/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6134838
I agree with you philosophically, but that doesn't look like a great example. Western programmer art was never really brimming with soul to begin with

>>6134874
The original textures were the expression of the artists at the time the game it was made, so that's why it'll always be more 'soulful'. Besides that, the new ones are very tacky, it's no surprise most of these HD packa are made by germans.

>>6134838
>shits on zoomers while saying "SOUL"
>post shit example of "SOUL"
0/troll

>>6134838
HOT TAKE - Video gaming would've been better if it stayed in the 1996-2001 range.

First up, you have the graphics whoring, where people keep seeking better and higher resolution graphics. It becomes an endless struggle arguing with people for why they should try out some new game that's been released because "lawl grafix ar bad". You have games that are unable to sell to a market that cares solely about graphics.

Secondly, graphics encourage cinematic story-telling. QTE's have become more and more popular with the rise of 3D graphics, with cut scenes jerking the player out of gameplay in order to zoom the camera into some face or location that the developer wants you to look at, because they spent money animating, directing, and rendering that shot and they're not going to chance you missing their 15 second sequence that they spent millions of dollars on.

Lastly, the team sizes were smaller back then which allowed for companies to earn more, and if a game didn't sell millions, or even hundreds of thousands, they'd still be in the green a lot of the time. This also incentivized cross-skill development where the level designers were also the artists, and the animators, and the programmers. This lead to greater group cohesion and understanding of the core concepts of the game, and allowed team members not to conflict with the goals of each-other leading to haphazard development and struggling to keep the themes and gameplay of the game focused, and working properly.

Each year, I'm able to name more and more indie games that are fun, memorable, and worth the time and money invested into them, than the garbage piles that are Triple A studio games.

-I'm tired of QTE's controlling my character instead of me
-I'm tired of staring and cinematics for minutes on end
-I'm tired of companies spending millions upon millions for their tech and banking everything on a single release

>>6134931
-CONTINUED-

-I'm tired of every game looking the same and dropping unique art styles for just "realistic 3d grafix"
-I'm tired of seeing a franchise die out or be on the edge of death only for the developer to pull a 180 and say "ho ho ho heyyyy gamers! we just made this new expansion/sequel that is totally gamey and wacky! come buy our new release!.....please!"
-I'm tired of boring linear games that have no challenge

I just want something fun. Shovel Knight, Into the Breach, Volgarr The Viking, Hotline Miami....These are all the kinds of games that should've and could've been made by Triple A studios, with much bigger budgets, with tons of even more content and polish behind them, and we have to rely on small indie teams that lack exposure and resources to make them.

>>6134931
>>6134935
I agree 100%. I'm sure there must be some exceptions, but it feels like there hasn't been any interesting game in at least 10 years. There's already a huge backlog of old games that I wanna play, so I don't think I'll be playing anything new in the foreseeable future.

>>6134935
Also have you considered that huge studios are simply incapable of making anything good just due to their sheer size? There's definitely a certain event horizon of investment where the risk aversion becomes too big to realistically create anything good.

>>6134958
>>6134962
It's not that I hate triple A games, it's that for every triple A game I see, there's 3 or 4 indie games that I'm more interested in. There are exceptions, like Witcher 3, Sekiro, Doom 2016, and Rainbow Six Siege, but for the most part triple A games don't challenge their players anymore. I would say between 2008-2012, there was a shift from actual games, to movie games. I can't tell where the industry is headed right now, but it seems like consoles as a service and virtual stores is becoming the next big thing, so you could start to see a return to smaller studio releases with more modest budgets.

Any movement away from TLOA, Uncharted, and modern Final Fantasy is a step in the right direction.

>>6134985
The witcher 3 was fucking boring, I dunno how people think the quests, action and setting aren't generic modern AAA fantasy

>>6134838
Yeah, this is horrid.
In terms of visuals I liked Deadly Shadows the most, it had the perfect balance between realistic and cartoonish.
My problem with HD texture packs for older games is that the more detailed the texture is, the emptier the game environment feels

>>6135015
Looks better vanilla

>>6134838
that's nice and all but I'd much rather a mod that improves enemy AI, collision and stuff like that. Im completly fine with the original graphics

>>6134885
Isn't it rather because better textures tax the performance more?

>>6134838
mate we have known for 20 years that 'hd texture packs' are shit. you know why because they are made by literal children most of the time and certainly not people with an art background or even just a good eye. these people don't know what the fuck a color pallette is
catch up

>>6134838
>zoomers
Retard. People modding Thief are the definition of boomers.

>>6134838
>Why do zoomers hate leaving things to imagination?
>Every game now has to look like the same tasteless, high contrast generic collage. Gross.
bit of a contradiction? get over yourself, use your imagination

>>6134931
Why not 1990-1996 range. Games had SOUL and also did NOT look like hot garbage due to relying on crappy 3D tech in its infancy.

>>6134838
What game?

>>6135245
Thief.

>>6135179
Most 3D games released during that time did look hot garbage though.

>>6134874
No, the update is hastly thrown together high definition texture ripped from Google image search with no attempt to match the feel or tone. And the expansion that adds in plants and props has no thought pit into their location or aesthetics.its just "more is better, more props, more stuff".

>>6135315
that's basically Revision for Deus Ex

>>6135179
>games had SOUL

No more than games from the 1996-2000 range. The games with early 3D also used a lot of art styles that covered up for the fact that they were early 3D, like Crash Bandicoot, Banjo Kazooie, Spyro, Ape Escape. And the games that didn't have particularly cartoony art style like Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, and Tekken, still looked fine. Not to mention, there's plenty of games for the NES and SNES that looked like puke. In fact, that era of gaming was filled with more garbage than any other era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_games

>>6134874
Western programmer art is the only genre that ever had soul to begin with. Insects drawings don't have soul.

>>6134838
This is the dumbest argument that just won't fucking die. If something exists with "soul" that you like then fucking play it. Do you not realize you aren't forced to play any mod or remake? You aren't. Nobody is putting a goddamn gun to your head. So shut the fuck up and don't play the "soulless" stuff. Don't be an asshole that tells other people what they should like.

>>6135606
Soul can't exist on its own, it's the endless crusade against soulless what keeps the soul alive and gives meaning.

>>6134838
Date of birth?

Soul argument is meaningless and you're a retarded brainlet spergchild unless you're talking about:

a) Doom

b) Quake

c) Painted Warhammer 40,000 miniatures from the 1992-2001 era.

>>6136028
How about this

I disagree and still think the original textures have soul and hd mod doesn't

If you don't like it well go fuck yourself I guess

>>6135606
>Don't be an asshole

ITT kids who act like they're older and make that obvious as hell by using buzzwords ending on -oomer and using /v/-memes like 'soul(less)'. You're still not fooling anyone, kids.

>>6136485
Wow you're so cool

>>6136485
You might have an unhealthy fixation on kids based on the way you're using the "kids" buzzword

>>6134838
>>6135015
The thing about HD packs is that it causes a clashat different levels of visual fidelity.

Thereare 3 things that go into it:
Fielity of models (polygonal details of separate models),
fidelity of textures (selfexplanatory)
and fidelity of environments (how complex environment is, how many separate elements go into it).
Obviously original games try to maintain the balance between all of those.

When you are updating one or two without updatingthe rest, resultlooks clashing and unbalanced, and therefore offputting to anyone who has a sense of taste.
Most often it is fidelity of environments that gets neglected since it is one of the hader things to update - it basically requires going over the whole game.

There areexamples of theopposite - like modern Crash (i know it has issues) and Spyro remasters - they keep gameplay and level structure intact, but uplift every bit of it at once, and they look great.

Such things are very unlikely toever be done by modding community as it requires compareable amount of people and effort as was necessary to create the original game in the first place.
SkyWind project is the only one of such fan-made uplifts that looks even remotely decent, and that's basically remaking the game entirely (as it should be in such cases).

tl;dr: Separate model/texture replacements are bound to always be shit, unless you remake levels as well, and even then it would probably suck anyway.

>>6136539
This 100%. I understand it's a good natured effort to want to "update" an old game you like, but on the other hand, if you love it so much you should appreciate it for what it is. It's like saying you love your girlfriend, but if she would just wear more makeup and get a haircut you'd have sex with her more often.

>>6136552
This is absolutely not what he was trying to say. His idea was about your girlfriend starting to wear more makeup, but not geting a new haircut which would suit this makeup.

>>6136539
>and they look great
No they dont

>>6136691
whatever you say, sweetie

>>6136658
You misunderstood me. My analogy was to show that if you want an "hd mod" then maybe you don't like the game as it is in the first place.

>>6136706
I understood your analogy, I pointed out that your "this 100%" approval of the person above seems to contradict with what you say next.

>>6134838
>Implying this is zoomers' faults specifically
John Carmack is directly tied to trying to drive bleeding edge graphics in games. Eat a dick.

>>6135008

Look at this tasteless faggot

>>6136529
You can't call it an unhealthy fixation if it's the truth. Why don't you cry about it? Or as you guys would call it nowadays: cope. Yeah that's right, I can use other words than 'kid'. It's not hard to expand your vocabulary you know.

>>6136850
ok, pedo

>>6136696
>colors look worse and washed out
>some chracter designs are unfaithfull to the original or simply weird
>overuses foilage

>>6136950
>colors look better and more organic without garish clashes
>characters actually have designs instead of being vague polygonal blobs
>foliage is used to increase detail density without altering stage layouts or introducing obstacles that weren't there in the originals, which would've happen if they added too many obstructive detail elements into stages

>>6136539
>>6136552
AI Upscalers are becoming a thing.
the thing is that you still need to put some textures into the dithering and pixelated treatment to get a better result that is 1:1 accurate to the original image

but people are too lazy to spend a few hours in photoshop

for 3dgames, most of it is limited by the mesh itself, you can make this to Q2 but the resolution is still lower than originally is.

>>6134931
I havent played a "modern" game past 2012 so its all gud for me

>>6137275
Nonono let the textures be what they are, no need to "update" them

>>6137953
Depends
Again, Many old games survived and looked better because CRT dithering, mainly with 3dfx games were always into play.

CRT wing commander 1 will look different and somewhat better defined than nowadays because there is no CRT dithering to work on it, Q1 wasn't retardly chunky as many faux retrofags wants to push it, GL quake was a blessing back then, Winquake at higher res was good because of how well the textures worked on it.

>>6137994
>GL quake was a blessing back then

I've come to realize that some people are just completely without taste.

The only problem with Quake's textures was playing it at the lowest resolution, where sever pixelization would obscure detail.

>>6138042
people loved GL quake because it could run at higher res, they didn't cared for what we meme now about filtering.

people wanted to play the game.

>>6137953
I would be fine with it in thief if anyone did it right. Handpainting everything. Noone does though. Who has the time.