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#1 05/10/17 19:05

RainbowEon
Member
Registered: 04/27/17

Oni - Analytical Overview

This is what I wanted that Anniversary Edition Splashscreen for, Iritscen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNgG8RSHNa8

I hope you all enjoy it. It took a while longer than I wanted it too, because I'm lazy, but I decided that today was the day. Feel free to correct me on stuff, because I frequently get things wrong.

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#2 05/10/17 21:05

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Oni - Analytical Overview

Nicely done.  And I didn't hear any wrong facts in your video, though we can't give all the credit for the music to Marty O'Donnell.  As shown here, Power of Seven is also credited for the music.  They did the opening theme for Marathon 2, so it starts to come together when you think about the sort of music that Marty is known for (more orchestral work) versus the techno style of music that we mostly hear in Oni, and M2's opening techno track.  But Marty is credited as the Music Lead, so he *was* responsible for it all coming together.  There are also a number of melodies from Myth I/II found in Oni, as documented on our wiki, so that proves that Marty was really involved.

You might find it interesting to know that, rather than running out of time to add details to the levels, Oni actually did have more extraneous details initially, and they were cut out towards the end of development because of memory and GPU constraints.  With more time, they probably could have optimized the engine and fit more of that stuff in.  See the "Pre-beta content" and "Pre-beta features" articles for a list of what we know was cut.

Lastly, Oni suffered from inconsistent art direction in the extreme, as you noted.  The animé intro/outro were done by AIC midway through development, like Hardy mentioned, and they were based off storyboards by Okita, the concept artist and Konoko's original designer, but around the same time, Konoko was re-designed by Lorraine Reyes.  All the final, polished art in and around the game is hers; if you see anything lackluster, like the fly-in portraits, those were done by temps/interns.

Meanwhile, the levels were not particularly art-directed at all, as far as I can tell, though that might be unfair to someone at BWest who was trying to herd cats.  So you have an abortive attempt at a cyberpunk aesthetic that's kind of halfway there, coupled with changes that were made for gameplay's sake, topped off with a last-minute rebuilding of some of the levels that damaged their attractiveness.  For a real cyberpunk aesthetic, I much prefer Deus Ex:HR (yes, really) and the multiplayer mod Neo-Tokyo (in all fairness, those came out years after Oni).  For sheer face-punching fun, though, Oni wins out.

P.S.: I appreciated your mention of Ergo Proxy and Wonderful Days; did you notice our references to those on the wiki, or did they just occur independently to you?


Check out the Anniversary Edition Seven at ae.oni2.net!

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#3 05/10/17 22:05

RainbowEon
Member
Registered: 04/27/17

Re: Oni - Analytical Overview

Iritscen wrote:

Nicely done.  And I didn't hear any wrong facts in your video, though we can't give all the credit for the music to Marty O'Donnell.  As shown , Power of Seven is also credited for the music.  They did the opening theme for Marathon 2, so it starts to come together when you think about the sort of music that Marty is known for (more orchestral work) versus the techno style of music that we mostly hear in Oni, and M2's opening techno track.  But Marty is credited as the Music Lead, so he *was* responsible for it all coming together.  There are also a number of melodies from Myth I/II found in Oni, as documented on our wiki, so that proves that Marty was really involved.

You might find it interesting to know that, rather than running out of time to add details to the levels, Oni actually did have more extraneous details initially, and they were cut out towards the end of development because of memory and GPU constraints.  With more time, they probably could have optimized the engine and fit more of that stuff in.  See the "Pre-beta content" and "Pre-beta features" articles for a list of what we know was cut.

Lastly, Oni suffered from inconsistent art direction in the extreme, as you noted.  The animé intro/outro were done by AIC midway through development, like Hardy mentioned, and they were based off storyboards by Okita, the concept artist and Konoko's original designer, but around the same time, Konoko was re-designed by Lorraine Reyes.  All the final, polished art in and around the game is hers; if you see anything lackluster, like the fly-in portraits, those were done by temps/interns.

Meanwhile, the levels were not particularly art-directed at all, as far as I can tell, though that might be unfair to someone at BWest who was trying to herd cats.  So you have an abortive attempt at a cyberpunk aesthetic that's kind of halfway there, coupled with changes that were made for gameplay's sake, topped off with a last-minute rebuilding of some of the levels that damaged their attractiveness.  For a real cyberpunk aesthetic, I much prefer Deus Ex:HR (yes, really) and the multiplayer mod Neo-Tokyo (in all fairness, those came out years after Oni).  For sheer face-punching fun, though, Oni wins out.

P.S.: I appreciated your mention of Ergo Proxy and Wonderful Days; did you notice our references to those on the wiki, or did they just occur independently to you?

I saw that that Power of Seven was accredited towards the music, and I did not include that. That's completely my fault. If I figure out YouTube's new annotations or whatever, I'll try to edit that in.

I think that Oni's aesthetics are fine, and with a bit more detail and polish, you could tell that it's futuristic more easily, but as you said, memory constraints, etc. I actually really like Deus Ex: Human Revolution's style aside from the intense yellow tinting. I know that a lot of people have said that this is alluding to the "golden age of progress" or some such, but it just annoys me. I thought that Mankind Divided looked better overall aesthetically. But yeah, NeoTokyo is great too. My favorite cyberpunk game aesthetics is probably E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy though.

As for the mention of Ergo Proxy and Wonderful Days, I actually connected those to Oni myself. I haven't rewatched either of those in a while, but I'm thinking of binge watching them with a friend sometime.

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#4 05/11/17 08:05

Iritscen
Moderator
From: NC, USA
Registered: 10/22/07

Re: Oni - Analytical Overview

The main problem with Oni's look is probably that they were going to use lightmapping, then they fell back to vertex shading, then they didn't even do that properly on a lot of levels.  With the right shading values in the vertices, the levels can look quite nice, but some spaces are just flat, or have misplaced shadows or nonsensical colors.  This might have happened when the levels were rebuilt hastily.  It's a shame; we've experimented with vertex shading in the game, but no one has ever tried to fix the original levels.

Not familiar with E.Y.E., and I've yet to play DX:Mankind Divided, but I'll keep them in mind.  As for the aforementioned animé, we used to try to write a little bit about any shows/movies that were either an influence on Oni or have similar elements in them.  I wrote a short wiki article on Ergo Proxy recently after re-watching it.  It's still a really good show, even though it only makes sense 50% of the time (and only 35% of the time if you don't turn your screen brightness all the way up).  We still have a red link on the wiki where the Wonderful Days article is supposed to go, since I haven't seen it, and anyone who has hasn't written an article on it yet.


Check out the Anniversary Edition Seven at ae.oni2.net!

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#5 05/13/17 11:05

s10k
Member
Registered: 01/14/07
Website

Re: Oni - Analytical Overview

Watched this yesterday. Nice review and thanks for mention us.

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#6 11/17/17 05:11

Erik
Member
Registered: 02/13/15

Re: Oni - Analytical Overview

Nice video! Oni deserves all the attention it can get:)
Never noticed the +60 frame rate by the way..

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