3D Sprite Armature

[BladeJunker]

I didn't mean that it would have no graphical compromises or no sprites. Just not a 2D demake. Also, generally most N64 games sacrificed audio for graphics quality because the RCP chip did sound and graphics, and if you wanted good graphics, you needed to sacrifice audio, it being mono or having few channels.

I didn't know that about the RCP, I'm always weary about sharing any chips with audio when sound is mandatory and should have its own chip, the Snes had a sound chip.

I was mostly thinking about storage capacity for N64 games rather than sound quality, N64 games usually tried for something like a soundboard of repeatable SFX rather than long voice tracks which HL has more than a few of. Like HEV warnings, Barnie chatter, Scientist chatter, Black Mesa notices, quite a few tracks in HL to pare down.

Don't take these observations as me saying it isn't possible because HL on N64 is entirely possible, porting is a process with both good and bad results. I'm guessing you want some 3D graphics from the 3D N64, I hear you.

[BladeJunker]

Posting some reference as concept promotion mostly lol. Primarily I push the idea for 3DO, 32X, and Jaguar platforms as a homebrew direction since they all 'kinda' do 3D but not really, you can render a texture mapped room but you can't fill it with anything but sprites unless you like crates.

The indie scene is interesting if only to see art assets at lower resolutions than were done back in the day like 128X128 max as Minecraft by default has the texture detail of a PS1 game. The other being style and color depth not having to be realistic in indie games, on PC after Wolf3D game sprites in FPS games got so damn serious looking being based on live actors and stop motion so they were typically only 8-bit color globalized palette sprites in the 128 color more or less range. Seems minor but a then genre mandatory 8-bit color range really tied your hands as far as console porting FPS games back in the day whether from hardware color depth limits or just performance matters. Console gamers actually had to wait quite a while to play FPS games as it was exclusive to PC in most respects.

Good examples include Delver, Retro Blazer, In the Kingdom, and an oldie Disruptor, actually was a cancelled 3DO game given a second chance on PS1, a lost gem in my books. I'll post some videos next post, running out of links lol.



Was looking up Stop Motion, had no idea the Temple of Doom mine cart sequence had stop motion work in it.
http://movieminiatures.blogspot.ca/2...art-chase.html

Kind of think back in the day 2.5D should have used more stop motion, it migrated to CG not long after the more famous games that used it. CG is practical now but it looked very fake in the 90s like Might and Magic 6-8.
http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/f...mment%3A123164

Hard to find pictures of the old latex models, they fell apart usually when they were done with them.

Some Blood related models. Only $6 on GOG for the whole thing minus Blood2.
http://www.the-postmortem.com/forum/...t=1181&start=0

[BladeJunker]

Actually found some stop motion reference involving action figures, picked some of the better ones. Pretty much the default of 45 degree angles I quoted for rendering is bound to be a little jerky but no more jerky than a standard 3D sprite animation, it's sort of a balancing act in prerendering between overall sprite resolution and view angle degrees. It reminds me of Street Fighter 3 in that you have an impressive amount of keyframes but at a lower resolution than was expected anymore.
How many degrees you set prerendering to also depends on context like a cinematic cut scene could give you a setup of more image memory to work with than in-game levels allow by limiting it to 2 characters at most.

The swapping of part variants in stop motion and action figures falls in line with my 3D sprite proposal, especially facial animation such as it is jumping one pose to the other.










Well the very least, these are fun to watch.

[BladeJunker]

Just a few more references I wanted to add to this, the other PF Magic titles after Ballz 3D. They don't exist anymore but they were unique.
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_Magic

They pretty much produced pet simulators after Ballz with Catz, Dogz, Petz, and Babyz well into the late 90s. Like Ballz 3D the creatures are built from many layers of smaller sprites, usually the typical circle or vector ball.


Had this one myself, played with it a lot more than The Sims which I just couldn't get into.


The dog version, heh.


Never knew about this one but it reminds me of Spore, just crazy alien creatures.


I think that was the last one, a little more elaborate with line segments to make eyeglasses but still mostly circles. Probably the most dense version as it looks like a lot of layers per body mass.


Not PF Magic but lastly Ecstatica, a game I can never remember how to spell. Showing 2 since it is sharper but the first game is closer in screen resolution to the 32X. Wouldn't necessarily say ellipsoids are any better than spheres but I think if you used both it might mask the individual sprites more since the same shape isn't repeated as often.


I'd probably try it myself but I need to get better at using Blender first. Mostly I've been going over the palette restrictions of the 32X, the way it can augment the Genesis colors but the amount of color remains the same for all Genesis specific layers.

[GeckoYamori]

I remember having a demo of Oddballz. Thanks for jogging my memory on that.

This is some real interesting overlooked tech and I'm glad you've taken such a deep interest in it.

[BladeJunker]

I remember having a demo of Oddballz. Thanks for jogging my memory on that.

This is some real interesting overlooked tech and I'm glad you've taken such a deep interest in it.

Hey no problem. This level of hardware has a real hard time with 3D but it's expected to do it. There's a lot of middle ground to be had on 32X that many developers tried sporadically over the 90s, I mostly look at ID's work of Doom2 and then Quake1 or 2.5D sprite to 3D mesh, feels like we missed some steps between.

[BladeJunker]

Forgot to add this to my references, Joy Mech Fight on Famicom, cruder graphics than Ballz but it looks like a more interesting game altogether. The robot theme works well with the sprite segments.


Kind of wish Ballz was about robots, that it's characters looked like ones from Vectorman or Mega Man, and had a 3D arena box background in retrospect. Well maybe some day someone will make this.