View Single Post
  #18  
Old Jul 30, 2010, 10:05 AM
Cedille Cedille is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Tokyo
Posts: 2,026
Default

Quote:
The tech didn't change that much either, PS1 is a rather simple evolution over the SNES with the number of voices bumped from 8 to 24 and RAM increased from 64kB to 512kB (same creator). What changed significantly starting with PS1 is that MIDI became the supported sequenced music format in development kits (before that point each developer had their own or licensed sound engines, with no standard libraries or formats to fall back on like Sony started to offer).
I think another progress of the 5th gene was the introduction of multi-streaming technology (I often heard Saturn was more groundbreaking in this regard because of the ADX format in courtesy of CSK, but didn't the PSX hardware also support such? I remember in some stages of Klonoa which was released around the same time as Grandia, two tracks were multi-streamed). Until then, developers had to use Redbook (aka CD-DA in Eastern) or CD-XA audio which didn't loop seamlessly, and more importantly they had to choice between music and sound (voice) effects to stream from the disc media. It also enabled a game to load both the game data and music at the same time, which worked better for a game where data on memory was frequently updated (e.g. JRPG with a separate battle system).
Reply With Quote