was common in the days when most people were pirating games on dialup, but now broadband is widespread enough (and hard drives are large enough) for ISO trading to be practical.

In my opinion, it's lame that Underdogs is distributing CD Rips of abandonware games instead of the full ISOs. It just creates problems and to some extent defeats the purpose of preserving games that are no longer commercially available (i.e. abandonware).

Reply 4 of 15, by eL_PuSHeR

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Agreed. If you are too desperate to save space, you can always pack an iso image using WinRAR or similar. You can always reduce image size about 10-20%

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 5 of 15, by DosFreak

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

NTFS compression works nicely on images. Probably not as well as .rar but if you like to mount your images alot NTFS compression does give a bit of space back.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 7 of 15, by HunterZ

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

It's possible. I'm not sure how the underlying implementation of NTFS compression works. If it is able to uncompress parts of the file instead of the whole thing then it might not be too bad. Most likely the speed penalty will be when the file is first open and is (at least partially) decompressed. Since most games expect users to be running the CD in a drive as slow as 8x (if not 4x), things like this shouldn't be a big deal.

Reply 8 of 15, by DosFreak

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I've never noticed a diff, but this is over USB2/1394 connections.....and if your trying to access a game .ISO over your USB1 connection I think you've got other problems to worry about. 😉

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 9 of 15, by Carrera

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

This is being run from a store bought CD. No warez, abandonware etc. It is Smacker video so if you want to see it you can install Blink and see it. IN fact, I may try overwriting some of the DLLs in te G-nome directory with the latest version. Maybe they will show up.
And yes, I was just telling everyone that this is a mecha game that seem to run under WinXP that is fun (you can crush infantry) 😀

Reply 10 of 15, by Snover

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

To compress image files for archival purposes, I strongly recommed the use of ECM. It strips out the error correction from the image (without damaging any copy-protection that might use invalid correction code to work), then reconstitutes it later when you want to actually use the image. Rather ingenious, and it does save quite a bit.

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 11 of 15, by HunterZ

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I thought that the subchannel data was where that was stored, and that most formats don't include that data as part of the image. Rather, they usually use an additional .SUB file.

I could be wrong.

Edit: looked at the site. Looks quite interesting and useful.

Reply 13 of 15, by eL_PuSHeR

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

It seems some image formats (As good ol' ISO) are already stripped of the Error Correction data; thus, there is no noticeable difference in using ECM or not.

I made a test using an ISO image and the difference after packing the two files with WinRAR was about 10KB.

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 14 of 15, by Snover

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Or, the error-correction data could not be reliably reconstituted and was left intact. I know that I have seen huge decreases in archive size on many, many different images using ECM. ISO files still have error-correction data in them (hence why you can have a 750MB ISO file).

Yes, it’s my fault.