The sky/clouds in Shenmue I

lavrentis

lavrentis

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Feb 9, 2020
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Shenmue
What effect do you think they were going for? If anyone doesn't know, i'm referring to the sky rotating when you move Ryo left or right.

It's very strange, and glad they took it out of Shenmue II.
 
Not every standard had been set for 3D worlds at that point. Shenmue used a flat plane that moved relative to the camera or possibly Ryo's current forward facing direction (from what I could tell), whereas Shenmue II introduced a much needed sky box.

As such, Yokosuka never had a sun, which makes me wonder what the hell was shining in Ryo's eyes here:

ryo1.jpg
 
Mittens2317 said:
Not every standard had been set for 3D worlds at that point. Shenmue used a flat plane that moved relative to the camera or possibly Ryo's current forward facing direction (from what I could tell), whereas Shenmue II introduced a much needed sky box.

As such, Yokosuka never had a sun, which makes me wonder what the hell was shining in Ryo's eyes here:

View attachment 7392
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It's actually a dome in Shenmue II, but yeah you're mostly right. In fact, some areas have very specific skydomes setup and for the whole game, there are a sun and moon 3d model which functions properly.
 
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Cube, sphere, what the hell's the difference?

giphy (2).gif
 
lavrentis said:
What effect do you think they were going for? If anyone doesn't know, i'm referring to the sky rotating when you move Ryo left or right.

It's very strange, and glad they took it out of Shenmue II.
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It didn't bother me too much in the original. The wildly swinging skybox in the more recent ports though... yikes! Properly modded, they're the best way to play the original games, but that skybox issue keeps Shenmue 1 from perfection.
 
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ShinChuck said:
It didn't bother me to much in the original. The wildly swinging skybox in the more recent ports though... yikes! Properly modded, they're the best way to play the original games, but that skybox issue keeps Shenmue 1 from perfection.
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Yes, I still see people who think the skybox in the ports is correct; it is not. It honestly looked fine in the originals and was pretty reasonable for being faked.

The skybox in the first game is a flat 2D texture. When you turn the camera that texture moves. The problem in the ports is that it behaves identically to the original game relative to the size of the screen. What I mean is as the screen gets wider, the sky appears to move faster because it's still moving by the same percentage of screen size as it did in 4x3 aspect ratio despite being wider. So in 16x9 it's moving 44% faster than it should be. To put another way, the amount of camera turning required for the left side of the sky to reach the right side of the screen is exactly the same in the re-releases as the originals even though the same amount of camera turning should only have moved the distance you would see in the original 4x3 area from left to right.

This reminds me that I wanted to try and fix it, but completely forgot about the problem because I haven't played the game in over a year now.
 
Sappharad said:
This reminds me that I wanted to try and fix it, but completely forgot about the problem because I haven't played the game in over a year now.
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I played it last year with skybox mod but is it possible to correct it so it’s more like the originals in 16x9?
 
Sappharad said:
Yes, I still see people who think the skybox in the ports is correct; it is not. It honestly looked fine in the originals and was pretty reasonable for being faked.

The skybox in the first game is a flat 2D texture. When you turn the camera that texture moves. The problem in the ports is that it behaves identically to the original game relative to the size of the screen.
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Speaking as a layman and not understanding exactly what was happening from a technological standpoint, I never had a problem with the skybox in the first Shenmue game. It wasn't until the ports where it was suddenly shifting to a nauseating, obvious degree that it became a problem for me.

I appreciate the explanation: seems like a big oversight, and if you ever make that fix, I'll download it in a heartbeat! As far as the ports go, it's really my only major remaining complaint after the several official patches we received and the widescreen/audio mods.
 
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It does seem a hell of alot less present, on the original DC. Must be why i've only noticed it now, on the re-release.

 
Does anyone know if SI + SII HD are emulated or running direct on the hardware.
 
Sh3ppy said:
Do the mods fix the broken fighting (hit boxes)? That was very disappointing in the PS4 versions.
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At a glance, I don't see any mods to fix it. It's an issue I wasn't aware of. :( So maybe there are two things the new ports still need!
 
lavrentis said:
It does seem a hell of alot less present, on the original DC. Must be why i've only noticed it now, on the re-release.

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Didn't it depend on the type of weather though? If it's cloudy the sky won't be too visible.
 
I always thought the 2d sky had a certain aesthetic. I noticed it even on dreamcast but it never bothered me or took me out of it. I even remember playing with the effect from time to time. At worst it reminded me of those shaky backgrounds from driving scenes in old movies, which themselves also had a certain aesthetic.
 
Yokosuka sky only looked fuzzy and bleh to me when I began to upscale around ~2014ish
 
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