my sc2 controversial impressions

[Reznor007]

Well, the defending of DC came right after the bashing. Not too suprising really.

I'm pretty unimpressed by SCII, especially after the fluidity of DoA3 and its multi-tiered levels. It's a step backwards IMO. They basically repackaged a 1999 game with slightly enhanced visuals and added a few goofy characters. The music isn't as good either.

DoA3 and VF4 are the only really good fighters to come out in the last 3 years.

I would put MKA ahead of DoA3, not in the graphics department, but in gameplay.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I wouldn't. Not by a long shot. Most people who hate DoA3 don't know how to play it. Even Tao Feng is better than MKA IMO.

 

[Lazy8s]

Has anyone ever tried to interpolate between sprite animations? For instance, you could build a Street Fighter out of separate sprites for limbs and such, and then have the computer calculate the approximate drawing shape of certain frames with an algorithm that told it what the shape should generally look like. Now I know that will all look terribly misshapen and disjointed if not handled with very tightly-placed keypoint frames and a very smart algorithm, but I was wondering if it has been tried (perhaps on simple repetitive sprite animations like the movement of an arm or the ruffling of clothing edges in the wind)?

 

[Fafalada]

Sprites should be able to animate at 60fps on a few consoles. Not that you'd want to, since all you'd see is a blur.

I'm not sure I follow here... by this logic, we should only see blur in 3d characters too...?
Either way, hw has nothing to do with the issue.
It's very much a production cost problem, the art asset costs for something like this would be obscene - and a 2d game isn't gonna have FFX2 budget behind it to afford them.

 

[London Geezer]

Sprites should be able to animate at 60fps on a few consoles. Not that you'd want to, since all you'd see is a blur.

I'm not sure I follow here... by this logic, we should only see blur in 3d characters too...?
Either way, hw has nothing to do with the issue.
It's very much a production cost problem, the art asset costs for something like this would be obscene - and a 2d game isn't gonna have FFX2 budget behind it to afford them.

yeah can u imagine drawing all those sprites by hand.......

i really don't see what would be wrong in using very detailed hi poly cel shaded characters and backgrounds for a 2D fighter....

i mean, i'm currently playing that beauty that is Guilty Gear X2 and i think it could be pretty feasible with current hardware... the game is still 2D but the structure is 3D cell-shaded... it would look pretty much the same but move sooooooooo smoothly...

i would simply LOVE to see a Guilty Gear X ON STEROIDS.... with the polygon budjet current consoles have, u could do SOOOOO much in terms of special effects and character animations in a Guilty Gear kind of game....

 

[Tagrineth]

Sprites should be able to animate at 60fps on a few consoles. Not that you'd want to, since all you'd see is a blur.

I'm not sure I follow here... by this logic, we should only see blur in 3d characters too...?
Either way, hw has nothing to do with the issue.
It's very much a production cost problem, the art asset costs for something like this would be obscene - and a 2d game isn't gonna have FFX2 budget behind it to afford them.

I say it would be a blur because at 60fps, you're changing the sprite every 60th of a second, which is very fast.

Shifting a pixel every 60th of a second would make for very fast scrolling on a low-res display. Of course, the higher your res the slower a fixed scroll rate will be...

But anyway, wrt sprites at 60fps, I'm ignoring repeated frames which would make 60fps perfect for some situations.

 

[Fafalada]

Shifting a pixel every 60th of a second would make for very fast scrolling on a low-res display. Of course, the higher your res the slower a fixed scroll rate will be...

Well I was more talking about animation frames, not sprite movement.
And obviously we're talking about sprites a "little" bigger then what was the norm in 16bit days...
Although now that you mentioned it... for backgrounds I think you could do some CRT trickery for subpixel scrolling (besides our current console rasterizers do have subpixel accuracy of their own)

 

[phat]

Shifting a pixel every 60th of a second would make for very fast scrolling on a low-res display. Of course, the higher your res the slower a fixed scroll rate will be...

That's really not all that fast. Back in the day, 8-bit games routinely move sprites one pixel every 1/60 of a second. Even on their relatively small 320x200 displays, it would take a sprite more than 5 seconds to cross the width of the screen at that rate.

 

[RaolinDarksbane]

You "might" be able to do a 60 fps sprite-based 2D fighting game assuming you use lower resolution for the characters(not like the 640x480 on GGXX). I am saying this because the PS2 and the GC has very small VRAM to store all those frames.

 

[TTP]

I am saying this because the PS2 and the GC has very small VRAM to store all those frames.

I don't think animations frames are stored in VRAM.

 

[Fafalada]

(not like the 640x480 on GGXX)

I sincerely hope that's refering to screen resolution.

You "might" be able to do a 60 fps sprite-based 2D fighting game assuming you use lower resolution for the characters. I am saying this because the PS2 and the GC has very small VRAM to store all those frames.

Why would you need VRam at all? CPU is plenty fast enough to draw the sprites on its own, if you're so afraid that uploading to VRam is so horribly slow it can't handle bandwith from two its bitsy sprites per frame.

Meanwhile, games did full screen animation updates from 1x speed optical drives 8 years ago, still with enough time to spare to draw 3d stuff on top.

Anyway, a backreference to the cost. If you did a fighting game with character sprites of actual 640x480 in size, animated at 60hz, I wouldn't be surprised if the production costs exceeded even the most expensive Disney animated movie productions.

 

[London Geezer]

(not like the 640x480 on GGXX)

I sincerely hope that's refering to screen resolution.

You "might" be able to do a 60 fps sprite-based 2D fighting game assuming you use lower resolution for the characters. I am saying this because the PS2 and the GC has very small VRAM to store all those frames.

Why would you need VRam at all? CPU is plenty fast enough to draw the sprites on its own, if you're so afraid that uploading to VRam is so horribly slow it can't handle bandwith from two its bitsy sprites per frame.

Meanwhile, games did full screen animation updates from 1x speed optical drives 8 years ago, still with enough time to spare to draw 3d stuff on top.

Anyway, a backreference to the cost. If you did a fighting game with character sprites of actual 640x480 in size, animated at 60hz, I wouldn't be surprised if the production costs exceeded even the most expensive Disney animated movie productions.

SO, why is no one bothering making a 2D game to really exploit this generation of Hardware? i mean, Guilty Gear X2 is already gorgeous to look at, but i'm SURE they could add so much in terms of IQ, particles, special effects and such... they have the animations and engine right, they should add to that in my opinion.. or maybe the budget would be too high for those kind of games... it's such a shame, havent had so much fun with a game for quite a while

 

[jvd]

london boy . i think its because everyone wnats the newest 3d games . The masses seemed to stop caring about game play in the 32bit age and started caring about graphics. 2d graphics aren't 'cool' anymore .

 

[Tagrineth]

Castlevania for PS2 will be 2D ^_^

Which is especially good because the 3D Castlevanias on N64 sucked...

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Castlevania for PS2 will be 2D ^_^

Which is especially good because the 3D Castlevanias on N64 sucked...

Correction: 2,5D

 

[London Geezer]

london boy . i think its because everyone wnats the newest 3d games . The masses seemed to stop caring about game play in the 32bit age and started caring about graphics. 2d graphics aren't 'cool' anymore .

MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY....

the thing is, with today's hardware, u could make a 2D game look pretty cool regardless of its bidimensional structure....

loads of proper special effects would certainly help, i'm not talking about MvsC2 super duper Hadoken (SP?), i'm talking about proper particle based special effects....

imagination guys, imagination....

 

[Nick Laslett]

Is there any chance of getting this thread back on topic?

I'm actually interested to know more about DarkBlu's points.

Does every version of SCII suffer from this animation flaw?

Will someone corroborate the flaw is present on the Xbox? (we only have the one post at the moment.)

Why is the flaw present, are there any other theories?

How noticable is this, will a casual player see it?

 

[maskrider]

Is there any chance of getting this thread back on topic?

I'm actually interested to know more about DarkBlu's points.

Does every version of SCII suffer from this animation flaw?

Will someone corroborate the flaw is present on the Xbox? (we only have the one post at the moment.)

Why is the flaw present, are there any other theories?

How noticable is this, will a casual player see it?

I didn't notice the problems after completed 2 versions (PS2 and X-BOX, many hours were spent, ha ha), still playing the GC version (Link is a good fighter).

Didn't notice any difference or problem in the animation.

 

[jvd]

Is there any chance of getting this thread back on topic?

I'm actually interested to know more about DarkBlu's points.

Does every version of SCII suffer from this animation flaw?

Will someone corroborate the flaw is present on the Xbox? (we only have the one post at the moment.)

Why is the flaw present, are there any other theories?

How noticable is this, will a casual player see it?

I don't notice the problems after completed 2 versions (PS2 and X-BOX, many hours were spent, ha ha), still playing the GC version (Link is a good fighter).

Didn't notice any difference or problem in the animation.

get into some crazy heavy fighting for a few seconds and it seems that they don't move right on the gamecube and xbox . The xbox seems to get worse with the higher res where as progressive scan on the gamecube makes it seem to go away. I dunno it may just be me but it was my buddy that pointed it out .

 

[marconelly!]

I think that would be an inconsistent framerate (or was it slowdowns) that reviewers noted are existing in all three versions.