Pokemon X & Y

[Dcubed]

Masuda clarifies why the overworld is 2D only...

 

http://m.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a516570/pokemon-x-and-y-lack-3d-effect-in-overworld-for-better-visuals.html

 

"We could put in a lot of grass and flowers, and try to make them as pretty as possible. When you don't use the 3D effect you are able to render quite a bit more on the 3DS.

 

"That's one of the reasons why we wanted to leave it off in the overworld, because it gives us more power to show off more beautiful graphics."

 

3D would then also be "more effective, more impactful" when it was used in the game, such as during battles.

 

Surprise surprise! It WAS for technical reasons (as I suspected before), but he later makes a good point...

 

"That plays to the strengths of the 3DS, where you don't require glasses - you don't have to put them on and take them off at certain moments," Masuda explained.

 

"You can just leave it on and then at certain specific moments, the 3D will come on and it will be more surprising or impactful to the player."

 

That's true! I never really considered that. The 3DS' use of S3D is unique in that you can just turn it on and off or adjust it on the fly for artistic reasons thanks to its glassesless nature (and the fact that the depth is user adjustable at any time).

 

I'm sure that they probably wanted to have S3D on at all times and found it too difficult to do, but during development, realised that it had the nice knock-on effect of making the battle scenes more exciting and impactful (because you suddenly see it switch to S3D and you're like WOAH!). It's much like that moment when you get to Skyarrow Bridge in PKMN B&W. The camera generally remains static throughout most of the game, but when you get to that point and you suddenly see it start to swerve and move about, it really takes you by surprise, making that scene much more memorable as a result (the same applies to the couple of full 3D cutscenes involving Zekrom and Reshiram. Yeah sure they could've done many more, but the fact that it's mostly sprites throughout the game and then suddenly BAM! full 3D models! makes it much more impactful!)

Edited September 19, 2013 by Dcubed

[Agent Gibbs]

hmmm problems with grass you say....let me just boot up MGS3d and see how they did that

[Ashley]

The water dinosaur thing is beautiful.

 

Do reviewers get a copy of this game early?

 

Hopefully!

 

Also:

 

But as the games became more widespread, when a game came out in Japan first, all of the information about the new pokémon and all of the story details would quickly go up on the internet. It's gotten to the point where even people who maybe don't want to see that information see it before they get a chance to play the game.

 

So X & Y is releasing at the same time in all regions because @Serebii ruined everyone's life.

Edited September 19, 2013 by Ashley

[Debug Mode]

...I fucking love you Serebii.

[Serebii]

...I fucking love you Serebii.

You're welcome

[RedShell]

Masuda clarifies why the overworld is 2D only...

 

http://m.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news/a516570/pokemon-x-and-y-lack-3d-effect-in-overworld-for-better-visuals.html

 

 

 

Surprise surprise! It WAS for technical reasons (as I suspected before), but he later makes a good point...

 

 

 

That's true! I never really considered that. The 3DS' use of S3D is unique in that you can just turn it on and off or adjust it on the fly for artistic reasons thanks to its glassesless nature (and the fact that the depth is user adjustable at any time).

 

I'm sure that they probably wanted to have S3D on at all times and found it too difficult to do, but during development, realised that it had the nice knock-on effect of making the battle scenes more exciting and impactful (because you suddenly see it switch to S3D and you're like WOAH!). It's much like that moment when you get to Skyarrow Bridge in PKMN B&W. The camera generally remains static throughout most of the game, but when you get to that point and you suddenly see it start to swerve and move about, it really takes you by surprise, making that scene much more memorable as a result (the same applies to the couple of full 3D cutscenes involving Zekrom and Reshiram. Yeah sure they could've done many more, but the fact that it's mostly sprites throughout the game and then suddenly BAM! full 3D models! makes it much more impactful!)

There are a multitude of reasons as to why this:

 

 

being 2D only for technical reasons is a massive lie.

Here are a few of them:

 

While I do accept the fact that having S3D limited to battles will create greater impact for those particular sections, I'd rather they just tell us the real reason for the overworld being 2D only, or simply not mention it at all.

 

It's almost as annoying as the time Nintendo said Tomodachi Collection couldn't be localised because speech synthesis wasn't possible in any language other than Japanese.

[Dcubed]

Well don't forget, this is Game Freak. This IS their first ever full 3D polygon game after all (not counting Harmoknight, since it used fixed camera angles) and they've never really had the greatest programmers on staff.

 

It's not hard to see why they might not be able to push visuals like the games you listed...

[Diageo]

Didn't they make Pokemon Stadium and Collosseum and Gale of Darkness, etc.?

[Serebii]

Didn't they make Pokemon Stadium and Collosseum and Gale of Darkness, etc.?

No. Colosseum, XD & Battle Revolution were done by Genius Sonority. Stadium was done by HAL

[RedShell]

Well don't forget, this is Game Freak. This IS their first ever full 3D polygon game after all (not counting Harmoknight, since it used fixed camera angles) and they've never really had the greatest programmers on staff.

Which further emphasises that the problem isn't to do with hardware limitation.

 

It's not hard to see why they might not be able to push visuals like the games you listed...

Until you consider the fact that they have convenient access to the greatest game developers in the world, and the very people responsible for the hardware that they're developing X&Y for.

 

I still firmly believe that Game Freak & Nintendo could easily get X&Y's overworld (exactly as it appears in its current sate, with no need to reduce the visuals) running in S3D, if they really wanted to.

[Dcubed]

Which further emphasises that the problem isn't to do with hardware limitation.

 

Until you consider the fact that they have convenient access to the greatest game developers in the world, and the very people responsible for the hardware that they're developing X&Y for.

 

I still firmly believe that Game Freak & Nintendo could easily get X&Y's overworld (exactly as it appears in its current sate, with no need to reduce the visuals) running in S3D, if they really wanted to.

 

Nintendo have never co-developed a Pokemon game themselves and probably don't even have the staff spare to actually lend programming support anyway (most of EAD Kyoto's production staff are no doubt neck deep in the trenches trying to get Mario Kart 8 and A Link Between Worlds done, while EAD Tokyo are dashing to get SM3DW out of the door ASAP; so that probably wasn't an option.

 

It sucks I agree, but it probably wouldn't be as simple a matter as getting Nintendo staff to help (and ultimately, Game Freak probably felt that the time that could've been spent on learning how to get it to work would be better spent improving the rest of the game).

 

On the plus side, this now means that they have their first full scale 3D production under their belt (and 2 3DS engines too!), so their next production should be much better from a technical perspective. Letting Gamefreak do it by themselves gives their internal staff a chance to learn how to make full 3D worlds and games that they wouldn't really get if they just got someone outside to help. It makes them a much stronger developer for the future (and in the long run, a stronger Gamefreak is much more valuable to Nintendo than getting outsiders in to assist them all the time)

 

Look at Intelligent Systems as a similar example. They didn't make a single fully 3D game all the way up until Fire Emblem Path of Radience on Gamecube...

 

 

And look what they can now do on hardware with similar specs!

 

(not to mention that the animations and shading is a million times better, but you can't really tell in a screenshot).

 

Everyone's gotta start from somewhere...

Edited September 20, 2013 by Dcubed

[Debug Mode]

Every one with a brain knows they're saying this bullshit so when Z or whatever comes out they can be all "OH MY GERD X, Y AND Z ARE DIMENSIONS AND Z TAKES US FULLY TO THE THIIIIIIIRD DIIIIIMENSIOOOOON GIVE US MONEY AND PRAISE US FOR THIS REVOLUTIONARY ACT"

[Serebii]

I think the reason is because they load up so many areas at once. Unlike Mario etc., large portions of the overworld are loaded at the time for interconnectivity between many of the routes and cities without having to go through gates.

 

Gates exist in the previous games for loading purposes, to reload the next area and all the assets within it. That is how they went about loading.

 

My bet is, with XY, they tried to do this and keep the stereoscopic 3D, but the processing of rendering all those areas in realtime, twice, caused an unacceptable performance drop.

 

Every game previously listed either has segmented levels, or like Ocarina of Time, have separation between areas to do this loading.

 

In the image you linked, it showed Route 2, going into Route 3 which leads into Santalune City. In addition to this, it's almost certain that Santalune City connects to other routes in a similar manner due to no sign of any gates

 

Also, as the camera is more dynamic, they need to make sure everything is rendered and saved in the position it was at when you last intereacted with it.

 

It may seem inconsequential, but it adds up.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Serebii

[Dcubed]

I don't see how loading gates have anything to do with S3D rendering limitations though. The amount of assets involved is the same either way, it's just being displayed twice. The matter of loading comes down to available RAM and CPU power, not GPU grunt (and of course, S3D would be GPU limited rather than CPU limited by its very nature).

[Serebii]

I don't see how loading gates have anything to do with S3D rendering limitations though. The amount of assets involved is the same either way, it's just being displayed twice. The matter of loading comes down to available RAM and CPU power, not GPU grunt (and of course, S3D would be GPU limited rather than CPU limited by its very nature).

You misunderstand. It's the amount of things that need rendering that cause the issues. Even if they're not on screen, they're there.

[V. Amoleo]

Occlusion culling is a pretty basic 3d graphics technique these days. If it's not on screen it's not being rendered.

[Dcubed]

You misunderstand. It's the amount of things that need rendering that cause the issues. Even if they're not on screen, they're there.

 

I could understand that if the environments were actually detailed... but they really aren't. Graphically its very simple by 3DS standards, maybe about on par with the DQ7 remake on 3DS...

 

 

... and that has no trouble running in S3D at all times (Artepiazza don't have a lot of experience with 3D either, more than Game Freak mind you - they did make the DQ DS remakes and Opoona for Wii).

 

I'm not trying to say that Game Freak are lazy or crap or whatever(and you should know from first hand experience that I bloody LOVE their games ). I'm just saying that the technical issues that they've gone through with making this game probably come from their lack of experience in making full 3D games (and that's a fact - Harmoknight was made by a different team, made up of quite a few people who came from Genius Sonority, who have had plenty of experience working on 3D titles), rather than it being impossible to pull off on the 3DS hardware, because plenty of other games show us otherwise.

 

This has been a bit of a trial by fire for GF and I said it would be long ago, back when the 3DS was first announced. Game Freak have also been public in how they struggled in getting to grips with 3DS development too; the site hosting that original interview seems to be gone, but here's Gamefreak's original quote...

 

“To be candid with you, it’s not an easy platform to develop software on. Thinking about it another way, though, it’s the kind of platform that really makes you want to delve into the feature set and figure out how to make fun things with it. The more you explore the features, the more ideas pop up about how to make games more fun. The 3DS has two CPUs — one devoted to the game, another devoted to network communication — and until the June update, I’d say that the communication chip was sort of a work in progress. The update completed the package, so to speak, and now we can get full performance out of that CPU. The fact that these two CPUs work independently of each other is really important — one can work all by itself without being bogged down by the other. I think taking full advantage of that is one of the keys to 3DS game development.”

 

And they were one of the very first developers to get 3DS dev kits (IIRC they were the first ones outside of Nintendo 1st party to get them as far as public knowledge goes). All of Nintendo's internal developers have struggled to have to get to grips with modern shader hardware (which is why Capcom's games looked way better than Nintendo's games on 3DS and why up until recently almost all of their 3DS games were developed in collaboration with outside developers).

 

Game Freak are effectively jumping two generations of hardware here and its their first time making a fully 3D game like this; it shouldn't be surprising that their game engine isn't a technical powerhouse. If Intelligent Systems is anything to go by though, their next few games are gonna look much better though, thanks to the experience they've accumulated over X&Y's development.

Edited September 21, 2013 by Dcubed

[RedShell]

But everything is so low poly, you can practically count 'em just by looking at a screenshot. I reckon there are more polygons being used to render Jill Valentine's arse in RE Revelations, than there are in any single area of Pokémon X/Y. And that thing is on-screen all the time!

 

At the end of the day, the reason given by Junichi Masuda just doesn't make any sense:

 

"We could put in a lot of grass and flowers, and try to make them as pretty as possible. When you don't use the 3D effect you are able to render quite a bit more on the 3DS.

 

"That's one of the reasons why we wanted to leave it off in the overworld, because it gives us more power to show off more beautiful graphics."

 

If those things were modelled in 3D, sure, but they're not. They're just 2D sprites (or a single polygon), they should have next to no bearing on performance at all.

[Guy]

The 2D field thing will always be bullshit no matter how people defend it. Even with thousands of flowers Pokemon X and Y would still look significantly worse than other 3DS titles with full 3D.

 

That said, it won't impact sales at all. A few people will be enraged and miss out, but I won't be one of them. It sucks there won't be 3D for those who want it, but I'm sure the game will still be solid.

 

It just wouldn't be a modern Pokemon game without something holding it back, right? Two steps forward, one step back.

[RedShell]

Yeah, despite my previous posts in here, I'm not actually that bothered by the 2D overworld, as I usually only play 3DS games with 3D on for the first playthrough, or sometimes just for the first few hours and then switch it off.

Especially for games that I'll spend a long time playing, I play 90% of the time in 2D. Can't even remember the last time I played Mario Kart 7 or Animal Crossing in 3D!

 

I'm only bothered by this situation with X&Y because I think they're misleading people by blaming it on the 3DS hardware.

At the same time, I understand that they need to have an answer to the "why is it not in 3D?" question, but it's unfortunate they couldn't come up with something better than "a lot of grass and flowers", or just give us the genuine reason.

[Blade]

Genuine reason is perhaps they just couldnt be arsed.

[Serebii]

Yeah, despite my previous posts in here, I'm not actually that bothered by the 2D overworld, as I usually only play 3DS games with 3D on for the first playthrough, or sometimes just for the first few hours and then switch it off.

Especially for games that I'll spend a long time playing, I play 90% of the time in 2D. Can't even remember the last time I played Mario Kart 7 or Animal Crossing in 3D!

 

I'm only bothered by this situation with X&Y because I think they're misleading people by blaming it on the 3DS hardware.

At the same time, I understand that they need to have an answer to the "why is it not in 3D?" question, but it's unfortunate they couldn't come up with something better than "a lot of grass and flowers", or just give us the genuine reason.

Yeah, I think it's ridiculous, but I can see how the performance could have been impacted.

 

I'm just glad that interviewer asked a decent question, not like Kotaku who asked if Mega Evolution was inspired by Digimon (people only think so because the western dub of Digimon uses Mega...Japanese does not) or others who asked for it to change to real time battles or to be on a home console.

[Dcubed]

You know what though? It might be disappointing, but the mainline Pokemon games have never really been graphical powerhouses anyway.

 

I'm upset about S3D being missing from the overworld, but at least the battles have it (and that's the part of the game that benefits from it the most - not to mention that the battle visuals look surprisingly great!). More importantly though, the gameplay changes look to be very innovative and fun, that's much more important than caring about graphics!

 

The game will still be amazing and I'll no doubt love every second of it, just like all the others

Edited September 21, 2013 by Dcubed

[S.C.G]

I know it's the principle of it but... don't you tend to spend around 80% of the game in battles anyway?

 

Personally it's not a deal-breaker for me but I'm just thinking that overall it doesn't sound like that big of a deal...

 

 

... if they bring out Pokemon Z in a year and a half however with full 3D support then, errr... that would be kind of awkward. :p

[Guy]

Guys, is this coming out on the 11th October or the 12th? I'm seeing different dates on different websites. 12th is a Saturday, which seems like a kind of weird date to release a game in the UK. Is the release meant to tie into new episodes of the series or something like that?

 

[edit]

 

The 2DS is also coming out then. I guess the launch is due to kids being off school on the Saturday?