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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Graphics: SMG vs. Super Mario Sunshine (Or how SMG's graphics were hyped)

Legend11 said:

Take a look at the Piranha Plants and Bowser at around 70% into the video... There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between both games.

I would say the fact that you can't tell the difference between Bowser and Bowser Jr. is quite telling. Clearly, you haven't played either game, and is oblivious to the huge differences in lightning, mapping and animation.

Of course, I would have expected no less from the guy who thought Brawl's very in-game models were pre-rendered. Clearly you have nothing better to do than make erroneous claims about Nintendo games you know nothing about. How productive.



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Well, my copy button didn't work, but my main point was this:

Side by side with Sunshine, Galaxy is displayed at roughly 520x400 resolution, which is 208k pixels.

Mario Galaxy is supposedly rated at 1280x720 (correct me if I'm wrong), which is 921k pixels. So, when placed side by side with Sunshine, Galaxy is being robbed of 77% of its rightful detail.


77% less resolution, kids! Of course it looks the same.



Numbers: Checker Players > Halo Players

Checkers Age and replayability > Halo Age and replayability

Therefore, Checkers > Halo

So, Checkers is a better game than Halo.

facher83 said:

Also, we're looking at a compressed video here, unless you're viewing an uncompressed file, even Mario 64 will look similar to a lot of these scenes.

We could compare Halo 1 to Halo 2 and come to the conclusion it's similar, but I'm not entirely sure what the objective would be. And, of course studios use similar 3D models in other games, it makes sense. Mario certainly shouldn't gain 40 lbs, lose 40 lbs, start wearing a yellow outfit instead of red and blue, etc etc. Let's give Mario pink hair just so it looks different? No no, that's just wrong.



Legend11 said:
fazz said:

2nd: Models of the characters have more polygons in Galaxy, and that's very noticeable. Levels don't have much increase in polygons, but they have normal mapping work in them to give them a more natural feel when you are looking at them in normal view. For example the Yoshi head planet: when you look at it from the normal view, it looks like very high-polygoned. But when you switch to normal view. Not to mention the parallax and bump mapping work.

3rd: Texture work in the character's models in Galaxy is higher. In fact, textures in character models in Sunshine was pretty scarce (gourad shading maybe?). But still, how much texture improvement can you do to Mario? More skin imperfections? More rivets to his overalls?


Take a look at the Piranha Plants and Bowser at around 70% into the video... There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between both games.


 I have both games Legend. I just recently replayed Sunshine to get in the mood. Believe me, the difference is very noticeable in those characters, specially in the big Piranha Plant. The video just doesn't makes justice to Galaxy's. For you it couldn't be a big difference because probably you don't have both games.

Just in case, let me give you some screenshots for comparison.

 

 

There you can notice the much higher polygon count on both Piranha and Mario. Also, you can see that the levels where much less detailed levels, with worse looking textures and less polygons.

In less words, Mario Galaxy looks better. No one expects it to look like Gears or UT3, but if it had higher resolution (that it actually could, as it runs 60fps stable at the current one) it could stand proudly to some games of the other consoles. 



Another easy way of looking at this is as follows:

Mario Galaxy, in the video, is displayed side by side on my laptop and still BOTH of them don't even come close to my screen width. If Galaxy is rated at 1280 pixels wide, it should fill my entire width, which it doesn't..... the video doesn't even come close to the actual clarity of the game.



Numbers: Checker Players > Halo Players

Checkers Age and replayability > Halo Age and replayability

Therefore, Checkers > Halo

So, Checkers is a better game than Halo.

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Guys: Take it easy on Legend. He's just bored because he has to wait another month while his 360 refurb gets repaired again.



RolStoppable said:
Legend11 said:
fazz said:

2nd: Models of the characters have more polygons in Galaxy, and that's very noticeable. Levels don't have much increase in polygons, but they have normal mapping work in them to give them a more natural feel when you are looking at them in normal view. For example the Yoshi head planet: when you look at it from the normal view, it looks like very high-polygoned. But when you switch to normal view. Not to mention the parallax and bump mapping work.

3rd: Texture work in the character's models in Galaxy is higher. In fact, textures in character models in Sunshine was pretty scarce (gourad shading maybe?). But still, how much texture improvement can you do to Mario? More skin imperfections? More rivets to his overalls?


Take a look at the Piranha Plants and Bowser at around 70% into the video... There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between both games.

Also, a lot of areas with nice effects were missing in the video comparison. The surfaces of planets swimming in lava


 Oh man the lava planets rocked graphically...




Legend have you even played the game yet?  There isn't even a valid comparison here, SMG looks hands down better side by side.  Its pretty obvious from this video and even then the video itself actually does a poor job in showing the strengths of SMG, especially the work it did with specular highlights and specular reflections and lets not forget the downright fantastic job they did with bumpmaps.  

Just to help folks without a technical background understand what these things are I will demonstrate with some pics from wikipedia.

 An example of specular highlights.
 
 

 
 
 An example of specular reflection.
 
 

 
 
 
 Before Applying BumpmapAfter applying Bumpmap 
  

 

 


I also really liked their fur shaders....

 

You seriously need to get off your SMG bashing bandwagon and, if you don't like the game that is fine it is your choice but at this point nobody can really take you seriously with these posts anymore. /sigh



To Each Man, Responsibility

Even in a flash video (which are not exactly the highest quality videos) you can see a massive difference between the games; in particular Galaxy has (much) more texture detail, far fewer polygonalization artifacts, and much nicer lighting and effects.

Honestly, if you can't tell the difference between these two games I doubt you can (really) tell the difference between a Wii game and an XBox 360 game ...



Galaxy simply looks better, in every way.

Sunshine looks lousy, undetailed and WAAAAY too bright. (it makes Wind Waker look dark for goodness sake)

Galaxy has great textures, great water and great lighting effects, in addition to the pure awesomeness of the game itself.



Top 3 favorite games: Super Mario Galaxy, The Sims 2 (PC), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker