I need you to read this carefully: Use code 50ANYAUSTIN to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first Factor box at bit.ly/4dIBz33! Do you see that? It says “50ANYAUSTIN” and NOT the old promo code, which was different, but I won’t be retyping it so I don’t confuse you. But don’t get confused. Use your eyeballs. Wait I actually just clicked the link myself and it auto-fills the promo code so you should be fine actually. You can relax. Huge thanks to the TH-cam channel GAMEbience for doing God’s work.
This is pretentious, navel-gazing, pseudo-intellectual trash which also has a desperate and irrelevant ad in it because not even you value the purity of your self-aggrandizing "art".
As someone that worked with Source for a while, I think the part you speak about is likely due to the limitations of the Source engine. In the original engine build (based on my work with SDK 2013) most environmental lighting is baked during the build process and not real time, so they have to use a LOT of tricks for some of these sequences to work, and some of these sequences will read like engine hacks because that's effectively what they are. Warning: this is going to get technical. Source engine has tech called a "3D Skybox" where the game engine allows you to place an entity called a sky_camera in a portion of the map and build a tiny diorama of what's in the distance of your level to match up to the rest of the map via reprojection. Think of it like a moving background inside cars on a movie set- to create the illusion of a much bigger world than there otherwise would be. Getting that reprojection aligned so that it remains a logical extension of the background at all times can be very challenging, particularly in a visually busy game like Titanfall 2. And the more you bring up these 2D assets the more I wonder just how much Respawn changed some of the underlying technology when integrating it with the Radiant tools. (This is once again a plea to Respawn to release the Titanfall 2 gcf to the community so we can start building cool shit in a cool universe k thx) So to the wing you point out- they probably did a 2D paint for that wing because they needed it to match up with the lighting for the rest of the scene, as well as the DOF post processing. In the foreground, the dropship is blurred out because we, the viewer, are focusing on the planet exploding. But, since that is a 3D rig, they use env_dof_filter or some modified version of this to blur the foreground to bring the player's focus to the background. If they just use the dropship model wing, this would blur out and ruin the effect. So much visually is going on with all the explosions and angle changes and teleporting the player between 2D and 3D skyboxes that this was likely necessary to get the scene to work. This effect is likely an evolved form of the hack they use at the end of multiplayer rounds when the defeated team gets to their dropshops and jump out of the map- when they FTL jump to orbit and you look over and see the planet, they don't let you for very long because that, too, is a 2D asset they put together to create that effect because of Source's engine limitations and 3D skybox technology. So good eye, AnyAustin! I genuinely didn't think about how sick some of these hacks were until you brought it up. Titanfall 2 is truly a showcase for what is possible with a mature engine and people that know how to use it to its fullest and get around its limitations in creative ways.
thats an interesting theory and might be true, but i can also think of at least 2 other ways they could have gotten around that issue so it might be 2D for a different reason, or for additional reasons as well as this one. i think its also likely it has to do with the parallax effect and its believability when put right next to true 3D perspective. that wing in 3D is a very strong reference point for forced perspective, and i bet having a totally 3D object like that just made the matte painting look way too flat. while ive not done work on the source engine, ive got a fair bit of experience in mixing 2D and 3D animation, including doing these semi-3D layered paintings in combination with fully 3D assets, and its a problem ive dealt with before. slicing and flattening a 3D object to blend it in is a super simple way to make the whole thing work and when austin pointed out the wing my very first thought was "yeah i bet the wing in 3D just looked TOO 3D next to the painting."
They run on a heavily modified version of the Portal 2 engine branch. So including dx11 and dx12, deferred shading, physically based rendering, texture streaming and HDR rendering. And the 3D skybox is interesting to play around with. It isn't just a fixed 1:16 skybox model. Anything in that skybox will appear in the big skybox. I've had fun dropping objects into it in gmod. Place an NPC there and you suddenly have this huge guy outside the window. For the FTL jump after a match I assume it just moves them somewhere under the regular map. A bit like that TTT stargate map, that has two parts, one in the SGC and one on an alien planet, and they're just different areas in the same map, stacked above each other.
I wish more developers would start using source 2(I know this is source "1"). Titanfall 2 looks gorgeous, plays very smooth, and most importantly runs well something that UE only gets one out of three on.
I think details like this are appealing because they show the humanity behind the artwork, like seeing the brushstrokes in a painting or hearing moments of roughness in a singer's voice
As a resident of Hamburg, Germany, i can confirm that that the big diorama we have is super cool and you'd probably love it. It's way bigger and more elaborate than you're probably picturing. It's been in constant construction since like 2001
I think the tangent is the "philosophy" part of the video about "can this be an S tier, if these maps aren't D tiers" because the level he said there is a tangent is the S tier level.
As you said, it's all about the 'vibe'-the feeling of the final scene. Choosing 2D instead of 3D for that last moment was meant to enhance the emotional impact. By limiting your ability to look around and focusing on a 2D image of the destroyed planet, they avoid the distraction of a detailed 3D model that might pull you out of the moment ("Oh, it's just a 2D planet"). Instead, the simplicity of the 2D image directs your attention and emotional focus to the planet itself ("Oh wow, look at that planet").
It's also something that helps emphasize that this was going to happen to a civilized world. Titanfall 2 does something with its "threat" that not every game succeeds with, because the threat is just implied constantly to be "bad thing you must stop". Titanfall 2 explicitly shows you, throughout the game, what this threat looks like, and what it can do. The sky box of the destroyed moon looks cool, but doesn't make sense at first. It's when you get to the facility and listen to the enemy commander's briefing that you get an idea of what is happening on this planet. Now that destroyed moon in the sky makes sense, now the scale of the threat feels that much more real. If you were actually a soldier fighting in this war, and you put these pieces together for yourself, that makes the entire operation that much more important. I really hope these devs get to make another proper Titanfall game again. They clearly still understand what makes these cinematic "corridor" shooters feel good to play, they understand how to sell the scale and scope of a battle (especially if their work on the Jedi games is anything to go by).
Hey 3D environment artist here: the smoke you’re looking at around 6:08 is PROBABLY using something called “flow maps” which is a type of looping animation that works by just using one texture to drive how another texture scrolls along. Usually it’s used for water but it’s also often used in big smoke columns in games.
I’m someone who has approximately zero knowledge about video game programming, if you have the time would you explain how this works like I’m a child? To me it’s like magic how you create entire worlds
That sounds a lot like how certain theatrical lighting effects are done. We'd basically take two wavy lenses that we could slide past each other to create things like water ripples or fire, but it's just looping
@@mobyrichard6298 This video is a good explainer: th-cam.com/video/NBEiTGHLkEo/w-d-xo.html It's a shader where you have one texture with colors corresponding to directions. Those directions then get used to move another texture along a surface.
In the dome level that he left behind, im pretty sure the point he was making is that the backgrounds look intentionally bad, both to enhance the immersion they are technically "Fake" areas made for battle simulations, but also to make the other skyboxes in the game look and feel more "Real" W AnyAustin always making me enjoy the small details in games, such a peak guy
It's perfectly in line with his thought about REQUIRING D-tier boxes to create the S-tier in the first place. This is the only F-tier box in the game, but it's on purpose! OKAY MISTER PHILOSOPHER, @anyaustin Can you fail if you set out with the intention of not succeeding? Or is this F-tier box ACTUALLY the only truly S-tier box in the game, being as meta and thoughtful and intentional and ARTFUL and just downright fuckin cool it is?!?? I look forward to your full-length video essay response, thank you. 🙏🏻
It's sad Titanfall was murdered by poor marketing, releasing it literally the week between CoD Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, with the final nail in the coffin being EA trying to compete with PUBG.
@@friendofp.24 nah I have to disagree. That year was FIRE for FPS. BF1 was great. COD Infinite Warfare was great retrospectively. And of course TF|2 was phenomenal.
AnyAustin. It's incredible how you've completely changed how I play video games now. Thanks for opening my eyes. I've always looked at video games as an art media. But not in the context you've done. I appreciate the perspective.
Titanfall 2 honestly has some crazy attention to detail across the board. For example in the first mission you can listen to radio chatter between the IMC and it mentions a specific unit being sent to a location you go to later on. (the factory level) When you are inevitably attacked there the soldiers are from the same aforementioned unit. Something 99% of players run past immediately but I love that they paid attention to that stuff.
Not even that. Despite the start being a tutorial, from the moment you get control over your character, you can just run ahead. Oh, there is a part telling you how to jump and crouch? No need to wait for the instruction, just go through. There is a part where you get the double jump? You can do it the moment you're in the area and the explanation starts. no need to wait for it to finish. It is a basic tutorial, yes. But you don't have to follow the tutorial if you already know.
the dome level had an intentionally bad artificial skybox to make the actual skyboxes look better. hit the nail? also the time travel level is visually gorgeous, they pulled off the contrast between skyboxes perfectly.
You got it exactly right. I’m impressed. That’s the exact thing I was gonna come back to talk about out but pretended to forget but I didn’t really forget it’s just a running bit I do to make you guys have to think about what the thing might’ve been to trick you into thinking critically about video games because that’s my real goal with this channel
A D-tier skybox to emphasize the S-tier one. A simulation of a distant 3D view, rendered in 2D on a screen closer than the view implies, in a similated game space using 2D billboard trickery very effectively to create a sense of depth on a real screen in my house that I played this game on. A simulation in a simulation. Wheels upon wheels. How clever.
@@any_austinalso, Austin. If you think that the prefab house factory is the best level in Titanfall 2, you are SO real for that. Couldn't agree more. What an incredible and inspired sense of space and motion in that factory - the highlight of a game focused entirely on space and motion.
@@any_austin It's worked for me. I've just recently bought GTA Definitive Trilogy. Played the crap out of those games as a kid, but being older, and especially after watching your videos, I'm keen to look at more subtle, mundane shit. And it has made the experience all the more pleasurable. There's just a lot of engagement, lots of "why is this happening or why is this here?" type of thinking going on.
> I buy a game > The next day any_austin releases a video on this > Has happened multiple times now There's a way to abuse this super power but I'm not sure how Edit: I've decided to buy huniepop
10:15 this is an interesting observation because mountains viewed from a distance irl look kind of surreal, almost like they’re a painted part of a skybox. So skybox mountains in games will capture that feeling much better than 3D modeled ones can capture the feeling of being up close to one
Yeah, being able to see all 3D models with the same clarity no matter the distance can end up looking kind of uncanny. There's no color fade as the air absorbs certain wavelengths over the distance, no haze from heat or water vapor that may be in the air. No effects of refraction or any of the other optical effects the atmosphere can cause at longer distances. While I'm sure effects can be used to imitate these, they still always seem to end up with the 3D model looking far too clear. So a large-scale 3D model can often end up looking more like a diorama than an actual vast landscape.
Literally just thinking this. I’ve lived around tall mountains most of my life and every time I look at them they never look real, they look like a painting even though they are the real deal lol
Oh you cooked with this. okay new idea. Open world game that has LOD that progressively gets more painterly the further away it is despite being photorealistic up close. Now that would be breathtaking.
Over the course of the past few months, you've quickly become one of my favorite channels. I haven't even played the majority of the games in your videos, but it doesn't even matter, they are interesting and amazing anyway!
Any Austin remains one of the best on TH-cam. There is so much we miss in the games we play everyday and I'm glad you're crazy enough to show off the smallest, strangest details that we either sprint by or only stop long enough to say "man" and move on.
That segue into the ad read was perfection. No lie, you might have some of the only ad reads I will sit and listen to solely because of how you lead into them.
yeah thats what I would call it Its used frequently in Half Life 2, like, a lot. the developer commentary recently added to that game discusses it in more detail. I highly recommend playing through it or watching the YT video of it, if you like game design.
@PicardRiket08 Wtf are you talking about I didn’t create the phrase I didn’t claim I did but I don’t know who did and the phrase isn’t agreed upon so the only description I can use to differentiate this phrase from another that means the same thing is that I use this phrase. Bros never heard of quotation marks imagine not knowing what quotation marks mean …Weird.
I have a distinct memory of dropping in the titan for the first time, after putting hundreds of hours into the first game, i always wished i could get the context of being in a titan when its dropped, and when you do in the second game it made me so happy, its such a little thing they didnt have to do, but they did, and it made me feel so proud, like i was truely a pilot!
Halo in general has some of the best skyboxes ever put in games. The Voi portal storm skybox is one of the most technically and artistically accomplished skyboxes I've ever seen. ODST also has some incredible work put into ultimately less than a minute drop sequence at the beginning, including an extremely consistent city layout where you can see all the locations that later missions occur at.
Nothing exists in isolation. Everything exists in context. The impact of a really good section of a game is greater when it's surrounded by a lesser section. Lesser can be less exciting, quieter, slower paced, or just worse. A good game will pace itself appropriately so that the truly awesome sections are surrounded by the correct context to make them hit that much harder - every piece working together to craft an overall experience. It's the reason areas like Blighttown in Dark Souls are integral to the game. You need the misery to know when you're happy.
Also relevant to the current debate on video game ratings and reviewing: ranking everything before people consume it tends to make everything too homogenous and is undesirable in art
This is why I love the slower atmospheric sections that lead up to the boss fights in Ultrakill (And come to think of it, two of the most memorable ones (4-4 and 7-4) are preceded by whole levels that are a bit slower and more measured than usual pacing wise (4-3 and 7-3)) (Also hot take but this is part of why I like the story stuff in Neon White, it breaks up the gameplay perfectly if you’re going for Aces (and I like the vibe more than most people seem to))
Really, really love that factory matte with the moving parts. It feels like watching a classic Star Wars film, or a similar old “auteur” movie. The way it responds to movement, while the lighting remains static because it is still a “matte” (I know it’s a skybox but the function is the same and matte is more cooler and nerdy to say), all with little moving layers of other 2D sprite work, gives it such a beautiful and immersive cinematic feeling. It’s less “realistic” than a true 3D render, but the effect that it gives is so much more atmospheric, and communicates a sense of grandeur and scale beyond what a 3D model ever could. By looking and feeling more “filmy”, it ends up feeling more grounded despite being a less accurate analogue to what being in a real environment would be like. I think a huge part of why this “less realistic” approach is more immersive than a 3D model (beyond just looking goddamn lovely and slightly dreamlike) is because, with matte work, the environment artists are in complete control of exactly what you are seeing and how you are perceiving it at all times. With 3D renders, you have to contend with the limits of different hardware, draw distance, LOD, and just plain bad angles depending on where the player is. With this approach, the scale and feeling it imparts on the player can be tightly controlled no matter what variables are present; the detail is hard coded, the draw distance doesn’t matter because it’s a set distance that isn’t nearly as far as it’s meant to look, and the player can’t get to a spot where things look kinda fucked up and janky because the exact details, the way light hits it, every inch of the texture, is exactly planned out and uniform no matter where you view it from. Absolutely stunning stuff. EDIT: also, to anyone reading this who loves high detail, crunchy res spritework like this, I cannot recommend Amid Evil enough. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, the weapons and huge parts of the environment are all 2D sprites with this exact kind of insane attention to detail, all done in Unreal so you have this really beautiful reactive lighting in the mix.
Plus a 2D skybox takes basically no resources to draw. All the geometry and texturing that you save can be put into making the close parts more detailed.
@@ryanrising2237 Yeah it's the 29th most overwhelmingly positive rated game on Steam. It's well liked and rated, just not nearly as popular as it deserves to be.
@@ryanrising2237 It's because EA made the idiotic decision of releasing Titanfall 2 between Battlefield 1 (a game they also published) and COD: Infinite Warfare
@@ManMannequin No, the game failed because its just really hard to get into. There's a reason new players don't stick around, just look at what happens every time the game goes on sale. This is coming from someone who likes the game
Speaking of super flat backgrounds, the dream sequences of Mass Effect 3 have some crazy low-res PNG trees on the outer edges. They're animated to wobble, making it look like wind is blowing them around, but it's very clear that it's just a single plane image. It made me think of your videos.
Not quite a matte painting type thing, but i know that a lot of multiplayer games, particularly ones from the Xbox 360/PS3 era, would use 2D graphics for distant objects. I know the Christ the Redeemer statue in the distance of Favela in Modern Warfare 2 is a 3D object on top of a 2D mountain. But the one i always remember is Battlefield 3, where the map Kharg Island has an entire hillside covered in 2D trees that is, somehow, not out of bounds, even on the scaled down 24 player version of the map. And yet you could have probably played Battlefield 3 for dozens or even hundreds of hours and never noticed it because the hillside has absolutely no objective, vantage points, anything. its not even on the way to anything. But despite almost 2 years of post-launch updates and content, they never did go back and fix that because despite being a playable area, it serves as little more than set dressing and i have found that to be incredibly endearing for some reason
there's a moment in the final fantasy vii remake where you're climbing up the mako reactor and see the slums below and they have that similar matte painting kind of feel and you better believe i made cloud slide up and down that ladder to keep on lookin'
The way u enjoy games and find artistic ways to love and cherish them have made u one of my favorite ppl to watch on here :) So thank u so much for continuing to share ur vids PLUS ur music with us!! (You made it on my Spotify top 5 artists and I just rly appreciate all the stuff u make :))
At 8:40 i have a theory for how this was done if it’s all a 2d painting. I was looking at the backgrounds in kotor 2 with the in game camera cheat because even for an old game the backgrounds amazed me with the scale of how they looked. And the way they made mountains have different depth despite being a single flat 2d painting was by adding bumps, ridges, and protrusions to the skybox. If you wanna check this out it is in the spot where you first crash land on the top of a snowy mountain a few hours into the game
Such a good video. I agree I love the 2D drawn skyboxes in games like this, not just because they look cool, but also because the artistry behind them is just incredible.
Hate to burst a bubble or something, but that ship is a 3d model. I mean, yes, the optimized everywhere they could, and turned your view of the ship from that spot to an image, since your feet are locked in place it doesn't matter. But no one drew that. It was essentially a screenshot taken from that position and used because it takes way less memory. And the other thing you didn't mention much was projections, which is a 2d image projected across 3d geometry, which is probably what that spot in level 3 you really liked was using.
Austin discovering game dev optimizations 👏 Mostly, it all comes down to resource usage reduction: if the camera angle doesn't change, and the lighting conditions don't change, and the model itself doesn't change, then why spend resources rendering a 3d model every frame, when it's a lot cheaper to render an image? If every player is going to see the same thing, just print that thing onto a texture, and use that, instead of being dynamic about it.
I was going to comment exactly this. Titanfall 2 is an incredibly optimised game, it’s runs buttery smooth at 59.7 fps or whatever on the original Xbox one while looking fantastic and having explosions and lasers. This quality is kept with the skyboxes
The teams doing the skyboxes and the cutscenes would be different from the teams creating gameplay assets, and will use their resources differently according to their priorities and time/money resources (which are usually more restricted than for teams working on the "main" part of the game).
When we're talking about a game with strong art direction 2d assets--or even simple 3d assets with the lighting "baked in"--give you much more control of what your art will look like on the end user's machine.
The 2D ship at the end is almost certainly not hand drawn. It's probably a 2D image rendering of the 3D object. That's how super old games achieved 3D looking graphics while still being constrained to 2D game engines.
Now you just need to play Hollow Knight, Batman Arkham and Bloodborne so you can truly get into the mindset of "Wow that was a great game! I'd love to play the sequel."
I don't currently have a lot of time to be watching youtube videos, but you're the only channel that I'm still watching everything you upload. Seeing a video that you made about one of my favorite games ever in my inbox brought me a big spark of joy. Thank you!
Love that you aren’t afraid to make videos you’re so passionate about even the algorithm won’t like it as much as “where does X lead to in X video game”
Honestly, for me, if everything was equally as good, I would love it because each level is a new experience. I played the hell out of Star Trek Online just observing planets in solar systems I could enter, and they were all 2D models, but at the same time you could fly around them as if they were 3D. When I first started, I spent a good 20 mins just flying around Earth looking at all the countries. It was amazing then and it's still pretty amazing now. I don't personally feel some things have to be bad in order for other things to be good.
When you talk about the "slow/lower quality/worse" parts making the "faster/higher quality/better parts" better, it made me realise why I like Tarantino movies so much. A movie like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is so good because it lulls the viewer into a sense of false security, by showing so much of the relatively mundane lives of the Hollywood Elite. Then right at the end when you are starting to question what this movie is even about (if you didn't know the historical context), you get hit with an incredible sequence. And if you put that same sequence at the end of a movie like John Wick it just would NOT hit the same, because John Wick tries to deliver constant high octane excitement throughout the movie, whereas Tarantino is happy to make you wait for it, all-in-all making the ending so much more impactful. This also applies tomost Tarantino movies including Hateful Eight, Django, Reservoir Dogs, and honestly most of his other movies to a lesser extent.
I think what you talk about is contrast and tone, which shouldn't necesserily tie into quality of things? So everything can be S-tier and still deliver the same experience, well, theoretically. Using Tarantino as example, one of the things people praise Pulp Fiction for is how all the mundane dialogues in the movie are actually fun to watch, not just the dramatic scenes.
You need calm moments between the exiting ones. Doesn't matter if it's action, horror, or comedy. The calm parts let you come down and relax, which makes the next big moment much more impactful.
The use of the 2d hand painted portion of the ship at the end was most likely used to make the transition between the 2d destroyed planet and the 3d interior more seamless, I think that if that exterior underside of the wing was also 3d then the overall effect would have been too jarring on the viewer
You’re getting into some spiritual philosophical thinking. You can’t have light without dark. You can’t have S tier sky boxes without d tier skyboxes. Or in other words, “when everyone’s super, no one is”
Dude, I know you probably get a billion comments like this, but I really appreciate your ability to appreciate the art that was made with love. I often think that I'm the only one who does sometimes, and it really puts a smile on my face to see you and this whole community doing just that. I love it, please keep making great stuff! Also, if you need an editor, just reach out! I'm looking for work and I would love to be a part of bringing greater art and content to more people, just like you're doing. Regardless, I hope to see you on my feed for a long time.
17:44 and that’s what I’m here for, I love videos like this cause it’s so genuine, it’s something you find interesting and you wanna share it in as much detail as possible
There's so much about this that I love because it highlights how video games are made. The skybox behind the player at the start of the level is just solid black? Yeah, why put graphics there, there's literally no reason for the player to turn around and look at it. Does this asset need to be 3d? No? Make it 2d, it saves resources. There's a really low-res 2d graphic used in the environment of the final gameplay moments of the game? That's fine, it's only on screen for mere seconds, and with the amount of movement and the fact that the players focus is elsewhere it doesn't need more detail.
17:04 Hand drawn probably isn't the right word. They likely just rendered that part of the dropship so they could cinematically position it in thiis frame... still really weird though.
I like when games mix the parallaxing 2D images with 3D models. In Halo 2-Reach they all have huge maps with 3D battles and buildings outside the map which help it feels alive but with Halo 4 everything outside the map becomes 2D and even the skybox gets close to the player. It doesn't always work out 😅
YOU need to pkay Space Marine 2. Every single setting and vista looks like a crazy painting. The scale is immense and almost every angle of that game is art. Its beautiful. I feel like it'd be up your ally even if you dont like the 40K lore. Its just really really good looking with a lot of incredible detail.
Any Austin is the type of creator I think we need more of. I love a video that’s goes stupidly in depth on topics, both real world and in media. But the simple quality videos this man puts out just because he saw this little thing and he can’t help but make a video on it because he thought it was so cool even if he can’t fully articulate why it makes him feel that way. It’s something to admire. Always share, talk about the things you enjoys and love. The world will be better for it.
Ok, I recently commented saying I was recommended your channel bc i watch Corridor Crew. Now you brought up matte paintings? Oh yea, Im fully convinced of the corelation. Love the content.
Considering Titanfall 2 was built on the then 12-year-old Source engine (though modified, obviously), I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this cool stuff was due to technical limitations. Like in that last seen, they probably realized that in order to get a sufficiently high-res image of the exploding planet into the game, they could have basically NO geometry or it would crash the engine, so it's flat. These limitations, in my opinion, add a lot to games and you can see that these older games were really pushing the limits of the technology they had to put together a quality experience; we gamers feel that intrinsically. I think that's why so many modern games struggle to capture that sense - they're so tuned that you don't feel like any effort was put into delivering something because all the rough edges have been sanded away even if the games are still pushing the limits, you can't tell, and it makes the games feel sloppy.
your point about games needing "boring" parts is absolutely true. i used to play A LOT of roleplay servers on GTA SA MP mod, and in Garrysmod (not darkrp obviously). when gun fights DO happen, jesus my andrenaline goes crazy! i loved that shit! even in the same game, going to a freeroam or deathmatch server i never got that adrenaline pump from getting into a gunfight because it constantly happens and dying is just a 10 second respawn. but when you're neck deep in a street gang faction where usually you're just hanging out "on your block", and esp if there's a server rule where if you die in roleplay faction war, you have to make a new character (Character Kill), then the stakes are a LOT higher. and oh man, god forbid you killed some tryhards self-insert ERP character they have 1000s of hours on - the forum flame wars were sometimes the best part 💀💀💀 and oh god the nerds who then actually start to believe they're inner city LA gangbangers they get sooo fuckin salty when they lose! gta 5 jimmy de santa type head asses 💀💀
just to add for context, a CK (Character Kill) were a big deal because it's not just a namechange in a lot of "heavy RP" servers. in the more hard core servers you'd wipe ALL your stats/gear/properties/cars/etc and must come up with a new back story etc for justifying your new character's story. you can't just go "this is my new character Any_Austin. He's a cartel member with John Wick tier skillz with weapons and has a super sports car in his garage" it had to be realistic, you're just some guy.
Titanfall 2 is a fantastic game and worth every minute even if you're not playing pvp frontier defense is an option to experience even more of it EA needs to let respawn do their thing and let apex go
@@fearingalma1550 I can yes I also believe that respawn has the ability and potential to make titanfall 3 would it be better than tf 1 or 2 idk and I also know that they've made more than just apex and titanfall but it's ea that released tf2 between bf1 and a cod title.
I really dig this cause i see games as a representation of what it "should really be", if you see a huge fake 2D structure on older games you'll likely think "hell yeah", at the same time if you see a huge actually 3D structure on a modern game you'll think the same... I personally don't see the point of modelling everything and making things realistically if a simple representation of something already gets the point across, and even has a cute quaint feel to it
Extra point: I have this grip with modern games, that they wanna simulate stuff for no actual reason, like, you must have a super computer to run smoke and fog on modern games but it was perfeclty and beautifully faked decades ago already 😭 A big example of this was when i finished 2014's Wolfenstein and started the 2017's right after... the clothes on the first game looked pretty good, the fur on the jackets was almost stylised cause it was a compacted modelled static fur, then when i launched the second game IT SUCKED, the beautiful fur turned into half a dozen strands cause now they wanted to run hair in real time or something, soooo stupid
Hey Austin I just need to tell you that during your Factor promo (Which I was WATCHING might I say), youtube decided to show me two other ads before you were even done talking about factor. Just feel like people making the videos should at least hear about things like this. Idk if it means anything though. And even though those two ads happened less than 100 seconds ago I already forget what either of them were. Anyway now I'll keep watching.
I’ve watched a few of your videos and I got to leave a comment, the style you have is great. I can tell your really passionate about the hidden gems of videos games which I appreciate very much. The nuances and appreciation of the details is so cool. Appreciate your work man
Before you unblur it(or I unpause it), because yes, I won't be playing Titan Fall 2. I do love trying to convince people to go through long setups for very tiny little payoffs. Well not love trying, but those payoffs are so incredible, and I want others to experience them.
0:21 personally I've always disliked the "if you haven't seen it by now, you probably don't care about spoilers." argument. I mean, I was six years old when Breaking Bad started so obviously I didn't watch it at the time, is it then my fault if hypothetically I had got annoyed because somebody spoiled something from it? Of course in this specific instance you're really not spoiling much of anything, and if I really cared that much about Titanfall 2 spoilers I'd just have stopped watching the second I realised what the video is about. Also I'm not saying everything should have spoiler warnings for every media ever created. I just think that's a pretty flimsy way of thinking about it. Sorry for the tangent, enjoyed the video regardless.
I think a lot of the time, if something is older and kind of past its prime in the public consciousness, new people are more likely to get into it if they have the cool stuff spoiled. Although obviously if you're already interested, getting spoiled would suck.
SO TRUE. I hate when people use the age of something to excuse spoiling it. It's a backwards way of thinking when these things are in a permanent medium (for the most part).
Fun fact for you in the future: Parallax mapping is a thing you can do with textures. Even skyrim can have functional parallax mapping. It allows a flat 2D texture to look like it has depths, this is especially useful with brick roads which you obviously do not want to model when you can just slap down the texture with a sort of UV map for where it juts out more. Similar to how you can just phong a texture and now you don't need a separate element for how glossy it is under the light.
Wow, I really agree with you on how you enjoy games that get boring at times. Dredge is one of the best examples I can think of. If there was constant chaos in the water at all times you'd get conditioned to it. But because it is spread out you are always on edge
Living in Hamburg, Germany, hearing the Miniatur Wunderland get mentioned is wild. BTW, they have many more dioramas beside the airport one (most of them are railway dioramas)
Absolutely recommend a visit as well if you are in Hamburg. Probably enough for two days with the amount of sets they've got there if you really want to take it all in.
(I can't tell if you know and are saying this ironically or not, but that's one of Austin's artist names and his music.) Ive been listening to his stuff for a couple years since he uses them for the end and they're so good ❤
I think you brought up a cool thing I've learned about game dev which is that the whole thing is about finding where to put in effort and detail instead of making the whole thing evenly detailed. It's like how Rembrandt would start to lessen the detail near the edges of the frame in his paintings. The choices on what to highlight and what not to becomes it's own art.
2D set pieces need to be implemented into more 3D media like games or animation, one thing recently that has done this beautifully is Arcane which looks and feels like a 3D animation yet all environments and backgrounds are hand painted 2D images and only the characters are 3D and it looks amazing.
As much as I love the "where does the water come from in x game" or "following powerlines in GTA" I was worried you were gonna become a channel that just follows the niche that works for them especially now that its a bigger channel but im glad to see I'm wrong
The things you find interesting are things I never would have given a second thought, but your passion for them is so fresh and charming that I hang on every word. In a landscape where so much content is driven by the need to generate conflict or discourse, your videos feel like a safe escape, a reminder that there's a joy in asking questions just for the sake of learning the answer.
Austin really made it on TH-cam. It took so many years for this channel to succeed despite Austin always having blown the vibe check out of the water + his fondness of little details that often go ignored leading to fun videos. I hope this is what he wants and that this is the kind of content he enjoys making these days, I am definitely enjoying. I still have my grey eggbusters shirt back when those were selling on teespring, which I think is one of 3, maybe 4 youtuber merch things I've ever purchased in my life, in an attempt to show my support to a small, interesting channel that deserved to be seen and succeed. Every new video that pops up warms my heart, because I know it's likely to get its well deserved million views now. I am just so profoundly happy for him.
I have the same fascination for almost every AnyAustin video as Austin has for this little piece of 2D art. I don’t usually watch AnyAustin thinking, “Wooow! Skyboxes!” or “Where do those cables lead?” Instead, I watch almost exclusively because Austin is so passionate about things that are easy to overlook, and that enthusiasm constantly inspires me to pay closer attention to those kinds of small details when I’m playing and to engage with them more deeply.
![เปิดบ้าน โคตรสวย ป๋องกพล รู้จักตั้งนาน เพิ่งรู้ว่ารวย!!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tmgCF_2HfYI/mqdefault.jpg)
I need you to read this carefully: Use code 50ANYAUSTIN to get 50% OFF plus free shipping on your first Factor box at bit.ly/4dIBz33!
Do you see that? It says “50ANYAUSTIN” and NOT the old promo code, which was different, but I won’t be retyping it so I don’t confuse you. But don’t get confused. Use your eyeballs. Wait I actually just clicked the link myself and it auto-fills the promo code so you should be fine actually. You can relax.
Huge thanks to the TH-cam channel GAMEbience for doing God’s work.
Austin you forgot to go back on the tangent about the fake hunger game box room skybox, I really wanted to hear about it 😢
its been a while but i think Sekiro also uses 2d cutouts like this
@@devinosland359Don't worry he'll remember next time for sure.
Scam
This is pretentious, navel-gazing, pseudo-intellectual trash which also has a desperate and irrelevant ad in it because not even you value the purity of your self-aggrandizing "art".
TITANFALL 2 MENTIONED!!!!!
We eating good tonight, Pilots
Titanfall 3 confirmed!
Doing my part to get them to make 3
RAHHHHHHHHH
@@any_austin So real of you, my man
The sunshine wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for the rain
What happens when you get both at the same time?
@@TheVicara rainbow. Duh
@@TheVicar Well you get _Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen the Rain_
That's one for the earholes.
As someone that worked with Source for a while, I think the part you speak about is likely due to the limitations of the Source engine. In the original engine build (based on my work with SDK 2013) most environmental lighting is baked during the build process and not real time, so they have to use a LOT of tricks for some of these sequences to work, and some of these sequences will read like engine hacks because that's effectively what they are. Warning: this is going to get technical.
Source engine has tech called a "3D Skybox" where the game engine allows you to place an entity called a sky_camera in a portion of the map and build a tiny diorama of what's in the distance of your level to match up to the rest of the map via reprojection. Think of it like a moving background inside cars on a movie set- to create the illusion of a much bigger world than there otherwise would be. Getting that reprojection aligned so that it remains a logical extension of the background at all times can be very challenging, particularly in a visually busy game like Titanfall 2. And the more you bring up these 2D assets the more I wonder just how much Respawn changed some of the underlying technology when integrating it with the Radiant tools. (This is once again a plea to Respawn to release the Titanfall 2 gcf to the community so we can start building cool shit in a cool universe k thx)
So to the wing you point out- they probably did a 2D paint for that wing because they needed it to match up with the lighting for the rest of the scene, as well as the DOF post processing. In the foreground, the dropship is blurred out because we, the viewer, are focusing on the planet exploding. But, since that is a 3D rig, they use env_dof_filter or some modified version of this to blur the foreground to bring the player's focus to the background. If they just use the dropship model wing, this would blur out and ruin the effect. So much visually is going on with all the explosions and angle changes and teleporting the player between 2D and 3D skyboxes that this was likely necessary to get the scene to work. This effect is likely an evolved form of the hack they use at the end of multiplayer rounds when the defeated team gets to their dropshops and jump out of the map- when they FTL jump to orbit and you look over and see the planet, they don't let you for very long because that, too, is a 2D asset they put together to create that effect because of Source's engine limitations and 3D skybox technology.
So good eye, AnyAustin! I genuinely didn't think about how sick some of these hacks were until you brought it up. Titanfall 2 is truly a showcase for what is possible with a mature engine and people that know how to use it to its fullest and get around its limitations in creative ways.
Great write up
Came to the comments to see if someone actually knew why. I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. Thanks!
thats an interesting theory and might be true, but i can also think of at least 2 other ways they could have gotten around that issue so it might be 2D for a different reason, or for additional reasons as well as this one.
i think its also likely it has to do with the parallax effect and its believability when put right next to true 3D perspective. that wing in 3D is a very strong reference point for forced perspective, and i bet having a totally 3D object like that just made the matte painting look way too flat.
while ive not done work on the source engine, ive got a fair bit of experience in mixing 2D and 3D animation, including doing these semi-3D layered paintings in combination with fully 3D assets, and its a problem ive dealt with before. slicing and flattening a 3D object to blend it in is a super simple way to make the whole thing work and when austin pointed out the wing my very first thought was "yeah i bet the wing in 3D just looked TOO 3D next to the painting."
They run on a heavily modified version of the Portal 2 engine branch. So including dx11 and dx12, deferred shading, physically based rendering, texture streaming and HDR rendering.
And the 3D skybox is interesting to play around with. It isn't just a fixed 1:16 skybox model. Anything in that skybox will appear in the big skybox.
I've had fun dropping objects into it in gmod. Place an NPC there and you suddenly have this huge guy outside the window.
For the FTL jump after a match I assume it just moves them somewhere under the regular map. A bit like that TTT stargate map, that has two parts, one in the SGC and one on an alien planet, and they're just different areas in the same map, stacked above each other.
I wish more developers would start using source 2(I know this is source "1"). Titanfall 2 looks gorgeous, plays very smooth, and most importantly runs well something that UE only gets one out of three on.
I think details like this are appealing because they show the humanity behind the artwork, like seeing the brushstrokes in a painting or hearing moments of roughness in a singer's voice
disappointed never went back to talk about the dome level.
Another Titanfall 2 video 🗣🗣🔥🔥
We want dome.
Never forget
I came here to say this
Me too! Make wit da dome, kid!
As a resident of Hamburg, Germany, i can confirm that that the big diorama we have is super cool and you'd probably love it. It's way bigger and more elaborate than you're probably picturing. It's been in constant construction since like 2001
He never finished the tangent from 9:00
THIS KILLS ME
I think the tangent is the "philosophy" part of the video about "can this be an S tier, if these maps aren't D tiers" because the level he said there is a tangent is the S tier level.
He promised!! :(
I think the Patreon video might be where he finishes that tangent?
fuck
As you said, it's all about the 'vibe'-the feeling of the final scene. Choosing 2D instead of 3D for that last moment was meant to enhance the emotional impact. By limiting your ability to look around and focusing on a 2D image of the destroyed planet, they avoid the distraction of a detailed 3D model that might pull you out of the moment ("Oh, it's just a 2D planet"). Instead, the simplicity of the 2D image directs your attention and emotional focus to the planet itself ("Oh wow, look at that planet").
Also budget
It's also something that helps emphasize that this was going to happen to a civilized world.
Titanfall 2 does something with its "threat" that not every game succeeds with, because the threat is just implied constantly to be "bad thing you must stop". Titanfall 2 explicitly shows you, throughout the game, what this threat looks like, and what it can do. The sky box of the destroyed moon looks cool, but doesn't make sense at first.
It's when you get to the facility and listen to the enemy commander's briefing that you get an idea of what is happening on this planet. Now that destroyed moon in the sky makes sense, now the scale of the threat feels that much more real. If you were actually a soldier fighting in this war, and you put these pieces together for yourself, that makes the entire operation that much more important.
I really hope these devs get to make another proper Titanfall game again. They clearly still understand what makes these cinematic "corridor" shooters feel good to play, they understand how to sell the scale and scope of a battle (especially if their work on the Jedi games is anything to go by).
Hey 3D environment artist here: the smoke you’re looking at around 6:08 is PROBABLY using something called “flow maps” which is a type of looping animation that works by just using one texture to drive how another texture scrolls along. Usually it’s used for water but it’s also often used in big smoke columns in games.
I’m someone who has approximately zero knowledge about video game programming, if you have the time would you explain how this works like I’m a child? To me it’s like magic how you create entire worlds
That sounds a lot like how certain theatrical lighting effects are done. We'd basically take two wavy lenses that we could slide past each other to create things like water ripples or fire, but it's just looping
@@mobyrichard6298 This video is a good explainer: th-cam.com/video/NBEiTGHLkEo/w-d-xo.html
It's a shader where you have one texture with colors corresponding to directions. Those directions then get used to move another texture along a surface.
I was wondering how this worked. Thanks!
Guessing that factory one is a depth map, then? I've worked with those in Wallpaper Engine before 😅
In the dome level that he left behind, im pretty sure the point he was making is that the backgrounds look intentionally bad, both to enhance the immersion they are technically "Fake" areas made for battle simulations, but also to make the other skyboxes in the game look and feel more "Real"
W AnyAustin always making me enjoy the small details in games, such a peak guy
It's perfectly in line with his thought about REQUIRING D-tier boxes to create the S-tier in the first place. This is the only F-tier box in the game, but it's on purpose!
OKAY MISTER PHILOSOPHER, @anyaustin Can you fail if you set out with the intention of not succeeding? Or is this F-tier box ACTUALLY the only truly S-tier box in the game, being as meta and thoughtful and intentional and ARTFUL and just downright fuckin cool it is?!?? I look forward to your full-length video essay response, thank you. 🙏🏻
It's sad Titanfall was murdered by poor marketing, releasing it literally the week between CoD Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1, with the final nail in the coffin being EA trying to compete with PUBG.
Which is both funny and sad since TIF2 is easily better than all of those.
(people are gonna be arguing about this in the comments now aren't they)
@@st.altair4936no argument here. TF|2 is superior.
I was playing multiplayer just this last weekend.
@@st.altair4936Battlefield 1 is actually good. It's COD that sucks.
@@friendofp.24 nah I have to disagree. That year was FIRE for FPS. BF1 was great. COD Infinite Warfare was great retrospectively. And of course TF|2 was phenomenal.
People really love to talk about this shit ad nauseum instead of actually *playing the video game*.
AnyAustin. It's incredible how you've completely changed how I play video games now. Thanks for opening my eyes. I've always looked at video games as an art media. But not in the context you've done. I appreciate the perspective.
Titanfall 2 honestly has some crazy attention to detail across the board. For example in the first mission you can listen to radio chatter between the IMC and it mentions a specific unit being sent to a location you go to later on. (the factory level) When you are inevitably attacked there the soldiers are from the same aforementioned unit. Something 99% of players run past immediately but I love that they paid attention to that stuff.
tho as a military hobbyist I’d rate their comms protocol as mid >:T
Not even that. Despite the start being a tutorial, from the moment you get control over your character, you can just run ahead.
Oh, there is a part telling you how to jump and crouch? No need to wait for the instruction, just go through.
There is a part where you get the double jump? You can do it the moment you're in the area and the explanation starts. no need to wait for it to finish.
It is a basic tutorial, yes. But you don't have to follow the tutorial if you already know.
9:28 The year of Luigi indeed... 💀
the dome level had an intentionally bad artificial skybox to make the actual skyboxes look better. hit the nail?
also the time travel level is visually gorgeous, they pulled off the contrast between skyboxes perfectly.
You got it exactly right. I’m impressed.
That’s the exact thing I was gonna come back to talk about out but pretended to forget but I didn’t really forget it’s just a running bit I do to make you guys have to think about what the thing might’ve been to trick you into thinking critically about video games because that’s my real goal with this channel
A D-tier skybox to emphasize the S-tier one. A simulation of a distant 3D view, rendered in 2D on a screen closer than the view implies, in a similated game space using 2D billboard trickery very effectively to create a sense of depth on a real screen in my house that I played this game on.
A simulation in a simulation. Wheels upon wheels. How clever.
@@any_austinalso, Austin. If you think that the prefab house factory is the best level in Titanfall 2, you are SO real for that. Couldn't agree more. What an incredible and inspired sense of space and motion in that factory - the highlight of a game focused entirely on space and motion.
@@any_austin It's worked for me. I've just recently bought GTA Definitive Trilogy. Played the crap out of those games as a kid, but being older, and especially after watching your videos, I'm keen to look at more subtle, mundane shit. And it has made the experience all the more pleasurable. There's just a lot of engagement, lots of "why is this happening or why is this here?" type of thinking going on.
@@any_austin plot twist: he actually did just forget
> I buy a game
> The next day any_austin releases a video on this
> Has happened multiple times now
There's a way to abuse this super power but I'm not sure how
Edit: I've decided to buy huniepop
buy outer wilds next ill paypal you.
@SgtJet3 already played it. All time favorite game ❤️
10:15 this is an interesting observation because mountains viewed from a distance irl look kind of surreal, almost like they’re a painted part of a skybox. So skybox mountains in games will capture that feeling much better than 3D modeled ones can capture the feeling of being up close to one
Yeah, being able to see all 3D models with the same clarity no matter the distance can end up looking kind of uncanny. There's no color fade as the air absorbs certain wavelengths over the distance, no haze from heat or water vapor that may be in the air. No effects of refraction or any of the other optical effects the atmosphere can cause at longer distances. While I'm sure effects can be used to imitate these, they still always seem to end up with the 3D model looking far too clear. So a large-scale 3D model can often end up looking more like a diorama than an actual vast landscape.
Literally just thinking this. I’ve lived around tall mountains most of my life and every time I look at them they never look real, they look like a painting even though they are the real deal lol
Oh you cooked with this. okay new idea. Open world game that has LOD that progressively gets more painterly the further away it is despite being photorealistic up close. Now that would be breathtaking.
@@reptarien Thats just UE5 with Lumen
Over the course of the past few months, you've quickly become one of my favorite channels. I haven't even played the majority of the games in your videos, but it doesn't even matter, they are interesting and amazing anyway!
Any Austin remains one of the best on TH-cam. There is so much we miss in the games we play everyday and I'm glad you're crazy enough to show off the smallest, strangest details that we either sprint by or only stop long enough to say "man" and move on.
No other TH-camr i reference more in day-to-day conversation. He points out such fun things!
That segue into the ad read was perfection. No lie, you might have some of the only ad reads I will sit and listen to solely because of how you lead into them.
15:18 I like to call it “Breathing Room” it lets you take a break from constant action and appreciate what you just experienced
yeah thats what I would call it
Its used frequently in Half Life 2, like, a lot. the developer commentary recently added to that game discusses it in more detail. I highly recommend playing through it or watching the YT video of it, if you like game design.
Wow, someone that actually thinks they invented the phrase "breathing room"... Weird.
@PicardRiket08 Wtf are you talking about I didn’t create the phrase I didn’t claim I did but I don’t know who did and the phrase isn’t agreed upon so the only description I can use to differentiate this phrase from another that means the same thing is that I use this phrase.
Bros never heard of quotation marks imagine not knowing what quotation marks mean …Weird.
I have a distinct memory of dropping in the titan for the first time, after putting hundreds of hours into the first game, i always wished i could get the context of being in a titan when its dropped, and when you do in the second game it made me so happy, its such a little thing they didnt have to do, but they did, and it made me feel so proud, like i was truely a pilot!
Halo: Reach has some great 2d backgrounds and moments during scenes. Like the opening intro to the game
Halo 2 also has some amazing ones
Halo in general has some of the best skyboxes ever put in games.
The Voi portal storm skybox is one of the most technically and artistically accomplished skyboxes I've ever seen.
ODST also has some incredible work put into ultimately less than a minute drop sequence at the beginning, including an extremely consistent city layout where you can see all the locations that later missions occur at.
@@glitchvid Agreed, this whole time I was just thinking about halo
Ur videos just keep getting better and better
TITANFALL 2 MENTIONED!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!
Nothing exists in isolation. Everything exists in context.
The impact of a really good section of a game is greater when it's surrounded by a lesser section. Lesser can be less exciting, quieter, slower paced, or just worse. A good game will pace itself appropriately so that the truly awesome sections are surrounded by the correct context to make them hit that much harder - every piece working together to craft an overall experience. It's the reason areas like Blighttown in Dark Souls are integral to the game. You need the misery to know when you're happy.
Also relevant to the current debate on video game ratings and reviewing: ranking everything before people consume it tends to make everything too homogenous and is undesirable in art
This is why I love the slower atmospheric sections that lead up to the boss fights in Ultrakill
(And come to think of it, two of the most memorable ones (4-4 and 7-4) are preceded by whole levels that are a bit slower and more measured than usual pacing wise (4-3 and 7-3))
(Also hot take but this is part of why I like the story stuff in Neon White, it breaks up the gameplay perfectly if you’re going for Aces (and I like the vibe more than most people seem to))
Really, really love that factory matte with the moving parts. It feels like watching a classic Star Wars film, or a similar old “auteur” movie. The way it responds to movement, while the lighting remains static because it is still a “matte” (I know it’s a skybox but the function is the same and matte is more cooler and nerdy to say), all with little moving layers of other 2D sprite work, gives it such a beautiful and immersive cinematic feeling. It’s less “realistic” than a true 3D render, but the effect that it gives is so much more atmospheric, and communicates a sense of grandeur and scale beyond what a 3D model ever could. By looking and feeling more “filmy”, it ends up feeling more grounded despite being a less accurate analogue to what being in a real environment would be like.
I think a huge part of why this “less realistic” approach is more immersive than a 3D model (beyond just looking goddamn lovely and slightly dreamlike) is because, with matte work, the environment artists are in complete control of exactly what you are seeing and how you are perceiving it at all times. With 3D renders, you have to contend with the limits of different hardware, draw distance, LOD, and just plain bad angles depending on where the player is. With this approach, the scale and feeling it imparts on the player can be tightly controlled no matter what variables are present; the detail is hard coded, the draw distance doesn’t matter because it’s a set distance that isn’t nearly as far as it’s meant to look, and the player can’t get to a spot where things look kinda fucked up and janky because the exact details, the way light hits it, every inch of the texture, is exactly planned out and uniform no matter where you view it from.
Absolutely stunning stuff.
EDIT: also, to anyone reading this who loves high detail, crunchy res spritework like this, I cannot recommend Amid Evil enough. It’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, the weapons and huge parts of the environment are all 2D sprites with this exact kind of insane attention to detail, all done in Unreal so you have this really beautiful reactive lighting in the mix.
Plus a 2D skybox takes basically no resources to draw. All the geometry and texturing that you save can be put into making the close parts more detailed.
Local man discovers hardware optimization, goes insane
I loved Titanfall 2, and 1. The campaign in 2 was super underrated.
That one button prompt in that one level has stuck with me 8 years later
It was very highly praised, I think it was appropriately rated. However, it didn’t sell as well as it could’ve, and that’s a bummer.
@@ryanrising2237 Yeah it's the 29th most overwhelmingly positive rated game on Steam.
It's well liked and rated, just not nearly as popular as it deserves to be.
@@ryanrising2237 It's because EA made the idiotic decision of releasing Titanfall 2 between Battlefield 1 (a game they also published) and COD: Infinite Warfare
@@ManMannequin No, the game failed because its just really hard to get into. There's a reason new players don't stick around, just look at what happens every time the game goes on sale. This is coming from someone who likes the game
Speaking of super flat backgrounds, the dream sequences of Mass Effect 3 have some crazy low-res PNG trees on the outer edges. They're animated to wobble, making it look like wind is blowing them around, but it's very clear that it's just a single plane image. It made me think of your videos.
6:18 I have > 1k hrs in Titanfall 2 and I have never turned around on the first mission. I didn’t even realize it was just black 0.0
Not quite a matte painting type thing, but i know that a lot of multiplayer games, particularly ones from the Xbox 360/PS3 era, would use 2D graphics for distant objects. I know the Christ the Redeemer statue in the distance of Favela in Modern Warfare 2 is a 3D object on top of a 2D mountain. But the one i always remember is Battlefield 3, where the map Kharg Island has an entire hillside covered in 2D trees that is, somehow, not out of bounds, even on the scaled down 24 player version of the map. And yet you could have probably played Battlefield 3 for dozens or even hundreds of hours and never noticed it because the hillside has absolutely no objective, vantage points, anything. its not even on the way to anything. But despite almost 2 years of post-launch updates and content, they never did go back and fix that because despite being a playable area, it serves as little more than set dressing and i have found that to be incredibly endearing for some reason
there's a moment in the final fantasy vii remake where you're climbing up the mako reactor and see the slums below and they have that similar matte painting kind of feel and you better believe i made cloud slide up and down that ladder to keep on lookin'
The way u enjoy games and find artistic ways to love and cherish them have made u one of my favorite ppl to watch on here :) So thank u so much for continuing to share ur vids PLUS ur music with us!! (You made it on my Spotify top 5 artists and I just rly appreciate all the stuff u make :))
The hand wavy use of the censoring bleep is my favourite running gag on this channel lmao
At 8:40 i have a theory for how this was done if it’s all a 2d painting. I was looking at the backgrounds in kotor 2 with the in game camera cheat because even for an old game the backgrounds amazed me with the scale of how they looked. And the way they made mountains have different depth despite being a single flat 2d painting was by adding bumps, ridges, and protrusions to the skybox. If you wanna check this out it is in the spot where you first crash land on the top of a snowy mountain a few hours into the game
Using more 2D art in 3D games is actually a great idea. These skyboxes look like playable concept art.
You have got to be one of the most interesting youtubers I've seen ever. Your videos are actually amazing and enjoyable to watch.
13:55 idk if that was on purpose but I giggled
It is
He's recently had a joke where he censored himself saying "fuck" by playing a clip of his friend saying "fuck"
Same
Such a good video. I agree I love the 2D drawn skyboxes in games like this, not just because they look cool, but also because the artistry behind them is just incredible.
The background of the multiplayer maps might be of interest to you, like the giant angel statue on angel city
Nice to see appreciation for matte paintings. I recently replayed Halo Reach and the matte paintings in that game are beautiful as well.
Prediction: it’s about lakes and rivers
It’s actually the exact opposite. It’s skyboxes
it was about skies
It was about mountains and skies 😔
I was gonna guess skyboxes but the replies already confirmed it so my guess is no longer valid
an older running theme on this channel
Hate to burst a bubble or something, but that ship is a 3d model. I mean, yes, the optimized everywhere they could, and turned your view of the ship from that spot to an image, since your feet are locked in place it doesn't matter. But no one drew that. It was essentially a screenshot taken from that position and used because it takes way less memory. And the other thing you didn't mention much was projections, which is a 2d image projected across 3d geometry, which is probably what that spot in level 3 you really liked was using.
Austin discovering game dev optimizations 👏
Mostly, it all comes down to resource usage reduction: if the camera angle doesn't change, and the lighting conditions don't change, and the model itself doesn't change, then why spend resources rendering a 3d model every frame, when it's a lot cheaper to render an image? If every player is going to see the same thing, just print that thing onto a texture, and use that, instead of being dynamic about it.
I was going to comment exactly this. Titanfall 2 is an incredibly optimised game, it’s runs buttery smooth at 59.7 fps or whatever on the original Xbox one while looking fantastic and having explosions and lasers.
This quality is kept with the skyboxes
yup. Drawing a million triangles is hard. Drawing the cube root of a million triangles is much less hard.
the model of the ship from the end is also probably relatively low-poly for how much more of the screen it would be taking up
The teams doing the skyboxes and the cutscenes would be different from the teams creating gameplay assets, and will use their resources differently according to their priorities and time/money resources (which are usually more restricted than for teams working on the "main" part of the game).
When we're talking about a game with strong art direction 2d assets--or even simple 3d assets with the lighting "baked in"--give you much more control of what your art will look like on the end user's machine.
The 2D ship at the end is almost certainly not hand drawn. It's probably a 2D image rendering of the 3D object. That's how super old games achieved 3D looking graphics while still being constrained to 2D game engines.
I JUST PLAYED TITANFALL 2 FOR THE FIRST TIME! WHAT CRAZY TIMING
I’M GLAD YOU FINALLY EXPERIENCED IT, WHAT A GREAT GAME
Great game, hope you liked it
Now you just need to play Hollow Knight, Batman Arkham and Bloodborne so you can truly get into the mindset of "Wow that was a great game! I'd love to play the sequel."
glorp
I mean it is on sale for like three bucks on Steam, I bet a lot of folks are sharing that experience right now.
I just got tricked into watching a Skybox Appreciation video
yes you did
@any_austin joke's on you. I watched the other ones on purpose.
ANYAUSTIN GOING TITANFALL MODE??? IM HERE. I SPRINTED
I wallran 🗣🗣🔥🔥
I grappled
I'd vortex grenade jump here if I've ever figured out how to do it consistently
@@Addsomehappy I spent my first 2 hours in the game mastering that to get 1st place in the tutorial lol
oh this is a NEW video. i've been binging your account for the last week, so this is a nice surprise. keep it up brother!!
My phone buffered here 3:55 and I thought he was doing some kind of silent subversion bit
Something i love about the virtual skyboxes is when you look down when you on the wall and see down the abyss
I love how Any Austin pays attention to the stuff that most people don’t. I have a whole new perspective on games now
I don't currently have a lot of time to be watching youtube videos, but you're the only channel that I'm still watching everything you upload. Seeing a video that you made about one of my favorite games ever in my inbox brought me a big spark of joy. Thank you!
Love that you aren’t afraid to make videos you’re so passionate about even the algorithm won’t like it as much as “where does X lead to in X video game”
Honestly, for me, if everything was equally as good, I would love it because each level is a new experience. I played the hell out of Star Trek Online just observing planets in solar systems I could enter, and they were all 2D models, but at the same time you could fly around them as if they were 3D. When I first started, I spent a good 20 mins just flying around Earth looking at all the countries. It was amazing then and it's still pretty amazing now. I don't personally feel some things have to be bad in order for other things to be good.
When you talk about the "slow/lower quality/worse" parts making the "faster/higher quality/better parts" better, it made me realise why I like Tarantino movies so much.
A movie like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is so good because it lulls the viewer into a sense of false security, by showing so much of the relatively mundane lives of the Hollywood Elite. Then right at the end when you are starting to question what this movie is even about (if you didn't know the historical context), you get hit with an incredible sequence. And if you put that same sequence at the end of a movie like John Wick it just would NOT hit the same, because John Wick tries to deliver constant high octane excitement throughout the movie, whereas Tarantino is happy to make you wait for it, all-in-all making the ending so much more impactful.
This also applies tomost Tarantino movies including Hateful Eight, Django, Reservoir Dogs, and honestly most of his other movies to a lesser extent.
I think what you talk about is contrast and tone, which shouldn't necesserily tie into quality of things? So everything can be S-tier and still deliver the same experience, well, theoretically.
Using Tarantino as example, one of the things people praise Pulp Fiction for is how all the mundane dialogues in the movie are actually fun to watch, not just the dramatic scenes.
You need calm moments between the exiting ones.
Doesn't matter if it's action, horror, or comedy. The calm parts let you come down and relax, which makes the next big moment much more impactful.
The use of the 2d hand painted portion of the ship at the end was most likely used to make the transition between the 2d destroyed planet and the 3d interior more seamless, I think that if that exterior underside of the wing was also 3d then the overall effect would have been too jarring on the viewer
Someday when I'm about to die and my life flashes before my eyes.... I hope the skyboxes are nice.
You should definitely look at the multiplayer maps in detail, they’re all pretty in their own way
You’re getting into some spiritual philosophical thinking. You can’t have light without dark. You can’t have S tier sky boxes without d tier skyboxes. Or in other words, “when everyone’s super, no one is”
Dude, I know you probably get a billion comments like this, but I really appreciate your ability to appreciate the art that was made with love. I often think that I'm the only one who does sometimes, and it really puts a smile on my face to see you and this whole community doing just that. I love it, please keep making great stuff!
Also, if you need an editor, just reach out! I'm looking for work and I would love to be a part of bringing greater art and content to more people, just like you're doing. Regardless, I hope to see you on my feed for a long time.
My favorite song of yours. Couldn’t tell you why but the can cracking sound just goes so hard
17:44 and that’s what I’m here for, I love videos like this cause it’s so genuine, it’s something you find interesting and you wanna share it in as much detail as possible
"Where do the electric lines end up in Red Dead Redemption 2 ?"
There's so much about this that I love because it highlights how video games are made.
The skybox behind the player at the start of the level is just solid black? Yeah, why put graphics there, there's literally no reason for the player to turn around and look at it.
Does this asset need to be 3d? No? Make it 2d, it saves resources.
There's a really low-res 2d graphic used in the environment of the final gameplay moments of the game? That's fine, it's only on screen for mere seconds, and with the amount of movement and the fact that the players focus is elsewhere it doesn't need more detail.
17:04 Hand drawn probably isn't the right word. They likely just rendered that part of the dropship so they could cinematically position it in thiis frame... still really weird though.
I like when games mix the parallaxing 2D images with 3D models. In Halo 2-Reach they all have huge maps with 3D battles and buildings outside the map which help it feels alive but with Halo 4 everything outside the map becomes 2D and even the skybox gets close to the player. It doesn't always work out 😅
YOU need to pkay Space Marine 2. Every single setting and vista looks like a crazy painting. The scale is immense and almost every angle of that game is art. Its beautiful. I feel like it'd be up your ally even if you dont like the 40K lore. Its just really really good looking with a lot of incredible detail.
Space Marine 2 to me is the first game that actually feels like what I imagined "next gen" would be like back in the Xbox 360 days.
@@erickschusterdeoliveira2662 Im not sure if thats an insult or not. lol
@@wretchedslippage3255you _do_ play as a giant fridge-man, but thankfully they have the technology to keep him from accidentally adhering to cover
"It's just cool" And things being just cool is the best. Love your vids for showing us the "Just cool" things you find. Love it.
I know nothing about Titanfall 2 but I'm here for the signature Any Austin dry humor
Any Austin is the type of creator I think we need more of. I love a video that’s goes stupidly in depth on topics, both real world and in media. But the simple quality videos this man puts out just because he saw this little thing and he can’t help but make a video on it because he thought it was so cool even if he can’t fully articulate why it makes him feel that way. It’s something to admire. Always share, talk about the things you enjoys and love. The world will be better for it.
Ok, I recently commented saying I was recommended your channel bc i watch Corridor Crew. Now you brought up matte paintings? Oh yea, Im fully convinced of the corelation. Love the content.
Considering Titanfall 2 was built on the then 12-year-old Source engine (though modified, obviously), I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this cool stuff was due to technical limitations. Like in that last seen, they probably realized that in order to get a sufficiently high-res image of the exploding planet into the game, they could have basically NO geometry or it would crash the engine, so it's flat. These limitations, in my opinion, add a lot to games and you can see that these older games were really pushing the limits of the technology they had to put together a quality experience; we gamers feel that intrinsically.
I think that's why so many modern games struggle to capture that sense - they're so tuned that you don't feel like any effort was put into delivering something because all the rough edges have been sanded away even if the games are still pushing the limits, you can't tell, and it makes the games feel sloppy.
rip titanfall :(
Never forget
Titanfall 3 next year guys don't lose -cope- hope 💪
your point about games needing "boring" parts is absolutely true. i used to play A LOT of roleplay servers on GTA SA MP mod, and in Garrysmod (not darkrp obviously). when gun fights DO happen, jesus my andrenaline goes crazy! i loved that shit! even in the same game, going to a freeroam or deathmatch server i never got that adrenaline pump from getting into a gunfight because it constantly happens and dying is just a 10 second respawn.
but when you're neck deep in a street gang faction where usually you're just hanging out "on your block", and esp if there's a server rule where if you die in roleplay faction war, you have to make a new character (Character Kill), then the stakes are a LOT higher. and oh man, god forbid you killed some tryhards self-insert ERP character they have 1000s of hours on - the forum flame wars were sometimes the best part
💀💀💀 and oh god the nerds who then actually start to believe they're inner city LA gangbangers they get sooo fuckin salty when they lose! gta 5 jimmy de santa type head asses 💀💀
just to add for context, a CK (Character Kill) were a big deal because it's not just a namechange in a lot of "heavy RP" servers. in the more hard core servers you'd wipe ALL your stats/gear/properties/cars/etc and must come up with a new back story etc for justifying your new character's story. you can't just go "this is my new character Any_Austin. He's a cartel member with John Wick tier skillz with weapons and has a super sports car in his garage" it had to be realistic, you're just some guy.
Titanfall 2 is a fantastic game and worth every minute even if you're not playing pvp frontier defense is an option to experience even more of it EA needs to let respawn do their thing and let apex go
Respawn actually *chose* to make Apex over TF3 if you can believe that
@@fearingalma1550 I can yes I also believe that respawn has the ability and potential to make titanfall 3 would it be better than tf 1 or 2 idk and I also know that they've made more than just apex and titanfall but it's ea that released tf2 between bf1 and a cod title.
I really dig this cause i see games as a representation of what it "should really be", if you see a huge fake 2D structure on older games you'll likely think "hell yeah", at the same time if you see a huge actually 3D structure on a modern game you'll think the same... I personally don't see the point of modelling everything and making things realistically if a simple representation of something already gets the point across, and even has a cute quaint feel to it
Extra point: I have this grip with modern games, that they wanna simulate stuff for no actual reason, like, you must have a super computer to run smoke and fog on modern games but it was perfeclty and beautifully faked decades ago already 😭
A big example of this was when i finished 2014's Wolfenstein and started the 2017's right after... the clothes on the first game looked pretty good, the fur on the jackets was almost stylised cause it was a compacted modelled static fur, then when i launched the second game IT SUCKED, the beautiful fur turned into half a dozen strands cause now they wanted to run hair in real time or something, soooo stupid
Hey Austin I just need to tell you that during your Factor promo (Which I was WATCHING might I say), youtube decided to show me two other ads before you were even done talking about factor.
Just feel like people making the videos should at least hear about things like this. Idk if it means anything though.
And even though those two ads happened less than 100 seconds ago I already forget what either of them were. Anyway now I'll keep watching.
holy cow
I sincerely believe youtubes midroll ad policy is to just make it as uncomfortable as possible for the viewer so they give up and buy red
@@Friday_Monday I’ll have to think about that. Thanks for bringing it up.
@@Friday_Monday couldn't be me
Wait until he finds out what shape his TV is
I clicked without reading because I thought I'd be finding out who has a job.
The best details in Titanfall 2 is knowing that we will never ever get the answers to the cliffhangers
Oh my god the fact that you added a fake shadow to your background is such a clever touch. I’ve never seen that before.
I’ve watched a few of your videos and I got to leave a comment, the style you have is great. I can tell your really passionate about the hidden gems of videos games which I appreciate very much. The nuances and appreciation of the details is so cool. Appreciate your work man
The sponsor pitch is presented so well that I actually watch it to completion! That is quite the feat. AnyAustin is certified high-quality content.
17:52 No Any Austin! Thank you for making!! It's always a great day when a new video comes out! Truly thank you!
Before you unblur it(or I unpause it), because yes, I won't be playing Titan Fall 2. I do love trying to convince people to go through long setups for very tiny little payoffs. Well not love trying, but those payoffs are so incredible, and I want others to experience them.
Missing out
What?
That might have been the best sponsor segue I’ve ever heard. 10/10
0:21 personally I've always disliked the "if you haven't seen it by now, you probably don't care about spoilers." argument.
I mean, I was six years old when Breaking Bad started so obviously I didn't watch it at the time, is it then my fault if hypothetically I had got annoyed because somebody spoiled something from it?
Of course in this specific instance you're really not spoiling much of anything, and if I really cared that much about Titanfall 2 spoilers I'd just have stopped watching the second I realised what the video is about.
Also I'm not saying everything should have spoiler warnings for every media ever created. I just think that's a pretty flimsy way of thinking about it.
Sorry for the tangent, enjoyed the video regardless.
I think a lot of the time, if something is older and kind of past its prime in the public consciousness, new people are more likely to get into it if they have the cool stuff spoiled. Although obviously if you're already interested, getting spoiled would suck.
SO TRUE. I hate when people use the age of something to excuse spoiling it. It's a backwards way of thinking when these things are in a permanent medium (for the most part).
Fun fact for you in the future: Parallax mapping is a thing you can do with textures. Even skyrim can have functional parallax mapping. It allows a flat 2D texture to look like it has depths, this is especially useful with brick roads which you obviously do not want to model when you can just slap down the texture with a sort of UV map for where it juts out more. Similar to how you can just phong a texture and now you don't need a separate element for how glossy it is under the light.
Wow, I really agree with you on how you enjoy games that get boring at times. Dredge is one of the best examples I can think of. If there was constant chaos in the water at all times you'd get conditioned to it. But because it is spread out you are always on edge
Living in Hamburg, Germany, hearing the Miniatur Wunderland get mentioned is wild. BTW, they have many more dioramas beside the airport one (most of them are railway dioramas)
Absolutely recommend a visit as well if you are in Hamburg. Probably enough for two days with the amount of sets they've got there if you really want to take it all in.
Song is at the end is a bop, you should give that guy a shoutout next time
(I can't tell if you know and are saying this ironically or not, but that's one of Austin's artist names and his music.) Ive been listening to his stuff for a couple years since he uses them for the end and they're so good ❤
I think you brought up a cool thing I've learned about game dev which is that the whole thing is about finding where to put in effort and detail instead of making the whole thing evenly detailed. It's like how Rembrandt would start to lessen the detail near the edges of the frame in his paintings. The choices on what to highlight and what not to becomes it's own art.
2D set pieces need to be implemented into more 3D media like games or animation, one thing recently that has done this beautifully is Arcane which looks and feels like a 3D animation yet all environments and backgrounds are hand painted 2D images and only the characters are 3D and it looks amazing.
As much as I love the "where does the water come from in x game" or "following powerlines in GTA" I was worried you were gonna become a channel that just follows the niche that works for them especially now that its a bigger channel but im glad to see I'm wrong
The things you find interesting are things I never would have given a second thought, but your passion for them is so fresh and charming that I hang on every word. In a landscape where so much content is driven by the need to generate conflict or discourse, your videos feel like a safe escape, a reminder that there's a joy in asking questions just for the sake of learning the answer.
Austin really made it on TH-cam. It took so many years for this channel to succeed despite Austin always having blown the vibe check out of the water + his fondness of little details that often go ignored leading to fun videos.
I hope this is what he wants and that this is the kind of content he enjoys making these days, I am definitely enjoying. I still have my grey eggbusters shirt back when those were selling on teespring, which I think is one of 3, maybe 4 youtuber merch things I've ever purchased in my life, in an attempt to show my support to a small, interesting channel that deserved to be seen and succeed. Every new video that pops up warms my heart, because I know it's likely to get its well deserved million views now. I am just so profoundly happy for him.
Love you
I have the same fascination for almost every AnyAustin video as Austin has for this little piece of 2D art. I don’t usually watch AnyAustin thinking, “Wooow! Skyboxes!” or “Where do those cables lead?” Instead, I watch almost exclusively because Austin is so passionate about things that are easy to overlook, and that enthusiasm constantly inspires me to pay closer attention to those kinds of small details when I’m playing and to engage with them more deeply.