The warping and rippling effect seen in the original Saturn release is completely absent from the PlayStation port of this game. This technique was used again in both Panzer Dragoon sequels and would also crop up in the epic JRPG Grandia. The Saturn's second video display processor manipulates this plane on a per-line basis to give the illusion of waves while textures, designed to appear warped, are manually placed beneath scenery to simulate reflections. The first stage roughly simulates the appearance of a large body of water with associated reflections. The original Panzer Dragoon, released in Japan in early 1995, is one of the first examples that comes to mind. Processing power was limited during PS1 and Saturn era and most water surfaces in 3D games were treated as simple planar surfaces with artist-generated textures applied to their surface. What sells this is the colour palette choice. Donkey Kong Country is renowned for its underwater stages but it's just smart use of the hardware: the foreground makes use of a scanline effect to create the illusion of ripples while line scrolling of the background plane allows for increased depth. This also applies to games like Secret of Mana with its rivers and streams. With the right values, you could create the illusion of true transparency and it looks great. On the Super NES, the introduction of colour math allowed developers to utilise bespoke foreground layers specifically for water. It's even possible to manipulate scanlines to create this underwater ripple effect. This enables large bodies of water to appear differently than the surface without requiring bespoke tiles. Games such as Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis made use of its own mid-frame register writes or raster effects to change the color palette at a defined point during the screen refresh.
#Splatoon 3 renders ps2
The first part of the Digital Foundry H2O special kicks off with a look at early 2D console water implementations, leading up to the PS2 era.ġ6-bit consoles opened greater possibilities when it came to displaying water.
#Splatoon 3 renders update
Thanks to the slow pixel response of the original Game Boy's LCD, it helps give the impression of transparency since the screen can't update fast enough between frames. This is combined with a pulsing effect were the water is blanked out every other frame. Lines are manipulated in groups of two, allowing the developers to create a warping effect as if water were passing in front of the scenery.
This scanline trick is used in Vice Project Doom - a late NES release, where reflections, ripples and indeed, the entire parallax background effect are displayed using mid-frame register writes.īatman: Return of the Joker for Nintendo Game Boy is another great example. Beyond that, fascinating tricks were used to add authenticity to the effect. Most older retro games typically focus on just one element.īack in the 2D era, effectiveness of water rendering would vary from game to game, but the fundamental concept was based on the same technique: hardware registers would be manipulated during the frame refresh to change colours, effectively cutting the screen into two - above water and below. Some games focus on just one while others attempt to simulate all aspects of water.
There's the visual element of the water surface including the animation and reflection of light, there are the wave patterns and finally, there's the rendering of underwater segments. Now, something to keep in mind as we progress through the annals of virtual water is that there are basically three elements which make up the display of water in games. In this DF Retro special - with more titles examined in-depth in the embedded videos on this page - I take a look at the standout water implementations across 15 years of classic gaming. It's fair to say that water looks great in most game today but if you dive back into the early days of gaming, water is one of those things that has always been difficult to get right. While actual fluid simulation remains computationally expensive, the visual representation of water has continued to evolve and impress for years.
Fire up any recent game and if it features water in any capacity, chances are good that it'll look suitably refreshing.
0 kommentar(er)
