Mining The Cd-Rom Vaults

Emedia Professional, Dec, 1998 by Philip DeLancie

Riven Sets Stage for CD to DVD Reissues

get together any group of DVD watchers and you are likely to hear some vigorous discussion about the DVD launch, described by some as the most successful consumer electronics introduction ever and by others as lackluster disappointment. Whatever the assessment, it's almost certain that talk of DVD software will revolve around home video products--mostly feature films and perhaps music video as well. You won't hear much about other applications for DVD, particularly the kinds of games and reference titles that have long been staples of the CD-ROM market. To date, DVD offerings in these areas have been so few that they have been dwarfed both in numbers and in public consciousness by home video fare.

With the installed base of DVD-ROM drives projected to take off rapidly beginning this holiday season, however, CD-ROM developers and publishers may finally start to see a potential DVD market for their wares. At first, the market may be too small to justify major expenditures on ground-up development of new DVD-specific titles. But publishers can also fill DVD demand with material developed concurrently for CD-ROM and DVD, or--taking a cue from the record industry's profitable reissue strategy for the audio CD--with existing CD-ROM titles, proven and popular, that are re-released on DVI).

At first glance, any CD-ROM that could benefit from DVD's larger capacity--whether a multiple-CD set or a bandwidth-hungry video showcase--might be a candidate for reissue. But DVD is not just bigger than CD-ROM, it is a different physical and logical format with its own requirements and challenges. The re-release process is also complicated by options within the DVD family. Some titles will simply be converted from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM. Others will be "repurposed," which involves going back to the original graphics and animations and re-authoring the title to play on a set-top DVD player.

To explore how these options play out on the ground, we've begun examining several titles that are being brought into the DVD domain from CD-ROM, including Riven and The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time, both from Red Orb Entertainment (a division of Broderbund Software in Novato, California), two titles that exemplify the "conversion" approach. Less dramatically altered by the transition to DVD-ROM than some titles, the "conversion" process these titles have undergone still reveals much about how the DVD formats innate strengths can enhance and extend applications traditionally distributed on CD-ROM. A future article will explore examples of the more transforming "re-purposing" approach to CD-to-DVD title transition.

EXPLORING DVD WORLDS

Riven is the follow-up to Myst, which publisher Broderbund (citing sales figures from PC Data) refers to as "the most successful CD-ROM game of all time." Developed by Cyan, Inc. of Mead, Washington, Riven is a graphic adventure game in which the player uses exploration and puzzle-solving to find and rescue a character named Catherine before the entire world of Riven collapses. According to producer Mark Boccuzzi of Red Orb, the title makes extensive use of both animation and live actors.

Legacy of Time is the third installment of the Journeyman Project series from Presto Studios in San Diego, California. The player takes the role of Gage Blackwood, an agent in a secret government body called the Temporal Security Agency, which is responsible for "protecting the sanctity of history." Blackwood pursues a fugitive colleague through the lost civilizations of Shangri-La, El Dorado, and Atlantis, uncovering secrets of the Earth's past, as well as the menacing plan of an alien race to destroy it. The story is self-contained; players need not have experienced the previous Journeyman games to play Legacy of Time.

"Riven and Legacy of Time are both games that are best enjoyed when the player is completely immersed in the world and the story," says Boccuzzi. "The huge storage capacity of a DVD-ROM allows us to create a more immersive experience for garners by obviating the need to swap CDs at particular points in the game, which breaks the `spell.' And with less compression needed to fit video and audio assets on the disc, the sensory qualities of both games are improved."

"DVD-ROM drives are higher-bandwidth devices than older CD-ROM drives," adds Mark Johnson, CTO of DVant, a Novato, California-based DVD design and authoring company that Red Orb brought in to help convert both titles to DVD. "Of course, you can get fast CD-ROM drives these days--24X or even 32X--but large software developers who have to take into consideration the lowest common denominator build their software to work on the millions of 2X and 4X drives installed out there. Fortunately, with DVD, the lowest common denominator starts at roughly the equivalent of 8X speed, so you can read data more quickly off of a DVD, which gives you much higher quality video playback."

Both Red Orb DVD titles are scheduled for regular U.S. release on August 17 at a suggested list price of $39.95, though Legacy of Time is already available through Apple's online retail operation with the purchase of some models of Power Macintosh G3 computers. The titles are both being released as DVD-5s (single-sided, single 4.7GB layer). "Riven shipped on five CD-ROMs and Legacy of Time on four," Boccuzzi says. "It was a simple matter to fit these multidisc CD-ROM products onto a single DVD-5 with the disc swapping code removed."