Was GC more or less powerful than PS2? *spawn
- Thread starter steviep
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I think, depending on the game, there can be a lot of none tiled stuff - billboards, signs, animals, cars, vending machines. Tiling stands out a lot and looks odd because we're not used to seeing it in real life, and the smaller the tile the more unreal and disconcerting the effect. Tiling with decals stuck in various places helps break it up but the larger your textures are before you tile the better. Unless you want to render a bathroom with freshly laid tiles, of course.
I'm having a little trouble picturing what you mean, I'm probably missing something. Are you talking about encoding multiple overlapping texture layers to an 8-bit texture, so a certain portion of the range was for layer one (colour 0 - 55 for example), another for layer two (say colours 56 - 140), another for layer 3 etc?
Or are you talking about packing multiple textures on top of each other in a way where the texture is only "resolved" with the correct look up table (would you even be able to compress in that format without losing everything meaningful)?
Or are you talking about something else that's gone over my head? If you could walk me through all the steps I might be able to get it.
I think you're right, but on something like a DC port, where a single texture had a number of different colour graduations you might be forced in to using an 8-bit CLUT of the source texture. Chopping up a larger texture into a number of smaller ones where 4-bit CLUTs would be less destructive, and reworking some of the most affected textures to be different but more suitable for reduced palette, might well be outside your budget.
I can image a DC port that played well to the DC's strengths hitting the PS2 right in its texturing weakspot, especially if your budget for reworking the assets was very limited. This might be one of the reasons why the Gamecube had a better time with Sega's DC ports.
Thanks. I guess this adds something to the picture then: on top of the clut and memory issue there's a possible performance implication, depending on what you're doing and how much you're able to optimise for PS2.
The DC deffo supported some kind of CLUT, and I'm pretty sure it was SimonF that confirmed it on these here boards. It might even have been one of the things that Sega specifically requested they add.
I'm opening myself up to criticism and mockery if I'm wrong about this, but I'll take a stab. Here's a screenshot of Final Fantasy 12; it's running on an emulator but that should let you see the textures better. (I saw this screenshot on a NeoGaf thread about RPG towns, hopefully the image host or account holder won't change the picture at this address to porn or something).
http://minus.com/l8zvVg2TrbvuO
And here's a direct PS2 screen of somewhere else:
http://reviews.cnet.com/playstation...y-xii-playstation/4528-9581_7-31568531-1.html
I may lack the vocabulary to properly describe what I'm seeing, so I'm just going to use the terms as seen in MS Paint (lol me) in the hope I can get across what I want to say:
The textures tend not have a great deal of range in terms of hue. The textures pick a colour and vary from lighter to darker (err, luminance) in a fairly tight range around that colour - an almost monochrome effect and what I think Squeak was referring to. Where textures do feature vastly different hues they are part of intentionally high contrast (rather than graduated/blended) sections within the texture, and the range of saturations and/or luminance of those hues is reduced.
Something like that. Similar to how artists approached making good looking sprites for the Megadrive with it's 16 colour sprites. They could look great, but there was always more you could do on the SNES with its 256 colour sprites. I think it's a big part of the PS2 "look", and hopefully I've explained it reasonably enough.
I think Squeak is right and that the best way to use the PS2 was to use higher resolution, lower colour textures as often as possible. Even to the point of slanting your art style that way - although that wouldn't be an option for some of the PC/Xbox lead multiplatform games that started appearing towards the end.
If you layer enough 16-color textures to be able to simulate high-color textures, you've lost whatever you were trying to gain by using palletized textures in the first place.
Metal Gear Solid 3
Resident Evil 4
Black
Second Sight
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Devil May Cry
Those are all games I played where at some point, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "There are those trademark 4-bit textures again." Once you know what to look for, you can't help but see it. I think function described it pretty well--you get sort of a monochrome look to the game. For example, in RE4 on the GC, there are actually greens, purples, and other hues in the ground textures in the first area that make it look a bit livelier. In the PS2 version, the textures are strictly limited to shades of brown, giving a much flatter look to the scene.
Bump-mapping in RE4? The only bump mapping that I notice in RE4 is Leon and Ashley belts and some of the barrels. Its poly count is also lesser when compare to MGS3 due to much smaller, linear, and lifeless environments and a complete lack of any vegetation and foliage.
Transformers for the PS2 is another excellent example of the PS2's capability - it has massive environment, insane poly count, highly detailed textures, awesome particle effect, and smooth frame rate.
[YT]5FDk-7ocarY[/YT]
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L. Scofield
Veteran
The Star Wars Rogue Squadron games on the other hand, didn't.
Bland, barren environments with low poly rigid models moving around doing nothing much in particular. I had 2 or 3 - can't remember - and it looked poor. And the on-foot sections were laughably bad - horrible infact. But there'd always be some PR stuff about amazing lighting and 20 million polygons per second and wham, it's a Factor Five love in as a few un-animated boxes move around above some snow or dirt. Take away the Star Wars and Nintendo fan multipliers and THE EMPEROR IS NAKED GOD DAMN IT!!!
...
Mhhh...
So barren...
Perfect proof that you're lying your ass off. The brightness/contrast trick was how it was done in the PS2/PC versions, not on the Gamecube version:
(0:16 for the lighting comparison)
You should've linked us direct from PS2 vids, not ones via an emulator on PC.
While I personally think the RE4 environments look pretty damn good, any holding back on the polygon front would partially be for the sake of having the throughput for the numerous enemies that would be on screen at once, more than I would ever see on screen at once with MGS3. Both games are impressive for their respective systems. RE4 blew me away graphically, MGS3 really did not, but it was a damn good game (I like it more than RE4). MGS3's environments are not that open anyways as they are like RE4's: small areas individually loaded in.
Like with Transformers' foliage palate, plenty of the environmental elements on screen were probably instanced like grass, branches on trees, etc. I would think the eDRAM on the PS2 would lend well to instancing 2D sprites at such a long distance as with Transformers'. It also makes me wonder if Far Cry actually could've been a possibility on the PS2, but it had a full physics system, global shadowing and much more resource heavy effects like real time reflections, bump and normal maps all at the same time. Yes, Far Cry on the Wii could've looked much better, but I really don't think it could've properly matched the Xbox ones, especially with substantially weaker vertex throughput. Using the FPU on the Wii CPU to do extra vertex calculations would take away from it's ability to calculate physics and we can see where it all goes downhill. Transformers' I think gives us a glimpse of what Far Cry on PS2 and GC would've been like. No global shadowing, advanced bump mapping effects probably left out completely, but perhaps reflections left intact for the water. Though preferably, I think the bumpmapping solution for the water (with added refraction and fog) in Super Mario Sunshine makes a more realistic impression as far as water goes in comparison to some overly glassy and reflective surface. What alot of people I don't think have realized is that large agitated bodies of water reflect less light to your eyes the further away it is due to it's rough moving nature. Yet in games, surfaces far away tend to be more glassy if they are reflection enabled
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Yeah, the second Transformers video is a PC emulator. My bad. The first video is 100% direct from the PS2 though. Regardless, TF for the PS2 is an absolutely stunning looking game. A technical marvel that didn't receive the attention that it truly deserve.
There are no 2D sprites in TF for the PS2. All of the trees in TF are fully 3D. Play the game and equip the glide minicon and glide from one point to another in the Amazon forest level and see for yourself. There are no 2D trick. Trust me, you'll be amazed
Many areas of MGS3 are quiet large in scale and trump many of the environments in RE4. Once again, yes, both have load time, but the fact remain: each sections of MGS3 is larger and more wide open than the one in RE4 - look at the areas where you fight The End for example. RE4 is mostly consist of straight forward narrow corridors.
I said a lot - NOT ALL - of the lighting in RE4 (including the GC version) are pre-baked.
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Yeah, it's simple palette animation without the animation. You change the palette to one with the appropriate colours and "blanks" for the texture you want.
Your two examples are the same thing.
Not at all. As mentioned, with luminance compression you can get very good compression rates. Or you can use a few decals to fill in the missing colour in smaller splashes.
The cost of multitexturing is really very low on PS2. With a normal buffer the GS can draw the screen over 40 times over @ 60fps. Not using the fillrate for something would be underutilizing the system.
Square was always much better artists than technical vanguards. I also suspect the bleached look of the textures has more to do with artistic choice than colour limitations.
There is nothing to prevent them from upping the contrast or having som splashes of a few off key colours.
Again look at Jak & Daxter as a good example of better texturing on PS2.
Smaller S3TC textures (256x256 and down probably) has some of the same problems with lack of colourvariation, due to the limitation of only two base colours inside a 4x4 block. Not as severe as with 16 colour palette. But still enough to hold artists off from being able to just freehand draw the texture or use a pic.
Ideed If you didn't care about aliasing, outright wanted the look of it, or only had straight lines, you'd be able to do things with 4bit CLUTs that would be impossible with S3TC.
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You'd technically only need two to get 256 colours, but I'm thinking more a dull grey stone texture which is suitable for 16 colours, and a green or brown dirt texture which is suitable for 16 colours.[/quote]
Yeah, I can agree to that. At the time it was ordinary, but aspects of the game can be divided into 'this is a green object, that a brown one." But it's a reasonable compromise for the time in many cases. I'm not so hard on 16 colour CLUTs as some.
All the trees in the background here : http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/news/09/23/transformers/transformers_screen015.jpg
Identical clones of some 3 tree images, and you're saying they're not 2D sprites?!
THE TREES!!
This is a tough one. I don't know whether to salute you for being a master of irony, or be like all
It's almost too perfect...
They switch to 2D models when far away due to LOD though right?
Not that I consider the PS2 more powerful than the GC. I actually believe the opposite. But I think the trees switched to 3D when close
Probably, although '3D trees' consists of a few 2D leaf sprites clustered around a simple trunk. But that's besides the point. PSman is utterly wrong in his assertion that no sprites are used for the trees. They quite obviosuly are. Anyone who fails to recognise that is hardly in a position to give relevant opinion on whether GC or PS2 was the more powerful system overall; a subject which would require the most in-depth and well-informed opinions from those who worked closely with both systems to even have a passing chance of making a valid comparison.
L. Scofield
Veteran
THE TREES!!
This is a tough one. I don't know whether to salute you for being a master of irony, or be like all
It's almost too perfect...
Yes, let's just ignore the other video -_-'
And what's wrong with those trees anyway? There's plenty of them and most of them can be shot down. Not to mention the dozens of ewoks and stormtroopers running around the level.
Oh.
The very next sentence after the one you quoted:
And later in this thread:
So you post one video of some (nice enough looking tbh) rigid bodies flying through some rigid bodies and then flying over a *moon*, and then ... THE TREES!!! I pointed out that this is exactly what always happens - always - and as a response you went and ... posted a video of the trees!
It's not your fault. The "trees" level being shown is one of the unbreakable laws of nature - it was always going to happen. If it was me on the other side of the fence I'm sure I'd do it too. I wouldn't be able to help it. It's like the motion of the planets, or death and taxes [Edit] or a Dreamcast fan bringing up VQ textures [/Edit].
Mhhh...The Star Wars Rogue Squadron games on the other hand, didn't.
Bland, barren environments with low poly rigid models moving around doing nothing much in particular. I had 2 or 3 - can't remember - and it looked poor. And the on-foot sections were laughably bad - horrible infact. But there'd always be some PR stuff about amazing lighting and 20 million polygons per second and wham, it's a Factor Five love in as a few un-animated boxes move around above some snow or dirt. Take away the Star Wars and Nintendo fan multipliers and THE EMPEROR IS NAKED GOD DAMN IT!!!
[Space / Moon level video]
[THE TREES video]
So barren...
The very next sentence after the one you quoted:
Man, I got so sick of people posting pictures of the trees as the answer to any and every possible criticism of the game's visuals. Yeah, the game looks much better when you can't see anything because of trees.
And later in this thread:
So you post one video of some (nice enough looking tbh) rigid bodies flying through some rigid bodies and then flying over a *moon*, and then ... THE TREES!!! I pointed out that this is exactly what always happens - always - and as a response you went and ... posted a video of the trees!
It's not your fault. The "trees" level being shown is one of the unbreakable laws of nature - it was always going to happen. If it was me on the other side of the fence I'm sure I'd do it too. I wouldn't be able to help it. It's like the motion of the planets, or death and taxes [Edit] or a Dreamcast fan bringing up VQ textures [/Edit].
So just because they look identical they are 2D?
Have you even play the game yet Shifty? If you did then you would've know that - once you explore the forest in TF - all of the trees are rendered in 3D. Please play the game first L. Scofield
Veteran
The point is, levels are far from barren. So what if they're rigid bodies? It's space shooter -_-'
