Tuesday, October 11, 2011









  1. Nice entry - and the perfect opportunity for me to rant... Apologies in advance Derboo.

    I don't know why WayForward gets so much praise for their 2D, considering how damn lazy they are when it comes to mirroring sprites. There are so many skilled developers out there who go the extra mile and don't mirror sprites, that I find it a little unfair how much praise WF gets.

    Anyway, dloaded the demo on PSN, and first thing I see it ambidextrous mirrored-sprites holding guns which swap hands depending on whether they face left or right. A few minutes playing convinced me it was a rather lacklustre game. Quit and deleted.

    I used to accept this crap in the 16-bit days, but it's about time devs starting making the effort to draw left/right facing sprites. Kagirinaki Tatakai did it. So did Phantasy Star 1 on the SMS (look closely). Super Metroid is probably my favourite example of accurately drawn sprites - so gorgeous.

    Everything by WayForward, Contra, Aliens Infestation, this, it's all mirrored. Bleurgh.

    And yes, I am totally that petty/OCD afflicted. :-)

  2. If you want to see why Wayforward is ahead of its game, compare Contra 4 to Contra Rebirth. The pixel work is orders of magnitude better.

    As for Bloodrayne, I'm not a huge fan of the combat either. Something about the DMC-style crowd control just doesn't seem to work right on a purely 2D plane. I also dislike not being able to cancel out of much of anything. Still an alright game though - I bought it mostly for the soundtrack, which I then bought directly from the composer.

  3. ^ Why would you accept mirroring in the 16-bit days but not now? It's not like it's any easier or less time consuming to make the graphics today.
    I'd never waste all that time on mirroring. A tiny thing most people won't even care about, enormous workload (and what boring work too) to fix. The reward just doesn't match the cost.
    Total waste of time that could be used to make actual content.

    And I love that they actually got mirroring into SFIV even though it's 3D. Nostalgic, but also makes sense in a competitive game where one side could be at the advantage if a move was trickier to see and react to when facing a certain direction.

    Either way, I don't like the way this game looks. Kinda flat and anime in a bad generic way. I like the idea of Bloodrayne, but not the actual games so far :/

  4. I accepted mirroring in the old days because I was less critically minded of what I consumed - I was also a kid. And kids accept all kinds of nonsense. But as I started to appreciate pixel art and mature, I also started to notice when they drew things correctly and when they didn't.

    Now when I see mirroring I find it jarring and unsettling. I have to put tremendous effort into ignoring it, otherwise it will affect my entire play experience, like a mild toothache which is always there, in the background.

    I've probably conditioned myself like this, but it really, really bugs me - as badly as when I play an FPS, reload my gun, see the guy open a revolver and throw six bullets away, even though he's only reloading the single bullet which I fired. Yet those other 5 are still in my ammo box, despite seeing them fall to the ground!

    I'm sure sprite mirroring does just boil down to workload. But it'd be nice if there was more recognition for those who go the extra mile.

    I was at one point tempted to make a blog entry with just screens showing every 2D based game which featured anatomically correct sprites.