#prerendered graphics

[nickolashx]

Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle (2006)

Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle is a horror adventure game developed by Shadow Tor Studios. Released in 2006, it is set in the site of Barrow Hill, based on real geographical locations in Cornwall, England.

Somewhere deep within the woods of Cornwall, a timeless force is stirring. Unseen beneath the ancient burial mound, known locally as Barrow Hill, a forgotten myth awakens. Use archaeology to discover that the barrow is more than just a collection of forgotten standing stones.

[beebfreeb]

To all my long-term followers: You have to look through all of my art and deduct exactly what's wrong with me. I know you can do it by now.

[socialbunny]

such a small nitpick to an overall amazing game/remake, but cutting our james' line in the staircase scene ("me? no, i would never kill myself...") i feel like removes james' own hyprocrisy and unreliable narrator-ness (not much fault to him, but nonetheless). cant't think of a real reason why this line was taken out - not even replaced with anything, just silence - thought i could guess it was removed because of the ending where he does, in fact, kill himself, but i feel like him killing himself shouldn't affect this dialogue as much.

he wouldn't kill himself, at least not at this moment. he wouldn't kill himself, but he can (and has) killed others. he hasn't really even confronted his guilt for killing mary fully.

and then he meets angela for the last time, gets a real glimpse into her hell and her anguish, and finally realizes there's nothing he can do to help her. he couldn't save mary, can hardly figure a way to save himself from his own suffering, what can he do for someone who seems complicit in their own demise?

so, as james does, he takes another life into his hands. he kills mary, convinced that she wanted to die and the pain to end. he kills for self-preservation reasons (he looks at his hands in disgust after). and with angela, he refuses her the knife. of course, i don't think he'd give her the knife in a normal context anyway, he's not crazy (debatable), but that he's deluded himself into thinking it Could save her. it's his final requite.

angela justifies this in mind - "saving it for yourself?" - and james replies in turn the above. and why would he kill himself? even in his own hell, in his crumbling delusion, he would never take his own life. he's better than that.

until he gets to face the final monster of his guilt and regret and turmoil. when the fog has cleared and all has been said and done, he can succumb to his feelings or finally feel acceptance.

LOL at this incredibly long post about silent hill 2 sorry guys. the staircase scene is my favorite one in the game, and i wish there was more to say about it than what's already been said because i love it so much. ok thanks.

[acerikus]

FINALLY figured out dolphin... I'VE WANTED TO REPLAY SSBB AGAIN FOR YEARS IT'S ONE OF MY FAVOURITE GAMES EVER... 😭🩷

[smbhax]

Gunbird 2 (PC / Steam)

[greatwyrmgold]

Recently, I started playing Civilization III on a whim. It came in a bundle with Civ IV that I picked up ages ago, but I haven't really played it; I have clearer memories of IV than III, and it's obviously a more refined version of the game.

When I was a kid, I assumed Civ III was 3D like IV. With a couple decades of casually learning about game tech behind me, III is very obviously using prerendered sprites. Look at it!

Which means IV was the first Civilization game with full 3D graphics, which in turn explains some of its presentation decisions. It explains the slower, more complicated movement animations (and the increased number of models per unit to make those more sensible). It explains why they added the extreme zoom with shifting perspective (though having any zoom at all was a big advantage over III).

And it explains the way the camera zooms in on combat, or more absurdly onto cities where you just built a wonder. Wonders don't have much presence on the world map, the game needs to open up a mini-window to play a video that lets it pay off the zoom's dramatic setup, but it zooms in dramatically regardless.

(Most Let's Players have those animations turned off, and Civ IV crashed when I tried to set up OBS to capture it. Anyone who's played Civ IV, please think back to the dramatic zoom I'm talking about and pretend it's embedded in the post. Wow, how melodramatic.)

Civilization V backed off on those presentation choices, because 3D graphics were a lot less impressive in 2010 than they were in 2005. (Not that it was exactly ground-breaking in 2005...) This makes sense; out of their specific technological context, some of those decisions are very silly.

But in their context...well, I understand why those silly decisions were made.

[galactica-phantom]

i love you isometric games with prerendered graphics

[wjbs-aus]

Examples of some games that use each style are below for anyone who is curious (most of them are first-person shooters, and all but one of them are combat-focused).

"NES-style but with larger sprites that aren't tile-based" - Literally any modern game that's trying to look like something on the NES

"Quake-inspired low-poly 3D but with interpolated skeletal animation" - DUSK, ULTRAKILL

"Prerendered sprites but with normal and specular mapping so they look 3D" - Brigador, Nightmare Reaper, Amid Evil (only on the weapons)

"Mid-poly 3D with low-res textures" - System Shock (2023), Turbo Overkill

"Mid-to-high-poly 3D with a low-res pixel-filter slapped on top" - The Magic Circle (only on a few areas and NPCs), Saints Row IV (during one specific mission fairly late into the game, and maybe a few other places)

"'2.5D' (3D levels, 2D characters) with HD sprites." - Fallen Aces

"Something else" - Fashion Police Squad (has the look and stuff, but the cultural references, non-gameplay images, and squash-and-stretch animation style all look a bit too modern), Prodeus (literally everything except for the levels themselves is represented with high-res prerendered graphics, though I think there's also a toggle to turn on models for everything instead?)

Cruelty Squad (simultaneous gore, eyestrain, sensory-overload and epilepsy warnings for not just the game but also screenshots and trailers, like seriously it's so bad that the Steam page has a warning at the beginning of the "About This Game" section)

Also, for two games that pull off their respective "retro" visual styles in really authentic-feeling ways, check out HROT (inspired by Chasm: The Rift and Quake, and feels like a real – if extremely strange – FPS from that era) and Zortch (which looks and feels like a weird N64 FPS from the late '90s, but came out almost exactly a year ago at time of writing).

[0m3g45n1p3r4lph4]

Whats the deal with Bionicle Heroes (Wii)?

Okay so everyone here knows Bionicle Heroes, probably by either the GameCube or Playstation 2 releases. Maybe even the Xbox release (of which all 3 are pretty much just ports with the input graphics changed) or the PC version (mouse and keyboard controls being the most drastic difference). It's many people's favorite (or at least most nostalgic) Bionicle game, competing with or right after Mata Nui Online Game.

The game itself is already quite repetitive - if you're the type to go for 100% completion, you're gonna be hearing the Hero Mode song A LOT. Even the DS version makes better use of unique mechanics by having Hahli use her Kanohi Elda to detect secrets, but that's a different tangent.

When I learned there was a Wii Version I was so excited to play what could very well be the Best version. To preface, I know a lot of people have a stigma against motion controls, but I've always found that the Metroid Prime Trilogy works so excellently with a Wii Remote and Nunchuck in ways that no other control scheme can match! Movement with an analog stick is more precise and comfortable than keys, and aiming with an analog stick is always wonky and imprecise. Mouse is okay, but Prime's pointer controls make those games really slick - just point where you wanna shoot, you can adjust the zones on the edges of the screen for turning your view, I really like it. I play on a close approximation of that style on Prime Remastered, but Joycons even have Gyro Drift so it doesn't always feel great.

So I go into this expecting similar - to be able to point at anywhere on screen and shoot at that. To point at an enemy and have the targeting lasers aim right at them.

Nope. Targeting is locked to the center of the screen.

Despite constantly having your pointer visible, THE ONLY INTERACTION IT HAS WITH THE GAME IS TO ROTATE THE CAMERA. You can't point at anything. Only moving the cursor towards the edges of the screen to turn your view, and whatever is closest to the center of the screen becomes your target.

You can't even adjust these zones.

Prime Trilogy showed me how WiimoteNunchuck can be one of the best control schemes, but I underestimated how it can also be one of the worst. What's the point of having a pointer if you're just gonna treat it as an analog stick????????

Not to mention it's clearly a rushed port of the GameCube release, including any prerendered cutscenes being much more compressed (though including new dialogue in the opener?) and even some missing textures revealing open skybox (luckily just minor stuff).

Like sure, I've got my gripes with every version of Heroes (the dumbing down of the most intense part of the story thus far, turning the Piraka into bumbling fools, you could at least make them intimidating in the part where BALTA TALKS ABOUT HOW INTIMIDATING THEY ARE CMON) but the control scheme makes the Wii version easily the worst. All the DS hand cramps are at least balanced out by the unique content, rahi variety (THEY HAVE FROST BEETLES), etc.

At least it's still got the good soundtrack.

[miloscat]

[Review] Syberia (PS2)

A graphic adventure, emphasis on the graphics.

Another pick from my monthly retro game club, Syberia is a game I only knew by reputation. While it was developed by Microïds' Canadian division, it was creatively spearheaded by the Belgian comic artist Benoît Sokal who instilled some unique flavours into it. Exploring some similar territory to his earlier game Amerzone, this is a point and click adventure set in a slightly askew version of Europe.

To spare my wrist from pointing and clicking, I opted for the contemporary PS2 port, which has you directly controlling protagonist Kate Walker with the analogue stick, with interactable hotspots getting highlighted as you pass them. Unfortunately the lower resolution does a slight disservice to the visual design of this game, although not as drastically as the DS conversion (which bizarrely, the later ports were based on, I've been told).

The game makes heavy use of prerendered backdrops to depict the melancholic locales, with some clever FMV insets for motion, and 3D models layered on top only for the sparse few characters. It's all in service of building Sokal's imaginative world, a world of faded glory populated by eccentrics, all touched by Hans Voralberg, the object of Walker's quest. Her mundane task of finalising a contract for the sale of a factory transforming into an unexpected steampunk adventure is ripe for drama, although the game doesn't capitalise on it as well as it could have.

Kate's personal journey is supposed to be along the lines of a buttoned-up lawyer being challenged to embrace the passions of life, but this only vaguely bubbles along in the background so she just ends up coming off as rather bland. Occasional phone calls home are meant to flesh out her arc, but they only served to make me annoyed at her shouty boss, shallow friend, overbearing mother, and worst of all her nagging, whiny fiancé. On the other hand, Kate's companion on her trip is the clockwork automaton Oscar, a standout character who mechanically exhibits a soulful blend of fussy and sassy.

But the story really revolves around Hans, the savant syndrome genius inventor. His influence is felt at each of the stops in your journey, where you talk with those whose lives he has touched, and try to tinker with the mechanical marvels he left behind. His intricate clockwork creations have been integrated in the sleepy French village of Valadilene, the majestic Barrockstadt university, the ex-Soviet industrial wasteland of Komkolzgrad, and the Eastern European hotel at Aralbad. Truly the locations are the star of the game, each seemingly stuck in a bubble of the past, the rich detail making them feel real even through an aura of the surreal.

These places do get let down somewhat by often muted colour palettes, although arguably that ties into the theme of decline that permeates each. A bigger issue is the awkwardness of navigating them, with sometimes unclear traversal options, not to mention the pause between each flip screen as the next one loads. Sometimes the direction you're facing is completely inverted as you move between screens, such that your continued move input turns you around and may even move you straight back. I suppose this is a problem unique to joypad controls... Kate also gets around very slowly (even with the run button), and goes through laborious animations to line herself up with interactables, so the pace of gameplay can feel plodding.

Broader pacing issues are present to varying degrees. The first two chapters in particular have quite drawn-out and convoluted sequences of puzzles and fetch quests. It never gets as challenging as Myst or obtuse as Starship Titanic (two other adventure games I've played with a similar sense of style and prerendered graphics), so I never struggled too much but an occasional nudge from a guide was needed when I failed to see eye to eye with the designers. Dialogue scenes also slow things down with overly wordy prose that you have to comb relevant details out of.

So there's some flaws, but my biggest issue was with the scope of the game. It just doesn't tell a complete story, ending rather abruptly as Kate meets Hans in a location you've already been to. It feels like the decision to split the story up into two games left this one without a satisfying conclusion. Hans' (and the game's) mammoth fixation and the driving motivation to get to Syberia are utterly unpaid-off; Oscar doesn't even get to meet his creator before the game ends, despite that being brought up numerous times! It's simply half a game, and from what I've read the sequel has its own problems with failing to make Kate a compelling protagonist after completing what passes for her character arc, among other things.

But you know, no game is perfect. I still think there's a lot to love in Syberia. The atmosphere is thick and there's always striking visual design waiting around the next corner. Every location feels distinct and fascinating, and each has memorable characters and setpieces. It brings up some interesting ideas, even if it doesn't quite grapple with them as much as I wanted it to. If anything it makes me curious about Sokal's comics, although from a quick look I'm not sure any of them have been published in English! Sacre bleu!

[jumpstartfactoftheday]

KnowledgeLand contains multiple schoolhouses based on the ones that appeared in early 90s JumpStart games. Shown here are the preschool, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade schoolhouses as they appear in KnowledgeLand (left) with the original sources of inspiration (right).

While the 3rd and 4th grade schoolhouses originally used prerendered 3D graphics, meaning that KnowledgeLand likely used the same models, the other schoolhouses were all originally 2D, and this is the only known instance of them being recreated with 3D graphics.

[weilaverdui]

Hey, so, due to reasons, Weil is getting less work for the next month (and honestly, thank gods), so lets try and do something fun.

We in Weird birds had that idea for a game about a man lost in the Fae realm, somewhat inspired by the Odyssey. And, well, Weil listened to Epic the musical a bit too much this month, so.

The goal is to make the barest demo of the base game loop in a month. Not much of graphics, but get the tech pinned. The intention is to have a 3d tiled backgrounds with a 2d prerendered character done with sprite sheets, and make turn-based combat RPG-style. Plus, dialogue system and some sort of controls for theplot progression, rudimentary for now.

Better plug a good inventiry system from start, that can be easily extended. Got stuck there in the first project.

Wish weil good luck! Goal 1 is to rig a dummy.

[shalmonsgamedev]

Went ahead and tested out a wildly unfinished room render (still various things w/no texture at all lol) but I'm actually kind of encouraged by it?? namely because, that li'l henri wasn't originally part of it! I dropped them in from the test sprite I had previously made a while back and they fit in relatively well!  :0

I am pretty tickled by the gaudy chunkiness of the maps at this size this is quite close to the exact vibe i was wanting, so i'm surprised i'm already figuring it out? that ugly-but-nostalgic prerendered gba/playstation vibe so I guess the next bit of anxiety is seeing whether it will play nice in RPGmaker

Ideally I would like the game to run the way it looks at 2x or maybe even 3x size I'm pretty sure I came across a way to do that somewhere in my research, so hopefully not a big deal but yea, gotta have that chonk in the graphics

[enigmaincrimson]

@jaxxtadc

"I hate to break it to you, but that is what the theme song sounds like from my end." The pixel sprite on the floating screen would explain, having neglected to give herself a proper introduction. I mean, it's not like he asked, and it wasn't what she actually looked like either.

"Of course, everything looks like prerendered FMV graphics from my end as well, but... I think we'll leave it with the whole... sampled midi music for now."

[dethl]

i just dont get why everyone insists retro games look better on CRTs. i only understand it for low-poly 3D games/prerendered graphics. everyone gives the same comparison every time, and every time i see the comparisons the sharp unfiltered pixels just look better to me

and like, i know the difference, im not ignorant, i had a CRT until 2020

[game-boy-pocket]

This looks like a screenshot of me beating Donkey Kong Country but it's actually a rom hack called DKC Mania. I've been craving more DK lately but there's sadly not much to choose from in the way of romhacks.

This one is for the most part, a remix of the original DKC game. It uses the exact same world map, and if the level you select was originally a jungle level, it will be a jungle level in the hack, or a mine cart level, or a cave, or a water level, ect. I think the only thing that didn't return was that track that requires fuel, which... good riddance. The bosses are all exactly the same, except for the two beaver bosses, who just take more hits and get faster.

I won't lie it's super basic and a lot of the level design feels familiar. The idea was to remix existing levels like how Sonic Mania did for existing Sonic levels but it doesn't quite go far enough. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun, I mean, it's literally more Donkey Kong Country. Which is what I wanted. So mission accomplished.

Now, while I had a lot of fun with this game, I have a lot of issues with it. The graphics look rough in some areas, I undstand though, it has to be tedious to make a level with the prerendered tile sets. The game also has a few areas where you will get launched over the screen and stay there, so you can cheese the whole level, though there is one level near the end where doing this gets you soft locked in a particularly hard level...

And there is also a mixed blessing. This game gives you unlimited lives, and instead of kicking you out of the level if you die, you just instantly restart or go to the checkpoint. That's cool... however... Bannanas, K-O-N-G letters, and Balloon lives are very satisfying things to collect, and bonus rooms are fun to find... this game has lots of those... but they're all worthless, and you'd be better off avoiding them since it can some times be risky to grab them. So i'm not sure how I feel about this mechanic.

Anyway... complaints aside, I'm happy this hack exists. I NEED more Donkey Kong, and Nintendo is not providing the goods. So if you're like me and need more DK, maybe give this one a spin.