This is the problem though. Not everyone does this.
I'd like to think Cave is a bit more sensible than the current incarnation of SNK. I don't think we'll ever see Espgaluda III with recycled low res sprites from previous games plastered on hi-res 3d backgrounds.
I don't think that's why though. They can always make them look like 2D sprites. They've just chosen to not draw them these days. It's gotta be the taxation on the system. Look at all the slowdown there is already.
I have my doubts about CG backgrounds looking good, but I agree on Cave's current hardware not being powerful enough for 100's of hi-res sprites flying about. Maybe in the next hardware revision? Here's hoping they don't utilize some funky resolution as a "halfway point" like Spectral vs Generation. That would gurantee inaccurate home ports.
Valgar wrote:CAVE doesn't even draw their sprites anymore (Progear was the last one), they are all pre-rendered.
Wrongo. Cave started prerendering stuff way earlier. Most of the sprites and backgrounds in both Guwange and Esprade are prerendered and touched up by hand afterwards. There are even some prerendered things in DDP and in Dangun but they are minimal.
Progear is heavily prerendered as well but with nice cleanups. I have to say that Cave is one of the few companies that pull prerendered stuff of awesomely.
And if you wonder why i know what's prerendered and what not, i am a prefessional 2d pixelartist and i can tell.
Also at hires you would need TONS of more detail to make it look as good. And how they do it atm every pixel is more or less used to full effect. The cleaning up and making superdetailed models would take way longer. i can happily live with 240x320. Pixels RAWK.
Low res 2D is a genre/style on it's own. I hate it when people think it's a poor man's 3D or high res 2D.
2D high res games (apart from one on one fighters) are only ever going to be a simple style like Mr Driller/ Spica Adventure or sketched on a graphics tablet Alien Homind style. You take an amazing 2D game like Ghouls 'N' Ghosts or Metal Slug and draw it in high res it might look a bit weird. Or like it has been said to get it looking even nearly right it would need an obscene amount of detail.
Look at that new Super Paper Mario most of it looks like its been drawn with the shape tools from some computer drawing program.
"When we were talking to one of the executives at the BBC. And he said, 'Now hold on, this man is so incompetent why wouldn't he be fired?' and I said 'Go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.'" - Ricky Gervais
I am slowly working on a shmup with ddp style gfx btw. Only doing art and when i have enough i will look for a programmer. Might take a while since i am rather busy otherwise.
some of the stuff i done so far. the palettes are made to bea easily interchangable, so these colours are not final tho i have to say i quite like them anyways
[mod edit] Please don't link to password protected images, it's really not very clever. We've had to remove these to stop it screwing up the viewing of this thread.
Valgar wrote:CAVE doesn't even draw their sprites anymore (Progear was the last one), they are all pre-rendered.
Wrongo. Cave started prerendering stuff way earlier.
Holy shit, I just said earlier that I know they used prerendered stuff earlier, and honestly, I never said they didn't. Just that Progear was the last one with some drawn sprites.
I think the only reason why there is no arcade hardware around that pushes a high-res 2D shmup is because nobody has taken the time to build such a thing. By now, the technology should be there. We've got all the RAM you could want, and I'm sure that even by drawing sprites as flat polys, a modern graphics card could pump out a game like DDP in high-res no sweat. The increase in CPU power needed to run a high res game seems like it should be negligible to me, but I could be wrong.
SamIAm wrote:I think the only reason why there is no arcade hardware around that pushes a high-res 2D shmup is because nobody has taken the time to build such a thing. By now, the technology should be there. We've got all the RAM you could want, and I'm sure that even by drawing sprites as flat polys, a modern graphics card could pump out a game like DDP in high-res no sweat. The increase in CPU power needed to run a high res game seems like it should be negligible to me, but I could be wrong.
I'd have to agree. More important than raw CPU power, the available bandwidth of commodity hardware is quite high. A simple SOC (System On Chip) setup with DDR or equivalent memory and a small embedded SDL or other free graphics library/API is more than enough to push about graphics at 640x480 and up. This isn't groundbreaking technology, nor is it expensive.
I'm honestly not sure why the arcade industry is still lagging so far behind. The rest of the world moved to VGA an eternity ago, while arcades are still stuck on 15KHz. I mean, I'm all for backwards compatability, but we're talking 20 year old technology here. Time to move on.
I always thought candy cabs were VGA. 15K/24K/31K Multi freq.
15khz rules, as one might say.
"When we were talking to one of the executives at the BBC. And he said, 'Now hold on, this man is so incompetent why wouldn't he be fired?' and I said 'Go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.'" - Ricky Gervais
Cabs (candy or otherwise) come with a variety of monitors depending the make and model of the cab.
A very few cabs are tri res (Taito egret 3, Konami Windy 2, Sega Naomi -except the european naomis, etc)
Some are high res only (Namco Cyberlead, euro naomis).
Some are dual res (Sega Astro which does 15 and 24).
Most are low res.
It should be noted that there are two arcade standards; JAMMA displays at low res and JVS displays at high res (though some JVS boards can output as Jamma and at low res, e.g. Naomi and Atomiswave).
There are a few wierd things (the sega system boards at medium res for example).
All the 2d system boards output at low res (MVS, PGM, SPI, CPS1, CPS2, Supernova etc)
Some of the older 3d system boards are also low res (STV, GNet etc).
The newer 3d system boards are either fixed to high res or are also capable of JAMMA, that accounts for Naomi, Aurora, Linbergh, Atomiswave, Tri Force, Chihro, Type X etc.
Some of these boards and the JVS standard have been around since 2000 so the arcade industry has caught up. I don't know of any games that come out as stand alone games for high res presumably because the amount of technology required on such a board (The PSX/GNET based arcade boards are low res for example).
Recent boards like Linburgh and Type X are starting to get flat, widescreen lcd monitors as witnessed with the recent HOTD4 cabs and Taito Concept E cabs.
Back to the 15khz/Jamma standard thing. As I understand it the refresh rate of the monitor does not have anything to do with the number of pixels that the graphics card can plot - if you think about it the same tv is capable of displaying any home console whatever the resolution of the underlying graphics card (until recently that is). I don't see any reason why 2d hardware couldn't push a higher resolution 640x480 for example... PGM and CPS2/3 had higher resolutions to 320x240 (or whatever it was) for example.
elvis wrote:
I'm honestly not sure why the arcade industry is still lagging so far behind. The rest of the world moved to VGA an eternity ago, while arcades are still stuck on 15KHz. I mean, I'm all for backwards compatability, but we're talking 20 year old technology here. Time to move on.
You should see all the high res cabs then =) F-Zero AX and Outrun 2 both look amazing, for instance. So, they're not stuck on low res.. on the other hand, low res 2d looks much better on a suitable arcade monitor than on VGA.
ptoing wrote:
There are even some prerendered things in DDP and in Dangun but they are minimal.
So what are those prerendered things in DDP then? Maybe that pods on type A that rotate and have some sort of blue trail after them? I´d really love to know - I assume that prerendering is mostly for making sure motion on sprites look realistic.
On the other hand, it`s hard to believe anyone can NOT notice that the player sprites in ESPRade and Guwange are prerendered.
FrederikJurk wrote:So what are those prerendered things in DDP then?
I'm no expert in these matters, but offhand the cubes which attach together to form the "Warning" sign before a boss and then separate and fly off again look rendered to me...also, when the (I think) 6th stage boss first appears there are a bunch of translucent shapes which spin and form together into him, I don't think that's hand-drawn work either...I could be wrong though.
About the DDP stuff:
The warning before bosses as BM said, and also the stars. These are obvious. But i am quite sure that there is some prerendereing and heavy cleanup going on in the case of some smaller sprites that rotate a lot, like the small green tanks and their turrets.
The thing with the Cave style gfx is that hardware rotation would look shite as stuff is seen from the top but also from the front. Some kind of weird axonometric "perspective" which works well in games. But making sprites like those tanks accurate is a bitch and much easier if you prerender and then just clean up. The renders dont even have to be superdetailed, just a rough template for the main shapes would help loads.
About the rotating things on the level 6 boss. I am quite sure those are the normal sprites he is put together from just smartly colourshifted.
Raizing stuff on the other hand is 100% top down, that is why then can just rotate their stuff in hardware and it looks fine.
And here the sprites i wanted to post earlier but fucked up royaly.
This ddp style is actually quite easy to pick apart, very formulaic but also very effective and goodlooking.
This ddp style is actually quite easy to pick apart, very formulaic but also very effective and goodlooking.
Quality. Have you got a site of the pro pixel art you have done?
I do like that appearing ship avatar.
"When we were talking to one of the executives at the BBC. And he said, 'Now hold on, this man is so incompetent why wouldn't he be fired?' and I said 'Go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.'" - Ricky Gervais
So there might be a few reasons few 2D games are in hi-res.
I think that companies are scared that the 'magic' will be lost.
Then again, it's more work and the cost would be alot higher, it might just be the end of 2D alltogether.
Any cab/monitor can display hi-res, although it might not look as crisp as on a hi-res monitor, it still looks good. I have Under Defeat running on my cab's low res 1989 monitor. Looks amazing.
I guess: If it ain't broke don't fix it!
As how it will look.
It can be done elegantly like Guilty Gear or they can fuck it up.
Why does Sammy not make Guilty Fighters, 480X640 shmup with your favorite Guilty Gear character?
Warning sign: "Let's Rock", before every boss.
interesting, i hadn't noticed the prerendered stuff in DDP and i'm one of the worse 2D graphics whore. most of the time cave's prerendered is well 2D-ized, guwange is good example (all enemy sprites are prerendered, too). DOJ and galuda are less well done for this, they have a few things that do look suspiciously 3Dish (DOJ's stage 4 boss looks like shit).
one recentish prerendered cave shmup that looks great is ketsui, all sprites are prerendered but they are very clean and 2Dish. one of the best looking caves despite the prerendering, except stage 2 which background is a bit drab.
