Remake !=.... (warning, *rant*)

Do you agree?

  • Hell yeah man, forget this new-fangled stuff...gimme the origin-al

    Votes: 9 37.5%

  • Aww naw, you got it wrong, d00d, more is better!!

    Votes: 14 58.3%

  • Who gives a rats @$$??

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • Total voters
    24
  • Poll closed .
Z

ZoddTheImmortal

Spaceman
a (pardon my french) bastardized version of one of the greatest games of the wing commander series. I almost laughed when I read someone's post about talons flying like hummingbirds...until I played and saw it was true...the handling without a joystick is iffy at best, the new "interface" leaves much to be desired...not to mention the KNOWN flaws when the gaming engine is used with certain graphics cards.

These are all points that should have been carefully planned for in the beginning stages, and then tested for during what should have been at least a 6 month testing phase. Standardized documentation should have been available during said testing.

I love this game and am willing to put time and effort into it's restoration to glory on new systems. But if leaving out cut-scenes due to any reason other than impossibility(is that a word?) is the level of remake that everyone here is looking for, count me out.

IMHO, a remake is a copy of the original, with perhaps more graphical/performance enhancements, but NOT EVER changing the original parameters and gameplay (physics, as an example). And if there are modifications requested, MAKE ADD-ONS. Something that you can download, install, and more importantly, TURN OFF at your leisure.

Lots of Privateer, ass-kicking love,

Z0ddTh31mmort4L
 
I've afraid the options in this poll do not really give enough freedom for people to express the full extent of their opinions. I don't always think more is better. I think constraint is a virtue in any endeavor. I think it is a good thing to try to make any chosen alterations or expansions (you could say enrichments) based on a logical extention of what has been established in the WC lore. Thus, adding ships from other realms of fiction (Star Wars) would be a bad idea, but trying to flesh out their story by including plausible details that attempt to be true to the spirit of WC is well within the realm of what professional fiction writers do when entering territory created by another author (take, for a recent and well-handled example, Alfonso Curan's [sic] handling of the fictional world created by J.K. Rowling in the movie rendition of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. There were substantial differences, but constraint was used, and the general essence of the story remained faithful. J.K. Rowling was willing to admit that while some ideas were different, they were enriching.)

The Remake is not a clone. If I went into it expecting a clone, I would be dissapointed. However, I appreciate what they are trying to do, and I take it for what it was meant to be. I enjoy it within that context, rather than let myself get steamed up about its differences and shortcomings. It is free, after all. A labor of love. A gift horse which many people are looking in the mouth. Giving constructive feedback is one thing. Choosing not to play it because it doesn't fit your taste is also a legitmate option. Imposing ultimatums and contorted mindreading is another thing alltogether.

People spend a lot of time telling the Remake team what it was they were intending to do, when really those weren't the Remake team's intentions at all. The Privateer Remake is their rendition of what they enjoyed about Privateer, with genuine efforts to recreate the greater portion of gameplay as much as possible within the parameters of their engine of choice.

It is what it is. Other people are free to make their own remakes of Privateer. Other people are free to make constructive suggestions (such as those leading to the decision to do a 100% precise remake. It lead to action that would get people what they want). You are free not to like it or any other project here. However, let's be a little more level-headed about this discussion. You can express what it is you are trying to say without hystrionics, and we can respect your opinion and express our own.
 
Zodd, this has been discussed before. At great, exhaustive, deep, brutal, insightful, and cooperative scope, length and perspective.

Rants are okay, but a poll should be something done with consideration.

Opinions if the Remake is proper are okay, but there's a thread for that.

Discussions about bugs are okay, but there's also a thread for that.

The people who are doing this may have a different vision of a Remake then you (or even I) have. Shouting at them won't help, and the poll won't help much either.
If you read the forums, you see that a lot of people want this or that, being able to customize their own game experience. There are people who want to see the old Privateer just as it was, but with nicer graphics. There are people who want more. There are people who want to switch between that. All that is in the flow, and will be possible one day.

The project is still going on, additions and bugfixes are made every day. If you want to help, I'm sure you are definitely welcome.
 
Zodd...what you suggested would be an interesting idea...if it were not for the fact that this is a fan creation and not a commercially budgeted and marketed project financed by a multi million dollar company. Spend 6 months and work on system compatability issues with the open source engine they're using? Get real. No mod by anyone on any engine would try to do that...that's not their responsibility. You have problems with the engine go talk to the developer not the modders.
 
A good remake would be Resident Evil remake which had vastly improved graphics, a couple of new gameplay elements like defensive weapons and new cutscenes and plot elements... however...
Privateer remake would do well to get whats in place working a little better, atm I still find the original more playable.
 
Sorry Guys

Howdy,
Didn't mean to come of quite as brash as I did, sh1tty day and all....no excuse however, sorry again ppl.

Anyway, as for the helping out thing, I have e-mailed you on wanting to do that. I just need some direction. Show me code, man!

I'm all for working out bugs and stuff


sorry about the b1tchehness again
 
Anyway, as for the helping out thing, I have e-mailed you on wanting to do that. I just need some direction. Show me code, man!
Click to expand...

I second that motion. I'm a C++ programmer, not a Python one (or even a vegastrike data expert). I need some direction. I got to the code and it's quite hard to understand without some explanation. How do things work? How does vegastrike interpret the files? Is there documentation about that somewhere?

On the other hand,

Instead of complaining about the uglyness of the current release...
Click to expand...
Who said the current release is ugly? Yeah, some textures are missing or pretty primitive, yes, some models lack detail. But Hey! so did the original Privateer. Although it would be great to have a good-looking remake, as it is now it feels much more like the original than it would with good graphics. Anyway, I'm in for good graphics. But the remake as it is now is NOT (repeat NOT 36! times) ugly. It's a work in progress, if any. In fact, the first time I ran it, I remember thinking: hey! open source and looks beautiful too!.
 
Brad: please explain yourself. And perhaps you didn't get it right: When I said the original lacked detail, I was referring to the sprite-based engine, and that you couldn't see much detail on enemy craft (mainly due to resolution limits, and not on artwork quality). Yes, I was vague, but I didn't think anyone would mind. The point is: right now, the graphics on the remake resemble quite closely the original look (at least on small ships, perhaps capital ships and bases still need work). And THAT IS *NOT* UGLY (my point).
 
the models are actually pretty detailed, the sprites in their non blown up sizes show it off as well.

also, this is a point i've argued many times. a sprite engine now, rendered for higher screen res's would look freaking awesome. if i could program i'd prove my point. if you render sprites for screen res's of 1024 +, you're going to see a ton of detail, not to mention you can render them out all photo-real like and really kick some visual ass. one day i'll finally be able to prove this. a lot of folks don't realize that the original priv and all those were rendered for 320x240 screen res? at most 640x480? there' s a BIG difference there.
 
The problem with sprite engines which would be noticeable nowadays, in a 3D-infested world (yesterdays it was also noticeable, but nobody gave a damn, one knew the computer had limitations), is perspective change.
When a sprite object rotates, you have to switch between multiple rendered angles. Now, in a 3D world, this can mean a LOT of pre-rendered frames (think of it, since both yaw and pitch may independently vary). If we split a circle in 8 slices (which is far too low for today's standards) you would need (approximately) 64 frames.
When you try to achieve the quality level you talked about, you would need more than 8 slices (36 minimum, resulting in 1296 frames). Now think on all the space and memory that would consume, for 1024x1024 images. Basically, it's prohibitive.
Sprite based engines are a thing of the past, when people had imagination and used it, and the programmer did not need to show every detail on the screen. Yes, prerendered sprites can look better than 3D meshes, but that's only when the object being spritisized (may not be a word) allows it.

Now, about the detail the original privateer had, really, I don't remember it that well as to argue with you. I just remember the classic blown up look when you got closer, which can make the finest artwork look like s**t.

But don't take it wrong: I never minded that. Remember: Doom I was State-of-the-Art. I never found a modern game more immersive than Doom I, and we agree that today games way outperform in graphics. It's not graphics quality what matters. It's gameplay. Doom I had a great atmosphere, it was scary. Privateer was a great portrait of the Gemini sector. THAT is what matters.
 
the thing is though, you wouldn't render the sprite at 1024. a good size for a sprite is at about 600x600, maybe go up a bit higher, maybe not. you could render say, 800x800, but 600x600 is really sufficient enough for it. make that your base image size, render as jpeg with a high contrast background, should work out fairly well. keeps your file sizes down, tell the engine to kill the contrast color. you don't even have to do every 10 degrees an image, going in increments of 20 works just fine as well. that's 18 individual frames for one revolution with no real noticable loss in an even rotation. with jpegs, 18 frames (what i just rendered out) at 600x600 comes out to 533kb. hmm....this is most interesting....going to have to play around some more with this, also, considering that modern games typically go up into the gig ranges for size, theres plenty of space for sprite graphics in a game.
 
533kb is a bit low, actually. The 18 frames you talked about Brad would only be for the x-y plane (or x-z if you swing that way), and there's still a whole 'nother dimension that needs to be satisfied. So it would realistically be 18 * 10 = 180 frames for a full sphere. Maybe a bit less, but still a heck of a lot more than just 18. So that's maybe almost 5 megs per ship.

5 megs (even 500k) is actually a lot for one ship. It's not about hard drive space, it's about video RAM space. A big chunk of those loading times in recent games are loading textures into RAM.

5megs/ship * 10 different ships and you've suddenly got 50 megs to load into RAM... just for ships.

You could probably get some fair detail on a 'modern' sprite-based engine, but you would also be giving up a lot of other graphical goodness. Sprite-based ships couldn't have shadows, couldn't reflect, and would look fake.

I think there's a reason that '3d' sprites are a thing of the past...
 
Yeah I was going to point out that effects wouldn't work out too well with sprite based. Lighting effects wouldn't be usuable on a sprite based game, shadows would be unrealistic at best.
 
i think i pointed out that i had only done the figures quick with the 18 frames. but thats beside the point. also, if its a ram thing....i'm running a gig of ram, overall, my system would handle it no problem. lighting effects, meh....its all tradeoffs. you'd have photoreal for shadows, its all in what you like. i like 3d, but oft times its rather annoying. its all doable, and all managable. its just in tastes. i'm not arguing on is better than the other, and yeah, maybe it is a thing of the past. but there's nothing wrong with a little nostalgia.

also, you'd have shadows, but it'd be baked in like it used to be in textures also on the image, it wouldn't shift...and even then you can make the lights rotate with the camera to simulate light playing over it. may not be perfect, but hell...it works :)
 
As a graphics programmer can I just say...
you're wasting valuable forum space ;)
As a gamer may I say the same? Given that people expect 60fps these days, jumping between angles of a ship would be completely unacceptable.

Although Quarto would be all for a cel shaded space combat title and I can't say I'd really object. Would suit privateer quite well owing to the limited colour depth employed by the original.
 
i'm not wasting anything, if anything i'm fact finding. cuz i'm looking at doing up a nostalgic deal as a little project. many may think me nuts, i don't care :) as a 3d artist doing low poly stuff all the damn time gets really old, really fast. it'd be nice to finally be able to do some killer high res work, and show it off in a game other than a cut scene :)
 
It's not really so much a question of RAM capacity (and we're really talking video RAM, not mobo RAM), but how fast you can stuff the data in there, which isn't directly related to quantity.

Yeah, it might be cool in a retro way, but there's pretty much no way it would equal a halfway decent 3d model + texture. I wouldn't mind seeing it in action, because it would be neat to see. Kind of like a state of the art, 21st century wood burning steam engine! : D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top