Dreamcast Startup Sound Explained

[Anthony817]

So I have seen this guy do other consoles like the PS2 in the past, but he deconstructs the bios to get at actual sound files and then even recreates it and breaks down what all is going on. Really interesting video. Thought it is worth a share.



This guy deserves a sub and thumbs up. Nobody else takes such a deep dive like this guy.

[dark]

Interesting. His mention of the fact that the PS2 bios sound is synthesized in real time while the DC's is a sample of the sound makes me wonder if the graphic of the swirl being drawn is a video that is played, or if the system runs a program that draws the graphic?

That also reminds me - the flubber animation for the original xbox startup is apparently generated on the fly rather than being a video that is played.

[Xiden]

nice find!

[Anthony817]

Interesting. His mention of the fact that the PS2 bios sound is synthesized in real time while the DC's is a sample of the sound makes me wonder if the graphic of the swirl being drawn is a video that is played, or if the system runs a program that draws the graphic?

That also reminds me - the flubber animation for the original xbox startup is apparently generated on the fly rather than being a video that is played.

That is a really interesting question.

Ah yes that was the cool thing about the Xbox. Another cool thing was all the custom bios's people released, some completely changing the startup sequence animation. I wonder why we don;t have similar on Dreamcast with bios mods? I am rocking the Katana devkit bios animation on mine with japanese_cake's amazing feature rich bios. You can change the color of the swirl even with a cool hidden menu in the settings screen by pressing Start button.

But I do hope in the future we see more cool stuff with his bios. I did ask him maybe a year or so back if he has worked on it since last release in 2016 but he hasn't tried messing with it in a while or adding features. Eventually he said he would. I think he was looking into trying to save more space by removing some stuff from bios to get a biot of more room to add more features but it is kind of difficult to say the least.

[fraggle200]

Interesting. His mention of the fact that the PS2 bios sound is synthesized in real time while the DC's is a sample of the sound makes me wonder if the graphic of the swirl being drawn is a video that is played, or if the system runs a program that draws the graphic?

That also reminds me - the flubber animation for the original xbox startup is apparently generated on the fly rather than being a video that is played.

My guess is the that the swirl is pre rendered. There's instances, depending on monitor/scanline settings that I've seen the outline of the swirl before it's coloured in. I can't imagine that would happen if it's rendered in real time.... or would it?