Is there any small mod to bring back the cutscenes from the PS1 version of the game to PC?

[MaxRideWizardLord]

8 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Assuming you don't mind it being reduced to 256 colors, it's possible to work on DOS on standard VGA hardware. 16-bit color (65k+ colors) would require a VESA-capable card, which means not all actual DOS machines could run it (DOSBox would be fine as it supports those).

 

DOS doesn't work like that, mostly because it doesn't have multitasking. It essentially runs one program at a time, and that program is given full control of the system's resources. There are exceptions to this (programs called TSRs) but they are few and far between, and generally are small, simple programs (probably the most well-known ones are stuff like DOSKEY which gives you a buffer for past commands).

 

The other downside is that calling a new program kills the old one. This is why Chex, Strife, etc. have them as intro movies before the game proper launches - there's no way to have Program A run, then let Program B run, and return to Program A. Program A got killed when Program B ran; its memory and contents got vaporized and replaced by Program B's. You'd have to somehow store Program A's data, run Program B, relaunch Program A and then restore Program A's memory. DOS wasn't designed for this.

 

No, the easiest way to make this work is to use a modern Windows source port, add in some sort of general movie support via FFMPEG or something, convert the STRs to some sort of codec FFMPEG understands, and have it play the movie. From the source port's POV, it would just set flags that a movie is playing, wait for the movie to finish, and once it is, proceed on with game execution.

 

Again, the major limitation is DOS. This gets much easier and more possible to do with a modern source port, as they are inherently built for this kind of multitasking and program libraries and all that stuff.

 

Launch is easy enough because it doesn't need to care about the game state; in-game is a no-no - see my earlier stuff about how DOS programs take full control of the system and raze the previous program's contents.

 

Didn't knew about all this, so it's kinda amazing how some old games managed to play cutscenes and whatnot. So you think most games, like same Captain Claw, wasn't able to run on DOS, despite being released in early 1997? Thanks for info.

[Dark Pulse]

2 minutes ago, MaxRideWizardLord said:

Didn't knew about all this, so it's kinda amazing how some old games managed to play cutscenes and whatnot. So you think most games, like same Captain Claw, wasn't able to run on DOS, despite being released in early 1997? Thanks for info.

Captain Claw was designed for Windows, so yes, if you try running it under DOS it will probably tell you "This program requires Microsoft Windows" and that will be the end of that. It being a side-scrolling platformer that LOOKS like it could run on DOS literally doesn't matter.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[chungy]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

convert the STRs to some sort of codec FFMPEG understands

There's a pretty high likelihood that ffmpeg supports the container/codecs as-is. They generally support everything that has ever been made. :P

[Dark Pulse]

9 hours ago, chungy said:

There's a pretty high likelihood that ffmpeg supports the container/codecs as-is. They generally support everything that has ever been made. :P

That's also literally the easiest step in this entire process. :p

[BBQgiraffe]

I don't know what format it is but FFmpeg supports basically everything.