It’s Agony, by Psygnosis. Here is a good article about its graphics and gameplay.
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Psygnosis was my second best software house for Amiga games, back then.
Here, the only problem I see is that the camera is too close:
If the camera is far above (bird’s eye view), I think it would look good.
Like this:
is 2d pixel art really cheaper than this (for a big-world game)? I was assuming not. If it is, I was wrong.
consider that in 3d: 1) modelling objects and characters of course is more expensive; 2) animating characters is cheaper; 3) special case animations are cheaper; 4) establishing shots are cheap; (in TWP you had to do without them); 5) showing the objects the character is carrying is relatively cheap. (in twp you had to do without this). 6) you can reuse the world elements (trees, grass) in game sequels, or expansion packs.
Sparse difficulties of an adventure in bird’s eye view with low poly:
Closeups in dialogs: here the low detail is revealed. They can be replaced by dialog gestures, which are now cheaper. Or they can be drawn in 2d, with portraits.
In general, cinematic cutscenes where the camera is close to the character (like in the Alone in the Dark screen). These are the real problem. One obvious solution is to do without them, or do the cutscenes in birds’eye view. Personally I would draw them in 2d with a different style, like this:
But the challenge would then become to choose a 3d style for the world which does not clash with the style of cutscenes.
But some kind of drawn scenes like the ones above are needed anyway, during dialogs. Because during dialogs you need to show what the character is talking about. You can’t have these long texts where you stare at a still scene which has nothing to do with what the characters are saying. If A is talking to B about C, you need to show C, not A and B.
This can also be done with a simple speech bubble, like:
this allows you to show A, B and C together, but is problematic if inside the balloon you need to show a complex scene.
Another problem of a bird’s eye view adventure is that, when you need to open a drawer, or search the objects on a table, the objects will probably be too small. But no problem: you can open a window, like ultima 7:
and you can have nested containers, which is nice.
I like both. But Alone in the Dark isn’t IMHO a good example for 3D games because it uses 2D backgrounds which are important for the overall look and feel of the game. It falls in some 2.5D category like Grim Fandango.
Is it? 3D models don’t rig and animate by themselves.
You have to do special case animations in 3D too.
But the advantage is that you can show this very same animation from all kind of camera angles and also re-use it e.g. on other, similarly rigged, models.
Yes and no: When showing a wide shot you have to do enough 3D scenery so it looks good and looks like a complete world. The other way around when doing close-ups you have to ensure the scenery looks detailed enough from this view.
This sounds like a lot of work also in 3D.
You hold different items in different ways, e.g. chainsaw vs. glass filled with water. Then you need to allow animations while holding items, at least walking. What about running, idle animations or climbing a ladder? You also have to ensure to keep clipping etc. at a minimum (for every item and character combination…).
3D solves problems and also brings all kind of new ones.
Yes, but as far as polygonal rendered characters go 1992 is really really early. That´s why I also raised the question if that game and it´s sequels might have started the 3D Adventure thing.
I think if that really was the case the Michael Bay Transformers would look like they came from the C64 Ocean game.
I suppose he meant on an “economy of scale”. Once you afford the initial expense of rigging your model, animating more and more poses becomes cheaper on the long run, as opposed to 2D graphics where producing each new frame costs roughly the same.
I recently watched some YouTube videos featuring Lost Horizon, for which they obviously used motion capturing - except for the faces which seem pretty motionless. The room screens are very detailed there. I’m not sure if they are prerendered 3D graphics or digital drawings. I think that they are more detailed than necessary. The production costs must have been very high for a game of this genre.
Though, I believe, once you have a good engine, a skilled team and the equipment necessary for motion capturing, it might be possible to create a handsome 3D adventure game with a budget similar to the budget for TWP. As I mentioned, it wouldn’t need to look like Lost Horizon.
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AFAIK they are hand drawn backgrounds with a (much) higher resolution than the display. The game engine scales these backgrounds as necessary: Due to the higher resolution the camera can zoom in and out without loosing details.
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Here is a making of (german with english subtitles; warning: includes spoilers):
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Thank you! I’ll watch it.
EDIT: It’s an interesting video indeed! I wonder how they animated the reflections on the water. Maybe the software used the 3D wire-frame in order to calculate how the wood and the sky ought to be reflected.
Seeing the performance capturing descriptions, I think that the capturing works would typically be done by another company that is specialized in that and provides the equipment.
Id agree here. I wasnt a backer as i didnt learn until too late, but i will be a backer for another if it comes up.
Shaders? 
If you are referring to the docks scene, it’s a simple pre-rendered cyclic animation.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You can easily reuse walking animations and show them from all angles, but special animations need to be made as they do in 2D.
And we are talking about TWP-style graphics (low-res pixel art). I’m sure someone like Octavi is quite efficient now with animating those characters. How fast professionals can animate rigged 3D models depends on the complexity of the model and how much work you want to put in it to make it look realistic. Also in 2D you can easily do additional special art, like letting Reyes’ tie fly around which in 3D would mean a lot of additional work.
Nonetheless if you want to do a 2D game in HD then 3D is often the best choice to help you with having detailed and fluid character animations.
A very early example of such 2.5D approach being Grim Fandango with 2D backgrounds and realtime rendered 3D characters, another example is Broken Sword 5 with 2D backgrounds in HD and 3D characters prerendered to 2D HD sprites.
I understand Doom but I’m surprised about Myst (e.g. 1, 2, 3):
Sure they have used 3D techniques to create those prerendered graphics but the game itself is mostly a slide show with node-based navigation + prerendered movie clips. I wouldn’t have thought about them when thinking of 3D.
Also the exploration works the same as in typical point’n’click adventure games vs. free movement which was the great new thing about games when 3D came up.
The backgrounds in Grim are pre-rendered 3D scenes.
Which are 2D images in-game
Do you know if they have touched up the images before putting them into the game?
(like in MI2 when they scanned hand drawings but then also did a lot of digital touch up)
Did they something about it in the Remastered version of Grim Fandango?
Uhm. Good questions. I don’t know if they have touched up the images back then. But it looks like if they have used the original backgrounds in the remastered version. Here is a making of:
And here are the differences between the original and the remastered version:
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However, they told that the 3D data were lost and that they had used the pre-rendered screens from the original version therefore. It may be cheaper, but it’s also a missed chance to make the Remastered version even more enhanced. I never liked the room screens from Grim Fandango, so I would have appreciated completely new screens.
It gets explained more detailed in this video, which @LowLevel posted:
The way I do it for IJ:Fate of Atlantis Special Edition:
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The scene is completely done in 3D. Why? It helps me with camera, perspective, lighting and shadows and its super easy to change camera angle without re-painting anything
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I do base render with all elements that will be set as a layers in Photoshop. The elements creates separations between image effects like: Shadows, Lighting, Specular, Material IDs, Ambient Occlusion etc.
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Layers are set and I do retouching and coloring to final look.
CGI cutscenes are done same way, but I dont do any retouching, only post-processing touches.
So, at the end you have 2D image and CGI video. Quick and easy.
Characters need to look final in the render, no post-processing or re-painting, because characters have tons of animations and you dont wanna waste your time on each animations. Result: bunch of 2D images, or sprite sheet packs.
BTW: I dont have a good experiences with 2.5D style…I am always trying to avoid it. It must be fully 3D or 2D game.
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