Aesthetically pleasing early 3D (<= 1998) computer graphics.

[Nevill]

Before Carmageddon, there were Destruction Derby series. It was the first racing game I've seen that featured a somewhat working car damage system with a clear visual representation.

Oh, and there were no repairs.

 

[DraQ]

As an example of very early 3D graphics that nevertheless works great I give you....
Frontier:

+ other LG games

TN:SFC in particular.

+ other id games

Only Dooms (and other Doom engine games - Hexen in particular).

Q1 was already not too impressive visually (dat mood, tho), although fluidity of pure poly GFX helped it a lot in motion.
Q2 was meh.

G

Sin:

Nope.
Just nope.
Sin looked pretty shit for its time. It's still worth playing but the two things it did the worst were graphics and rocket launcher.

I wonder if anyone recognizes this little gem:

Anyway any list of <=1998 lookers must end With Unreal and Half-Life (although the latter doesn't really get to shine until you leave boxy industrial and lab environments and arrive in Xen).
It's a law of physics.
Look it up.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Wipeout 2097

Hey! That's the one I was looking for! Great game that.

No one has posted Descent: Freespace? Or did I miss it?

You missed it

 

[DraQ]

It looks a little bit like Quake but they used their own engine.

The worst things about Chasm were:

• it was awfully short (16 levels grouped into 4 episodes).
• the levels were encoded as 2.5D meaning no z-axis whatsoever present in level layouts - seriously, the game had less vertical play than Doom1 (although you could jump).

Other than that it was like much crisper and detailed Quake with nifty environmental effects and bullet hole decals, running on comparable hardware.

Not as atmospheric as Quake, but it played well, had nice weapons and cool locational damage.

 

[Zarniwoop]

You slack-jawed Codex faggots disappoint me.

You picked literally THE most graphical advancingest time period in all of gaming history, and left out the best ones. Shamefur dispray.

There's one game that defined graphical excellence in 1998 for most. Better graphics were not seen until X: Beyond the Frontier, or in an FPS - Max Payne. This:

For me, there is nothing like the original Unreal, which started development in 1994, a record-breaking 4 year development cycle at the time. To be fair, Unreal levels were gi-fucking-normous and open, compared to HL's corridor levels (a relatively new mechanic in PC games at the time)

Distant runners up: Need for Speed 3:

Incoming

From there on, it was just a straight incline to 2006: The Year The Graphics Died. The consolepocalypse.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Though 1998 is hardly "early 3D". Early would be stuff like Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld etc. By 98 we already had special cards SPECIFICALLY FOR 3D GRAPHICS. How badass was that? Although you still needed a 2D card, connected via the hyper-modern VGA link.

 

[DraQ]

You slack-jawed Codex faggots disappoint me.

You picked literally THE most graphical advancingest time period in all of gaming history, and left out the best ones. Shamefur dispray.

There's one game that defined graphical excellence in 1998 for most. Better graphics were not seen until X: Beyond the Frontier, or in an FPS - Max Payne. This:

For me, there is nothing like the original Unreal, which started development in 1994, a record-breaking 4 year development cycle at the time. To be fair, Unreal levels were gi-fucking-normous and open, compared to HL's corridor levels (a relatively new mechanic in PC games at the time)

From there on, it was just a straight incline to 2006: The Year The Graphics Died. The consolepocalypse.

1. Too slow.
2. You've picked HL shots with HD pack, so it's sort of cheating.
3. HL GFX were actually inferior to Unreal (slightly but noticeably - no multitexturing, worse lighting model, no nifty procedurally animated textures) and most of the game provided few opportunities to showcase its (nevertheless massive) visual potential.

 

[Zarniwoop]

1. Too slow.
2. You've picked HL shots with HD pack, so it's sort of cheating.
3. HL GFX were actually inferior to Unreal (slightly but noticeably - no multitexturing, worse lighting model, no nifty procedurally animated textures) and most of the game provided few opportunities to showcase its (nevertheless massive) visual potential.

My post didn't mean to imply that HL graphics were better, just that that's the one most people remember. I didn't spend much time checking the source of the screenshots since the Unreal one still looks better. Unreal was miles ahead at the time (or even before HL was released, judging from screenshots I saw in magazines at the time). The internets was not a good source of screenshots back then.

The Sunspire is still one of the best FPS levels ever designed and it actually does show off the huge scale and detail that the Unreal Engine was capable of.
It seems silly now, but when you consider they had 8 or 16 MB VRAM back then and 64MB system RAM, it's p. impressive what they pulled off.

 

[DraQ]

My post didn't mean to imply that HL graphics were better, just that that's the one most people remember.

Well, you did say that no better graphics was seen until X/Max Payne.

Actually now that I think about it I'm not sure about lighting model, although there were some curious cases of WUT in HL (mainly in conjunction with Hollywood radiashun).

The HL also had some definite advantages over Unreal even in terms of visuals - for example Unreal didn't really use actual alpha channel for its textures/sprites so there were things it couldn't render (or at least not in a simple way) that were used by H-L (like grey smoke, OTOH Unreal supported some non-standard blending modes including multiplicative blending), it also didn't support skeletal anims (although that has more to do with flexibility of animations than their look unless you have some seriously sparse keyframes).

The Sunspire is still one of the best FPS levels ever designed and it actually does show off the huge scale and detail that the Unreal Engine was capable of.
It seems silly now, but when you consider they had 8 or 16 MB VRAM back then and 64MB system RAM, it's p. impressive what they pulled off.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Sin looked pretty shit for its time.

Maybe to you. You seem to have a fetish for atmospherefaggotry and have little appreciation for anything else. Same with Half Life. There were a lot of great looking areas in that game. It just isn't true that the game was shit looking until Xen.

At any rate, Sin was very competently made. It had nice visuals (not the best, but not shit either), solid game play once you get used to its rhythm, very good level design with lots of varied environments (including an underwater section) and overall a very underrated game who's success was marred by an unfortunate buggy release. When it first came out it scored only a few points away from Half Life whenever a reviewer was lucky enough not to experience any serious problem and i think the two games are not *that* far apart.

It seems silly now

It does? Compared to what?

 

[sser]

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine looked pretty good. Lots of different types of locations and it certainly wowed me when I played it. I really loved that game though so I'm biased.

Also, it's after 1998, but some there were some early 3D strategy games with solid graphics: Homeworld, Ground Control, Myth II, Combat Mission and the fairly unknown Starship Troopers RTS:





I doubt many can go back, but the original Alone in the Dark scared the pants off me, even with its polygonal monster-of-a-monster:

Nevermind that part when the zombie or whatever suddenly comes out of the floorboards.


Not sure if it's 3D or a graphical trick, but the first Red Baron (1999) also wowed me for its time, as did many flight simulators:

 

[DraQ]

Same with Half Life. There were a lot of great looking areas in that game. It just isn't true that the game was shit looking until Xen.

I didn't say the game was shit looking. I said it didn't have much opportunity to show off its good looks. Boxy corridors and crate rooms can only look so good, and apart from occasional destruction or interesting technical/lab flourish that's all you could get in HL in terms of environment. Sometimes you got both at once in terms of nice destructible environment or scripted scene going on in the background. HL areas were mostly expertly executed and backed by strong technical aspects of underlying engine and assets, but they were still mostly low key concepts.

What did shine regardless of context were effects and models.

At any rate, Sin was very competently made. It had nice visuals (not the best, but not shit either), solid game play once you get used to its rhythm, very good level design with lots of varied environments (including an underwater section) and overall a very underrated game who's success was marred by an unfortunate buggy release. When it first came out it scored only a few points away from Half Life whenever a reviewer was lucky enough not to experience any serious problem and i think the two games are not *that* far apart.

I agree with everything apart from visuals. Sin's visuals were just weak (although there were a couple of things that shone - for example I loved how Quantum Destabilizer effect looked).

It was all just sort of blurry (or pixelated if running in software mode) - including character models, which contrasted it from HL - the effects were very raw with loose polys and naked pixels flying around, plus uninspired explosions. If I had to pinpoint two things that made Sin fall into obscurity I would say they were poor graphics (barely better than Q2) that was dated on arrival compared to competing Unreal and HL, and worse feel of your weapons compared to HL. Sin also didn't go all the way through implementing pseudorealistic mechanics befitting modern FPS it aspired to be perhaps even more than HL - for example, both pistol and SMG had finite magazines and required reloads, but shotgun or other weapons didn't.
Other than that Sin is definitely an ambitious and interesting FPS and definitely worth playing.

 

[Nutmeg]

DraQ, Zarniwoop

Do you have any nice screenshots of the Unreal software renderer?

 

[Zarniwoop]

I just got that one off Google Image search, there's sure to be something out there somewhere.

Who's dicking around with the word filter again? Dafuq is this Rich Homie Cloaked shit?

 

[grudgebringer]

Spoiler

Distant runners up: Need for Speed 3:

That's Hot Pursuit 2, not Need for Speed 3.

Do you have any nice screenshots of the Unreal software renderer?

I found only this

Spoiler

I remember a couple of screenshots in some glossy magazine that were taken exactly from that tech demo. They looked glorious back then.

Anyway, System Shock:

 

[Astral Rag]

I also remember being amazed by those screenshots, I think I first saw Unreal screenshots in 1996.

A lot of early Unreal alphas and betas were leaked and are still floating around online.
Those characters , I do like that blue skybox.


edit: found the magazine

Spoiler

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

 

[Astral Rag]

Cryo's Dreams, looked great in magazines but I never got around to playing i.t, would you recommend i.t?

 

[Luka-boy]

M1 Tank Platoon 2 came out in 1998 and in my opinion is still a pretty-looking game.

Spoiler

The Star Wars space sims always felt impressive with the size of their space battles, with X-Wing vs Tie Fighter being the big jump in visuals due to the higher resolution and much better textures.

Spoiler

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Cryo's Dreams, looked great in magazines but I never got around to playing i.t, would you recommend i.t?

Honestly didn't played it too much but I avoid 3D platforming like a fire so... I remembered it mainly for its excepional visuals and surrealistic vibe.

 

[Astral Rag]

Into the Shadows demo was impressive in 1995. Too bad that the game was cancelled.

Some sexy Into the Shadows pictures and news.

Spoiler

-Triton are Swedish devs, this is their first game, they were previously active in the demo scene.
-They use an in-house engine called T.A.P.E. (Triton Advanced Physics Engine), they claim their engine is much faster than id's Quake engine. TAPE is written in Assembly. ITS will run on a 386 with 8MB ram but a 486dx2 or higher is recommended for smooth gameplay.
-ITS will have a SP campaign, an 8 (or maybe 12) player deathmatch multiplayer mode and a coop mode.
-You play the role of Erik Lionheart, a chaotic evil wizard kidnapped your sister...
-There will be around 20 motion captured enemies, each enemy will have unique combo moves.
-ITS has around 30 useable weapons and different armor types, there are also special moves.
-The journalist regrets that there is not much info on the most important part of the game, the gameplay
-The game is as good as finished. (ITS was never released, some members of Triton later formed Starbreeze Studios.)

 

[Destroid]

Anyway, System Shock:

Spoiler

Damn, I don't remember SS looking anything like that, is it a high res texture pack or did you just need a monster computer at the time to run it like this?

 

[grudgebringer]

Damn, I don't remember SS looking anything like that, is it a high res texture pack or did you just need a monster computer at the time to run it like this?

That's an upgraded portable version. You can choose from SVGA modes up to 1280x1024 and configure control scheme that will resemble familiar WASD+mouselook.

Spoiler

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=211.0

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=211.0

 

[DraQ]

DraQ, Zarniwoop

Do you have any nice screenshots of the Unreal software renderer?

Sadly, I'd have to run U1 in this mode and take some as I don't have any ATM.

Overall SW was hard to tell from HW in typical circumstances. Unless you stuck your face into any texture or model (to notice poorer filtering and detail texturing or lack of thereof for transparent geometry and all meshes) or had meshes behind transparent geometry (for some reason the game didn't blend that properly) you had to take a good, long look to see the difference (although software had certain propensity for Z glitches) - at least as long as you had an MMX processor (it was necessary for volumetric fog).

Do note that SW looked the best before patches - the patches introduced some fairly aggressive texture LOD on small meshes that looked pretty awful without filtering and removed a small handful of features (although to be fair they were poorly supported and caused massive performance hit) like curved surfaces (basically software based tesselation for ultra smooth meshes, it bloated objects not meant to use it - most of those had a flag set to not use it but there were a few lulzy omissions - and it could freeze the game for a few seconds when you gibbed someone - all those flying pieces of meat didn't tesselate themselves, someone had to spend cycles on it) and dispersion pistol particle trail (don't know why, TBH).

Anyway, System Shock:

Spoiler

Coincidentally, I've been (re)playing SS1 lately (portable version, mouselook is a godsend, mouselookwith toggleable original aiming method for tricky shots and 'nade throwing is even better), although I'm feeling strong urge to skip Shodan and go straight to YT - the cyberspace is beyond awful in this game.

PS. I've finally sound some use for railgun - it's excellent for chainsploding the swarms of autobombs in that maze on the bridge level. :D
Other than that it's useless piece of shit.

 

[Astral Rag]

Q1 was already not too impressive visually

Are you off your meds again?