Man, do I love experimenting.

[Meowster]

I was just thinking there recently.... like five minutes ago, perhaps... about how great experimentation is. Something I love experimenting with is graphics. Boyd likes experimenting on himself, but that is besides the point....

The point is, I used to use RPGmaker, and because of the graphical restrictions I found myself improvising a lot. I used a technique that was used a lot in Final Fantasy VIII; I tried to implement in game graphics with cutscene graphics. The end result was actually quite nice:



Yes, the picture is small, but anyway. See the eensy weensy little sprites down there? Yeah.

In Final Fantasy VIII, this was also very successful because it helped ease the transition between gameplay and cutscenes. Usually, you could tell when a cutscene was coming because of a pause in the gameplay and a black screen. Similarly you knew when it was over, and there was an unpleasant transition between soft, smooth CGI animation and the polygon characters.

Take for instance, the Ragnarok scene in FFVIII, where the ship crashes through Lunatic Pandora. The merging of graphics really brings the player into the action of the event. It starts off as you stand on the deck of the airship, and the camera zooms past our polygonal character into the FMV sequence. Then as the airship lands, we once again see our polygonal characters run onto the deck of the airship, merged seamlessly with the FMV animation. There was no definitive beginning or end of the cutscene. Similarly, this method is used in the beginning of Grim Fandango, where we are taken from the intro sequence by the camera zooming out on Manny and taking its place in the ordinary room position.

We don't have FMV sequences to merge the gameplay with. But such techniques could certainly be used. I'd love to see some experimenting like this. Look at the stylish graphics of Fear Effect... that game sucked, but I was addicted to it because of the graphics which were new for that time.


Anyway, the reason I thought about this way because I was using that very technique in BR, and I thought I'd show this screenshot:

[m0ds]

Another good example is Interstate '76. Basically are you talking about merging cut-scene graphics (which, are presumably somehow different) with in game graphics, but them both working well together?

[BOYD1981]

that kind of technique was used in the first two Oddworld games, i think the backgrounds may have been movie files, i remember one scene where Abe steps into a train and it seamlessly animates and pans round to show an entire scene, then when it stops it pans round the face on view again, it was might impressive.
if i make another game i'd actually like to make a 3D model of the place it takes place in so i could do stuff like that, so like if the character turns a corner you make an animation of the camera panning round instead of fading in and out, it looks neat...

anyway, i'm off to experiment on myself... now where did i leave that cactus....

[Meowster]

Preshishly.

Also, can anybody else think of ways to experiment in such ways? With RPGmaker, you really did have a lot of restrictions, and it was a nuisance but still.. I enjoyed finding ways to improvise. People had to come up with a lot of new ideas to work their way around the limitations. For instance using a mountainous background with an ordinary foreground, and layering tiled items over the mountainous background.

In one game made with RPGmaker, there was a scene that was made fully from in-game tile graphics, and it was neat. The guy had used, as well as the ordinary snow effect plugin, foreground and background scrolling screens, so it gave a lovely illusion of depth and the swirling of the wind. He'd used a hand-made tile set to build a first-person scene, and had an animated object that simulated the flapping fabric of the players hood as they stood looking out through the snow. It was really amazing, and completely stretched the engine to its limits.


With AGS there are fewer limitations, so people don't find the need to do as much improvising and therefore there are less new ideas/styles/etc coming out. For instance, if we wanted to simulate that snow effect in AGS, we would probably just paint a first-person background, use the snow plugin and voila. And set character transparency to 0.


So I guess I'm trying to encourage innovative use of AGS. Or something.

[InCreator]

I think that pretty cool way to do cutscenes is like they did them in many Nintendo (NES) games, where half-screen-size pictures of characters move left and right and talk.

Something like it was in games, such as Ninja Gaiden, Samurai Pizza Cats, Colgo13 and other.

[Miez]

I've been testing this sad excuse for a game they call "Return of the King" for PS2. And it uses a cutscene-to-game transition that's absolutely breathtaking. It was used in "the Fellowship of the Ring" as well. They've modelled scenes from the live action movie clips and do a seamless transition from FMV to interactive 3D. These games might suck, but those transitions are extremely well done and look like a mighty pain in the behind to do (technically).