why aren't game disks affected by scratches?

[The Happy Face King]

i have a luigis mansion disk and its really scratched up but when i play it NOT A SINGLE glitch missing model messed up texture or anything but with dvd disks just a few scratches and somewhere it will freeze i just dont get it!

Dont ask me why this is here because i dont know what forum to put it in

[psychospacecow]

They are affected by scratches. The effect just might not be readily apparent.

[Kosheh]

Dont ask me why this is here because i dont know what forum to put it in

Ummm, probably gaming discussion. It was right below this one

i have a luigis mansion disk and its really scratched up but when i play it NOT A SINGLE glitch missing model messed up texture or anything but with dvd disks just a few scratches and somewhere it will freeze i just dont get it!

Several small scratches won't do anything. If they're every which way and straight-lines on the disc, it won't affect playback either.

- Discs with circular scratches will skip, and it's hard to fix those scratches too.
- Nintendo disc games read backwards (reads from the middle and scans outward) and are relevant to that gen. so if it's scratches on the edge of the disc, you probably wouldn't notice until either the end of a game or during a random cutscene.
- Blu-ray discs have a protective coating that protects them from most light scratches. Taking a pair of keys to the bottom of a disc will ruin it just the same; once again, Nintendo games are backwards-reading Blu-ray discs just fyi

I have Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, and it's heavily scratched up. There's one huge gash around the middle of the disc that's circular in fashion but and it refuses to play past the first cutscene. It's...actually super frustrating.


..and do models even screw up when it comes to disc scratches? I'd assume some material just wouldn't...play.

[psychospacecow]

I've had ones where the models read the textures wrong or something like that. I've also had ones that cause certain cutscenes to crash the game.

[Vipershark]

Moved to Gaming Discussion.

[puggsoy]

The data on a game disc is all of the game's resources, usually all stored in separate files, bits here and there and wherever, and some compiled code that brings it all together. Scratches might corrupt some textures, models, audio, or a bit of the code. However the game only reads that part of the disk when it needs to, so until then it won't come across the scratch. I'm not sure about this but I don't think resources are stored in the order they're needed or anything either, so at the start of the game it could well be reading some data at both the outer and inner edge of the disk.

With a movie DVD, pretty much all of the disk is taken up with video data. So if you watch the movie from start to finish, it's gonna eventually come across the part with the scratch and it'll freeze up.

If you played your Luigi's Mansion from start to finish, discovered every single bonus and secret, completely 100%'d the game with that scratched disk, then you might eventually see or hear something screwed up. Obviously, if you were really unlucky you could have scratched a bit of data needed for it to boot up, and it would just crash on startup. However it looks like whatever part of data is affected (if any is at all) is probably just something used in a part of the game you haven't played through with your scratched disk.

..and do models even screw up when it comes to disc scratches? I'd assume some material just wouldn't...play.

It would depend what part of the model data the scratch corrupts. If it's the header or any other kind of stuff needed to load the model then it could crash the game, but if it's just vertex data then you'd get a messed up model.

[sky_queen3]

Maybe Gamecube games fair better as I've had 2 (second hand) copies of Tekken Tag Tournament for the PS2 not let me finish Bryan Fury's story mode, the game freezes up on the ending movie. (Unless it's an Australian/PAL thing...)

[MandL27]

Dont ask me why this is here because i dont know what forum to put it in

Ummm, probably gaming discussion. It was right below this one

i have a luigis mansion disk and its really scratched up but when i play it NOT A SINGLE glitch missing model messed up texture or anything but with dvd disks just a few scratches and somewhere it will freeze i just dont get it!                  

Several small scratches won't do anything. If they're every which way and straight-lines on the disc, it won't affect playback either.

- Discs with circular scratches will skip, and it's hard to fix those scratches too.
- Nintendo disc games read backwards (reads from the middle and scans outward) and are relevant to that gen. so if it's scratches on the edge of the disc, you probably wouldn't notice until either the end of a game or during a random cutscene.
- Blu-ray discs have a protective coating that protects them from most light scratches. Taking a pair of keys to the bottom of a disc will ruin it just the same; once again, Nintendo games are backwards-reading Blu-ray discs just fyi

I have Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, and it's heavily scratched up. There's one huge gash around the middle of the disc that's circular in fashion but and it refuses to play past the first cutscene. It's...actually super frustrating.


..and do models even screw up when it comes to disc scratches? I'd assume some material just wouldn't...play.

I think I once got a fingerprint or something on a Super Mario Galaxy 2 disc and it would refuse to boot up until I wiped the print off, so either that thing forward-read or was just really confused.

[Helmo]

That's why I back up all my games and just use discs for collection purposes.

[Kosheh]

- Nintendo disc games read backwards (reads from the middle and scans outward) and are relevant to that gen.

I think I once got a fingerprint or something on a Super Mario Galaxy 2 disc and it would refuse to boot up until I wiped the print off, so either that thing forward-read or was just really confused.

Actually, I was super sleepy that night. If they read backwards, it'd start from the outside and work its way in.

whoops. Discs normally read from the middle and work their way outward.




that's what I get for posting sleepy about nintendas!
(so, yeah, it'd totally make sense if it refused to boot btw)

That's why I back up all my games and just use discs for collection purposes.

"i back up my games and let the discs collect dust because i get fingerprints everywhere"


shoving the disc in the disc reader is so much fun though