Dream: Land of Giants

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iNCEPTIONAL

Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

https://youtu.be/g65aNHZKMXk

It's fun to imagine just how good this might have all looked if Rare had actually fully finished and polished the game. You can see there's some points in the video where they added a shadow under the player for example, so it's clear they could and certainly would have taken it all even further and really given it that last layer of shine if it ever saw commercial release.

Now, to be honest, I'm not actually a huge fan of the particular Euro-UK art style here, especially on the characters, which just look a bit dorky and clumsy, but it's still visually very impressive for a 16-bit game, even in its unfinished state. It's another example of a game that, in its finished version, I think could have easily bridged the gap between 16-bit and 32-bit (in terms of 2D games).

Also, for whatever reason, it makes me want to see just how good a version of the original PlayStation/Saturn/Jaguar Rayman game could look on SNES (a game with actual lovely art direction):

https://youtu.be/rAd6MlU5yiY?t=255

I'm thinking SNES could do a very respectable job here with its 256 colours onscreen, three overlapping backgrounds layers, proper transparency, some window/shape masking, Mode 7 (for the zooming cutscenes/score/menu screens seen in the Jaguar version), etc. In the right hands, I don't think it would be too far removed from the Atari Jaguar version overall actually, and possibly better in some ways, as there's doesn't seem to be any transparency in the Jaguar footage below:

https://youtu.be/b40hjWIQUZQ?t=191

This is probably the closest thing visually to Rayman on the SNES (also has a very Neo Geo look to it too imo):

https://youtu.be/kX0D0kAUNHc?t=310
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Tue Aug 16, 2022 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
calima
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by calima »

IIRC Rayman was originally on SNES, and you can find pics of it (not sure if any ROM was leaked).
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

calima wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 11:00 pm IIRC Rayman was originally on SNES, and you can find pics of it (not sure if any ROM was leaked).
Yeah, I think I saw some prototype footage of a Rayman game on SNES, but it was a very different game from the one that eventually released on the 32-bit consoles and a bit more traditional looking. Looked like it could have been pretty decent on SNES though, for what it was. I'd still be interested in seeing just how close visually the SNES could get to the Rayman game we all know of though, because I think it could actually do a pretty good job of that.
calima
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by calima »

You can look at the GBA version. GBA is very close to SNES in graphical abilities, it's a good approximation.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

calima wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 8:52 am You can look at the GBA version. GBA is very close to SNES in graphical abilities, it's a good approximation.
Yeah, I guess the GBA can put a few more colours onscreen than SNES but has a lower resolution, so a SNES version would probably look quite similar ultimately. I expect the GBA version probably isn't actually pushing more colours onscreen than the SNES could display though (although I haven't confirmed that), and games on it tend to have over-saturated and washed-out colours to work with the original non-backlit screen (you can see the difference between the typical SNES version and GBA version of whatever game in the video below*), so I think maybe the SNES version would still be nicer overall, with the more subtle colours and added pixel detail, and just a generally more pleasing look when viewed on a decent CRT that would have better contrast and subtle blending between the pixels too. Even when viewed on the likes of a SNES Classic Mini and modern digital TV, I think the SNES version would still look that bit nicer. It would definitely be interesting to see an actual SNES version.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xurqNOafU6Y
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
Pokun
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by Pokun »

It looks very good, was this the action-RPG that eventually turned into Banjo Kazooie?

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 1:37 pm Now, to be honest, I'm not actually a huge fan of the particular Euro-UK art style here, especially on the characters, which just look a bit dorky and clumsy,
It's kinda ironic to hear that from someone who has worked as an artist for Rare where the dorky and clumsy Euro-UK art-style is so over-represented. But I agree with you, the character design is probably what I like the least about Rare games, and European game art-styles tends to be too goofy for my taste in general.
I like the more classic European art-styles (Tintin, Asterix, Goliat, Bamse, Spirou etc) which has more in common with classic American (Popeye, Disney etc) and Japanese art-styles, but it seems American and European ones took very different directions (for the worse IMHO) from the Japanese ones more recently.

I do like the backgrounds and bright colors in Rayman though.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 2:03 pm It looks very good, was this the action-RPG that eventually turned into Banjo Kazooie?

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Aug 15, 2022 1:37 pm Now, to be honest, I'm not actually a huge fan of the particular Euro-UK art style here, especially on the characters, which just look a bit dorky and clumsy,
It's kinda ironic to hear that from someone who has worked as an artist for Rare where the dorky and clumsy Euro-UK art-style is so over-represented. But I agree with you, the character design is probably what I like the least about Rare games, and European game art-styles tends to be too goofy for my taste in general.
I like the more classic European art-styles (Tintin, Asterix, Goliat, Bamse, Spirou etc) which has more in common with classic American (Popeye, Disney etc) and Japanese art-styles, but it seems American and European ones took very different directions (for the worse IMHO) from the Japanese ones more recently.

I do like the backgrounds and bright colors in Rayman though.
Yup, and totally with you on all of that.

To be fair to Rare, I'm not a great artist, and I think that back then, if I'd been left to do more art for them, it possibly would have ended up with that kinda fugly Euro-UK look too, mostly because I didn't understand hue shifting to get lighter and darker tones of a colour until recently, which alone makes a huge difference to the colours in an image. You can see this effect in some Genesis/Mega Drive games that use the shadow/highlight mode extensively, where it often has a kinda of dull Euro-UK look to it (in regards to the colouring), precisely because the shadow/highlight mode basically just adds more white or black to the colour but doesn't hue shift it. Outside of that, I can't quite pinpoint what makes stuff look particularly Euro-UK in style, but I know it when I see it, and I'm just not a huge fan of it in most cases.

Rare often did some nice 3D stuff on the likes of N64, but some of its 2D art wasn't the best at times, particularly the pre-rendered stuff.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by rainwarrior »

I really like the shadows of the trees falling across the player.

I notice that the shadows of the player on the ground disappear only when this effect is in use, though. ;) The shadows are either blending against sprites, or blending against the ground, but not both, because it would destroy the "masking" effect of it only falling on the sprites.

That dinosaur stomp at the end is such a tease! Ha ha.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:02 pm I really like the shadows of the trees falling across the player.

I notice that the shadows of the player on the ground disappear only when this effect is in use, though. ;) The shadows are either blending against sprites, or blending against the ground, but not both, because it would destroy the "masking" effect of it only falling on the sprites.

That dinosaur stomp at the end is such a tease! Ha ha.
Interesting observation.

So, what I might personally do then, because I do like the shadows form the trees and whatever other semi-transparency effects, but also want shadows on the characters too, is just draw an opaque shadow below the characters directly into the sprite graphics. And, much like Street Fighter II does for the shadows, I'd maybe also change the colour slightly depending on the particular level and the colour of the floor or whatever surface, just for a subtle extra touch matching things there.

That tree shadow effect is really pretty cool, and you mention masking, so what's it specifically doing to make sure the shadows only appear on the sprites but not on the level (as explained in a way I could understand, of course)?
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rainwarrior
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by rainwarrior »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:35 amThat tree shadow effect is really pretty cool, and you mention masking, so what's it specifically doing to make sure the shadows only appear on the sprites but not on the level (as explained in a way I could understand, of course)?
Colour math can be applied to a specific layer. In this case, the sprite layer gets blending, the other backgrounds don't.

This means that the blending is masked away from everything but sprites.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:42 am
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:35 amThat tree shadow effect is really pretty cool, and you mention masking, so what's it specifically doing to make sure the shadows only appear on the sprites but not on the level (as explained in a way I could understand, of course)?
Colour math can be applied to a specific layer. In this case, the sprite layer gets blending, the other backgrounds don't.

This means that the blending is masked away from everything but sprites.
Does the sprite layer count as a single layer for this regardless of what priority they have, or can you set some sprites on a different priority if you don't want them to be affected by the colour math shadows here?

I should probably ask similarly regarding setting a background to high/low priority too, since that can move it either in front of or below other backgrounds and also sprites?
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Thu Aug 18, 2022 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by rainwarrior »

For this purpose, priority doesn't count. There is one sprite layer (OBJ) and 1-4 background layers (BG1, BG2, BG3, BG4), and then the backdrop colour.

The priority system can be thought of as splitting these into separate layers, or it might be thought of just deciding which piece of which layer goes on top... but the colour math hardware doesn't know about priority. It just knows "the top pixel is from OBJ" or "the top pixel is from BG3", and can decide whether to apply or not based on that.
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Re: Dream: Land of Giants

Post by creaothceann »

It also uses the palette index.
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