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DS development > ASH pre-rendered and it looks good!

#57101 - G-Pjube - Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:54 pm

The game ASH which was announced by Mistwalker was said to use a new type of gfx style (for DS). Instead of using sprites or polygon models they chose for Pre-Rendered visuals. And if I may be honest, this looks very good! Pls check them out here:

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Now for the development part, would something like this work for homebrew? Is this hard or is it easier then polygon models or sprites? I assume it would be harder (on the GFX side) but alot easier on the programming side. It would be nice to see someone use a style equal to this.
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#57138 - tepples - Thu Oct 13, 2005 10:50 pm

Polygonal characters on top of photorealistic still images was done way back in Final Fantasy VII. Yes it would be more expensive to develop a game this way, as FF7 was one of the first multi-million dollar games.
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#57176 - M3d10n - Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:48 am

New GFX style my arse! That's cheap trickery even the 3DO could do!

I at least hope they have some sort of video layering technique going on (maybe even using alpha blending), to layer a character FMV over the monster FMV over the background FMV/still picture.

That would result in glorified Shining Force 2-style battle sequences. I also hope they get a good video compressor going on, and manage to stuff the cart full of different animations, so I it won't feel like playing a first generation PC CD-ROM game.

Cyberia anyone?

Anyway, they need to spend a higher budget on graphics (since the only limit on FMV is your pockets' deepness), but at least they won't spend any money getting people to develop a kik ass 3D engine on the DS.

And I was fantasying about Mystwalker somehow breaking the DS polygon limit... it was just a bunch of FMV. *sigh*

#57197 - cybereality - Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:12 am

Those screen grabs look great, but this is by no means a "new" graphical style. This is the same technique used in Donkey Kong Country, Resident Evil (or Alone in the Dark for that matter), and FFVII. This technique can yeild graphics on par with current CG pre-renders (like the intros on PS2 games) but they cannot be interactive. The game will most likely play similar to FFVII for PS1. It is rather misleading, because they ARE using sprites. They are just not handdrawn sprites. They are sprites rendered from 3D graphics (like taking a bunch of screengrabs from a PS2 game). They lose points in my book for fronting like this is some sort of graphical innovation.

The real question is how they expect to fix all those prerenders / FMV onto a 32MB cart. The remake of Resident Evil looked decent, but you could tell they had to compress the shit out of it to make it fit. FFVII for PS1 took up 4CDs, who knows how small it could be with the cut-scenes ripped. But hey, they managed to make Donkey Kong Country for the SNES and that sill looks awesome.
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#57200 - Freakker - Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:22 am

I think I remember seeing a patch long ago which would let you play FF VII(PC) without any disks inserted, so I guess they have just the videos on them.

#57221 - ethoscapade - Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:47 am

FF7 - cutscenes = somewhere in the 100-200 MB range, afaik

we've at least got 64 MB DS carts now, so this is doable, right?

#57230 - Eponick - Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:58 pm

cybereality wrote:
They lose points in my book for fronting like this is some sort of graphical innovation.


Hmm, none of the news posts ive read claim it was an innovation or new graphical style.
I think thats something G-Pjube put in.

Back on topic, it does look nice =)

#57282 - Darkwind_776 - Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:59 pm

ethoscapade wrote:
FF7 - cutscenes = somewhere in the 100-200 MB range, afaik

we've at least got 64 MB DS carts now, so this is doable, right?
I thought they were 128 mb...

#57285 - lambi1982 - Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:44 pm

Just because it says new doesnt have to mean "NEW", it means NEW to the DS, something not done on the DS, that type of new.

Its funny, one of you wrote something about FIRST GEN PC, whats wrong with that???? 90% of homebrew is fucking pong like graphics, WTF

no one is ever fucking happy with anything produced for a game. it seems like when ever a developer makes a game, people are so fast to shit on it, but then jump for fucking joy when you can play a god damn 1980's version of "ET" from atari on the DS.

Go to hell you Bastards............. ;)

Lets see homebrew do anything close to what is in the stills. (and I dont mean putting a JPG on the DS and saying they did so.
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#57324 - tepples - Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:59 pm

Darkwind_776 wrote:
ethoscapade wrote:
we've at least got 64 MB DS carts now, so this is doable, right?

I thought they were 128 mb...

Nintendo announced an eventual 1 Gbit (128 MiB) capacity for DS game cards, but all released commercial Nintendo DS games are 512 Mbit (64 MiB) or smaller. Which commercial DS game is 1 Gbit yet?
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#57564 - M3d10n - Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:41 am

lambi1982 wrote:
Just because it says new doesnt have to mean "NEW", it means NEW to the DS, something not done on the DS, that type of new.

Its funny, one of you wrote something about FIRST GEN PC, whats wrong with that???? 90% of homebrew is fucking pong like graphics, WTF

no one is ever fucking happy with anything produced for a game. it seems like when ever a developer makes a game, people are so fast to shit on it, but then jump for fucking joy when you can play a god damn 1980's version of "ET" from atari on the DS.

Go to hell you Bastards............. ;)

Lets see homebrew do anything close to what is in the stills. (and I dont mean putting a JPG on the DS and saying they did so.


Cool down there buddy. Too sensitive, arent we? I said "Firt gen PC CD-ROM games". Well, probably not actually first gen, but I am fererring to the FMV-based games craze back in the day (both pre-rendered and *gasp* live action).

I also wasn't talking about dated graphics, geez. AFAIK, a pre-rendered games can feature the best graphics ever in any hardware, only limited by color palette and storage capacity. Geez, you can even have 100% real graphics, by using video footage. I (and a lot of people) have bad memories from that time, when developers saw a very easy way to massively boost the graphical quality in their games at the cost of several gameplay constraints.

While some FMV games did manage to be entertaining, it's a fact that they were highly restrictive when compared to real-time affairs.

#57570 - mocnicom - Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:14 am

M3d10n wrote:


Cool down there buddy. Too sensitive, arent we? I said "Firt gen PC CD-ROM games". Well, probably not actually first gen, but I am fererring to the FMV-based games craze back in the day (both pre-rendered and *gasp* live action).

I also wasn't talking about dated graphics, geez. AFAIK, a pre-rendered games can feature the best graphics ever in any hardware, only limited by color palette and storage capacity. Geez, you can even have 100% real graphics, by using video footage. I (and a lot of people) have bad memories from that time, when developers saw a very easy way to massively boost the graphical quality in their games at the cost of several gameplay constraints.

While some FMV games did manage to be entertaining, it's a fact that they were highly restrictive when compared to real-time affairs.

I don't think that gameplay constraint are much of a concern for a turn-based RPG though.

#57657 - M3d10n - Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:46 pm

mocnicom wrote:
I don't think that gameplay constraint are much of a concern for a turn-based RPG though.


That's true. As I said before: glorified Shining Force 2 attack sequences. Gameplay-wise, they don't benefit from being real-time at all. But while gameplay might not be affected, variety can be, since FMVs uses a lot more space, and you can have only so many characters/monsters/attack types.

Of course, it all depends on the compression, lenght and framerate of the videos. If they use some video layer composition scheme, it'll be possible to render a single video for each character attack type, and layer it over different enemies and backgrounds, saving lots of space.

They could even have the spell/splash/hit effects go on it's own layer, and use an additive blend on it, allowing spell effects to be re-used among characters.

But there's always the dark possibility they'll go single-clip route, and do something ugly like having a clip of the character attacking, then cut to another clip of a monster being hit, and both are never seen at the same time on the screen.

I'd also like to see how the map view will be. Squares? Hex?