Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2021]

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There is only one thing I want to know....what happened to that bump mapping technique they demonstrated for the PS2 version and we never saw in the actual game
 

Another nice video DF. Loved to see some Turrican again :)
that's one of the games I wanted to play as a child but couldn't. The graphics looked amazing to me on computer magazines at the time -specially the Amiga version-, and I mean computer, not consoles. The brownish but colourful graphics of that version on Micromania magazine got me so hyped about a game like that at the time. Alas never happened to play that game in the end :/
 
And thats one of the reasons RT is so cool, older games get a visual upgrade :)
Well, not really. They also changed assets, polygon counts, ....
So the "RT"-renderer looks better than the "original" renderer. It is like the nvidia Quake 2 RTX demo. It was an apples to oranges comparison. Just like this one.
 
Perhaps the most impressive game I've played, not because of the graphics but the art style. If I were a CEO on a videogames company I'd certainly hire the artist behind Quake.

Iirc, I've never seen similar art style ever since. The atmosphere was really out of this world, too. Some of the levels -specially in the area where the medieval knights are- are some of the best I've played in a videogame. Just like some kind of godly Mario 64 or similar level.


Also I remember in some videos people mentioning the "Quake widows", GFs of some Quake players that felt neglected.
 
Perhaps the most impressive game I've played, not because of the graphics but the art style. If I were a CEO on a videogames company I'd certainly hire the artist behind Quake.

Iirc, I've never seen similar art style ever since. The atmosphere was really out of this world, too. Some of the levels -specially in the area where the medieval knights are- are some of the best I've played in a videogame. Just like some kind of godly Mario 64 or similar level.


Also I remember in some videos people mentioning the "Quake widows", GFs of some Quake players that felt neglected.
Never understood the Quake hype. Quake 2 was great but quake 1 was just ... an "ugly" mess. I preferred Duke3D or other Sprite shooters at this time. Sprites just looked so much better at this time than those low-poly models.
 
Never understood the Quake hype. Quake 2 was great but quake 1 was just ... an "ugly" mess. I preferred Duke3D or other Sprite shooters at this time. Sprites just looked so much better at this time than those low-poly models.
That's an art vs tech debate. Personally, once I played Quake it was hard to go back to Duke because of the way mouselook felt in duke. It's fixed in the modern ports, but it never felt right after you feel it in Quake. And Quake 2, the guns feel off to me now. I find it really hard to go back to. Even the RTX release. But I do think Quake 2 is probably the most completely fleshed out game id ever made. The level design was still maze-like but it sort of made sense. You had hub worlds and defined goals. And the multiplayer was so good at the time.

I saw an interview with John Romero, or maybe it was him reading mean tweets or something, and he addressed the browness of Quake, and he said something like "Quake only uses 16 colors so we were really limited", and elaborated that the lighting is all done by changing pallets of somethings so the textures all had to fit into a really small color pallet to accommodate the lighting. I could have the number wrong, maybe it was 32 colors.

EDIT
Found it, it's in the Noclip profile of Romero about 31 minutes in.
Romero says they have 8 colors and 32 values for light maps.
 
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That's an art vs tech debate. Personally, once I played Quake it was hard to go back to Duke because of the way mouselook felt in duke. It's fixed in the modern ports, but it never felt right after you feel it in Quake. And Quake 2, the guns feel off to me now. I find it really hard to go back to. Even the RTX release. But I do think Quake 2 is probably the most completely fleshed out game id ever made. The level design was still maze-like but it sort of made sense. You had hub worlds and defined goals. And the multiplayer was so good at the time.

I saw an interview with John Romero, or maybe it was him reading mean tweets or something, and he addressed the browness of Quake, and he said something like "Quake only uses 16 colors so we were really limited", and elaborated that the lighting is all done by changing pallets of somethings so the textures all had to fit into a really small color pallet to accommodate the lighting. I could have the number wrong, maybe it was 32 colors.

EDIT
Found it, it's in the Noclip profile of Romero about 31 minutes in.
Romero says they have 8 colors and 32 values for light maps.

Quake is the whole reason I finally learned how to use mouselook in games without feeling like a neuropathic spaz. :p Prior to that I used to use a gravis joypad to play Doom (I always got my ass handed to me in multiplayer by a friend who started to use the limited (horizontal only) mouselook in the Doom games).

I never looked back after I started, and then I got revenge by repeatedly beating his ass so badly in competitive multiplayer that he just wouldn't play me anymore. :D

Regards,
SB
 
Never understood the Quake hype. Quake 2 was great but quake 1 was just ... an "ugly" mess. I preferred Duke3D or other Sprite shooters at this time. Sprites just looked so much better at this time than those low-poly models.
which hardware did you use to play the game at the time?

I had a Monster 3D 3DFX GPU, but I remember playing the game on software mode and it ran decently well. The game always looked gorgeous to me.

Perhaps it was my crappy monitor at the time or whatever, but it looked crisp to me.

Also the fact that I didnt have internet 'cos I was poor but had access to the famous Reaper Bot for Quake, which emulated human behaviour and learnt as you played a map, was an incredible feat. It was the first multiplayer mode I ever played in a game. (save split screen)

Epic would end up hiring Steven Polge, the creator of the Reaper bot, btw.
 
Quake was technical wonder as software renderer.

Remember wondering what happened to textures after certain distance, as they managed hold detail without roping and aliasing artifacts, a first time seeing mipmaps.
Slightly off topic, but UT2004's software renderer is insane. I know it doesn't support every feature (detail textures I think are broken), but it uses some sort of filtering, and is reasonably performant considering how complex that game was at the time. IIRC it ran better on a higher end Pentium 4 than it did on that chipset's onboard graphics accelerator.
 
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Hello, I'm a new member who has suscribe to only maybe have the chance to know a thing about two quite old video-games, because for them it has been never revealed what are the native resolution and anti-aliasing. So sadly, they never got a "face-off" from "eurogamer" to compare the two versions console of "Where the Wild Things Are" from xbox 360 and ps3 and also for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from xbox 360 and ps3. I know it's can be weird that I speak about two games that was release a dozen years ago but if someone know and can told me what about them I will be very happy please.
 
The Playstation launch game retrospective was excellent and got really funny towards the end. To capture the Mahjong game on real hardware has to be the most pointless and cool comparison ever!
 
I wasnt sure where to comment this, but a retro gaming thread is fine for that, I think.

The creator of Bsnes, one of the best SNES emulators out there, has committed suicide 'cos of cyberbullying. She was a transgender person.


Not everyone is equally strong at withstanding attacks from people they don't know in person or don't know them in person. Theoretically you should give a shit, but life is like that...sigh
 
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