Ingenious Solutions in Video Game Design: A Long-form Analysis
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
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Here we take a look at a few of the great ideas that developers have used to circumvent limitations in games. They're mostly hardware-based, but there are countless ways that a game developer can make the hardware work with them, instead of fighting the limits of its specifications.
"Making Crash Bandicoot" - all-things-andy...
A huge special thanks to the Reddit's Games discussion forum, where lots of great discussion about this topic took place. Many users contributed ideas and examples which made their way into the final video here. For the full discussion, see this link: / creative_solutions_for...
8:40 I love how you take the time to explain the concept of doing something 4 times faster.
That is probably the only part he understood as well :D
Well the bit about "the origin of the magical constant remains a mystery" is certainly 100% idiotic bullshit.
Ryan Denziloe he got the timeline wrong too....
+Nicat Memmedov
God knows it's the only part I understood
+Garaway The sad thing is, he got it wrong. Four times FASTER means five times AS FAST. Meaning getting "three friends to help you", assuming everyone does equal amounts of work, is three times faster - or four times as fast.
The design of difficulty deserves its own analysis. So many subtle ways of approaching it without the player even knowing.
id like to point out that namco patented loading games, which is why they are the only ones who do it.
It is expired AFAIK
Yep in 2015, they should have never been allowed to in the first place. Just like Henry Ford fighting the "automobile" patent. The concept was far too broad and should have been laughed off. We can thank the government viewing video games as media for children and uneducated bureaucrats for that.
I'm kind of sad he didn't mention Bayonetta though....
patent ran out
Namco patented loading screen games, and frequently tried to sue people for using "their" idea. Even when many others had done the same thing much earlier. We could have had superior loading screens for years, but they patented something they didn't even invent (and was super vague and broad, which shouldn't have been possible in the first place) and we all got stuck with boring screens :(
Thankfully the patent expired last year!
i did not even know there was such a patent. This is ridiculous!
Yeah it is pretty terrible. -Joe
Yeah it expired Dec 2015, but it really did screw up the works.
Sega applied for and was awarded U.S. Patent 6,200,138-"Game display method, moving direction indicating method, game apparatus and drive simulating apparatus" - in 2001. The mechanics in the "138 patent" describe an arcade cabinet similar to Sega's previous arcade game Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders (1997), but also describe the arrow navigation system and pedestrian avoidance aspects that were used in Crazy Taxi.
So they locked down using arrows to show where to go next, which is why the GPS system in Grand Theft Auto never used arrows, etc.
You are underestimating the skill of orchestras a lot to say they could not replicate "Battle on the Big Bridge".
+R. Ringshifter My thoughts exactly. Many orchestra pieces are faster and more complicated than that....
Battle on The Big Bridge itself has been played by orchestra, even.
Nick Miller Of course, but he specifically says "can never hope to replicate the *tight rhythm* and *insanely fast tempo*" which is plainly absurd. It will obviously be on different instruments, but it is by no means super difficult to play accurately.
Bump
Sage
Glad you included The World Ends With You. The fluidity of difficulty knocked my socks off when I played it. There was something just so immediate about the ease with which you could tailor each battle to the level of challenge you wanted. And the rewards always felt appropriate.
So Crash Bandicoot wears gloves for the same reason Mickey Mouse does. Back in the day when all cartoons were black-and-white, if a character was solid black (like Felix the Cat), you wouldn't be able to see their hands if they were held in front of their body, so animators would get around this by having the characters wear white gloves.
It's always fascinating to me how earlier developers were able to do so much with so little. It's like looking back on ancient artisans managing to build monuments that stand to this day.
It should also be noted that early NES composers developed a musical style not unlike baroque-era music. The limited number of channels (4) meant they had to re-purpose drum tracks for sound effects or give songs countermelodies while the melody cut out at times, similar to how baroque layered its melodies on top of one another.
Hmm, not so sure. Almost every "classic" NES tune has the channels organised as such: noises for "percussion", one bass line, and two melody lines playing in harmony. I can't remember any NES music which uses actual counterpoint, but if you can, I'll be glad to hear it!
Dusty you're chatting shit. Why would you chat shit?
Fernie Canto I'm not sure if I'm exactly the biggest authority, but I remember it from a podcast from my old local classical radio station. There are two articles for it here: www.classicalmpr.org/story/2013/12/17/video-game-basso-continuo
www.classicalmpr.org/story/2014/03/27/comparing-baroque-music-with-video-game-music-on-top-score
Dusty Chan
Thanks for the links. And yeah, I think that first article was *really* pushing and stretching the definitions to make that connection, and the examples didn't help much. For me, it's clear that the idea of a rhythm bass giving support to a melody is derived from electronic music itself, already very prevalent in that day and pioneered by names like Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Tangerine Dream and the like; and much of late 70's electronic also has roots in funk and soul (and some NES tunes sounded pretty funky indeed, e.g. the first level of Castlevania).
It must be said that many electronic music pioneers were doing wonders with very primitive equipment. I see video-game music largely as a continuation of that work. I guess it's just down to cultural baggage: as much as some classical music buffs would want to put Koji Kondo next to Bach, I see him much more grooving along with Donna Summer.
Fernie Canto I can agree with that conclusion much more easily.
I learned more about game desgn in this video than my entire course in game design.
High praise, thanks! -Joe
agreed better then extra credits.
I feel it's better because it has less "fluff" than extra credits.
But seriously , big companys dont know games you cant teach art. you can teach programming and technical skills but art is somthing that surpasses the value of the sum total of its parts. and that requires heart XD . cause theres no one right way to do anything. especially fun.
I actually went through that "Quake Experience" a few years ago during a college project, where I had this 8bit processor read 3axial data from an accelerometer and do these wild real-time logging and detection operations through an USB. It got to the point where the math library was simply too big to be included in the program, so I was forced to pick whichever functions I needed (mostly square roots and arctangents) and implement them using Newton's methods for space and processing efficiency.
Great channel, subbed.
I hate dynamic difficulty. Sometimes I want challenge and have easy time, sometimes I want to prove I can beat everything game throws at me.
I am okay when game asks me if I want to lower difficulty, like DMC3. I am not okay, when it goes up and down and I don't want. Maybe I want zero challenge or I want to die over and over until I get good.
Fantastic job and analysis! Nice job staying objectively focused and providing multiple examples of the variety of constraints/topics.
Amazing video! One other way of balancing difficulty in RPGs is including superbosses or extra dungeons. The story events can be easier and have challenges littered throughout.
Metroid Prime also used the Mass Effect and Dead Space methods of hiding loading screens (elevators and waiting for doors to open), in addition the simple "long corridor" method mentioned.
Mario's entire design is because of Donkey Kong's limitations. He has overalls to differentiate his arms from his body, he has a big nose and a mustache to define his face, and a hat is easier to create than hair with fewer pixels.
Hey there. Just found your channel and love the concept. I am a fan of Extra Credits and glad to have found another channel on game design. I am currently attending Full Sail University for Game Design and have just finished up my first class Creative Presentation. Our books we had to read were Nancy Duartes "Resonate" and "Slide:ology" in the books she goes over how less is more and how text while presenting can sometimes do more harm than good. Maybe give those books a read if you like, just a suggestion from a simple viewer. Either way keep up the good work!
12:38 -- Are you *really* saying a human orchestra can't possibly play something like that? Dude, you need to listen to more music.
they can but not exactly so
Non Johns
What do you mean, "exactly"? You mean it wouldn't be as precise?
It wouldn't sound the same
Non Johns
That's now what's said in the video, though. The author talked about the "tight rhythm and insanely fast tempo" of the music, and how a human orchestra "could never hope to replicate" it. That's a very strong, and wrong, statement. Of course a human ensemble would sound very different, but there are pieces of music that are *much* faster and *much* tighter than that, which have been performed countless times in live settings already. A person who says that clearly has a very, very lacking musical background. And that's not a problem in itself, but if one knows little about music, they shouldn't make such statements about it.
Ohh okay
Amazing video! Engaging, informative, well researched, structured and edited. Well done!
Wait..... Deus Ex predicted 911. Holy shit.
My favorite clever hack is in Pitfall. It uses a random number generator set to a specific initial value to store its levels. Apparently the developer came up with the idea to work around the limited storage space, he played many different randomly generated levels until finally finding one that he liked for the final game.
Just want to say this is the most interesting and well made game-design video I've ever seen. Subscribed and I'll be checking out your other videos, thanks so much for this one :)!
I really love these types of vids, you know this channel could become huge if you guys dedicated it further to these.
We have started a channel just for the analysis videos only. It's here: ruclips.net/channel/UCPbq5s9zheSKNAnEmBbo1_w
Majora's Mask is a gold mine of this type of creative solution developing that in turn shapes what makes the game so fantastic.
Finally! I needed a channel like this, subscribed!
Awesome! Thanks for watching!
One of the most interesting video games youtube vids I've ever seen. Keep up the good work man, subscribed.
thanks!
Great video! As a game design major, I found this video very insightful and full of good information!
This is a great video! I have some ideas for videogames and am trying to learn coding to create my idea but before I jump in blind I want to learn about the history of videogame design as well as what people have done to get past challenges and this is just what I was looking for. Thanks
The coolest ingenious solution to platform limitations that I've seen is from Mark Ferrari's GDC talk about 8-bit and 8-bittish art. Around 11 minutes in he shows how they used palette switching to create 9 scenes (3 locations--forest valley, cloudy sky, cityscap--at 3 different times of day) from one piece of art.
Great analysis vid! I bet each of the areas described here could make their own video, but a general overview is appreciated :)
Such a great analysis, I'm subbing, I like this kind of videos.
I love video games and learning, but I get bored of both, even though I have a great time on competitive games the music and sound effects of those games gets repetitive after a while, and videos with great audio content but lacking graphics have a similar effect in me, so I play competitive video games while listening to analysis, reviews, debates, interviews, etc. I've been doing this for the last 2 years and it has worked.
12:43 YOU USED FOOTAGE FROM MY PLAYTHROUGH OF FF5 AND I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE UNTIL NOW!!!!
...I kinda feel honored, to be honest!
Um... Orchestras can DEFINITELY go that fast... And square waves are very similar to reed instruments, though I've seen orchestras using synths too for specific songs... Whistles and wind instruments are close to pure sine waves too. I can make an almost pure sine from whistling. I love this video but you're wrong about the current limitations of music xD there aren't really any limitations these days, live or recorded, and sometimes even translating between electronic and traditional.
One of my favourite examples is the memory and ID locations for the code of items, Pokemon, and moves in Pokemon Gold and Silver, as evidenced by the arbitrary code execution coin case glitch. The number of items, pokemon, and moves all line up with each other so cleanly that there are the same number of all three in total. This means the same ID can be used with three separate times with a corresponding memory location, resulting in an elegant if simple coding system that takes up 1/3 of the space.
+Game Soup Subbed! ;)
Big fan of implementing creating game design.
Really enjoyed the video. Glad I found you. ^^
Small correction: At 15:20 he said screen resolution can be changed in 1/30th of a second, but actually the game runs with 60 FPS. That's the impressive thing about WipEout HD, it runs at 1080p with 60 frames on the PS3 without any noticable lags.
Thumbs up for mentioning The World Ends With You, I'm always happy to see that game get more attention!
YES! TWEWY will forever be my underrated, nobody-talks-about-it favorite RPG. Always great to find another TWEWY fan.
I agree with you about Darksouls 2 being a good example of a well flowing game, but not because of the reasons you listed, or at least in the way you listed. I think its a good example because it gives players options, players are almost never out of options in Darksouls, including but not limited to grinding, asking for help ( like you mentioned) or even finding a way to skip a boss or area all together. It keeps the player actively trying to explore, and out smart the game, while also creating a challenge barrier that teaches, and tests the players skills.
I actually came up with an interesting game difficulty slider for a game of mine. Mutators. You can activate any number of them that change the game in different ways from just making enemies weaker, or added extra lives. Or making you take extra damage while giving out more damage. Or additional enemies that spawn, or enemies attack much more relentlessly.
In this way you can activate any number of them for a customized difficulty.
You came up with an idea that's been done a boatload of times. it's a good one though.
*Sees Nocturne's difficulty select screen*
*Sees hard mode*
Oh god...the memories...the horror...the pain...
The eventual incredible sweet victory. The demifiend DESERVES hard mode.
I've been on a youtube educational video binge and I really enjoyed your style! Also really appreciate links to all the sources in the video and was wondering if there's a list of the sources somewhere clickable, this video has made me want to do some outside research!
The more of your videos I watch, the more I think my math major might actually be worth while
Actually, the reason for the fog in Silent Hill was primarily to make the open world because it hid that the map was constantly loading in the background.
i would be surprised if the high density mesh of mario at 14:07 is actually an in-game model. poly count is way too high for something like the wii u, looks more like a promo-shot rendering model to me.
prerendered backgrounds also look amazing. im playing through bravely default again on the 3ds and i love the art in it. Feels like your inside a painting. which you kind of are.
Such a high quality video. So inspiring. Thank you it's an amazing work
A good option for subjective difficulty in regards to a time limit would be to have certain paths have items or maybe areas that when reached would increase the time limit. That way the people who got really good at the most difficult one would get the best score giving the players a reason to try other paths and improve.
Awesome video. I've always been fascinated by the many ways developers find tricks to get around obstacles and get the most out of a given platform.
+cj694x2 Thanks! We love this stuff too. For some reason it's the most interesting stuff to read up on.
You deserve wayyyyy more subscribers, so I threw my number your way ;)
But seriously, your videos are all great :)
thanks!
Hi, interesting video and great examples.
I'd like to make a suggestion for future videos. I found it difficult to read your in-video text while listening to your narration because they didn't use the same wording.
For example, starting at around 15:50, you talk about the problem solving process. But the wording you use in narration almost never uses any of the wording on-screen. Thus, it feels like I have to process two semantically different statements at the same time very quickly.
"Potential solutions affect performance variably" while at the same time you say "The optimal path to solve a problem may not always be available".
So I understand that you don't want to do the old cliche of just reading out the words on a powerpoint but this might be a bit too different. I often feel like I had to first ignore your narration and parse the bullet points, then replay the section to hear your narration.
I would either let the bullet point appear first and pause so viewers can see what you're going to talk about, and then start your narration about that point, or just write your text to be more congruous to your narration.
Hope to see more videos in the future!
I think it's worth pointing out that the way Metroid Prime and Dead Space handle loading is actually very, very similar. Metroid Prime loads in assets for the room past the exit you're closest to in the current room, which is why long narrow halls were sometimes used between areas; they can act as a loading buffer between two large rooms that otherwise can't fit in the system memory, and to physically move the player to a location where the design of the next room makes logical sense, ie. it wouldn't interact with the geometry of the previous room. However, many larger rooms directly load to other large rooms, and in many cases, if you move quickly, the door won't open instantly, but will instead open when the next area is finished loading. This, like dead space, is not a specifically defined amount of time.
"if you haven't seen GDQ's gaming marathon, then you should use up all your vacation days, and stay at home like a creep and watch" I laugh. A lot. And true btw :)
this was a rad video and I'm totally hooked on your channel
12:38
sounds like a challenge
This honestly has been quite informative. Thank you for this vid.
As innovative solutions go, Zanac is one for the records. That game has the most evil adaptive difficulty ever implemented. It is one of the very first bullet-hell games. And despite the NES limitations, the game never slows down or drops frames...the developers managed to push the number of ships and bullets flying at you to the absolute limit for the system without sacrificing quality.
Realy nice quality content dude! keep it up!
Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it! --Ed
I'm pretty sure the magic number used by Quake was more a solution to calculating the square root than it was division (that was just a bonus), but otherwise, really good video. As a developer, I spend a lot of my time working on optimizations and tricks to pack the most into the game.
Excellent analysis! Incredibly coherent and well written.
This sounds more like game development than game design. The two have to work with each other, so for example you have to design levels that can be understood when viewed from a single angle that's looking at a 3d pre-rendered background, but the process of coming up with that idea is game development imo.
I agree, the pure technical aspect is development, eve if it works hand in hand with design.
The quake 3 inverse root isn't design. The elevator conversations are. As well as the crates in crash bandicoot.
Apparently Namco copyrighted "load up" games which is why we don't see that from other company's. GG Namco
Amazing. Thx so much for the quality of the info
Speaking on the limitations of live recorded music for games at 12:18... you know there are many orchestras that utilize electronic instruments that can generate white noise sound effects, and there are tons of live musicians that use the NES sound-chip for live music (e.i. Crystal Castles, Anamanaguchi, etc.), right? ... And after playing cello for ten years, I can definitely tell you that Battle of the Big Bridge is nothing compared to many orchestral works, like the iconic Presto from Summer of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. And you don't need to play to say that, just listen to that or Rachmaninoff's Musical Moment #4 (though it's only for piano). Live music can be just as tight and fast paced, and not all games use orchestra's anyway which greatly broadens the scope of what's possible acoustically. AND on top of that, once the music is recorded, it's not like they can't go back and add anything they want anyway-any white noise, NES sounds, or even just speed up the tempo. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Really the only valid point in that section is that the NED hardware is limited. It's more accurate to mention that budgets for many games have been so limited in the past, that games with full orchestral, live recorded music is actually really frickin rare, and also really something that's only become popular within the past decade, since a lot of studios have to rely on synthesized music, unless it's a huge AAA title, but even they want to save money where they can, and music's usually a safe place to cut corners when you don't want to pay for an orchestra.
I think the point they were *trying* to make was that the limitations gave composers a framework to focus on the barest essentials of composition which led to the creation of memorable melodies and basic hooks that work even in low fidelity.
Art thrives in limitations, even orchestral music. Just imagine a classical composer trying to get every instrument ever to play at once in a single piece. Even if theoretically possible, it's inevitable that some of the more subtle ones would be completely drowned out.
Removing limitations doesn't necessarily lead to better music without vision behind the compositions; for an example of high-fidelity orchestral music that is competently played but utterly devoid of direction or inspiration, see Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. Give me the Yamaha MIDI twang of the Genesis games any day over that crap.
My favorite difficulty options in a game was System Shock. You could control attributes of the four various aspects of the game: Combat, Puzzles, Cyberspace, and Story. Very cool. You could play the game as a shooter. Or as a completely story-driven experience, with enemies as very feeble.
Battle on the Big Bridge would be really cool played by a drumline and brass. That's probably the only way a live performance could come close to the original.
The white noise channel on the NES existed specifically TO simulate percussion, it wasn't an innovation based on limitation. White noise had already been used in more sophisticated synthesizers at the time to add percussive elements prior to this and the designers of the NES were aware when designing the sound capabilities of the system
For an example where developers tried to give a story justification for bad draw distance and failed, see Superman 64.
I'd love to see a long form piece on speed running. I think you guys could make that really interesting. Just a thought.
Neither of us is a speed runner, but Ed does watch a lot of them and loves GDQ. -Joe
1 of the best vids on youtube!
So well-researched. Thanks for this.
+Austin Kaiser I'm so glad you found it enjoyable! This was an amazingly fun project.
Love the videos.
They provide some good insight.
Metroid Prime used the doors and elevators to load too. D:
I remember that! -Joe
recently I noticed when I wasn't good at playing guitar I would always play the same thing in a different way and I keep recording it because it often sounded good
but now I'm much more consistent, and in this consistency I lost the element of variation that allowed for happy accidents
A great topic. Thank you for making this. I feel this video could have been improved by a change in structure. Rather than addressing every item in the discussion separately, you can allow the viewer more freedom to assimilate the information by presenting the examples in an incomplete form, and then completing the puzzle with a single unifying observation. This would make your final point more powerful and it would invite the viewer to participate in the exploration, albeit silently and passively.
The Myst series was actually prerendered all the way to 4, because the computers at the time weren't able to handle real 3D with textures at a reasonable speed or at least with that level of detail, Uru, 5 and the remake of the first are the only ones in 3D
+Game Soup This was an awesome analysis. :)
And... *Subscribed*.
Looking forward to checking out more of your videos on game design. ^V^
this is my favorite vid on youtube
Wow! Thanks! We're glad you like it!
You talked a ton about dynamic difficulty but didn't mention God Hand? It's one of the best examples.
An orchestra can emulate square waves pretty easily by using either a clarinet section or a synthesizer(this can be used in many other ways.
Crash Bandicoot was awesome, in every sense.
Just one example of groundbreaking solutions that Naughty Dog came up with was Occlusion Culling - a process that would only render objects that were visible to the player, further freeing up video memory and processing power. I can name hundreds of games that wouldn't run if not for that amazing system. It's sad that the series ended like it did.
I am convinced/know that the music from Final Fantasy 5 can be played by the IRL instruments and even live. There is nothing that is impossible in the song.
About what you say at 13:30, I agree but hopefully we can still make awesome thematic music with modern quality audio :)
only 6 minutes in but i wanted to mention how doom was actually top down and they were able to make it seem 3d. didnt know iif you mentioned that
um...what? How the hell does that work?
He's talking about how the game engine works, if you hit tab to look at the map in the original Doom, what you're looking at is the the game you are actually playing. When you are in the main action screen, it's calculating your position on the map and showing you what you would see if it were in 3-d from your perspective. So the gameplay is 2-d but you are being shown what appears to be a 3-d image may be a simpler way to put it. I probably could've worded it better, but hopefully I was able to convey it. -Joe
@@eveandromeda its hard to explain without a picture but your character exists in a map and has a cone of vision. The map has all the things you see in the game, whatever the cone of vision touches the game loads for you to see. It determines how big something is supposed to be by your distance from it on the map.
Another subject related to game's difficulty is difficulty in freemium-mobile games, how it is carefully controlled so it increases slightly for each level but there will suddenly be moments where it is almost impossible for the player to beat the level (kind of gateways) unless he tries many times and waits several days or pays extra money. after this level the dificulty reverts to the regular curve it was following
normally I wouldn't care about these "designs" but the sad fact is that gambling (the other gaming industry) and mobile freemium elements have started to leak through to the traditional videogame companies and we have for instance the weapon unlock system in Battlefield 4 where you unlock weapons and attachments all the time, however in order to get a specific weapon and the accesories you may want you would have to spend countless hours playing in a very specific maner... or you can pay extra money and buy the "shortcuts".
your overall point around 11:40 is kind of half true. and if you think a band couldn't pull off a translated version of that song, well you're wrong. It may take a hell of a band, but it's easily in the realm of doability. but I agree that certain limitations lead to innovations. I call them "happy accidents" in music. This video brings to light that they also exist in the game design world. good work :)
I think you're being generous by considering that even "half true". He says that modern orchestras couldn't replicate the Mario sounds without transcribing them to other instruments, thus completely forgetting that you can just include a synthesizer in the ensemble--as modern classical musicians HAVE BEEN DOING FOR DECADES. And if you can't put a synthesizer to play along, just record it separately and get the orchestra to play in sync. Or use library sounds in a DAW and replicate a synthetic orchestra to do whatever the hell you want (though it won't sound as good as a live ensemble, obviously).
The reason why so many modern soundtracks stick to traditional orchestras is not because of limitations; it's just an attempt to ape Hollywood, raising video-games to a "serious" status (in a foolish manner). In fact, it really annoys me how utterly derivative some video-game soundtracks can be. And I dismiss that idea that it's because it's "too easy" to make music with modern tools; it's just some kind of collective self-esteem issue that leads composers to sound more bombastic and more self-important every year. Big orchestras doesn't result in less memorable music--listen to fucking Beethoven if you don't believe it. Or John Williams, if that's more up your alley.
P.S.: some of my comments here are not a direct reply to you; I just happened to open a can o' worms of mine there and couldn't stop rambling.
Well, I was actually referring to the high BPM final fantasy track he says humans couldn't pull off. I play in a death metal band. It gets pretty wicked. I'm pretty sure even I could pull it off if I wanted to.
I think he is, however, touching on an issue that a lot of very smart people can not wrap their head around, with all due respect to them. which is how the creme of the crop, the best of any art form seem to turn problems into creative solutions. They work around limitations instead of letting them hinder their progress. It's always the rule breakers who become the new rule setters. I try explaining this to academics when they try to convince me to take schooling for music, and their heads explode. These people however usually have not written over 100 songs like I have, but they want to tell me how "learning it right" will not affect me as a songwriter. It's because they don't seem to understand that I write music because it's simply fun to me, and as soon as it becomes homework I lose interest. OFCOURSE I'm an autodidact and study the things I need to study when I'm ready, but that is my path, not their chosen path. I want to make all the "Mistakes." I prefer the limitations doing it this way sets on me. I can learn to work around these issues my way, creatively, before learning what the "right" solutions are, and I'm 100% sure I'm better for it.
Finding my own way down in this way has given me a leg up on many other people in my field. now that I've been doing music for 12 years or so now, and I've caught up in my understanding of theory, etc, I have something school can never teach them, which is a unique only to me, outside of the box approach to music composition that people can imitate but no one can truly take.
Shrug
Derrick Swinney
"Well, I was actually referring to the high BPM final fantasy track he says humans couldn't pull off."
Oh, yes, I wrote all that because I agreed with you. I just went off the rails. But there's music that is *a lot* faster and more precise than his example in all sorts of genres: classical (e.g. Flight of the Bumblebee), jazz, progressive rock, metal and so on. It's, honestly, quite baffling that someone would think a human ensemble couldn't perform that, and a pretty embarrassing thing to say in a video like this.
"They work around limitations instead of letting them hinder their progress. It's always the rule breakers who become the new rule setters."
This is true to some degree. There are lots of rule breakers that reached the pantheon of great musicians, but an even bigger lot of "rule breakers" that went nowhere. And in history, you *will* find plenty of great artists who, when faced with limitations, banged their head against the wall until they brought it down. Richard Wagner requested new instruments to be designed specifically to get the sound he wanted for his operas. Baroque musicians (Bach included) championed the well temperament so they could modulate their music to any key they wanted and make it always sound good. In Bach's case, he did often break rules, but he was an even bigger *maker* of rules, and he was a master in everything he did.
The way I see it, every "rule" in every art form has a purpose, and one of the flaws of academia is to teach the rules without teaching the purpose. And I suppose many teachers don't bother teaching the purpose because they believe those rules are universal (just look at how many teachers think the harmonic series is the fundamental mathematical universal principle behind all consonance and dissonance, and then look at the recent MIT article about a tribe in Bolivia that displayed no preference between consonant and dissonant sounds). I think what you're getting at is that no rule is universal, and it doesn't make sense to follow rules that don't apply to what you're trying to do. And I think you'll only learn which rules make sense through experimentation, and I guess most of academia doesn't exactly encourage that (with notable exceptions, of course. One of our local music colleges includes a class on free improvisation in some of its courses; it's akin to throwing a bunch of kids in an icy lake and demanding them to swim out on their own. The results are mindblowing). I look through some videos on music theory on RUclips, and I often see viewers making questions such as "is it okay to play this note on this scale?" or "is it okay to start a song with a chord outside its key?". Those are questions made by people who are scared of experimenting, and I believe you're on the right track by being fearless. Breaking rules won't necessarily bring success every time, but it's a hell of a good way to learn, and probably better than just following textbooks to the letter. It's art, not medical science. You won't kill anyone.
Right, I mean, not everyone is Picasso, but only those with a similar spirit can do what he did.
I think the main takeaway is that
1. There are exceptions to everything,
2. “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” -Bruce Lee.
Also, I don't care if I never make it. The songs I've written do something to me nothing else can. They take me to worlds in my head that I've created for them. This is a very personal experience and an outsider may see me as egotistical because a quarter of everything I listen to is my own work. However, they do not account for how it calms my anxiety and is always literally fine-tuned to bring me chills. It helps me, and that's what it's all about. Going somewhere to learn how to achieve these things 'better' to me, is the antithesis of my reason for it. It's just how I regard certain aspects and principles of aesthetics. Weird how some can see fit to mock it on either side.
Celephais was special for the same reason only Kuranes was fit to rule it.
+Fermie Canto
"just look at how many teachers think the harmonic series is the
fundamental mathematical universal principle behind all consonance and dissonance, and then look at the recent MIT article about a tribe in
Bolivia that displayed no preference between consonant and dissonant sounds"
That doesn't disprove anything. That simply reveals a certain people's perception of consonance and dissonance.
Mathematically, certain combinations of notes are objectively dissonant, where dissonance is defined as the relative simplicity of these notes' superpositional amplitude. A fifth creates a standing wave with three nodes, relative to its base. A major seventh creates a lot more. I understand your point, but your example does not serve it well.
I'm surprised parallax scrolling and Mode7 weren't included in this video, creating a sense of depth and dimension in a hardware that couldn't render "real" 3D.
I use a self-imposed challenge for stealth games: "Phantom Mode" -no kills/knockouts -no alerts -no spot -no cheat mechanics (walls/aimbot) -no leaving gadgets on the map & finally -get through the stage/map as though you were never there.
A game design video that doesn't use horseshit philosophy and arbitrary nonsense hidden behind the guise of a really obnoxious voice?! Seriously, can YOU actually get more views than Extra Crapheap, pretty please? You have far more than actually earned it. Especially when you do you decide to go in depth and actually talk about games.
just something about "long-form analysis" in 2023 when the video is only 23 minutes, lol. Doesn't detract from the value of it, it's just funny since I was ready for about ten times that much time.
Sonic X-Treme took advantage of a mistake to get perfectly curved arcs on Sonic's eyeline. I don't recall exactly how it worked out, but I believe it had to do with accidentally leaving out a point or line when defining a polygon, which made the square shape bend one edge backwards so it was shaped like a triangle. I remember seeing a diagram back around '06 that the team's lead programmer, Chris Coffin, posted on a forum explaining it. If memory serves, the team noticed it and applied it on the character model for some extra refinement. There was a ton of clever stuff in that game, a shame it got canned.
Great work!
Just found your channel. You got yourself a new sub :)
Thanks! Glad you enjoy it!
Great vid! Subbed.
thanks!
Are you telling me the people who made Quake literally came up with a new math equation to make their game run faster?
That's genius.
Not entirely. It looks magical, but really it just used known properties of logarithms and floating point representations. Still very clever and amazing though.
They did not come up with it. There is a bit of a debate on the exact origin, but general consensus is that it originated somewhere in the Silicon Graphics. This kind of invention isn't entirely uncommon in game development, either. Remember all these trig identities from high school? Game dev is probably the only place where these are actually finding great amount of use. Modern CPUs are way better at crunching out these special functions, but you still don't want to compute more of them than you have to.
No, it's called linear approximation and is taught in most first calculus classes. It is handy for estimating certain types of formula (logarithms and square roots). Basically you take a more complicated formula, and estimate nearby points via a simple line.
The general idea is that you take a value you can easily calculate. I.E. the square root of 9 is 3... but what is the square root of 8.7?? By using linear approximation we can basically take the slope, and just add or subtract .3 from the function, essentially giving an estimate by inputting this value into the linear approximation formula.
If you want to learn more (with a much better explanation than mine) check out this: www.math.brown.edu/UTRA/linapprox.html
Linear approximation is really a nice tool, and not very complicated. Although that's what most math majors say (the more you know, the more past topics are easy to derive and explain). So whatever >.<
The minute he said Isaac newton I knew he was talking about linear approximation, it was a hell of a topic when first introduced, but really it's incredibly simple.
Tyrael Archangel That's not the clever part of fast inverse square root, though. Everyone who has spent any amount of time studying numerical methods or spent some time actually developing for rendering/game engines knows the Newton Method. (And hopefully, some better methods as well.)
The clever part is how you get that first estimate. You want to be in the rough neighborhood, or it will take forever to converge. (And we want to be done in 1 step!) The idea is that floating point numbers are recorded as a pair of numbers m and x (plus a sign bit, but it's not important here.) The number is decoded as (1 + m) * 2^x. The entire approach relies on the fact that (1+z) * 2^(-x/2) is a fair estimate, where we don't care much what z is, so long as it's in the [0,1), which it will be. This allows CPU to compute the first estimate as one bit-shift and one subtraction operations. These are typically the fastest instructions, as they are both part of the ALU.
How do we make this game not lag but still look good?
I'm not sure, but I think we're going to have to use... math!
So Deus Ex predicted the fall of the Twin Towers accidentally. holy shit
Very interesting video! Thanks for making it :D
would love it if the volume was a little louder and the text a little easier to read. oprahs got old eyes
@Underscorer you just mad Oprah didn't get you a car
At 17:50 you show a clip of "I Wanna Be The Boshy" which is weird because I was listening to this video while playing a medley game and fighting the final boss of that game.
+StarchyToast haha, weird coicidence!
One great way to make the AI catch up to the player without it being too obvious is to cover the road with ash particles that get leaned up when you ride them.
So while the first player's beautifying the road strip by strip, the AI are riding along the 'frictionless' strip created by the forerunner and catching up easily. Of course, the strip disappears after a while so during the later laps it's not possible for the forerunner to use those strips.
At least, if the rubber banding needs some kind of explanation to make it logical.
2:08
The memory bandwith should say Gb/S and not GB/S xD
Minor and extremely unimportant correction.
Anyway, love your videos, keep it up
Ah, thanks for that correction. Thanks for watching!