Weird happenings in Miraculum

[SegaSonic91]

Hi, I am new here.  I was going to reply in the old Miraculum thread, but decided a new topic would be better as the last reply was a year ago.

I bought my PC-FX back in 2004.  Miraculum was one of the few PC-FX games I bought that I thought made the system worthwhile.  I was horribly disappointed by RiRuLi RaRuRa (that's probably wrong, but I am sure people will know what I mean) and a few others I was really looking forward to playing.  But Miraculum, I enjoyed.  It was very reminiscent of Startling Odyssey II which I really liked.

My PC-FX has been packed away since late 2005 when I went to Japan, I would love to play Miraculum again now that I will actually understand it.  I will say that I was shocked by how crappy the graphics and sound on the FX was.  I don't know what the hell NEC was thinking releasing that ancient hardware to compete with the ps1 and mighty Saturn.  I read that the FX hardware was the hardware that was meant to release after the Super Grafx but because of its failure, it was scrapped.  I will never understand why they never added the SGX hardware to the DUO personally.

Back to Miraculum, one thing I found strange about the game, and always wondered if it happens for everyone, there was a "misty forest" area not too far into the game and just walking around in a certain area made my EXP points go up.  I walk around in circles and gained 10+ levels!  I don't remember how far I got into the game, but I enjoyed what I played.  There was only another 5 or 6 FX games I wanted to buy after all the games I bought in 2005, I really should buy them.  Some, such as Comic Road are cheap now compared to back then.  Chip Chan Kick! is a little cheaper but not by much.  I doubt Zenki will EVER be cheap, much like certain Saturn and Mega Drive games -_-

[esteban]

I don't own an FX anymore, but I wish I had played more games before giving it away. Miraculum, for example,  certainly looks interesting, and I am not the biggest fan of the genre.

I'd love to hear what the small cadre of PC-FX owners will say about it. 

[pulstar]

This is high my list of PC-FX wants along with Der Langrisser (I know you can pretty much get it on all systems of that era but I don't care :-") and Last Imperial Prince. Is it a sequel to the Startling Odyssey series or just made by the same developers?

[deserada]

I was shocked by how crappy the graphics and sound on the FX was.  I don't know what the hell NEC was thinking releasing that ancient hardware to compete with the ps1 and mighty Saturn.  I read that the FX hardware was the hardware that was meant to release after the Super Grafx but because of its failure, it was scrapped.  I will never understand why they never added the SGX hardware to the DUO personally.

The hardware was reportedly finished in '93, (and in a similar situation to what Sega experienced with the Dreamcast and the Saturn) it was too early to release a new console because they were experiencing sustained sales on the older hardware. Putting out new hardware then would detract income from their current line and would make it more difficult to return on the investment of development for next-gen.

By the time they released, it was more a response to the other companies who were rolling out the new generation, and NEC didn't want to get left behind.

This in mind, the graphics are far from "crappy", and the FMV playback that the FX supports is remarkable for its time. As for the sound hardware, it sports both CDDA (digital) playback and a 6+2 channel hardware synth. This is astounding, and hybrid hardware like this is a real treat for both developers and anyone who appreciates traditional FM synthesis.

Obviously the application of these features varies between developers, so I suggest you check out some more titles, played on the real hardware, and with real discs. A lot of the rips online are of subpar quality, compressed in various ways to save space (CDDA audio compression, ugh!).

In general (not directed to anyone in particular here), unless you know enough to make your own images (i.e. editing an optimizing a disc image), I suggest you don't judge any one system based on its performance with them.

[SamIAm]

Welcome to the forums. Now, what exactly are you talking about?

PC-FX images are not compromised like many PCE-CD archives are. WAV audio tracks are not converted to MP3 or anything like that, because the custom formatting of the discs pretty much doesn't allow it. Also, the FMV isn't downgraded one bit. Trust me, my friends and I have personally extracted the FMV of a game, hard-subtitled it, and put it back in the game so that it works on real hardware. Basically, rips of PC-FX games are 100% accurate and there is no difference between a CD-R burn and a real disc.

And then there's the FMV itself, which is hardly remarkable. The maximum resolution is 256x240, compared to 320x240 on the Saturn and Playstation, and even though 30 FPS is supported, virtually everything released on the system runs at 12 FPS. I have checked this personally.

The sound hardware is literally the same as the PCE-CD, with only moderately improved ADPCM capabilities. I love the PCE, but that sound chip is decrepit on a 1993/94 system. The Saturn had 32 channels and 44.1khz playback, and plenty of other technology that is far superior to what's in the sound chip in the PC-FX.

I'm sorry, but for the most part, the PC-FX hardware really does kind of suck. They were nuts to release it two weeks after the Saturn and Playstation at the same price point.

[Necromancer]

All logic aside, the NEC part makes the PC-FX superior to other 32 bit systems. 

[deserada]

Welcome to the forums. Now, what exactly are you talking about?

PC-FX images are not compromised like many PCE-CD archives are. WAV audio tracks are not converted to MP3 or anything like that, because the custom formatting of the discs pretty much doesn't allow it. Also, the FMV isn't downgraded one bit. Trust me, my friends and I have personally extracted the FMV of a game, hard-subtitled it, and put it back in the game so that it works on real hardware. Basically, rips of PC-FX games are 100% accurate and there is no difference between a CD-R burn and a real disc.

And then there's the FMV itself, which is hardly remarkable. The maximum resolution is 256x240, compared to 320x240 on the Saturn and Playstation, and even though 30 FPS is supported, virtually everything released on the system runs at 12 FPS. I have checked this personally.

The sound hardware is literally the same as the PCE-CD, with only moderately improved ADPCM capabilities. I love the PCE, but that sound chip is decrepit on a 1993/94 system. The Saturn had 32 channels and 44.1khz playback, and plenty of other technology that is far superior to what's in the sound chip in the PC-FX.

I'm sorry, but for the most part, the PC-FX hardware really does kind of suck. They were nuts to release it two weeks after the Saturn and Playstation at the same price point.

Much appreciated.

I've managed to find bad images, but mostly from inherently questionable sources. One of the titles in question was Zenki, and I am aware that many of the sound samples are generated by the PCE-CD hardware, as you call it, but the image was corrupt in such a way that the CDDA audio appeared to be of poor quality. After finding a few other images for comparison, I realized that it was a simply poor rip, either on behalf of the creator's process, or was the victim of bad sectors on an aging hard drive at some point in its delivery. Granted, this is anomalous by comparison to the erroneous archival of libraries of such disc-based systems as the PCE-CD and the Dreamcast.

My personal intrigue with the hardware is its hybrid nature and capability for its time, not its (lack) of hardware competition with its contemporaries. The inclusion of PCE-CD audio hardware was originally intended for compatibility, but was also made usable for current titles, if I remember correctly. (I would, however, like to correct myself in saying that it utilizes wavetable synthesis, and not FM synthesis.) If it truly does not support at least 24FPS FMV playback, then I have been acceptably fooled.

Evidently I need to do some more reading on the hardware; would you kindly point me in the right direction as to what resources are available for further study?

[esteban]

Hardware gurus: if the PC-FX FMV was 256x240 12FPS, what were the specs for HuVIDEO?

Bonknuts might have to weigh in....

[SamIAm]

A lot of my info about the FMV stuff comes from experience fooling around with utilities released by NEC in their PC-FXGA package.

30FPS is definitely supported, don't get me wrong. It's just that it was virtually never used, and the quality takes a hit when you're at 30 FPS with a full screen image and max audio quality (31khz stereo if I remember right). However, I did actually experiment with encoding a 30FPS TV show, scaled to the proper resolution, and the quality didn't suffer too terribly.

Bear in mind that the system is updating the TV screen every 1/60th of a second without fail, and it either repeats a frame or draws a new one. Thus, the framerate has to be evenly divisible by 60: 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Something like 25 FPS would actually be fluctuating between 30 FPS and 20 FPS very rapidly. This is like what the Tengai Makyo game does, fluctuating between 12 and 20 FPS IIRC.

The intro to Battle Heat uses a constant 30 FPS only during the moments that you see rocks and water. The rest of the time, it's fluctuating like Tengai Makyo. It's very windowed, though.

Hardware gurus: if the PC-FX FMV was 256x240 12FPS, what were the specs for HuVIDEO?

Bonknuts might have to weigh in....

You could actually check this yourself with Mednafen pretty easily. Open up Gulliver Boy or whatever and take a screenshot. With that, you can measure the resolution. Then turn on frame-advance mode and see how many frames it takes for the picture to change. I bet it would take 5 or 6 frames, which would mean 12 or 10 FPS, respectively.

EDIT: Just checked. It's actually 10 FPS, at 192x112 resolution.

12 FPS is sort of the standard with cheaply produced animation, whether we're talking Dragonball or The Simpsons. It's a nice number because it can be doubled to fit the 24FPS film standard, or quintupled to fit the 60Hz NTSC standard. That probably has as much to do with why so much PC-FX stuff is 12 FPS as anything.

[NightWolve]

Trust me, my friends and I have personally extracted the FMV of a game, hard-subtitled it, and put it back in the game so that it works on real hardware.

Pretty hardcore. I didn't realize enough interest was put into hacking games for this system such that something like that could be accomplished. Replacing text, sure, but this is much more technically difficult.

[esteban]

A lot of my info about the FMV stuff comes from experience fooling around with utilities released by NEC in their PC-FXGA package.

30FPS is definitely supported, don't get me wrong. It's just that it was virtually never used, and the quality takes a hit when you're at 30 FPS with a full screen image and max audio quality (31khz stereo if I remember right). However, I did actually experiment with encoding a 30FPS TV show, scaled to the proper resolution, and the quality didn't suffer too terribly.

Bear in mind that the system is updating the TV screen every 1/60th of a second without fail, and it either repeats a frame or draws a new one. Thus, the framerate has to be evenly divisible by 60: 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. Something like 25 FPS would actually be fluctuating between 30 FPS and 20 FPS very rapidly. This is like what the Tengai Makyo game does, fluctuating between 12 and 20 FPS IIRC.

The intro to Battle Heat uses a constant 30 FPS only during the moments that you see rocks and water. The rest of the time, it's fluctuating like Tengai Makyo. It's very windowed, though.

Hardware gurus: if the PC-FX FMV was 256x240 12FPS, what were the specs for HuVIDEO?

Bonknuts might have to weigh in....

You could actually check this yourself with Mednafen pretty easily. Open up Gulliver Boy or whatever and take a screenshot. With that, you can measure the resolution. Then turn on frame-advance mode and see how many frames it takes for the picture to change. I bet it would take 5 or 6 frames, which would mean 12 or 10 FPS, respectively.

EDIT: Just checked. It's actually 10 FPS, at 192x112 resolution.

12 FPS is sort of the standard with cheaply produced animation, whether we're talking Dragonball or The Simpsons. It's a nice number because it can be doubled to fit the 24FPS film standard, or quintupled to fit the 60Hz NTSC standard. That probably has as much to do with why so much PC-FX stuff is 12 FPS as anything.

Awesome, thanks for checking that for me 

[A Black Falcon]

If you REALLY want a system with amazing video quality for its time... seriously, it's the Phillips CD-i.  With the Digital Video Cartridge addon, the thing can play very nice quality video in games in this system from 1991!  I've seen comparisons, CD-i Dragon's Lair absolutely wipes the floor with the 3DO version.  Of course the CD-i was absolutely worthless for anything NOT an FMV game, but FMV games it can do.

[SegaSonic91]

I am kind of late to reply to my own thread, but here goes 

In response to what deserada said, I own every game I ever played on my PC-FX.  I think he was assuming that I was some noobie, PS2 gen kid downloading games and playing them on an emulator.  Haha!  Very wrong!  I do still think the graphics and sound are crap, even most of the games disappointed me.  RuRiRa... Blah, blah, blah (can never remember it's name!) for instance, was hugely disappointing to me.  I thought it would be like the classic NEC Platformers on the PCE, but it wasn't.  Last Imperial Prince was OK, but was still another disappointment to me.  I am glad I own the PC-FX, but I just wish that NEC had made a new system and supported it with games like Tengai Makyou III.  They played up the bloody FMV waaaaay too much.  I think that NEC thought they could make huge sales to the otaku crowd, which sadly, is all they seemed interested in.