Early generation of 3D is depressingly bad.

I wonder if it would be possible to mod Simon 3 with new models & textures, like in Deus Ex HDTP. Hehehe reverse engineering of self-made 3D engine...

 

Actually, there's a project to make Simon the Sorcerer 3 2D.

Haven't heard any news about it since about 2007 or 2008, so it's probably dead, though.

 

I heard that Simon the Sorcerer 3 actually started as 2D project but publisher thought it was outdated, or some crap like that, so they scraped all the work and started from scratch in 3D.

 

Publishers, the greatest decline factor of all time. Last thursday it was 3D and freelook. Then: shaders 5.0. Now: full voice- acting and support for gamers.

 

Never bothered me when I played it fourteen years ago. Part of the reason may be that earlier 2D graphics weren't very good in JRPGs either. In FF7, a lot of the backgrounds were quite good and an improvement over stuff like Chrono Trigger, though of course they weren't 3D, so while the general impression may be a bit jarring in retrospect, back then I just thought the game was rather pretty.

 

Final Fantasy has always had horrid graphics, things changed only with FFX.

 

There is a decent number of early 3D games with good art direction where 3D, in all its jagged and pixelated glory, adds an abstract kind of character. Some games looked very fitting in low res and low poly.

 

And that 9 times out of ten, thats not your view of him in the overworld. It's more like this:


It is odd that they didn't at least use the battle sprites for the cutscenes though, which are the majority of closeups on the characters and already have a fixed viewpoint on movements, unlike the standard moving around where it'd have to load everything on the fly as you move.

 

They wanted FF7 to have characters in super- deformed style, like it was in previous games. Outcome was similar to Simon 2 vs Simon 3D.
BTW did you noticed that in FF7 textures weren't used at all, except of faces, in combat models? It looked good, though. Graphics made with tech limitations in mind usually endures the test of time.

 

TBH I never spent much time looking at the characters outside of battle. The backgrounds in FF7 were fucking amazing at the time.

 

I think the images in the OP look okay. Everything's clearly identifiable without much effort.

 

it was around this time that games started to go shitty.

 

I found that was pretty difficult to take a 3D engine then use it to make a turn-based game, really it's probably a pain to make anything too different from whatever game the engine was originally made for.

I'm guessing that's a lot of why you never see them any more, but the good news is that it makes it a lot easier to swap out art so if any indies manage to make a decent game it's theoretically easy to upgrade its looks. So 3D is really a boon to indie development, otherwise you are going to need years and years of effort by a skilled artist to make the artwork.

 

2d backgrounds impose a sort of "perspective tyranny" for npcs sprites, unless you are willing (or able to) let your animator slave away at various perspectives sprite sheets or use cheapo tricks (like sierra/square/enix/lucasarts/etc loved to do with "mountains" where you could go up and down and the sprite/hitscan collision rectangle got progressively smaller). Or just use a 3d model and base the sprites on it - but if you're doing that, why not go all the way and do a 2d/3d objects game or fully 3d game - just ask your artists to place a note on the background with a standard vector saying "this side up" for the npcs/objects, just like they do with the "growing smaller and larger" regions, the rate of that, the blocking scenario, the scenario you can go behind of. Complicated stuff, games.

Many of the most beautiful 2d games actually use this last cheap trick for npcs (ex: age of wonders 2 shadow magic) even with the same perspective all the time, simply because it's more adaptable.

Scenes that departed from this standard "2d-painting" perspective became memorable.
Remember the castle in "Indiana Jones and the last crusade"? Monkey Island overland maps? Or Fate of atlantis?
Even so, i suspect that some of these were actually "incorrect", if analyzed rigorously, for instance those amazing fate of atlantis "perspective" scenes on the atlantean dig, or the scene where you destroy the ghost in the pool of lava.

 

It doesn't matter. What matters is that without them such simulation wouldn't even be a possibility.

So? The games that use anything proficiently aren't exactly numerous.

Keyword being "transitions".

If you move from 2D to 3D without it affecting gameplay, the transition is ultimately pointless.
If you change the gameplay, you risk making a sequel in name only.
If you rely on highly stylized graphics 3D will fuck it up, especially if you cannot into cell shading.


Now take a game with root concept being already in 3D rather than trying to replicate 2D games with 3D engine:
RTS? Homeworld.
RPG? TES 2&3.
Adventure? Azrael's Tear.
Simulation? Any.
FPS? Any.

 

There is more examples of that than GF? The only other thing that I can remotely think of as "taking advantage of" primitive 3D was early Nintendo 64 stuff, Mario 64 used the same traits that helped Mario look good in primitive 2D to look good in primitive 3D (his basic shape and outfit is very friendly to low polycounts and textures as it is to low pixel counts) and Starfox 64 stuck almost exclusively (One hard to unlock MP mode being the exception) to vehicles (which look OK in low poly).

 

Yeah this. Alone1 is a great game and still looks fine.

Simon3D was terrible, but the main reason had nothing to do with graphics: the shift to 3D was also accompanied by a gameplay shift and some of the worst controls to ever grace a game. A few other series made the transition without trouble and managed to give us incredibly good entries (see Tex Murphy's The Pandora Directive). Unfortunately most of them took the exact same path as Simon and ended up giving us severely declined entires (Broken Sword 3, Monkey Island 4, and so on)

3D in FF7 looks ugly as fuck, but that's more due to the particular style they went for with the characters rather than the technology itself.

 

Hey man. Alone in the Dark was pretty scary when it came out. The first time I saw that ghoul hopping outside the window and then crashing through it scared the hell out of me. Of course, I think it was actually supposed to be a werewolf but that's beside the point.

 

Azrael's Tear
Thief 1
Quake


Basically, that "brutalist" approach to npcs and environments, without the corny comical jutting bulging musclemen of today, that could only be fully expressed because engines hadn't yet reached the level needed for the photorealistic (or the pr department quite reached the domination they have today).

Simpler forms go well with dark, dirty, gothic textures it seems.
Of course, mario64 & zelda64 also "worked", after habituation. But doesn't everything? Playing thief, that effect was almost immediate. You looked at the guards talking about going to the bear pits through the gate, shitty fake door textures and all, and BAM, immersion.

Though maybe that is not not quite primitive enough. The other example i thought of was ultima underworld, but that was at the point they didn't even try to use 3d npcs.

 

When i mentioned the "tyranny of perspective" i don't think this was bad: in fact, it's why the exceptions when they happen in the same game were memorable. Cutscenes were like something completely different yet, think back to another world the first time you saw the intro, or flashback if that was the first - real 3d ahah.

 

Some of the bad, early 3d games I've played:

1. TES Adventures: Redguard. Awesome soundtrack, simplistic gameplay, Bethesda's first foray into 3D is quite horrendous.
2. Spec Op - a mediocre third person shooter - horribad and runs on Dos.

 

Fuck you motherfuckers, Pandemonium looks fucking great:







I still can't get it to work properly on my PC

miss dis game so much