Primal: first PS2 bump mapped game?

[PC-Engine]

That doesn't look like PSX textures to me

 

[Paul]

PSX detail is what IGN stated, not resolution. And those textures do lack detail. But than again what are you going to trust, a screenshot coming from the developers website with forced AA on it. OR the testimonials of people who played the game at E3 that say currently it isn't looking very hot.

It'll get better, but as of now it's embarassing.

 

[marconelly!]

Now that you posted that pic, it reminded me - they even managed to screw up that cool looking bluish/icy color pallette that original MGS had, and their Snake model just looks somehow 'skinny', more like a skeleton, compared to his MGS2 counterpart.

 

[PC-Engine]

PSX detail is what IGN stated, not resolution. And those textures do lack detail. But than again what are you going to trust, a screenshot coming from the developers website with forced AA on it. OR the testimonials of people who played the game at E3 that say currently it isn't looking very hot.

It'll get better, but as of now it's embarassing.

The texture detail in that pic looks fine to me. AA has nothing to do with the amount of texture detail.

Now that you posted that pic, it reminded me - they even managed to screw up that cool looking bluish/icy color pallette that original MGS had.

I don't think they screwd up. It's a design choice. It's a remake of MGS not an exact copy.

 

[Josiah]

Allright here we go...low-res texures, simple environment, and the polygon counts are not really impressive at all. Snake has a plainly visible angular silhouette. The cutscenes look good, but gameplay uses simpler low-polygon geometry. The fact is all games right now, across all platforms, are using "low-polygon" models for in-game graphics. This is not going to change until we see PS3/XB2/GC2 etc, current hardware simply does not have the power to render every crack and detail of a surface with literal geometry (hell, they couldn't even get his shoulders to look smooth).

*edit: clarification, this pic is from the PS2 MGS2

 

[PC-Engine]

THANK YOU!!!

 

[Paul]

AA has nothing to do with the amount of texture detail.

And when did I say it did? I'm proving a point that the game looks worse than it does in your screenshots from Konami with forced AA on them.

The texture detail in that pic looks fine to me.

Where is your evidence? Oh wait I forgot, your evidence doesn't support your claim, go figure. Evidence being impressions from gaming websites(IGN)

Oh and please Josiah, the game doesn't look THAT bad as shown in your poor quality screenshot. You can't even make out the bullet count in the gun in that pic that's how bad it is.

 

[PC-Engine]

AA has nothing to do with the amount of texture detail.

And when did I say it did? I'm proving a point that the game looks worse than it does in your screenshots from Konami with forced AA on them.

You said the evidence was from first impressions of major gaming websites, well IGN says the textures are not detailed. There's the evidence.

The game looks worse than the screenshots with regards to aliasing. It does not look worse with regards to texture detail because texture detail is independent of aliasing.

BTW IGN also said the textures looked the same as PSX

You think aliasing will cause the textures in that screenshot to turn into PSX textures

 

[Paul]

You don't get it, THE GAME looks worse than the screenshots your supplied. That WAS the point.

Aliasing degrades image quality correct? Or are we turning on AA in our video cards and losing frame rate for nothing.

Where did you get me not knowing texture detail has nothing to do with texture detail from this?

But than again what are you going to trust, a screenshot coming from the developers website with forced AA on it. OR the testimonials of people who played the game at E3 that say currently it isn't looking very hot.

Point: Who are we going to trust with how the game looks, the developers who put AA on the screenshots, or the people who actually played the gaem.

Comment about them putting the AA on was just that, they are trying to get the whole image to look better, wouldn't surprise me if they touched it up either.

 

[PC-Engine]

You don't get it, THE GAME looks worse than the screenshots your supplied. That WAS the point.

Aliasing degrades image quality correct? Or are we turning on AA in our video cards and losing frame rate for nothing.

Where did you get me not knowing texture detail has nothing to do with texture detail from this?

But than again what are you going to trust, a screenshot coming from the developers website with forced AA on it. OR the testimonials of people who played the game at E3 that say currently it isn't looking very hot.

Point: Who are we going to trust with how the game looks, the developers who put AA on the screenshots, or the people who actually played the gaem.

Comment about them putting the AA on was just that, they are trying to get the whole image to look better, wouldn't surprise me if they touched it up either.

You're basing your whole argument on aliasing making it look worse now?

First it was PSX textures, which got debunked pretty quick, now it has shifted to aliasing.

Hate to break it to you pal but those MGS3 screenshots posted a few weeks back were AA too

 

[Paul]

You're basing your whole argument on aliasing making it look worse now?

No? Why not try and read something?


You were the one who brought up me not knowing that AA had nothing to do with texture quality with this.

AA has nothing to do with the amount of texture detail.

Which infact, I NEVER stated that AA made the texture detail. You took what I said and turned it around.

First it was PSX textures, which got debunked pretty quick, now it has shifted to aliasing.

Uhmm no? The whole point was that WHO ARE YOU GOING TO TRUST WITH REGARDS OF HOW THE GAME LOOKS, THE DEVELOPER WHICH PUTS AA ON THE SCREENSHOTS, OR THE PERSON THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS THE GAME.

It's just an EXAMPLE of who you should trust.

Stop switching the argument around to fit said rhetoric.

Oh and your backpedling now. Watch.

You said with this quote that the game not looking like crap was because you had evidence of major gaming websites impressions right?

Go read the first impressions from the major gaming media sites...that's my answer.

Ok let's go and see what IGN has to say about the graphics huh?

The rest of the visual package still looks extremely early, however. Texture detail remains identical to the original PSX version, and, despite the added resolution boost

How is this so concidering that you said the textures were fine? You said that your answear would come from impressions from the major gaming media websites. Well, here it is. All outlayed right in front of you.

Let's look at some more!

Square edges are noticeable in many places, such as Snake's scuba mask, which appears very angular and rough. There's also a noticeable lack of anti-aliasing that should be corrected in the final build. And, like most early software, the game's framerate is clearly not yet optimized to its fullest, as slowdown runs thick through the entire playable demo. In its current form, Twin Snakes still has far to go before it reaches the quality of visuals that Silicon Knights prides itself upon, but we have no doubt that the team is hard at work behind closed doors to deliver Nintendo gamers exactly what we want.

So tell me, if your evidence of the game not looking pretty bad comes from major gaming websites, than why are they saying it looks like crap also? Do you even have evidence?

Hate to break it to you pal but those MGS3 screenshots posted a few weeks back were AA too

Only idiots don't know this, what was the point of bringing this up?

 

[zurich]

I bet PCEngine could argue with the devil himself that hell isn't a bad place.

 

[PC-Engine]

You're basing your whole argument on aliasing making it look worse now?

No? Why not try and read something?


You were the one who brought up me not knowing that AA had nothing to do with texture quality with this.

AA has nothing to do with the amount of texture detail.

Which infact, I NEVER stated that AA made the texture detail. You took what I said and turned it around.

First it was PSX textures, which got debunked pretty quick, now it has shifted to aliasing.

Uhmm no? The whole point was that WHO ARE YOU GOING TO TRUST WITH REGARDS OF HOW THE GAME LOOKS, THE DEVELOPER WHICH PUTS AA ON THE SCREENSHOTS, OR THE PERSON THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS THE GAME.

It's just an EXAMPLE of who you should trust.

Stop switching the argument around to fit said rhetoric.

Oh and your backpedling now. Watch.

You said with this quote that the game not looking like crap was because you had evidence of major gaming websites impressions right?

Go read the first impressions from the major gaming media sites...that's my answer.

Ok let's go and see what IGN has to say about the graphics huh?

The rest of the visual package still looks extremely early, however. Texture detail remains identical to the original PSX version, and, despite the added resolution boost

How is this so concidering that you said the textures were fine? You said that your answear would come from impressions from the major gaming media websites. Well, here it is. All outlayed right in front of you.

Let's look at some more!

Square edges are noticeable in many places, such as Snake's scuba mask, which appears very angular and rough. There's also a noticeable lack of anti-aliasing that should be corrected in the final build. And, like most early software, the game's framerate is clearly not yet optimized to its fullest, as slowdown runs thick through the entire playable demo. In its current form, Twin Snakes still has far to go before it reaches the quality of visuals that Silicon Knights prides itself upon, but we have no doubt that the team is hard at work behind closed doors to deliver Nintendo gamers exactly what we want.

So tell me, if your evidence of the game not looking pretty bad comes from major gaming websites, than why are they saying it looks like crap also? Do you even have evidence?

Hate to break it to you pal but those MGS3 screenshots posted a few weeks back were AA too

Only idiots don't know this, what was the point of bringing this up?

http://www.planetgamecube.com/specials.cfm?action=profile&id=454

Sounds like a good impression to me...

 

[Paul]

What was shown at E3(Which is what they discuss in this interview) was far from a MGS2 beater.

There are many problems as the IGN person has said is wrong with the game graphicly.

Will it improve? Yes. Was what was shown disapointing to say the least? I would say so.

My final words.

Besides, planetgamecube? I'm sure such a website isn't going to look at a new GC game in a negative aspect Especially with some head guy at silicon knigts I take it?

 

[PC-Engine]

Fair enough

The game won't be out until Xmas so there's a lot of time left to polish it up. I'm still hoping there will be some BM thrown in there

 

[chaphack]

MGSTS looks sharper with better textures imo. Maybe BM will be use on the metal floors or the snow. Dont think i should use BM, but pixel lighting on a whole. It does wonders to the graphics.

 

[marconelly!]

Allright here we go...low-res texures, simple environment, and the polygon counts are not really impressive at all. Snake has a plainly visible angular silhouette. The cutscenes look good, but gameplay uses simpler low-polygon geometry.

I'm not 100% sure if MGS2 uses different character or scene models for cutscenes. They start way too quickly for something that would have to be loaded in the memory completely at the beginning of each scene.

Besides, we can have screenshot wars all you want, it doesn't change the fact that MGSTS E3 build *was* looking worse than MGS2 in just about every way.

 

[Almasy]

I´d just like to point out something (sorry if it has already been posted), but SK seems to be dimishing heavily the atmosphere in MGS. The game was far darker than these screenshots, bluish and greenish tones were adundant, and the environments are just lacking "something". I can´t really explain it.

That´s not to say the game looks bad (because it doesn´t in the least).

 

[Fafalada]

You usually PAINT the displacements, so it is a texturing method most of the time. A few VFX studios have started to use highres laser scans to generate the maps though, like Weta for the LOTR creatures - but it is still a TEXTURE MAP and not geometry (as vertices, edges, faces) data.

By this logic, data storage would define type of rendering method.
Or to use a completely silly analogy, if I store all my geometry as a FP32 texture, all 3d rendering becomes a texture method... Even if I render wireframe ?

I see it as a form of geometry compression - and possibly one that could be widely used in the future realtime apps, if certain things about programmable hw come to be.

Uh..and I'm sure you realize that without knowing the limiting factor of the MGS2/3 engine, you don't magically double polygon rates when going to a lower framerate. GT4 can't run at 60 fps with voice support...why is that?

You double your available render time, there is nothing magical about that.
What you do with it, could vary a lot depending on what was the limiting factor before.
It's actually entirely possible to increase polygons per frame by much more then 2x, or barely increase it at all, depending on where the limits are.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

By this logic, data storage would define type of rendering method.
Or to use a completely silly analogy, if I store all my geometry as a FP32 texture, all 3d rendering becomes a texture method... Even if I render wireframe ?

Well, you're a programmer and I'm an artist

(One of the best laughs we had when I was working at a game dev company was when there was an argument on one of the meetings, between a coder and an artist. Or rather, it was a difference in opinion. Suddenly the artist got fed up, handed his notebook to the programmer, and told him to draw a bird on the paper... )

Anyway, I believe that displacement maps will be retouched by artists 90% of the time using traditional paint programs, even if they are generated from a high res model or point cloud data. I'm not sure if Weta does it but I can ask about if you're interested...

I see it as a form of geometry compression - and possibly one that could be widely used in the future realtime apps, if certain things about programmable hw come to be.

I agree, but it's still going to be more than just storing some geometry data. See, if you define it so, bump maps are only normal vector data stored as a texture, but it's usually painted as a 2D image... So I'd say it's not a clear case