Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

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turboxray
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

Individualised wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:59 pm Games have always been plentiful with unused content, but you'll be hard pressed to find a game with some of the type of "unoptimisations" (as I like to call it) you can find in modern games.
Huh??? I find found plenty and wasn't hard pressed. Just how many old games code have you stepped through?
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Individualised
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Individualised »

turboxray wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 6:26 pm
Individualised wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:59 pm Games have always been plentiful with unused content, but you'll be hard pressed to find a game with some of the type of "unoptimisations" (as I like to call it) you can find in modern games.
Huh??? I find found plenty and wasn't hard pressed. Just how many old games code have you stepped through?
I think that maybe we have a different idea on how unoptimised is unoptimised. You're right though, many older games can be just as terrible as modern games code-wise, perhaps that wasn't the best point to focus on. Now modern, retro-style games using overkill engines like Unity, might be more relevant.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Individualised wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:59 pm...you're certainly not going to find a fully fledged 3D engine in a strictly 2D PS1 platformer game.
I'd bet money that we could find this. I absolutely expect something like this happened multiple times on the PS1, especially in its later days with how much shovelware it got.

However, I definitely wouldn't be willing to spend the time required to find one and prove it just to win an argument. I just strongly feel that it would be true. I've seen excesses of this nature across the entire historical span of game development, and as soon as people had already-made 3D engines lying around they were damn sure going to put them to waste on the wrong things.
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Individualised
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Individualised »

rainwarrior wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 6:29 pm
Individualised wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:59 pm...you're certainly not going to find a fully fledged 3D engine in a strictly 2D PS1 platformer game.
I'd bet money that we could find this. I absolutely expect something like this happened multiple times on the PS1, especially in its later days with how much shovelware it got.

However, I definitely wouldn't be willing to spend the time required to find one and prove it just to win an argument. I just strongly feel that it would be true. I've seen excesses of this nature across the entire historical span of game development, and as soon as people had already-made 3D engines lying around they were damn sure going to put them to waste on the wrong things.
Totally fair points. Perhaps I was focusing on the wrong thing in my post. I still do think that retro-style games using engines like Unity is a problem though, not just because it's bloated but it means developers aren't encouraged to learn lower level programming, which can be very useful.
Drag
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Drag »

If you don't need to learn low-level programming to make a game, then people won't. :P

That's not a bad thing though:
1) It lowers the barrier for entry for people who want to make their own games, and that gets more people interested in it.
2) Job security for those of us who do learn low-level programming. :D (Somebody's maintaining Unity, Unreal, Godot, Game Maker, etc, after all!)
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Gilbert
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Gilbert »

For developers of old games that didn't care much about optimisation, useless codes, or even trying to understand the limitations of the systems, and the like...

One word:

Micronics
tepples
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by tepples »

Individualised wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 6:29 pmNow modern, retro-style games using overkill engines like Unity, might be more relevant.
In my professional experience, something like Unity is the easy way to rerelease a particular retro-style game on multiple modern consoles, each with its own incompatible native API. If you can use Unity, you can use any middleware that runs on Unity, such as Geod's 3dSen used to port Haunted: Halloween '86 to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.

As for 3D engines hidden in otherwise 2D games, look no further than McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure for Genesis, which has a hidden tech demo of a polygonal 3D renderer.
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Individualised
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Individualised »

And speaking of games whose modern ports run on Unity... the original Doom, while ingeniously programmed in many ways, also contains a lot of bloat (as well as bad/broken code, which may be due to the game being rushed - an example is the broken status bar faces, which actually render correctly in the build shown in the visit to id software video, which only dates to a few weeks before the final build). For example, as discussed on this forum before (in the SNES Doom source code thread I believe), many textures are obscenely big even though they could be tiled at smaller resolutions with negligible quality loss (as was done in the SNES conversion). Another example is how many music tracks (specifically ones that are used for multiple levels) are duplicated multiple times in the WAD - even weirder, many of the duplicates have small differences from each other that would usually go unnoticed. As Doom had a lot of music composed for it that never ended up being used, it could possibly be a sign of some music tracks being taken out last minute (perhaps the ones that were just straight up covers of real songs, though some of those were used in Doom 2).

Even I'm proving my original post wrong, I guess.
Pokun
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Pokun »

Well, Unity or not the developers should be able to fix the game to a virtual resolution and stick to its pixel grid for all screen manipulation if they want to make a good-looking retro-style game that doesn't make us cringe too much. That means no rotation or other effects that requires a higher resolution than the set virtual one. If done within those limitations, smooth rotation, magnified tiles and sprites and most other effects are perfectly fine.

Rockman 9 and 10 are very good examples of games that tries hard to look like NES games and don't really do anything that obviously gives them away.

Now of course in Mario Maker 2, Nintendo probably didn't think this was a problem at all and doesn't really try to hide the real resolution in any way. They focus on adding new physics and items that wasn't possible (or would at least have been hard to do) in the original games, and the themes are mostly salt and pepper allowing you to play with the earlier franchises while adding new stuff to them.
I consider the Mario Maker games to just be new installments in the 2D Mario series that offers totally new things not previously experimented with, rather than retro-toys that accurately simulates the previous Mario games.

Even if you make a SMB3 course and strictly only use items and features actually found in the original it still doesn't really feel like SMB3, it's a new game. Beside many of the features in the original games aren't really possible in Maro Maker 2, like the SMB1 coin heaven for example because you can't make a bean stalk that goes to a sub-level (you must use a pipe).

Still I think that the smooth wiggling of the helmets worn by Mario in Mario Maker 2 really wasn't necessary, it just looks too out of place IMHO.
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Individualised
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Individualised »

It's excusable in Mario Maker because that game also has themes based on modern Mario games. So making the resolution match wasn't really possible.

Nuclear Throne is an example of a game that's made in a "modern" engine (Game Maker Studio) that does it right and has its internal resolution match the assets, proving that it is in fact possible, and it's also a great game too. Though I imagine Game Maker is still more suitable for that than Unity.
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