Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2023]

[PSman1700]

 

[BRiT]

New Year, New Thread, Same old retro gaming topics.

Old Thread @ https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/digital-foundry-retro-discussion-2022.62680/

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This is principally a technical discussion thread for their retro topics. It is allied to the other tech analysis threads and shares the same rules as those which you should familiarise yourself with. The purpose is to discuss the findings of the Digital Foundry articles on a technical level, including the techniques employed by game developers in their games, and the comparative design decisions off cross-platform titles. Digital Foundry is more closely allied with Beyond3D than other gaming sites which is why they get special mention here!
What this thread is not, is a place to complain about a port's quality and make accusations of developers, to offer feedback on the quality of the Digital Foundry writing or the writers' biases, trumpet your preferred console over the other, talk business and sales, or otherwise sidetrack the discussion from talking about the gaming technology covered in the Digital Foundry articles. If you do not post to the required standard, your posts will be removed, and persistent unwanted contributions will see you locked out of the Technology Forum.
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[Cyan]

that's something totally new! SNES running 3D games without mode 7 enabled (F-Zero always in my heart, that's why I still play games like Redout 1 and Redout 2) and no FX chip? I haven't gotten past the introduction for now but the game running when they start the video is very impressive for the hardware.

 

[see colon]

I must admit, I kept waiting for Star Trek Starfleet Academy to show up...

 

[Cyan]

this is the game that my best friend IRL played for most hours in his life. He was so hardcore about it that he was online everyday and playing in squads and so on, he even gifted me the game so that I could play with him. I played it and the game turned out to be a very good one. But I didn't spend many hours playing it.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I had the PS3 version of bf3. I had love hate relationship with it. I loved the light hearted comedy of bad company 1 and disliked that they made it more into a standard set piece laden affair with try hard swearing in bad company 2.


And bf3 campaign was just a bad version of call of duty at half the fps. I don't think they ever really reached the enjoyment factor of bc1 campaigns again. I liked battlefield 3s multiplayer though. It felt really polished and balanced. I especially liked it because it free

*Edit*

I realized I kept calling battlefield 3, bad company 3 sorry folks I edited it out

 

[Cyan]

I had the PS3 version of bf3. I had love hate relationship with it. I loved the light hearted comedy of bad company 1 and disliked that they made it more into a standard set piece laden affair with try hard swearing in bad company 2.


And bc3 campaign was just a bad version of call of duty at half the fps. I don't think they ever really reached the enjoyment factor of bc1 campaigns again. I liked bad company 3s multiplayer though. It felt really polished and balanced. I especially liked it because it free

well, the campaign of BF3 is boring. I tried to replay the game a few months ago, 'cos I had just played the online part of the game back in the day, since it was a gift from my best friend so I could play with him.

So I set everything to max, 1440p 165fps bla bla bla, but I didn't like the art style nor the graphics even at Ultra, shadows and lighting looked too fake to me. So I dropped it.

 

[trinibwoy]

How does Battlefield 3 (2011) look so much better than Mirrors Edge Catalyst (2016) on the same engine?

 

[cwjs]

How does Battlefield 3 (2011) look so much better than Mirrors Edge Catalyst (2016) on the same engine?

1. Much easier content. Catalyst's glossy, clear surfaces everywhere expose a lot of the flaws of that era's rendering. Catalyst would probably look pretty "bad" to somebody sensitive to image quality today without heavy use of RT.
2. 5 years is a lot of time, the same "Engine" doesn't have all of the same features by that point.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Mirrors edge 1 looked better to me than ME2. But that was also a simpler game geometry wise and in terms of structure

 

[PSman1700]

 

[Cyan]

talking of jewels, there is this game, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, a superb game that it's taking a bit of time to become the full version, it has been in Early Access for some time. -release date expected to be spring of 2023-

(pictures aren't mine)

 

[Riddlewire]

I didn't have a sufficient PC at the time, so the Xbox version was the one I played. It's feature-complete (in gameplay and story terms), so it's a perfectly acceptable way to play the game, even if the performance isn't so great. It also managed to map the FPS aiming to the gamepad much better than other 6th gen FPS titles, without resorting to the Halo tricks of fat enemies, large reticles, and generally slow movement.

Now we need a DF Retro on Daikatana: PC vs N64.

 

[Phantom88]

John was misremembering the game as being heavy to run, but it was the opposite. It was the poster child for low hardware requirements considering that together with Far Cry and Doom 3 they were the three highest end games in the world, by a gigantic margin above everything else.

Halflife 2 Benchmarks

Depending on the card, one single benchmark run took a lot of time- up to 20 minutes per run. It was impossible to test all interesting configurations like FSAA and Anisotropic filtering combinations

www.tomshardware.com

The guys also severely underestimate the original's influence It didn't make FPS games linear and it's influence is not limited to fps games. It was industry wide and affected every genre and every platform. It's design influence is in everything from Uncharted to God of War to Bioshock to Dishonored to some small indie platformer that took cues from HL's storytelling mechanisms and beyond. HL1 was a game that shifted the whole industry and with which a handfull of games in the medium's entire history can stand slongside with.

 

[Davros]

Wasnt there some sort of controversy with HL2 and geforce fx cards .

IIRC the direct3d spec at the time called for a minimum of 24bit precision for shaders which is what ATI went with, Nvidia however decided to go with 32bit precision.
Small problem with Nvidia's 32bit precision it tanked performance so much so that Nvidia introduced a 16bit partial precision mode.
post from neowin that explains it better than I can remember.

Evidently, Half-Life 2 is forcing FP32 precision on the GeForce FX, which can significantly impact its performance. The GeForce FX also supports the less accurate, but faster running FP16 mode. Although Valve did not include partial precision in Half-Life 2, it appears that FP16 can be "forced" with a utility program.

Note that partial precision is a DirectX instruction modifier that is supported by pixel shader version 2.0 and higher. The partial precision modifier is an indicator used by the developer to instruct the graphics driver that the use of partial precision is acceptable.

Theres another Article that goes a lot more in depth at Anandtech

Half-Life 2 Performance Benchmark Preview

www.anandtech.com

 

[Cyan]

I didn't have a sufficient PC at the time, so the Xbox version was the one I played. It's feature-complete (in gameplay and story terms), so it's a perfectly acceptable way to play the game, even if the performance isn't so great. It also managed to map the FPS aiming to the gamepad much better than other 6th gen FPS titles, without resorting to the Halo tricks of fat enemies, large reticles, and generally slow movement.

Now we need a DF Retro on Daikatana: PC vs N64.

it's so nice to have videos from DF on those great games. I got HL1 and 2 and Portal a month ago in a Steam sale and I am going to play it sometime this year (at 120-TV- or 165fps-monitor), hopefully, when I complete Elden Ring and Redout 2 and get into the next thing.

Wish DF did videos like this but titled like..dunno "best games for low resources PCs". (there are quite a few AAA games that fit the description)

 

[Cyan]

remembering one of my favourite genres and games, F-Zero GX (my favourite is F-Zero Maximum Velocity). I think Mario Kart is more fun to play with family and friends and stuff, but no game thrills my mind to the speed of the vehicles like F-Zero -and the likes- games do.

The video talks about the unknown and secret techniques the players found in F-Zero GX that changed the game forever.

 

[Riddlewire]

Regarding 720p monitors:
There were 1280x1024 monitors available during the 7th generation that would natively display a 720p signal at 1:1 with large letterboxing.
There were (and still are) monitors of other resolutions that will display native resolution in a window box. I have an Acer monitor that will do that, although it's 4k, so a 720p image is pretty tiny (and you get 3x3 integer scaling from 720p-to-4k so there's no benefit to the window box mode).

Add: Also worth mentioning that the 360 version of this game is FPS Boost enabled on Series consoles, so no more tearing and a locked 60fps.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Regarding 720p monitors:
There were 1280x1024 monitors available during the 7th generation that would natively display a 720p signal at 1:1 with large letterboxing.
There were (and still are) monitors of other resolutions that will display native resolution in a window box. I have an Acer monitor that will do that, although it's 4k, so a 720p image is pretty tiny (and you get 3x3 integer scaling from 720p-to-4k so there's no benefit to the window box mode).

Add: Also worth mentioning that the 360 version of this game is FPS Boost enabled on Series consoles, so no more tearing and a locked 60fps.

Unfortunately it's still the 360 version so 720p with terrible AA and extreme pop in close to the camera to say nothing of the graphics themselves

 

[Cyan]

actually played this game and managed to complete it via emulation. It was soooo addictive. Also Perfect Dark got me hooked and I completed it.