Idle Forums Game Club 2 - Shadow of the Colossus edition

[Sno]

Actually a lot of times it makes games easier to play. A lot of times it depends on how the game itself decides to handle input at the engine level. Lots of engines will run their Input loop seperate of their render loop meaning you're going to be getting reasonably accurate feeling control despite a crazy framey mess.

I can actually remember quite a few NES era games (contra) that became MUCH easier once the frame rate started to tank.

Like i said, a lot of modern shmups are specifically designed to produce slowdown.

When Atlus "fixed" the slowdown in Deathsmiles for the US version, Cave's response was to go in and spend months patching it back in.

The game was meant to slow down when a ton of bullets were on screen to facilitate weaving through elaborate patterns.

[darthbator]

Yeah games like Radiant Silvergun might actually be impossible without slowdown, There are just so many bullets onscreen if it was moving along at any more then 20FPS I don't know how you would possibly be able to track all that.

[Sno]

Does Radiant Silvergun actually have any significant slowdown? I don't remember there being anything particularly noticeable in the versions of the game i've seen/played.

[darthbator]

I'm not really sure. I don't think it was to bad now that you mention it. To be honest the games that would always chunk out where usually sprite based and silvergun was primarily polys. I just tend to list that one off when I am thinking of games where bullets fill the screen.

[youmeyou]

Wait, a game slowing down time to facilitate gameplay is a totally separate thing from frames dropping. A shmup with dropped frames is not a game I would ever want to play. (for fear of putting holes in nearby things I hold dearly).

[syntheticgerbil]

I played this within the last couple years, and as an animation nut, Shadow of the Collossus was YEARS AHEAD!

This game holds up.

I wrote a fat dissertation on Ni No Kuni recently and why anime games don't look like anime. In a purely aesthetic way I actually like that Shadow and Collossus has such a low framerate, and I'm sure if I was a really studied motion-scientist I might be able to articulate why.

A lot of television made animation stopped doing 24 fps about a decade ago as the switch to digital was made. the 6 ghosted frames upon conversion to NTSC to can easily be avoided by skipping straight to 30fps instead, this allows for easy home video consumption DVD consumption and doesn't hurt traditional animation in any way in terms of looking unreal like your article suggests.

I certainly never do anything in 24 fps, I'm of the mind unless I'm doing something for film, which I probably never will, for any kind of digital consumption it's incredibly outdated. I actually get pissed that Flash or 3D programs still default my starting fps as 24.

You'd also might be surprised how much has been done digitally with ink and paint since about the mid 90s, so a lot of animated shows don't actually have infinite fidelity even if the pencils were scanned first. Many times they have been digitally colored and rendered at 720x480 (or 576 if you're a European production). There are some movie productions that have been done in Toonboom with clean vector lines (Anastasia is a big one), but that's basically if you are only doing traditional cel coloring and requires much more time and effort to cleanly trace your pencil lines with nice bevel curved vectors.

Where can I find that Brad Muir live stream? I'm curious to know how they achieved that exactly. My hunch is just animating as usual in 3D and converting the best individual inbetweens to keyframes and doubling or tripling them up against the next key.

[Sno]

http://www.giantbomb...hunter/17-6838/

Here is the Brazen stream, though he doesn't go into any real depth on the animation style, there's just a few general comments about it.

I do hope they find a publisher for that game, a more accessible Monster Hunter would not be a bad thing.

I had some friends drag me into playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. Once it actually gets going, it can be a totally incredible experience, but there's so much bullshit about that series that makes it aggressively inaccessible.

I mean, most of the games in that series still don't have any online play, and ones that do, like Tri, are extremely primitive online. It's also just an absolutely gruelling grind.

There's definitely something to slowly gathering supplies and building your tools and gear and putting all that stuff on the line and being so totally invested in a high risk hunt, but it took me ten hours to get there, ten hours before i was ready for my first real monster hunt when playing Tri.

You know, but you get to that point and it all totally clicks, how deliberate and planned every action has to be, different people in different rolls dealing different kinds of damage to different parts of the monster, while the monster cycles through impressively complex behavior patterns. (Leading you on a chase through a massive environment, signalling other monsters to come an interfere with the battles, becoming more aggressive as the fight goes on, and ultimately trying to limp away and hide to recover its health.)

Just huge fifty minute ordeals with players needing to be incredibly organized into different offensive and support roles, making sure you mark the monster to track it across the map, laying out traps, burning through supplies for buffs and restores.

When it clicks, it's the most amazing thing, but everything around that is just so primitive and so much of a grind.

Monster Hunter is incredible, I fucking hate Monster Hunter, I can't wait to play Monster Hunter 4.

For how much of an ordeal it is, there is definitely room for something like that experience that is a little more accessible, and definitely room for something with a more modern design sensibility. There is fertile ground there, and i hope Brazen happens. (Hey, and maybe the competition would push Capcom in the right direction on that series.)

Honestly though, now that i'm on board with Monster Hunter, i'll probably be the guy decrying Brazen as a dumbed down impostor.

[TurboPubx-16]

If Shadow of the Colusess was at a low, but consistent frame rate, I think it would have worked out pretty well. But the original release went anywhere from thirty frames (staring at the ground) to four frames (falling off a monster, ten thousand hairs bruseling, dust particles going everywhere).

[Sno]

5 frames a second seems like a huge exaggeration, i'm pretty certain it never got that bad.

Digital Foundry did some comparisons between the HD re-release and the original version. The framerates they found were generally in the 15-20 range for the original release, with the occasional burst of 30 fps, while the HD re-release runs at a consistent 30 fps.

http://www.eurogamer...s-hd-collection

[I_smell]

The main point is that anime is made in twos and threes and has this really clamped-frames animation style, where games are the opposite of that and you can spin a polygonal object around at as high a framerate as ya like.

I was REALLY apprehensive about putting a number on it, cos I knew I'd be talking some old 60's textbook bollocks. I was hoping someone 'd pick me up on it just so I could know for sure.

[TurboPubx-16]

5 frames a second seems like a huge exaggeration, i'm pretty certain it never got that bad.

Digital Foundry did some comparisons between the HD re-release and the original version. The framerates they found were generally in the 15-20 range for the original release, with the occasional burst of 30 fps, while the HD re-release runs at a consistent 30 fps.

http://www.eurogamer...s-hd-collection

It is no exaggeration for me to say that the original release had the worst frame rate of any console game I've ever played, frequently when the game was trying to pull off its most crucial gameplay moments. It was like someone was showing me a flipbook made out of a stack of sandpaper. Maybe the game only hit a low of ten fps, but when you are inputting control commands everything seems slower, especially when it's the third time you've fallen off a Colossus because the game can't keep up.

[syntheticgerbil]

The main point is that anime is made in twos and threes and has this really clamped-frames animation style, where games are the opposite of that and you can spin a polygonal object around at as high a framerate as ya like.

Well usually it varies (at least on better animes), just completely depending on the animation budget. Someone might want to do a whole sequence on 1s and then another sequence is 5 seconds of panning to make up for the lost production time. When done well, I find Japanese cartoons to be really clever. You cited Dead Leaves which I think has one of the craziest most awesome animation budgeting I've ever seen. It all feels like stylistic decisions switching sometimes from constant 1s to choppy kinectic to Speed Racer form to comedic effect. I actually recently lucked out and finally found the hard to find animation book Japan likes to release as companions with the individual keyframes for all full animated sequences.

Also a lot of old theatrical Warner Bros. shorts tended to steer towards 2s for many animations while Disney always steered towards 1s (and still does). I think a staple of 2s with 1s for fast scenes always looks better, but I think I'm kind of in a minority of that opinion. Too much flailing and weirdness in 1s for slower actions that happens in everything Disney for my taste.

[Erkki]

So I guess this thread is about framerate?

[Sno]

We haven't started yet.

Do you guys want to start on monday?

[darthbator]

I should probably go get that HD collection....

[Yasawas]

The "Nico: Original concept video" from the special features section on the HD collection is a wonderful thing, I will be watching this before starting on Tuesday to get suitably pumped:

[elmuerte]

No, we start on Tuesday the 1st. I haven't received my copy yet :/

[darthbator]

Yeah I gotta made sure to go get this game!

[JonCole]

SOTC HD is $13.99 on the PS Store right now, and $9.80 for Plus members like myself. Would be a great time to pick it up if you live in the US region.

[elmuerte]

Ok, my copy arrived. So I'll be killing a colossus later today.

[Sno]

Alright, i guess we're on, then?

Two weeks from today for the first colossus, so take your time with it. (So the fourteenth, a monday, would be the last day.)

If everybody blows through it, we'll talk about shortening the time frame.

Spoiler tag story and colossus talk and helpfully label for other people the general details of what is being spoiled. Other things like broad gameplay discussion and development trivia should be fair game, but use your discretion. If you jump ahead, don't talk about it until the group is caught up.

Enjoy the game, and probably set aside some time to explore for fruit and white-tailed lizards. Heh.

[elmuerte]

I haven't played it yet. First had to upgrade my PS3, then install a patch for SotC, and then I could finally start the game.

One hour later I finally reached the point where I could move. That game has a really really long intro.

Do they speak Japanase? Or is it a made up language?

[Sno]

I understand it to be a made up language, from what i've read.

[elmuerte]

I've killed the first Colossus. It took me about 30 minutes, or at least, that's what the savegame said. So now I have to wait 2 weeks to kill the next one?

I thought there would be more to it to find and kill a colossus, this was rather boring.

[Thrik]

I remember being put off this game because it took so long to get through the introductory bollocks and then the first colossus was extremely underwhelming. It does seem clear that the later ones get more interesting though, based on my reckless viewing of spoiler videos.