Ready Up

The Ready Up Podcast – Season 2, Episode 5 – Pink Bows and Blue Dungarees

Episode five of Season 2 is here! Laura Rich is settling into her role as host and, with John pressing buttons, chats, at some length with our guests this time Scott Cameron and the Big Boss herself, Kirsten Kearney-Bendon!

Current gaming

– John has been getting all lost in Pandaria, but has reservations about the new skills management and combat
– Laura has been kicking ass and taking names in Borderlands 2 and iPadding with Super Hexagon
– Scott has been MMO’ing Guild Wars 2, banging heads in Borderlands 2 and not really being very scared, not at all, ever, in Dark Souls on the PC
– Kirsten has been trying to be whiter than white – Celestial White in fact – in Guild Wars 2

 

News

– John wonders about our collective futures as a World of Warcraft hobby sparks a US political row
– Laura talks about her fun times at Eurogamer
– Scott provokes a hefty legal discussion as Sony sue the actor Jerry Lambert – perhaps better known as the character Kevin Butler
– Kirsten is super happy about our nomination, once again, in this years GMAs

Scott talks about his Blog Brand ‘Incoming‘ and Kirsten makes excuses about not doing very many ‘Letter from the Editor‘ posts and gives us a sneaky peak into some changes to the site!

We also discuss the Big Question this episode:

“HD remakes and re-releases, are they worth it?”

 

In amongst all of this we ramble, dissemble, muse and emote generally!

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Ready Up Podcast theme music courtesy of Tommy Tallarico.

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10 responses to “The Ready Up Podcast – Season 2, Episode 5 – Pink Bows and Blue Dungarees”

  1. Ryan Esler avatar
    Ryan Esler

    Love the new image for the podcast.

  2. Johnny avatar
    Johnny

    The FFVII re-release has fixed translations, enhanced texture filtering and true HD support. It’s noooot the 1998 PC version 😛

  3. Scott avatar
    Scott

    Sorry if I wasn’t clear on the podcast about that, Johnny. The fixed translations of the “International” re-release /were/ in the 1998 Eidos version. The only thing they’ve added here (apart from a wrapper to support Windows 7) is couple of simple linear image filters and a windowed mode. I suppose the built-in trainer is new, though again, that can be achieved with simple download on the ’98 release.

    It does not have true HD support; all the widescreen option does is stretch a 4:3 internal frame buffer to fit whatever resolution your monitor is running at, destroying the aspect ratio of the backgrounds. Also, MIDI music (without the Yamaha XG cards we used at the time) is pretty horrendous in this day and age, though I know you can mod MP3s in there!

  4. Scott avatar
    Scott

    Also, I’m getting mixed reports on the MIDI/CD-soundtrack issue, so apologies if I’m wrong there!

  5. Johnny avatar
    Johnny

    Nah, through some wizardry the image doesn’t get stretched when taken to 16:9. I’ve no idea how they managed it but they did (I bought it on day one).

    Yeah the music in this version is good in some places and bad in others, I just went ahead and patched it though. They killed the amazing boss music with the midi translation 🙁

  6. Scott avatar
    Scott

    That’s interesting, Johnny. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but every article I’ve read and all the screenshots I’ve seen of the “full 16:9 mode” suggest it’s lazy full stretching of the backgrounds, which again breaks the aspect ratio and isn’t really 16:9: http://truepcgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/33.jpg

    The backgrounds in FFVII were originally rendered in a 4:3 ratio in 1997. Without re-rendering the backgrounds in 16:9 by going back to the original art assets, there is mathematically no way to change it to 16:9 without breaking the aspect ratio. The only thing they /might/ be doing is zooming the backgrounds to 14:9, a compromise used on TV for older programmes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14:9

    Good idea on patching the music, though! 😉

  7. Johnny avatar
    Johnny

    By gum you’re right, my eyes have been deceived.

    Went and took two screens there.
    16:9 http://i.cubeupload.com/5MeBpq.png
    4:3 http://i.cubeupload.com/AolzL7.png

    Although I think the game comes out for the better at 16:9, but that could be because I’ve been playing it at that aspect ratio for the last few months!

  8. Johnny avatar
    Johnny

    Those screens are native res by the way, not resized. I’ve been playing at 720p for better Xsplit capturing.

  9. Scott avatar
    Scott

    Thanks for the screenshots! 🙂 Glad we clarified that. Sorry if I came off picky; I’m a stickler for aspect ratios I was just genuinely curious!

    Still, it’s good that there’s some legal way to play it on Windows 7 easily, without resorting to the ’98 release or PSX emulation. Even if they were super lazy about it. :p

    Also, high-five fellow XSplitter!

  10. Shadowmate avatar
    Shadowmate

    Another good show guys. always look forward to downloading from pocketcasts. Only knew the podcast was back recently so listened to them all pretty much back to back. Glad you are back. Keep up the good work.

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