The Dreamcast shined between 1998 and 2001, but Sega's financial situation ended its life prematurely. As a result, many games, both announced and unannounced, were abruptly canceled, and as new games arrived on other platforms, many often wondered: would these titles have been possible on the Dreamcast? Well, with an unofficial home release of Grand Theft Auto 3 on the classic Sega machine, we finally have an answer to at least one of those questions.
GTA 3 itself really needs no introduction – it was a cultural event after all – but before GTA 3 took the world by storm, the development team at DMA Design, creator of Lemmings, had released several Grand Theft Auto games in PlayStation, PC and Yes, the Dreamcast. That's right: GTA2 received a Dreamcast port during its short life. The result is certainly interesting, but as a game designed primarily for PlayStation, it is limited. It works very poorly on the Dreamcast, which I find unacceptable given its origins. However, if you can ignore that, many of the ideas that would define the series began here. GTA was popular, but not in the way the series would be after GTA 3. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast version is also low quality given the platform it runs on, which only serves to make the port of GTA3 be much more impressive.
The new Dreamcast version is derived from the RE3 reverse-engineering project, a comprehensive, non-emulated version of the Rockstar Engine. When creating a playable image, you will need to use the PC version from which the data is extracted and converted to the appropriate file formats. It is currently optimized for use with optical disc emulators, which replace the Dreamcast's optical drive, but it is possible to play from a burned CD-R, although there are some caveats. Basically, this is the full version of GTA3. All missions, maps, cutscenes, and audio were cut, albeit with some reduction in quality at some points, which we'll get to.
Starting with the comparisons, GTA 3 has seen many releases over the years, but I wanted to stay contemporary and compare it to the original PlayStation 2 release. When capturing the game, I used original consoles but with PixelFX Gem installed on each of them for flawless HDMI digital output.
So the first thing I want to address is actually a visual effect that I didn't use in most of the comparisons: the feature called “trails.” This is a build-up style blur that uses previous frames to create a sort of post-process motion blur effect. It also combines colors to create that unique looking presentation that is central to GTA3's visual design language. The Dreamcast is not well suited to this type of effect, due to its unique memory layout in the way it handles textures and framebuffers; basically, if you try to use the framebuffer as a texture (a copy of the entire frame), you get two. correct pixels followed by two incorrect pixels. There are two selectable alternatives on the Dreamcast version, but the performance hit is palpable and it's clear that more work is required.
Right away, I noticed some minor texture blending issues here, but also differences in the character model. The Dreamcast version pulls from the PC version of the game which features changes to character models, so there are fundamental changes, and even some additional items that are absent on PS2. I also noticed that the resolution of the texture has been affected to fit into the Dreamcast's memory. During the PC data conversion process, textures are reduced across the board compared to other versions of GTA 3. Now this may seem strange, but according to SKMP (project leader) it all comes down to limitations from memory, but not necessarily because of the textures themselves.
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Basically, the game sends a lot of vertex data to the GPU and the GPU needs to store all these vertices in memory before rendering them. While the models look simple on the surface, the sheer size and number of objects on screen mean that GTA 3 pushes a fair amount of geometry. So while the Dreamcast has 8MB of VRAM versus 4MB on the PS2, because of how it works on the Dreamcast, vertex data consumes more than half of the system's VRAM pool. Subtract the framebuffer data and other VRAM resident objects and you're left with just 2.3 MB of VRAM for textures.
Also, in addition to reducing the size, all textures are compressed using the Dreamcast's VQ texture compression, but it turns out that VQ compression is not suitable for compressing the palletized textures used by GTA3, so additional artifacts also appear. However, there is still hope. The team is working on ideas to overcome this and over time we should see stable builds capable of loading textures at full resolution. I also noticed problems with the flashes of light from the headlights that travel around the world. This is something the team is still working on: there is currently a depth mismatch there and these light flares are basically 2D objects projected onto the geometry of the world. Those, however, are the main limitations I noticed in terms of visual issues because otherwise what we have is something very similar to the original game.
The most positive thing is that all the main visual elements have made the cut: light maps, shadow textures of trees and lamp posts, light halos, streetlight and traffic light illumination, fogging and more . It's all here. One of the most impressive things about this port is the streaming system – part of this is because GTA3 is designed around optical disc-based data streaming, so there's a lot of wiggle room, but it's still a challenge, especially given that the Dreamcast has half the system memory. of PS2. The game attempts to keep as much data as possible in memory to avoid mishaps, while a separate streaming thread handles retrieving data from the source media.
The initial version was optimized for use with the GDEMU optical disk emulator, but I don't have one of those, so I opted for a burned CD-R. The team sent me an updated version that prioritizes CD-ROM performance and… it works. In the initial version, every time the game loaded a sound effect, it would pause making certain missions almost unplayable, but now? It works surprisingly well from a CD and that's a real achievement.
In terms of performance, let's look at the permutations of my tests. I used the V1 trail effect on the Dreamcast, which is the closest to the PS2. However, with this feature enabled, the frame rate is limited to just 15 frames per second on the Dreamcast, as exceeding this is not currently feasible, although I'm told there are plans to optimize it further. However, it is unlikely that we will see more than 20 fps with contrails. I was just curious to see how it compares to the default state of the game on PS2. This test also revealed to me why GTA 3 always felt so choppy on PS2: the frame rate is poor, with a lot of random 16ms spikes. I've always noticed this in the past: GTA3 is not smooth compared to its contemporaries. However, this was forgiven due to its revolutionary design, but still, we now know why it feels that way.
With V3 tracks enabled (there's no V2, if you're wondering), the Dreamcast's frame rate increases but stays firmly in sub-20fps territory most of the time. I should note that V3 paths are enabled by default in the menu, so this is what you will probably experience on first boot. This time frame rate drops to a 15 to 20 fps window, which is further improved by turning off trails completely. The thing is, all of this is measured in fairly undemanding areas. Move to the city's central island and the increased geometry causes problems: the frame rate is in the 10fps territory in some areas and can drop even lower.
Looking at the performance data made me think about the PS2's frame rate issues and what a remake of GTA 3 could have been like. After all, years later, the PSP game Liberty City Stories was ported to the PS2 and there I made a pleasant discovery: the overall visual quality and performance is significantly improved in an updated version of the GTA 3 map. The traffic is much denser, the models are improved and elements such as fences and fire escapes are added. The lighting is better and the frame rate is much smoother as well. There's definitely a lot of extra wiggle room here.
However, I must say that the Dreamcast version is still in development, but even this first version is amazing, with many interesting features and more to come. The game is mostly playable as is, although there is currently a progress-halting bug on the Bomb da Base mission that makes it impossible to finish it normally at the moment, but that will also be fixed in the future.
The key takeaway for me is that the Dreamcast development community has managed to pull off what seems almost like a miraculous port. Elements like the motion blur trails effect, for example, are something DC simply isn't designed for, but the development team has nailed it. Being able to run such a large scale game with this level of performance is truly incredible. Personally, I'm skeptical that Rockstar could have pulled this off in 2001 – the studio was still learning how to make games like this and the initial PS2 launch was pretty rocky. However, looking at this new Dreamcast port, it is clear that the performance is poor, but remember that this is a first release and as a proof of concept, this port is incredible. In fact, the Dreamcast can handle Grand Theft Auto 3 in its entirety. The dream will never die!