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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

A few people have been raving about Amid Evil but the presentation just ....doesn;t do it for me. 

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. 

 

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 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. 

 

We Need Influencers Taking Quelfies ?

No, and I hate social media wankers just as much as the next guy, but to be honest when that shite is an integral part to gathering a wide playerbase, I don't think it should come as a surprise when "90s Retro Shovelware Simulator #714" shits all over the custom quake scene in the public awareness department. 

Just to clarify - i'm not suggesting for a single second that custom quake's relative obscurity next to a recent commercial product is a problem in any way, nor am I suggesting any of us should give a toss about it (I certainly don't give a badger's bollock), but again this is just an extended reply to post #273. 

It WILL come as a surprise when "90s Retro Shovelware Simulator #714" shits all over the custom quake scene in actual quality. 

So I understand we need to create a room with old Pentium 90's with CRT running demos in Quake Software and some good lighting for a perfect "Quake Gamefeel Quelfie experience" room and charge a fee for entry.
...
and never let them back out of that room. 

Quake's gamma brightness actually looks a lot better on CRT monitors.

Considering how many people uses very bright gamma settings, which makes their maps nearly unplayable on gamma 1.0, CRT monitors would help. Bright gamma looks washed out on modern monitors. 

I'm playing Dusk and I LOVE IT!