Developers have been using pixel art retro graphics for years now as both ways to reduce development costs and hook people who are hungry for feeling nostalgic (and also because it looks good if done well) but the same hasn't happened with old 3D graphics.
Do you think there's a market for it? Would you feel good playing a video game made today but with retro 3D graphics like pic related?
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There's Dusk which is basically a Quake homage and Amid Evil which is basically a Heretic/Hexen homage. Those are both coming out pretty soon and they both look great.
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Retro 3D graphics? As in blocky architecture with low res textures that don't even have hardware rendering smoothness? Don't make me laugh. Could you imagine the kids of today sitting in front of their pcs and playing a blocky looking game that looks like it's made of literal bricks with textures like those? Kids would hate that
I love low poly. I'm actually pretty stoked about the nwn re-release. But I don't see much else out there that does specifically what you're proposing.
I'm not entirely sure if people play pixel games for actual nostalgia value. Seems like it's mostly played by younger audience who didn't actually play games in 80s-early 90s and want to have some sort of proxy experience. Sure, my childhood memories are filled with Commander Keen and Jill of the Jungle, but I spent my life watching at games constantly evolving in both mechanics and visuals, so I want games to look as good as they can.
I really like how Phantasy Star Online looks.
Who paid you to screengrab Dr. Pavel?
I take it, the joke is Minecraft?
NWN in particular is just ugly early 3D, but what really brings it down are blatantly obvious tilesets. They did wonders for letting the community put together zones, but they were a tremendous step down from pre-rendered backgrounds of IE games.
Let me answer you from a position of a single developer who is actually a physicist. Coding everything, creating music, art, all by yourself, takes so much time if you work elsewhere. Pixel art is more approachable (same goes for Unity development). 3D does not get around that as I would still need to create models, textures, rigging, whatever.
As for playing - as long as the game is good, I don't care. I love Thief 1/2, No One Lives Forever, Gothic 1, N64 Zeldas, Warcraft 3. If low poly allows the devs to improve on the gameplay and underlying mechanics, I am all in.
pixel art is easy to learn and easy to produce, at least shitty pixel art
same can't be said of lowpoly 3d, there's a barrier to entry keeping the talentless indie devs out
If the graphics are gonna be low-effort, the gameplay / gamefeel has to be good enough to make up for it. The gameplay has to be something I really want, deep down inside. Something with awesome multiplayer features and rpg character building, in my personal tastes.
PSO is actually a good example of what I'm talking about. If PSO was released today, I would still like it.
It's a great game. It's a shame that PSO2 turned out how it is.
As in, turned out to not exist, yeah.
NWN1 looked like ass even when it was new, the technoslavs at CDproject somehow cleaned up that engine and made the Witcher 1 which looks leaps and bounds better than the butt-ugly half-assed campaigns Bioware served up. the toolkit was amazing at doing what it was intended to do, let a bunch of amateurs make their own game modules for others to play, though. but nobody wants to see a return to that ugly, ugly era--well, maybe Minecraft autists, because Minecraft was pretty much just as ass-ugly as NWN.
>there's a barrier to entry keeping the talentless indie devs out
See It's not about talent, it's about time. I have taken up coding, music, and drawing with relative success, and I am sure I will succeed in 3D modeling if I go for it. But this would push my project by at least a year or two (mind you, it is a personal and not a commercial project, this might not be applicable to actual studios who want to make moneys).
>Dusk which is basically a Quake
>look great
It looks like a complete shit. Both in terms of visuals and level design. Just compare this garbage...
Looks more like Chasm: The Rift.
To this. It's fan map which was made in a fucking week.
I never had any problem with the way NWN looked, but the last time I played it was like 10 years ago
fuck
To be fair it's a lot easier to make a floating castle with a 2d skybox look good then an open field
It looks worse than Chasm.
Open field is a top-notch level design, my friend. How Quake can even compete?
youtube.com
This is good leveldis, not Dusk garbage.
minecraft kinda scratched that itch
then low poly looked nicer / ages better
Your pic is cherrypicked as fuck considering it isn't old at all. It's a 2016 total conversion game-mod for Quake.
I'd be fine with low-poly 3D, especially if it had high quality animations, proper physics, lighting, etc.
I think Minecraft is evidence enough that this can work just fine.
...but that's the whole point. It's a thread about releasing new games that look old.
A big guy.
I dunno, I find it all pretty endearing. Early ps1 games have not aged as well imo.
does lovely planet count?
We already have Andromeda
Mount and Blade is the closest thing I can think of, and though it wasn't "retro" when it originally came out, it would be if they continued with it nowadays.
It's hard to say really. It does depend obviously on one level on whether people develop the skills, which are more advanced than 2D 8-bit, and whether it's possible to go to the trouble to make them and save money in the first place.
But there is also the fact that the technical limits of what you can do with 2D were effectively reached when 3D took over entirely, whereas a lot of those old games don't lack just graphical quality, they lack physics engines and so on from modern games, and it might be more work to make a game outside the constraints of the generic software's design, which are designed for modern game graphics.
Because old 3D is just shit
The Horde of Zendar was originally released as a standalone map before AD was even a thing
i enjoyed it. episode 2 was pretty fun.