/vr/ - Retro Games

Yes, they seemed a lot more creative about working within technical limitations.
Now it's just dropping shit into Unity.

>>7257969
Not really what I was talking about. I was mainly comparing 3D games. Pixel games don't have lighting in the same way as 3D games do. Also, classic Link's Awakening sucks, mainly because of the controls. There's no way the new one could possibly be worse. If you don't have to open the inventory every 10 seconds then it wins by default.

>>7257980
>Does anyone else feel like certain retro games actually had better graphics than modern games?
>Not really what I was talking about.
2d graphics are better than 3d

>>7258017
Neither are better nor worse than the other. It's an apples to oranges comparison. But I do feel that retro 3D has better lighting than most modern 3D in some quantifiable way.

>>7258026
>apples to oranges
Which are both sweet, edible fruit.

>>7257951
Nice blogpost but you're full of bullshit. Back you go.
Game companies have bigger budgets than ever and have entire teams dedicated to art style.
Stop being a hipster you insufferable faggot. Ever wonder why you sleep alone at night?

>>7258076
> Game companies have bigger budgets than ever and have entire teams dedicated to art style.
Yeah, that's part of the problem sherlock. Haven't you ever heard of "too many cooks spoils the broth"? Now instead of being handled directly by the art director, lighting is controlled by a team of dozens of code monkeys who need to put a bunch of unnecessary effects into the game to justify their jobs
> Ever wonder why you sleep alone at night?
No, I already know why. It's because I have really bad taste in women and I never fall for girls who are actually GF material.

>>7257969
ah shit, i still have to finish the rmake

Real life is ugly so the more they try to make the graphics realistic the uglier it gets

>>7257951
those models were hand made, textures were hand made and also had baked shadows by hand, today aaa is all photogrammetry and/or lidar, they undeniably look better individually but when you have to setup an scene it doesn't well because the assets are all from different sources
If you weren't paying attention, real life looks bad

>>7258230
>it doesn't look well
anyway, that's not an excuse, I don't think it's something that an artist can't fix but you have to pay him and it would take tons of hours, we know the aaa budget goes 90% to publicity

Must be the art style but MGS2 and 3 had pretty awesome graphics

>>7258076
You stink of kike.

>>7257978
only good post in this thread

>>7258191
Is this ugly to you?

>>7257951
Lots of games from this generation used lightmaps that were pre-rendered in 3DS Max or Maya, then maybe fine-tuned in an image editing program. I agree that it's great for atmosphere but you can't have dynamic lights in your background.

Nowadays, with SSAO and realtime ray-tracing, you can just put light sources in your game scene and call it a day.

Doom 2016 was a strange choice of a modern game that looks bad. Nu-Doom is one of the few modern games that I think still has some semblance of art-style left. The remake of Resident Evil 2 and 3 come to mind as modern games that I think look like trash even today. So many long stretches of bland textures with no interesting details put into them. Places like the sewers and especially the parking garage in 2 just look completely devoid of style. Blows my mind that RE7 came out years before the remakes because it looks so much better than them visually.

>>7257951
Silent Hill 2 is a case where it's almost photo-realistic. It's kinda amazing how far artists have fallen since then.

>>7257951
It's called an art style.

>>7259842
I completely disagree and think the opposite. RE engine is one of the nicest looking modern engines and every RE engine game is one of the nicest looking of the modern gen. Meanwhile modern nuDoom is one of the nastiest looking games of the generation. Everything looks hazy and washed out like a piece of furniture left in the sun too long.

>>7258076
Modern games are trash and soulless, cope.

>>7259640
It's meh at best

>>7257951
Isn't that pre-rendered? I think that can make the lighting look much better.

often this comes up with discussion of why modern graphics don't look as good as 20 year old pre-renders, with the reason being that an artistically composed shot (left) is not comparable to a free camera (right) in any medium.

OP complains that even old games with free camera looked better and I dunno, i would posit that's to do with there needing to be artistry within the textures but probably the real deal is that modern engines are too fucking shiny and have too many pixels to work with

Doom
looks exactly like CODAW
looks exactly like Titanfall2
looks exactly like that other future-set FPS with boost jumps

but a better comparison is needed like a newer horror game set in a house

>>7260032
RE engine is good but the remakes skimp out on environmental details that are crucial to making a game stand out visually. RE7 I'd agree is one of the nicest looking games of the gen. REmake 2 and 3 not so much.

Pic related. The entire area parking garage just has this bland and unappealing grey look. Theres nothing visually interesting in the entire area. Its especially bad if you've played RE7 and can tell half of RE2make is just lazily copy+pasted assets from RE7. Only thing that saves REmake 2 and 3 from looking like total boring shite half the time is the good lighting from the engine. The cars themselves just look like assets thrown in without much extra thought or detail put into their placement other than, "Its a parking garage so it has some cars in it." The only decent looking parts of the parking garage and the sewers are the parts that are so dark that you can barely see anything anyways. Also I thought the lab was just a GIGANTIC step down visually from the lab of the original. The old lab looked industrial and fucked up, the new lab looks like sci-fi shit and is waaaayyyy too clean looking.

btw I don't think 2016 looks particularly great, I just don't think it looks that bad either. I thought Eternal was a big step up from 2016 visually for the most part, particularly how the demons themselves look. Anyways, to each his own my dude.

>>7257951
naw i think modern games have the best 2D graphics

>>7257951 (OP)
naw i think modern games have the best 2D graphics

>>7257951
Art Style is more important than graphical fidelity. It's undeniable that contemporary games have better graphics, due to the fidelity. But something cel-shaded will look better in 20 years, because it's an art style that doesn't need to chase the biggest and best.

>>7260449
>Art Style is more important than graphical fidelity. It's undeniable that contemporary games have better graphics, due to the fidelity.
just contradict yourself directly and fully

>>7260351
The police station is definitely the strongest part of Remake 2 in almost every sense. The lab was kind of a disappointing final area. That's the case for every RE game though. Has there ever been an RE game where the final level wasn't under par compared to the rest of the game?

>>7260351
>>7260481
I think the biggest reason why RE2 doesn't look as great is because they were targeting 60fps on consoles. Which, given that reason, it's not really a bad one

>>7260467
No I didn't, keep reading.
Art Style is more important, because it will stand up to "aging" better than the current cutting edge graphics. In 20 years, the stylized game will look better, because it wasn't chasing technical specs.

>>7260467
contemporary games have better graphics. That is to say, they graph more things on screen.

>>7260486
what do you think graphics means?

>>7260481
The police station in RE2make might be the pinnacle of the entire series. When you mix in Mr. X, Lickers and zombies you get one of the most memorable parts of any game ever. None of these enemies by themselves is that much of a threat but goddamn it gets spicy when you mix all of them together and throw them into a non-linear area like the station. Theres so much potential in RE but the games only meet that potential for such a short period of time. I agree RE has always had problems with its final areas, but I'd go further and say they've always struggled with their entire second half. They've never figured out how to make a good RE "lategame" IMO the way RE games should be structured is have 2-3 large sandbox areas like the mansion in RE1 or the station in RE2. They need to stop putting in these shitty linear areas to add "environmental variety" like the cave in 1 or the sewers in 2. Would also be really cool to have an RE game with a map like Dead Rising 1. I have high hopes for RE8 since theyve hinted the game is going to have a more open structure. That and it just looks sick so far.

yes, games from 2002 - 2004 easily can look better than a lot of games today since most games these days are full of ugly post-processing up the ass

It has to do with how games handle lighting
With old games everything was dark as shit unless you specifically made a light in-game. Now it's the reverse where everything is fullbright unless you go out of your way to make shadows.
Add to that stuff like insanely long rendering pipelines and terrible art direction and games do indeed look like garbage.

>>7260529
> With old games everything was dark as shit unless you specifically made a light in-game. Now it's the reverse where everything is fullbright unless you go out of your way to make shadows.
It actually does kinda feel this way. Why is that?

>>7260513
So you can continue to ignore my point? No thanks.
Art Style > Graphical Fidelity
Everything I said supports this idea. When you decide to get your head out of your ass, you can reread my posts, and then hang your head in shame, when you realize that I am right.

Many modern games are both too visually busy and have textures that look like plastic. This isn't really what "most" modern games look like though, just high profile stuff.

>>7258076

>>7260578
you said
>contemporary games have better graphics, due to the fidelity
so you have to explain, what do you think 'graphics' means? because higher fidelity with bad art does not make 'better graphics'. its like you know the right thing but you can't speak english

>>7260590
he was obviously using "graphics" interchangeably with "graphical fidelity" you sperg

>>7260648
so.. he's retarded because that's not what 'good graphics' means

>>7257951 >>7257978

Games used to have graphic engines designed specifically by the coders to take advantage of each piece of hardware, nowadays they use the two same generic renders.

>>7260805
> Games used to have graphic engines designed specifically by the coders to take advantage of each piece of hardware
Shouldn't it be even easier to do this now since Xbox, PS, and PC are so similar? So even multiplatform games can be tailored to the architecture?
> they use the two same generic renders
Which are? Are you talking about Unity and Unreal? Because Unity is effectively nonexistant in AAA, and Unreal is still the minority, even if it's a sizeable minority.

I like retro graphics because it emanates a certain charm and a certain grim. Its not ugly because it embraces all the elements together and its honest in its own limitations. Its like that 6/10 with a magical pussy. Its a meh girl thats trying everything she has to grab your attention, and when you fuck her, its heavenly.

>>7257951
graphics haven't noticeably advanced since PS2, that's one reason why it's not retro

The modern game industry decided to chase photorealism, and it's been an absolute cancer. Mindlessly copying reality leads to soulless art. Pic related is a good example; it's a pencil drawing that realistically copies a photograph as faithfully as possible. While we may admire the technical skill, it ultimately does nothing except imitate. We recognize that the best artists aren't the ones who can imitate reality the closest.

With early game graphics, imitating reality was impossible. Artists were forced to interpret around limitations, and the results ended up being quite memorable.

Nowdays, games have the perverse obsession with making everything look realistic, regardless of everything else. The concrete has shaders that let it perfectly model the fresnel based on the angle of incidence, the ceiling lights have their global illumination simulate bouncing light, and there's perfectly simulated volumetric scattering everywhere. Despite all that, the fundamental artistic job of having something interesting to look at in somewhere interesting to be never gets done. You just get stuck in some grey concrete island or mathematically generated vegetated area that's indistinguishable from any other game out there.

>>7262568
remember all this about realism isn't even worth it in its own right, because as soon as anything moves it looks like cheap shit
not to mention you can't interact with any of it

>>7262568
>>7262580
Agreed. I feel like the AAA industry has lost sight of the fact that games are supposed to be an abstraction - a game - not a simulation.

>>7260481
>Has there ever been an RE game where the final level wasn't under par compared to the rest of the game?
Because only 5 people here have finished CV, nobody talks about how great the final area is.
You have to collect 3 items to access the last 10-15 minutes of the game, and these 3 items can be grabbed in any order. Each of them requires a significant amount of investment, whether it be a full puzzle (Alfred), item hunting (Nosferatu), or boss fights (Alexia), and depending on the order you do them, you can get optional dialogue (if you do Nosferatu before Alexia, Alexia will show up when you release Nosferatu).
It's a nice open-ended section preceding a final section that is mostly puzzle heavy before the final boss.

Not a 3D title but want to give a shoutout to Diablo 1's lighting. Playing that game has an intensity to it, an atmosphere that sucks you in, completely unlike any modern arpg. And the lighting, flickering of candles, and the way fireballs light up the screen is a huge part of it.

>>7257980
>Also, classic Link's Awakening sucks, mainly because of the controls.
It controls exactly like every other retro top-down 2D Zelda.

>>7260585
both look shit

>>7257951
Some game makers used the tech limits to creat great atmospheres that modern games only serve to sterilize with HD realism. That's one of the things lost in both the Resident Evil and FF7 remakes.

>>7258076
>Game companies have bigger budgets than ever and have entire teams dedicated to art style.
And those "artists" are all CalArts faggots with no sense of aesthetics.
Neck yourself, faggot.

>>7257951
>Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

Epic has.

That's why:
>NO LONGER SUPPORT FOR UNREAL TOURNAMENT 99 OR ANY OTHER UNREAL TOURNAMENT GAME IN THE FUTURE RELEASES OF THE RENDERER,
>AS THE EPIC GAMES COMPANY IS ALLEGEDLY NOT PLEASED WITH SUCH GRAPHICAL UPDATES TO THESE TITLES (EXCLUDING MAPS AND TEXTURES). FOR UT 99 GRAB VERSION 1.6.1. !!
https://www.moddb.com/mods/unreal-directx11-renderer-for-ut-ug-rune-and-dx/downloads/directx11-renderer-for-wotrune-hp12-cbu-and-ds9tf-version-162

Stop enjoying old games, buy new games.

>>7260351
What ruins modern graphics are post fx garbage. Grain for muh artistic feel, a Vignette for muh "visual focus", Lens Distortion because "dude post fx lmao", Chromatic Aberration because "dude post fx lmao", Color filters (used to be shitbrown or pissyellow, now it's usually eyewrecking blue, and of course, eyevaseline Anti Aliasing.

>>7257951
>certain retro games
"certain" absolutely. Also many remakes and generic AAA, but I wouldn't say that on average it's worse than before.
>>7263651
This is absolutely true, but in many cases they can also be deactivated.
There is plenty of shitty art direction in games, but for every Gears of War and CoD there are still games that look beautiful, realistic and not. Take stuff like Kingdom Come, Echo, Journey or Manifold Garden.

>>7260445
Its kind of rare. Cuphead is a great example but most other 2d games look like flash trash or pixel vomit.

>>7263827
> Echo
Meh, it's a pretty standard UE4 look. And yes, I'm one of the 10 people who played this game. It's not that good. It's the definition of a one-trick pony that depends entirely on the one gimmick. Also, I'm pretty sure the levels are randomly generated to some extent. At least I hope they are. If they're designed by a person, then the level designer should have been fired.

>>7263941
I didn't like the gameplay either, but it looks fantastic, come on. The lighting might standard UE4, but the art direction is definitely inspired.

>>7263827
this does look generic though. there's filigree geometry or whatever but it doesn't fucking matter because the color grading, 'lens effects' and all that shit absolutely dominate.
its funny you mention gears and cod because that's the two fucking games this looks like. gears design in the cod:aw engine

>>7264663
(actually i looked up the game and it looks ok. you just picked the worst possible picture)

>>7260032
nuDoom takes place on Mars and was optimised for performance. It is bleak, brutal, and foreboding. If played on settings above medium it can look really nice. The dingy colours make sense in that context.

>>7259640
what game

>>7259640
like people have said, there's no design. so while this is very technically impressive it just looks like the background of a random shot you'd take with a phone to show something in the foreground. there's 'nothing to see'