AuthorTopic: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes  (Read 44039 times)

Offline KAT

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #30 on: April 11, 2013, 05:14:56 pm
This is... CRAP! :(

In my opinion the best HD game remake is... Another World. Even port on Android is very good.

Offline Arne

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #31 on: April 11, 2013, 11:07:30 pm
It looks constrained to blandness by the aim to do fancy 3D with a probably low budget. The... uh quanta manipulation mechanics of the original would probably have been more rewarding to expand upon.

Offline Seiseki

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #32 on: April 15, 2013, 07:27:27 pm
So extremely generic...  :'(

Offline PypeBros

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #33 on: April 16, 2013, 11:27:27 am
Quote
you can see they're using terrible nearest neighbor rotations…

They're not nice, for sure. But they are what the DS and GBA hardware can offer. I mean, the GPU does that alone, without requiring that some of the 33/66MHz cycles are used to adapt or render curves, and there is no need for extra room in the ROM to store additional images.

The same kind of aliasing occur to textures of a low-poly 3D game, so there's definitely constraints that apply here that you'd never see in a flash-capable or CDROM-powered device.

Offline tim

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #34 on: April 17, 2013, 01:41:31 pm
I don't care about hardware limitation. We don't need nice rotation algorythms on powerful hardware. I want carefully hand-drawn rotations. That's all. Nintendo has the money to pay 20 artists in order to animate a few pokemon.
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Offline ptoing

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #35 on: April 17, 2013, 01:51:47 pm
Obviously Nintendo does not care, and it makes business sense. There are a lot of pokemon now. And the fact is that most people, especially those who are not artists or even pixelartist, do not care or even realise this. So why should Nintendo throw out money on something that will be noted by less than 1% of their userbase as something that improves the game?
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Offline Ymedron

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #36 on: April 17, 2013, 02:40:12 pm
As they have moved over to 3d models, I think the rotation was in fact a signal that there were too many pokemon to do hand-drawn stuff for.
In Crystal they had like five different frames for each pokemon at best (Espeon comes to mind as an example) but in Emerald it dropped down to two with already using stretching and squashing to make them more animated. Black and White did a good job with making the pokemon modular and thus being able to make them really mobile, rather than having a single sprite to stretch and squash. If they had hand-drawn them, they would probably only have given the most popular pokemon animations.
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Offline tim

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #37 on: April 18, 2013, 12:24:06 am
You're telling me that a company making hundred of millions, on one of their biggest franchise, can't animate 2 or 3 seconds of a few hundred small sprites because it's not humanly possible ? Don't tell me an artist can't do these very simple animations, at least one pokemon a day, and don't tell me they can't hire 20 artists. It's very doable. It's even easy I would say. They are no excuses. Nintendo simply sucks these days, that's all. They're lazy. They also could have done a real pokemon game on Gamecube, they never did anything like this. "Too much work" you say. "Lazy people, and easy money" I say.

I don't care about their business. I care about quality and customer satisfaction. When you have the power to do it well, then you have to do it well. If you don't, it shows that you really don't care. Animating pokemons a lot better would not cost that much for such an important license. Also, if you need an example, the sprite work done on the last King of Fighter is outstanding. It show that some people care and they found a way to have a better cost efficiency by animating 3D models first before pixelling. Don't tell me people can't tell the difference. There's a reason everybody loves Prince of Persia, Another World, or Flashback : the quality of their animation.

I can't believe how people like you, who are customers, are trying to defend a company's interest instead of the artists interests & the final customer interests. If you don't fight for quality, if you don't blame companies when they cut big corners to reduce costs and quality, then don't complain that beautiful 2D and well animated pixels are disappearing over time. Both as a customer and as an artist, I don't want that.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2013, 12:36:32 am by tim »
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Offline Ymedron

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #38 on: April 18, 2013, 08:05:34 am
It's possible to spend that much time, it's just not business-possible.
I'd ask you to hire a team to draw 2 to 3 hand-drawn frames of 649 pokemon, all with an unique bodyform and in addition to that, animate about 50 different trainer sprites with two to three frames, and try to have the game not take ages to complete. Plus there -might- be space constraints to consider, as they probably want other gameplay than just pokemon battles. But I can't attest to that since I'm not a programmer or a ds game designer.

I'm defending them because I can understand that they need to keep costs down while trying to give the best game they can. Also I'm defending the people who were making that game, and my opinion that the decisions they made were a lot better than what could have been done.
I see you have also forgotten about pokemon Colosseum and the sequel to it (I can't remember if it's XP or XD) which were pretty legit pokemon games, though I assume you don't like them because you couldn't catch wild pokemon in Colosseum.

I was absolutely delighted to get battle screens that have a full pokemon backsprite, with the pokemon moving the whole battle than just the start. That wouldn't be possible if they drew each sprite by hand, as they'd have had to add a ton of new sprites just for the breathing. (also notice that they animated segments of the pokemon more, depending on how they moved. For example a flying pokemon has a fully animated wingflap, they don't just twist and warp it.)

Anyway, I'd appreciate if you didn't get so personal about this. I can have an opinion, and I can stand behind it. I don't have any high hopes about being able to make a game entirely based on pretty graphics and no concerns for how long it takes to make. Especially if you are working in a sub-company to a big one that expects you to pull your weight.
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Offline PypeBros

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Re: Flashback HD & The terrible truth of remakes

Reply #39 on: April 18, 2013, 08:28:22 am
Don't tell me an artist can't do these very simple animations, at least one pokemon a day, and don't tell me they can't hire 20 artists. It's very doable. It's even easy I would say.
Sure. The question is "can we ship that in a ROM that is cheap enough to accomodate the estimated christmas gift budget of the average japanese family (rest of the world set apart)". I think they *did* animate a set of pokemon as they used to, and the same set with rotation technique. With as much frames as the storage technology would support. I think they then tested those sets on their intended audience (kids) and kids prefered the one that looked "more alive", artistic considerations set aside.
I think managers then said to the artists and coders "do what kids prefered" and the others nodded politely.

Quote
Both as a customer and as an artist, I don't want that.
Me neither. I prefer the crafted work of Nieborg et al. on Shantae, for instance. But Shantae is far from being a cash cow.
All I've found I could do about it is to play Shantae rather than the ugly Phantom Hourglass when my 3-year-old wants to watch me playing. I can (and do) suggest her to watch Disney's masterpiece like Fantasia rather than Toy Story ¼. But basically that's all.

As an artist, you can refuse to commission under such terms and go indie. And face the financial risks on your own.

I do, however, defend Ubisoft and the UbiArt framework. They bring back the ability to work in small teams, and free artists from technical considerations such as polygons or pixels. Yet, animation is fluid and works well. Levels are appealing and diverse. There is no realism clash. I think that's indeed great. That allows more focus on the fun, imho.