Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2018 - 2020]

[Shifty Geezer]

Except a melody is so limited in scope you cannot help but tread on the toes of other musics. There are a very finite number of note combinations that are going to sound pleasant and there some styles that basically use the same music and put different lyrics on. One could have a computer create a bunch of random tracks (ignoring hundreds of years of already existing melodies) and claim copyright on all of them.

Well, this isn't the place to discuss whether music should or shouldn't be copyrightable. Up to recently, it wasn't an option. Maybe one day in the future it will be, and hundreds of old 8bit tracks are dug and used to sue new music. As far as Cyan's post goes, any musician could have used any game track for their music with impunity so it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear similar themes.

 

[Cyan]

Lots of examples of this

David Whittaker:

Zombie nation:

Cheers

in this particular case, it is even more impressive, it is basically the same tune, even the instruments sound alike. I wonder if they composed Zombie Nation with a Commodore 64, 'cos of the sound. xD (what a great story of bad crappy covers the Commodore 64 has....)

I found this on the Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Jones ):

Subtune 21, named "Star Dust", was used by the German producer team Zombie Nation in their song Kernkraft 400 without permission. Florian Senfter ("Splank!") later paid an undisclosed sum to David Whittaker for the use of the melody.

 

[Gubbi]

I found this on the Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Jones ):

Subtune 21, named "Star Dust", was used by the German producer team Zombie Nation in their song Kernkraft 400 without permission. Florian Senfter ("Splank!") later paid an undisclosed sum to David Whittaker for the use of the melody.

Remarkable considering the same Lazy Jones soundtrack has sections lifted directly from Nena's 99 Luftballons and Visage's Fade to Gray.

Cheers

 

[BRiT]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...e-history-of-water-rendering-in-classic-games

DF Retro: The history of water rendering in classic games
A refreshing antidote to the summer heatwave.

Fire up any recent game and if it features water in any capacity, chances are good that it'll look suitably refreshing. While actual fluid simulation remains computationally expensive, the visual representation of water has continued to evolve and impress for years. It's fair to say that water looks great in most game today but if you dive back into the early days of gaming, water is one of those things that has always been difficult to get right. In this DF Retro special - with more titles examined in-depth in the embedded videos on this page - I take a look at the standout water implementations across 15 years of classic gaming.

Now, something to keep in mind as we progress through the annals of virtual water is that there are basically three elements which make up the display of water in games. There's the visual element of the water surface including the animation and reflection of light, there are the wave patterns and finally, there's the rendering of underwater segments. Some games focus on just one while others attempt to simulate all aspects of water. Most older retro games typically focus on just one element.

Back in the 2D era, effectiveness of water rendering would vary from game to game, but the fundamental concept was based on the same technique: hardware registers would be manipulated during the frame refresh to change colours, effectively cutting the screen into two - above water and below. Beyond that, fascinating tricks were used to add authenticity to the effect. This scanline trick is used in Vice Project Doom - a late NES release, where reflections, ripples and indeed, the entire parallax background effect are displayed using mid-frame register writes.

Part 2 Video (August 5, 2018):

Part 1 Video (July 22, 2018):

​

 

[Mobius1aic]

To be honest, I think the videos were not as in depth as they could've been. But suffice to say they did a pretty good job showing off what could be done with each gen. I'm glad they got the nod to FEAR in there; I feel like I'm the only one who realized there were portions of the game with a 3D water surface simulation. That said, they sure do seem to love the Gamecube's examples of water rendering. I wonder if the Gekko's short pipeline despite poop SIMD played a part in making Wave Race Blue Storm a success?

 

[vipa899]

Which of the 6th gens could produce the best water though? Was it the cube?

 

[Mobius1aic]

Which of the 6th gens could produce the best water though? Was it the cube?

Going by the method used in Super Mario Sunshine, clearly it was a case of just plain 'ol good art and knowing how to exploit the system. "Best water" really is a loaded question. You're going to have games with better actual interactivity (Baldur's Gate, Ghosthunter) and others with better visuals (Wave Race Blue Storm). The Xbox really was the only system that could give you the best of both worlds with a brute programmable shader GPU for visuals and decent SIMD for simulation. I never realized water in Blinx looks pretty damn amazing!

I just really want to exclaim how hard water surface simulation was being pushed that era. Despite being much more capable, games of the next era (PS3 and 360) seemed a bit more conservative on the simulation side of things and going only for visual improvements, often with still a flat water surface.........

 

[vipa899]

The Xbox really was the only system that could give you the best of both worlds with a brute programmable shader GPU for visuals and decent SIMD for simulation. I never realized water in Blinx looks pretty damn amazing!

DF didnt mention Conker live and reloaded for the xbox, wasnt the water anything impressive there?

 

[Cyan]

Going by the method used in Super Mario Sunshine, clearly it was a case of just plain 'ol good art and knowing how to exploit the system. "Best water" really is a loaded question. You're going to have games with better actual interactivity (Baldur's Gate, Ghosthunter) and others with better visuals (Wave Race Blue Storm). The Xbox really was the only system that could give you the best of both worlds with a brute programmable shader GPU for visuals and decent SIMD for simulation. I never realized water in Blinx looks pretty damn amazing!

I just really want to exclaim how hard water surface simulation was being pushed that era. Despite being much more capable, games of the next era (PS3 and 360) seemed a bit more conservative on the simulation side of things and going only for visual improvements, often with still a flat water surface.........

glad to see Super Mario Sunshine was featured, among others (which water effects I actually discovered after watching the video). Best water in games, yes..., that's a bit of a complex and difficult choice.

When it comes to worst water, a few contenders are very hard to beat. One of them is Sonic Blast for the Master System. You can get lost under water in the first level, and the water in water covered areas looks exactly like the rest of the environment, they just simulate bubbles, but the water looks like air.... It can't be seen here 'cos the author of the video beats the 1st level of Sonic Blast pretty fast, and he doesn't explore the level, but anyways.. I think DF Retro showed this seedy effect in a different video, focused on Sonic games, iirc.

 

[Cyan]

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.

so looking forward to some of the interviews you are planning for the future.

In addition, imho, some interviews that could be soooooo interesting from a retrogaming perspective would be with developers -or fans- who created hacks for Arcade games like Street Fighter 2 like Street Fighter 2 Rainbow Edition and so on (Accelerator edition, Accelerator 2, Koryu...-this one is crazy)...

Or even Street Fighter 2 hacks for the SNES version, (which I have) some a thousand times crazier than their arcade counterparts like Street Fighter 2 Dragon Edition or Street Fighter 2 New Moves edition.

 

[Mobius1aic]

DF didnt mention Conker live and reloaded for the xbox, wasnt the water anything impressive there?

To be fair there are alot of games out there with pretty good water tech that didn't get mentioned. The Uncharted series did a pretty good job despite not always having the most technically advanced water. I think Resistance 2 deserved a mention for pushing the surface wave simulation to such a high degree of quality. They were hitting notable examples, especially from the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube gen because it was a landmark generation for water sim and rendering.

One thing I noticed in the video about the original PC Far Cry was the absence of quite a bit of world geometry missing from the reflection buffer. It's fully intact when running the game on Windows XP and there are fixes for post XP OSs.

 

[vipa899]

Just watched their SH2 PS2 vs xbox/pc retro, the FMV on ps2 was 60fps, xbox 30fps, but on ps2 it was interlaced, on xbox progressive, could it be thats why the framerate was halved? DF never went into this.

 

[BRiT]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...astered-the-return-of-the-six-degrees-shooter

Forsaken Remastered - the welcome return of the six-degrees shooter
What made the original a classic, plus full analysis of the new release.

If there's one gaming genre that embodies the spirit of late 90s PC gaming, it's the six degrees of freedom shooter. Dropped into a labyrinthian mass of tunnels, players are tasked with navigating complex spaces utilising a full six degrees of freedom while dealing with enemies, hunting for keys and finding exits. Interplay's Descent popularised the concept, but other brilliant games followed in its wake, including Probe Software's stunning Forsaken. And now, thanks to the efforts of Nightdive Studios, Samuel 'Kaiser' Villarreal (the developer behind the EX versions of Turok, Doom 64 and Powerslave) and other talented coders, Forsaken has returned.

The original game launched in 1998 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. It was developed in the UK for PC and PlayStation by Probe Entertainment while Iguana Entertainment UK handled the N64 version. Forsaken featured much the same gameplay formula as Descent, but thanks to its more advanced graphics engine, the visuals are less abstract than Descent, making it easier to navigate the complex structures. The action features a Doom-like quality to it with large numbers of enemies swarming the player at any point - and this mix of hectic action with fluid controls and puzzle solving feels great even today.

The good news is that now there's a fully official way to play the game. Forsaken Remastered by Nightdive Studios is basically a deluxe special edition. Every map from PlayStation 1 and PC is included along with all of the Nintendo 64 content too, repurposed to fit the flow of the original release. The end result is a singular whole, with one map also featuring a brand-new section designed just for this new version of the game. All told, you're looking at 32 maps in total.

The new remaster is available on PC and Xbox One, with full 4K60 support for the enhanced X console. We're told that dynamic resolution scaling is in place to maintain performance, but we couldn't find any drops in resolution, but this is an older game with different demands on the hardware. The game is mostly-single threaded, for instance, which places extra demand on a single CPU core. The menu is also fascinating for a console game. You can, for instance, toggle between different types of anti-aliasing, enable or disable ambient occlusion, enable motion blur and more! These seem to have little to no impact on performance, however, instead offering users a way to customise the experience. On the PC side, a few additional options are available including support for higher frame-rates, ultra-wide displays and three different rendering APIs - OpenGL, D3D11 and Vulkan.

 

[Nesh]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...astered-the-return-of-the-six-degrees-shooter

Forsaken Remastered - the welcome return of the six-degrees shooter
What made the original a classic, plus full analysis of the new release.

If there's one gaming genre that embodies the spirit of late 90s PC gaming, it's the six degrees of freedom shooter. Dropped into a labyrinthian mass of tunnels, players are tasked with navigating complex spaces utilising a full six degrees of freedom while dealing with enemies, hunting for keys and finding exits. Interplay's Descent popularised the concept, but other brilliant games followed in its wake, including Probe Software's stunning Forsaken. And now, thanks to the efforts of Nightdive Studios, Samuel 'Kaiser' Villarreal (the developer behind the EX versions of Turok, Doom 64 and Powerslave) and other talented coders, Forsaken has returned.

The original game launched in 1998 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation and Nintendo 64. It was developed in the UK for PC and PlayStation by Probe Entertainment while Iguana Entertainment UK handled the N64 version. Forsaken featured much the same gameplay formula as Descent, but thanks to its more advanced graphics engine, the visuals are less abstract than Descent, making it easier to navigate the complex structures. The action features a Doom-like quality to it with large numbers of enemies swarming the player at any point - and this mix of hectic action with fluid controls and puzzle solving feels great even today.

The good news is that now there's a fully official way to play the game. Forsaken Remastered by Nightdive Studios is basically a deluxe special edition. Every map from PlayStation 1 and PC is included along with all of the Nintendo 64 content too, repurposed to fit the flow of the original release. The end result is a singular whole, with one map also featuring a brand-new section designed just for this new version of the game. All told, you're looking at 32 maps in total.

The new remaster is available on PC and Xbox One, with full 4K60 support for the enhanced X console. We're told that dynamic resolution scaling is in place to maintain performance, but we couldn't find any drops in resolution, but this is an older game with different demands on the hardware. The game is mostly-single threaded, for instance, which places extra demand on a single CPU core. The menu is also fascinating for a console game. You can, for instance, toggle between different types of anti-aliasing, enable or disable ambient occlusion, enable motion blur and more! These seem to have little to no impact on performance, however, instead offering users a way to customise the experience. On the PC side, a few additional options are available including support for higher frame-rates, ultra-wide displays and three different rendering APIs - OpenGL, D3D11 and Vulkan.

The PS1 version was super impressive. It looked high res, was super smooth and I dare say it I believe looked better than the N64 version. Texture detail in particular.

 

[Mobius1aic]

The PS1 version was super impressive. It looked high res, was super smooth and I dare say it I believe looked better than the N64 version. Texture detail in particular.

\

I've never played Forsaken but it certainly looks like a well crafted game.

Thinking back on the PS1, I always tend to look down upon it for it's faults, but when I see games in motion, I become impressed again with what it pulled off for it's time. I would choose the higher framerate of the PS1 version versus the rebuilt N64 version. Being a '98 game, I'm sorta surprised it didn't get a Dreamcast port for the '99 US launch, but release cadences was so fast back then, Acclaim probably was too busy developing other games.

 

[Karamazov]

they should do a DF retro about the atari lynx, it was an amazing piece of hardware with some impressive games at the time.

 

[vipa899]

Was comparing some games today on PS2/xbox, and noticed again that for example TS Future Perfect on Xbox the textures/view in the distance is kind of blurry, on PS2 its much more sharp. Its the same with SSX games, most games i think. Not sure if its been taken up here before, but why is this?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Have you an example? PS2 had zero texture filtering, so textures were 'sharp', but also shimmered. XB had working mip-mapping but no anisotropic filtering so textures would blur out notably on textures at a significant angle to the camera. So for roads, PS2 would look sharper than XB, because of a hardware bug, but you also had the disaster of FFX grass, whcih cost the NHS £5.2 billion in corrective eye surgery for those of us who fell victim. Probably.

Is that what you're seeing?

 

[vipa899]

Not sure, i think so. For example in SSX, the course in the distance on xbox is kinda blurry, getting sharp upon getting closer. Going to the Xbox version from PS2, its very notice-able.
Another example is in Future Perfect, on xbox, theres a tiled floor, it seems that if the floor isnt wholly rendered yet, on PS2 on the exact same distnance the floor is rendered.
Its not a fail of the xbox or something, as ive tested with 4 of them, and between 2 PS2's. All my xboxes do this Same TV, same type of cables tested. Played from HDD and original DVD.

What your describing seems to be it, but gotta admit i like the PS2's approach more in most cases.
Its kinda hard to take screenshots, gotta look into that

Edit: I dunno if its the same effect as VIce City on both, but the whole image on xbox is more blurry, whilst on PS2 its more sharp. But thats the whole image, not just distance views getting sharper upon getting close.

The fence in the distance, or actually the whole image seems blurry in the distance, but getting sharp upon closing in. On PS2 this same distance view is 'sharp'.

 

[vipa899]

https://imgur.com/a/2Xws3x9

Some examples taken with a phone but you get the idea. Its like this in many games, if not all. Closing in on the floor on xbox, the floor is 'sharpened'.

https://imgur.com/yTWtH0n