The Next-gen Situation discussion *spawn

[Arwin]

They were pre-rendered dude

Are you sure?

 

[Rangers]

PS2 shook the world with the quality of its textures, blew PC gamers away.

find that hard to believe since i remember dreamcast holding up quite well in cross platform port comparisons with the ps2 for the short time they co-existed. unless said pc gamers were also blown away by dreamcast a year prior.

in fact I was trying to google around cause my memory was fuzzy on specifics about that, and found this http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/437344-headhunter/62313818

 

[almighty]

Are you sure?

Yep, I had the game and there was a very obvious 3D plane that the players were on and the backgrounds...

Watch this video and you'll see it....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4BvRdlAy40

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The backgrounds were on a different plane, but they are not pre-rendered.

 

[Nesh]

Yep, I had the game and there was a very obvious 3D plane that the players were on and the backgrounds...

Watch this video and you'll see it....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4BvRdlAy40

I have the game too and I dont see anything that suggests pre-rendered.

 

[Rangers]

I have the game too and I dont see anything that suggests pre-rendered.

Funny looking at that horrible video and I'm guessing there were people back then talking about "well, diminishing returns, this is probably best graphics will get "

 

[Nesh]

Funny looking at that horrible video and I'm guessing there were people back then talking about "well, diminishing returns, this is probably best graphics will get "

It sure was an awesome looking game at the time. Certainly an eye catcher and for me probably the best looking game when it was released. It was almost like I was watching at a PS1 CG only in real time
Sometimes I was wondering how much improved graphics will get when the PS2 would mature? I was thinking to myself "hey look how T3 improved from T1. How much better the last PS2 Tekken is going to look when this already looks so great". Surprisingly TTT in many ways it was still unmatched. I still like its visuals more than T4 and T6, although I must say that Soul Calibur 3 surpassed it. I think that was the best looking fighting on the PS2 at the end

 

[menmau]

Subjective. TTT boasted much more detail, effects and higher polygon models even though someone may argue the stages were not interactive. The lighting effects in TTT were phenomenal. Due to the brilliant lighting Jin's stage had wood which actually looked like wood, in ogres stage rock looked like rock, in Leis stage wet asphault looked like wet asphault, silk loojed like silk etc. No other fighting on the PS2 mimicked so well the lighting bounced from material. The character models probably had more geometry than any other game at the time, including more impressive facial animations than DOA2. Some stages almost gave a similar look to a bump mapping technique although it wasnt. The textures overall were unmatched.

I have to agree with you, the detailed textures, lighting, and high polygon character, and it even had some polygon characters moving on the background. I also found it quite impressive for the time, really!
Although I took a long time to get used, just because of that blessing division between arena and background.
On a side note, my version was printed on a CD instead of a DVD, and it created lot of noise (similar to Xbox360).

 

[user542745831]

b) No, outside of skyboxes, pre-rendered backdrops add nothing to a game.

What? Pre-rendered environments add much better visuals to a game than real-time-rendered environments ever could on the same hardware, don't they?

If you're going to fix your camera angle, you can do something almost that pretty in real-time already.

See above? How can real-time-rendered environments look as good as pre-rendered environments? That doesn't make much sense, doesn't it?

c) Fixed camera angles are terrible for video games.

So you didn't enjoy Resident Evil 1 / 2 / 3 for example?

I have always wondered how good modern hardware could make pre-rendered back grounds look.

Capcom in the remakes had the backgrounds animated and really brought them to life, I bet modern hardware could have them all cast shadows and crucially, be interactive.

That would probably be so awesome .

Those UE3 "Samaritan" and UE4 "Elemental" demos for example would probably look quite pale in comparison, wouldn't they ?

By the way:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/resident-evil-2-remake-possible-with-fan-support-6397240

:smile:

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Funny looking at that horrible video and I'm guessing there were people back then talking about "well, diminishing returns, this is probably best graphics will get "

Almighty's video is actually from a PC running emulated Arcade version of the game. The arcade was based on the Playstation 1, that game basically looks like Tekken 3, the PS2 version looks much better.

 

[user542745831]

Almighty's video is actually from a PC running emulated Arcade version of the game. The arcade was based on the Playstation 1, that game basically looks like Tekken 3, the PS2 version looks much better.

Then why didn't you just provide a video of the PS2 version of "Tekken Tag Tournament" with your post to simplify matters ?

And by the way:

Why not just use "Tekken Tag Tournament HD" for PS3 instead, like shown in the following video over there for example (starting around 00:37 min):

?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Well I actually did spend about 15 min trying to find a good video, but the quality of the PS2 videos were so shitty that I gave up, but here's one...
1m42s is the start of gameplay.

 

[user542745831]

but the quality of the PS2 videos were so shitty that I gave up

The following pages for example appear to have some 1080p screenshots of "Tekken Tag Tournament HD" for PS3 available though:

http://www.ign.com/images/games/tekken-hybrid-ps3-110966

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-16-tekken-hybrid-screenshots-screenshot-gallery

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-02-fresh-tekken-hybrid-screens-emerge-screenshot-gallery



Or is there any significant visual difference between "Tekken Tag Tournament" for PS2 and "Tekken Tag Tournament HD" for PS3 other than increased rendering resolution?

 

[milk]

Making a next gen game with pre-rendered environments.

Well, you'll expect 1080p graphics, so throw in 1080p images for the background, they also need to be in HDR for better post processing. Some places might need animation, so yeah animated sections. You also might want to have a cache of the closest sections to avoid loadings during gameplay. Now, from a next-gen game you expect to have lots of dynamic and interactive lighting, like muzzle-flashes, fire, explosions, magical effects, lightning, etc. So to correctly light the prerendered environment, you might actually need to store a full fat G-buffer in there, and shade it dynamically. Dynamic shadows are next. For static lights, you can store the shadow-buffer of the environment and just render the dynamic objects in real time. ( you need that to handle all types of shadow: env. on char, char on char, char on env. env. on env ) but for any moving lights you will need some 3d representation of the scene to have them work.
At this point, you are saving very little renderering time. You are doing most of the lighting and shading work you would do in any game, but you are saving up geometry ( which isn't the biggest bottleneck these days ) But still, you are gonna have some VERY detailed character model in that game. You can also have some better env. lighing by baking in the GI and the static lights (although you will need separate layers with lit and unlit versions of every static light you want to bake in and have shadows for) But at this point I don't even know how much memory all that would take.
But is that worth all the natural gameplay compromises associated with fixed camera, AND the production side complications as well? Specially when reducing interation time and costly baking routines during development is one of the biggest trends these days.

 

[user542745831]

But is that worth all the natural gameplay compromises associated with fixed camera, AND the production side complications as well?

Just compare the visuals shown in the following video for example:

with the visuals shown in the following video for example:

Although "Resident Evil Remake" is running on NGC and "Resident Evil 5: Lost In Nightmares" is running on PS3/Xbox 360, "Resident Evil Remake" does look better than "Resident Evil 5: Lost In Nightmares", doesn't it?

Now imagine what a game like "Resident Evil Remake" would look like if it would be made for PS4/Xbox 720 (or whatever they are going to be called) and ask yourself again if it would be worth it.

Clearly, it would, wouldn't it?

 

[almighty]

There's not many things that would make me buy a console again except for a few things

1. A console with an Ocarina Of Time remake
2. A console with remakes of resident Evil 1,2 & 3

 

[fearsomepirate]

So you didn't enjoy Resident Evil 1 / 2 / 3 for example?

When real-time rendering meant a room was basically a cube with a few other cubes and badly-textured polyhedra acting as scenery, pre-rendered backdrops added exponentially more detail and believability to the environment, easily making up for the huge sacrifices made in controls and visibility. They haven't meant that since last gen, really. The gameplay sacrifices you make for the visual improvements you get from offline rendering just aren't worth it anymore.

Here's the PS2 version of Tekken Tag. There's pretty clearly something weird going on between the fighting plane and the backgrounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bT6nBFXDPk

 

[user542745831]

The gameplay sacrifices you make for the visual improvements you get from offline rendering just aren't worth it anymore.

So, do you consider "Resident Evil 6" to have better gameplay than "Resident Evil Remake" for example ?

 

[fearsomepirate]

So, do you consider "Resident Evil 6" to have better gameplay than "Resident Evil Remake" for example?

Every game that doesn't have a fixed camera with tank controls has better gameplay than the old RE games, including REMake and RE0.

 

[almighty]

I can understand the camera angle argument but for games like Resident Evil those camera angles add to the atmosphere massively and really wouldn't ruin or limit the game play from a true next generation remake that used pre-rendered back drops.