Love the style. The blood water works really well with the green bricks and lighting.

2nd shot looks very cramped in the vertical space. Suggest lifting the ceiling somewhat and raising all the structures up to support it.

Getting a very "classic id" feel from it, nice! 

Those freestanding gateways with the hanging sconces are rad.

Can't wait to play it! 

Thanks for the comments.

@Daz the cramped vertical height in this area is actually inspired by a real life location in Florence (the museum at the Medici Chapel see link.) We just took an awesome family vacation to Rome, Florence and Venice. Not sure if I'll change in this little area it but def understand it's limited for combat.

@NarNar. That was one of those "I'm out of ideas for the night, let me try this." Glad you like it. :)

Less than 50% completed on the overall design. But lots of vacation time to keep at it!! 

@daz here's the link I referred to above.

https://d1ce0xx3pfclcz.cloudfront.net/slir/w800-h600/repository/ft/8/3/831334565365.jpg 

I actually like the idea of having low arches to duck under during a firefight in a more open area, the way mice have the safety of their lil hole in the wall. 

Hi-res kernel-dithered texture filtering, with 3-step hi-res kernel-dithered lightmap filtering.

[url]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByDhLWwAE9MK2.png:orig[/url]

[url]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByEVaWMAAwpQc.png:orig[/url]

[url]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByEgmWAAAqNwe.png:orig[/url] 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByDhLWwAE9MK2.png:orig

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByEVaWMAAwpQc.png:orig

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXByEgmWAAAqNwe.png:orig 

The pixelized version is the original and the smooth is yours? 

 

 

Looks blurry. What's the difference with normal filtering? 

By "normal filtering" you mean bilinear RGB filtering? The renderer in Retroquad is limited to 8-bit color and doesn't use hardware acceleration, so I can't do a direct comparison.
Well, I could use a savegame to get the same camera position in another engine, but I didn't care enough to do that�

Anyway, the main differences are:
� This filter has a hexagon shape instead of a square shape. This means some diagonal lines gets smoother than others, which is kinda similar to how the Nintendo 64 filtering works (e.g. half of the diagonals of the octagonal gratings in Turok 2 are rendered as smooth lines, while the other half is rendered as blurry squares).
� The lightmap uses some different filters, to prevent loss of detail in areas where the colormap would usually cause loss of detail, and to generate slightly higher-res details where possible (the first screenshot demonstrates this).
� Texturing and lighting are calculated separately, and combined in real time.

So, it's not as smooth as bilinear RGB filtering, but it's more faithful to the original 8-bit indexed colors, and in some situations it is more detailed. 

That looks awesome. 

I just don't understand why people want to mess up all that gorgeous pixel art. :-/

But it looks like a good algorithm, yeah ... 

I just don't understand why people want to mess up all that gorgeous pixel art. :-/

This.

It's like taking Quake's monster models and running a meshsmooth on them.

I can see it being interesting from a coding point of view. But...the art, man :/ 

The general public doesn't care about pixel art, and I need not to take pride on such technical limitations. Such advancements are optional, of course.

Also, I'm aiming for specific technical challenges, and for a specific visual style to use in games made with Retroquad. 

what message board does the general public post on? 

"The general public doesn't care about pixel art, and I need not to take pride on such technical limitations."

I guess that explains the complete lack of interest in retro gaming. 

Didn't realise it was software rendering there. Very cool you got modern he filtering look with software, although as others have said, I prefer the pixel look because it's clean and sharp. 

Lol, here we go again with the pixelated crap vs. realistic graphics thing. 

Vasoline smear isn't realistic. 

It's not a lack of interest, it's about giving people options.

And retro doesn't mean pixelated. By your standards the SNES isn't a retro console, because it uses true translucency instead of a pixel grid like Genesis games does.

Also, the Nintendo 64 is a retro console, and Quake 64 is a retro game. But whatever, have your opinion. 

It's just a personal preference thing. I prefer the pixel graphics in Quake and I generally dislike anything that messes with it. Smearing, blurring, high-res texture packs, fancy shader effects, etc. 

One thing I agree is that the filtered look isn't perfect for Quake, because Quake's assets were not created with filtering in mind.

However, Mario 64 would look like ass without filtering, because its assets were created with filtering in mind.

Both are different retro artistic styles, made for different retro technologies. My style will mix some different retro approaches into its own thing, with new assets made specifically for it, offering a different vision about retro gaming.

And, well, if this is giving people some food for thought, that means I'm in the right way. Some disagreement is normal. 

As long as the option to switch blurring off is present then who cares?