Game:

Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child (2000)

Duration: 57:12

102 views

3

This is a deep dive into the Dreamcast port of "Kiss Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child" (KPC), exposing a lot of things with the game files (including cancelled PC content), ultimately figuring out why the port ended up being the way that it did.

From everything in the video, it's clear too me that Tremor Entertainment did everything they possibly could to get KPC's LithTech engine running on the Dreamcast, using a very different file structure from the PC versions of KPC and Blood 2. Tremor even made their own version of LithTech for use only on Dreamcast, and it is not a lazy port (as many assume).

I know this port started development in November 1999, and was postponed to October 2000. So in 11 months, it took a long time to downgrade the PC version of KPC. These are my conclusions, evidence & theories:

⚫🟢 Archive links to the port's history. I think Tremor took on too big of a project that was better suited for PS2, not Dreamcast.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010203164800/http://dreamcast.ign.com/news/11745.html (posted November 1, 1999)

https://web.archive.org/web/19991127151653/http://psychonews.com:80/ (posted November 8, 1999)

https://web.archive.org/web/20000831032111/http://www.kisspsychocircus.com/tremor.html (unknown post date, but likely early in the development process, given they experimented with online)

https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/13/kiss-psycho-circus-the-nightmare-child-delayed (posted June 13, 2000)

⚫🟢 Tremor simply ran out of time to implement the bosses and get their levels & script code working. The Nightmare Child boss with all of his script code works just fine without any lag (see the 19:27 mark), they started to work on Stargrave in the code (at the 37:14 mark), and there is literally no code in the OBJECT.LTO file for the 3 other bosses. Their unedited PC models exist, however, with Tiberius (at the 30:25 mark) being a clear untouched model. References to Tiberius and the Grinder minion from the PC subtitles were last-minute removed from the DC.

Ultimately, the lack of bosses is not a lag issue. I think that if Tremor had time to get all the bosses working (plus the Grinder), they'd likely use the Nightmare Child's generic boss track for all bosses, as the GD-ROM couldn't store any more music that the PC uses.

⚫🟢 Tremor has realm intro FMVs in the files of Madame Raven's intros, recorded from the PC (watch from the 40:19 to 45:18 marks). However, there is no Madame Raven dialog files in the Dreamcast's cutscenes. Tremor likely needed time to figure out how to code-in dialog to go with the subtitles, while also saving disc storage, which is very much possible on DC games (Shadowman did this on all consoles without wasting storage).

⚫🟢 KPC is a hi-res textured game. When too many assets are loaded into the Dreamcast's RAM, it causes crashes. So if this port were to have all the textures and maintain the texture-heavy levels where the textures are all rendered at once (like the removed Morbid Manors 2 and 3, plus Gloomvale), Tremor would need to most likely blur the textures, making KPC look like a high-poly N64 game.

Or, make the levels look blander with less textures, or shrink huge size PC levels like Doom Forge 2 and 3.

These choices would look ugly by DC standards, and I've seen Half-Life 1 DC mods do this N64 style texture blur trick & making the levels bland.

⚫🟢 The Dreamcast itself has 200mhz CPU, 16mb RAM, and 8mb VRAM. This is essentially a 1994 gaming PC with a 1996 CPU and a 1997 GPU. The PC version of KPC needs a 300mhz CPU, 64mb RAM (32mb used in task manager) and 8mb VRAM.

PC KPC is very similar to the default specs of the PS2, where with the right tricks and specifically-coded console abilities, the PS2's RAM could be used like VRAM (what GTA: San Andreas did). KPC on the PS2 would, in theory, be just like the PC version, perhaps with worse anti-aliasing.

⚫🟢 Tremor spent a LOT of time reducing the enemy count from the PC to get a playable framerate, as the PC enemy placements cause EXTREME lag with so many monsters. I'm sure this is the reason Tremor ran out of time to implement the bosses, Madame Raven dialog & FMVs.

Big-time conclusion:

⚫🔴 Simply put, if the DC had enough power (like the PS2) to render the engine itself, monsters, textures, level polys, etc. without any serious lag or crashes, Tremor would've not needed to spend so much time optimizing the basic game, thus having more time (to timely release the port) to add the infamously missing content. Online features & split-screen that Tremor wanted to do, I'm not sure about. That I think would be more dependent on Sega's online being in business, as well as Tremor taking even more time after finishing the single-player & missing content to optimize multiplayer. In my heart of hearts, optimizing for a PS2 version would've had everything a KPC console port needed, being released in a timely manner, unlike the Dreamcast that took forever to get things working correctly.

Other Statistics