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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. 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. more interesting than most of these shitty retro FPS (so far) -
is there a filter/shader to correct/reproduce more faithfully the tuned on CRT Quake engine Gamma on LCDs ? Or do some of the ports already do this and I am not noticing ? CRT is cool and all, I'd love to find a large pro CRT monitor from back then someday but until such a find... It looks like the work of a single amateur indie developer done in his spare time (of which I would respect a lot more), but instead it is made by a team of paid people working full-time? I don't get it. Did they all just settle for Sonic-fast movement and call it a day? There is nothing about that game that appeals to me.
Meanwhile Prodeus is looking good (mostly because I like the Doom 3-aesthetics of the levels): http://www.prodeusgame.com/website/index.php Which strikes me as somewhat incredibly pointless.
...of running Doom 3 at lowest settings while wearing ski goggles. Bizarre.
Looks like they’re rendering enemies in 3d, and then converting them to sprites in real time, which could have been so cool if they attempted more of a “sprite” aesthetic. Like a bit of toon shading, stylised look, some post processing colour work to make them stand out from the background and make them look hand painted and easy to discern from a distance, but at the same time they’d rotate smoothly and you’d be able to do rag dolls, IK, and be affected by environment lighting. Imagine that style with the doom enemies! You could try and get the original sculpts to use as models too. Sadly here they did none of that and it looks like trash. It reaches the quality you expect from a AAA experience while adhering to some of the aesthetic technical limits of older hardware.
I had a bit of a whinge earlier about how nonsensical it is to do circa 2005 visuals, and then view them through a pixel mosaic filter. I wonder if it has 30,000-poly zbrushed monsters with PBR materials but which only animate at 10 frames a second? that would look sweeeeeettt - mix the old with the new baby! It reaches the quality you expect from a AAA experience while adhering to some of the aesthetic technical limits of older hardware.
Shame as this could be fun. Uncharted 4 but with tomb raider 2 graphics, Witcher 3 in the Daggerfall engine. That's the sort of thing I think of - not Doom 3 in the Doom 3 engine, but lower resolution. Is basically horseshit, straight out of the horse's arse.
It's basically like being a fan of 1920s ballroom music and then making a lo-fidelity stuttering crackle'n'pop lossless FLAC of ballroom music, claiming that what made that era great was not the passion, melody, groove, and integrity of the music, but all the unavoidable shit quality recording of that music due to limits of that time. And then doing a fucking half-arsed job of sort of recreating the music, but putting a lot more effort into recreating the shit quality recording. Devs, repeat after me until you get it into your stupid thick skulls: WHAT MADE SOME RETRO GAMES GREAT WERE THE POSITIVE QUALITIES OF THOSE GAMES (directness, simplicitiy, player controls, imagination, themes, atmosphere, action, violence, creativity), NOT UNAVOIDABLE TECHNICAL LIMITS THAT GOT IN THE WAY OF THOSE QUALITIES. Give it time and you'll have algorithms that can far surpass anything any human can do creatively.
Sure there are lots of small devs attempting modern retro shooters who lack the resources to go far beyond the limits of older tech. Totally fair enough. But it's just as important to focus on those positive qualities of older FPSes and do a really good job within that genre and within those limits, rather than using those limits as an excuse to churn out shit "Hey this is old-fashioned and out-dated, that's our USP". Nope, all the nope.
An artificially low resolution can work as a deliberate art style, IF and I think only if, the underlying graphics are low fidelity and would gain nothing from being seen in a higher resolution.
Take vanilla quake, and start with a modern screen resolution, then try lowering it, and keep lowering it, until you reach a point where the ability to read the scene really suffers if you go any lower. Take Doom 3, and do the same exercise. You will find you can't go as low as you can with quake. It seems the people doing this Probeus thing haven't quite grasped this incredibly advanced concept.
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