A Classic RPG Made of Handcrafted Dioramas | Hacker News Reader

A Classic RPG Made of Handcrafted Dioramas

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98 pointstintinnabula34 comments

Everytime I hear "handcrafted" and "videogame", Trüberbrook comes in mind - I'm really impressed by this kind of work:

https://www.makinggames.biz/game-design/the-making-of-truber...

The Neverhood is the original handcrafted game for me. I really liked the style and humor, but the puzzles were way too difficult for me to actually get anywhere.

Behind the scenes videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrR3jbgocI4

I remember the demo and its music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_XLMF5mCl4

I only played some bits of it (borrowed it from a friend), but there's two bits that I still remember all these years later. The "Me Willie. Me Willie Trombone" recordings, and the Pop Goes The Weasel sequence.

Wow, that's so cool, I would never have thought of using real models in a game like that!

It looks gorgeous, but what is it like from a gaming perspective?

A bit of an old-fashioned point and click style of gameplay, with both the good and the bad comes with it. Humor is there, has a German flavor to it though so I'm not sure how well it survives translation.

So nothing earth-shattering but I enjoyed myself.

Another good example is Papetura: it's 100% made of paper and light bulb. The visual result is quite nice and very intriguing.

https://www.pcgamer.com/this-indie-developer-spent-6-years-s...

That's beautiful. Really beautiful.

Considering 3D Graphics Asset are ridiculously expensive. I wonder if these type of development actually save cost.

Other examples are:

* The Dream Machine

* Lume

* Lumino City

And probably the most famous example, Cuphead.

I remember reading about the making of 2009 "A boy and his blob". The studio went to the local college and hired a bunch of art students to do all the art by hand.

After about 10 hours in this, I dropped it. The visuals were good, the story was mediocre, and the combat was OK at first, but the addition of the "collect enemies and fight them all at once" mechanic didn't click with me.

I will definitely agree that there are a lot of nostalgia trips for folks familiar with playing the oldest Final Fantasy games, and they were well done and I welcomed them as a fan.

That said, the worst part for me is that playing a standard JRPG on a phone is physically uncomfortable, and a fantastic source of eye strain. Maybe I'm being a luddite (or just old) with my preference for screens that fill a significant visual arc, but a phone screen - even the one on my 11 Max - is too small for these kinds of games.

At least this game (unlike so many others) offers controller mapping, so that part isn't too bad.

I'd agree that that would be terrible. I generally play on an iPad with an xbox controller, which is a much different experience. I'm not a fan of touch controls for games like this.

I think fixed camera is better for non-action rpg, than follow-behind-the-back.

Games like Xenoblade and Ninokuni have beautiful and creative graphics, yet you basically play them in the minimap.

Fixed camera in cities and inside could help the art director show off the beauty and creativity (look at the crazy camera angels in The World Ends With You: neo - it really adds a lot to the experience of the game), and make those areas simpler to navigate, so you wouldn't need to follow the arrow in the minimap, but actual navigate the city yourself.

Honestly that's why I wish most games would just completely do away with minimaps because you're exactly right. Minimaps let the designers be lazy when the correct answer is to actually put things in the world that let you know which way to go. Octopath Traveler did a great job of this by putting signposts at every crossroads, but then they still screwed it up by adding in a minimap.

Witcher3 has to be one of the biggest failures here. They put all this detail and work into a living city like Novigrad, but provide 0 visual clues regarding how to find anything that you really are living in the minimap.

A shame it's an Apple platform exclusive though, but, I guess that's the reality of things.

I was going to say 'new', but platform exclusives have been a thing for as long as gaming has been around; in fact, in the current generation of consoles, there's a lot LESS console/PC exclusives because it's easier to port between platforms.

At the same time, platforms like Epic are paying big dollar for exclusives and giving out free games. Not sure if it's actually successful.

Anyone played Machinarium? Perhaps my favorite game of all time and a very similar art style.

https://amanita-design.net/games/machinarium.html

I am about 40 hours in, and so far it’s one of my favorite games in the last decade. It’s feels like the final fantasy games of my youth.

There is enough equipment to have some variety, but not so much that it becomes borderline meaningless like a lot of games. Character upgrades are just the right amount of deep to be enjoyable but not overwhelming. So far there’s a little grinding, but not much.

The graphics and music are great, but it’s the gameplay for me that’s kept me playing.

I'm a little disappointed to see Sakaguchi settling firmly into the "warm and cozy nostalgia" rut that I think alot of seasoned videogame developers fall into when they get older.

When he was at the wheel at Squaresoft, each new Final Fantasy was a major leap over the last one (with the arguable exception of FFV). Final Fantasy VII was a revolutionary step forward in the history of JRPGs.

Ever since he quit Square and founded Mistwalker, however, he seems to have stopped really trying to push the genre forward at all. Blue Dragon was a similar cute-and-comfortable RPG, at best a Chrono-Trigger lite and at worst just a Dragon-Quest lite.

This feels like more of the same: we're going to get a staff of well-known veterans to come together and make what is basically a JRPG you might have played 20 years ago, but with some modern graphics and a kitschy art style.

This youtube channel has some good videos about the creation of such dioramas:

https://www.youtube.com/c/StudsonStudio/videos

It's more on the timelapse/infotainment side of things, not exactly tutorials.

As a fan of earlier Final Fantasy games, this is giving me chills. #soexcited.

Both this and the second part are already out.

I really wish they would talk more about their 3D-scanning process. Using miniature sets for backgrounds is nothing new, but previously you'd just take a photo with maybe some depth data. Going for full 3D-scan is a bold move.

Ah the Japanese. Trailer is zoomed in women faces and obligatory triple up-skirt shot, at lest they know their audience.

I've been playing the game on the iPad and one of the annoying issues I have is that the captures for the handcrafted dioramas are quite low res. This results in a sort of blurry background, with sharp 3D models on top effect. It's a small thing but a constant nag that it could look so much better.

Can’t say I see the point really, a lot of this can be replicated with good CGI. It’s mostly an indulgence for the game creator.

Can it really? People say the unique look of the movie “Bladerunner” is due to its use of models and real sets. There have been countless movies that imitated its look with CGI, but none of them have its special feel.

Yes it could be replicated by CGI. There is no absolutely reason it couldn't. In fact these games don't just use photos of Dioramas but heavily edited ones with CGI on top.

> “Bladerunner” is due to its use of models and real sets.

The problem with CGI in movies today is "restrain". Movies today tend to overdo 3D and color grading so it often look unreal. I never liked the heavy use of color filters in recent movies.

Could you replicate, sure. But would you necessarily create the same thing if you start from a CGI only process, not necessarily.

It's not too say one is implicitly better than the other but part of creative intent is derived from the process itself and the constraints inherent within it. I genuinely believe that the creator is making an expressive choice here and that's cool.

I really wish I could find the source, but I remember seeing a documentary done by the effects team for Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. They talked about the transition from models on DS9 to CGI for voyager. The point that stood out for me was that they said what they missed the most from doing model based effects was the serendipitous shots they would get, be it an interesting angle, lighting effect, etc. The beauty of working in reality is that reality fills in the blanks. With CGI everything has to be planned. (I get thats not 100%, there's plenty of CGI plugins that generate random noise and effects, but its still not the same).

Interesting. Physical reality is infinitely complex, and a CGI is a computational model of that reality. It’s become impressive (hair!), and I’m sure I’ve seen plenty of CGI in movies without realizing it. But it’s not the same.

If you haven't listened to the director commentary on the Bladerunner director's cut, you owe yourself a rewatch. The only parts that I recall are regarding set design and frankly if it wasn't for the struggles and pain of a real set I'm not sure the movie would have remotely the same feel.

Where reality meets imagination is a magical place. Unbounded imagination typically results in tiring fantasy that doesn't resonate with the viewer. The realism is free when it's actually real.

When you have a massive CGI budget you are pressured to make everything as cool as possible. No restraint. That’s why you end up with tiring fantasies.

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