How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?

How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?

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  1. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Silent Hill 2 came out and it made REmake look like dogshit.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Silent Hill 2 came out 8 months before REmake.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Good job emphasizing my point

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Silent Hill 2 looked like shit then and looks even worse today
      Resident Evil Remake aged like wine

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Resident Evil Remake aged like wine

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          Zoomers see one blurry texture during a cutscene and shit themselves to death. You should go play Fortnite, no blurry textures there

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            It's one blurry texture the game focuses on for a prolonged amount of time, yes. You're forced to take notice of it.
            This is ignoring that REmake also only has the GCN version, which is locked to 480p at best, and the HD version introduces massive amounts of artifacting, crushed blacks, new visual errors and bugs, as well as lower quality BGs.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      This is false.
      Source: Remake still to this day looks amazing

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah. That's why they're still making them like REmake even today

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      cool dude no one ever thought that but go on being the same guy in every thread insisting things that never happened

  2. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Pre Rendered graphics were a result if necessity not overt intention.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      but they looked better than what most games went with. just look at bof5. id rather have pre rendered backgrounds

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Could be anything from data corruption to simply not bothering to save them.

        Prerendered 3D can have amazing results, but they can be very limiting if you want to do something with a more free camera. At the same time, pre-rendered 3D means shitloads of 2D frames if you want smoothness and rotations, which can mean taking up a lot of your memory in ways which 3D doesn't necessarily have to.

        There's all kinds of approaches out there, with all sorts of benefits, drawbacks, and quirks, with some being better suited for some kinds of games. It's a big game of tradeoffs.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >but they looked better than what most games went with.
        Silent Hill 3 and Metal Gear Solid 3 you can achieve far more than pre-rendered backgrounds on far weaker hardware.
        All pre-renders ended up doing in the longrun was making the games that had them look worse as time moved forward.

  3. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    This was back during the turbulent 90's where studios were popping up left and right, developing a dozen games in 2 or 3 years, and then fading into obscurity never to be heard from again, and even the big studios constantly had projects coming and going. It's likely it all just got burned onto a disc that ended up just getting forgotten somewhere.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Could be anything from data corruption to simply not bothering to save them.

      Prerendered 3D can have amazing results, but they can be very limiting if you want to do something with a more free camera. At the same time, pre-rendered 3D means shitloads of 2D frames if you want smoothness and rotations, which can mean taking up a lot of your memory in ways which 3D doesn't necessarily have to.

      There's all kinds of approaches out there, with all sorts of benefits, drawbacks, and quirks, with some being better suited for some kinds of games. It's a big game of tradeoffs.

      Backgrounds from RE games are small potatoes. The real question is how and why a company like Squaresoft lost or destroyed all the hideously expensive CGI movies from their late 90s-early 2000s games.

      I wouldn't be surprised if all these assets still exist locked away somewhere, in reality it's more likely an issue around the effort involved with accessing the old formats, importing into modern tooling, etc.
      There's more demand and return from full blown remakes like RE2 and FF7R which can be sold at $60-$70 rather than fixing up old releases that couldn't sell more than $10-$20 a pop.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >in reality it's more likely an issue around the effort involved with accessing the old formats

        yeah, not like they have hoards of programmers and tech people...

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          there's a premium cost for people who still work with and understand legacy systems, not to mention the cost / logistics of locating hardware that you would need in order dump all of the old assets. As other anons have mentioned devs in this era rarely used version control so there would be effort in sifting through the archives as well.
          Like I already said, there's not enough money in "remastering" the original games with those assets. No one is going to buy original RE2 but with upscaled assets for $70.
          Hell, even Nintendo who clearly hoarded a ton of stuff would rather remake games from the ground up. And when they do release the original versions of a game, it's just the original ROM with the bare minimum of features added in, which people still buy.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        It wouldn't have been that difficult. They likely saved them as tiff files which are extraordinarily easy and simple to use.

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          huh? Isn't the whole argument "y no 4k RE backgrounds?" I'm sure they saved them all off to a simple format as well, at the original resolutions. Man, for being a bunch of internet addicted dorks you guys don't know anything about software development.

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            Because the backgrounds for the original RE were embarrassingly simplistic. If they were going to do a remake, they would want things that have four times the details they had in 1996.

            >Man, for being a bunch of internet addicted dorks you guys don't know anything about software development.
            What the frick are you talking about you autist?

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              Some people think that this really old style of 3D is really pretty, where everything kind of looks like slightly glossy plastic when you look at it up close.
              Like people who wish that Super Mario 64 could have looked like those promotional pre-rendered stills, even though it doesn't actually look good.

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              Ah right you guys barely understand English either, no wonder computers are over your head

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                He's right, the original pre-renders would look incredibly fricking plain and underdetailed by 2020s standards. When they aren't scaled down to the intended resolutions those models and textures usually look incredibly synthetic, stone does not look like stone, wood does not look like wood, metal only kinda looks like metal if it has a shiny reflective texture almost like a mirror.
                A lot of the 'texture' comes from the downscaling.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                I was replying to the anon that said they saved them off as .tiff, so what was the big deal. and pointing out that this would be at the original low resolution. I agree with you.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                Oh, uh, I should just go to bed.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                Listen, I know you think you're smarter than you actually are, and you made an air-tight case for why your........weird, strawman, irrelevant, goal-post moving moronic argument makes sense, but I'm going to have to ask you to remain on-topic for the duration of the discussion instead of making up fantastical discussions in your head that we aren't a part of, nor do we give a shit to try and decipher the dipshit moron-logic you've worked yourself into a corner within your own mind on. Okay?

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                What are you on? Lmao

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                I'm not engaging in interpretive discussions based on morons that misunderstand the original premise of my posts. I have no idea what the frick you're talking about with software development, or interpolating from my original comment as to how that correlates with software development.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        If there's one thing I learned from the Nintendo gigaleak is that most data out there very likely has surviving backup copies somewhere that not even the original creators are aware of. Nintendo remade the voices for Starfox 64 3D because they thought they were lost forever but then we find the original, uncompressed voice files.

  4. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Backgrounds from RE games are small potatoes. The real question is how and why a company like Squaresoft lost or destroyed all the hideously expensive CGI movies from their late 90s-early 2000s games.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      There was no version control, that's why. They didn't care about backups or whatever and now it's gone.

  5. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    >How did Capcom lose the Resident Evil Pre-Rendered Backgrounds?
    I deleted them. It was just a prank, we all laughed it off at the end.

  6. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Companies just didn't care back then, Square Enix lost the fricking SOURCE CODE for KH1 and had to redo the game from scratch in 2013 so that the remaster could be released.

  7. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    They didn't. The PC versions use higher res backgrounds.

  8. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Must be a Japanese thing, I remember them using the hardrives from the original release of grim Fandango for the remaster. It looks like they had almost everything.
    If I had a guess they just threw them away like they do with old things in general

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Must be a Japanese thing

      its a lazy management thing. You see it everywhere. Management has to have a plan to store stuff. Otherwise it gets lost as employees come and go. If you don't make programmers use some sort of organizational system they will just save everything as dickbutt1, dickbutt2, dickbutt 3 on their desktop and then it get wiped by their intern that issues out new computers to new employees.

  9. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    What we have seen from the Gigaleak makes most Japanese studios look like clowns compared to Nintendo in terms of data preservation.

  10. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    They were toys, selling products...

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      back in the day they didn't imagine they would have to reuse them i guess.
      the 90's were oriented towards the future, not the past. we were obsessed with new and shiny shit.
      many would have sold a family member to be able to play something that looked real. nobody cared about retro and old consoles and games often ended up in the trash.

      these

  11. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    back in the day they didn't imagine they would have to reuse them i guess.
    the 90's were oriented towards the future, not the past. we were obsessed with new and shiny shit.
    many would have sold a family member to be able to play something that looked real. nobody cared about retro and old consoles and games often ended up in the trash.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      I can undestand not backing up megaman, people would think you were crazy to say people wanted to still play megaman 30 years later. Final fantasy and rez evil, multi million $ of effort and not bothering to save the files even for a pc version.
      Would have been cool if people just took floppies home which did happen with many prototypes. Rareware were pretty good about keeping even their old stuff and even they were close to losing a lot of stuff due to a hard drive crash on an sgi machine.

      I love how everyone's an expert on this topic. Have you been to Capcom's archives? Did you talk to the devs of the different versions? Do you know the process of making these games made?

      No, you don't know shit. But everyone acts like they know these things as a fact.

      The PC versions (the versions based on the PC versions) of 3 used higher res backgrounds, which means that yes they were preserved up until that point. Why didn't 2 use higher res backgrounds then? The key difference, and we know this from multiple sources, is that in 3 the backgrounds were designed in higher res to begin with and then downscaled for PSX, this wasn't the case in 2. So the PC port of 3 used those backgrounds because they already existed, within grasp.

      Why couldn't they take the source 3D rooms and make them high res for RE2? For one thing we don't know the full process here, we don't know the amount of post processing done once the camera angles are turned into images, possibly redoing the backgrounds meant redoing a lot of processing.
      But who says they *couldn't*? The main reason why they didn't is because that shit is a business, they make those ports in the quickest, cheapest way possible. They're not here to improve the game in substantial ways unless it has a clear marketing plus. Changing a costume or changing stats for a new hard mode is something that can be done quickly and which brings that marketing plus.

      The real question is how come in the PC port of 3, not all backgrounds are high res... how come some of those backgrounds are beta... This still doesn't mean they couldn't have found all the backgrounds, it only means they didn't care to search/do more. This is proven by the fact that the background masks all remained low-res even though that IS something they could have easily fixed by cutting pieces from the high res backgrounds.

      tl;dr there is no proof they "lost" anything. But there is proof they didn't give a shit.

      Nice, didn't know they were better

      there's a premium cost for people who still work with and understand legacy systems, not to mention the cost / logistics of locating hardware that you would need in order dump all of the old assets. As other anons have mentioned devs in this era rarely used version control so there would be effort in sifting through the archives as well.
      Like I already said, there's not enough money in "remastering" the original games with those assets. No one is going to buy original RE2 but with upscaled assets for $70.
      Hell, even Nintendo who clearly hoarded a ton of stuff would rather remake games from the ground up. And when they do release the original versions of a game, it's just the original ROM with the bare minimum of features added in, which people still buy.

      Think how much money nintendo would lose if they didn't save the mario source, theres all stars, then the gba games and maybe even used as a guide in maker. They would probably have to badly recreate the old physics.

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Final fantasy
        Weird thing is they had that issue when they were trying to port it to PC. Eidos asked high res backgrounds I think. They still didn't saved jack shit after that.
        Square is a special kind of idiot on this though.
        I also wouldn't understand not backing up Mega Man. Anime from 70s were sold on DVD during the era Mega Man was made. That's the material they got the idea from in the first place.

  12. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    They no longer needed them, REmake was as far as they could take it. They could render in real time what they could only pre-render before.

  13. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I love how everyone's an expert on this topic. Have you been to Capcom's archives? Did you talk to the devs of the different versions? Do you know the process of making these games made?

    No, you don't know shit. But everyone acts like they know these things as a fact.

    The PC versions (the versions based on the PC versions) of 3 used higher res backgrounds, which means that yes they were preserved up until that point. Why didn't 2 use higher res backgrounds then? The key difference, and we know this from multiple sources, is that in 3 the backgrounds were designed in higher res to begin with and then downscaled for PSX, this wasn't the case in 2. So the PC port of 3 used those backgrounds because they already existed, within grasp.

    Why couldn't they take the source 3D rooms and make them high res for RE2? For one thing we don't know the full process here, we don't know the amount of post processing done once the camera angles are turned into images, possibly redoing the backgrounds meant redoing a lot of processing.
    But who says they *couldn't*? The main reason why they didn't is because that shit is a business, they make those ports in the quickest, cheapest way possible. They're not here to improve the game in substantial ways unless it has a clear marketing plus. Changing a costume or changing stats for a new hard mode is something that can be done quickly and which brings that marketing plus.

    The real question is how come in the PC port of 3, not all backgrounds are high res... how come some of those backgrounds are beta... This still doesn't mean they couldn't have found all the backgrounds, it only means they didn't care to search/do more. This is proven by the fact that the background masks all remained low-res even though that IS something they could have easily fixed by cutting pieces from the high res backgrounds.

    tl;dr there is no proof they "lost" anything. But there is proof they didn't give a shit.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Good, sensible post. Weren't the Gamecube/Dreamcast of RE2 released with higher res backdrops?

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        Not RE2 no, only RE3.

        From what I recall RE2/3 GC upscaled the backgrounds though, so technically they are 640*480 but really it's the same thing.
        RE3 GC also fixed a couple of discrepencies and issues regarding the beta backgrounds of RE3 PC, but the fixes usually consisted in reverting to the PSX versions in those cases.
        Once you dive into the ports of RE2/3 you realize how much of a mess it is and there is sadly no perfect version of 3, each version has its pros&cons. I used to love the PC version(s) but once you start seeing some of the mess like in this pic, you can't unsee it.

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          I hear ya, even reshade can't fix the PC bg in 1. I've found Duckstation Director's cut with shaders is near enough perfect if it wasn't for the model clipping that even perspective correction oesn't fix (for me at least).

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          >sadly no perfect version of 3,
          PS1 is the best if you ask me. I don't mind 240p with CRT shader. It also fits in with the first two games, creating a trilogy.

        • 5 months ago
          Anonymous

          You should check out the seamless HD texture mods for the gamecube version of Resi 2 and 3. The backgrounds have all been AI upscaled using a custom ESRGAN model, it looks absolutely fantastic on a modern display and this is how I played through both games last year.

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            Anon that ESRGAN shit uses the old fricked up and full of artifacts model from 6 years ago

            someone should had done a better one using the new models and photoshop

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              Have you a link to this new version? or a vid I can check it out in?

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                They are working on it because Dino Crisis is a thing now.

                That image applies well to early esrgan, now there are better models with no artifacts at all if you aren't a complete moron

          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous
          • 5 months ago
            Anonymous

            They look very clean. They are archaic and very simple renders that look interesting mainly because of post processing and lower resolution hiding lack of original details. I don't think it's a good idea for 5th gen. Even Onimusha doesn't look all that good in HD remaster.

            • 5 months ago
              Anonymous

              What you say stays true for RE1 very much so, for RE2 so-so. But RE3 is very rich in detail and its OG files are already fairly high res on PC version so the upscale quality is very decent.

              As someone who played through RE2 easily 50 times over the years on real hardware, I tried the upscale mod recently and it looked very convincing to the point where it may be my go-to version from now on. The only issue I had was that it features shitty modern avatars and items for inventory screen but there was a patch/separate mod (dont remember exactly) that upscales and keeps the OG aesthetic intact.

              Hard mode and skippable doors makes it difficult to go back to real hardware even though I have a CRT.

              • 5 months ago
                Anonymous

                RE3 HD isn't bad, but the model used on it is outdated due to artifacts.
                and newer GPU'S gives better detail and processing power for upscales.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      >3 the backgrounds were designed in higher res to begin with and then downscaled for PSX, this wasn't the case in 2

      All games like this, even RE1 had 8K raw quality backgrounds before being scaled down to PSX hardware and resolution

      • 5 months ago
        Anonymous

        lol no, those CG backgrounds were rendered in £D modelling software of the era and were incredibly complex by the standards of the time. Just rendering one of those backgrounds in 640X480 resolution would have taken a workstation of the time around an hour. Rendering an "8k raw quality" would have taken days per background with the sort of system capcom had available to them.

    • 5 months ago
      Anonymous

      Unrelated but God she kinda came off as a b***h in this scene

  14. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    I know this would be a very hard task of course, but could they be eventually recreated? I'm guessing main problem would be finding original textures, which is most likely impossible.
    Mario Kart 64 models look nearly like the original thing.

  15. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Japanese culture dictates that keeping archives of your old stuff is HARAM

  16. 5 months ago
    Anonymous

    Weird how this scene is supposed to be in daylight. It just looks like a night time street lit by streetlights. I suppose they could save on rendering time by having single-reflection raytracing, which creates those deep shadows.

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