Laserdisc games (Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, etc.)

[Sasquatch!]

I looked around on the Daphne site (http://www.daphne-emu.com/), and while the software looks pretty cool,
1) I don't own a laserdisc player

2) I don't have any of these original laserdiscs to play or to convert to MPEG
2a) I'm not about to start asking for the MPEG dumps either.

Sadly, I think that using Daphne is out for me.

I also looked at Digital Leisure's site (http://www.digitalleisure.com/products.html), and they do have these titles available as DVD ROMs, but I'm a little hesitant because:

1) I bought the Dragon's Lair CD-ROM, and it sucked

2) According to their site, my PC's DVD player may or may not work, which means that I might be screwed if I purchase it


So...is anyone playing these games?  And if so, how?

[StephenH]

I heard you can use a converted DVD-ROM for Daphne (Dragons Lair and Space Ace, that is).   They are available from Digital Leisure.   Do not get the DVD-Video versions, as they will NOT work.    

The conversion program is called DVD2Daph, and it copies the video to your hard disk, and converts the audio to OGG Vorbis, as well as a framefile.

[jaquer]

Man, if you like any of those games, buy the Digital Leisure DVD-ROMS and you can use this cool program:

http://www.laserarchive.com/dvd2daph/

It will rip the MPEGs, normalize the audio and make frame file for you. It's basically a one-click operation.

Believe me, you won't regret it.

edit: Hey, one minute difference. You must have posted while was Google'ing the page.

[MrArcade]

I could not get DL DVDrom to play fullscreen.

If you are determined, you will find somewhere to get the lasergames on the net.  Just be aware that they are big files.  If you are on dial-up you are out of luck.  Compressed the files are over 10 Gig.

[Sasquatch!]

Hey that DVD2Daph programs sounds like a great solution.  Any idea how big the files are?

Edit: So wait, I would still need a DVD player for DVD2Daph to work?

[SirPoonga]

You'd need a dvd player to get the mpegs, but after that no, you don;t need one.  (Hint, borrow one if you don;t have one)

You will probably end up with over a gig of mpegs.

[Minwah]

Has anyone tried copying the video files from a Philips CDi disk??  A program called ISOBUSTER allows you to read a CDi disk, but I'm not sure whether Dragons Lair/II/Space Ace would work with Daphne from this - maybe with some playing around it could be made to work.

Anyhow, I'm going to give it a go as soon as I get these games on CDi.  

[Howard_Casto]

It won't work because the cdi version is modified, and thus the frames won't match up.  It's the same reason the dvd video or the pc-cdrom disc won't work.  

Sorry

[Minwah]

I see - shame

Oh well I'm more interested in Mad Dog McCree ( )anyway, which is not supported in Daphne AFAIK.

[Dink]

It wasn't stated obviously for the slow ones (me).

You can direct Daphne to use MPEG's ripped (sampled) from a DVD that Digital Liesure sells instead of a real laser disc player.  The DVD version.  You use the DVD2Daph program to do that.

If you search enough you can find these MPEGs (with the needed framefiles) already ripped on the internet.  Dragon's Lair is about 1gb, Space Ace about 1.2GB, Goal To Go about 1.5gb in multipart .rar files.

The Space Ace MPEGs (for use with Daphne) are currently being released in alt.binaries.games.arcade (that group name might be wrong, I'll check when I get home from work).  Dragon's Lair and others soon to follow.  

[Howard_Casto]

It wasn't stated obviously for the slow ones (me).

You can direct Daphne to use MPEG's ripped (sampled) from a DVD that Digital Liesure sells instead of a real laser disc player.  The DVD version.  You use the DVD2Daph program to do that.

If you search enough you can find these MPEGs (with the needed framefiles) already ripped on the internet.  Dragon's Lair is about 1gb, Space Ace about 1.2GB, Goal To Go about 1.5gb in multipart .rar files.

The Space Ace MPEGs (for use with Daphne) are currently being released in alt.binaries.games.arcade (that group name might be wrong, I'll check when I get home from work).  Dragon's Lair and others soon to follow.  

This is ONLY for the pc DVD-rom version , the dvd video, psx2, or xbox versions will NOT WORK with dvd2daph... just a warning for those considering a purchase.  

[mamefan123]

Besides dragon's lair and space ace, are any of the other games supported by daphne worth getting??

[Warborg]

As far as not using DVD2Daph for the DVD video, I see mention that it's because the generated Framefile wouldn't match up...  Wouldn't it be possible to edit the framefile to make it work, or are their other issues on top of this that will not allow it to work?  I have the MPGs from the original arcade laserdiscs, but I also have the DVD video of DL and the DVD-ROM of Space Ace, and was contemplating ripping them and maybe get some better quality out of it...

[Lilwolf]

I downloaded two... one I'm missing the txt file for it (sucks... download 1.4gig and have your newsgroup reader autofilter the txt file because it's too small to be useful)

Esh's somethingorother I never got past the first screen (really).  don't know if it's the controls or what.

btw, there was a driver for mame that allowed you to run DL in mame with the screens from the DVD version... but it was never released.... I was hoping that one would come out.

[Howard_Casto]

Almost all laser games fro daphne are well worth the download.  With two exceptions....

Thayer's Quest as it requires a full keyboard (literally) to play, and goal to go, because, well, it sucks.

DL,SA,SDQ and ESh are all pretty much "press the right key at the right time to proceed games"  Cliff Hanger expands on this with combinations of keys to press.  

Badlands is a shot em first game where you have to fire at just the right time.  

The rest are hybirds of a real video game with a laser disc movie for a background.  They have more traditional gameplay styles.  

[Keith O]

I'd say besides DL and SA the other must have's are Super Don and Cliff Hanger. DL 2 is a great game as well but it's not supported in Daphne as of yet.

[Howard_Casto]

As far as not using DVD2Daph for the DVD video, I see mention that it's because the generated Framefile wouldn't match up...  Wouldn't it be possible to edit the framefile to make it work, or are their other issues on top of this that will not allow it to work?  I have the MPGs from the original arcade laserdiscs, but I also have the DVD video of DL and the DVD-ROM of Space Ace, and was contemplating ripping them and maybe get some better quality out of it...

There are several issues.... The video roms lack certian screens and scenes that are on the orignal laser disc.  (like the insert coins and game over screens)  Also the scenes are cut up differently, which effects the timing of the game.    I think the framerate is also different, which could cause problems but could be fixed upon the ripping maybe.  As for the framefile, in theory you could make one that would sorta work but it's not worth that much trouble.  

As the scenes are out of order the calibration feature of daphne couldn't be used to create a frame file.  You would have to manually discover the starting frame of each of the 80+ scenes and write it down.  Then you would have to get the frame number of the start of all 80+ scenes of the orignal laserdisc and write it down....  Then you would have to resplice all of the scenes back into their orignal order as the framefiles assume that all scenes are in the proper order and they won't display properly any other way.  (framefiles point to the start of the next scene when the video is spanned over several files, it assumes that all the other scenes on that file will be in the proper order.)


So as you can see it's much simplier to fork over the extra cash and get the dvd rom versions.    

[Warborg]

Yeah, I see what you mean now...  I didn't consider the fact of the missing screens and scenes maybe being ordered differently within the video file...  Oh well, I do have the MPG of the arcade laserdisc, I'll stick to that...