Gaming GTA Chinatown Wars graphics

[granville]

Is that so? I played Pokemon Crystal in my celphone with vBoy, and 30fps is soooo slow, while 60 seems normal.

Maybe it's a different term? Or maybe different calculation?

The 30FPS you're referring to is actually slowdown I believe. It's going at half the speed. Most emulators seems to measure speed in frames per second, but that's a bit confusing and incorrect. Visual Boy Advance does it right. It measures speed in a percentage. 100% is the normal speed of what games should run in. If it drops below that, the action will remain smooth, but will move in slow-motion.

Frameskip is a common option in emus. It lowers the framerate. It keeps the action at a fast speed, but the action becomes choppier. It "skips" frames of motion. If a game goes at a constant locked 60fps at ALL times, but slows down, it appears to be moving in slow motion. The action is still smooth, but it's moving like slow-mo. Is that what's happening in vBoy or did I get it wrong?

 

[Raestloz]

You get it wrong, since the fps is a speed option, you can go for 20-120 fps. The odd thing is at "normal" speed the speed is like twice as fast, and normal is at the same speed with 120, which makes it 60 is maybe slowed down, but the sound feels the way I remember at 60 fps

Real odd indeed

 

[pilotwangs]

I've been playing that driv3r game,it's pretty good.

Amazing graphics for a GBA game.

Though I think the GTA DS game will be like the first 2,which is okay,but id prefare a 3D one.

 

[GeekyGuy]

Is that so? I played Pokemon Crystal in my celphone with vBoy, and 30fps is soooo slow, while 60 seems normal.

Maybe it's a different term? Or maybe different calculation?

I couldn't tell you what to make of your experience with Pokemon Crystal, but "frames per second" is a measurement of actions within a certain time that is constant, regardless of what a given piece of technology / software might convey. According to what I was taught in film class, persistence of vision starts (generally speaking) at about 16-frames per second. I don't claim to be an expert, just an ex-communication student who now reviews video games for a living. I couldn't code a calculator to say my name, but I know a few fundamentals here and there -- that's all.

Thirty frames, though, is quite fast for the human eye to perceive various data, though with video games, visuals seem to be enhanced that much more at 60. But I think at that point, unless the hardware is being pushed to its limits, we're talking about something similar to the difference between high-def and standard screen resolutions. Unless you're a total video-phile, GTA running at 30 fps on the DS shouldn't make a turd of difference to you. If it does, you probably should have gotten a PSP in the first place. Am I right about it?

 

[MG4M3R]

I think that will look like this or better:



And where is the problem with the FPS?

Sonic Unleashed for PS3 and X360 will run at 30 fps, and look like this:

 

[javad]

If they work really hard they could make it 3D and decent

 

[Batman55]

If they work really hard they could make it 3D and decent

Keyword: IF. Rockstar made GTA games, but now that the series is ridiculously huge and mainstream who is to say that they won't just slap together a shitty game and watch it sell millions...

I'm just trying to set my standards low so I can be surprised (or worst case scenario, disappointed).

 

[GeekyGuy]

If they work really hard they could make it 3D and decent

Keyword: IF. Rockstar made GTA games, but now that the series is ridiculously huge and mainstream who is to say that they won't just slap together a shitty game and watch it sell millions...

Yeah, I share that sentiment. I want it to be great and I know Rockstar is capable of greatness on the DS despite the system's limitations. But will Rockstar actually put out a great GTA game? TBD. Just because it's Rockstar doesn't guarantee anything.

 

[DSGamer64]

I think Rockstar have learnt so much about how to work with the limitations of hardware and how to do what most thought were impossible. For example, although the Psp is more powerful than the DS, they still managed to double the size of the free roaming city when they released VCS. This was not possible until after they gained more experience. I think people are underestimating both the DS and Rockstar.

The difference though is that the PSP has 2 GB's of storage, where as the DS has a max of what, 512MB? Hardware is not the issue here, it is the size of the game and whether or not the graphics will be generated quick enough and still give you a decent visual presentation and good game length.

 

[VmprHntrD]

The DS has plenty of storage. When figuring the PSP games came in the size they were, you have to figure:
- Larger textures
- 'CD' quality audio tracks
- Larger polygon models

There's more, but those are three good ones that take up a hell of a lot more room. Take a look at the clip above, or even look into something like say Call of Duty 4 on the DS. Lots of textures, voice, good sampled audio, and a solid frame rate are possible. That Driver3 video up there shows even in the low spec low res world of the GBA you could do a 30fps GTA 'lite' clone.

Trust me when I say there's plenty of room there to create a world. I know it seems odd, but take the GBA GTA for instance. Yes it is top down, yes the 'moving' objects in the world are sprites, but what is the world and it's structure...3D. The entire world of Liberty City is there in 3D with basic well detailed polygonal structures on the GBA no less. With the DS you can using that as a basic thought process realize you can make a tilted 3rd person GTA on the DS perhaps with just a N64/PSX era draw distance which they can cover up with whatever...fog, building structures, something. On DS it would be acceptable to do so as it's no PC and it's no PS2 and you don't need to be seeing 10 blocks ahead as it won't matter, not at that screen size.

 

[Pigwooly]

In regards to the FPS confusion in this thread I am a professional animator/games developer and can explain this pretty easily.

A frame rate isn't really a measure of the speed of a game. In terms of speed all that matters is that something is played back at the rate it was intended. This means that something that is meant to be played at 10 fps and is played at 10fps will be just as fast as something intended to be played at 100fps if that thing is indeed running at 100 fps. If something is played at a lower rate that it was intended that's when you get slowdown in a game.

So if you are using an emulator and it's saying it's running at 30fps and it seems really slow that's because it was probably meant to run at 60fps and therefore the 30fps is really half speed. Smart developers cap a game at 30fps if they know it won't be able to consistently stay at 60fps, to prevent this slowdown. A 30fps game running at 30fps is running at full speed.

All film (like you see in theaters) runs at 24 frames per second and does not look choppy at all because things shot on film get natural motion blur. This is due to the fact that the objects in front of the camera don't stay still while each frame is exposed. This blur helps your eye transition from frame to frame and allows things to look super smooth even at 24fps. In 3D animated movies we simulate motion blur in our renders to achieve this same effect.

Unfortunately motion blur takes a lot of complex calculations and most video games can't render motion blur in real time yet. Therefore we try to bump the framerate up to 60 fps in order to make it look smoother without the motion blur. 30fps still looks pretty good though and in my opinion way too much is made of 30fps vs 60fps. The more important issue is whether or not the frame rate is consistent. A locked 30fps is much better than a game that is usually 60fps and occasionally dips into 30fps.

 

[Ferrariman]

Why do you guys care so much? most games run on DS run at 30 FPS.

 

[TwinBlades]

Lmao you guys are getting carried away. What if they do a poor job? I mean it's not gonna be 100% 3D gameplay I mean we dont have any actual info that Rockstar confirmed it's gonna be 3D gameplay, unless someone here has the info on it. But really what if the game sucks because of the visual and I'm not trying to make anyone mad.

 

[Shabadage]

Lmao you guys are getting carried away. What if they do a poor job? I mean it's not gonna be 100% 3D gameplay I mean we dont have any actual info that Rockstar confirmed it's gonna be 3D gameplay, unless someone here has the info on it. But really what if the game sucks because of the visual and I'm not trying to make anyone mad.

So if you're telling us that it's not going to be 3D gameplay, yet R* hasn't released any info yet. They haven't confirmed nor denied ANYTHING about the game except that it exists and there will be some sort of online component (Could just be leaderboards!). 90% of this thread is people saying that it can in no way be 3D, and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can." We're not saying it will be, we're not saying it won't be. You're obviously the one who's getting carried away by making claims about a game you know nothing about.

 

[MagNetCZ]

and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can.".

Haha, you slipped that in nicely. Well it might be 3D but really, not much detailed, driv3r for the GBA might have been running on something much weaker and without hardware 3D support but only changing the sprite cars to decent looking 3D cars takes quite a lot power, then of course the environment shouldn't be just cube buildings either. We'll see how it turns out, heh.

 

[Shabadage]

and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can.".

Haha, you slipped that in nicely. Well it might be 3D but really, not much detailed, driv3r for the GBA might have been running on something much weaker and without hardware 3D support but only changing the sprite cars to decent looking 3D cars takes quite a lot power, then of course the environment shouldn't be just cube buildings either. We'll see how it turns out, heh.

I never said it would be pretty. I'm saying it's fully possible. Sure the draw distance may suck balls and the like. But it's possible. I've never said anything more if you look back in this thread. Good programmers can pull off amazing shit no matter what hardware they're using.

 

[Law]

and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can.".

Haha, you slipped that in nicely. Well it might be 3D but really, not much detailed, driv3r for the GBA might have been running on something much weaker and without hardware 3D support but only changing the sprite cars to decent looking 3D cars takes quite a lot power, then of course the environment shouldn't be just cube buildings either. We'll see how it turns out, heh.

I never said it would be pretty. I'm saying it's fully possible. Sure the draw distance may suck balls and the like. But it's possible. I've never said anything more if you look back in this thread. Good programmers can pull off amazing shit no matter what hardware they're using.

+1

Also, I think that Resi Evil DS actually had pretty good graphics, perhaps a similar style could be used for GTA.

 

[TwinBlades]

So if you're telling us that it's not going to be 3D gameplay, yet R* hasn't released any info yet. They haven't confirmed nor denied ANYTHING about the game except that it exists and there will be some sort of online component (Could just be leaderboards!). 90% of this thread is people saying that it can in no way be 3D, and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can." We're not saying it will be, we're not saying it won't be. You're obviously the one who's getting carried away by making claims about a game you know nothing about.

Wow take it easy there bud, lmao what a spaz, I'm just saying that it might not be 3D whats the big problem? I'm hoping it will be but just saying -.-

 

[Shabadage]

and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can.".

Haha, you slipped that in nicely. Well it might be 3D but really, not much detailed, driv3r for the GBA might have been running on something much weaker and without hardware 3D support but only changing the sprite cars to decent looking 3D cars takes quite a lot power, then of course the environment shouldn't be just cube buildings either. We'll see how it turns out, heh.

I never said it would be pretty. I'm saying it's fully possible. Sure the draw distance may suck balls and the like. But it's possible. I've never said anything more if you look back in this thread. Good programmers can pull off amazing shit no matter what hardware they're using.

+1

Also, I think that Resi Evil DS actually had pretty good graphics, perhaps a similar style could be used for GTA.

That game was quite impressive considering how early in the DS life cycle it was. I hate the game, but I respect what they did. Not as much as I respected the ResiEvil GBC team though (Not talking about that Gaiden shit either!).

 

[MagNetCZ]

and then us who know better saying, "Yes, yes it can.".

Haha, you slipped that in nicely. Well it might be 3D but really, not much detailed, driv3r for the GBA might have been running on something much weaker and without hardware 3D support but only changing the sprite cars to decent looking 3D cars takes quite a lot power, then of course the environment shouldn't be just cube buildings either. We'll see how it turns out, heh.

I never said it would be pretty. I'm saying it's fully possible. Sure the draw distance may suck balls and the like. But it's possible. I've never said anything more if you look back in this thread. Good programmers can pull off amazing shit no matter what hardware they're using.

+1

Also, I think that Resi Evil DS actually had pretty good graphics, perhaps a similar style could be used for GTA.

Like 3D models on 2D backgrounds? It's better to have top-down fully 3D view than that

, some isometric pre-rendered city or something.