Lazy Graphics.

[Pink]

So I've been waiting for this game to come out on Steam for ages, just like all of you. FF9 is my all time favourite game so as soon as I saw it was out I purchased it... I was a little bit taken back by the price... but thought, oh well it's FF9 it'll be worth it.

I'm really impressed by the HD models, I think they look lovely, though they do kind of not blend with the background that well, however I was willing to look past that...Unfortunately as I explored the game further I found many graphical issues that I was NOT OK with. Take this random floating horrible looking wine glass: http://imgur.com/yoLgbrJ

How on earth did they not notice that before release? I'm a little bit miffed that they are charging us such a high price for a 20+ year old game with issues like this...

[Viktor]

That's exactly what i just said here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/377840/discussions/0/361787186420938985/
It's not like they didn't notice the bad background. You need to realize that the environment graphics was originally made as pre-rendered pictures. Yes, they are just pictures. To make it fit the rest of the HD graphics, they would have to completely remake those pre-rendered pictures you see in cities/villages. Upscale wouldn't be much helpful, since that's what it does anyway when you run it on today's screen

[Pink]

I'm not so fussed with the character models. I do notice they clash with the background and seem to not fit in but at least they still look nice. The thing that is pissing me off is weird things like that floating badly rendered wine glass... it looks like they just forgot about it. It has jagged edges and just looks stupid!

[Giant_Marvin]

I'm okay with it. If some devotee or modders want to add detail to these prerendered backgrounds, that would be nice.But I find charm in using my imagination to fill in the "blank"s though.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

I'm okay with it. If some devotee or modders want to add detail to these prerendered backgrounds, that would be nice.But I find charm in using my imagination to fill in the "blank"s though.

I can't imagine modders would be able to do anything about it. Sure, some sharpness here and there maybe and stuff..., but it's still picture. What happens if you enlarge 480p picture to 1080p? Will be bigger, but will have bad quality.

[Giant_Marvin]

Originally posted by Viktor:

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

I'm okay with it. If some devotee or modders want to add detail to these prerendered backgrounds, that would be nice.But I find charm in using my imagination to fill in the "blank"s though.

I can't imagine modders would be able to do anything about it. Sure, some sharpness here and there maybe and stuff..., but it's still picture. What happens if you enlarge 480p picture to 1080p? Will be bigger, but will have bad quality.

Well, they could replace the picture. Like an actual art project. I've thought about doing this for the ff viii port way back but then I said nah, too much effort.

[Giant_Marvin]

Not sure how the file sizes/etc. mesh with the engine but a very determined nerd can find a way.

[Xenader]

Originally posted by Squid:

I'm not so fussed with the character models. I do notice they clash with the background and seem to not fit in but at least they still look nice. The thing that is pissing me off is weird things like that floating badly rendered wine glass... it looks like they just forgot about it. It has jagged edges and just looks stupid!

its a silly little wine glass. even going over assets in game and placement 100 times, theres gonna be something missed.
Just send them a message about when and where its at so they become aware and can fix it.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

Originally posted by Viktor:

I can't imagine modders would be able to do anything about it. Sure, some sharpness here and there maybe and stuff..., but it's still picture. What happens if you enlarge 480p picture to 1080p? Will be bigger, but will have bad quality.

Well, they could replace the picture. Like an actual art project. I've thought about doing this for the ff viii port way back but then I said nah, too much effort.

Well, that would probably be good idea. But as you said, there is too much work to it. You would have to draw extreme amount of pictures. I draw too. The problem is that i draw to realistically. So if i drew the pictures, they would look awesome, but it would be finished in 2050 maybe. As i draw realistically, it takes long time. It's the problem with my drawings. And i somehow can't draw with less details. Might sound like i'm trying to make myself look pro here. But it's actually a barrier for me to improve my drawing skills. For example, i draw a portrait for a week, which is pretty frustrating and i must be really motivated to actually finish it.

[Pink]

Originally posted by Xenader:

Originally posted by Squid:

I'm not so fussed with the character models. I do notice they clash with the background and seem to not fit in but at least they still look nice. The thing that is pissing me off is weird things like that floating badly rendered wine glass... it looks like they just forgot about it. It has jagged edges and just looks stupid!

its a silly little wine glass. even going over assets in game and placement 100 times, theres gonna be something missed.
Just send them a message about when and where its at so they become aware and can fix it.

The wine glass isn't the only issue I have noticed though :(

I do want to contact SE to show them my screen shot so they can fix it but i actually have no idea how to get in contact with them... they are notoriously difficult to contact from previous experiences :(

[Giant_Marvin]

Originally posted by Viktor:

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

Well, they could replace the picture. Like an actual art project. I've thought about doing this for the ff viii port way back but then I said nah, too much effort.

Well, that would probably be good idea. But as you said, there is too much work to it. You would have to draw extreme amount of pictures. I draw too. The problem is that i draw to realistically. So if i drew the pictures, they would look awesome, but it would be finished in 2050 maybe. As i draw realistically, it takes long time. It's the problem with my drawings. And i somehow can't draw with less details. Might sound like i'm trying to make myself look pro here. But it's actually a barrier for me to improve my drawing skills. For example, i draw a portrait for a week, which is pretty frustrating and i must be really motivated to actually finish it.

Yeah, I hear you. I was thinking more that someone could extract the image files and do a sort of HD paint-by-numbers. Just sharpen up the edges a bit. Honestly, what square could have done to make this really great, but would have cost them probably more than it's worth. Final Fantasy is such a franchise that some crazy ass fan might be willing to do it though.

[Giant_Marvin]

I love how it looks though, and I sort of missed the prerendered backgrounds when they stopped doing it. It's really interesting how they were able to play with perspective this way. When it's a fully 3d environment, you look at each map from the same perspective. I thought the way these ps1 final fantasy games did this was one of the elements that made them most charming. Like, there's tiny zidane in the corner, then his model grows larger as he gets closer to the camera.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

Originally posted by Viktor:

Well, that would probably be good idea. But as you said, there is too much work to it. You would have to draw extreme amount of pictures. I draw too. The problem is that i draw to realistically. So if i drew the pictures, they would look awesome, but it would be finished in 2050 maybe. As i draw realistically, it takes long time. It's the problem with my drawings. And i somehow can't draw with less details. Might sound like i'm trying to make myself look pro here. But it's actually a barrier for me to improve my drawing skills. For example, i draw a portrait for a week, which is pretty frustrating and i must be really motivated to actually finish it.

Yeah, I hear you. I was thinking more that someone could extract the image files and do a sort of HD paint-by-numbers. Just sharpen up the edges a bit. Honestly, what square could have done to make this really great, but would have cost them probably more than it's worth. Final Fantasy is such a franchise that some crazy ass fan might be willing to do it though.

Oh, that's actually pretty clever idea. In photoshop, you could just enlarge the picture to 1080p and basically redraw the details and smoothing it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Still a lot of crazy work, but much less than remaking the pics completely. For starting making that, being crazy is enough. Someone could try that. Maybe even i could.

[Giant_Marvin]

Anyway, we went on a tangent. OP said this was not his concern and floating wine glass was. I agree but maybe lore can justify it?

[Viktor]

Originally posted by Giant_Marvin:

I love how it looks though, and I sort of missed the prerendered backgrounds when they stopped doing it. It's really interesting how they were able to play with perspective this way. When it's a fully 3d environment, you look at each map from the same perspective. I thought the way these ps1 final fantasy games did this was one of the elements that made them most charming. Like, there's tiny zidane in the corner, then his model grows larger as he gets closer to the camera.

Yea, the pre-rendered background was really clever idea back then. Fully 3D background looked much worse. So in that time, it was just making the game look pretty. But i also saw some games that was using this technique and looked bad. The character felt like is not there. The devs just had to do it well and FF did it well.

[TyTy]

I believe that the orginal artwork was all lost when they moved offices.

It was all originally much higher quality, but it had to be scaled down for PS1. Some of it can be found here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=551612

So while SE would have probably wanted better artwork, it would have been very hard and/or time consuming.

Personally I like how it looks (apart from the grey borders).