Resident Evil: Behind the Mask [+Hazardous Battle]

[DarkSpyda04]

Leo2236 is another RE modding community person that does an amazing job at creating renders in the style of the classics. Check out some of his renders in the link below.

http://re123.bplaced.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=95&start=30

What you might also find it cool is this post from DrainDeimos of Capcom-Unity in a thread titled "What makes Resident Evil so special?"

What made RE special?

RE popularized exploration games that attempted to psyche the player out of exploring. This is different than a game like GTA or Zelda or Metroid. In those games you are invited to explore.

RE dared you to explore. This is a type of game that kids play in real life. Anthropologists call it Legend Tripping and TVtropes calls it Scare Dare. RE popularized it in digital form on consoles.

How did RE do that? By creating locations that were worth exploring, loading them up with atmosphere and by using mechanics and systems that made the player resistant to taking risks and cautious of their choices.

This is what made RE special. The rest is just icing.

I remember when I played Resident Evil as a kid and around the school yard all the kids would talk about Resident Evil and make up spooky stories of what was in the next locked room. I really think this is the kind of thing Resident Evil shot for back in 1996. It's essentially a 3D point & click horror adventure game that creates unique game mechanics in a way that dares the player to explore the environment whilst making it dangerous or uncertain. Sometimes you'd have a journal with stuff written down about a locked door like the prisoner's journal in Code Veronica that mentions spooky things happening behind the door next to the guillotine stand. This DARES the player to enter that place rather than simply inviting them in. It's kind of childish but it is what it is. Sometimes I consider Resident Evil a children's game because adults don't see what a kid sees in it. Adults see it as a game where you pick up puzzle items to unlock doors with bad voice acting and a B-movie story.

Keep up the good work. I'm liking what I'm seeing with this project.

[Chris' Boob]

VP is insanely good at backgrounds nowadays. Damn.

[Renard]

No wonky lighting or awkward camera angles? Impressive!

[Gemini]

1) Is Ark going to react like RE2-3 regarding being injured? Meaning if he's going to be almost in perfect fighting shape when yellow caution health, somehow slower when in orange caution health, and almost crippled when he's in red danger health?
2) Does the team have any thoughts to implement the visible damage done by the monsters on Ark? Like leaving blood stains when claw/grapple him and such.
3) Likewise, are the monsters going to have any visible damage when injured by Ark? Such as severe limbs after numerous shots, reacting slower after being gravelly injured and so on.
4) Is there any possibility to include the grenades, as offensive/defensive weapon? Like in BH2 beta and RE3?
5) Not really a question, just a wishful way to ask you guys to somehow include Neptunes. I mean, who doesn't like mutated sharks anyway?

1-3) Same as in RE2. The simplest I keep it the better. Some visual aspects don't have to be uber complicated if there's good gameplay to back it up.
2) Limping does it already and it was implemented in the first 3 weeks of development.
4) No idea, there are almost no weapons implemented yet.
5) Nope, they don't fit, I told you already why.

No wonky lighting or awkward camera angles? Impressive!

Nor broken normals or non-tiling textures. Yay! Sonic and I spend a lot of time on every single camera.

you don't notice any flicker on the backrounds because they're essentially anti-aliased (rendered at a higher res then scaled down) and you only notice the flicker on harsh edges, but you do notice it on the edges of meshes.

You're confusing jags around edges with flickering. Flickering is an issue the PSX has with interlaced 640x480 mode: the screen flashes like hell due to the GPU not keeping up with everything else. Most games which used "high" resolution back in the day implemented something like 512x240, 640x240, 320x480, or 320x512 (either vertical or horizontal rendering space is doubled). That is what reduces jags, but it's pseudo high and doesn't rely on interlaced mode. It also requires matrix remangling or a scaled unit matrix due to the different screen aspect ratio.

[Jimmy_Jazz]

1-3) You're confusing jags around edges with flickering

Not at all, interlaced flickering was always alot more noticable (for me at least) when high contrast pixels met so they can be related to each other. Pre-rendered backgrounds initially rendered at a higher res and rounded down to 640x480 would have all the harsh edges smoothed out and as a result, the flickering alot less noticable on them.

You're confusing jags around edges with flickering. Flickering is an issue the PSX has with interlaced 640x480 mode: the screen flashes like hell due to the GPU not keeping up with everything else. .

Was it a GPU issue? Even the DC/PS2/GC/XB all used 480i. I thought that it was a standard at the time (some games did support 480p) for tvs (tv signals were interlaced, DVD and VHS players would show interlaced on the tv). Flickering in all cases would stand out more on jaggies than lower contrast pixels and thankfully we had texture filtering as standard on that gen.

[Gemini]

Not at all, interlaced flickering was always alot more noticable (for me at least) when high contrast pixels met so they can be related to each other. Pre-rendered backgrounds initially rendered at a higher res and rounded down to 640x480 would have all the harsh edges smoothed out and as a result, the flickering alot less noticable on them.

That's still not flickering, just regular jags reduced thanks to the signal commuting pixels on the same screen space either as runtime assets or pre-rendered.

Was it a GPU issue? Even the DC/PS2/GC/XB all used 480i.

The PSX hardware is extremely strict in interlaced mode, so other consoles don't apply as a valid example. GPU timing works differently and flickering causes regions of the screen to stay locked on to a previous frame as a result, or in other cases there's intensive flashing due to scanlines not matching.

[Jimmy_Jazz]

I think you're misunderstanding me. There is flickering, caused by interlacing, and there is aliasing. I've not said they are the same thing, but that flickering is more noticable on aliasing edges.

[blackpower]

Gemini = there will be the level of the hospital in Resident Evil: Behind the Mask?

The hospital's first silent hill, made me very afraid.

What do you think about a remake of Sweet Home is on resident evil 0 psx?

[SonicBlue]

No, it has been replaced with a Strip Club.

[Chris' Boob]

No, it has been replaced with a Strip Club.

And we see Claire, Jill, and Ada giving lap dances yah?

You know, this would make a funny easter egg, but with zombies pole dancing.

[Guest]

Been followin' you since day one. Wonderful how you've been keeping everyone very up to date with the goings on and whatnot, I am as excited for this as I am with IGAS' project.

[THE_iCEQB]

Hey Gemini, I wrote you a PM ... if you are interested in a german translation, I'm your man ;)

[Gemini]

There aren't really any plans for a multi language release. I do have support for that because Squeeze Bomb originally used external text resources, but for now it's almost entirely unused due to injection of just English. This could change at some point, since xml allows to expand resources with whatever new data is required, yet not for now.

EDIT
Took me a little more than expected to write the main GUI wrappers:

More will be shoehorned as soon as I'm done finalizing the logic.

[RetroRain]

So basically, in this battle mode, you pick a character, and go through the mansion, and find some items right? I'm assuming that you'll be putting in at least one type of zombie in certain rooms?

Do you plan on upping the gore level, and making cool death scenes from scratch?

[Gemini]

You pick a character, optionally edit gear/outfit, stage, objective, set up extra options, and your mission starts. I'm still working around rough edges, trying to make this as arcade as possible.

As for the gore level, there is a switch like on the N64 version. Definitively not going to make it Mortal Kombat-ish, tho.