Pre-Rendered Backgrounds

[Turion]

Greetings!

I'd have a few questions about GameCore.
Before I write it, I must add that my quad-core is broken right now, so I couldn't even try GameCore because my Geforce4 MX440 right now doesn't support SM2.0. xD

So the question I'm having is if it's possible to create games (with GameCore of course) which use pre-rendered backgrounds, like those of the Resident Evil 1-2-3 series, or Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare?

I think technically it would look like this:
The basic game map is nothing complicated, just textureless primitives which act as simple boundaries.
These are practically invisible during the game. However the player, the enemies and pick-up (ammo, herbs etc) and interact objects are also visible and are all in 3D. Below the player & objects is the pre-rendered background.
The camera angle is of course fixed. However the angle can change depending the player's position in the room - this could be triggered by going through an invisible wall. If the angle changes, the pre-rendered background is also changed to another.
Above all of this could be pieces of sprites which act as a top layers for objects you go which you go behind to.

When you go near to and interact with a door/ladder/etc, you go to another room/map and so on and so on...

I've been looking for an engine which is capable of this for ages, and doesn't require really deep coding.

Thanks for the answer in advance!

[LutinMalefique]

hi,

Of course you can make a game with a fixed camera gameplay. But nowadays, a pre-rendered background is useless, i mean a complete one.
You can still use a pre-rendered image for a distant scenery for example. For what i know of Gamecore, i seem to me that your idea is the hardest : matching shades or colors between 2d and 3d, collision detection, etc...

But if you were thinking of a special effect for your background (cartoon, handmade rendering, etc..) this can be achieved by a shader, by right now you can't add your own custom shader to gamecore

Finally,

doesn't require really deep coding.

well... the basic implementation of fixed camera will not be the hardest, maybe the transition between rooms or avoid a "ping-pong" effect when the player is just in the middle of two cameras. Those should give you some headaches  

[Turion]

Thanks for your reply!

I think the "ping-pong" effect occurs when you control the character by directions. Using tank controls (which I prefer anyway) seems to be a good solution for that.

As for the pre rendered backgrounds, I don't think it's useless. You can get very geat graphics with your program of choice and drastically reduce the number of rendered polygons - this way a game may run more easily on older/weaker machines, which may be an important point.
The only drawback is the fixed aspect ratio, but that's a minor thing.
But if you look at the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil for example, you still don't see games these days with that level of visual quality.

Note: I'm planning on creating a game with low-poly models and lo-res backgrounds by the way it is in late 90's resident evil style - I really like that somehow.

[LutinMalefique]

Gamecube remake of Resident Evil

I took out my gamecube after years of torpor and bought some classics that i had not played at the time, Resident Evil is one of them 

good luck with your project.