*CONFIRMED* Pinocchio World + Jump Scans

[Reagan Rayden]

Completely did not notice that chat bubbles were not in BBS.

 

[snow_flake40]

Uh-huh. See, you didn't even notice because the pace of the game wasn't slowed down to a stop. Hopefully fully-voiced cutscenes will now be a running theme in KH...

 

[Mr Yippie]

Spoiler Show

the style and design of Pleasure Island in the movie was fantastic. I hope they use it to its best potential.

I mean, if Traverse Town can hold FIVE districts now, who knows what they can do?

 

[Virus]

Spoiler Show

the style and design of Pleasure Island in the movie was fantastic. I hope they use it to its best potential.

I mean, if Traverse Town can hold FIVE districts now, who knows what they can do?

I doubt Disney will allow tobacco in their E10+ game. Use of tobacco brings it up to T (and we just CAN'T have that...)

But yeah, I have no doubt that all these worlds will be much more vast and extensive than the worlds in previous games.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Completely did not notice that chat bubbles were not in BBS.

There were a few, but only when it was a prompt for something or you were talking to an NCP.

 

[Ikkin]

To this day, I'd still prefer that, in place of the fish faces, they used the high resolution faces but instead of lip synching, they used some sort of basic animation of them opening and closing their mouths. I realize that part of the reason they use the fish faces is because they don't have the time to animate and lip synch every face in every cutscene, but the contrast is so jarring that it's painful.

I don't think it has to do with the time it takes to animate/lip synch -- FFXIII has no fish-face models whatsoever, though I still thought there might have been two different levels of animation for the super-HQ model and the game model. (My understanding of FFXIII's animation is that S-E made some sort of phonetic animation system that helped do the lipsync, and then possibly used animators to clean up the results further for some of the more important cutscenes, which seems like it wouldn't be much more work overall)

The reason why they do it is because PS2-esque levels of system power are neither capable of using the HQ models all the time nor capable of using gameplay models with the required level of detail. The gameplay models use much smaller texture sheets, about half the number of polygons, and are rigged with a fraction of the number of bones (since the bones in S-E models are massively concentrated in the face). The problem should quickly resolve itself once we finally get a game on a system that's not hamstrung by a graphics card with polygon rendering capabilities from the year 2000. =P

 

[The_Dream_Shield]

I actually NEVER noticed the fish face thing, though I do now xD I don't think I really would in gameplay either, possibly if I played KH1 NOW after all these years, but I don't think I really need ANOTHER playthrough right now ;p

Pleasure Island looked good in the movie o_0 Its been so long since I've seen it, I also hope they put the themes and design to their full use <3

 

[gelandporn]

I don't think it has to do with the time it takes to animate/lip synch -- FFXIII has no fish-face models whatsoever, though I still thought there might have been two different levels of animation for the super-HQ model and the game model. (My understanding of FFXIII's animation is that S-E made some sort of phonetic animation system that helped do the lipsync, and then possibly used animators to clean up the results further for some of the more important cutscenes, which seems like it wouldn't be much more work overall)

The reason why they do it is because PS2-esque levels of system power are neither capable of using the HQ models all the time nor capable of using gameplay models with the required level of detail. The gameplay models use much smaller texture sheets, about half the number of polygons, and are rigged with a fraction of the number of bones (since the bones in S-E models are massively concentrated in the face). The problem should quickly resolve itself once we finally get a game on a system that's not hamstrung by a graphics card with polygon rendering capabilities from the year 2000. =P

I don't see how the HQ faces requiring twice the polygons would even be a problem. It's just a face, they're not rendering something huge here like the 1000 Heartless Battle which would clearly need some compromises.

Fish face is still present even in Re:CoM, which only uses pre-rendered FMVs as opposed to real time cutscenes, and thus polygons are a non-issue. And yet they still use fish face. The only logical explanation is because of what I said- the animators do not have time to animate and lip synch every face (or they're lazy).

What you have to consider is the fact that they have to do this for two languages, and it's not just strictly the mouth, it's also more subtle facial expressions which I would imagine has to be done manually (or at least, any automated animation system's help would be limited).

 

[JustDarkMemories]

Do we have any footage of the Pinocchio world or is it just the scans?
Just asking.

 

[OathkeeperRoxas XIII]

Do we have any footage of the Pinocchio world or is it just the scans?
Just asking.

Just scans at the moments, but we'll get footage soon. Excited for Pinoke's world and Norte Dame

 

[DropDistance]

these are nice, those Dream Eaters look a lot like animals rather than monsters/creatures to me.. but hey, maybe it's for a reason?

 

[Ikkin]

I don't see how the HQ faces requiring twice the polygons would even be a problem. It's just a face, they're not rendering something huge here like the 1000 Heartless Battle which would clearly need some compromises.

That's why I think it might have more to do with the bones than anything else.

The 1000 Heartless Battle is something of a cheat, though, to be fair. Donald and Goofy aren't there, there are a limited number of enemies (maybe around twenty or so?) ever in play, they're some of the simplest enemies in the entire game geometry/bone-wise, there are only two types of enemies so the texture memory requirements aren't that high, all the background enemies are the same models using the same animations which can be replicated by the game with much lower cost, and the area it takes place in is one of the least complicated areas in the game. I'm not sure you can use it to prove that they "should" be able to use the HQ models all the time because it's a very special case.

Fish face is still present even in Re:CoM, which only uses pre-rendered FMVs as opposed to real time cutscenes, and thus polygons are a non-issue. And yet they still use fish face. The only logical explanation is because of what I said- the animators do not have time to animate and lip synch every face (or they're lazy).

Re:CoM's cutscenes were run off the PS2 engine, though. If there were hard-coded limitations in the engine itself, it might not have been possible for them to use the higher-quality models without changing the engine, and that would take effort that they wouldn't want to put into a freebie game.

Then again, if there was one game in which "laziness" would be a reasonable explanation, Re:CoM would be it. The video quality in that game was atrocious. =(

What you have to consider is the fact that they have to do this for two languages, and it's not just strictly the mouth, it's also more subtle facial expressions which I would imagine has to be done manually (or at least, any automated animation system's help would be limited).

They didn't have any problem doing it for FFXIII, though. I'm not sure if they would have had the type of tech that helped them out with this back when they were working on KH2, but 3D should definitely have access to it, and the fact that they're still not using it suggests that they simply can't use the HQ models in those scenes.

 

[JustDarkMemories]

Just scans at the moments, but we'll get footage soon. Excited for Pinoke's world and Norte Dame

Not really... maybe for Notre Dame but not for Pinocchio. I hated Monstro back in KH1 after all.

 

[snow_flake40]

Not really... maybe for Notre Dame but not for Pinocchio. I hated Monstro back in KH1 after all.

Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of Monstro either. Never did care for mazes and such.

But, this won't just be Monstro this time round. The screens we have suggest that Pinocchio's world will take place outside of the whale (at least the majority of it). I'm personally really excited for Pinocchio. It would have been such a waste to just give that movie Monstro and nothing more.

 

[Neko]

I absolutely love the Dream eater designs.

 

[kupo1121]

Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of Monstro either. Never did care for mazes and such.

But, this won't just be Monstro this time round. The screens we have suggest that Pinocchio's world will take place outside of the whale (at least the majority of it). I'm personally really excited for Pinocchio. It would have been such a waste to just give that movie Monstro and nothing more.

The main problem with Monstro was that basically all of the rooms looked identical minus the mouth. This made entering a new room confusing because it took a moment to realize if you had visited the room before. In DDD I expect Monstro to be MUCH smaller because the mainland is also going to have a lot of rooms in the world. This will make navigating the rooms that are in Monstro much easier hopefully

 

[snow_flake40]

The main problem with Monstro was that basically all of the rooms looked identical minus the mouth. This made entering a new room confusing because it took a moment to realize if you had visited the room before. In DDD I expect Monstro to be MUCH smaller because the mainland is also going to have a lot of rooms in the world. This will make navigating the rooms that are in Monstro much easier hopefully

Very true. I think there will be very little of Monstro in this game, just two rooms max. I'd say they'll just have Monstro's mouth and save the rest of the world for Pleasure Island and wherever else. There's no point in having a huge Monstro area because we've already done that. The focus this time round will definitely be on the rest of the movie. ...Probably.

 

[Kevin Perez]

Wow, everything looks so damn cool! Unfortunately, I'll be YouTubing this installment because I simply cannot switch to another hand held game console. Even so, it looks freaking awesome. I hope they get a good voice actor for Frollo for the American version since the original is dead

 

[gelandporn]

That's why I think it might have more to do with the bones than anything else.

The 1000 Heartless Battle is something of a cheat, though, to be fair. Donald and Goofy aren't there, there are a limited number of enemies (maybe around twenty or so?) ever in play, they're some of the simplest enemies in the entire game geometry/bone-wise, there are only two types of enemies so the texture memory requirements aren't that high, all the background enemies are the same models using the same animations which can be replicated by the game with much lower cost, and the area it takes place in is one of the least complicated areas in the game. I'm not sure you can use it to prove that they "should" be able to use the HQ models all the time because it's a very special case.

I wasn't using it to prove they should be able to use HQ models, I was using it as an example of when they need to cut corners because of limitations (ie everything you just said). I don't understand how this would be the case for the HQ models. Even if it's twice the polygons/more bones, etc, the game shows it can handle it just fine.

For example:


What's different between the times they have HQ faces and fish faces? Nothing. It's not like in gameplay where there's a lot going on in the screen. I don't see how the game could have trouble processing the HQ faces especially at times like those, I think you're underplaying the PS2's limitations or overplaying the graphics of KH when there are plenty of titles on the PS2 of better quality.

And I mean, we already have a known example of when they could have had HQ faces but didn't- Sora, Riku and Kairi in the Japanese BbS, which they changed in the English and FM versions. Why would you assume that they would be incapable of doing the same thing for the rest of the fish faces?

Re:CoM's cutscenes were run off the PS2 engine, though. If there were hard-coded limitations in the engine itself, it might not have been possible for them to use the higher-quality models without changing the engine, and that would take effort that they wouldn't want to put into a freebie game.

Then again, if there was one game in which "laziness" would be a reasonable explanation, Re:CoM would be it. The video quality in that game was atrocious. =(

While I'm not at all familiar with the development process, my understanding is that developers are given a development kit as a sort of emulator for the console on which they can develop the games. Development kits are more powerful than the consoles themselves so they can do things like debugging. They would not have any problem using the HQ models and compressing it into a FMV.

I don't see how you could say it was just laziness in Re:CoM.

They didn't have any problem doing it for FFXIII, though. I'm not sure if they would have had the type of tech that helped them out with this back when they were working on KH2, but 3D should definitely have access to it, and the fact that they're still not using it suggests that they simply can't use the HQ models in those scenes.

There's not really any point in comparing it to FF constantly because we know the production quality in FF cutscenes are usually better than KH. For instance, comparing the CGI scenes, they are more abundant in FF games and of better quality.

KH cuts corners, not just with faces but with stock animations. How many times did you see Goofy scratching his snout, Donald tapping his foot with his wings crossed, and Sora talking with one hand moving in front of him in KH2? A lot, because they used the same animations continually rather than create unique animations for each cutscene. I'm not saying that's wrong. But is that because of graphical limitations? Hell no.

 

[Chuman]

Am I the only one who enjoyed Monstro way back when it was a giant world?