/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10160295
Very tasteful art.

>>8564050
As already said, limitations and passion mostly, but another huge factor is that back then you had to be very familiar with modelling programs and texturing tools to make shit even look passable, since there wasn't as many easy shortcuts or tutorials for devs back then as there were today. Nowadays devs have become too comfortable with shortcuts and tools that can produce high-poly and high-fidelity assets, focusing on cutting down the time required to make games instead of fully pushing the limits of the technology to create things and techniques people have never seen before. One of the first lessons I got when I started 3D modelling was learning how to make a fully textured dumpster, which I thought would be impossible, but it only took us (a full class of beginners) five hours to make, without any prior experience whatsoever, all thanks to easy-to-use shortcuts and a library of preset textures.

If we could make stuff that could pass off in your average steam release after 5 hours of work, imagine what someone who had years of experience doing things the hard way could achieve. It'd be like giving photoshop to Van Gogh or a 3D printer and CAD to Da Vinci.

Also another major issue is that modern games just default to photo-realisim which might look good, but it usually leaves games without any sense of discernible style or theme. If you took screenshots of game enviroments, removed HUD elements and easily identifiable objects like weapons, characters or icons, a majority of them just look the same. Retro games, in their limitations, created unique styles naturally just by choices such as focusing more on texturing than lighting, focusing on lighting over texturing, sprite work and multilayering etc. There was also a more widespread usage of different game engines, so even using the same lighting settings and textures could produce radically different looks, as opposed to now where there are three mainstream engines people emply to design games.

Who is your low poly waifu?

>>3999127
>>3999338