*CONFIRMED* Pinocchio World + Jump Scans

[Kevin Perez]

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

It would've been more enjoyable for me if I hadn't kept getting lost and constantly falling of the "chambers".

 

[Virus]

It would've been more enjoyable for me if I hadn't kept getting lost and constantly falling of the "chambers".

My first play through it was rather confusing. But if you just pick a path and stick to it, it wasn't so bad.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I found Monstro fun. Annoying, but fun.

 

[Chuman]

My first play through it was rather confusing. But if you just pick a path and stick to it, it wasn't so bad.

Exactly. I had some trouble with that, but with some practice and after some grinding, there wasn't much trouble left.

 

[Virus]

You know what world I hated? Deep Jungle. UGH. I fell into that Hippo Lagoon every single fucking time.

 

[Neko]

I found Monstro fun. Annoying, but fun.

That is how I felt about Monstro. I enjoyed jumping and climbing around everywhere. It just got annoying when you slipped off somewhere or if you got lost. Once you memorize where all the rooms are it is much easier.

 

[Chuman]

You know what world I hated? Deep Jungle. UGH. I fell into that Hippo Lagoon every single fucking time.

I hated that part. Although I did find an area, I don't remember where, in the Deep Jungle where enemies spawned endlessly and I grinded for a good few hours. I was level 40 when I completed the world.

 

[Kevin Perez]

You know what world I hated? Deep Jungle. UGH. I fell into that Hippo Lagoon every single fucking time.

Yes, that was a pain in the ass.

I wonder.....Are we going to see Figaro, Stromboli, Honest John and Gideon (the villains in Pinocchio who are the fox and the cat) in DDS? There where sprites for the later in Days.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Yes, that was a pain in the ass.

I wonder.....Are we going to see Figaro, Stromboli, Honest John and Gideon (the villains in Pinocchio who are the fox and the cat) in DDS? There where sprites for the later in Days.

Pretty sure we will considering Pinocchio is changing into a donkey and we see parts of the circus and the cage Pinocchio gets locked in.

 

[gelandporn]

Monstro was meh because it got boring fast with every room looking the same, and the music didn't help.

But I'm actually wondering if they're just going to port the Monstro fight from BbSFM to DDD for either Sora or Riku. I get the feeling they will, and I wouldn't mind either since I don't intend on ever getting BbSFM.

 

[Chuman]

Yes, that was a pain in the ass.

I wonder.....Are we going to see Figaro, Stromboli, Honest John and Gideon (the villains in Pinocchio who are the fox and the cat) in DDS? There where sprites for the later in Days.

It's possible. This is Kingdom Hearts, weve had Donald Duck talk to Squall Lionheart. No possibilities may be ruled out in the Kingdom Hearts series*

*Except for Kingdom Hearts III coming out in 2012.

 

[Kevin Perez]

Monstro was meh because it got boring fast with every room looking the same, and the music didn't help.

But I'm actually wondering if they're just going to port the Monstro fight from BbSFM to DDD for either Sora or Riku. I get the feeling they will, and I wouldn't mind either since I don't intend on ever getting BbSFM.

I so regretted ever buying BBS FM as I never completed it as I gave it away to someone. It was pretty lame anyways. I should've YouTubed it as I will for the other installments of Kingdom Hearts until III comes out. It's irritating to have these many hand held games come out, despite being so cool, while forever waiting for the conclusion of the Xehanort saga.

 

[Neko]

But I'm actually wondering if they're just going to port the Monstro fight from BbSFM to DDD for either Sora or Riku. I get the feeling they will, and I wouldn't mind either since I don't intend on ever getting BbSFM.

I can see this happening and I can see it fitting in with the storyline too. That would work out nicely.

 

[gelandporn]

I'm also thinking that Pleasure Island is going to look a lot different than it did in the movie.

The problem DDD has is that the environments are based off of the settings in Disney movies, but it's trying to have greater environment interaction. So if they were trying to make the environments as accurate as possible, then that could potentially stifle interaction or at least limit it (eg no poles for Sora to fling off of here, no wall to bounce off of there, etc). Considering that we didn't get to see a lot of Pleasure Island in the actual movie, I get the feeling that they'll use this opportunity to have a bit of artistic license.

For example, it is basically an amusement park. While there are no scenes of a roller coaster, I could see the developers making one from scratch for Sora to glide on, or something to that effect.

 

[Kevin Perez]

I wonder if will also get to see the little village in the movie. You know, the one where Pinocchio goes to school the first day?

 

[Mr Yippie]

The best part of Monstro was his mouth. Climbing around the planks was fun as hell.

Deep Jungle was the best of ALL the world, oh man

 

[Neko]

I wonder if will also get to see the little village in the movie. You know, the one where Pinocchio goes to school the first day?

Since the world is suppose to be called Pranksters' Paradise I would assume most of the story will take place on Pleasure Island, but I can see them making a scene in the village when you first go to the world or something similar to that.

 

[:::A Hex Torn:::]

Anyone post this yet? Apparently showing the "Hari Lion":

Source: Twitter

 

[Ikkin]

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.

...

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?

Well, my point was, the difference in complexity to the renderer probably wasn't as big as it looked. =P

And what you're forgetting is the fact that you just don't know what the technical restrictions are. Maybe it's loading things into and out of memory, and sometimes doesn't have enough time to load the more complicated model back in sometimes. Maybe the other characters in the scene or the background complexity is higher and they can't show the HQ models because of it part of the time. You don't know the limitations of the PS2, or the limitations of the KH engine, and assuming that they could have done better and simply chose not to is unfair and disrespectful to the devs that spent years making the games.

(Bitty!SRK are a bit different, in that they didn't actually have a HQ model in the JP version of BbS; there are obviously going to be different considerations about whether to make an HQ model in the first place than about whether the HQ model or the gameplay model should be used in a particular shot assuming the existence of both)

Think about this for a moment, though: if they're just trying to cut corners and are not limited by technology, why would they ever choose to be inconsistent within a single cutscene? Certainly it's both easier and looks far better to just create some cutscenes entirely in fishface, and use the HQ models throughout the entirety of the A-level cutscenes that they really want to focus on, if they have the opportunity to do so. I might not understand why they're being limited technically, but it's far less absurd to assume that some kind of problem exists than to suggest that developers would choose to switch between graphical paradigms in the middle of a scene because they're too lazy to animate every line.

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.

Actually, from what it sounds like, Squenix actually did use real-time previewing on the target console as a development tool. And devkits (at least, the type that are used once the console's chips are made) aren't exactly super-powered PC emulators, anyway -- they're target consoles with double RAM (I would say "and maybe overclocked chips," but that was never brought up as a possibility when people were talking about Vita's potential specs given the devkit rumors) to give developers some breathing room for their unoptimized code. A PS2 devkit would be a Wii at best, and that's being very generous.

In any case, Re:CoM is recorded engine footage, not CG. Engine limitations exist, and they wouldn't be overcome by using a faster computer (Unreal Engine 3, for instance, has a maximum triangle limit of around 30,000, which means that even with a computer 10 times faster than a PS3, you can't make a character more complicated than Lightning -- it's not hard to imagine other limitations that could make fishface models necessary in certain circumstances). It's not like Days or Coded, either, where the model quality is scaled up (...Mickey's ears...) and high levels of Anti-Aliasing are applied; even with the terrible compression, it's obvious that they didn't bother to add AA to Re:CoM's cutscenes at all (watch the jagged diagonals).

I have no doubt whatsoever that Re:CoM's cutscenes would run on PS2 as is. Their recorded status is either down to a) lack of time to optimize them or b) something to make the cutscene viewer work better.

To show that the gameplay models aren't an artifact of system limitations, you have to use Days or Coded's cutscenes, not Re:CoM's. Of course, you probably can't do that.

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.

I'd say there is a point to comparing KH to FF, because all of the PS2 and PSP FFs had fishface and reused animations too. =P Dissidia was, in fact, entirely done in fishface, which was terribly annoying. CG has nothing to do with it, really; KH avoids it because almost no one actually prefers it to the style of the game, and using it means an inability to show weapons changes. IIRC, Nomura had mentioned stepping away from it to a large degree in Versus because of that (as well as ditching separate gameplay and cutscene models entirely), which means that directorial preference could have something to do with it, too.

Stock animations are rather different than fishface anyway, in that there's no technical benefit to them whatsoever, they don't look bad in and of themselves, and most people simply won't think about them as long as the important cutscenes don't use them inappropriately. =P

Anyone post this yet?

Source: Twitter

...is that the Needle Lion? o_o

(I think I'm more convinced now that they added on more dynamic shading... interesting...)

 

[Neko]

Anyone post this yet?

Source: Twitter

Yes it is on the first page of the thread. You just cannot see it as well as you can in the pic you posted.