I wonder if Sega realise the potential profit in a remodelled PD trilogy pack, using the current technology as a graphical basis?
They probably do, that’s why they haven’t done it. 
Be nice though.
The third picture might be proof that the sanworm was indeed remodelled since the position of it’s eyes is different. <<
You have to remember, the was no modeling of th head, it was a pretty flat polygon to begin with. Changing the texture you can place the eyes where ever you want.
My prediction is:
1- They change lagi’s model (it looks like he has actual shading now …)
2- enemies are largely untouched , except for textures (maybe some will be shaded now)
3- world has new textures
4- effects have new textures.
The gamespot guys could barely see a difference- probably only us hardcore will even notice it …
Hmm, that’s unfortunately looking quite possible, as IGN now has a preview article up and it’s even vaguer than GameSpot’s:
ps2.ign.com/articles/651/651972p1.html
They say that “The quality of the port is the best we’ve seen in years” and also that “The game is pixilated and the frame rate is nothing to write home about”. I’m not quite sure how that paragraph makes sense. 
The question of whether the frame rate is high or low is annoying; I wish we could see some good footage to be sure for ourselves…
Wait wait!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!This game isn’t going to leave Japan?!??!
1up has a trailer!!Sega Ages : Panzer Dragoon footage :
1up.com/do/download?cId=3143834
Episode 1’s boss fight.The dragon model is very good and the airship also looks well done.But the ruins that fall apart just before the battle look just like 10 years ago.The graphical quality contrast is a little awkward.
You didn’t know? At least imports are easier to get in this age of Japan-to-your-door delivery than they’ve ever been, so it’s not really as bad as it sounds…
[quote=“Gehpnaet”]1up has a trailer!!Sega Ages : Panzer Dragoon footage :
1up.com/do/download?cId=3143834
I’m donwloading…[/quote]
That’s odd, I’ve been trying to check 1UP myself today but I can’t connect to the site for some reason; I noticed that they had their Sega Ages Panzer Dragoon game-page up yesterday evening, but they didn’t have any content on it at that point. Let us know if it’s a different trailer to the last one…
EDIT: Ah, you have. 
I can see the video no problem- I pulled down the big quick-time one.
It looks pretty much what I was saying.
The dragoon looks much better, almost like Orta’s PD1 Lagi. I can’t tell if the shading is baked into the textures or if it is affected by a real-time light.
From the bad video footage, the airship doesn’t look better to me than PD PC (albeit it is very dark footage). I always though the airship on the PC version looked rather good, there doesn’t appear to be a big difference to me.
I agree with the world looking almost worse comments- I think what is odd is the geometry is so low, and the textures have filtering on, causing them to look smeary. Those textures they made were never meant to be seen at high-res or filtered- they were hand-built for that low resolution and lack of filtering, and depended on it to look correct.
If they were going to filter the textures and increase screen res, they would need to re-author them in a way to maintain those characteristics- sort of like keeping them blocky but detailed.
interesting quote:
moonapples.com/lagi/artwork.htm
[quote]XBN: Its funny how the original Panzer Dragoon games on Saturn still look great because those old texturing techniques look a little bit like today’s cel-shading techniques…
Yoshida: If you took at Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2, because of the limitations of Saturn in terms of memory and graphics, the world we created was almost pixel by pixel because we had a team of designers each working on each individual images-for example, we took photos of skin and transferred them to Saturn almost block by block. So we had a totally hand-made product. [/quote]
It seems to be baked, I can see no shading when the dragon moves his head.
[quote=“lagi_webmaster”]
From the bad video footage, the airship doesn’t look better to me than PD PC (albeit it is very dark footage). I always though the airship on the PC version looked rather good, there doesn’t appear to be a big difference to me.[/quote]
The Airship model is exactly the same as in the PC version, isn’t it? The wings beeing just flat polygons. The main structure seems to have shading now, which seems to increase the detail a little.
They should have just increased the texture size by a power of 2 with a pixel repeat. That way they would stay filtered and still be crisp.
I wonder if Mr. Mielke ever brings out the PD feature he planned for the 10th anniversary of PD…
Ah, I’ve checked the video out myself now, and my first reactions were:
-
The new dragon model is rather nice.
-
The sea doesn’t have a ripple effect added to it any more, and thus looks slightly odd when you’re inside the ruin. I’d say that to look right it either needs to ripple, or scroll below you faster (so that its surface texture syncs up with the walls of the structure properly).
A smaller thing I noticed is that the big “pillars” of light that usually come down through the ceiling when the ruins are destroyed don’t appear in this demo; considering that they were primitive mesh transparencies, I’m guessing they’ll either be removed completely or re-done before the game’s release.
As for the battleship model, I’m 99% certain that it’s the same model and textures used in the PC version, with no new elements added; the original textures do give it a very dark underside to give the impression of a shadow, so this (together with the high contrast of the video) might make it look different at first.
I’m also starting to wonder if this is all that was playable of Episode 1 at the show; all of the screenshots and footage we’ve seen have been based around the end of the level and the boss so far…
Anyhow, for any shortcomings the current demo might have, at least it’s only meant to be in a 30% finished state.
EDIT: From the video, it also looks like the camera / viewpoint system will be roughly the same as in the original game (with the ability to select different viewpoints and auto-zooming when you turn to the left / right / back in the default viewpoint), but we’d probably need to see a bit more to confirm if it’s exactly the same…
They said Ep1 and Ep2 were finished.
2 episodes ------------- 30%
X ------------- 100%
X = 200/30 = 6,66666666666666…7
Which roughly translates to the 6 episodes + 1 (the last episodes beeing just a boss really) of the game.
So this probably means they are pretty much done with all they work in these first two episodes which might mean that we won’t see much more tweaking that what we’ve seen so far on these Episodes…which is sad actually.
That occured to me too, but I think it’d be strange for them to say that the demo is of Episodes 1 and 2 and that the demo is 30% finished in the same statement if that meant one and the same thing; 'course, that doesn’t mean it can’t be the case.
(EDIT: I don’t remember any sources confirming that those Episodes are finished… has that been said anywhere?)
I hope you would be right but sadly I think they do mean one and the same thing.It’s better not to be expecting much change anyways unless we get dissappinted in the fututre…
[quote=“Gehpnaet”]
But the ruins that fall apart just before the battle look just like 10 years ago.The graphical quality contrast is a little awkward.[/quote]
For me thats the worst part. The Saturn version features more detail and far better textures. Other than that the port doesn’t look to bad at all. Nice to see/hear the old music is still in place too
Anyone notice the FX almost look like cel shading?
The wierdest thing about the ground is that the columns and walls don’t have transparency, so it doesn’t look like they are submerged, it looks like they are sitting on top of the water.
I agree about the double pixel trick, in photoshop old filters like ‘minimize’ and stuff can do a neat look block style look without being pixel-ly.
[quote=“lagi_webmaster”]The wierdest thing about the ground is that the columns and walls don’t have transparency, so it doesn’t look like they are submerged, it looks like they are sitting on top of the water.
[/quote]
i guess someone in Sega didn’t want the PS2 version to look better than the Saturn one…
[Spam removed.]
this is sad; they should have totally redone the entire game
wait, wasn’t sega ages supposed to be complete remakes of classic games or just touch ups?
^Bit of both. Although a lot of work has gone into it Dragon Force is really just touched up - voice acting, redrawn cut scenes and such add to the overall experience but the game itself remains virtually the same. Most of the differences are in the series graphical, boosted up to the original arcade standard 99% of the time curses Golden Axe in 3D
“Bit of both. Although a lot of work has gone into it Dragon Force is really just touched up - voice acting, redrawn cut scenes and such add to the overall experience but the game itself remains virtually the same. Most of the differences are in the series graphical, boosted up to the original arcade standard 99% of the time curses Golden Axe in 3D”
I hear they’re putting in a lot of work into the pso trilogy (why did they leave out III?). I understand that Sega doesn’t want to ruin the original experience of the game, but why don’t they do COMPLETE remakes?
Phantasy Star 1 & 2 have been out in Japan for some time now (in fact, PS1 was the first game in the Sega Ages series) and a lot of effort has gone into those games. Tweaked battle machanics, completely redrawn, hi res sprites/backgrounds/monsters, and extra content added. Although a “trilogy” pack (of 1,2 and 4) was apparently planned for US release, no official work AFAIK of a Sega Ages edition of either PS 3 or 4 has been announced.