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Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice


Radiant Hero Ike

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Oh wow, the in game cutscenes have actual dialogue in them too! And I have to admit, I got a decent chuckle when Amy mentioned D-Fekt would make a good action figure if they ever got merchandised. Guess that's the first 4th wall breaking moment for Amy actually.

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"He'd make a great action figure if our adventures were ever merchandised!"

Masterful lampshading!

Seriously, though, that was admittedly more funny than it should have been. XD

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They got actual voice acting and animation with the ingame models instead of just stilted poses? Holy shit!

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We still don't know if those cutscenes have replaced the standard Shattered Crystal cutscenes or if they're just sprinkled at select points throughout a la Ace Attorney 5 or Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2, so while it's an impressive jump forward, I'm still skeptical.

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Well yeah, but they're already sprinkling the high-quality 3D cutscenes throughout the game in almost the exact same way. Why would you have three different types of cutscenes all for what seems to essentially be the same purpose?

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The same reason you would ever have the still-pose style of cutscene to begin with.  To conserve disk space and system load.  Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2 also the pre-rendered cutscenes both in the form of HD CG movies and the ones that used the in-game models as well as the static-image dialogue box cutscenes.  Not an unusual practice for Sonic games to be wildly inconsistent.

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I don't think Unleashed SD ever used the ingame models. It had videos of the HD version's ingame model cutscenes along with the CG stuff. But this game's already in it's original format, so it'd be weird to have three types of cutscenes like that.

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If the in-game model cutscenes are actually the models from the HD version, my mistake, but you get the idea that they used three different types of cutscenes in order to conserve resources on a comparatively more limited piece of hardware.  It doesn't necessarily matter that Fire & Ice in this case is the default version of the game, they'll still have to work with the 3DS' limitations as well as time constraints no doubt.  So it doesn't seem alien to me that they might decide to use three styles of cutscenes based on the importance of the actual events. 

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6 hours ago, Tara said:

The same reason you would ever have the still-pose style of cutscene to begin with.  To conserve disk space and system load.

I just wanted to chime in quickly to point out that prerendered cutscenes have basically zero loading times. If anything, they load faster than in-engine shenanigans, stills and text included. There are games literally as far back as the DS that manage this without problems (case in point), and I think it's pretty telling that FMVs are the only part of Sonic 06 that actually load quickly.

Storage space, of course, I'll grant you.

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33 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

I just wanted to chime in quickly to point out that prerendered cutscenes have basically zero loading times. If anything, they load faster than in-engine shenanigans, stills and text included. There are games literally as far back as the DS that manage this without problems (case in point), and I think it's pretty telling that FMVs are the only part of Sonic 06 that actually load quickly.

Storage space, of course, I'll grant you.

I wasn't talking about the actual time it takes to load; I was talking about the actual CPU usage that they require, which can be be pretty demanding depending on the system in question and resolution of the video (as well as a variety of other factors).  Taking, for example, that my Windows Vista computer from 2009 can run every aspect of Sonic CD perfectly... except for the opening and ending cutscenes.

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Okay, I didn't see this coming.

I think those models still look odd, but this is better than the in model cutscenes we got from Shattered Crystal.

Also, lol about that action figure joke!

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10 hours ago, Tara said:

We still don't know if those cutscenes have replaced the standard Shattered Crystal cutscenes or if they're just sprinkled at select points throughout a la Ace Attorney 5 or Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2, so while it's an impressive jump forward, I'm still skeptical.

The most notable example to me is Sonic 06. Each character's opening, ending, and one cutscene that the animators deemed important enough got fully rendered and gorgeous movies. Also some parts of the Last Story. The rest used in game models and looked...well, to be nice we'll just say they haven't aged all that well haha

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2 hours ago, BradAric said:

The most notable example to me is Sonic 06. Each character's opening, ending, and one cutscene that the animators deemed important enough got fully rendered and gorgeous movies. Also some parts of the Last Story. The rest used in game models and looked...well, to be nice we'll just say they haven't aged all that well haha

That would imply they were good to begin with, Rise of Lyric had better models and were animated much better than 06 ever could 

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9 hours ago, Tara said:

I wasn't talking about the actual time it takes to load; I was talking about the actual CPU usage that they require, which can be be pretty demanding depending on the system in question and resolution of the video (as well as a variety of other factors).  Taking, for example, that my Windows Vista computer from 2009 can run every aspect of Sonic CD perfectly... except for the opening and ending cutscenes.

...well even then it makes less difference than you might think - running a video could potentially seem daunting until you take into account that it's the only task the system is doing at the time. Given that most of these cutscenes are probably going to play at the beginning and end of levels anyway (though do correct me if I'm wrong on that), even if it does somehow prove taxing they can just unload ingame assets from RAM and stuff like that to compensate. Again, we have previous gen handheld games to speak for that - if a DS can run full resolution video at a consistent 30fps there's really no reason the 3DS can't.

The Sonic CD case seems like an exception rather than the rule. Nevermind that Vista is kind of a crap OS for a moment - it was originally built for Win95 anyway if memory serves right, so there's easily the possibility of a codec issue or something like that. The only way that same logic would apply to Fire and Ice is if you tried plugging the cart directly into a Vita.

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9 hours ago, Soni said:

That would imply they were good to begin with, Rise of Lyric had better models and were animated much better than 06 ever could 

I actually think quite a bit of 06 was beautiful. Quite a bit was not of course, but those particular cutscenes they put the extra effort into were gorgeous. Most people probably remember the in-between cutscenes that were awkward and terrible when they talk about 06's look lol. In the case of THOSE vs Rise of Lyric...I absolutely agree haha

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I'm not talking about the CG scenes, those still hold up. 06's in game cutscenes are hot garbage 

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I agree. Mephiles spinning like a ballerina in a cutscene for no reason, the consistent lack of soul and character in the facial and body animations, the game going suddenly black and white for no damn reason whatsoever(Seriously was it some sort of glitch they didn't have time to fix or something?), the 06 ingame cutscenes were terrible even by 2006 standards.

RoL's cutscenes at the very least feel like actual effort went into them. If you ask me it has the best character animation ever in a Sonic game, yes better than Unleashed. You can tell it's the same people that animated the Jak Trilogy. It's the only thing in that game that feels Naughty Dog-ish.

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51 minutes ago, Soni said:

I'm not talking about the CG scenes, those still hold up. 06's in game cutscenes are hot garbage 

Then yes, those are not what I was talking about when I talked about the beauty of specific 06 cutscenes. The movement in the in game cutscenes is often downright hilarious lol

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5 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

...well even then it makes less difference than you might think - running a video could potentially seem daunting until you take into account that it's the only task the system is doing at the time. Given that most of these cutscenes are probably going to play at the beginning and end of levels anyway (though do correct me if I'm wrong on that), even if it does somehow prove taxing they can just unload ingame assets from RAM and stuff like that to compensate. Again, we have previous gen handheld games to speak for that - if a DS can run full resolution video at a consistent 30fps there's really no reason the 3DS can't.

The Sonic CD case seems like an exception rather than the rule. Nevermind that Vista is kind of a crap OS for a moment - it was originally built for Win95 anyway if memory serves right, so there's easily the possibility of a codec issue or something like that. The only way that same logic would apply to Fire and Ice is if you tried plugging the cart directly into a Vita.

I wouldn't call any of the anime cutscenes imported into DS games "full resolution."  Ones like the one you linked as well as games like Final Fantasy III DS are impressive, given the limitations of the system, but they are of notably lower quality than what you would find on a console or PC.  Even if you go to the Nintendo eShop, the trailers for games aren't bad quality, but they aren't totally comparable to the same trailers you'd see on YouTube (on PC).  Regardless, ideally, you're right, it shouldn't be a problem in a well-designed, well-coded, and functioning game. Not every game meets that criteria, though, and so it wouldn't surprise me if they opted for simpler cutscenes just so they didn't have to deal with the hassle of compressing it into a format that the 3DS can handle.

I was referring to the 2011 version of Sonic CD.  While I'm certainly not denying that Vista as an operating system is insufferable in its own right, that really isn't the problem since (if Steam specs are anything to go by, which, mind you, sometimes they're not) the game should work fine for systems still running on Windows XP.  The issue largely stems from the fact that the PC in question wasn't meant for high resolution video.  Poor GPU, very low RAM (1.6 GB, despite the advertised 2 GB on the box), and a comparatively weak processor make videos like that (probably not helped that the Steam overlay probably also takes up a bit of CPU usage as well) a bit of a chore for that hunk of junk computer.  But those specs work perfect for just playing the game.  Of course, I'm not comparing the 3DS to that old-even-when-it-was-new machine which I got strictly because I couldn't afford anything else, but I'm making the point that while pre-rendered cutscenes shouldn't pose a problem in most scenarios, they can present their own share of complications if done right, which undoubtedly would make filling in the gaps with simpler, lower quality cutscenes appealing from a developer's point of view at least.

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5 hours ago, Tara said:

I wouldn't call any of the anime cutscenes imported into DS games "full resolution." 

I should probably clarify this: by that I meant the full resolution of the system itself. Nobody's insinuating that a handheld somehow plays videos in a resolution higher than it's actually capable of, that would be silly. I'm not sure why we're arguing hypothetically whether or not Fire and Ice is capable of doing that either, given that we were just shown a cutscene higher up on this page.

5 hours ago, Tara said:

I was referring to the 2011 version of Sonic CD

Oh pardon me, I did admittedly forget CD had been re-released. For some reason I was thinking of the original release I still have a copy of, which seems to get harder to run with every new OS that comes out.

All the same, by your own admission the whole problem is still that the game's running on a system it wasn't designed for. It's not like Fire and Ice is a port of a console game or anything - it's made for the 3DS and the 3DS alone, the videos are built for one resolution and one resolution alone, and all the cropping and formatting that needs to be done in order for them to run on a 3DS to begin with has already been done. More to the point, the cutscenes are already running ingame. There's literally no complications left besides the possibility of storage space on the cart, which I pretty much already conceded on the first post.

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1 hour ago, Blacklightning said:

I should probably clarify this: by that I meant the full resolution of the system itself. Nobody's insinuating that a handheld somehow plays videos in a resolution higher than it's actually capable of, that would be silly. I'm not sure why we're arguing hypothetically whether or not Fire and Ice is capable of doing that either, given that we were just shown a cutscene higher up on this page.

Oh pardon me, I did admittedly forget CD had been re-released. For some reason I was thinking of the original release I still have a copy of, which seems to get harder to run with every new OS that comes out.

All the same, by your own admission the whole problem is still that the game's running on a system it wasn't designed for. It's not like Fire and Ice is a port of a console game or anything - it's made for the 3DS and the 3DS alone, the videos are built for one resolution and one resolution alone, and all the cropping and formatting that needs to be done in order for them to run on a 3DS to begin with has already been done. More to the point, the cutscenes are already running ingame. There's literally no complications left besides the possibility of storage space on the cart, which I pretty much already conceded on the first post.

To my understanding, the argument isn't rather or not Fire and Ice hypothetically could handle pre-rendered cutscenes, it's rather or not these cutscenes would completely replace the standard still-image style of cutscenes that were present in Shattered Crystal.  My argument was that it wouldn't be unheard of for them to still have a third style of cutscene in order to keep disk space and system load to a minimum, which started this admittedly off-topic tangent.  Nowhere did I say Fire & Ice couldn't run them, but that complications can and often do arise.

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On 07/07/2016 at 8:18 PM, Shaddy the guy said:

They got actual voice acting and animation with the ingame models instead of just stilted poses? Holy shit!

 

On 07/07/2016 at 8:38 PM, Soni said:

We've came a long way since Sonic Rush

I don't know about voice acting, but both Rush and Rush Adventure had a couple of animated cutscenes using the in-game models.  I think it was only from Colours onwards that they stopped trying and just used a few compressed versions of the console cutscenes to supplement the increasingly inadequate stilted-pose chatter.

I'm not saying F&I hasn't raised the bar, but... if the handheld series hadn't thrown everything besides the engine out the window and had instead continued to build on what they'd achieved in the Rush games, Fire & Ice's cutscenes would probably just be par for the course rather than a notable improvement, just as they're barely par for the course for 3DS games more generally.

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Huh. I didn't know that F&I will be released in September 27th....

2-3 months from now....

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