Small Mailman
Member
I'm into it. I find the PS1/N64 graphics very charming. I feel like it adds to the games atmospheres!
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
When will retro-inspired games move onto low-poly PS1/N64 graphics?
- Thread starter PeakPointMatrix
- Start date
Hit me up with some Unreal maps bruv.
I'm not sure about feeling nostalgic about PS1 era blockfest. I think that "style" is more hardware constraint rather than actual art style. I'm not sure the time and man power needed to make PS1-era graphic is less in large margin compared to PS2-era.
Lili: Child of Geos is an indie right? That game looks great.
Lili: Child of Geos is an indie right? That game looks great.
Real PS1 games are a nausea inducing, super lo-res, jaggy mess. Unless you play them on an emulator (increases resolution and adds anti-aliasing). And n64 games are low res, super blurry, and foggy (again, unless you play them using an emulator). A genuine, 32 bit era indy retro game (aiming for it) has not really been made, and will never be made.
BloodMoney
Banned
Has anyone mentioned Interstate 76 yet?... Because, op, that is what I'm talking about. The concept you speak of has been enacted before. Old school graphics, 1997 style (or was it 96?).
God that was a good game. Taurus' poems. So good.gif
God that was a good game. Taurus' poems. So good.gif
Much like the repeating tiled graphics of old 2D games, there is often a very elegant simplicity in early 3D games and their geometry/world design, which contrast modern AAA titles that clutter things up with tons of little details everywhere, and I think that's a quality many people see in that style of presentation.
Pyroclastic
Banned
I would certainly be interested in more games that sort of look like the 3d precursors to that era. What would people classify Proteus as being like, for example? Like some amiga tech demo or whatever maybe.
SCReuter
Member
I think I find this more visually appealing than today's photorealistic racers. It's beautiful.
I'd be all for it! Almost all the complaints I've read are aide effects of the original hardware these games ran on...
Problems like warped textures wouldn't be an issue with the type of hardware we are dealing with here...the games could be absolutely gorgeous considering the resolutions/frame rates/AA solutions/particle effects that would be possible by keeping poly counts low...
Problems like warped textures wouldn't be an issue with the type of hardware we are dealing with here...the games could be absolutely gorgeous considering the resolutions/frame rates/AA solutions/particle effects that would be possible by keeping poly counts low...
afternoon delight
Member
Hear hear! I think in a few years they'll cacth up to this inspiration as the 8/16bit variety runs dry.
Bring it on I say!
Bring it on I say!
I don't think they will, because early 3D games are an absolute eye sore. There's nothing asthetically pleasing about them. 3D games look great now, but it took years of awkward growing pains (where only the novelty of it allowed them to be regarded as good looking) to get to this point.
2D pixel art is a real art form and has the potential to be really beautiful. Early low poly 3D games -- I just can't think of a single example where I think the game now is beautiful.
This is beautiful, right now, in 2014, as I look at it:
This is not:
2D pixel art is a real art form and has the potential to be really beautiful. Early low poly 3D games -- I just can't think of a single example where I think the game now is beautiful.
This is beautiful, right now, in 2014, as I look at it:
This is not:
Some Nobody
Junior Member
I agree with this only if it means these 8-bit/16-bit games disappear too.
I don't think they will, because early 3D games are an absolute eye sore. There's nothing asthetically pleasing about them. 3D games look great now, but it took years of awkward growing pains (where only the novelty of it allowed them to be regarded as good looking) to get to this point.
2D pixel art is a real art form and has the potential to be really beautiful. Early low poly 3D games -- I just can't think of a single example where I think the game now is beautiful.
This is beautiful, right now, in 2014, as I look at it:
This is not:
It was trying to look realistic. Dew Prism still looks amazing, and a game aping its still will look that much more amazing when they fix all the graphical quirks.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=798812
That looks appealing to me HD DS (basically PSX/N64 era art)
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Hey guys have some Soul Reaver:
And a nice side dish of Silent Bomber:
When I opened this thread I was exactly thinking about silent bomber.
More like 32X graphics, amirite
Spring-Loaded
Member
yes, exactly. thank you.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Dreamcast was still considered low poly, no?
Pretty good jump over N64 nonetheless, imo. Soul Calibur looks a gen apart.
I'm new be nice
Member
This game still has a certain quality and appeal to its graphics for me. There's something minimalistic about it that feels surreal. In a weird way it has a more real quality to me than this:
MrCunningham
Member
Yeah, I agree with you on this, leave the technical limitations in the past where they can be enjoyed with nostalgia goggles. But I welcome the low poly art style.
There was more than just technical limitations that marred the look of games, techniques have improves over time as well. For example, a lot of older 3D games didn't even have skeletal animation which limited model animation to swamping between different keyframe models. This made for some clunky looking animation in the past. I remember when skeletal animation was like a big deal. Modeling techniques in general improved over time as well, I think there's much more that can be done with limited polygons numbers overall. Developers aren't limited to wasting polygons on subdividing models to reduce warping and such.
Not saying you are wrong here on the hardware, but I do think that other aspects of modeling have improved over time too that it can make issues in the past trivial.
Also different hardware back then gave different results too. Model 2 modeled everything in quadrilaterals, giving everything its own distinct look. Same with Model 1 and the Sega Saturn and 3DO.
Yes please!! But at a high res, and with modern lighting techniques.
Animation
I also wonder if you were doing something low poly if you could really push the systems insanely hard. Stuff like a zombie game with like 50,000 zombies on screen. Or an open world game where you can go in to every single interior with no loading. Insane amounts of particle effects. Transitions like in GTA V when switching characters, but absolutely no hitching to hide the loading, etc etc.
Animation
I also wonder if you were doing something low poly if you could really push the systems insanely hard. Stuff like a zombie game with like 50,000 zombies on screen. Or an open world game where you can go in to every single interior with no loading. Insane amounts of particle effects. Transitions like in GTA V when switching characters, but absolutely no hitching to hide the loading, etc etc.
Ivan el Trolazo
Banned
the palmtrees and trees are sprites?
Rhazer Fusion
Member
Exactly what I was going to say. Low poly characters are ugly to me. Generally, there isn't any particular style to them.
Haunted
Member
Some games truly haven't aged well at all. I mean, clean IQ and texture quality can minimise the ugliness, but the more you stylise to rectify the limitations, the farther you get from what you're emulating.
I guess at that point it's more an attempt at emulating what it should have looked like back then in its ideal condition, rather than what we actually got.
Games like Eldritch do a good job at being simple, low-poly works that are still aesthetically pleasing. I've recently tried to replay Soul Reaver and good god, it's really fucking ugly.
I guess at that point it's more an attempt at emulating what it should have looked like back then in its ideal condition, rather than what we actually got.
Games like Eldritch do a good job at being simple, low-poly works that are still aesthetically pleasing. I've recently tried to replay Soul Reaver and good god, it's really fucking ugly.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
That bridge and building image was really nice, but I'd kinda like to see it without the modern lighting and reflections.
SCReuter
Member
Okay?
Some of this looks pretty cool, but early 3D games didn't actually look like this, so if you made a game that looked like this it would just be a stylized 3D game -- not a psx/n64 era inspired game.
N64 games in reality looked more like this:
and running at 15 fps.
despite a couple of good games, it was a *TERRIBLE* era in gaming. best forgotten.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Low-poly doesn't mean low-res or no z-buffer or no perspective correction or no problematic frame-rates or dithered transparencies or fog. We can both emulate hardware of years past and redo what was built for old machines at an optimal performance level. Today, "low-poly" just means low-poly, and games like Lonely Planet look good as a result of the chosen tech level corresponding to how the game should appear. Drift Stage is still in pre-alpha, and I don't necessarily like the mismatch of transparent smoke effects to pixelated ones, but it exemplifies that narrow margin of stylization found between 2D pixel art and polygonal models with photographed textures meant to look like real-life (even Sonic Adventure fits that bill).
Too many knee-jerk reactions littering this thread, but also a collection of thoughtful opinions favoring this kind of style for some games that could use it. Mega Man Legends, Sonic Jam, and Kirby 64 rather impress me with their economic polygon models and pixel-like use of texturing. There should be a variety of games realizing the vibrant early-'90s pixel art style with 3D engines and polygons. Not that all games need good color theory and simpler ways of conveying visual information, but there's nothing aged about the stuff you might see over at Polycount.
Too many knee-jerk reactions littering this thread, but also a collection of thoughtful opinions favoring this kind of style for some games that could use it. Mega Man Legends, Sonic Jam, and Kirby 64 rather impress me with their economic polygon models and pixel-like use of texturing. There should be a variety of games realizing the vibrant early-'90s pixel art style with 3D engines and polygons. Not that all games need good color theory and simpler ways of conveying visual information, but there's nothing aged about the stuff you might see over at Polycount.
JordanN
Banned
This is interesting because I always wanted to discuss the merits of what makes 3D an artform.
When you look at CG movies, next to none of them feature anything that looks like a PS1/N64 game. It seems like low poly always existed as a limitation, as opposed to an actual art direction.
Of course, this is circumstantial evidence. But when you look at 8-bit or 16-bit, it seems like something that's generally accepted in not just games but in other media as well (i.e look at Wreck it Ralph. They had no problems going for old arcade looking sprites).
Of course, everything is subjective. It's possible there are other explanations why low poly hasn't taken off. Or maybe it really isn't a style at all.
I have one theory behind this. Think about brush strokes. Can you still make a painting with only 10 strokes? Sure. But chances are, you'll end up with a painting that is very crude. If you had more brush strokes, you could paint until you come up with an image actually resembling something.
Riposte
Member
People doing that right now, in this thread.
I wouldn't mind a game that looks (and moves) like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXXjW_5gxCA
To be fair, most retro inspired indie games with pixel art look nothing at all like NES or other retro consoles either.
Dragoon En Regalia
Member
Haven't seen these yet:
I can see these guys as existing in a 3D space just as easily as I can visualize them collapsing into 2D space, becoming pixel art in the process.
I can see these guys as existing in a 3D space just as easily as I can visualize them collapsing into 2D space, becoming pixel art in the process.
XANDER CAGE
Member
Some of this looks pretty cool, but early 3D games didn't actually look like this, so if you made a game that looked like this it would just be a stylized 3D game -- not a psx/n64 era inspired game.
N64 games in reality looked more like this:
and running at 15 fps.
despite a couple of good games, it was a *TERRIBLE* era in gaming. best forgotten.
Well, yeah. Retro-inspired 2D games couldn't actually run on the systems they're harkening back to (outside of some rare exceptions), they're just evoking a certain style. Of course a modern low-poly 3D game would eschew all the uglier problems the PS1/N64 generation had.
evilromero
Member
Jesus Christ there's a serious lack of imagination in here.
I've been wanting this for years. I put forward the question years ago to reddit and got a bunch of nopes. Ugh. The truth is that during the 90s nobody would have guessed that 8-bit style graphics would be cool again. You would've got noped right out of the room since all gamers wanted was 3D.
I've been wanting this for years. I put forward the question years ago to reddit and got a bunch of nopes. Ugh. The truth is that during the 90s nobody would have guessed that 8-bit style graphics would be cool again. You would've got noped right out of the room since all gamers wanted was 3D.
KrM DeLorean
Member
My completely uninformed opinion, looking from the outside in, it looks like making good low poly 3d assets, combined with applying physics to said assets, would take a lot more work.
But what do I know.
But what do I know.
I'm not saying I do not want to see low-poly indies, although I'm admittedly heavily biased towards SNES level graphics. Nonetheless, good simple 3D can look damn good even to me.
I'm saying its unlikely because of the effort required. Indies have soul-crushing time and resource limits. That is the main problem.
Ridiculously simplified example: You can whip up a prototype for a character by opening MS Paint and drawing some stick figures right next to each other. Done.
Compare that to the considerable workload behind creating a 3D character prototype. You need to conjure up a mesh in e.g. Blender. Don't even think about animating (rigging) it. If you want to go the extra mile and go with textures instead of flat shading, then creating and applying only one of those is equivalent to the entire 2D character prototype, work-wise.
Just to be clear, I am not saying Indies are lazy. Or that they are content with 2D. Not at all, ever.
I'm just saying the reality of the situation is a harsh one. The move to 3D, no matter how tool-assisted or minimalistic, adds a level of complexity that subtracts from the already meager resources they have at hand. They basically HAVE to choose sprites and 2D engines. The 8/16 bit optics help explain away the limitations like toned down animations and lowrez artwork, which is why that particular style is so popular.
Of course, "Indie" is a ridiculously vague term that covers everything from one guy in a basement to arguably Chris Roberts and his 50+ million dollar 300-people mega project. Still, the core problem remains that a 2D game is vastly less complex than a 3D one, even with all the advancements in tools and workflow.
I'm saying its unlikely because of the effort required. Indies have soul-crushing time and resource limits. That is the main problem.
Ridiculously simplified example: You can whip up a prototype for a character by opening MS Paint and drawing some stick figures right next to each other. Done.
Compare that to the considerable workload behind creating a 3D character prototype. You need to conjure up a mesh in e.g. Blender. Don't even think about animating (rigging) it. If you want to go the extra mile and go with textures instead of flat shading, then creating and applying only one of those is equivalent to the entire 2D character prototype, work-wise.
Just to be clear, I am not saying Indies are lazy. Or that they are content with 2D. Not at all, ever.
I'm just saying the reality of the situation is a harsh one. The move to 3D, no matter how tool-assisted or minimalistic, adds a level of complexity that subtracts from the already meager resources they have at hand. They basically HAVE to choose sprites and 2D engines. The 8/16 bit optics help explain away the limitations like toned down animations and lowrez artwork, which is why that particular style is so popular.
Of course, "Indie" is a ridiculously vague term that covers everything from one guy in a basement to arguably Chris Roberts and his 50+ million dollar 300-people mega project. Still, the core problem remains that a 2D game is vastly less complex than a 3D one, even with all the advancements in tools and workflow.
EmCeeGramr
Member
A lot of the commentary here about how it'd be lazy, they could easily use better graphics along with the same gameplay, and that they'd just be conforming to old limitations for nostalgia's sake when we've moved on is reminding me of way back in 2008 when a lot of people were angry with Capcom for making Mega Man 9 an NES-styled game instead of using SNES or modern HD sprite graphics.
arhra
Member
Those are (high res emulator shots of) actual DS games, which was a platform with relatively similar technical limitations (in terms of polycount and texture variety) to the PS1/N64, but implemented without some of the major flaws of those consoles, and coded to by devs with much more experience at working in 3D.
Late-gen PS1 stuff isn't that too dissimilar, aside from the unavoidable technical limitations of the platform.
That's pretty much exactly the quality level that people are talking about when they discuss this subject (although personally, I still think that low-res rendering has a certain charm to it).
Thanks, i think you summed up exactly what i was thinking.
People seem to be immediately reacting to the hardware limitations, rather than the art style. For me low poly art, clean textures with modern resolutions / frame rates / stability etc would be awesome, and a welcome change from pixel art
I'm wondering if age has something to do with how appetizing the prospect of N64 / PS1 style graphics is?
This is the period i was a teenager, playing a lot, definitely easy for me to have nostalgic and romantic view of the games, and be really into the idea of a retro revival?
Maybe not so easy for young people, looking at it later to look past the issues, and see the charm of the art?