Prophecy on GBA

Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

I think you're a little mixed-up.
Originally posted by Lelapinmechant
2D games with fully animated sprites will have more graphical assets than full 3D games due to the fact that when you animate a sprite, you actualy draw it over again, duplicating the image thirty frames for every second. On the other hand, when you animate a 3D object, you're simply animating the object, not the graphic element.
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Whether you're drawing a 3D scene or a scene made from 2D sprites, you have to re-draw every element of the scene every time you advance a frame. The nature of the objects that make up a scene doesn't affect this.
The development team over at VV knew there was no cart large enough to get all the animation of the skater they wanted in 2D, so they opted for simple gourad-shaded polygons(texture-mapped in the sequal) that used the same animation of the big-brother console version. This changed what would have been 24MB of assets into the small, 8MB cart that was THPS2(a fantastic GBA game, by the way, for those of you considering buying one now that Prophecy's coming).
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While a game done using 3D polygonal models might take up less space on a cart than a 2D game, you can't really make any kind of blanket statement that says one is inherantly smaller than the other.

It's comparing apples to oranges, and it depends entirely on how many frames your animations take up and how many angles you include in your sprites.
 
Re: Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

Originally posted by Frosty
I think you're a little mixed-up.Whether you're drawing a 3D scene or a scene made from 2D sprites, you have to re-draw every element of the scene every time you advance a frame.
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Yes, the hardware redraws every frame of a 3D scene. But with 2D art, you need an actual piece of artwork for every frame drawn, while for 3D scenes, you only need the calculations for camera angle, light map, etc. All of which take up considerably less space than 2D artwork for every frame. The only graphical assets in the situation of a 3D scene are the textures and the models, though yes, every frame is drawn anew, new assets aren't being drawn on for each fram. You're right, though, it is comparing apples to oranges, unless your talking about a programmer who's trying to get the same effect, same smooth frame rate, same amount of animation, etcetera(as was the case with VV's THPS2 GBA, when they were considering 2D vs. 3D). In other words, making Prophecy full 3D on the GBA would draw on fewer graphical assets, just textures, essentially, which was my point-- there will be more room on the cart than if they were to go the 2D route while attempting to achieve the same effect.
 
Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

Originally posted by Lelapinmechant


The development team over at VV knew there was no cart large enough to get all the animation of the skater they wanted in 2D, so they opted for simple gourad-shaded polygons(texture-mapped in the sequal) that used the same animation of the big-brother console version.
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IIRC you can make really really big carts -- it's just really really expensive (like the hundreds-of-megs carts for the Neo Geo...).
 
Re: Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

Originally posted by Bandit LOAF


IIRC you can make really really big carts -- it's just really really expensive (like the hundreds-of-megs carts for the Neo Geo...).
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Problem is, the really big ones are so expensive they aren't being manufactured yet. The 256 megabit(32MB) carts are supposed to be the biggest the GBA can handle, but there's not a single one in existence, so developers can't start developing roms that large until there actually are carts that large to put 'em on.
 
hmm...

I thought that nintendo power said that gameboy advance could handle up to 512 megabit gamepacks, but 256 would be the standard high end size.

"Remember, the only full-talking RPG for SNES was only a 12 MB cart, and that was with many more graphical assests than this game will have, and waaay back in '96"

Still I really would like to know what rpg game on SNES had full speech?
 
Re: Re: Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

Originally posted by Lelapinmechant
Problem is, the really big ones are so expensive they aren't being manufactured yet. The 256 megabit(32MB) carts are supposed to be the biggest the GBA can handle, but there's not a single one in existence, so developers can't start developing roms that large until there actually are carts that large to put 'em on.
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Um no. They're not producing them until the GBA gets rolling along a bit better. It's still rather new.
 
It is going to difficult to have all the buttons on GBA. In ths snes of wc1 i had to have the book open in front of me to remember all the different button combinations.
 
i think the best thing for the GBA version is to make it more arcadey than the original prophecy, they will have to make the controls simpler, prolly set the engines at 100% etc. but hopefully they'll do it right.
 
Originally posted by Conrad
i think the best thing for the GBA version is to make it more arcadey than the original prophecy, they will have to make the controls simpler, prolly set the engines at 100% etc. but hopefully they'll do it right.
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Why would you need to make the controls much simpler? You can pretty much play the game with a two button joystick and rarely touch the keyboard (including throttle control, which you suggest would dissapear...). With four buttons you can do it pretty well... stuff like comms and nav maps can be relegated to a pause screen or somesuch. You don't really have to dumb it down that much. You'll probably lose some target selecting methods, maybe the decoys, and some shortcuts like single key presses to full guns, full throttle. Instead, needing to throttle up, down and scroll through the guns.
 
i dont play prophecy with a joystick im a keyboard junkie (never been arsed to buy a joystick); what i ment with the simplification is that i do not want a snes wc1 with dozens of combinations.

i was going to do an ascii gba but sadly it didn't show up right in the post :( so i had to kill it....
 
Yeah, I would suspect that the controls would be simplified to avoid too many complex keystrokes. Here is an example of what I might expect:

Abbreviations:
D-pad (Direction Pad)
A (A button)
B (B button)
R (right shoulder button)
L (left shoulder button)
Start (start button)
Select (select button)

Controls:

D-pad: steering
A: fire guns
B: fire missile
Select: drop decoy
R+D-pad up/down: increase/decrease throttle
L+A: cycle guns
L+B: cycle missiles
L+R: engage afterburner
Start: pause and open menu

Menu includes:
Game control/display options submenu
Set difficulty level
Communications
Power distribution
Damage report/repair system
Nav map/target selection mode (you get the basic nav map, but can zoom in to a closeup of the current battlefield and select a target, just like in the PC version of WCP)

A system something like this would keep the player from being overloaded with information, and would keep the number of keystrokes and combinations to a minimum
 
Originally posted by Frosty
What if it leads to a whole new line of GBA WCs? That'd make me ecstatic. Perhaps less so than a PC WC, but ecstatic nonetheless.
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We can only wait and see. But good news, nonetheless.
 
Anyone find it unnerving that EA has lent out the "Wing Commander" name to a third party? I mean, I'm all for a GBA game, but doesn't it seem out of character for them?
 
Originally posted by Filler
Actually, I would expect them to be identical to the snes version ;)
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Well the gba doesn't have as many buttons so that aint possible. i didn't like the Snes controls anyways though
 
WOW...

I haven't posted here in eons, but I think this is worth it.

It was weird too....it's been forever since i've been to the CIC, but just decided what the hell, for old times sake. Then I saw THIS!!!

WOW! This is the coolest thing to EVER happen. Even weirder too because just yesterday I had the sudden urge to buy a GBA...for no reason....

Yay!!!!

Anyway, hey to everyone (LOAF, Frosty, TC), people I used to talk to all the time! It's been awhile. Farewell (probably not for long...once this game comes out i'll be in super WC mode, and will probably return to my chat zone regular-ness)
 
Originally posted by LeHah
Anyone find it unnerving that EA has lent out the "Wing Commander" name to a third party? I mean, I'm all for a GBA game, but doesn't it seem out of character for them?
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My understanding is that this company has the GBA rights to any EA product for the next three years... which is why Raylight approached them to do a WC game.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: As seems to be my custom, I whole-heartedly disagree.

Originally posted by LeHah


Um no. They're not producing them until the GBA gets rolling along a bit better. It's still rather new.
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What are you talking about? The GBA is not only the successor to the most popular console of all time, it's also the only game in town when it comes to handheld game consoles in the US. Still, don't take my word for it... see what an expert had to say about cart sizes.
 
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