David AmadorSkyrim small tables are actually shelves buried. If you can't see it ...
(Recreating my list of #gamedev tricks thread)
(Recreating my list of #gamedev tricks thread)
In Jak and Daxter if by any chance the Area/assets ahead aren't fully loaded the game will make you trip to give it more time to fully load. #gamedev
In Super Mario 64 to achieve the infinite stairs effect, Mario gets teleported back. Also the reason why Speedrunners can glitch and skip it using the backwards jump trick. #gamedev
There was a memory exception in Wing Commander on exit, because of the deadline they left it but change the error message to "Thank you for playing Wing Commander!" #gamedev
This #gamedev trick is from Undertale, to prevent NPCs to walk on pits, Magic glass.
In Fallout 3 the Trains are actually a character wearing a train model as a hat. Engine didn't allow for vehicles, so this way they could reuse NPC movement code. #gamedev
In Super Mario Bros. because of memory limitations clouds and bushes are the same sprite but using a different tint color. #GameDev
In Kirby's Dream Land for GameBoy, to save memory some enemies have the same "back" part of the sprite and only change the face. #GameDev
Here's one of my fav, in Zelda: A Link Between Worlds because a true top-down view in 3D would have perspective issues, they purposely tilt the objects, so the perspective looks good to the player from top. #GameDev
Duke Nukem 3D mirrors reflection were achieved by duplicating the room on the other side. If you deactivate clipping you can go to the other side. True reflections are computational intensive even today #GameDev
In NBA Jam: T.E. for Genesis/Mega Drive developers only found out after making the 250k cartridges, that there was a save bug. But playing the game in a certain order fixed it, so it got a day one "patch" in the manual saying how to initialize memory. #GameDev
In Super Mario Galaxy when Mario drowns in a swap his hand reaches out, but because of the size of the head devs had to shrink it so only the hand is visible to the player #GameDev
World of Warcraft rest bonus was made to encourage breaks, half XP gained after a few hours. Players hated, so they made everything take 2x as much XP to achieve but you start at 200% XP and gradually back to 100%. Same thing & players are happy. #GameDev
In Resident Evil 4 during the radio chat cutscenes it's actually a 2D panel with the 3D models behind. Many other games do this too.#GameDev
In Duck Hunt the NES Zapper worked by blacking out screen & drawing white blocks around targets when you fire, for a couple frames. The diode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer if it’s pointed at a lit target. #gamedev #retrogaming
In Metal Gear Solid 1, another reflection trick. Water puddles are just a transparent texture with the geometry of ceiling and walls duplicated and inverted below the ground. That's why we can't see Snake reflection in puddles. #gamedev
Sega Saturn used Quads instead of triangles (the industry norm) for rendering, which is good for 2D but not as practical for 3D, devs had to work around that, so games like Tomb Raider had to be built to support quads on Saturn and triangles on PlayStation #gamedev
NIGHTEͶ ∆@djlink That's so interesting! Wasn't Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter 3D engine also based on quad? That may be a SEGA thing, I wonder what other game or system also worked the same way
Sebas van den Brink@djlink That's crazy! How cool a workaround. Thank you for sharing
walter4096@djlink right this refers more to the texture mapping technique which really did distort an alighned quad in texture space into a quad in screenspace. more pleasing perspective aproximation in some cases but awful for clipping. both "1st 32bit 3D gen" machines had problems with perspective texture really. grouping 2 tris as a quad can be nice generally. artists try to make clean quad meshes for anim/tetxure control
@djlink its called "forward texture mapping".. i think 3DO did the same, as did one of the very early nvidia 3d cards, with added quadratic curves (very unusual).https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/how-does-forward-texture-map-work.7254/
Adam - The Funny Brain@djlink this one is also used in Tony Hawk games! I seem to recall they even went as far as cloning the player so they got reflected too, but my brain might be lying to me as there's a lack of coffee. :)
@TheFunnyBrainGames ah neat gotta check that one
@djlink If you want to see a demo of it in THPS, there's a video of it at 7:46 of this video (sorry, YouTube Vanced isn't letting me link with timestamps) :) Fun video in general, lots of illusions are done behind walls etc. :) https://youtu.be/-1BoG3yPnu0
100 Things You Didn't Notice in Tony Hawk Games
Connor Cadellin@djlink IIRC Spyro Year of the Dragon did the same thing for ice, except they also had a duplicate character rig moving around on the other side to give fake character reflections. That's also how the mirror room in Super Mario 64 was achieved.
@cadellin I didn't know about spyro, that's neat.
Darth Biomech@djlink I'd say this trick is valuable even today, if you don't want to mess with real-time reflections, for mobile games for example. Making people "reflect" in them would be trickier though.
@darth_biomech yup absolutely, even desktop and consoles it's an intensive process depending on scene complexity.
Morgan Loomis@djlink how did it know which duck?
@morganloomis 1 square per duck at each time. notice that 1 only shows at time.
@djlink ah of course. I remember being a kid and seeing the flash of the squares, knowing I was getting a small glimpse behind the curtain, but having no idea what to make of it. Early console devs were so clever.
Brian Louden 
@djlink @morganloomis Does this mean that it alternated ducks per a trigger pull or did it sequence on screen ducks each pull? This is intriguing.
Clive Blackledge⁷
Corsac@djlink so you could just shoot light bulbs in your living room and it woukd work?
@corsac theoretically yes. Kinda like you could use a candle to replace the Wii IR receiver if it broke.
Anatoly Shashkin💾
AMS
Michiel Toneman@djlink That's really smart. I love the way these game devs thought outside the box to make the seemingly impossible possible.
Gavroche@djlink how does it know where to put the white square
Ted Martens@djlink I was so good at Clay Pigeon mode that one time my score got so high it froze the game 😎
Jordan @djlink clever!
helix2301@djlink this was essential to my childhood
TacticalTechyTaky@djlink so you just had to shoot at the light bulb in your room. Good ol’ days
Eric Corps Conscient@djlink J'ai battu des records en m'éloignant au max de l'écran télé je touchais tout rien qu'en visant la télé
Jejo@djlink
Can't believe players didn't realize that 😂
Can't believe players didn't realize that 😂
@away2thestars different context makes a lot of difference :)
@djlink
It confirms the power of rewards Vs punishments
It confirms the power of rewards Vs punishments
Nina Roussakoff@djlink Perception is so important. Glass half empty or half full. Do you lose something? Or do you gain something? Same end result - different starting point.
Thanks for sharing this - it's a great game design example. 🙏
@Nina I like this one too a lot, for what you just said. This out of box thinking spared a lot of work of remaking something else and made players happy.
ic768@djlink Author misspelled alright*
@djlink I always loved this mechanic on WoW. It just made sense to me. I did not have to feel guilty for shutting the game off.
I don't think I see many MMO's doing this kind of thing. BDO has an AFK-farm thing which is a bit close to this. I wish more MMO's would have this kind of "hey, take a break from the grind, it's fine" mechanics.
KipiGiD@djlink
Pretty much the same thing as some companies are doing with sales:
If you price a thing as X, people may consider it as expensive and not worth of buying. But if you price it as 2 * X and then give 50% discount (or even 30% discount), people suddenly consider it as a steal.
Pretty much the same thing as some companies are doing with sales:
If you price a thing as X, people may consider it as expensive and not worth of buying. But if you price it as 2 * X and then give 50% discount (or even 30% discount), people suddenly consider it as a steal.
Marcel 🌚@djlink So the purple slime kills you by just compressing your head into a pea. Another mildly terrifying aspect of Mario world building lol
Nyek London@djlink Got a pinprick and let out all of the noxious purple gas that keeps his head inflated
Kyle Banks@djlink ohh that's a good one. I always wonder how many other ideas were considered before deciding to just fudge it
Rob McGregor
Mat 
@samuraipizzarob @djlink That game made a huge difference in my #NBA fandom as well. I became a massive Hakeem Olajuwon fan because apparently I was a front-runner in the mid 90s.
@MontaWorldPeace @djlink It's not inconceivable that it was why I became more of a Pippen guy/kid than a Jordan one...
David
Jake Birkett - Veteran Indie@djlink Yep I knew this. Pretty ingenious solution.
@GreyAlien yup, and several other games used this too, like Metal Gear and more.
Elan@djlink @GreyAlien Deus Ex pulled a similar trick (inheriting it from the Unreal engine which showed off mirrors in their first game). Then the sequels (which spent their CPU on other things) had to find some excuse for why their mirrors didn’t work!
Visions Mind@djlink This is one of the more interesting "hidden tricks". not long ago I saw a video on YT where they did this trick combined with opacity masks to fake corridor reflections on a semi-reflective floor for a mobile game in unity. Its a bit unintuitive to think it might be cheaper, but yeah churning out polygons might be just cheaper then the math involved for reflections. draw calls shouldn't be much of an issue since it's literally duplication/mirroring of geo/uvs/materials and such right?
@visionsmind exactly, also, if not looking to the geometry area it will be discarded depending on cull options, so it's a win-win. I guess the downsize is that it needs a lot of work to get done instead of a sophisticated shader that would give it out of the box
William M Coyne, PharmD, MBA