Silent hill 3 WTF!!!

[marconelly!]

The highest poly in-game character in SH2 was just over 30,000 tris (the end game demon) and had both bones and morphs (for facial animation and moving hair)

*SPOILER*

You mean the very last demon you fight in the game? The one Maria transforms into?

*END SPOLIER

If so, I don't remember it had any moving hair...

so the high res screen shots could be off another version (like PC....)

Or, way more likely, they could be from the PS2 devkits. It wouldn't be a first time konami did that (ZOE2) That is not to say there won't be other versions coming, but it's highly unlikely they are co-developed (Konami staff even denied it several times)

 

[Fafalada]

Devkits don't have any more capability to render highres then a standard PS2 does.

Of course, just for purpose of screenshots, you can ignore the framerate and do a nice hi-res render in multiple passes.

 

[chaphack]

I am wary of those hires PS2 screens.....

I just got ZOE2(it is good, but short...) and well, it is not as sharp and clean as those old screens. Image quality looks very much like any 480i PS2 games on big screen TV. ie not too good.

I think PS2 developers should keep to getting normal 640x448 screens, without any photoshop FSAA. A better representation of a PS2 game. You know that hires and FSAA does wonder on the graphics wow impact.

 

[marconelly!]

Well, name me ONE game on any platform that lived up to those hi-res screens completely, because I can't think of any.

ZOE2 has very filtered output, no visible flicker of any kind and overall looks awesome in the image quality department, as much as it can be on normal TV screens. The overall impression from it's output is about the same as from those screens because you don't get to study the static picture but watch the game in motion. Same complints were for DOA3, I gave them this same answer and I still stand by it.

 

[chaphack]

I know, that is why i think console game developers should stick to using *real* screens. If you look close up at ZOE2, you can see some ugly pixels, made worse on larger TVs without progressive scan. Very much different from the pixel smooth screens KCE released.

 

[marconelly!]

Well, I only have 20" TV so it all looks neat and tight.

When the 1080i becomes norm next gen (and when I become richer!) I'll buy something bigger

 

[chaphack]

well marc, what i meant was, for you to look close up to your 20" TV with ZOE2, and try to extrapolate it. That is what others, with larger TV, experienced with PS2 image. Something like that.

Pixels pixels shinning brightly.

 

[TTP]

Do you ave a 4000" TV chap?

 

[marconelly!]

Well, ZOE2 has as good image quality as one can expect from an interlaced game that uses full frame buffers (no flicker, it's filtered). As far as PS2 games go, I think it's on par or even better than MGS2. I have tried number of Xbox games on this same TV, and they don't look any better in that regard. You can always tell where the pixels are, no matter what, if you try really hard.

Games simply don't look well with big screen interlaced TVs in general, there's little that can be done about it, I guess.

 

[chaphack]

Do you ave a 4000" TV chap?

i wished!

 

[Grall]

How do you more knowledgeable dudes think Konami makes this game look so good, regarding texture resolution etc?

Do they do a lot of decals/multitexturing perhaps, or do they do like, a hires base 8-bit greyscale luminance map with a lower-res color map on top perhaps?

Just have to say this game looks friggin awesome, I can't wait until I can pop that disc into my PS2!

I even have that pic with the decrepid-looking old buildings/fog as windows background!


*G*

 

[London Geezer]

The highest poly in-game character in SH2 was just over 30,000 tris (the end game demon) and had both bones and morphs (for facial animation and moving hair)

*SPOILER*

You mean the very last demon you fight in the game? The one Maria transforms into?

*END SPOLIER

are we sure that's the one we're talking about here???
i cant really remember, someone should post a pic, but i can't recall it being extremely detailed or anything..... but i've got this hole in my brain, i really can't remember the model.....

 

[Fafalada]

I know, that is why i think console game developers should stick to using *real* screens

If you can make all devs follow that rule at the same time, it might work. But as long as at least a few are doing it, others can only follow suit if they don't want to be left behind - PR works that way.

How do you more knowledgeable dudes think Konami makes this game look so good, regarding texture resolution etc?

When you can throw say, 100mb worth of textures towards two characters and a 4x4meter room, it's not exactly difficult to make it look higher res then the same texture budget spanned over a 6x6kilometer city stage.

Do they do a lot of decals/multitexturing perhaps, or do they do like, a hires base 8-bit greyscale luminance map with a lower-res color map on top perhaps?

Luminance compression works pretty much perfect with just 4bit luminance maps, and still looks very good with 2bit ones too. The drawback is that textures compressed that way can't really be mipmapped in any reasonable way, so it limits what you can use them for.
Which goes back to previous point again - in games with mostly small interiors it's far more usable then something bigger outdoor.
Although I wouldn't know if they actually use it, there's no visual clue you could use to figure that out.

 

[Grall]

Faf,

I'm sure you're right regarding the texturing of a small room, but this outdoors scene, it is a lot bigger than 4x4 meters! Granted, the ground is a tiled texture and so is the fence on the left, but the buildings don't seem to have any repeating textures at all... extremely impressive. Though I suppose this game does run at 30fps, which gives it a greater texturing budget than one running at 60...

And why is luminance mapping hard to mipmap? If both intensity and color maps are shrunk by an equal amount per mip level, shouldn't it look good anyway?


*G*

 

[Fafalada]

I'm sure you're right regarding the texturing of a small room, but this outdoors scene, it is a lot bigger than 4x4 meters! Granted, the ground is a tiled texture and so is the fence on the left, but the buildings don't seem to have any repeating textures at all... extremely impressive. Though I suppose this game does run at 30fps, which gives it a greater texturing budget than one running at 60...

Well, personally I don't think a PS2 game should ever really have problems with per frame texture budget, but that's just IMO. People tend to forget that 32mb of main memory isn't all that much though. Anyway, SH comes with a bonus of short draw distance, so it should make that question even more a moot point.
As for total budget, as most adventure games, when you have the benefit of "area loads" , doesn't matter much if they are outdoor, you effectivelly have a lot more memory to play with then games of type that can't do that.

And why is luminance mapping hard to mipmap? If both intensity and color maps are shrunk by an equal amount per mip level, shouldn't it look good anyway?

For one, mipmapping paletted texture with any kind of filter will reduce number of colors available per mipmap, which is highly undesirable with say... 2bit luminance maps.
Also, color map is typically at least 4-8 times smaller in each dimension. That means that when your luminance mipmap is 64x64, your color map would already be 1x1...
There's other issues too, but it'd take too long to go through all that. In the end it just isn't usable as a general approach, but it comes handy for things that don't really need mipmaps. It's really nice for skymaps for instance...

 

[DeanoC]

The highest poly in-game character in SH2 was just over 30,000 tris (the end game demon) and had both bones and morphs (for facial animation and moving hair)

*SPOILER*

You mean the very last demon you fight in the game? The one Maria transforms into?

*END SPOLIER

If so, I don't remember it had any moving hair...

so the high res screen shots could be off another version (like PC....)

Or, way more likely, they could be from the PS2 devkits. It wouldn't be a first time konami did that (ZOE2) That is not to say there won't be other versions coming, but it's highly unlikely they are co-developed (Konami staff even denied it several times)

*SPOILER*
Not the demon but the Mary pre-transform (its not the same model as the other Mary's). The last Mary/Maria (multiple ending so you don't always get Mary) is known as the end-game demon, you have to excuse me, in that I often use the internal SH2 terms. Ask me about Sea Cucumber's and how they are vital to SH2

The really best model in SH2 is end-game Mary (pre-transform Demon and bedside cutscene). The attenuation to detail is amazing, hair, eyes, figure nails, even things like for folds in her skirt and top.

*END SPOLIER

It was trying to give a subtle hint about there probably are non-PS2 versions of SH3.... Trust me on this I almost worked on SH3PC....

I'm not in touch with Konami these days so things may have changed but as of 6 months ago....

 

[marconelly!]

As for total budget, as most adventure games, when you have the benefit of "area loads"

That's another thing I was going to ask you. Load times in SH2 were really short between the rooms: 3, 4, 5 seconds or so. What do you think it loads during that time? It obviously doesn't replace the whole 32MBs of memory...

It was trying to give a subtle hint about there probably are non-PS2 versions of SH3

I thought the game might be released one day on PC, much like SH2 did (after all, SH3 trailer was on the SH2 PC disk) but the screens released so far are all obviously from the PS2 version. For example, you can spot vertex lighting in places, which PC version of SH2 didn't have. Konami often releases high res screens of their PS2 games, that is nothing new. What really interests me is if there is going to be an Xbox version, especially after all the claims from Konami that they will not develop any more for it (in Japan, that is). I'd hate to buy a game that comes out sooner, only to find out few months later that the version for Xbox is coming, and will have additional scenarios or something like that.

 

[Squeak]

Well, personally I don't think a PS2 game should ever really have problems with per frame texture budget, but that's just IMO. People tend to forget that 32mb of main memory isn't all that much though

But GC and even DC seems to do a lot better though, with 24Mb and 16Mb of main memory respectively.

 

[Fafalada]

That's another thing I was going to ask you. Load times in SH2 were really short between the rooms: 3, 4, 5 seconds or so. What do you think it loads during that time? It obviously doesn't replace the whole 32MBs of memory...

I figure DeanoC could better answer that question for SH2 specifically, given his inside knowledge?

Anyway, I can just debate what CAN be done in that time.
5seconds is enough to load up to 20mb of raw DVD data. With some simple compression on the files that could actually end up filling entire 32mb.

Obviously though, you don't get to spend all 32mb for loaded data, there's code and other allocations that use up more then their fair share of memory, as well as certain things you always keep like main character etc.
Outside those persistant types of data, I have little doubt you could replace everything else with every load - if you need to (ie. from one room to the other All the environment texture data could be swapped).

But GC and even DC seems to do a lot better though, with 24Mb and 16Mb of main memory respectively.

There were threads going forver about this before, so I'll just stick with we agree to disagree line here.

 

[London Geezer]

That's another thing I was going to ask you. Load times in SH2 were really short between the rooms: 3, 4, 5 seconds or so. What do you think it loads during that time? It obviously doesn't replace the whole 32MBs of memory...

I figure DeanoC could better answer that question for SH2 specifically, given his inside knowledge?

Anyway, I can just debate what CAN be done in that time.
5seconds is enough to load up to 20mb of raw DVD data. With some simple compression on the files that could actually end up filling entire 32mb.

Obviously though, you don't get to spend all 32mb for loaded data, there's code and other allocations that use up more then their fair share of memory, as well as certain things you always keep like main character etc.
Outside those persistant types of data, I have little doubt you could replace everything else with every load - if you need to (ie. from one room to the other All the environment texture data could be swapped).

But GC and even DC seems to do a lot better though, with 24Mb and 16Mb of main memory respectively.

There were threads going forver about this before, so I'll just stick with we agree to disagree line here.

right, faf, what always made me wonder, is.... if 5 secs is enough to fill up almost 32megs of memory, then why on earth do we have some games that take AGES to load??? really, i just don't get it..... some games are in the order of 30 seconds, which in theory would be enough to fill up more than 100Mb of memory.......... :? :?