Support NeoGAF

[TheChewyWaffles]

rollercoaster tycoon being written entirely in assembly is pretty crazy.

Wtf

 

[mclem]

I was going to mention kkrieger, but it's been done, so instead I'll bring up the arcade game I, Robot:

Smooth-rendered 3D polygonal graphics.

In 1983.

This game is contemporary with Mario Bros.

 

[Naked Snake]

For me it's MGS2, weather was incredible, AI also felt groundbreaking to me.

Thank you. I scrolled through every post in this thread thinking nobody was going to mention this.

Also Super Mario Bros.

 

[Timeaisis]

Everything about Metal Gear Solid 2 when it came out. Particles, weather effects, animations, lighting, AI. If I had to itemize "next gen moments", MGS2 is probably the first one that comes to mind.

Recently, though, Dishonored 2's Crack in the Slab mission is an amazing technical level design feat.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Doesn't that make it not seamless then?

It was 100% seamless when playing.

Loved Blade of Darkness! It's the souls series grandfather.

Enclave too, so great!

Wut. Enclave is hot garbage and has nothing to do with Souls whatsoever. It wasn't even an RPG.

 

[hotcyder]

Wtf

http://www.chrissawyergames.com/faq3.htm

and I didn't think my appreciation for this game could get any higher.

 

[lumzi23]

Everybody's talking about Toy Story graphics, and the Gamecube had Star Wars graphics over a decade ago.

Ok fine, so it's not like it's a 1:1 recreation, but holy hell it looks amazingly close to the movies back in the day. The modern Star Wars games has this weird lighting that looks off.

Sorry, did you mean to respond to me or someone else?

 

[ss_lemonade]

Wut. Enclave is hot garbage and has nothing to do with Souls whatsoever. It wasn't even an RPG.

Enclave looked amazing before it was released. Pre-downgrade, I remember how it was supposed to have environmental destruction, dynamic water with reflections and 4 player splitscreen (just some things I recall from early magazine previews). I wonder if the downgrades were because it was too much for the xbox to handle

 

[Schyz]

In my opinion is the Sega Model 2 hardware (1993):

Once you had seen those graphics it was clear that videogames were going to change.

In consumer hardware, it probably was the first 3Dfx card, the Voodoo 1 (1996):

 

[Cow Mengde]

Sorry, did you mean to respond to me or someone else?

No, it was not. It was just a general statement.

 

[ty_hot]

Eh, GT4 was more impressive. I mean, the US version ran in 1080i, which is freaking crazy if you think about the time it was released and on which hardware it ran.

GT and the always forgotten Tourist Trophy, 1080i on a PS2. Not to say that at 480p it was already such an amazing game graphically.

 

[Nvzman]

GT and the always forgotten Tourist Trophy, 1080i on a PS2. Not to say that at 480p it was already such an amazing game graphically.

Did GT4 and TT actually render at 1080i? Because I've played GT4 a good amount at launch and after, and when you set the game at 720p or 1080i it has an absolute assload of aliasing and looks pretty garbage, like the game is being upscaled from 480p with a 1080i/720p HUD.
I've been wondering this for a while, as it doesn't really look like GT4 renders at 720p, just a bunch of upscaling.

 

[Refreshment.01]

Sprint Vector's fluid locomotion system, which allows movement in VR with no motion sickness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2EgXu_FrSk

Funny thing is there are some Wii games that did something similar for locomotion. Although i do understand why this works. XD

Technological achievements:

• Spacewar. Top of the line as it gets.
• Elite.
• iRobot (1983?)
• Star Wars Arcade with the ambient cabinet.
• Dragons Lair.
• Vectrex Imager.
• Galaxian.
• Sega Motocros game (the one with the handle bars)
• Zaxxon.
• Defender of the crown.
• Vette.
• Virtuality Machines. (Winchester specially)
• WIng Commander.
• Tresspasser.
• Daytona.
• DKC.
• VF3
• Tenebrae (64KB procedural generated game).

 

[pottuvoi]

Did GT4 and TT actually render at 1080i? Because I've played GT4 a good amount at launch and after, and when you set the game at 720p or 1080i it has an absolute assload of aliasing and looks pretty garbage, like the game is being upscaled from 480p with a 1080i/720p HUD.
I've been wondering this for a while, as it doesn't really look like GT4 renders at 720p, just a bunch of upscaling.

Pretty sure it was 640x540 per field, so 640x1080i.
Horizontal 3x scaling to fill screen.

As it ran pretty stable 60fps they could do field rendering.

 

[HTupolev]

Did GT4 and TT actually render at 1080i? Because I've played GT4 a good amount at launch and after, and when you set the game at 720p or 1080i it has an absolute assload of aliasing and looks pretty garbage, like the game is being upscaled from 480p with a 1080i/720p HUD.
I've been wondering this for a while, as it doesn't really look like GT4 renders at 720p, just a bunch of upscaling.

It's windowboxed 1080i (i.e. there are black borders around the outside), but yes, GT4 does basically render in 1080i.

That statement has to be understood in the context of what "1080i" means, though. "1080i" is just alternating even-odd 540-line images. The 1080i rendering mode is almost identical to the 480p60 rendering mode, it's just vertically offsetting every other field ("frame") by half a pixel.
So on an HD CRT that's natively drawing1080i video, the vertical resolution is native to the video output, but the image is fairly low-res on the horizontal axis (i.e. it's somewhere in the ballpark of 640 pixels).

Just about any PS2 or oXbox game in the sixth gen that had a 480p60 rendering mode, probably could have supported 1080i in this way if the studio had made it a priority.

 

[dogen]

It's windowboxed 1080i (i.e. there are black borders around the outside), but yes, GT4 does basically render in 1080i.

That statement has to be understood in the context of what "1080i" means, though. "1080i" is just alternating even-odd 540-line images. The 1080i rendering mode is almost identical to the 480p60 rendering mode, it's just vertically offsetting every other field ("frame") by half a pixel.
So on an HD CRT that's natively drawing1080i video, the vertical resolution is native to the video output, but the image is fairly low-res on the horizontal axis (i.e. it's somewhere in the ballpark of 640 pixels).

Just about any PS2 or oXbox game in the sixth gen that had a 480p60 rendering mode, probably could have supported 1080i in this way if the studio had made it a priority.

I believe it's 576 wide, which puts it at 576x1080i. Not exactly what people think when they read "GT4 did 1080i on PS2!!".

edit - actually it's 576x960i. Which is lower resolution per "field" than the 480p mode.

 

[Chronus]

Portal's portals

Not just seamlessly warping around the map regardless of how far apart the portals are, but also displaying the connected rooms on whatever surface the portal is without visual compromises was absolutely amazing.

The original Prey (2006) did that first.
The first Serious Sam (2001) also had a teleporter in the Karnak level with a similar effect but it was, if I remember correctly, the only instance in the game.

 

[abacab driver]

Yeah if I'm being honest..it's Virtua Fighter all day.
As someone said earlier in the thread, it looked so out of place in a sea of 2d games in the arcade.

To put it in perspective..some of the best looking fighting games (whether 1 on 1 or brawler type) in 1993 were: Mortal Kombat 2, Super Street Fighter 2, Samurai Showdown, Fighters History, Martial Champion, Survival Arts, etc..

Then you look over at Virtua Fighter and think, wait this must be too expensive to play..this doesn't even belong here.

 

[Warm Machine]

The NES version of AfterBurner was extremely impressive as it has a lot of the missile trails. It also ran smoother and was much more like the arcade game than the Sega Master System version.

 

[DOWN]

MGSV running at rock solid 60fps and looking this good is an incredible achievement only a few developers would have been able to achieve... if any other than Kojima Productions.

That game looks like barren cross gen bullshit so it’s actually one of the least surprising 60fps games but ok

 

[pagrab]

Funny thing is there are some Wii games that did something similar for locomotion. Although i do understand why this works. XD

Technological achievements:

• Spacewar. Top of the line as it gets.
• Elite.
• iRobot (1983?)
• Star Wars Arcade with the ambient cabinet.
• Dragons Lair.
• Vectrex Imager.
• Galaxian.
• Sega Motocros game (the one with the handle bars)
• Zaxxon.
• Defender of the crown.
• Vette.
• Virtuality Machines. (Winchester specially)
• WIng Commander.
• Tresspasser.
• Daytona.
• DKC.
• VF3
  [*]Tenebrae (64KB procedural generated game).
  

Can you link to this game? I cannot find it and I am curious.

 

[Shambalakan]

MDK was really impressive for it's time (1997). It's graphics and visuals were somehow different for me.
According to "The Making of MDK" in a part of Wikipedia:

Because the game was attempting things never before seen in a PC game, the team decided to write their own programming language from scratch. However, rather than simply having the programmers write the language, the designers and artists also worked on it, allowing a more collaboratively creative atmosphere than is usual, and facilitating the language to work specifically to accommodate the elements of the game which the designers and artists wished to achieve.

One of the missions for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmMswJEmJwQ
https://youtu.be/rmMswJEmJwQ?t=4m46s

DF Retro episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LbIJdGNQfA

 

[dogen]

Because the game was attempting things never before seen in a PC game, the team decided to write their own programming language from scratch. However, rather than simply having the programmers write the language, the designers and artists also worked on it, allowing a more collaboratively creative atmosphere than is usual, and facilitating the language to work specifically to accommodate the elements of the game which the designers and artists wished to achieve.

I hope they mean made suggestions or asked for features lol.

 

[Ryu Hayabusa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv_GQNh9D68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0blSBgpRUg

 

[Refreshment.01]

Can you link to this game? I cannot find it and I am curious.

Certainly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl2GYqNNIK4

It started as a demo scene project at 64KB in size, then it became a 96KB called Kkrieger.

It started development in 2004, i think it impresses given the file size and only a couple of guys from germany working on it.

 

[ghibli99]

Gran Turismo's environment mapping (or whatever the true technical term) on replays seemed so ahead of their time, especially on that console... kinda blew my mind like the metallic effects in SM64.

 

[pottuvoi]

Gran Turismo's environment mapping (or whatever the true technical term) on replays seemed so ahead of their time, especially on that console... kinda blew my mind like the metallic effects in SM64.

The old method is actually a really simple trick, just offset of texture coordinates in X&Y to direction of normal.
Environment maps were just drawn by hand with bright spot in middle or top to simulate light direction.

 

[miller.skippins]

Sonic R on Sega Saturn is pretty astounding in terms of visuals...full transparency polygons and all..

 

[TedMilk]

Descent for PC had fully polygonal enemies and true 360 degree levels and movement way before Quake was released (although the levels were made up of cubes a la Tomb Raider).

 

[Rosstimus]

A bit of an obscure one, but I cannot believe Comanche. It's an MSDOS game that came out in 1997 (edit 1992 actually!) and it looks like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d480zpAQu08

Also fun fact. Shrek on Xbox was one of the first commercial games to use deferred lighting. Seriously.

Holy shit. That was '92?? I'd honestly say this is more impressive for it's time than Crysis was in 2007. like damn.

 

[Celine]

Wave Race 64 is one of the first 3D games I can think of that used the extra processing power from the generational jump to impact heavily the gameplay through physics (in this case the waves behaviours).

That's running way, way smoother than what I expected from a Super FX 3D game. Granted, the rendering resolution of the terrain is comically low and only about half of the screen space is used (looks like the other half is meant for the HUD). Makes you wonder if voxels were a better fit for 3D graphics than polygons for the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372pNhXTm_4

Actually the base engine works through Mode7, then it was rewritten to use SuperFX calls to speed up the framerate.
Some details from the coder that wrote the engine (John Brooks):

I made the SNES & 65816 voxel engine for Comanche SNES. Jim Ratcliff then ported key funcs to the Super FX chip to speed up the frame rate.

My 1992 SNES voxel engine was Mode 7, 256-color byte-per-pixel like PC VGA. Super-FX didn't do Mode 7, only bit-plane Mode 3.

Keys to SNES voxel:
1) All UI graphics are sprites
2) Voxel bitmap uses odd VRAM bytes
3) Cvt bitmap->tiles via DMA
4) CPU blits

 

[deadscreensky]

Holy shit. That was '92?? I'd honestly say this is more impressive for it's time than Crysis was in 2007. like damn.

That's actually Comanche 3, I think, but the original in 1992 was still absolutely mind-blowing.

 

[Ebenezer Grymm]

I want to add Dragon Age, the first one, and the ability to program AI scripts for your party members through an in depth in game menu.

I know of other games that let you do it, Final Fantasy 12 to an extent with the gambit system, but nothing on par with what DA had built in.

 

[Javier23]

Not just the lighting but also the way drapes and curtains reacted when walking through them was a technical achievement that I'd put right up there with other periods of game development such as Half-life 2s physics and Unreals water effects.

Hitman did it two years earlier. Not sure about other games.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

- Remember Me and MGS5 doing PBR for last-gen consoles.
- TLOU first game to use dynamic GI (for the flashlight).
- First time Pupil Dilation in a game: MGS4, Uncharted games & TLOU, Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls.
- Dynamic water physics being used for gameplay in Hydrophobia.
- Eye candy graphics used for gameplay like the huge moving levels/bosses aka the titans in GOW3.