How do you feel about Blu-ray?
Hello all
Just signed up to this board. I never owned a CD-i though, but I have a big interest in Blu-ray, which has some of the same features. You can do some of the same things with Blu-ray - and then run it on PlayStation 3 + PlayStation 4 + Xbox One, because all of those consoles feature a blu-ray drive.
How does the CD-i people feel about Blu-ray? Is it something you love or hate?
At https://www.blu-play.com/games you can see two examples of homebrew games I've made.
Hello and welcome @misthalu!
Personally, I am neutral about Blu-ray discs.
I don't own any Blu-ray discs or players, only DVDs.
It is a great technology evolution comparing to Video-CD or DVD, the picture quality, sound and specially the storage.
On a common Video-CD movie, you needed 2 discs, the DVD changed this issue.
As I am more a streamer guy, watching series and movies online, I personally have no reasons to get into Blu-ray, unless someone offer me one at Christmas!
In the other hand, there is still a lot of movies re-edited on Blu-ray that was already on Video-CD!
The DVD anb Blu-ray players support all Video-CDs, and that is a good way to keep your VCD collection even if you don't own a CD-i player equipped with a Digital Video Cartridge.
I don't think VCD's ever offered interactive content.
There are some DVD games actually, but they are rather limited in functionality.
But CD-i and Blu-ray can do many of the same things regarding interactivity. You can use a programming language for both to create games.
"Dragon's Lair" for example, was made for both systems, as far as I know.
I think whatever homebrew is made for the CD-i could easily be made for Blu-ray too. Even with the same resolution, although it's true of course that Blu-ray offers much higher resolutions - if you want them.
But how does the average CD-i homebrew dev feel about Blu-ray in that aspect, I wonder.
Two examples of Blu-ray games that comes with movies:
"Bolt's Be-Awesome Mission" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ4QUlbM6_c
"Gusteau's Gormet Game" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aatH8C2mjHc
Found this thread again after stumbling across the recently released Nobelia for the CD-i.
Cute little looking game.
I can't help think the CD-i and Blu-Play homebrew devs should join forces somehow, and port each other's games so they exists on both platforms. Both platforms are somewhat similar.
Recently a Blu-Play developer ported Doom to the platform. He did this in only a single week, using Cibyl Transpiler - transpiling the C source into Blu-ray Disc Java. Maybe the same could be done for CD-i games?
Blu-ray and CD-i are very different platforms, it's not exchangable in any way. I could see Dragon's Lair (and other games in the same genre) work on both platforms, since it's essentially just playing a movie, and if you press (or don't press) a certain button another scene will play.
I don't think you understand the possibilities we have with Blu-ray.
You have Java 1.3 available, so you can do a lot more than just "movie games". The Doom port is a good example.
So both platforms can play video and execute applications coded with a programming language and runs from an optical disc.
See "The UFO Game!", which is using a video for background, and then a Java coded game on top of it.
That's a good example of a game I'd think was ideal to port to the CD-i because of how it's made. I don't mind sending the source to whoever finds it interesting to take a look at such a porting project. 🙂
This seems to be really interesting...
@twburn @cdifan and other CD-i coders will be available for sure to help, maybe not to make, as they have other projects in hands.
What about you to try port it to the system? With Discord, the "immediate" support from them is guaranty!
Thank you for keep supporting the CD-i with your ideas!
Yes I've already had a few chats with both twburn and cdifan on the Discord server. We've found that the CD-i has most of the same simple graphics methods available as used on Blu-ray Disc Java (BD-J), so it should definitely be possible to port a game - relatively effortless even.
Definitely worth an experiment. We should try with something very simple just to try it out.
I won't be diving into CD-i dev myself though. The idea is more that CD-i devs could share their source code with Blu-Play devs, and vice versa. That way both platforms could see more releases.
Here is another example of a Blu-Play game, ported to blu-ray from MIDP (they're both JavaME platforms).
"Ukko's Journey" (not using videos for background)
Any CD-i dev interested in porting a Blu-Play game, come to our Discord server. I can't speak for other devs of course, but I'll be happy to share the source code for my own games.
I must admit I'm also more into making my own games than porting other people's games. But I'm hoping there'll be devs interested in porting on both platforms. Just gotta find them. 😉