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Modern Retro Shooters / Quake Spiritual Successors
Wonder If A Specific Retro-shooter Thread Is Warranted?
#10166 posted by Shambler [92.29.26.135] on 2017/08/27 11:32:00


It is! Separate thread because there's a lot of these sort of games, the ethos of them is particularly relevant to this board, and it's inhabitants seem to have some good varying opinions on the matter.

Quake as the eptiome as 90s action FPS:

Very direct control and physics
Simple streamlined gameplay
Brutal visceral and gory
Weird fantasy / gothic / industrial theme
Grungy, coherent graphics
Cool map designs / architecture (for the time)
Varied but consistent bestiary
Etc
(many of the above adhered to and greatly enhanced by subsequent custom content)

We all like these aspects, we all like these aspects in other games, we all want to see more of those games, possibly combined with modern graphical styles (Quake Chumpions MAPS might be an example of how far this could go) and maybe very limited modern additions (crouching? an inventory? coherent story? - but nothing that gets in the way of solid action). We perhaps want the next Quake / 90s action FPS spiritual successor...

Modern Retro Shooters:

...and lo, there's a neverending stream of modern retro games many of which are unabashedly marketting themselves as 90s action FPS spiritual successors and particularly highlighting speed, direct control, simple action, limitless violence. Do they have what it takes to hit that mark though??

Strafe
http://store.steampowered.com/app/442780/STRAFE_Millennium_Edition/

Amid Evil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo7X7b6pPng

Dusk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsu9uDMlIMM

Hellbound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyabhVn1SfQ

Apocryph
http://store.steampowered.com/app/596240/Apocryph_an_oldschool_shooter/

Ion Maiden
https://twitter.com/voidpnt

Neverdead
http://store.steampowered.com/app/681000/NEVRDEAD/

Gorescript
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpZ1Wa0OIoQ

Intrude
https://bagogames.com/intrude-review/

Hermodr
http://store.steampowered.com/app/490360/Hermodr/

Devil Daggers
http://store.steampowered.com/app/422970/Devil_Daggers/

Gibhard
http://www.gibhard.com

Revulsion
http://store.steampowered.com/app/719180/Revulsion/

Witchfire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zqjNkdXT94

PLUS MANY MORE LINKED IN THE THREAD BELOW....

Without wanting to opine too much, there seems to be a general trend of possibly not hitting the mark despite some attempts to do so, with a huge variety in how much potential those attempts show, as well as how close these games are to realising the overall harmonious game quality of a typical best 90s action FPS. I.e. Some games seem to do some aspects right, but don't seem to get all the aspects in balance and appealing together.

Discuss....
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Prodeus 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwHRPVrZVgM

seems more doom-like than quake-like but i saw a little bit of 3d/jumping in there. 
Prodeus 
Not sure what the design goal of the game is... basically looks like Doom 3 with the resolution of Doom 1. 
Prodeus 
I don't like the hud overlay but the pixel rendering of 3d objects adds a bit of a gritty feel to me. I like it. 
Typical Bullshit. 
" It reaches the quality you expect from a AAA experience while adhering to some of the aesthetic technical limits of older hardware."

Funnily enough you useless mis-guided cocksuckers, "aesthetic technical limits" were in no way what made old skool games great, they were a necessary evil to put up because they were just fucking limits. 
That's Debatable 
One could argue that the limits imposed by old tech forced developers to focus on other things than visuals, and also allowed for faster production cycles.
Example in our context, the time it takes to make a Quake map, vs the time it takes to make a level in some modern game. 
That's 
An incidental silver lining benefit, not a fundamental positive to having lower quality graphics. 
Li'l Bit Of This, Li'l Bit Of That 
(^ "bit" in the title is also said Cockney glottal-stop style)

It's actually very complicated with lots of variables jostling with each other. E.g. crunchy software quake at low resolution looks amazing and immersive and strangely rich with detail for some reason, but those exact same environments in smooth GL on a modern monitor look like bland, barren shite. You're no longer squinting at it and your mind doesn't have to fill in the details, and the magic is gone.

Other things: tools were primitive which probably hampered asset creation times substantially compared to what we can do now with all our spanky new Trenchcoats and Mayos and whatnot. 
I Disagree 
Many games, even some modern ones with big budgets, choose a specific quality of visuals with this in mind.
Biggest example recently that comes to mind is the latest Zelda game, where they tried to go more realistic but realized how much extra work it meant to look right, so decided for a simpler more stylized look.

To me one of the big reasons I love Quake is it's low-fidelity, and what that means for gameplay and extra content creation. 
For Clarity 
Previous post was in reply to Shambler not Kinn. 
 
But yeah, many of the things we love about 90s FPS level design - multiroute, exploration, secrets, optional bits etc - exist because you could afford to make them back then. With the cost of real estate in modern FPS, the optional bits are the first to get binned when production reality kicks in.

Things seem to be improving again, I think we're over the worst of the "linear" era and developers are making more of an effort in this regard, but certainly post 90s there was a long stagnation period when all FPS releases were little more than on-rails games. 
Just Watched The Trailer 
Yeah, WTF.

So they've made an FPS that looks like it came from the mid-2000s, then stuck it in a screen resolution that comes from the mid 1990s.

I've seen enough of these sorts of indie developers to think that maybe we should just gather them all up, dump them on some remote, isolated tropical island somewhere, and just let them make all these incongruous eyesore games amongst themselves, well away from the rest of us, and then meanwhile in the world of normal people with actual taste, we can all eventually, in time, just pretend that these awful things don't exist. 
And There We Go. 
Thread conclusively answered. 
 
I thought the main reason that old maps had so many different routes was because they also had to function as deathmatch maps. 
So Any More Thoughts On These. 
The big hope, apart from maybe Witchfire which I'm worried might have a great theme and gameplay that is the worst of Painkiller meets the worst of Bulletstorm, is of course the semi-home-grown (i.e. half of terrafusion is working on it) 3DKillpixelRealms "#RetroFPS #PixelShooter #indie #blocktober #PartyLikeIts1996 #quakekiller #lowpixel #RetroPoly #pixelpoly #polypixel #QuakeLikeQuakeDidIt #pixel #ALLTHEPOLYGONS #8bitIndieDev #tastethegiblets #oldskoolpixeltretropoly"

But any more to consider....?? 
 
Ion Maiden still looks pretty sick. Haven't played the most recent demo level though. 
Seems To Be The Main Success So Far. 
A few people have been raving about Amid Evil but the presentation just ....doesn;t do it for me. 
Fake Retro Graphics Are Disgusting 
Amid Evil's art design is the most confused and dishonest rubbish I've ever seen. Never have I seen a more ridiculous 'retro' style.
If you're going to emulate a retro style then do it consistently. Dusk might have looked like bargain bin rubbish from 1996 but its at least consistent with its ugliness.

Just look at this shit
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/S25Js28nX55W2wr7nxNtSL.jpg
https://images.gamewatcherstatic.com/image/file/0/19/88490/673130_20171011213244_1.png

The weapons aren't models they're sprites, but they're lit with modern PBR shading and it looks weird as hell. They're high resolution enough that you don't even notice that they're sprites so its a complete waste of time anyway.
What makes it even worse is that the enemies are all 3D but their polycount and texture resolution is tiny by comparison to the weapons and they don't have the pbr shading that everything else does.
The levels look like romhacks of Mario 64 bashed together in sketchup and are lit with such garish colours and noisy textures that it makes the PBR shading all the more tasteless with tiny bright specular highlights everywhere
Then there's the particle effects which are in such abundance. The particles aren't even consistent with each other, some have 1bit alphas while others are blended and the blood particles don't match the decals they leave.
And then there's dithering on the water.
Its all so jarring its laughable.

Whoever is responsible for this absolute mess of an art direction should be ashamed.
You don't even have the excuse that Prodeus does by having a cool technical gimmick like having enemies be rendered as spites through a shader.

And RockPaperShotgun is sucking its cock because of course they are.
Anything with polygons and pretensions towards being 'retro' is a new Quake to those hacks 
 
Jean Baudrillard had a theory of "simulacra" - a copy of a copy of a copy, something that purports to represent reality but is in fact a perversion of an already distorted view of reality. Most of these "retro-style" developers seem to be creating simulacra.

Dusk is cool though. 
Hello Dave Oshry 
 
#27 
Chill out bruv, this ain't TTLG or NMA. 
 
Like, two sixty seven. My 'six' key has gone to shit. 
 
Dusk does also have a fake "retro" look. Its abundant alpha blending, colored lighting and fog looks nothing like the games it pretends to be inspired on (Doom, Quake and Build engine games).

The retro game whose vfx looks the closest to the ones in Dusk is Quake III Arena. The explosions, the alpha blended blood in the air, the fog, the colored lighting, etc. But Q3A uses texture filtering and has a way higher polycount, because it's not pretending to be a PS1 game.

The "low res" option in Dusk makes it look even more fake. Not true retro. Dusk's visual style is based on guesswork, not on actual research.

Dusk is not a retro-looking game, but anyway, it does look fun. And so does Amid Evil.

The blood splatters on the ground in Amid Evil seems to be using additive blending, not 8-bit alpha. Which is why they look a lot brighter than they should, and it does look bad indeed.
And I agree that the high-res weapons and the low-res enemies looks weird together. 
Dusk 
Dusk is really fun, the movement feels great and, maybe most important, the levels are fun to explore. I'm looking forward to Ion Maiden, too.
I don't really care whether these games are more or less faithful. I just want new shooters that 1) place an emphasis on interesting level design, and 2) run on my potato.
I do see, though, where the anger is coming from. The Quake scene has been churning out entire games-worth of material for years and years without any notice and then these games come out of nowhere in the last year or two and everyone acts like they're the first to discover the 90s. 
 
I do see, though, where the anger is coming from. The Quake scene has been churning out entire games-worth of material for years and years without any notice and then these games come out of nowhere in the last year or two and everyone acts like they're the first to discover the 90s.

It's about the presentation and the interface. To the average joe you need a phD in computer science to find and install a decent quake engine, get a mod running, get the map loaded blah blah blah.

There is no "double click this and you are in the game". There is no map/mod browser from inside Quake's UI. It's just a private club for private people.

That is why the quake scene has been invisible to the general public, and why any old shit with a simple point of entry is going to leapfrog quake so hard it's almost funny. 
 
Yeah I know that's not the whole story, and media-friendly marketing is also a big part of it, but you need a few different things all working together and the accessibility stuff I mentioned IS an essential ingredient. 
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