What's With the Odd Framerate?

[Everybody do the flop]

Why did they decide to make the game run at 15FPS in cutscenes and fights, but have the overworld and menus run faster? I know it's not my computer, because I've seen trailers with that odd framerate too.

[Timeraider]

15 fps? quite sure it should be 30 in cutscenes and 60 in fights. Not sure whats wrong at you

[Everybody do the flop]

Originally posted by Timeraider:

15 fps? quite sure it should be 30 in cutscenes and 60- in fights

I don't know, it seems a lot slower than 30.

[Aemony]

Do you mean the frame rate that the characters move at? If so, that's because the source material uses the same frame rate. It is a design choice made to be closer to the source material, basically, which further makes the game play as if it was an actual anime episode.

The fights themselves are 60 FPS, and the camera moves around in 60 FPS. It's just the character sprites and effects that move around in whatever frame rate is used in the anime.

[Everybody do the flop]

Originally posted by Aemony:

Do you mean the frame rate that the characters move at? If so, that's because the source material uses the same frame rate. It is a design choice made to be closer to the source material, basically, which further makes the game play as if it was an actual anime episode.

The fights themselves are 60 FPS, and the camera moves around in 60 FPS. It's just the character sprites and effects that move around in whatever frame rate is used in the anime.

Hmm... but when the characters move, it makes them seem more... clunky and kinda hard to look at. In the show, maybe it's fine because everything moves at that speed all the time or something, but in-game it just looks awkward.

[Blixt]

I totaly agree, I think it is really wierd seeing a 3d model with 20fps animations when the rest of the game around it is moveing at 60.

[GnomeDompski]

Originally posted by Everybody do the flop:

Originally posted by Aemony:

Do you mean the frame rate that the characters move at? If so, that's because the source material uses the same frame rate. It is a design choice made to be closer to the source material, basically, which further makes the game play as if it was an actual anime episode.

The fights themselves are 60 FPS, and the camera moves around in 60 FPS. It's just the character sprites and effects that move around in whatever frame rate is used in the anime.

Hmm... but when the characters move, it makes them seem more... clunky and kinda hard to look at. In the show, maybe it's fine because everything moves at that speed all the time or something, but in-game it just looks awkward.

Yeah it doesn't seem right for the game. 24 FPS only looks right on TV because we watch nearly all shows in 24 FPS. The same way it is considered bad to have more FPS in shows and movies ("soap opera effect") it is also considered bad to have less FPS in games ("wtf is wrong with my pc effect").

Didn't they already try this cinematic BS in the evil within and everyone hated it enough for them to remove the low FPS?

[Phobic Panda]

Movies are usually in the same frame rate as anime and cartoons which are 23.976fps.

Exceptions are some in 29.97 and the weird ♥♥♥♥ with the hobbit.

[Eagle]

Its an artifact of tradition. Regular Anime has always been displayed in 23/24 FPS and it works with drawn art but with 3d models OR CGI its terrible but they insist on doing it because its the "Anime Feel". which is why most anime with CGI or 3d parts looks so bad. Its just a dumb traditional Industry standard.

The game play parts are supposed to be 60 FPS though. but that makes the cut scenes that much worst because you go from Buttery smooth animation in game to Crappy choppy FPS in cut scenes.

[Kurtino]

I had the same problem with a 144hz monitor and gsync trying to run the game in windows full screen mode, it seems to lock the framerate to 30 or less. Swapping to Fullscreen mode fixed it back to 60.

If you're talking about the character animations, it's deliberate to mimick the animation style of the anime, but the game itself runs in 60 even if only a limited number of frames or sprites are used for the character models.

[Setnaro X]

The character were deliberately animated in this fashion not only to mimic the way characters moved in the anime, but also to make it much more visually clear to see each character's frame data.

There's actually a video where a member of Arc System Works explains the process behind this and why it was done back when Xrd was released.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E

[Monterossa]

lazy and cheap animating.

[Aemony]

Originally posted by GnomeDompski:

Originally posted by Everybody do the flop:

Hmm... but when the characters move, it makes them seem more... clunky and kinda hard to look at. In the show, maybe it's fine because everything moves at that speed all the time or something, but in-game it just looks awkward.

Yeah it doesn't seem right for the game. 24 FPS only looks right on TV because we watch nearly all shows in 24 FPS. The same way it is considered bad to have more FPS in shows and movies ("soap opera effect") it is also considered bad to have less FPS in games ("wtf is wrong with my pc effect").

Didn't they already try this cinematic BS in the evil within and everyone hated it enough for them to remove the low FPS?

This is NOT the same. The "24 FPS looks right on TV" is because the cameras used to record the moving actors have natural motion blur applied to the moving objects on the recording, which allows viewers brains to throw in the missing details. The only reason why 24 FPS were chosen back when the recording industry first began was because it was the *slowest* possible frame rate that viewers could stomach, and therefor the cheapest to produce in as well.

The "soap opera effect" happens simply because viewers aren't used to higher frame rates of recordings, which causes them to correlate the experience to the soap operas of the past that were recorded in higher frame rates (60i). Anyone can get used to the higher frame rate with just a couple of hours of watching, and after that it's horrible to go back.

Regardless, it have absolutely nothing to do with any non-life action recordings, such as cartoons, anime, and similar. They do not have the natural motion blur that is present in IRL recordings and therefor does not fall under the same "24 FPS rule." The choice of the "low framerate" of this game is entirely to mirror the source material of the anime, and a higher frame rate would've created a disconnect between the game and the anime. Characters and objects in animes run at around ~12 FPS or even lower.

The reason they use 60 FPS for the camera panning is because the gameplay would suffer from having that limited to 30 FPS or even lower. The characters and effects themselves do not suffer from this issue, and instead they can be lower to better reflect the source material. The reason why the cutscenes are even lower is because they're copying the anime series entirely (because it's a cutscene, and not a playable sequence).

[Marshal Amim Kagori]

Originally posted by Everybody do the flop:

Why did they decide to make the game run at 15FPS in cutscenes and fights, but have the overworld and menus run faster? I know it's not my computer, because I've seen trailers with that odd framerate too.

The game runs multiple framerates on different planes to give that "Anime" feeling. Actual characters move and fight at 60fps, background animations range from 15fps to 60fps. All cutscenes are done at 30fps.

[Raxxa]

yeah cuts feels like 30 fps. controls just feel odd. refund.

[Marshal Amim Kagori]

Originally posted by Monterossa:

lazy and cheap animating.

Hardly.