How to make a low-end PS2 type version of game?? (for mobile and low-end computers)

Hi, I plan on making a game and I would like for it to be accessible to as many people possible so I'd like to make a both a version for high-end computers and and at the same time make another version intended for low-end computers (or maybe mobile) that looks like a PS2-era game. I plan on using 3DS-max, so right off the bat I know the turbosmooth modifier can be used to make models lower/higher resolution, but I I know there's probably a lot more to it than that.

How would I go about doing this?

Also, do you know what were the limitations of early PS2-era games?

 

50 000 polygons at 60fps (character 2000 poly)
no normal map (unless dot3)
Blinn phong shading
256²pixels textures per unit or less

 

Thanks. Do you know how they handled culling/level streaming for PS2 games?

 

There were games that pushed hardware quite far.

^^^ This is playstation 2. Something like that would be quite costly to create even today.

300 mhz cpu, although with vector operating optimization.
250-325k visible polygons at 60 fps, 500-650 at 30.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_technical_specifications
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If you want to simulate low end, hmm. Then it would go like this:

1. Usually no bumpamapping and no normalmapping for most games. Vertex lighting with a single texture.
2. Some simple post processing effects are possible.
3. Locations are usually small, keeping overall polycount low and amount of textures small. Tight texture budget requires clever approach for dealing with material variation.
4. Low-ish resolution.
5. Low texture resolution. The systmem had 4 megabytes of video memory total.
6. Small number of active enemies and objects (32 megabytes of RAM total).
7. No fancy physics effects.

Basically, check video for Katamari Damacy, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex (PS2 game), Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, Oni, Ico, Baroque.

Then rememebr that this was high end. "The Thing" and "Silent Hill 2" are good examples of games ported to PC platform.

Basically, the way I see it, to simulate ps2 feel (even though it doesn't have a well defined aesthetic), you'd keep texture resolution low, while having polycount slightly above Quake 3 level. Which means that either everything will be quite blurry with strategically used textures, where each texel was carefully selected not to go over budget... or you go for cartoonish visuals that don't have that a lot of textures, and rely on texture colors or simple shaders.

That's the rough idea of it.

 

By the way. I highly doubt that you'd be able to achieve "PS2 feel" with automatic poly reduction tools. This stuff would need to be done by hand.

 

Thanks! I was trying to make a game more along the lines of "Stretch Panic" since I know that was a game made by a very small team of people- so something that I could easily do in a few years. I do not want to bite off more than I can chew and be never finish it (my game).

 

http://www.atensionspan.com/tn/Stretch Panic [SLUS 20182].jpg

For whatever reason the picture wouldn't upload before

 

I greatly doubt those wikipedia number, it's probably flat unshaded triangles. Though some game punch up, but with particles like only, by fitting everything in the vu cache, which is a few kb only.

The ps2 also had amazing fillrates for its generation.

 

PS2 aesthetic is really down to the texture art. The shading is all about gradients and you would do well to check some source textures out for this, it's eye opening.

 

Not sure what you mean by gradients? But, I have ripped textures from PS2 games before

 

Well, there's how you do PS2 style games. It's 99% the texture doing the talking for any given frame. There's virtually no shading going on and no shader magic.

Back then any shading was done with verts.

 

This is all custom per games, the biggest factor was access time of the cd, so a lot of data was duplicated, this techniques is still in use.

Typical culling would probably be based on bounding box and portal. Some open world might have anti portal ( primitive occluder geometry that denies rendering behind it)

 

This is a decent point of reference. Judging by the videos, it has a common traits of ps2 games - vertex lighting, textures are either missing or relatively low res and strategically reused, but at the same time there's some advanced effects (like that sketchy visual thing). At the same time, 2d visuals are quite detailed.

 

Normalmapping apparently was attempted but was really hard to see. Cel-shading was a thing in couple of titles.

I feel like this is something between RivaTNT 2PRO and first cards capable of pixel shaders. There's quite a lot that can be done with even small number of textures and no shaders, but it'll be necessary to get creative with it.

 

Yeah normal mapping was done through dot3 normal map, which is taking advantage of the fact that normal mapping can be reduced to add and mul, which the fixed function blending can do. But then there is the memory budget ...

 

Tip: Alot of the darker areas and shadows on objects, were hand painted onto the textures too. They used that technique, for alot of dreamcast games as well.

Note: I'm not speaking about the shadows, cast on the ground by a light source.

 

I can understand why you would pick PS2 level gaming technology for it's retro aesthetic.

However, maybe you should look at the actual gaming hardware that people use and it's capabilities e.g. For the PC the Steams Hardware Survey (link) is a great way to understand what the users systems can manage.

For instance:

• 69.27% of people have a 1920 x 1080 display the PS2 ran at 640 x 480.
• 99% of people have >1.4 Ghz CPU the PS2 had a 300 mhz CPU
• >80% of people have 4 core CPUs it looks like the PS2 was a single core processor but with dedicated SIMD functions and a FPU coprocessor (PS2 CPU).
• 93.22% of people have a DX12 capable GPU.

Now you might be aiming at the mobile gaming space but I'm sure you can get similar hardware stats for mobile platform capabilities.

Do you need to build two separate versions of the game e.g. high end and low end or could you use quality settings?

Side note for quick and light development a lo fi approach could potentially speed up the entire game development process and even give the game a retro-unique look and feel.

 

Vertex colours were the key to PS2-era lighting/shading. Environment lighting was often baked or hand-painted into the vertex colours (as lightmaps would take too much memory)

 

The high-end version is supposed to be more of a tribute to early 1990s CGI. So, still very simplistic looking, but maybe a bit more high poly than PS2 and of course- much better lighting.










Edit:

Do you know how backgrounds/skyboxes/sky spheres were done in the PS2-era? 256x256 seems like a very small resolution for such a large object.

 

Not sure what you mean by vertex lighting? Do you mean the reflection model (like gouraud shading?) Because I'm pretty sure I saw phong-shading in Silent Hill 2 for the mannequins, and thought phong reflection model is always is per-pixel?

 

It is called "lighting model" or "shading model" and not reflection model. And yes, it is Gouraud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading. While more advanced lighting is possible, as demonstrated by "Path of Neo", it was almost never used.

Silentr Hill is not "low end PS2". It is "very high end PS2".

Silent Hill uses projected texture to simulate lighting cone. The enemies frequently appear unlit.
It is also highly likely that this screenshot is from PC version.

This is from PS2:

As you can see the scene is unlit in most cases (no lighting), and in interior aside from that one shadow from the flashlight (silent hill 2 does not support multiple shadows, even on PC), uses gouroad shading (textures mask it very well). What's more, the area you walk in is entire "level". So, this room with mannequin standing up is everything the console has loaded into memory.

 

Not sure what you mean by "un-lit"? Do you mean no cast shadows, because it doesn't look completely flat with no shading? Also, do you know how backgrounds were handled for PS2 games?

 

It means it has no lighting at all. If you remove textures you'll see uniformly colored sillhoette and a skybox.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-VertexFragmentShaderExamples.html

The entire area in the video playthrough can easily be this. James actually seems to have a single light from above to highlight face geometry, but that's the extend of it.

I can make a guess based on visuals. Different games handled those differenetly. Silent Hill looks like it was simply detailed texture work MAYBE with a separate layer for baked shadows. Meaning Quake 3 level at best.

A good example of such approach is Richard Burns rally, which

has detailed exterior scenes that work well even without lights.

In most games, however, it is either unlit scenes, or quake 3 level visuals.

The difference between "unlit" and "quake 3" level is that quake is that quake 3 (and 2, by the way), keep base texture and shadowmaps separate, which allows to re-blend the visuals when dynamic lights come into play. Basically, if you light a fire in a dark corner, in unlit scene the corner will remain dark, while in Q3 level you'll see texture on the walls you couldn't see before.

 

Thanks again.

 

@tmr2 While looking through steam suggestion I came across this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1066430/Kwaidan_Azuma_manor_story/

Which seems to be doing what you wanted.
From what little I saw in the intro trailer, they mostly nailed PS2 aesthetic.
While texture resolution is a bit too high for PS2, the rest looks correct.


This seems to be on "upper level of quality" for PS2 era, though. And it is like I said - vertex lighting for characters, environments unlit or Quake3 level.

 

I will look at this. Thanks