[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/vr/ - Retro Games

View post   
File: 302 KB, 620x472, open-areas_1_orig.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10647957 No.10647957 [Reply] [Original]

How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?

>> No.10647965

>>10647957
Silent Hill 2 came out and it made REmake look like dogshit.

>> No.10647971

>>10647957
Pre Rendered graphics were a result if necessity not overt intention.

>> No.10647976

>>10647957
This was back during the turbulent 90's where studios were popping up left and right, developing a dozen games in 2 or 3 years, and then fading into obscurity never to be heard from again, and even the big studios constantly had projects coming and going. It's likely it all just got burned onto a disc that ended up just getting forgotten somewhere.

>> No.10647980

>>10647971
but they looked better than what most games went with. just look at bof5. id rather have pre rendered backgrounds

>> No.10648005

>>10647957
Could be anything from data corruption to simply not bothering to save them.

>>10647980
Prerendered 3D can have amazing results, but they can be very limiting if you want to do something with a more free camera. At the same time, pre-rendered 3D means shitloads of 2D frames if you want smoothness and rotations, which can mean taking up a lot of your memory in ways which 3D doesn't necessarily have to.

There's all kinds of approaches out there, with all sorts of benefits, drawbacks, and quirks, with some being better suited for some kinds of games. It's a big game of tradeoffs.

>> No.10648073

Backgrounds from RE games are small potatoes. The real question is how and why a company like Squaresoft lost or destroyed all the hideously expensive CGI movies from their late 90s-early 2000s games.

>> No.10648091

>>10647976
>>10648005
>>10648073
I wouldn't be surprised if all these assets still exist locked away somewhere, in reality it's more likely an issue around the effort involved with accessing the old formats, importing into modern tooling, etc.
There's more demand and return from full blown remakes like RE2 and FF7R which can be sold at $60-$70 rather than fixing up old releases that couldn't sell more than $10-$20 a pop.

>> No.10648096

>>10647965
Silent Hill 2 came out 8 months before REmake.

>> No.10648101

>>10647957
>How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?
I deleted them. It was just a prank, we all laughed it off at the end.

>> No.10648103

>>10648073
There was no version control, that's why. They didn't care about backups or whatever and now it's gone.

>> No.10648105

>>10647957
Companies just didn't care back then, Square Enix lost the fucking SOURCE CODE for KH1 and had to redo the game from scratch in 2013 so that the remaster could be released.

>> No.10648742

They didn't. The PC versions use higher res backgrounds.

>> No.10648820

>>10648096
Good job emphasizing my point

>> No.10648834

>>10647957
Must be a Japanese thing, I remember them using the hardrives from the original release of grim Fandango for the remaster. It looks like they had almost everything.
If I had a guess they just threw them away like they do with old things in general

>> No.10648924

What we have seen from the Gigaleak makes most Japanese studios look like clowns compared to Nintendo in terms of data preservation.

>> No.10649761

>>10647980
>but they looked better than what most games went with.
Silent Hill 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3 you can achieve far more than pre-rendered backgrounds on far weaker hardware.
All pre-renders ended up doing in the longrun was making the games that had them look worse as time moved forward.

>> No.10649784

>>10647957
>>10647957
>How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?

lack of planning probably.

Having worked a tech job, I'll tell you what happens. You come in, they wipe an old employee's computer and give it to you. If they didn't have a plan to store the code and assets that went into their games, there is a good chance it all got deleted as new employees came and went.

The short answer is the lack of planning from management.

>> No.10649791

>>10648091
>in reality it's more likely an issue around the effort involved with accessing the old formats

yeah, not like they have hoards of programmers and tech people...

>> No.10649804

>>10648834
>Must be a Japanese thing

its a lazy management thing. You see it everywhere. Management has to have a plan to store stuff. Otherwise it gets lost as employees come and go. If you don't make programmers use some sort of organizational system they will just save everything as dickbutt1, dickbutt2, dickbutt 3 on their desktop and then it get wiped by their intern that issues out new computers to new employees.

>> No.10649825

>>10649791
there's a premium cost for people who still work with and understand legacy systems, not to mention the cost / logistics of locating hardware that you would need in order dump all of the old assets. As other anons have mentioned devs in this era rarely used version control so there would be effort in sifting through the archives as well.
Like I already said, there's not enough money in "remastering" the original games with those assets. No one is going to buy original RE2 but with upscaled assets for $70.
Hell, even Nintendo who clearly hoarded a ton of stuff would rather remake games from the ground up. And when they do release the original versions of a game, it's just the original ROM with the bare minimum of features added in, which people still buy.

>> No.10649830 [DELETED] 

>>10647965
>soilent hill 2

>> No.10650251

>>10647965
Silent Hill 2 looked like shit then and looks even worse today
Resident Evil Remake aged like wine

>> No.10650619
File: 1008 KB, 1087x746, file.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10650619

>>10650251
>Resident Evil Remake aged like wine

>> No.10650661

>>10647957
They were toys, selling products...

>> No.10651726

>>10647957
back in the day they didn't imagine they would have to reuse them i guess.
the 90's were oriented towards the future, not the past. we were obsessed with new and shiny shit.
many would have sold a family member to be able to play something that looked real. nobody cared about retro and old consoles and games often ended up in the trash.

>> No.10651809

>>10648091
It wouldn't have been that difficult. They likely saved them as tiff files which are extraordinarily easy and simple to use.

>> No.10651817

>>10650661
>>10651726
these

>> No.10651937

>>10647957
They no longer needed them, REmake was as far as they could take it. They could render in real time what they could only pre-render before.

>> No.10652309

>>10647965
This is false.
Source: Remake still to this day looks amazing

>> No.10652313

>>10652309
Yeah. That's why they're still making them like REmake even today

>> No.10652368
File: 813 KB, 640x480, RE3 slap.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10652368

I love how everyone's an expert on this topic. Have you been to Capcom's archives? Did you talk to the devs of the different versions? Do you know the process of making these games made?

No, you don't know shit. But everyone acts like they know these things as a fact.

The PC versions (the versions based on the PC versions) of 3 used higher res backgrounds, which means that yes they were preserved up until that point. Why didn't 2 use higher res backgrounds then? The key difference, and we know this from multiple sources, is that in 3 the backgrounds were designed in higher res to begin with and then downscaled for PSX, this wasn't the case in 2. So the PC port of 3 used those backgrounds because they already existed, within grasp.

Why couldn't they take the source 3D rooms and make them high res for RE2? For one thing we don't know the full process here, we don't know the amount of post processing done once the camera angles are turned into images, possibly redoing the backgrounds meant redoing a lot of processing.
But who says they *couldn't*? The main reason why they didn't is because that shit is a business, they make those ports in the quickest, cheapest way possible. They're not here to improve the game in substantial ways unless it has a clear marketing plus. Changing a costume or changing stats for a new hard mode is something that can be done quickly and which brings that marketing plus.

The real question is how come in the PC port of 3, not all backgrounds are high res... how come some of those backgrounds are beta... This still doesn't mean they couldn't have found all the backgrounds, it only means they didn't care to search/do more. This is proven by the fact that the background masks all remained low-res even though that IS something they could have easily fixed by cutting pieces from the high res backgrounds.

tl;dr there is no proof they "lost" anything. But there is proof they didn't give a shit.

>> No.10652387

>>10652368
Good, sensible post. Weren't the Gamecube/Dreamcast of RE2 released with higher res backdrops?

>> No.10652394
File: 286 KB, 640x480, Resident_Evil_3_Nemesis_Windows_ClockTower.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10652394

>>10652387
Not RE2 no, only RE3.

From what I recall RE2/3 GC upscaled the backgrounds though, so technically they are 640*480 but really it's the same thing.
RE3 GC also fixed a couple of discrepencies and issues regarding the beta backgrounds of RE3 PC, but the fixes usually consisted in reverting to the PSX versions in those cases.
Once you dive into the ports of RE2/3 you realize how much of a mess it is and there is sadly no perfect version of 3, each version has its pros&cons. I used to love the PC version(s) but once you start seeing some of the mess like in this pic, you can't unsee it.

>> No.10652401

>>10652394
I hear ya, even reshade can't fix the PC bg in 1. I've found Duckstation Director's cut with shaders is near enough perfect if it wasn't for the model clipping that even perspective correction oesn't fix (for me at least).

>> No.10652437

>>10651726
I can undestand not backing up megaman, people would think you were crazy to say people wanted to still play megaman 30 years later. Final fantasy and rez evil, multi million $ of effort and not bothering to save the files even for a pc version.
Would have been cool if people just took floppies home which did happen with many prototypes. Rareware were pretty good about keeping even their old stuff and even they were close to losing a lot of stuff due to a hard drive crash on an sgi machine.

>>10652368
Nice, didn't know they were better

>>10649825
Think how much money nintendo would lose if they didn't save the mario source, theres all stars, then the gba games and maybe even used as a guide in maker. They would probably have to badly recreate the old physics.

>> No.10652510

I know this would be a very hard task of course, but could they be eventually recreated? I'm guessing main problem would be finding original textures, which is most likely impossible.
Mario Kart 64 models look nearly like the original thing.

>> No.10652515

>>10652437
>Final fantasy
Weird thing is they had that issue when they were trying to port it to PC. Eidos asked high res backgrounds I think. They still didn't saved jack shit after that.
Square is a special kind of idiot on this though.
I also wouldn't understand not backing up Mega Man. Anime from 70s were sold on DVD during the era Mega Man was made. That's the material they got the idea from in the first place.

>> No.10652525

>>10652394
>sadly no perfect version of 3,
PS1 is the best if you ask me. I don't mind 240p with CRT shader. It also fits in with the first two games, creating a trilogy.

>> No.10652560

>>10651809
huh? Isn't the whole argument "y no 4k RE backgrounds?" I'm sure they saved them all off to a simple format as well, at the original resolutions. Man, for being a bunch of internet addicted dorks you guys don't know anything about software development.

>> No.10652813

>>10652368
>3 the backgrounds were designed in higher res to begin with and then downscaled for PSX, this wasn't the case in 2

All games like this, even RE1 had 8K raw quality backgrounds before being scaled down to PSX hardware and resolution

>> No.10653838

>>10647965
cool dude no one ever thought that but go on being the same guy in every thread insisting things that never happened

>> No.10653974

>>10647957
Japanese culture dictates that keeping archives of your old stuff is HARAM

>> No.10654108 [DELETED] 

>>10652560
Because the backgrounds for the original RE were embarrassingly simplistic. If they were going to do a remake, they would want things that have four times the details they had in 1996.

>> No.10654113

>>10652560
Because the backgrounds for the original RE were embarrassingly simplistic. If they were going to do a remake, they would want things that have four times the details they had in 1996.

>Man, for being a bunch of internet addicted dorks you guys don't know anything about software development.
What the fuck are you talking about you autist?

>> No.10654170

>>10654113
Some people think that this really old style of 3D is really pretty, where everything kind of looks like slightly glossy plastic when you look at it up close.
Like people who wish that Super Mario 64 could have looked like those promotional pre-rendered stills, even though it doesn't actually look good.

>> No.10654176

>>10654113
Ah right you guys barely understand English either, no wonder computers are over your head

>> No.10654190

>>10654176
He's right, the original pre-renders would look incredibly fucking plain and underdetailed by 2020s standards. When they aren't scaled down to the intended resolutions those models and textures usually look incredibly synthetic, stone does not look like stone, wood does not look like wood, metal only kinda looks like metal if it has a shiny reflective texture almost like a mirror.
A lot of the 'texture' comes from the downscaling.

>> No.10654194

>>10654176
Listen, I know you think you're smarter than you actually are, and you made an air-tight case for why your........weird, strawman, irrelevant, goal-post moving retarded argument makes sense, but I'm going to have to ask you to remain on-topic for the duration of the discussion instead of making up fantastical discussions in your head that we aren't a part of, nor do we give a shit to try and decipher the dipshit retard-logic you've worked yourself into a corner within your own mind on. Okay?

>> No.10654201

>>10654190
I was replying to the anon that said they saved them off as .tiff, so what was the big deal. and pointing out that this would be at the original low resolution. I agree with you.

>> No.10654203

>>10654194
What are you on? Lmao

>> No.10654207

>>10654203
I'm not engaging in interpretive discussions based on retards that misunderstand the original premise of my posts. I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about with software development, or interpolating from my original comment as to how that correlates with software development.

>> No.10654227

>>10654201
Oh, uh, I should just go to bed.

>> No.10654430

>>10650619
Zoomers see one blurry texture during a cutscene and shit themselves to death. You should go play Fortnite, no blurry textures there

>> No.10654505

>>10648091
If there's one thing I learned from the Nintendo gigaleak is that most data out there very likely has surviving backup copies somewhere that not even the original creators are aware of. Nintendo remade the voices for Starfox 64 3D because they thought they were lost forever but then we find the original, uncompressed voice files.

>> No.10654512

>>10652368
Unrelated but God she kinda came off as a bitch in this scene

>> No.10654706

>>10652394
You should check out the seamless HD texture mods for the gamecube version of Resi 2 and 3. The backgrounds have all been AI upscaled using a custom ESRGAN model, it looks absolutely fantastic on a modern display and this is how I played through both games last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PD5KiRhMbY

>> No.10654716

>>10654706
Anon that ESRGAN shit uses the old fucked up and full of artifacts model from 6 years ago

someone should had done a better one using the new models and photoshop

>> No.10654723

>>10652813
lol no, those CG backgrounds were rendered in £D modelling software of the era and were incredibly complex by the standards of the time. Just rendering one of those backgrounds in 640X480 resolution would have taken a workstation of the time around an hour. Rendering an "8k raw quality" would have taken days per background with the sort of system capcom had available to them.

>> No.10654727

>>10654716
Have you a link to this new version? or a vid I can check it out in?

>> No.10654729
File: 286 KB, 512x512, bookia nova.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10654729

>>10654706

>> No.10654734

>>10654727
They are working on it because Dino Crisis is a thing now.

>>10654729
That image applies well to early esrgan, now there are better models with no artifacts at all if you aren't a complete retard

>> No.10655179

>>10654430
It's one blurry texture the game focuses on for a prolonged amount of time, yes. You're forced to take notice of it.
This is ignoring that REmake also only has the GCN version, which is locked to 480p at best, and the HD version introduces massive amounts of artifacting, crushed blacks, new visual errors and bugs, as well as lower quality BGs.

>> No.10655237

>>10647957
Weird how this scene is supposed to be in daylight. It just looks like a night time street lit by streetlights. I suppose they could save on rendering time by having single-reflection raytracing, which creates those deep shadows.

>> No.10655241
File: 325 KB, 1920x1080, 1700080509780.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10655241

>>10654706
They look very clean. They are archaic and very simple renders that look interesting mainly because of post processing and lower resolution hiding lack of original details. I don't think it's a good idea for 5th gen. Even Onimusha doesn't look all that good in HD remaster.

>> No.10655504

>>10655241
What you say stays true for RE1 very much so, for RE2 so-so. But RE3 is very rich in detail and its OG files are already fairly high res on PC version so the upscale quality is very decent.

As someone who played through RE2 easily 50 times over the years on real hardware, I tried the upscale mod recently and it looked very convincing to the point where it may be my go-to version from now on. The only issue I had was that it features shitty modern avatars and items for inventory screen but there was a patch/separate mod (dont remember exactly) that upscales and keeps the OG aesthetic intact.

Hard mode and skippable doors makes it difficult to go back to real hardware even though I have a CRT.

>> No.10657276 [DELETED] 

>>10655504
RE3 HD isnt bad, but the model used on it is out of date

>> No.10657282

>>10655504
RE3 HD isn't bad, but the model used on it is outdated due to artifacts.
and newer GPU'S gives better detail and processing power for upscales.