Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a significant enough feature that a couple seconds is really not a big deal. There are likely time-wasters just as long, if not longer, elsewhere in the game and they do not contribute a much richer audio experience. While I’d love to minimize time wasting as much as possible, this is something that appears once on boot-up while I’m sure there are other time-wasters that appear multiple times while you’re playing the game. If they’re even a fraction of a second, they will quickly add up more than this logo’s time.
Donald Knuth has a great quote on this: “The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”
Two issues though. Sakurai was taking about how he likes the ability to jump from game to game at an arcade and jump straight into the game. But a lot of console games had you go through intros, menus, tutorials, etc. And he didn’t like that, hence why he was saying he’d rather not have an extra logo screen to click through
The second issue was that the game in question was a GameCube game. It only outputs in stereo. Surround sound wasnt a common thing in games at the time. It would have been the old school Dolby Surround/Pro Logic II encoding. Most gaming setups didn’t have surround sound receivers or sound bars yet. Also, it’s a Kirby game. The target audience wouldn’t have cared
The arcade experience is fundamentally different from the console experience. Arcade games are generally crafted to eat quarters and kick players off as soon as possible without making them feel ripped off. Jumping in and out of games is common at arcades. While it’s nice to save that couple of seconds on a console game, it’s not something that adds up a lot unless you’re jumping between games a few minutes at a time, which again, is more like an arcade and doesn’t make as much sense in a console gaming context because you generally have a better idea of what games you own and want to play.
As for the second issue, if it was a feature that wasn’t worthwhile and that nobody cared about, then why was he considering it in the first place? There are many technical details in games that exist that casual players don’t pay attention to, but subconsciously would enjoy. Surround sound adds quite a bit to a racing game, considering that the entire game is about racing against other characters that are positioned all around you.
The perception of delay is a lot larger for a single initial delay than a lot of smaller delays within the game. It’s very noticable if a game takes 20 seconds to get past the intro screens, while it is barely noticeable if a quarter of a second of delay is added to the loading between each level, even if it adds up to a lot more than the initial loading screen.
Considering that the use of 5.1 surround would be a very rare case for the target aidience, I find the choice of dropping it to be excellent to enhance the experience.
The title states “Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo” presumably because you actually cannot have Dolby sound without the logo. Yes, technically you could, but it’s likely part of the license agreement and so him refusing to display the logo as outlined by the license means he couldn’t use Dolby sound in the game (or would get sued if he went ahead and did it anyway).
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a significant enough feature that a couple seconds is really not a big deal. There are likely time-wasters just as long, if not longer, elsewhere in the game and they do not contribute a much richer audio experience. While I’d love to minimize time wasting as much as possible, this is something that appears once on boot-up while I’m sure there are other time-wasters that appear multiple times while you’re playing the game. If they’re even a fraction of a second, they will quickly add up more than this logo’s time.
Donald Knuth has a great quote on this: “The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.”
Two issues though. Sakurai was taking about how he likes the ability to jump from game to game at an arcade and jump straight into the game. But a lot of console games had you go through intros, menus, tutorials, etc. And he didn’t like that, hence why he was saying he’d rather not have an extra logo screen to click through
The second issue was that the game in question was a GameCube game. It only outputs in stereo. Surround sound wasnt a common thing in games at the time. It would have been the old school Dolby Surround/Pro Logic II encoding. Most gaming setups didn’t have surround sound receivers or sound bars yet. Also, it’s a Kirby game. The target audience wouldn’t have cared
The arcade experience is fundamentally different from the console experience. Arcade games are generally crafted to eat quarters and kick players off as soon as possible without making them feel ripped off. Jumping in and out of games is common at arcades. While it’s nice to save that couple of seconds on a console game, it’s not something that adds up a lot unless you’re jumping between games a few minutes at a time, which again, is more like an arcade and doesn’t make as much sense in a console gaming context because you generally have a better idea of what games you own and want to play.
As for the second issue, if it was a feature that wasn’t worthwhile and that nobody cared about, then why was he considering it in the first place? There are many technical details in games that exist that casual players don’t pay attention to, but subconsciously would enjoy. Surround sound adds quite a bit to a racing game, considering that the entire game is about racing against other characters that are positioned all around you.
The perception of delay is a lot larger for a single initial delay than a lot of smaller delays within the game. It’s very noticable if a game takes 20 seconds to get past the intro screens, while it is barely noticeable if a quarter of a second of delay is added to the loading between each level, even if it adds up to a lot more than the initial loading screen.
Considering that the use of 5.1 surround would be a very rare case for the target aidience, I find the choice of dropping it to be excellent to enhance the experience.
Perception plays a huge role, that’s true, but I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree since it’s ultimately subjective.
Because Lemmy hates everything that isn’t FOSS. The more time I spend here, the more I see that it is no better than Reddit.
Nope. It’s just an unnecessary label which provides no additional features, i.e. no benefits. You can have Dolby sound without the Dolby label.
The title states “Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo” presumably because you actually cannot have Dolby sound without the logo. Yes, technically you could, but it’s likely part of the license agreement and so him refusing to display the logo as outlined by the license means he couldn’t use Dolby sound in the game (or would get sued if he went ahead and did it anyway).
Don’t like it? Write your own equivalent and selfhost it using my favorite distro. /s
Exactly. This place sucks just as bad as Reddit, and the only reason I don’t go back to Reddit is out of principle.
Cry moar!