Brewology

Well I have recently been messing with this game Castlevania Dracula X Chronicles. At first, the full game ISO was 1.03 GB. have been messing with it and have it all the way down to 378 MB. I haven't noticed a loss of anything except on the main menu, you can go to this "Sound Test" page where you can listen to the game theme song or something, but I could care less for that.
But it seems like the makers are just flooding the files with useless stuff to make the files big so when you would download the game, the file would be huge on your memory stick or something... Has anyone else messed with this game and what size did you get it? I stopped messing with the file when i got it to 378 MB(cso) because it was pretty late and figured I probably couldn't take anything else off.

EDIT: Shrinked it down to a 114 MB file, it acts the same as the 378 MB file, as far as i know it plays just as good and looks the same as the regular full ISO file.

I do not think you can get it much smaller than 114 MB.

I am impressed you got it that small from over a gig.

What are you using for compression?

Some of the useless files (and I say this mostly for the benefit of whomever is reading) are made up of foreign language files and video that are called up when the program reads your console region. "God of War" is an example of a game that works this way. It is cheaper to press out one version of a game than it is to track many diffrent versions for diffrent countries.

Well the reason I was like Wow! was because I did not lose anything, at all except one thing. And it was to listen to the theme song in the main menu and thats it. I plays exactly the same and I shrunk it to 114 MB from 1.03 GB. It is a cso.

Dude that's hot!

Who needs the into music anyway?

Well its Castlevania . Well I can still hear the music in the main menu, I mean like in the main menu it is a special feature to check out the Castlevania themes, and I can't listen to those, but I can listen to it in the main menu.. kind of hard to explain unless you got the game.

I have it and sort of regret the purchase because I am one of the lucky few that was able to play the Turbographix 16 version on an emulator. The PSP version is pretty much the same except for the 3d models which are manditory for games now days.

I also agree with you about the Music in Castlevania. I think the games have always had great music. I own the "Symphony of the Night" soundtrack. My favorite is the acapella cathedral music you hear from the load screeen.

Anyhow, what I wanted to mention was this, If you can shrink a 1 gig game by 90% and only give up the intro music that is a great trade off. I play Einhander for the PS1 a lot on my PSP. I even made custom music for the eboot. It took me an afternoon of work to get it right. It was sort of a waste of time because when I pay now I am so anxious to start the game I rarely get to listen to the music that I mixed.

Speaking of video game music, do you miss 8 bit sound?

The old video game music theme songs are classic! Like the early Nintendo game tunes and the PS1 games. The FFVII Soundtrack is awesome! I can listen to those songs anytime.

YEA!

I just feel that those days are long gone especially since it is a lot easier to get a license to insert commercial music in a game than it is to compose it.

I am a little excited about the Conan game I saw a clip on You Tube highlighting the professional musicians that recorded it. "God of War" had good music.

Seeing the previews for Conan I can tell that title is the 360 solution to "God of War".

I am a little disappointed in Conan's looks. He appears to me as more of a douche bag than a warrior.

Haha douche bag.. I haven't seen the reviews yet, but yea the 360 needs a substitute for GoW I guess. Great Game, I guess the reason the music was good was because it was based on old Rome times.

adventwolf, do you follow a certain pattern when deleting folders or files in a ISO? I'd really like to cut down the sizes of some ISOs.

The standard files you usually delete are as follows:

PSP_GAME//
SYSDIR//
BOOT.BIN*
UPDATE*

And any txt file for some other language other than yours. And mostly just trial and error, and compressing to CSO.

*delete

Seems easy enough. What about the music files? Do we just delete them or do we replace them with blank files?

Oh, one more question, when extracting an ISO to delete those files, how do I make it back into an ISO?

I use UMDGen v4, all you have to do is drag the file over to the UMDGen window and delete the stuff there, and once you are finished you can save it as a CSO file.

Hmm, tried it, but got an error, when I loaded the game on my PSP (error: 80010002)

According to this info, this is what the error means:



I tried it again several times and even change the iso driver--but nothing worked.

You deleted the BOOT.Bin and not the EBOOT.BIN right?
I'm thinkin you did. Try messing with your Recovery ISO drivers if thats not it.