I missed that he’d split his channels!
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I would love to like this post, but I am crying on the inside because of how true it is.
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Thanks for sharing this - honestly had no idea how this worked on the Famicom until now, or how it wouldn’t be possible to pull off without a mapper (Crisis Force seems to use VRC4) if it’s not horizontal scrolling.
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Speaking of which, this was on point:
The sheer pace of game development/publishing these days and the emergence of new platforms is forcing people toward the fastest/least risky route of adopting middleware. While I don’t blame them for doing so, something has definitely been lost.
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Last I had heard, the minimum input latency one could expect from a Unity based game was 60ms. That’s pretty disappointing considering modern consoles, displays, and controllers introduce additional layers of latency on top of that. That made Hollow Knight very hard for me to play on Switch, even with a wired controller and low latency display.
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I’ve never heard this.
I read this as “Nobody cares about indie games any more” and nodded my head.
It’s maddening how much input latency there can be across games, it really hampers the feel of the controls. Katamari Damacy was ported to Unity for the Switch and PC release, and presumably due to the post-processing effects it has a huge amount of input latency, far beyond that of the original PS2 game. Completely changes how reactive your Katamari feels when moving the analogue sticks around.
I’ve been playing the new Brigandine on the Switch and I can feel the latency every time I progress the text - because it can’t keep up with my double button presses (one button press to fill the text box, the other to advance the text).
For Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, Capcom programmed the PS2’s vector units to generate satisfyingly disruptive ripples when you run across these stagnant indoor water pools.
Aside from the effect being really satisfying to trigger and watch, it’s more impressive that they even bothered to make it happen in the first place: These pools of water only reveal themselves for a couple of minutes across the game’s entire 25 hour running time!
That the fact the artists and programmers bothered to make this happen in the first place is to be lauded, then, when compared with games where water is very much the main focus (Neo Contra’s level 3, Balder’s Gate Dark Alliance).
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What are the odds they used the code from the rubber duck demo? I believe that was shared/included in the SDK. It’s by Dylan Cuthbert (Starfox).
PlayStation 2 Tech Demos - Tokyo Game Show 1999
If it was one of their library programs it would make a lot of sense. This is probably the most well known implementation. It’s more impressive when it’s on the ground with a bunch of characters moving over it, not sure why this uploader decided to just show a fountain.
Neo Contra has it for the sewer level, but perhaps due to the sheer amount going on the ripples update at half the framerate of the game itself
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Really impressive effect for PS2 hardware. Never saw it before.
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That looks pretty impressive, even the way it ripples off the side of the fountain’s walls as well as being disturbed by the player.
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I remember a friend and I stopping our co-op to marvel at that water effect. for some reason we always admire water in games while visiting.
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Water is one of things that I always have to check out as well.
I was sorely diasponted with Horizon Zero Dawn in that respect. Amazing graphics, beautiful game, but crappy water distortion and interaction when swimming.
Also, rain coming through the walls in caves.
All this from a game a that had Aloy stroke the red weeds when she was standing idle in a bunch of them. Consistency people!!
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This is really cool. Earthbound battle backgrounds:
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Speaking of which…
The user’s test was done using a gaming monitor
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Woah - you don’t even need the slow mo - lol.
Haha - very true that! The PC version has less latency but I could still feel it even when browsing menus, you can’t quickly navigate them with fast button presses.