The Low Tech Way Resident Evil Tricked You
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
- Play the finished demo scene: popstrikers.itch.io/re-camera...
Get access to extended version of videos, exclusive podcasts, and more!
/ popstrikers
Or grab me a Red Bull to power through editing the next one
ko-fi.com/popstrikers
Video Sources:
T-Rex Tech Demo: • T-Rex Tech Demo 1 Play...
Manta Tech Demo: • Manta Tech Demo 1 Play...
Die Hard Trilogy: • Die Hard Trilogy (PS1)...
Tomb Raider: • Was it Good? - Tomb Ra...
Vagrant Story: • PSX Longplay [143] Vag...
Resident Evil 1: • Longplay of Resident E...
Resident Evil 3: • Resident Evil 3 : Neme...
Soul Reaver: • LEGACY OF KAIN SOUL RE...
Resident Evil 2: • Resident Evil 2 [USA] ...
City Environment used in the game: blendswap.com/blend/30474
Social Links:
Twitch: / tomoliver3d
Twitter: / tomoliver3d
Instagram: tommyoliversays
TikTok: / popstrikers 
Развлечения
Just because a play style was invented because of a technological limitation of the time doesn’t mean it isn’t still fun. We didn’t give up dice completely for bits
Is this you saying that fixed camera is cool or isn’t cool?
I have been playing some classic RE games this year, and going back to fixed camera angles has been AMAZING. So fun to play through, and the angles are a large part of the magic
@@redomagnus4762 Fixed camera angles and tank controls are still good for games built around the idea of it. Also the youtuber for this video forgets another very important aspect. Art style/art direction for modern indie games. Because pre rendered background/sprites do not look the same as a fully rendered environment.
if it was fun t begin with yes, but this mecanic was suposed to be confusing and ''scary'' in the first time, and is not like this this days so no it's not funny because it was never suposed to, and not scary anymore because we all learn how to deal with it, is just, clunky
@@Wolfstanus did you skip through the video? because he does bring that up.
@elderjose9662 I disagree with this take. It's not "clunky", as these games are built around these controls and are essential to the game design. It is fundamentally fun if these games actually appeal to you at all. These games don't just exist to scare you, they are video games first and foremost and everything about the controls and camera work to make these games what they are. I wouldn't be able to have fun replaying RE1R dozens of times if the only appeal is the initial "confusion" and fear.
Modern controls and camera do not automatically make a game a better or more well crafted experience Just look at RE3 vs it's remake.
I've always said one thing that made Resident Evil scary was you didn't know what you were gonna find at the other side of the corner. The angles are a key element to help in the horror aspect of the games.
This. Also a skilled dev could use the camera like a real movie director, guiding players nonverbally towards points of interest.
RE 4 ruined it.
RE 4 was the downfall.
Resident evil 1 - 3 are hilarious they aged poorly
I enjoyed the old school RE games, but thy relied too much on their own self-imposed limitations to make the games artificially difficult. Basic movement was clunky and frustrating, exploration was slow and disorienting, aiming was hilariously bad, and combat would always occur on the line between two cameras making it impossible to see the enemy.
These weren't features. They were flaws. Serious, unaddressed, flaws.
choosing one specific angle allowed the artists who worked on the game to create truly memorable scenes and customize and direct every little bit of it. in MANY ways it leads to more sophisticated and customized art direction than larger games now.
This sort of thing is exactly why I'm pretty tired of open world games. There's something about a curated experience that you can't get when the devs instead focus on "you choose how to proceed." It's why I like the first couple Metal Gear Solid games more than MGS V.
art direction over graphics complexity.
I think a small part you didn´t reconsider for the Tank controls is that back then, those games were designed to be played with a D-Pad, not a Stick. When the first RE came out, the typical PS Dual Stick Controller wasn´t even out, you just had your base controller without them, and even with later games, I´m not even sure if RE3 supported the sticks. But nowadays, trying to play tank controls with a stick just feels strange
That’s actually one of the things I go over in the Extended Cut haha
Re3 did support the sticks it was 1 and 2 that didnt at first. They both got duel shock editions later after their initial releases re1 got its duel shock in late 1997 and 2 got it in later of 1998. Re3 came out in 1999 when most games started to shift to analog stick controls by that point.
A little off topic but Final Fantasy 7 started off with just use of the D-pad but there is a gameshark cheat that allows use of the analog stick on the original ps1. 8 and 9 used both the pad and sticks.
@@TheRealSephiroth Correct, but literally nobody played any of those games, or the future titles in the same genre, with the analog sticks.
To this day, the first two protips I give to anyone planning to play a late-90s / early-00s horror games for the first time are:
1. Google and read up the MANUALS, and
2. Use the D-pad. Sadly, Xbox controller has terrible D-pad, which is why I use and recommend Playstation controllers.
Playing those games with a Playstation D-Pad feels great.
@@GugureSux thats not entirely true. I never play with the Dpad unless thats the only option. I always used the sticks. I couldnt stand the pads 🤣
I miss fixed camera angles. They could tell a story and create a sense of suspense quite effortlessly
absolutely
Dude even metal gear did this well till guns of the patriots
Many indie games now using it.
What about only using fixed camera angles for intense moments?
Could make for some interesting moments.
@@Broockle a lot of new adventure/horror titles do that and do it well
Yeah, "pre-rendered" was code back then for "static background", hah. But it worked. By golly, the fixed angle thing worked.
It's called "pre-rendered" because it wasn't made from a sprite sheet.
@RianQuenlin yea these ppl aren't to smart
@@Quenlin well technically it was "code" for these kinds of "above their means" graphics by rendering them before hand on a graphics workstation.
They didn't HAVE to be static, I mean heck, these games HAVE video playback.
But I don't think they could run all the game code while ALSO playing the game on top, and considering the loading speed, alot of effects could be done bit-wise or by messing with the whole screen.
Lightening? Just brighten and darken the background image.
Dumpster fire? Essentially a small gif. Same for alot of other smaller effects. And let's not forget the ps1 is really a 3d game system, so nothings stopping you from doing regular modeling tricks like uv scrolling.
@@Quenlin No? Pre-rendered 3D graphics were used to make sprite sheets too, like in Donkey Kong Country (and a hundred other games of the era).
@@todesziege When the hardware wasn't fast and powerful enough to render 2D scenes in real time it was indeed pre-rendered.
The fixed camera angle make a feeling like the player watch a security camera record, just during can able to control the protagonist. It completely created an experience as if we were part of an archive recording. Brilliant.
This solution is perfect for a detective-horror game, because the rendered fixed background show the players a lots of clues and background information, and a good envirovment for mondter encounters.
And a photorealistic gamplay background is a very beautyful thing.
Games back then had very short draw distance due to lack of VRAM and system RAM in order for the game console to render more stuff on the screen. Developers had to start thinking outside of the box to work around those constraints like Crash Bandicoot developer who used the C library as extra RAM to store more textures so he would have a fully 3D polygon rendered character with large amount of detail while also being able to still render the map for the level design.
Did you get that from watching the Ars War Stories interview he did? That video was INSANE. Dude is a programming god.
Also, since you are using Crash as an example, the level designs in those games are even made with this limitation in mind, in both 3D and 2D sections.
The fact that so many moderm horror games like Chillas art and Puppet Combo are purposefully recreating the retro ps1 esque kind of graphics, shows that the technological limitations created a style that to this day is loved and never forgotten. Same with 8 bits. We now have graphics cards and pcs capable of virtual reality and yet 8 bit style games still sell and are thriving. Technological limitations gave birth to a style and genre that never dies.
I had a pretty good idea for how this stuff works already, but seeing you do it in real-time really makes me feel inspired to try it myself. It was also pretty crazy hearing the File City theme near the end there... That brings me back, holy fuck.
I only played Digimon World BRIEFLY at a friend's house waaaay back but parts of it lodged themselves in my brain permanently haha
Also deff give game dev a shot if you're interested! Tons of tools exist now that make the process so much more approachable 👍
Reminds me of RTS and side scrollers
The King has returned haha also incredible video loved all the angles 😂
Thanks dude! 👍
Regarding hiding and rendering layers - The "layered" look can actually be achieved with a single-layer image from a single render, by mapping a depth-mask that's 1:1 with the game engine's distance units and rendering individual pixels in front of or behind 3D elements based on their in-engine distance from the camera.
the depth mask counts as a layer
That's a cool idea, but I wonder how well it would work with transparency (like glass windows, and bloom like the candles at 13:25), and antialiasing.
PS1 doesn't have a Z-Buffer so if you want to perfectly emulate the old PS1 games, layering is the only way to do it.
I did wonder how Sierra Online "Space Quest II" worked. I figured that they have some z-buffer implemented in software.
Ocarina of Time also famously used this technique for its fixed camera angle interiors, most notably Castle Town
Also, lots of N64 games use 2D images that are forced to show towards the camera and adjust in real time. Obviously Mario Kart is a shining example, but also stuff like coins in Mario 64
@@kylespevak6781the technical term is ‘billboarding’ if anyone is interested.
Final fantasy 7 famously merged full motion video and fixed backgrounds to transition from one to the other 'seamlessly'
Love the way you put this one togheter! Pre-rendered backgrounds hold up so well
I loved everything about RE2. I feel the static camera angles added to its atmosphere.
I love fixed camera angles and i really appreciate the art of the pre-rendered graphics.
Absolutely loved this, great work and really well researched too, can't wait to see more stuff like this from you, Tom!
Glad you enjoyed it 👍
Capcom recently settled a suit with a photographer whose work they used without permission. Starting in the 90's they used photographs from a book of reference photo's taken by Judy Juracek. The photos were from a book called 'Surfaces' that came out in '96 and the book came with a CD-ROM with over 1200 images. The 147-page court document was full of evidence showing how they'd used hundreds of her images in games like the Resident Evil series and Devil May Cry.
On the comments at the end about modern pre-rendered backgrounds: It's still a very common or even universal technique for sky boxes and far away objects. Up until recently everyone used Clarisse for this. Not that recent any more but the example that impressed me the most is from Resi 6, there's a scene fairly early on where you're moving down a day time street and there are enemies and explosions and things happening in front of you at the end of the street -- Only it's a video. It completely seamlessly transitions into 3D geometry when you move closer. To hide the load and better integrate effects, if I had to guess. You're walking in a straight line towards it, there's nowhere to hide a cut.
Whenever I come across a new channel, sometimes I'm too quick to judge but I was pleasantly surprised. I was like "wtf is this ner- ...oh, I see what you did there". The way your yard looked so static while you walked across it, it looked just like a fixed camera game. Nice work on the video. For me, fixed cameras are solely in place for extra fear factor/suspense while approaching corners and exploring the game. Even after Resident Evil 4 and 5 came out, remakes of the first 3, ports to the Nintendo DS even, were still bangers for the old feel. And by old feel, I don't mean nostalgia, but the fixed camera changes the feel of the whole game. You got yourself another subscriber.
Great video and overall a damn solid way to illustrate how fixed camera angles work in game dev perspective, also you get an extra plus for using the Digimon World OST. Subscribed.
Yess someone else heared it haha
This was informative and fun, thank you for your time & effort in getting this out there.
Dude I just had to subscribe after this video popped up on my feed. Please keep making this high quality content. ❤
i like the filming and editing to underscore the point. very nice combination of analysis and application!
Thank you!
Silent Hill 1 and Dino Crisis 1 did it in a middle of the road kind of approach, by having the player able to partially control the camera outside of cutscenes but having the camera either on rails or struggling against the player. It kinda helped with the spooky atmosphere and those games were fully rendered 3D, they just used the same tank controls because the camera snapping and framing shots was really cool and effective.
To come up with this idea alone, at a time when graphics performance and computing capacity were very low, pure genius.
I subscribed literally as soon as i finished the video, what an amazing topic and way of talking. Cant wait for more!
Great video. I think you naild it. Thanks for taking me back in time 🙏
Such an enjoyable way of presenting things! Thank you Tommy!
Great video! I love the pre-rendered backgrounds and tank controls. Interesting to see some of how it was done.
Your insight into the camera angles and cinematography is spot on. Totally agree
Thank you!
Good video. This touches on the time and genre of games I played growing up with and loving. Thanks for the clip of Echoes of the Living too. Looks great!
Happy to see youre doing videos again!!!
Happy to be back
Great video! I really appreciate your insight on this topic ❤
Combining a how to video, with a retrospective is very clever. It shows others you know what you are talking about, and trials and tribulations along the way. Great work.
I still think fixed camera is the way to go. A horror game just isn't as scary when you can play it like a shooter.
There is another vid on youtube about pre rendered backrounds. But you actually showed how its done, great video! It really is interactive art when everything comes together.
Thanks man
The modern version os this for me is the camera floating by itself that's used in Eternal Darkness and Kuon, both allow for modern stick controls but keep the cinematic angles, and I think it should be done more often. It also make them easier to play to people like me who never got used to tank controls.
I think a God of War (1, 2 , Chains of Olympus, Ghost of Sparta, 3, & ascension) have a good compromise of this, with fully rendered backgrounds in (for the time) astonishing detail but being the camera effectively only capable of render a part of the scene at any moment made those graphics possible.
One of the problems with the background images is that the resolution is pretty much fixed as any down or upscale usually looks just worse. Now we could use really high resolution images to counter the problem but back in the 90's the resolutions were kept down the QVGA levels due to SD television resolutions.
Even if there would exist some of these 3d assets the issue is that as far as I understand the raw 3d renderings were very rarely used outside of animation sequences and the static background images and layers were usually heavily edited and digitally painted over to cover the early CGI rendering flaws and adding level of small detail not feasible to render at the time.
That's why it's better to play these games using Retroarch with crt shaders.
An interesting game that uses them a lot without you noticing it was FFX. Pretty much all indoor maps, but through clever use of layers and parallax scrolling, even a big amount of outdoor areas trick you into thinking they are full 3D environments, when they actually are just pre rendered.
It also had the best way to make things work with "modern" control style and abrupt camera changes, by keeping the character running forward after a camera change and only resisting when you change the input. Not perfect, but a decent solution.
Parasite Eve used the same controls 3 years earlier, and was also a Square game.
glad to have you back :D
Solid video essay/tutorial. Pretty awesome, thanks.
Not knowing what's lurking in the next frame is the best in giving you jump scares
Camera angles were everything in the early RE games. I'll never forget the fixed camera angle on the doorframe in front of the bathroom (the one with the tub zombie) in the 2001 RE1 after the L shaped hallway with the dogs and windows. It gave you this portrait view of your character that you couldn't find anywhere else
Thats not quite right how camera triggers worked on resident evil. They had a way more complex system, 2D shapes that cover the area, lets call those "zones", each camera could only hold 4 zones. A level could have a maximum of 16 cameras, so maximum 64 zones. But they werent 3D, boxes, they were 2D shapes, only 2D collision was checked, some trigonometry as done. Those zones could overlap with zones of other cameras but they wouldnt work unless the correct camera was active. The simple trigger volume doesnt works quite well compared to how the guys at capcom made it.
Also the main reason to use prerendered BGs in today tech would be to get better antialias. And you could waste all the resources in either higher resolution at high framerate, or saturate with detail the character mesh. Like real buttons instead of normal maps.
Interesting! My goal wasn’t to recreate the camera system as it was done in RE 1:1, but rather show how it could be accomplished with modern tools. This is hardly a perfect system and would have issues scaling, but I think it works well enough for the demonstration.
I had no idea the intricacies of the actual system used in the classic RE games, though. Is there a place I could read more about that? Sounds fascinating.
I think one reason to use "pre rendered" backgrounds in modern game is for unique aesthetic. Hand painted world. Like. FF7 meets Okami, and being able to make a guilty gear xrd detail level protagonist and enemies. Claymation meets resident evil, neverhood, darker.
Pre rendered does not need to mean actually rendered, but photographs, paintings, drawings... A video file.
And also. Vibe. Point of using actually live 3D like code veronica does was made but you could give it bigger Final Fantasy 9 vibe by having keyframed animations without tweening, like guilty gear xrd. 8frames for a spinning windmill, or three "frames" for water flow animation for a river.
Signalis already embraced and still changed it's idea for new indie title borrowing from the vibes of PS1 horror.
I kinda would love the same for PS1 RPG's. Though, partially this is kept alive as fantasian apparently uses dioramas that were digitized into the game's environments. Few 3DS games that still feels recent to me darnit also used hand painted or such static parts in their games, though not for all of the game, just select places.
@@SumeaBizarroSurvivor was the first 3D Resident Evil game.
RE might have been the most notorious for using fixed cameras and tank controls, but i think that this camera style peaked with Final Fantasy 9. Specially with the way they pretty much perfected the way to blend the CG cutscenes with the static images and gameplay all together, not to mention how gourgeous the scenary of that game is.
I would love the return of fixed cameras and tank control games, even if it's "arcaic" style, it's perfect for games with fixed cameras and it definetly has room for lots of improvements, it would be amazing too see what the devs could pull off with today's tech.
I still think code veronica and the outbreak series are the perfect blend of fully rendered environments w fixed or panning camera angles, it’s perfect
All they need to do is just improving the graphics to make it look real, without changing anything else
I think we kind of have a form of spiritual successor to fixed camera angle games in VR games with "doll stages". Instead of a a pseudo-3D game with fixed 2D background and a fixed camera, you now have a full 3D game with fixed 3D background and a moveable camera restricted to the same vantage point. You play by interacting with a "doll house", which is generally an entire level rendered at once, and the character you control moves through the environment without shifting the camera (the camera is only controlled by your head). Just like pre-rendered background games blend 2D and 3D techniques together, these doll house games blend flat 3D and full 3D, and provides a way for newcomers to ease into VR gaming.
Really nice video , learned a lot , thanks ❤
Dude this was an amazing video. Great analysis, and great application of the old skool way games used to be.
I wish Capcom did a remake of Haunting Ground and kept the classic fixed camera and tank controls that game was a masterpiece
Loved the breakdown and explanations, great video! Can't wait to hear about more of those nifty PS1 tricks.
Enjoyed this mate, deserve more subscribers!
thank you for the enormous amount of effort you put in that explanation, I always loved this effect in the first games and wondered how it was done :0
No problem, glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for this video. It was very helpful and nostalgic.
Awesome video! Very well made 🙏
Those camera angles sure made the game scary
Another fun fact about the pre-rendered backgrounds is that it allowed the environment artists to add far more detail than what rendering software at the time would allow. The actual rendered image was usually fairly basic, only containing the bare essentials. The environment artists would then open the base image in editing software and add in all of the minute details, thus bringing the scene to life. This is what gave us the debris littering the streets of Raccoon City, or the smudges and bloodstains on the walls of the Spencer Mansion. I'd imagine that, out of the development time for a typical PS1-era RE game, the overwhelming majority went into the environments.
Dude, just found your channel and as a lifelong fan of the RE series, this was a great video
What a really well presented and informative video, you got a sub from me.
PS: I miss talk controls.
To those confused about that statement: Yes, we exist, and we enjoy and miss not every single game feeling exactly the same. Variety, experimentation and risk is something I miss dearly from the AAA games of the 90s and 00s.
Seconded. It's a very weird, post-2010s zoomer narrative that the control and camera scheme of classic survival horror would've ever been a problem.
OG PS1 Resident Evils alone sold dozens of millions of copies, back when 250k was enough for the game to get the "Platinum" / "Greatest Hits" release.
I can’t believe I lived long enough to witness zoomers discovering pre-rendered backgrounds, I remember learning about them in FF7 when that came out.
I almost didn't watch this one because of the thumbnail. I already knew how games like this did things and I didn't think I wanted to watch it over other things.
It turned out to be really interesting and I subscribed because I like your style of showing a Unity example. Nice stuff!
great content, man! thanks!
welcome back man, fantastic upload
The Gamecube version of Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero look amazing, imagine what could be done with today's computers, 4K photorealistic backgrounds. And with some tricks like having multiple layers the same way was done in Alone in the Dark 4, dynamic lighting. And if instead of using flat images you rendered a cubemap, the camera could have some rotation and it would look awesome.
With a modern engine like UE5 they could probably do it in real-time, no pre-rendering needed. The resolution would just be substantially lower than 4K.
I swear I played the old RE2 for the first time this year and fell in love with the fixed camera angles.
I swear you look like a resident evil zombie
Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted to look like.
You nailed it bro. Great video.
The concept of fixed camera angels and pre-rendered backgrounds was ingenious.
I truly miss this era of gaming.
5:00 that was beautiful how u acted that on ya back porch even slowing down to slowey walk up the steps
More breakdown like this would be awesome,thank you...
Cool video. Watched til the end. Good luck with your channel
Tank controls were also the result of trying to provide full freedom to a player to move in a 3d environment with a controller that, at the time, had no analog stick and only a d-pad for movement (original PS1 controller and Saturn controller).
Thank you for teaching this to us! This is very interesting. 👏
When I play the game, I had this idea that the director will make a good fixed CCTV camera planner.
the acted out scenes crack me up, they're perfect
5:54 As a DMC fan, I like that you highlighted this issue. Going into the hallway one way can suddenly become another.
The RE1 remake was so beautifully rendered and cinematic, and for me, that was a huge part of what made it so scary.
Very interesting! Great video!
presented very well, great video!
This video is funny to me because back then, all this was very well known. It was considered "cheating" by most gamers how they achieved the games graphics.
Imagine going forward in time to watch a video explaining how the effect in LOtR was made to a generation who never heard of cgi and motion capture.
Amazing that even after two years and some mishaps, you still got this one out the door. And I learned that this worked pretty much the way I expected, but it was neat to see from the dev side.
They did not trick me. I always knew the environments were 2D. Many other games did that.
Or imagine a game where you can freely move the camera but the background are still static images to kill the illusion.
Great video!
Loved the Digimon World's soundtrack on background! Nice video!
Fixed camera angles was what i hated most in life as a child lol
It's definitely one of my favorite styles. Game developers should really embrace this technique again.
If that's your house that's one hell of an entrance. On a side note have you ever walked onto a spider web while exiting your door to your house because that's what happened to me once.
i liked this video a lot! you representation was also very cool. i agree with you. those games have their very own charme.
TOM! THIS IS AMAZING! Im glad youre making fun vids one more
Thanks man! I'm glad to be back!
Loved this, thank you
I love how you kept using the Legacy of Kain soundtrack way way longer than the short Soul Reaver clip ♥
The OST is just so good
Awesome video!
Alone in the dark for PC in 1992 was the first horror game i know using this technique
What a return - this was so good!!!
Thanks, glad to be back!
Very cool thanks for uploading this 😄👍👍
Resident Evil fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds, the spiritual successor to Alone In The Dark fixed camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds.
This is a very cool and informative video, thanks! I too would love to see a modern game, triple A or not, with pre-rendered backgrounds, to their fullest. It has even come to a point I'd like to make one myself, even though I have absolutely no experience in game dev. Sharing the love for this tech and the unique atmosphere it is able to generate is important!
My first thought when I started this video was MAN I hate fixed camera angles... but you know what you're right they are cool! Really enjoyed seeing you break it down and re-create it!