Graphics Fags

[Zlaja]

Quake 2 isn't exactly an amazing game

Quake 2 IS an amazing game.

to the point where Reach had this whole big convoluted plot that played out in the long cutscenes

At least the plot of Reach was good, and you can just skip the cutscenes if you don't care. Also, seeing your own customized Spartan in said cutscenes was neat.

 

[El Presidente]

This reminds me that Matt Barton used to masturbate to Defender of the Crown when he was younger



Check 6:10 onwards

 

[Just Locus]

Stylistic Visuals > Realistic/"Bleeding Edge" Visuals.

 

[Vic]

Stylistic Visuals > Realistic/"Bleeding Edge" Visuals.

so art is better than real life?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The only usefulness of 4K is that it is good to display ASCII graphics.

 

[Falksi]

This reminds me that Matt Barton used to masturbate to Defender of the Crown when he was younger



Check 6:10 onwards

The bit where she grabs your dick is legendary...

 

[Falksi]

1. Gameplay
2. Pacing
3. Story
4. Music
5. Graphics

But with that said they're all important and, as others have said, stylistic graphics>>>realistic graphics. Hence why peak 90's pixel art still looks a thousand times better than anything other than the most currently realistic looking games.

I'm just playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution again, and when that first came out I was blown away, it looked lush. Now I often find myself being drawn out of the experience because some stuff looks flat and lacking in detail. but when I boot up Streets of Rage 2 or Contra 3 for a blast there's none of that drop-off, it still stimulates brilliantly.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I can't really deal with graphics older than BG3/Fallout period,

You can't get into graphics older than a game that came out 4 months ago, that was noted for having amazing graphics?

High bar much?

 

[gurugeorge]

I can't really deal with graphics older than BG3/Fallout period,

You can't get into graphics older than a game that came out 4 months ago, that was noted for having amazing graphics?

High bar much?

Aaargh, I meant BG ofc

 

[Ezekiel]

The only usefulness of 4K is that it is good to display ASCII graphics.

TVs are kind of big for FHD, QHD and similar resolutions.

 

[tritosine2k]

Realtime lighting = indoctrination AND turns you into soyjaks
basically self admission on twitter:

"I miss the days of devs showing off their own tech, teenage me would download and rewatch engine tech demos over and over. The music from frostbite radiosity demo is forever stuck in my head and I hear it everytime I write any gfx code."

They routinely "forget" to mention half+ of the story, for example
frostbite shipped with lightmaps.

In some places metro exodus looks worse than unreal engine 1 . But its some realtime raytracing attraction, suuuuuuuuure xD

 

[Azdul]

Realtime lighting = indoctrination AND turns you into soyjaks
basically self admission on twitter:

"I miss the days of devs showing off their own tech, teenage me would download and rewatch engine tech demos over and over. The music from frostbite radiosity demo is forever stuck in my head and I hear it everytime I write any gfx code."

They routinely "forget" to mention half+ of the story, for example
frostbite shipped with lightmaps.

In some places metro exodus looks worse than unreal engine 1 . But its some realtime raytracing attraction, suuuuuuuuure xD

Ever since Doom 3 - console versions of real-time PC titles shipped with lightmaps. PS5 or XSX cannot do path tracing - so obviously multiplatform game will not depend on rays to light up the scene.

It does not mean that real time rendering is a snake oil.

Let me give you extreme example. I'm playing classic BG1 (1998) - where everything is prerendered on much more powerful machines- but only once.

Originally - nighttime was achieved by palette shift towards black and blue - and light circles around lamps. Graphical Overhaul mod added nighttime light maps - and it looks much more convincing. Still - day can turn into the night only through loading screen. Fireballs do not have any impact on lighting of the scene. There is no dawn or dusk. Or seasons. Almost every part of scenery is indestructible.

In 2023 most console / multiplatform games have the same limitations as BG1 had in 1998 - because precalculated lights will look good only if lightning conditions never change. And it obviously influences game design.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

1. Gameplay
2. Pacing
3. Story
4. Music
5. Graphics

But with that said they're all important and, as others have said, stylistic graphics>>>realistic graphics. Hence why peak 90's pixel art still looks a thousand times better than anything other than the most currently realistic looking games.

I'm just playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution again, and when that first came out I was blown away, it looked lush. Now I often find myself being drawn out of the experience because some stuff looks flat and lacking in detail. but when I boot up Streets of Rage 2 or Contra 3 for a blast there's none of that drop-off, it still stimulates brilliantly.

Stylization and aesthetics help, but the difference between DX:HR and games such as SoR2 or Contra 3 is more a showcase of how 3D graphics age whereas 2D remains the same. Even though the rate of advancement in graphics has slowed down, now that 12 years have passed since the release of DX:HR there are games with substantially better 3D graphics in a technical sense, and this affects our perception of the older 3D.

 

[gurugeorge]

1. Gameplay
2. Pacing
3. Story
4. Music
5. Graphics

But with that said they're all important and, as others have said, stylistic graphics>>>realistic graphics. Hence why peak 90's pixel art still looks a thousand times better than anything other than the most currently realistic looking games.

I'm just playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution again, and when that first came out I was blown away, it looked lush. Now I often find myself being drawn out of the experience because some stuff looks flat and lacking in detail. but when I boot up Streets of Rage 2 or Contra 3 for a blast there's none of that drop-off, it still stimulates brilliantly.

Stylization and aesthetics help, but the difference between DX:HR and games such as SoR2 or Contra 3 is more a showcase of how 3D graphics age whereas 2D remains the same. Even though the rate of advancement in graphics has slowed down, now that 12 years have passed since the release of DX:HR there are games with substantially better 3D graphics in a technical sense, and this affects our perception of the older 3D.

There's a bit of a funny curve with all that. It's like, there's a gap where 3-d graphics of a certain age do indeed look bad compared to contemporary 3-d graphics, but then after a longer gap, the older 3-d graphics start to have their own charm, just as much as old 2-d graphics. Like, if you play something like Unreal or DS9: The Fallen, they have a look of their own, and if the art design was good, they'll still stand up ok.

I was struck by that a few years ago when there was a survival game (some viking survival game, I can't remember) that had older-style 3-d graphics that hearkened back to like a decade earlier.

It's like every distinct leap in graphics eventually has its own quirkiness that can be attractive, even if you factor out the nostalgia.

 

[Humanophage]

Early 3D looked hideous and actively undermined my enjoyment at the time they were new. I really forced myself to play NWN on release because it was such a staggering visual downgrade from Infinity Engine, 2D strategies, 2D adventure games, etc. It was especially disheartening as 2D reached its peak at the time, looking almost like good illustrated books, yet it was simultaneously marginalised in favour of something so abominable for the sake of looking more modern. The early to late 2000s were a constant visual battering, Warcraft 3 style being the worst offender.

It's different from the progression in 2D, as 2D was just gradually getting better instead of replacing something that was better-looking. There was no shock of a precipitous and unwanted decline.

 

[Modron]

3D was well established by NWN's release in what 2002? Early 3D is ~94-98 IMO.

 

[deuxhero]

Yeah, NWN was ugly by the standards of the day. It and Morrowind were the last major games with segmented bodies like that and
1: MW actually made use of the segmentation for its armor system where players wore eight armor pieces and three visible clothing pieces each with their own appearance. (Were gloves and boots even visible separately in NWN?)
2: MW only needed a year for the fanbase to hack together a solution to the segmented bodies. Did the NWNEE non-segmented bodies ever release?

A lot of "early 3d" games like SM64, Shadows of the Empire, or GoldenEye 007 (let alone PC titles like Quake and Quake Engine games) look a lot better than NWN does despite a five year gap between them. The art style really makes the segmented bodies of NWN "pop" where they blend together in the older ones (It also helps those titles never tried making them "sexy").

 

[Humanophage]

3D was well established by NWN's release in what 2002? Early 3D is ~94-98 IMO.

I don't insist on the term, but it's the way it seems to be used. Anyway, all of this pertains to earlier games too, it's just that it wasn't forced down every orifice at the time.

Yeah, NWN was ugly by the standards of the day. It and Morrowind were the last major games with segmented bodies like that and
1: MW actually made use of the segmentation for its armor system where players wore eight armor pieces and three visible clothing pieces each with their own appearance. (Were gloves and boots even visible separately in NWN?)
2: MW only needed a year for the fanbase to hack together a solution to the segmented bodies. Did the NWNEE non-segmented bodies ever release?

A lot of "early 3d" games like SM64, Shadows of the Empire, or GoldenEye 007 (let alone PC titles like Quake and Quake Engine games) look a lot better than NWN does despite a five year gap between them. The art style really makes the segmented bodies of NWN "pop" where they blend together in the older ones (It also helps those titles never tried making them "sexy").

My biggest gripe wasn't even with the bodies but with the landscape. It is also quite striking how beautiful the 2D elements look. Aren't those the cutest bags, for example? They look just like any illustration in a book. The buttons below the portrait look excellent. The portraits are custom here but all the illustrations looked perfectly good and added the much-needed character. If you combine these 3D models with 2D backgrounds, it looks fine (as in TOEE). Then to add insult to injury, the portraits were dropped in favour of 3D headshots in NWN2! It's like they just couldn't comprehend that this 3D is fugly.

 

[tritosine2k]

3D was well established by NWN's release in what 2002? Early 3D is ~94-98 IMO.

Except anti-aliasing is STILL unsolved (TAA turns into a low pass filter in motion) and it was only because CRT the noAA looked barely acceptable.

2023 was the year that GPUs stood still
A new GPU generation did very little to change the speed you get for your money.
ANDREW CUNNINGHAM - 12/28/2023, 12:28 PM

If the realtime lighting fetishism was because of this marginal improvement then good riddance. Can't wait for DPU (as in datacenter).

 

[ds]

3D was well established by NWN's release in what 2002? Early 3D is ~94-98 IMO.

Except anti-aliasing is STILL unsolved and it was only because CRT the noAA looked barely acceptable.

(Anti-)aliasing was solved longer than there have been computer games. It's just that people prefer increasing resolutions and frame-rates over sufficient spatial sampling.

 

[tritosine2k]

3D was well established by NWN's release in what 2002? Early 3D is ~94-98 IMO.

Except anti-aliasing is STILL unsolved and it was only because CRT the noAA looked barely acceptable.

(Anti-)aliasing was solved longer than there have been computer games. It's just that people prefer increasing resolutions and frame-rates over sufficient spatial sampling.

increased resolution is needed because increased fov (arcminute rule, 60pixels per degree for eye resolution). You had 30° IRL fov for long enough so it's warranted.

Realtime lighting running the same computation over n+1 machines across the globe for the same looks that can be precomputed is unwarranted and it's not a replacement because theres no more actual content, fortnite stuff is pseudo content and it's ridicuoulus really ("metaverse" lul).

 

[Lemming42]

A big problem with NWN's visuals is that BioWare always design massive mostly-empty maps, which look bad in 2D and abominable in 3D. The whole starting area of NWN with the academy is just surreal, huge cavernous angular rooms with repeated floor tile textures, like something out of one of Max Payne's nightmares.

 

[JarlFrank]

A big problem with NWN's visuals is that BioWare always design massive mostly-empty maps, which look bad in 2D and abominable in 3D. The whole starting area of NWN with the academy is just surreal, huge cavernous angular rooms with repeated floor tile textures, like something out of one of Max Payne's nightmares.

NWN looks ugly because its assets are ugly and the scale is all out of whack.

There are contemporary 3D games that look significantly better due to better art direction and a proper sense of scale: the Gothics, Morrowind, Dungeon Siege, Arx Fatalis, etc.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

"pixel art" leaves me viscerally unmoved (though I can appreciate it from an aesthetic point of view).

There's a big difference between fag "Pixel art" every indie game has vs. An old game with graphical limitations but unique visuals & good art direction

Also 2+ decade different from Fallout to BG3 so weird examples you chose

 

[Lizard]

Limitations create better art. Ultimate artistic freedom gets you someone shitting out paint filled eggs onto a canvas in the town square.

Almost everyone working on the games from the past would have preferred to make their games as graphically impressive as possible if they could have.

More devs should limit themselves intentionally artistically. It would provide more interesting looking games than the ultra realistic games or cartoon vomit we mainly get from well budgeted studios these days. Even something as simple as limiting your color palette.