Primal: first PS2 bump mapped game?

That's nonsense.

Anyways, I haven't seen any bumpmapping in Primal, but I haven't played through the whole game yet.

 

please clarify what you are saying here. I am aware of the murky texture issue on PS2.

I am also aware that for 'colorful' games texturing becomes a challenge ont he PS2 and most likely you will end up seeing the above problem.

again what's your point?

 

After playing it on rental for a week or so, I have to say the graphic effects were impressive in the game. Lots of neat little things going on almost all of the time. Some areas I actually thought there was some bumpmapping going on. I had to stop and look, pan, and rotate to examine it. It probably wasn't there, and as was mentioned earlier by Marc, it would likely have been just good use of specularity mapping. For example, some patches of snow on the ground didn't quite look like the rest of the snow. It just looked different for some reason. AFAIC, it might just as well have been real bumpmapping from the standpoint of casually passing through a level. It was visually convincing "effect", barring intense scrutiny.

Suffice to say, even though the action element of the game was a bit mediocre, there was often much neat scenery to look at along the way. That may or may not constitute a "fun" game to you, just as the Myst series has great appeal to some but not others. It's all a matter of what kind of game you are looking for.

Either way, a "bumpy" effect was accomplished in the end. That's all that should matter, not how it was done. People should not get so upset or threatened by whether or not the game contains bumpmapping as is claimed. It almost seems as if the delicate worlds of some will come shattering to the ground if they are ever left to acknowledge that yes, indeed, bumpmapping occured in a PS2 game. Thus you get this vehement denial and all sorts of rationalizations of how this could never, ever, ever happen whenever the slightest provocation that someone actually pulled it off comes up.

...and once again, it seems the goal posts have been moved. Not only is it just enough that bumpmapping appears in a PS2 game, now it must appear in conjunction with high resolution textures to be impressive. That of course, is followed with assessments that the textures in Primal are murky and unresolved, thus sealing the fate that any bumpmapping that is in the game, it is still unimpressive. On the contrary, the game looks quite good through and through. It's not the greatest, to be sure. However, it still is a decent looking game. If one cannot at least come to grips with that, then clearly they are just adamant about making judgements about a game (for one reason or agenda or another) before actually experiencing it. What's the point then?

 

Yeah BM should just die. If it's done right and not overdone than ok. Shrek for XB probably had the most BM in a game to date. It looked and played horrid. I like Sega's approach with high resolution detailed textures ala Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 and FZero GX. You really have to take a double take to distinguish if it's BM or not. Metroid Prime could have used BM but who cares? The freaking detail is still second to none imo. Then you have games like Halo and RS (also Halo2 and RS3) who seem to get BM just right.

BTW, I still say Maximo has the best PS2 textures imo.

 

Maximo is not bad, but I think Rygar, and especially SH3 are better in that regard.

 

PS2 could easily do embossed bump-mapping, even a Voodoo 2 could do that. it looks like s@#$ though :]

 

Anybody got some pix of some embossed bumpmapping that look like "s@#$"? I've always been curious what these alternative ways that evidently are unacceptable really look like.

 

here's a good explanation:
http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/bump/bumpmap.html

 

I was more interested in how bad these other ways look in practice, not so much a definition of what they are (if you posted that link for me, that is).

 

There are some example pictures at the bottom of the page, and a demo you can download and run to see yourself.

 

[sighs] I guess we won't be seeing anything of substance to support the claim posted here. What I was asking for was game pix. If none of these alternatives can be tied to a specific game, then how can we form a conclusion that they look like "s@#$"?

 

The snow in the hoth level of Rogue Leader is a good example of embossed maps done right.

 

to be fair tho, large terrains tend to benefit from emboss BM more so than others.

 

Again, I'm pretty positive BGA (on PS2) does use embossed BM.

 

marc:

yes ,but it was pre baked like all effects ,in what the called a "monster texture",sent in one single pass into GS.
(there was a paper at 2002 GDC,by Ezra Dreisbch, main BGA coder)

 

Whoa, I'd love to see that paper. Prebaked or not, it behaves just like bumpmapping should. You move the light around - hilite moves across. If he didn't say how it was done, I don't think there would be a way to know just by looking at it. I mean, if he found some really fast way to do it, more power to him.

 

Why the biased-ness against BM? Why should it die? Why should we stop loving BM? Is it because PS2 doesnt do it well, at all?

BM is getting all the attention because it makes a game looks better(when done right). It is not about how powerful BM maketh a console, but it is how cool BM maketh a game. We talketh BM because it maketh beautiful graphics.

Good BM + Hiquality textures >>> Hiquality textures.

You cannot dispute that.

Unless a console/PC/CGI-Renderer can replace the BM of games/GCIMovies with real geometry, BM will be here to stay.

 

I sincerly think that BM sucks 95% of the time.Most artists i know agree on this.

Marc , actually it's a slide.I don't know if it's safe to give it away,'cause i got it from devcon 2002 from inside sony dev mailing list.Maybe be Faf can tell more about that slide,and also disclosure of it.

 

Sure you can, its all about art style. BM would be totally out of place in stylized games like ZoE2/MGS2(3).. however, after much Xboxen playing, I'll also say that its sorely missed from games (racers) like GT3/4 (the track).

 

Actually BM would do wonders for the MGS engine and I'm hoping SK adds BM to MGSTS for GCN.

Just look at the BM'd character models in REmake and REZero. They look much better than the ones in MGS2/3.