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Old 06-05-2005, 12:50 PM   #1
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Firstly, thanks for a great article again. But I wanted to ask... are Ubi/Cyan keeping a tight grip on hi-res images of the CG actors? I liked what I saw in the videos from IGN, but they're just not good indicators as to the overall quality. Granted, it's not finished, but it'd be fantastic to have one good shot of Esher to look at. Has anyone approached Cyan about it, even on an individual basis?
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Old 06-05-2005, 01:22 PM   #2
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That was good and informative, Christsie. Over at JA+ people are simply having nasty convulsions just because their precious FMV characters were taken away. They're ignorant of how impossible that would be in a real time 3D game.
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Old 06-05-2005, 03:40 PM   #3
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Nice preview. I'm disappointed there won't be real actors, but is sounds like the rest of the game will try to appease us Myst lovers.
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That was good and informative, Christsie. Over at JA+ people are simply having nasty convulsions just because their precious FMV characters were taken away. They're ignorant of how impossible that would be in a real time 3D game.
Count me as ignorant. I don't understand why they could do it in RealMyst and not in Myst V.
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Old 06-05-2005, 04:13 PM   #4
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In realMyst it was done in such a way that you, the player, could not move around the room with the FMV character in front of you. If you could move you'll realize he was a flat image, and that will f#&k up the immersion (he's not supposed to be some holograph, but the 'real' guy in the same room with you). That the game forced you to more or less stand still while watching a flat FMV character talk to you already screwed up the immersion.

It has be a HUGE amount of unnecessary work to make it so that an FMV character can walk as a 3D character in a 3D world while you are walking in that world at the same time. Might as well toss that dumb idea out and just use 3D characters in game. As it stands, some of those detractors developed unrealistic expectations as to how technology works today.
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Old 06-05-2005, 04:22 PM   #5
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You would in fact have to film them at every possible angle at once (well, from a reasonable number of them), which would require hundreds of cameras going simultaneously (a bit like how they did the "bullet time" effects in the matrix, but using a full hemisphere of cameras surrounding the scene, all of which would have to be painted out in post production). Then, you'd have the videos of all of the different angles playing back at the same time, and have the engine rapidly switch from one video to another to another every new frame of animation, as you moved around the character, so it would look like they were moving in real space at the same time as you were. That is insane. I'm sure someday we'll see it as a novelty, but not in a full game.

Also that doesn't account at all for how people get distorted and the perspective of their limbs and face change as you move a camera (or the human eye) closer and farther from them, so if you got close up to these people, perspective would go all wonky. Their noses would look flat, their hands would reach forward to touch you, but it would just look like they were waving at you from a long ways away through a pair of binoculars.
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Old 06-05-2005, 05:05 PM   #6
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Was that how it was in the Tex Murphys? I found it odd, but not strange enough to detract from the game.
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Old 06-05-2005, 05:10 PM   #7
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I think in the Tex Murphy games the FMV were all in cutscenes, separate from the 3D environments. So you'd see a film of a person during conversation, but once you went back to the 3D room to look around, the person wasn't there anymore.

Have you played Conspiracies? Remember how the people were like cardboard cutouts? If I'm understanding this right, that's the kind of thing that would happen if Myst V had FMV characters.

The 3D guy we saw in the Myst V demo was pretty incredible. I am a fan of FMV, but I think what Cyan has done is a nice blend of FMV and 3D. The gestures and facial expressions are realistic, and you don't have the weird sensation of the people not being an actual part of the place.
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Old 06-05-2005, 05:11 PM   #8
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Never played Tex Murphy, but I've always thought of sticking 'live' actors in a digital world corny and hokey. It just looks......wrong. It pulls me out of my suspension of disbelief, as either the actor must become a 3D characer in that world or the world itself must change into a 'live' world. The severity is jarring.

When I saw Atrus (forget, was that him?) at the end of realMyst, the first thing I wanted to do was walk around him and check him out as a 3D live character. Turns out he was a dumb flat FMV image. But the worst thing was that I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO MOVE around the room. It was supremely stupid and the whole thing was cheapened.
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Old 06-05-2005, 05:17 PM   #9
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Quote:
I think in the Tex Murphy games the FMV were all in cutscenes, separate from the 3D environments. So you'd see a film of a person during conversation, but once you went back to the 3D room to look around, the person wasn't there anymore.

Have you played Conspiracies? Remember how the people were like cardboard cutouts? If I'm understanding this right, that's the kind of thing that would happen if Myst V had FMV characters.
I was sure that there were characters in the environment, as well as in cut scenes. You'd think I'd remember since I only played them at the end of last year, but my memory isn't what it used to be.

I never did get Conspiracies since it was keyboard controlled .
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Old 06-05-2005, 08:55 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fov
I think in the Tex Murphy games the FMV were all in cutscenes, separate from the 3D environments. So you'd see a film of a person during conversation, but once you went back to the 3D room to look around, the person wasn't there anymore.
Actually no. Sometimes that was the case, but usually the characters would still be present in the scene, even after the cutscenes have finished playing. It didn't look pretty though. They pretty much just looked like cardboard cutouts - completely flat and although you could walkaround them, there was never any dimension to them. So yeah, they really stuck out, and with Myst they would stand out to an even greater degree I think.
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Old 06-05-2005, 08:59 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens
That was good and informative, Christsie.
That my new nickname? Thanks for the compliment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by squarejawhero
ut I wanted to ask... are Ubi/Cyan keeping a tight grip on hi-res images of the CG actors? I liked what I saw in the videos from IGN, but they're just not good indicators as to the overall quality. Granted, it's not finished, but it'd be fantastic to have one good shot of Esher to look at.
They didn't seem very uptight about showing it to us at E3, but I don't think it's all 100% finished yet and with the amount of fans upset over the switch away from FMV, they probabally don't want to reveal it to the public yet until it is the best that it can possibly be.
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Old 06-06-2005, 12:50 AM   #12
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Good indicator of great things to come then. Thanks Christina.
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Old 06-06-2005, 04:26 AM   #13
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One thing you're forgetting about the use of FMV actors in real-time 3D:

Even if you did manage, as Jake suggested, to film someone from so many angles that you could drop them into the middle of a 3D environment, walk around them, and have it look good... you still have to consider player-character interaction. Whereas a 3D model can follow you around a room with his eyes or change his behavior based on your activity... a FMV sprite... even such a complicated one, would be set on a predetermined path, looking in certain directions, gesturing at a certain point in the 3D room where you, the player, may or may not be standing.

I'm going to miss the usually great FMVs of Myst too, but the JA+ peeps need to understand that innovation involves change.
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Old 06-06-2005, 07:42 AM   #14
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Why do I have this sudden vision of a surly Scotsman saying "If it's not Rrrrrriven, it's crrrrrap!"

bad brain.
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Old 06-06-2005, 11:50 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TheTwelve
I'm going to miss the usually great FMVs of Myst too, but the JA+ peeps need to understand that innovation involves change.
And letting go.
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Old 06-06-2005, 02:21 PM   #16
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In general, Cyan doesn't release a lot of screenshots for their games. It's a thing with them - they would rather you see them in the game. They have been like this for "forever", bu they have loosened up a bit, over the years, and release some screenshots, though never a lot.

I'm just guessing here, but my suspicion is that that the "people" are going to look great in the game - they will look "alive", and they will look like they belong in the game. Outside of the the game, in screenshots, they will still look good, but it's going to be obvious that they are animations. Maybe both Cyan and Ubisoft (the publisher) just don't want to have to put up with grief.

I have a theory on some of the issues with regards to games, FMV, 3D and all that. I think that adventure gamers vary in how much they want games to be, for want of a better word "interactive". Maybe the better word is "how important it is to them". I think I'll write more on this later!

Oh, almost forgot - really good article - adventuregamers!
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Old 06-06-2005, 03:32 PM   #17
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LOL, now I'm haunting JA+ reading that thread. Same old, same old - statements of personal opinion as damning fact. That said I'd love to hear someone like Trep answer some of the more common "3D can't work in adventures" arguments. Basically most of them boil down to "it hasn't been done/hasn't been done well so therefore it can't be done".

Now there's someone saying 3D is more expensive than 2D because of licensing costs. They make some great points, but doesn't seem to know that the cost of creating a 2D game, and all the production politics and requirements involved in creating good 2D animation, would probably be astronomical on the level he's talking about. You need producers, dealings with overseas animation teams, equipment for the paint studio, editing... dah dah dah list goes on.
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Old 06-06-2005, 03:35 PM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by squarejawhero
Basically most of them boil down to "it hasn't been done/hasn't been done well so therefore it can't be done".
I'm usually a bit careful when I hear about 3D in a game, albeit less now than a year ago, but if someone can pull some incredibly gorgeous 3D characters out of his hat, that would be Cyan.
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Old 06-06-2005, 03:39 PM   #19
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Well, there's being cautious and there's also being blindly skeptical.
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Old 06-06-2005, 03:51 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninth
I'm usually a bit careful when I hear about 3D in a game, albeit less now than a year ago, but if someone can pull some incredibly gorgeous 3D characters out of his hat, that would be Cyan.
Or Valve. Or Monolith. Or iD.......or basically other devs who have been working with 3D technology for years (which means very few adventure devs).
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