Shenmue Dojo

Posted: **Sat Jul 14, 2018 8:43 am**

Robfozz wrote:
Blue haired clown has been fixed, I repeat, blue haired clown has been fixed!(Screenshot from the new Return to Dobuita Street video)

Posted: **Sat Jul 14, 2018 11:12 am**

Mestre Ziming wrote: Ok, I was curious and did some analysis using the stream uploaded on youtube, timelines are in the pictures and you can check yourselfs too.

Window in Dojo isn't rendered, it's passable I guess but noticeable:

Camera inside Ryo's arm, noticeable:

Camera inside lights, not very noticeable:

Kid stuck in the back, very noticeable:

Camera inside Ryo's head, very noticeable:

Fisherman stuck in the back, very noticeable:

Camera inside Hisaka-san arm, noticeable:

Camera inside Ryo's arm, noticeable:

Camera inside Ryo's head, very noticeable:

Actually it's kind what I was expecting, keep in mind that this is what I noticed (could be more) and I only did it until reaching the beginning of disc 2, didn't feel like continuing.
As you can see there's a lot of problems just for this portion of the game alone.

As for Shenmue 2 I didn't try looking at it yet but its a mixed bag, one would expect to be the best game to support 16:9 because of the letterbox already implemented but the game just keeps jumping from 19:6 to 4:3 in cut scenes with QTEs. Probably would be very jarring, everything would need to be cropped I guess...

Probably disc 4 would be passable since there's almost no QTEs there. I'm curious what they will do with this game actually...

Most of these issues are fixable, you can set the distance in witch geometry is starting to being rendered, so those "camera into mesh" are an easy fix, plus if you have the source code.. well you can allways move the camera a little bit farther and problem solved.

Posted: **Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:29 pm**

south carmain wrote: Can someone who has some knowledge on the subject explain to me why it's possible to easily emulate the shenmue games at 60fps but not implement it in to the remasters without having to rewrite the entire code? I'm a bit confused how an emulator can tell the engine to output at 60fps but it's impossible to do so without.

Here's a simple answer:

It's not possible to easily emulate the Shenmue games at 60fps.

Posted: **Wed Jul 18, 2018 9:59 pm**

DigitalDuck wrote:
south carmain wrote: Can someone who has some knowledge on the subject explain to me why it's possible to easily emulate the shenmue games at 60fps but not implement it in to the remasters without having to rewrite the entire code? I'm a bit confused how an emulator can tell the engine to output at 60fps but it's impossible to do so without.

Here's a simple answer:

It's not possible to easily emulate the Shenmue games at 60fps.

But if it can be done by us at home, why wouldn't a professional developer be able to do it?

Posted: **Wed Jul 18, 2018 11:27 pm**

mrandyk wrote:But if it can be done by us at home, why wouldn't a professional developer be able to do it?

In a related question, if it's so easy to be done at home, why haven't any of these hobbyists turned pro and pitched the project to Sega? And yet it's the professional dev teams getting called "lazy" by the semi-anonymous people watching from the sidelines.

I think I've made my point but I'd be happy to turn the page to a new era. Good things happened when hobbyists stepped up with the Sonic series.

Posted: **Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:20 am**

mrandyk wrote:But if it can be done by us at home, why wouldn't a professional developer be able to do it?

Just because people have made it work in specific places doesn't mean those changes just 'work' across every other possible moment and eventuality in the game. Its entirely possible they have tried all the same tweaks we have as a community and found it was too hit and miss and time consuming in reality. For example, just saying it's easy to just move the camera back to get a 16:9 ratio is daft.. Sure.. and that might work most of the time, but there could be a future cutscene where doing that even slightly pushes the camera inside another object... Can't move forwards, can't move backwards... What about the many characters that freeze when they leave the confines of the 4:3 border, add new animations too??

We are all talking like we are professional devs with full access to the code and shitting all over thier efforts as if they were lazy or incompetent. Don't be so arrogant and so sure of yourselves.. have some humility.. (people in general, not specifically you mrandyk)

Posted: **Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:15 pm**

D3T is a capable outfit filled with professionals.
The problems/ shortcomings that are mentioned in various threads have nothing to do with them as a team, or their work ethic.

Let’s face it: everything comes down to the budget.
Sega most likely did not “break the bank” for these HD ports/remasters. Had they added another zero on their check, then we could have gotten 16:9 cutscenes/ 4K gameplay/ online forklift racing/ What’s Shenmue/ Passport features/ updated textures/ etc.

So, let’s not be too harsh. It’s a discounted collection that you can get in the US for about $25. Besides, they could always make further improvements to the collection via future patches.

The good news: the game is selling well beyond expectations, which will undoubtedly have a positive effect on the franchise in the future.

Posted: **Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:03 pm**

Centrale wrote:
mrandyk wrote:But if it can be done by us at home, why wouldn't a professional developer be able to do it?

In a related question, if it's so easy to be done at home, why haven't any of these hobbyists turned pro and pitched the project to Sega? And yet it's the professional dev teams getting called "lazy" by the semi-anonymous people watching from the sidelines.

Centrale wrote:In a related question, if it's so easy to be done at home, why haven't any of these hobbyists turned pro and pitched the project to Sega?

They have. Blit pitched it to them over 5 years ago, and Sega turned it down. This is a situation of easier said than done. Many developers have pitched games to Sega before and gotten turned down. Other examples would be the Sonic skateboarding game pitch that Borman over at AssemblerGames found a prototype of and released, as well as more recently the Jet Set Radio Evolution pitch that Sega also rejected. Sonic Mania is the result of an existing relationship that Christian Whitehead formed with Sega after having handled the 3 mobile ports prior to that, and significant fan support over his initial YouTube video proposing the first one. The same situation is not appropriate for a professional company to get themselves into, it's more likely they'd get legal on their ass instead if they're trying to get a pitch to go viral by posting it publicly.

I should also mention that some of us making these comments do have a background in software development. I'd love the opportunity to fix this myself, but that's just not a realistic situation.

punkmanced wrote: D3T is a capable outfit filled with professionals.
The problems/ shortcomings that are mentioned in various threads have nothing to do with them as a team, or their work ethic.

Let’s face it: everything comes down to the budget.
Sega most likely did not “break the bank” for these HD ports/remasters. Had they added another zero on their check, then we could have gotten 16:9 cutscenes/ 4K gameplay/ online forklift racing/ What’s Shenmue/ Passport features/ updated textures/ etc.

This 100x over. It is entirely down to the price point of the games and budget. Despite being upset about the lack of investment in the ports, I actually think they made a sound decision targeting the budget price point from a business standpoint. It will maximize the number of people who can afford the game, and potentially help in the future. (As long as it doesn't end up being shitty and the reviews tank as a result hurting sales after release)

None of this B.S. about "well, maybe it's hard for them to only affect a specific scene" is valid - No, it's not. Easiest way to describe this so it can be well understood is just look at the debug build of Shenmue that's floating around. Every scene has a unique ID that you can select & play back with that build. The full game, despite not having a scene select, works the same way. If they don't want to try and modify the game data it's very simple for them to throw in an kludge on top of existing logic that checks the current Scene ID and applies a camera modification specific to one scene as Esppirial suggested. We can even do this already just using cheat device codes, as they support conditional logic.

The games have already been finished because they need at least 6 weeks for manufacturing and distribution. What they've shown lately is exactly what we're getting and it's unlikely they'll want to change much in a later patch. For the price they're targeting, I'm satisfied with what they've done. Would I like better, yes, but I don't think the game would sell as well if they were targeting say $10 more for example and then it might not be worth it.

Best case scenario is they do well and go back and remaster the first two when the series is done. I know some people are hoping the success of 3 results in Sega picking up 4 themselves instead of an external company like Deep Silver, and I think this will go a long way towards making that happen.

Posted: **Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:12 pm**

Sappharad wrote:I should also mention that some of us making these comments do have a background in software development.

I do as well. That's why anybody who makes remarks about "lazy" developers has no credibility in my eyes.

Regarding Blit, my understanding is that Sega didn't want to pay as much for the project as Blit quoted for what Blit felt it would take to do the project well. That's the way it goes sometimes. We'll never find out whether the upcoming I & II re-release meets or exceeds the scope of what Blit proposed. A lot has changed in five years.

Posted: **Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:38 am**

I'm fairly happy with the HD releases, they're probably not the "end all of all ports", like some people would like, but it's mostly what I was expecting (even some cool extras, like original rendering, double VA).

The only thing that I could ask that it's not very demanging it's to have an option of stretched borders for cinematics, I know it's ugly, but for some people might be less jarring than 4:3.

Posted: **Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:45 pm**

Just can't help but feel what a missed oppertunity this was. I mean how much would it have taken to actually spend some time on the game and update the graphics? It looks old, probably will play old too and because of that, there is probably a bunch of potential fans that won't bother with the game.

Posted: **Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:09 pm**

King John Blaze wrote:probably will play old too and because of that

If you looked into it a bit more before instantly writing off the re-release for its graphics, you’d probably find out that they’re implementing features like a revamped modern control scheme to circumvent this very thing.

Posted: **Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:25 pm**

punkmanced wrote:Had they added another zero on their check, then we could have gotten 16:9 cutscenes/ 4K gameplay/ online forklift racing/ What’s Shenmue/ Passport features/ updated textures/ etc.

Which is probably a good thing as I would have foolishly spent too much time on that :-k

Posted: **Fri Jul 20, 2018 9:44 pm**

^ Seriously...how cool would that have been!

Posted: **Sat Jul 21, 2018 1:57 am**

King John Blaze wrote: Just can't help but feel what a missed oppertunity this was. I mean how much would it have taken to actually spend some time on the game and update the graphics? It looks old, probably will play old too and because of that, there is probably a bunch of potential fans that won't bother with the game.

You are entitled to your opinion but consider this..

Many cases rereleasing games as HD reboots have failed.

The first special edition monkey island had a lot of criticism for voice acting and graphical decisions that took away from the original monkey island feel.

Silent Hill rereleases were also controversial to the originals.

Gabriel Knight rerelease, many fans including new players prefer the originals

I can go on, realize the situation here..

1) Shenmue 1 was exclusive to Dreamcast and out of print for some time now, the GDroms will eventually fail. for new players, at some point Dreamcast hardware will dry up.

2) Shenmue II was never released in the US for Dreamcast outside of PAL versions imported, Shenmue IIx was released for xbox but also out of print now, the xbox 360 emulator doesnt load everything properly which also hinders and makes it difficult to obtain the game.

3) Realize that we had literally no news about Shenmue continuing let alone a re release spanning from 2002 to 2015 for shenmue III and a remastered rerelease in 2018. If you date back shenmue 1s release date in 99 thats almost 20 years that have lapsed from the first game. Understand that fans had been pushing for continuations and releases for roughly over a decade.

4)We are getting both games at a cheap price with both Japanese and English dubs and 1080p support. As much as I would love a remaster, I highly doubt SEGA would take the risk on a full retextured game. If sales are good for the game, then perhaps that will send a message that there is demand for a remake of the games similar to what occurred with Yakuza.

Shenmue Dojo

Random Shenmue HD Thoughts

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