The Low Tech Way Resident Evil Tricked You 

Is this you saying that fixed camera is cool or isn’t cool? I have been playing some classic RE games this year, and going back to fixed camera angles has been AMAZING. So fun to play through, and the angles are a large part of the magic

@@redomagnus4762 Fixed camera angles and tank controls are still good for games built around the idea of it. Also the youtuber for this video forgets another very important aspect. Art style/art direction for modern indie games. Because pre rendered background/sprites do not look the same as a fully rendered environment.

if it was fun t begin with yes, but this mecanic was suposed to be confusing and ''scary'' in the first time, and is not like this this days so no it's not funny because it was never suposed to, and not scary anymore because we all learn how to deal with it, is just, clunky

@@Wolfstanus did you skip through the video? because he does bring that up.

​@elderjose9662 I disagree with this take. It's not "clunky", as these games are built around these controls and are essential to the game design. It is fundamentally fun if these games actually appeal to you at all. These games don't just exist to scare you, they are video games first and foremost and everything about the controls and camera work to make these games what they are. I wouldn't be able to have fun replaying RE1R dozens of times if the only appeal is the initial "confusion" and fear. Modern controls and camera do not automatically make a game a better or more well crafted experience Just look at RE3 vs it's remake.

This sort of thing is exactly why I'm pretty tired of open world games. There's something about a curated experience that you can't get when the devs instead focus on "you choose how to proceed." It's why I like the first couple Metal Gear Solid games more than MGS V.

absolutely

Dude even metal gear did this well till guns of the patriots

Many indie games now using it.

What about only using fixed camera angles for intense moments? Could make for some interesting moments.

@@Broockle a lot of new adventure/horror titles do that and do it well

This. Also a skilled dev could use the camera like a real movie director, guiding players nonverbally towards points of interest.

RE 4 ruined it.

RE 4 was the downfall.

Resident evil 1 - 3 are hilarious they aged poorly

I enjoyed the old school RE games, but thy relied too much on their own self-imposed limitations to make the games artificially difficult. Basic movement was clunky and frustrating, exploration was slow and disorienting, aiming was hilariously bad, and combat would always occur on the line between two cameras making it impossible to see the enemy. These weren't features. They were flaws. Serious, unaddressed, flaws.

Did you get that from watching the Ars War Stories interview he did? That video was INSANE. Dude is a programming god.

That’s actually one of the things I go over in the Extended Cut haha

Re3 did support the sticks it was 1 and 2 that didnt at first. They both got duel shock editions later after their initial releases re1 got its duel shock in late 1997 and 2 got it in later of 1998. Re3 came out in 1999 when most games started to shift to analog stick controls by that point. A little off topic but Final Fantasy 7 started off with just use of the D-pad but there is a gameshark cheat that allows use of the analog stick on the original ps1. 8 and 9 used both the pad and sticks.

@@TheRealSephiroth Correct, but literally nobody played any of those games, or the future titles in the same genre, with the analog sticks. To this day, the first two protips I give to anyone planning to play a late-90s / early-00s horror games for the first time are: 1. Google and read up the MANUALS, and 2. Use the D-pad. Sadly, Xbox controller has terrible D-pad, which is why I use and recommend Playstation controllers.

Playing those games with a Playstation D-Pad feels great.

@@GugureSux thats not entirely true. I never play with the Dpad unless thats the only option. I always used the sticks. I couldnt stand the pads 🤣

It's called "pre-rendered" because it wasn't made from a sprite sheet.

​@RianQuenlin yea these ppl aren't to smart

​@@Quenlin well technically it was "code" for these kinds of "above their means" graphics by rendering them before hand on a graphics workstation. They didn't HAVE to be static, I mean heck, these games HAVE video playback. But I don't think they could run all the game code while ALSO playing the game on top, and considering the loading speed, alot of effects could be done bit-wise or by messing with the whole screen. Lightening? Just brighten and darken the background image. Dumpster fire? Essentially a small gif. Same for alot of other smaller effects. And let's not forget the ps1 is really a 3d game system, so nothings stopping you from doing regular modeling tricks like uv scrolling.

@@Quenlin No? Pre-rendered 3D graphics were used to make sprite sheets too, like in Donkey Kong Country (and a hundred other games of the era).

​@@todesziege When the hardware wasn't fast and powerful enough to render 2D scenes in real time it was indeed pre-rendered.

the depth mask counts as a layer

That's a cool idea, but I wonder how well it would work with transparency (like glass windows, and bloom like the candles at 13:25), and antialiasing.

PS1 doesn't have a Z-Buffer so if you want to perfectly emulate the old PS1 games, layering is the only way to do it.

I only played Digimon World BRIEFLY at a friend's house waaaay back but parts of it lodged themselves in my brain permanently haha Also deff give game dev a shot if you're interested! Tons of tools exist now that make the process so much more approachable 👍

Reminds me of RTS and side scrollers

Also, lots of N64 games use 2D images that are forced to show towards the camera and adjust in real time. Obviously Mario Kart is a shining example, but also stuff like coins in Mario 64

@@kylespevak6781the technical term is ‘billboarding’ if anyone is interested.

Thanks dude! 👍

Thanks man

Interesting! My goal wasn’t to recreate the camera system as it was done in RE 1:1, but rather show how it could be accomplished with modern tools. This is hardly a perfect system and would have issues scaling, but I think it works well enough for the demonstration. I had no idea the intricacies of the actual system used in the classic RE games, though. Is there a place I could read more about that? Sounds fascinating.

I think one reason to use "pre rendered" backgrounds in modern game is for unique aesthetic. Hand painted world. Like. FF7 meets Okami, and being able to make a guilty gear xrd detail level protagonist and enemies. Claymation meets resident evil, neverhood, darker. Pre rendered does not need to mean actually rendered, but photographs, paintings, drawings... A video file. And also. Vibe. Point of using actually live 3D like code veronica does was made but you could give it bigger Final Fantasy 9 vibe by having keyframed animations without tweening, like guilty gear xrd. 8frames for a spinning windmill, or three "frames" for water flow animation for a river. Signalis already embraced and still changed it's idea for new indie title borrowing from the vibes of PS1 horror. I kinda would love the same for PS1 RPG's. Though, partially this is kept alive as fantasian apparently uses dioramas that were digitized into the game's environments. Few 3DS games that still feels recent to me darnit also used hand painted or such static parts in their games, though not for all of the game, just select places.

​@@SumeaBizarroSurvivor was the first 3D Resident Evil game.

Yess someone else heared it haha

I swear you look like a resident evil zombie

Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted to look like.

Glad you enjoyed it 👍

All they need to do is just improving the graphics to make it look real, without changing anything else

Parasite Eve used the same controls 3 years earlier, and was also a Square game.

The OST is just so good

With a modern engine like UE5 they could probably do it in real-time, no pre-rendering needed. The resolution would just be substantially lower than 4K.

Thank you!

Seconded. It's a very weird, post-2010s zoomer narrative that the control and camera scheme of classic survival horror would've ever been a problem. OG PS1 Resident Evils alone sold dozens of millions of copies, back when 250k was enough for the game to get the "Platinum" / "Greatest Hits" release.

Good to know!

Welcome back 👍

Happy to be back

I liked that he illustrated with cubes containing the spaces which the player moves, but can be clunky if you have all scenes working in one giant layer space

This concept didn't work nowadays, bc this was made a tons of times before, so right now with the power of graphics will be odd.

@@LosMSR Just like it is odd that some games would use 8/16-bits graphics nowadays that we have much higher resolution and graphical power? Tell that to Shovel Knight! And let's not forget Octopath Traveler and other 16-bit inspired graphics utilizing modern technology to bring that art style to the modern era of gaming with their 2DHD style. The concept itself is perfectly fine, and the oddity is just a matter of getting used to it. Th value is in how it would be used.

@@TwilightWolf032 Check the cinema of terror, they reused a lot the method of Blaire Witch Project, that was bored at the end, bc of that, over and over the same. That's a thing that some people forget about the past, that something was trendy before, bc was new, but later was just overuse.

@@LosMSR Exactly. Overuse. Now it's not being used anymore and we have plenty of variety in the industry. A revival of this style with finesse would do wonders.

@@TwilightWolf032 That's not the meaning of overuse, especially if there is a record of all.