Oddworld betas

[Sekto Springs]

And?

[Wil]

No he wasn't.

That's clearly a development screenshot from a build before sprites were made lower-res.

[LIJI]

its yet to be released i think in oddbox,lorne was mentioning a bit of graphic fix

I meant that it's possible for the Oddbox releases to have these graphics. If Lorne said something about graphical improvements, that's even likelier!

Edit:

No he wasn't.

That's clearly a development screenshot from a build before sprites were made lower-res.

I'm not entirely sure. Developing in one resolution and releasing in a different one seems like a lot of hassle for no profit. It's likely to lead to bugs, mainly when the original res is 640x480 and the final is 640x240 with a TV-style scaling algorithm. It could be screenshots from the PS version, which might run on 640x480. I'd need to test it someday...

[Scraby]

i heard that from ign i think,picturing these muds and say that lorne will include graphical fixes to both old pc games and transfered

[Holy Sock]

I'd love it if the Oddbox version of AE used the higher res models. Don't see it happening though...

[Phylum]

It was never said that the graphics will be redone, unless you know of an article we don't.

In which case, link or it didn't happen.

[LIJI]

I browsed the gallery a bit more and not only did I find more high quality screenshots, I also found more images that are probably from the same beta as the screenshots previously posted! They look like the final levels, but lack some elements like meat grinders, the mine car etc while containing living creatures - Mudokons and Scrabs.

Could anyone explain how did so many beta and high quality images get into the gallery? The official Oddworld website only contain about 60 low res screenshots for each game, and only about 5 of them are beta ones.

[Scraby]

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0...0024_super.jpg this guy bought the game on steam,and this is how it looks,i gave him a pm and he tells me that the graphics are same from the pic....

[Nate]

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0...0024_super.jpg this guy bought the game on steam,and this is how it looks,i gave him a pm and he tells me that the graphics are same from the pic....

He's full of it. The graphics run at 640X480, just like they always did. See the attachment for what I mean.

In any case, that's not relevant because they were talking about theoretical graphical improvements coming with the Oddbox, not what the game is like now. That said, I personally doubt that they're working on improving the graphics. Other than the crappy compression in the FMVs, it's just not needed.

[Scraby]

the graphics are low released so that any computer can run them,today computers could run games that look like real life,the computers in 1996 didnt had that power....

[LIJI]

AO and AE are only virtually 640x480. They're actually 640x240 being scaled up.
Compare your screenshot to these ones:


Compare the sleeping Slig and the Mudokon sprites. The quality of the background art. It all looks much better, and not only in terms of resolution. (i.e. even if you take both images and scale them down to 320x240 you'll still notice the quality difference)
Playing Oddworld games at this quality of graphics would be awesome, and assuming these screenshots were at some point real in-game screenshots it's possible they include them in the Oddbox version.

[Wil]

It is technically possible if they still have complete and unrestricted access to and familiary with the entire archive of developmental everything, plus a whole bunch of time to implement it.

[LIJI]

The code was already implemented before, which is why these screenshots exist. It really depends of how was the original code kept. If it was overwritten with the lower quality graphics - too bad. If they were smart enough to code the lower quality graphics as a pre-compile option - it should be as easy as pressing a button. If they kept it in any other form, it should be possible without that much work and time, at most one week, and it'll be worth it.

Edit:
I've come to the conclusion these images are not screenshots. This is how they were made:
1. Oddworld took the 3D source of the CAM files and rendered it at 640x480 (With slightly different lighting)
2. They did the same for the sprites.
3. Someone quite unprofessionally combined these all together.
These resulted in a few problems:
- The muds are much taller than usual
- Some objects (Like the wheel in the attached example) are mis-positioned and mis-scaled.
- Some objects (Like the meat grinder blade in some other example) are missing.
- The font for the LCD is different
- The laughing gas looks very different from the game.


The bottom line - there's no high quality version of AO and AE, and there will never be.
This does not apply for all beta images though! Only images with high quality graphics are "fake".

[Scraby]

i have saw how they made oddworld,using 3d programs to make 3d models and animate them,afther that taking shots and making sprites



EDIT: i found something http://www.psu.com/features/8354

[Phylum]

How does that have any relevance to the quality of the original game in relation to the re-release?

[SOTHA]

I seem to recall in the instuction manual for AE a screenshot of the SoulStorm door from FeeCo., where the greeter is, yeah? In-game you have to pass through the electric walls, but in this abe had rolled over the top and appeared by the door, with the electric walls there. Can someone confirm/make me look like a fool please?

Edit:
http://i.neoseeker.com/p/Games/Plays...ofilethumb.jpg
Also, that's different from ingame.

[LIJI]

If I remember correctly the final version had the "rolling-path-thing" leading to that "information-spot-thing". (We need really names for these! :P)

[ODDWORLDisTHEbest!]

If I remember correctly the final version had the "rolling-path-thing" leading to that "information-spot-thing".

yes it did

[Nate]

The thing about Feeco Depot is that the level foregrounds were built using a set of templates that could be dragged, dropped and shifted around. That meant that they could experiment a bit more with the level design, which is why we see more variation in Feeco levels than others.

[ODDWORLDisTHEbest!]

yes, for example, check out my video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVUMeIWTOCA there is a unseen feeco level, youve probably seen it before anyway

[LIJI]

The thing about Feeco Depot is that the level foregrounds were built using a set of templates that could be dragged, dropped and shifted around. That meant that they could experiment a bit more with the level design, which is why we see more variation in Feeco levels than others.

That makes sense now. The FeeCo Depot level does seem quite "monotonic" and easy to work on; but so are most other levels after FeeCo.

Here's another series of weird screenshots:




There are a few wrong things with these:
1. The Greeters are bigger than usual.
2. They lack their sensors.
3. Not only are they placed in locations where they don't appear in in the final game, they appear in locations that make no sense to put them. (For example, places with a very little places, and a place with a lot of Muds to save. They're not going to avoid the greeters, are they?)
4. It could be just me, but the LCD looks a bit funny.

This could mean a few things, either that:
1. These are not "real" in game screenshots but are edited, but it's unlikely since they look very different from the other "fakes".
2. These are taken from a development stage where greeters were just created and required testing, so they were placed in a few places (To see if they can handle many targets (Muds) at once for example. Personally I'd love seeing this! :P) to see if they behave correctly. (Later on they implemented the sensors and made them smaller)
or 3. Greeters used to have a different behavior which didn't use sensors. That different behavior made it logical to put them in these locations. Later when the behavior changed they were replaced.

[Phylum]

I think 3 is very likely. I wouldn't be surprised if OWI were prone to making size changes, as they used 3D models and this is easier to change than re-spriting in 2D.

[Paul]

Rebuilding the game is not a simple "press a button" operation!! It would require obtaining all of the source code, a visual studio 6 license (not possible since no longer supported) and working build environment.

Since MSVC6 is outdated they would have to use a newer c/c++ compiler, the end result of this is that the code won't build and will require maintaince. Once it finally builds it would then require more QA/testing etc.

Assuming someone actually poured a lot of money in and did this.. they would then need maya license and whatever whacky crazy scripts they have to render the game sprites and scenes..make all that work have a big rendering farm so it doesn't take 10 years to
finish...

And finally the game formats would need updating for the higher res graphics.. why? Not because "computers back then couldn't handle it" but because these games where designed for the PLAYSTATION which means they only had a 1024x512 frame buffer! PC's at the time could have done 10 fold the resolution if required.

So how about those high res screen shots? Likely just rendered out directly from maya for marketing/publication purposes if you ask me(would also explain why you would make the objects huge)

[Nate]

Given that they are trying to tweak the Abe games to add in acheivements, it's likely they're already performing the first three paragraphs of your post.

[Paul]

Given that they are trying to tweak the Abe games to add in acheivements, it's likely they're already performing the first three paragraphs of your post.

If they actually rebuilt the game from source to add this I would be seriously shocked (and buy it instantly since if they built it with RTTI it makes decompiling it a lot easier)

But the biggest task would still be re-rendering all sprites/videos/everything to be higher resolution and make the game beable to use them. To do that they would have to come up with updated or new file formats and rewriting the psx emulation stuff.. so in other words almost a complete rewrite apart from the game logic!

[LIJI]

But the biggest task would still be re-rendering all sprites/videos/everything to be higher resolution and make the game beable to use them. To do that they would have to come up with updated or new file formats and rewriting the psx emulation stuff.. so in other words almost a complete rewrite apart from the game logic!

I said that for the theoretical case where the high-res screens were real and were implemented at some point (And later was changed to lower-res). Now that we know for sure they're not it's obviously not the case and would take much more time, so it's not going to happen.