Weirdest Graphical Compromises

kubev · Jul 2, 2018

For some reason, I was just thinking about how weird it was that every player sprite in Madden '97 (on PlayStation and Saturn, anyway) had the number 88 on the back of its jersey (I assume due to memory limitations). This got me to thinking about weird graphical compromises in general. I mean, if you can't put the correct number on a player in a sports game, then why even bother putting a number on the sprite, anyway? I believe that this only happened for one year (although I don't know if it happened with other football series).

What other weird graphical compromises that didn't really make a lot of sense can you think of?

low-G · Jul 2, 2018

That they don't occlude the sun in the Dreamcast version of Hydro Thunder. No attempt at all. The sun flare always shines through everything. Probably a rush job but then they released a revised version of the game months later that still didn't fix it.

Jerykk · Jul 2, 2018

The original PC port of RE4 was missing world lighting. Like, completely. I'm pretty sure it was a bug rather than a compromise but the fact that they actually shipped with it is pretty amazing.

HTupolev · Jul 2, 2018

kubev said:
I mean, if you can't put the correct number on a player in a sports game, then why even bother putting a number on the sprite, anyway?

Probably because having no number on a football jersey can look weird in and of itself.

lexible · Jul 2, 2018

Jerykk said:
The original PC port of RE4 was missing world lighting. Like, completely. I'm pretty sure it was a bug rather than a compromise but the fact that they actually shipped with it is pretty amazing.

You also couldn't exit the game. You had to Alt F4.

Lady Bow · Jul 2, 2018

Don't know if this is what you're looking for but the N64 had a built-in implementation of anti-aliasing in the system that blurred every single game. Generally the sprite-based games look a lot better with the AA off while the polygonal ones are hit or miss/subjective really.

Gestault · Jul 2, 2018

Doom for the 32X didn't have the backs for the 2D enemy sprites. Made sneaking a heck of a lot less effective.

Phediuk · Jul 2, 2018

Wolfenstein 3D on the SNES replacing the dogs with giant rats.

kubev · Jul 2, 2018

Gestault said:
Doom for the 32X didn't have the backs for the 2D enemy sprites. Made sneaking a heck of a lot less effective.

You know, in retrospect, I can't help but wonder how awesome DOOM for 32X could've been with a higher-capacity cartridge or as a CD 32X game (and preferably with more development time, in either case). Also, while the likelihood of it happening would've been slim, regardless of when the game came out, I would've loved for DOOM for 32X to have the music exclusive to the 3DO version. That only even happened for the 3DO version because the developer handling the port (yes, one person) wouldn't have been able to get the pre-existing music working within the required time, and I think the guy in charge of the company behind the port happened to be in a band. XD

Azure Wanderer · Jul 2, 2018

Spiderman PS1 didn't feature fingers on its cutscenes.. which is weird because they're CGI and the PC version has them haha.

kubev · Jul 2, 2018

Azure Wanderer said:
Spiderman PS1 didn't feature fingers on its cutscenes.. which is weird because they're CGI and the PC version has them haha.

Yeah, if they're pre-rendered, then that's definitely an odd choice.

Gestault · Jul 2, 2018

This is a recent one: Gran Turismo Sport saves on its render budget by just mapping whatever the player's car is currently reflecting on all opponent cars. So if you're driving under a bridge, it reflects nicely for you, but also puts that reflection on cars ahead/behind you that are nowhere near it. I think it's actually pretty clever, because aside from things like bridges, if you're close enough to notice, your surroundings are pretty similar.

Timu · Jul 2, 2018

Azure Wanderer said:
Spiderman PS1 didn't feature fingers on its cutscenes.. which is weird because they're CGI and the PC version has them haha.

I believe the Dreamcast version had them as well.

kubev said:
Yeah, if they're pre-rendered, then that's definitely an odd choice.

Yeah, it had pre-rendered cutscenes(and in game ones).

SleepSmasher · Jul 2, 2018

Lack of temporal anti aliasing in recently released games. Crash is a good example. Unless it's an engine limitation, why have FXAA as an option when TAA is so much better (and for Crash even more so, since it's not that fast paced so blurriness wouldn't even be an issue).

And while we're at it, why isn't SMAA an option instead of FXAA when TAA isn't available is also beyond me.

lvl 99 Pixel · Jul 2, 2018

Pokkens background sprites/characters

Antitype · Jul 2, 2018

Quincunx AA on PS3, that ruined the IQ of so many games. I'd rather they implemented no AA over this.

pahlke1 · Jul 2, 2018

Gestault said:
This is a recent one: Gran Turismo Sport saves on its render budget by just mapping whatever the player's car is currently reflecting on all opponent cars. So if you're driving under a bridge, it reflects nicely for you, but also puts that reflection on cars ahead/behind you that are nowhere near it. I think it's actually pretty clever, because aside from things like bridges, if you're close enough to notice, your surroundings are pretty similar.

Wow that sounds like a really unique way to do reflections

caff!!! · Jul 2, 2018

Phediuk said:
Wolfenstein 3D on the SNES replacing the dogs with giant rats.

I'd blame Nintendo policies for that and the removal of Nazi imegery

HTupolev · Jul 2, 2018

Gestault said:
This is a recent one: Gran Turismo Sport saves on its render budget by just mapping whatever the player's car is currently reflecting on all opponent cars. So if you're driving under a bridge, it reflects nicely for you, but also puts that reflection on cars ahead/behind you that are nowhere near it. I think it's actually pretty clever, because aside from things like bridges, if you're close enough to notice, your surroundings are pretty similar.

pahlke1 said:
Wow that sounds like a really unique way to do reflections

I think that using the real-time cubemap of the main car for all the cars is actually a pretty common technique. As far as PS4 racers go, for instance, Driveclub does the same thing.

Azure Wanderer · Jul 3, 2018

felipepl said:
Lack of temporal anti aliasing in recently released games. Crash is a good example. Unless it's an engine limitation, why have FXAA as an option when TAA is so much better (and for Crash even more so, since it's not that fast paced so blurriness wouldn't even be an issue).

And while we're at it, why isn't SMAA an option instead of FXAA when TAA isn't available is also beyond me.

You mean the Switch port or all versions?

Pottuvoi · Jul 3, 2018

felipepl said:
Lack of temporal anti aliasing in recently released games. Crash is a good example. Unless it's an engine limitation, why have FXAA as an option when TAA is so much better (and for Crash even more so, since it's not that fast paced so blurriness wouldn't even be an issue).

And while we're at it, why isn't SMAA an option instead of FXAA when TAA isn't available is also beyond me.

UE only has FXAA and TAA as default options.

MLAA and SMAA apparently have quite variable performance depending on scene. (Amount of edges found.)
It might be part of the reason.

Clay · Jul 3, 2018

Weird might not be the right word, but I hate it when developers have faraway enemies run at a lower refresh rate than the rest of the game. Enemies in games like Halo 5 and the 3DS RE: Mercenaries running around at half the frame rate looks ridiculous and I never get used to it, I'd prefer they do anything else to hit their performance goals, including just dropping everything to the lower refresh rate so everything is consistent.

Huey · Jul 3, 2018

Gestault said:
Doom for the 32X didn't have the backs for the 2D enemy sprites. Made sneaking a heck of a lot less effective.

Azure Wanderer said:
Spiderman PS1 didn't feature fingers on its cutscenes.. which is weird because they're CGI and the PC version has them haha.

You people can't find pics of these amazing examples?!

violent · Jul 3, 2018

Wasn't the absent moon in Dark Souls Remastered a big deal?

Azure Wanderer · Jul 3, 2018

HueyFreeman said:
You people can't find pics of these amazing examples?!

I found a nice comparison video if you're interested

Xiaomi · Jul 3, 2018

Quake used a weird hexidecimal constant to do less taxing lighting and reflection angles by approximating an inverse square root without fully calculating it. It was made famous by the comment that accompanied the code:

Code:

i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );  
 // what the fuck?

Not the kind of thing you can screenshot, but still a little weird.

DanteLinkX · Jul 3, 2018

Those ugly as fuck gifs (same 2 or 3 images looping) they used on the titatrons on wwf games on n64 lol.

rawhide · Jul 3, 2018

The GBA was full of original games and SNES ports that used a Joel Schumacer-esque color palette to compensate for the awful non-backlit OG GBA screen, with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance perhaps being the most noteworthy in that regard.

Rlan · Jul 3, 2018

In Rayman on PSOne there are several save points where you take a photo as a checkpoint.

The GBA version of Rayman is pretty spot on in terms of remaking the game, but oddly these now use blown up versions of them at half their original size. It just looks bizarre.

Adamska · Jul 3, 2018

Azure Wanderer said:
Spiderman PS1 didn't feature fingers on its cutscenes.. which is weird because they're CGI and the PC version has them haha.

I'm pretty sure the models used in the PC/Dreamcast versions were created long after the PS1 version came out, since these versions only came out in 2001. It's not a compromise of the PS1 version, it's an improvement for a late port.

Velocity:Design:Comfort · Jul 3, 2018

low-G said:
That they don't occlude the sun in the Dreamcast version of Hydro Thunder. No attempt at all. The sun flare always shines through everything. Probably a rush job but then they released a revised version of the game months later that still didn't fix it.

I had to see this one to believe it. It's silly as fuck, but I kind of love it in a way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGbMiuYus2c

Railgun · Jul 3, 2018

felipepl said:
Lack of temporal anti aliasing in recently released games. Crash is a good example. Unless it's an engine limitation, why have FXAA as an option when TAA is so much better (and for Crash even more so, since it's not that fast paced so blurriness wouldn't even be an issue).

And while we're at it, why isn't SMAA an option instead of FXAA when TAA isn't available is also beyond me.

Yep, I thought by 2018 all games would be using TAA and aliasing would be a thing of the past but nope.

Mhj · Jul 3, 2018

Xiaomi said:
Quake used a weird hexidecimal constant to do less taxing lighting and reflection angles by approximating an inverse square root without fully calculating it. It was made famous by the comment that accompanied the code:

Code:

i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?

Not the kind of thing you can screenshot, but still a little weird.

Read an article about that constant once upon a time. I believe it was possible to pick an even better constant, though the difference was minor.

HTupolev · Jul 3, 2018

Mhj said:
Read an article about that constant once upon a time. I believe it was possible to pick an even better constant, though the difference was minor.

It's bizarre that nobody seems to know who came up with the technique.

At it's core it's weirdly simple: take advantage of exponent-mantissa format to do exponentiation operations via simpler operations on the exponent. The nuances get kind of crazy, though.

kubev · Jul 3, 2018

Clay said:
Weird might not be the right word, but I hate it when developers have faraway enemies run at a lower refresh rate than the rest of the game. Enemies in games like Halo 5 and the 3DS RE: Mercenaries running around at half the frame rate looks ridiculous and I never get used to it, I'd prefer they do anything else to hit their performance goals, including just dropping everything to the lower refresh rate so everything is consistent.

Yeah, that bugs me, as well. It's less noticeable in some games, to be fair, but I'm with you in the sense that I'd prefer for other compromises to be made first.

rawhide said:
The GBA was full of original games and SNES ports that used a Joel Schumacer-esque color palette to compensate for the awful non-backlit OG GBA screen, with Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance perhaps being the most noteworthy in that regard.

Yeah, this was really unfortunate. Did any of the official re-releases of these games account for that by having the color palettes darkened for use on Wii, Wii U, etc.?

MoonlitBow · Jul 3, 2018

kubev said:
Yeah, this was really unfortunate. Did any of the official re-releases of these games account for that by having the color palettes darkened for use on Wii, Wii U, etc.?

3DS did, and the games looked way better for it, but "brighter is always better" is a pretty popular sentiment especially for colorful games so not many agreed.

SleepSmasher · Jul 3, 2018

Azure Wanderer said:
You mean the Switch port or all versions?

Nope - PC version. I had to supersample it 2x to eliminate all the jaggies. And my native resolution is 3440x1440 (21:9).

Deleted member 10428 · Jul 3, 2018

Gestault said:
Doom for the 32X didn't have the backs for the 2D enemy sprites. Made sneaking a heck of a lot less effective.

Worse yet, it made it so that enemies couldn't attack each other.

Pottuvoi · Jul 3, 2018

Xiaomi said:
Quake used a weird hexidecimal constant to do less taxing lighting and reflection angles by approximating an inverse square root without fully calculating it. It was made famous by the comment that accompanied the code:

Code:

i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck?

Not the kind of thing you can screenshot, but still a little weird.

It's still used in games, even in GPU code.

rawhide · Jul 3, 2018

kubev said:
Yeah, this was really unfortunate. Did any of the official re-releases of these games account for that by having the color palettes darkened for use on Wii, Wii U, etc.?

From memory, GBA games on Wii U were calibrated so they'd always be darkened when viewed on the gamepad.

It's not even a GBA game but the developers of the original Shantae for GBC programmed an entire alternate color palette specifically for GBA and it'll switch to the brighter palette if it detects GBA hardware. I want to say some of the later GBA games like the Final Fantasy ports had manual palette toggles in the options, too.

.exe · Jul 3, 2018

Console games that doesn't use 16x trilinear filtering. I don't get it. It costs practically nothing in terms of performance.

ThreepQuest64 · Jul 3, 2018

felipepl said:
Lack of temporal anti aliasing in recently released games. Crash is a good example. Unless it's an engine limitation, why have FXAA as an option when TAA is so much better (and for Crash even more so, since it's not that fast paced so blurriness wouldn't even be an issue).

And while we're at it, why isn't SMAA an option instead of FXAA when TAA isn't available is also beyond me.

I'm not a big SMAA fan like many others because I prefer the minor blurring of FXAA compared to some taxing scenes with SMAA enabled. TAA on the other hand... Fallout 4, Deus Ex: MD (with a sharpness option), Dishonored 2 (even with a sharpness slider!!) and AC: Origins (even on 'low' it's brilliant and only cost minor performance) totally ruined any other AA technique for me. I want TAA as an option. In. Every. Single. Game.

Vintage · Jul 3, 2018

According to developers, in Mass Effect 3 you cannot holster your weapon because there wasn't enough memory left to put in that animation.

degauss · Jul 3, 2018

The Quake 3 railgun being a tacky straight beam of light, and not a beautiful spiral of particles like in Quake 2. One of the nicest graphical flourishes in the game downgraded for technical reasons, particles apparently being a problem in the new engine or something.

Many years later, in Quake Champions it still looks like shit, but then that game looks like a gaudy mess overall.

Lukemia SL · Jul 3, 2018

Jerykk said:
The original PC port of RE4 was missing world lighting. Like, completely. I'm pretty sure it was a bug rather than a compromise but the fact that they actually shipped with it is pretty amazing.

I don't think it was a bug, it was most probably because they ported the PS2 version which belongs in this thread.
They amount of compromises to get that version running on PS2 with lots of cutbacks and no hardware lights, bump mapping and terrible replacement shaders or lack thereof is crazy.

Buff Beefbroth · Jul 3, 2018

The item pickups being brightly colored icons rather than 3D models in splitscreen Quake 3 on the Dreamcast.

ThereAreFourNaan · Jul 3, 2018

Jerykk said:
The original PC port of RE4 was missing world lighting. Like, completely. I'm pretty sure it was a bug rather than a compromise but the fact that they actually shipped with it is pretty amazing.

The graphics weren't even the biggest issue with that port - the game didn't ship with mouse support.

Dark1x · Jul 3, 2018

Lady Bow said:
Don't know if this is what you're looking for but the N64 had a built-in implementation of anti-aliasing in the system that blurred every single game. Generally the sprite-based games look a lot better with the AA off while the polygonal ones are hit or miss/subjective really.

That's the hardware blur - which always looks better disabled. There's another AA pass which can be disabled which does tend to result in super pixelated and dithered 3D games. You can disable the first with a hardware mod and the second with an Everdrive.

Deblur is such a great feature.

Dr. Dre's Dr. · Jul 3, 2018

I like the N64 Goldeneye "cube fist with texture"

Deleted member 15497 · Jul 3, 2018

Halo 5 MP :V

h5-guardians-forge-btb-map-guillotine-urban-transport-671dab35fdae4826a577d0f9a16f9a7a.jpg

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