[Dario FF]

GDC Vault Link

This might be really old but I don't remember this talk being free recently, and certainly not when we were researching Hedgehog engine games more in detail. I think the only resource in the Wiki was this page, so it can be filled with a lot more stuff now. He also uses the Debug mode a lot during the presentation to showcase the graphical features.

There's a lot of technical details on the process from rendering, introducing assets, packing, streaming, shading methods, etc. It doesn't reveal a whole lot more that could enable anything new given that we mostly figured this out already, but it does clear up on a lot of technical details we had a few doubts on.

Black Knight's Stage Geometry in Hedgehog Engine running on PC to showcase how much Global Illumination can help despite just being Wii geometry. (Don't remember seeing these) He clarifies these didn't mean the game was going to be ported, it was just an experiment to see the benefits of GI on low-detail geometry.

This post has been edited by Dario FF: 20 July 2015 - 06:56 PM

[Dark Sonic]

This is awesome, and I love seeing into Unleashed's development.

Oh Werehog being referred to in game as "evil."

EvilTest
STAGE_Evil

If only we could ever get our hands on a development copy of Unleashed. That'd be an incredible beta to see.

This post has been edited by Dark Sonic: 20 July 2015 - 07:00 PM

[S0LV0]

Interesting to hear they were planning on implementing GI in the Wii version. That never came through, did it?

(Also, yes, Werehog being internally referred to as "Evil" is amazing)

[Dark Sonic]

S0LV0, on 20 July 2015 - 07:11 PM, said:

Interesting to hear they were planning on implementing GI in the Wii version. That never came through, did it?

(Also, yes, Werehog being internally referred to as "Evil" is amazing)

Maybe they never got it working, so Colors was born because they couldn't make a good looking Generations Wii

[Blue Blood]

Bloody hell. I knew that GI made a fantastic difference, but I didn't really quite how much of a difference it could make to something. Camelot Castle looks gorgeous in those pics. Enough to make to want to see it ported over to Generations with the GI recreated.



What exactly changed between Unleashed and Generations by the way? Certain certain things were removed/dumbed down for performance over quality, right? Unleashed just looks so much nicer than Generations, but runs so much worse. And then there's Lost World too, which was going for a completely different approach. But to stay on Unl. vs Gens., SEGA were really trying to push the HE back in 2008. They were constantly talking showcasing it and slapped it all over promotion for Unleashed. IIRC they were even looking to license it out. Kind of a shame that never took off. By the time Gens finally rolled around, the HE didn't even get so much as a mention in the game's startup.

I wonder if they still intend to use it for Sonic in the future, or a significantly updated/modified variant thereof? In that presentation they talk briefly about things they can't do, such as dynamic light sources. They could really produce some beautiful stuff with next-gen hardware. (And I really don't want them to just continue with Lost World's art style...)

S0LV0, on 20 July 2015 - 07:11 PM, said:

(Also, yes, Werehog being internally referred to as "Evil" is amazing)

Modern Sonic's internally referred to as "Generic" in Generations.

This post has been edited by Blue Blood: 20 July 2015 - 08:03 PM

[Paraxade]

Blue Blood, on 20 July 2015 - 08:01 PM, said:

Camelot Castle looks gorgeous in those pics. Enough to make to want to see it ported over to Generations with the GI recreated.

Melpontro was working on this last year, but I don't think he ever finished or released it.

[Blue Blood]

Paraxade, on 20 July 2015 - 08:13 PM, said:

Melpontro was working on this last year, but I don't think he ever finished or released it.

Well, that's a thing, I guess. Looks lush, but boring as all fuck. Don't know what I was expecting really.

[Falk]

Kinda looks like it could be an Apotos-esque level with a little more little springs/doodads/etc to make fake high paths. Essentially an introductory stage that doesn't get too complex.

But yeah, as a standalone, it's pretty, but... is probably fun for playing through a couple of times.

[Chimera]

Funny how much screenshots can lie to you, eh?

While it definitely looks pretty, its still the straight path design of Camelot Castle, except only taking photos of the interesting parts (the same parts taken for Black Knight promos as it seems). Still, cool to see the benefits in a direct comparison. With the right tweaking, you can really make any level look pretty nowadays.
















key word RIGHT.

[Falk]

Except Tropical Resort

[Twilightzoney]

Falk, on 22 July 2015 - 12:27 PM, said:

Except Tropical Resort

Tropical resort wouldn't need casting shadows now would it? Just GI from a bunch of omni lights from signs and stuff to make it look pretty.

[JaredAFX]

Huh. This is really interesting. It's almost hilarious to think of the Wii using GI. I'm not an expert on GI or the Hedgehog Engine, but I know enough about the Wii's hardware to know that neither would ever work on the thing. This is just really funny (and it makes you think: if Black Knight weren't Wii exclusive, do you think having buttons would have made it better or worse? It'd probably be very different, that's for sure).

This post has been edited by JaredAFX: 22 July 2015 - 09:30 PM

[Twilightzoney]

JaredAFX, on 22 July 2015 - 09:30 PM, said:

Huh. This is really interesting. It's almost hilarious to think of the Wii using GI. I'm not an expert on GI or the Hedgehog Engine, but I know enough about the Wii's hardware to know that neither would ever work on the thing. This is just really funny (and it makes you think: if Black Knight weren't Wii exclusive, do you think having buttons would have made it better or worse? It'd probably be very different, that's for sure).

The thing is they achieved getting fake GI and used real Shadow Maps in Sonic Colors. And they had light fields. It was just different file formats but it was still using a modified Hedgehog Engine. Then the Colors team borrowed more from the Unleashed/Gens teams workflow for Lost World and used the proper file formats from their hedgehog enigne.