Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2018 - 2020]

[JLinneman]

Is it DF being towards Sony products or didnt they do any research regarding baldurs gate on the 6th gens? They just assumed things there it seems

No, this is a game I've looked closely at in the past. There are a lot of subtle differences between the three versions. They used some crazy frame-buffer technique to effectively "super-sample" the image on PS2. I need to refresh myself on how it works but it's effectively double-width in terms of resolution. When you see it on a CRT, it's striking just how clean it is - almost pre-rendered looking. The Xbox and GC versions, however, are more in line with standard games for those platforms.

I think the differences come down to the fact that it was engineered in a very specific way for PS2 potentially making it more difficult to transition to other platforms. It's one of the very few PS2 games that has an edge over an Xbox version for this reason. If Xbox had been the lead platform, they likely would have taken an entirely different approach to water rendering that is better suited to the Xbox. I think they did a better job porting DA to the Xbox than Konami did porting Metal Gear Solid 2, though, as it mostly retains the same look with very minor changes. It's a solid port.

I'd really love to chat with Ezra someday, though. He was lead programmer on this project and responsible for a lot of the insane work Lobotomy did on Saturn and PS1 (not to mention that N64 driving game).

 

[vipa899]

The water could have been done on og xbox, but the 2x SSAA/higher res?

 

[JLinneman]

The water could have been done on og xbox, but the 2x SSAA/higher res?

I really can't say what was possible or not. I wish we could discuss this with the game's developers. I'd love to know the circumstances around the ports - how many people worked on them, how much time did they have etc. I know the PS2 game still uses field rendering so its front buffer is 640x224, I think, while the back buffer is 1280 pixels wide. Again, I'm not entirely sure how it's achieved off the top of my head but it's really effective in practice. I think it honestly offers the best image quality on the PlayStation 2 and easily one of the best of the generation. I assumed the overhead nature of the game and distant camera forced them to think about how to render small objects cleanly - the typical flickery field-rendered look of many early PS2 games would have destroyed the artwork in DA.

 

[vipa899]

Played the game on both PS2 and Xbox, though not side by side, im not really notecing a defference in resolution, maybe placebo effect dont know if any. On a CRT TV it probally has a better effect, too bad i dont own any since many years ago.
About how its achieved its probally the standard 'ps2 framebuffer' answer you get to see here on beyond3d

Wonder if devs could have used the tech to give all PS2 games a 'resolution boost'? Xbox version of dark alliance probally couldnt use framebuffer but some other way to achieve the higher resolution?

I wish we could discuss this with the game's developers.

Yeah, but think its many years ago the 6th gen was active... cant expect active devs and such discussing things like that. Many intresting discussions are somewhere on this forum, you just need to find hem

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'd really love to chat with Ezra someday, though. He was lead programmer on this project and responsible for a lot of the insane work Lobotomy did on Saturn and PS1 (not to mention that N64 driving game).

I read an article somewhere on the net that described the development process of BDGA, how it was such a small team and Ezra basically wrote the engine himself. We also talked about it a bit with the devs on the old Snowblind Studios forum before they were taken over by WB, though Ezra wasn't there. The IQ was exactly because of what you said - the small details needing to be visible.

CON improved considerably on the tech. The terrible glitching of the textures and blacked-out levels came by surprise to the devs and was a result of the dual-layer DVD affecting seek times. It never happened during development. Justice League Heroes was SB's last use of the tech in that style game - compare that game on the different consoles to see how far it was progressed. I don't think that game had any water though.

 

[vipa899]

From Wikipedia

''GameSpy reviewed the Xbox and GameCube versions. Raymond Padilla scored the Xbox version 4 out of 5, writing "With the Xbox, the developers had a significantly more powerful tool to retell the story of Dark Alliance. Unfortunately, they didn't take advantage of it.''

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate:_Dark_Alliance

 

[Cyan]

I love these "Unlikely Heroes". Games where you wouldn't expect to have great tech, and yet, there is these one or two bits that are surprisingly good. We already have a thread for that don't we? Kung fu Panda definetly is a worthy participant for that one!

which thread is the one you mention? I can't figure it out.

Kung Fu Panda water looks real, 'cos of how it renders underwater rendering of objects that are, or also can be, under the water...earth cods and dregs, and lotus (or are those water lilies?).

A water level of the game played at 4k has to be a sight to behold.

Zelda Wind Waker also has good water effects, so does my Xbox One launch game AC IV Black Flag. Another Xbox One launch game I have, BF4, has one of the worst waters ever, it looks like vaseline.

Bioshock water is pretty neat, too.

Skyrim (vanilla) has okay water, although the flow of the currents sometimes seems to go against the laws of physics. This can be seen in the bridge near the farms outside of Whiterun. Or in the road to Markarth, in a place where there is tundra and a little fall. The current in the river flows against the direction of the waterfall. It looks odd.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Haven't watched the whole vid. Do they mention From Dust's water? Only game I know of that had a physical simulation.

 

[milk]

Kung Fu Panda water looks real, 'cos of how it renders underwater rendering of objects that are, or also can be, under the water...earth cods and dregs, and lotus (or are those water lilies?).

I think its not just that. What impressed me most was the look of the wave patterns. They seem to have nailed a very plausible recreation of the look and movement of an actual lake. Come to think of it, it must be very non-trivial to figure out actual "phisically based" values for the highly aproximated typical height-map based flyid surface simulation in games. To get the right speed of propagation, amplitude, freequency etc...

 

[Cyan]

I think its not just that. What impressed me most was the look of the wave patterns. They seem to have nailed a very plausible recreation of the look and movement of an actual lake. Come to think of it, it must be very non-trivial to figure out actual "phisically based" values for the highly aproximated typical height-map based flyid surface simulation in games. To get the right speed of propagation, amplitude, freequency etc...

Kung Fu Panda the almighty.

Another game that I remember had great water -at the time- is Expendable, which was bundled with my Matrox G400 -I still have it-. The supports enviromental bump mapping, the biggest feature of the Matrox G400 -along with 32 bits color, compared to my Voodoo 3 at the time, it made a BIG difference).

Imho, Expendable sucks but the water in it looked sooooo good thanks to the EMBM.

 

[see colon]

Imho, Expendable sucks but the water in it looked sooooo good thanks to the EMBM.

Expendable is a great game with a terrible control scheme.

 

[Cyan]

back into songs... yesterday one of my colleagues' (and a retrogaming geek) mouth started to froth when he began to talk about one of my videogame music idols, Yuzo Koshiro. He called him a fraud, a plagiarist. He was ruthless.

So I began to search for info, and found this... The alleged inspirations of Yuzo Koshiro to compose his famous music. (there are more)

 

[Cyan]

but then...others plagiarised Yuzo Koshiro.

Yuzo Koshiro composed the melody of the Bridge Zone stage of Sonic The Hedgehog for Master System and Game Gear. And...6 years later, Janet Jackson published her successful song Together Again. Why didn't Sega report her?

original (50 seconds clip)

Janet Jackson (17 seconds clip)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

1) You can't copyright a melody. Lyrics are copyright and anyone singing your words has to get permission, but anyone can play the tune without paying a thing. This drives musicians nuts but presently they aren't legally protected.
2) There are loads of repeated themes in music. That Sonic section is a classic chord progression that's as likely coincidental as plagiarism.

 

[Theeoo]

Is that true? One example I can think of right now is Huey Lewis suing Ray Parker Jnr for the similarity of the GB theme tune to one of his songs.

 

[Gubbi]

Lots of examples of this

David Whittaker:

Zombie nation:

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Quick Google.
https://www.laweekly.com/music/you-still-cant-copyright-a-riff-and-thats-a-good-thing-7071329

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Quick Google.
https://www.laweekly.com/music/you-still-cant-copyright-a-riff-and-thats-a-good-thing-7071329

And yet the Blurred Lines case, found fault and illegality in 2015 and was upheld by an appeal court this year, disagree. Lawyers are often vocal about what the law says but it's their interpretation and this is all court cases are - lawyers discussing/arguing interpretation of ambiguities in the law and how best to interpret them in any given circumstance.

Yet two precedents stand - at least in the US.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There was a BBC documentary a few years ago talking about copyright and many musicians were there saying how they couldn't get copyright and it pissed them off. You can hear direct lifting of riffs in 'derivative works' too. A judge has been very critical of the ruling -

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide....inge-on-marvin-gaye-song-rules-appeals-court/

US Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen strongly objected to the ruling, however, arguing that the Marvin Gaye Estate was able to “accomplish what no one has before: copyright a musical style.”

So this is the first and only case. You can't otherwise 'steal' a musical style. Or, another way to think of it, you can legally steal another musical idea.

Listening to those two tracks, I've no idea what copyright infringement has taken place. They're not even that similar. Latin music is going to take a hammering if this forms precedent because they all sound the same! And anyone following a standard 12 bar blues progression is going to be victim to the song that came before it.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Because nobody managed to make a compelling argument in court before doesn't negate what is now two precedent-setting rulings. This is how legal precedents work. If breakthrough legal precedents over the last century have taught us anything, it's that once a precedent is on the statute that similar cases are likely to proliferate.

It wasn't possible to copyright source code until it was tested and accepted in courts and now it's the norm. If you can copyright a style, you can certainly copyright a melody which is a much clearer test than Blurred Lines.