Is it possible to fix cracked discs?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Are cassette tape games sequential?

[CRTGAMER]

Are cassette tape games sequential?

Good point! Forgot about the old game tapes, sequential in the data load. The era dictated a lot of loading due to limited memory in the computer. Not sure of the older games count since they were a different nature, such as reactive style arcade games. Some of the tape based dungeon crawlers such as Sword of Fargoal would randomize each level even though a sequential loaded off the cassette tape.

Anyway, this thread is getting derailed.

With apologies, maybe now a train wreck with all the detours!? Hey all great discussion thruout this thread though.

[Cronozilla]

Yes, the data is sequential on all these pieces of media ... the issue is how easy it is to access various portions.

You plan the placement of data based on how you expect things to play out.

But yeah, you would generally describe generic things, then the loaded program in memory would generate the things you need. Doing the heavy art content sort of stuff we're used to now just wouldn't fly. There's not a lot of ways to grab what you need off the media in a sensible manner.

Even though Call of Duty is ultra sequential in the way you play ... the assets aren't sequential at all when they're stored. The upside is, on a record, you could either have definitions at the beginning to define your art and that is loaded into memory ... or you have the representation every place they occur in the game ... the first method makes the most sense, but the second method, there'd be nothing stopping you from making 100% unique everything throughout. Though ... that'd be one short game.

How can you derail a thread that's about a question that's already been answered multiple times?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Man collecting or not people should really take better care of their shit.

I never understood. I've always been a gamer, not a collector, but who could possibly pay $60 or $40 or even $10 for a game and just leave the disc sitting naked somewhere. What little kid, who can't even buy his own games, would abuse the ones he has? I sure didn't, but my little brother leaves his PS4 games on the floor long enough to gather cobwebs.

[CRTGAMER]

Man collecting or not people should really take better care of their shit.

I never understood. I've always been a gamer, not a collector, but who could possibly pay $60 or $40 or even $10 for a game and just leave the disc sitting naked somewhere. What little kid, who can't even buy his own games, would abuse the ones he has? I sure didn't, but my little brother leaves his PS4 games on the floor long enough to gather cobwebs.

Did you mean PS3? Actually the carelessness is more common then you think, evidenced by all the buybacks at Gamestop. A lot of those gutted games were sold back that way.

[Retronomy]

Yes, the data is sequential on all these pieces of media ... the issue is how easy it is to access various portions.

I hate to be that guy, but by all these pieces of media you include Compact discs, I regret to inform you that they're actually Random Access. CD data is written non sequentially and is interleaved (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_er ... terleaving)
In addition, all data is encoded with error codes in the event of burst error, which allows CD's to continue functioning by solving the error code instead of just flat out stopping the data stream. CD technology is actually quite complex and impressive for ultimately being a long spiral of metal film.

[Cronozilla]

I don't think i said optic is sequentially accessible data. Sorry, it if looked like I did.

[Ziggy]

A video game on vinyl ... I'm not sure how well that'd work. Everything would have to be 100% sequential.

That'd actually be kind of interesting.

It was more of a joke about CD vs vinyl, which some of us have talked about in at least one other thread. But yeah, I was thinking about a video game on vinyl as I was posting that. It's a funny concept.

[Retronomy]

No worries, I wasn't sure if you were going that route or not. I just figured I should clarify considering the topic. While CD's do a lot for error handling, it's usually best to give up all hope the second there's a crack because you (usually) irreparably destroy both the interleaved data along with it's error codes. You can at times get by with some severe scratches, but cd crack? Nope. That's only assuming, of course, that the crack isn't from the outer rim and it doesn't go to any sectors of written data.

[Retronomy]

A video game on vinyl ... I'm not sure how well that'd work. Everything would have to be 100% sequential.

That'd actually be kind of interesting.

It was more of a joke about CD vs vinyl, which some of us have talked about in at least one other thread. But yeah, I was thinking about a video game on vinyl as I was posting that. It's a funny concept.

Well, an LP has a total of appx 3000 feet of groove. If we were to divide that by providing each second it's own bit for the average length of 45 minutes on an LP, we'd achieve 8,100,000 bits, or 988.77 kb, although that's being somewhat lenient as I'm sure you could read more data in smaller time frames. Bits with their 0 or 1 values would be determined by their varying vibrations, allowing for varying intensity. Some space between each bit (I assume) is needed, to allow for stops to prepare for the next bit, and the start and end of each side need identifying code to know when to stop reading.

In comparison to games such as Mega Man 6, which is 513kb (assembly), which would take just over 23 minutes to load all of the games data not including read stars and ends.

(More than) Theoretically, with some custom software, you could indeed turn a turntable into a media reading device for gaming so long as the game itself can load all of it's code at once into ram, and the recieving hardware can interpret this data into usable code.

Of course, this is all a very loose interprestation, and would obviously be a lot more involved in practice.