games that have an ugly 'early 3D' look

[Stavrophore]

Twiglard

But if you make comparison with sprites side by side, you will see that even poor 3D is still superior.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

LMAO KOTOR2 is early 3D now? Are you 8?

KOTOR2 isn’t early 3D, it’s just a game Feargus was in charge of.

 

[Twiglard]

But if you make comparison with sprites side by side, you will see that even poor 3D is still superior.

Baked sprites look well even if they're animated and subjected to simple scaling. It's only drawn sprites that are expensive.

In an adventure game you can make an image of a guy sitting at a desk. Once in a while he's going to take a sip of coffee, scratch his beard or touch his face. Looks way better than early 3D and doesn't have the cost of pixel art. You can also use simple rotation such as scaling to 50% of the sprite's size when it's twice as far away than the reference length.

You could make a game like DOOM and save a lot of time at the cost of disk space. Don't draw a character holding a gun and walking in 8 directions separately. Make a model and animate it, then render as many rotations as you want. Making variants using different textures but the same model and UV mappings is free (except for disk space). But be careful about the combinatorial explosion when adding variants of variants of variants... I don't even think that adding 32 rotation directions rather than 8 or making the sprites animate at 60 Hz would improve things. Low-res sprites work because people's brains fill in the gaps.

It's wasn't going to work on consoles. 3D was also pushed because of popamole N-64 and the like barely having any disk space. Consoles got their hard drives relatively late. If sprites won't fit into the RAM, you have unacceptable stalls caused by slow CD-ROM drives. They're even worse at seeking than hard drives. It's also partly the reason why there's little character or scenery variety in early 3D games. Behead everyone who owned a 32-bit console.

 

[tritosine2k]

This thread is merely a periodic reminder that 3D graphics age terribly in general, (...) Stylization can probably help as well relative to attempts at naturalistic 3D images.

That 3D graphics somehow age worse than others gets parroted a lot but that doesn't make it anything more than a meme. (...)

To add an example to the thread, The Longest Journey uses 3D characters on top of 2D (mostly? pre-rendered) background:

It's nothing odd but natural order of things in next step it's fitted to "world space" eg as in RAGE. And the better media the less objectionable staticness because the more personalized the remote rendering . But it's silly season for a while now with "realtime" raytracing, "dynamic" lighting without cast shadows, temporal superslop and other clap-trap.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

This thread is merely a periodic reminder that 3D graphics age terribly in general, (...) Stylization can probably help as well relative to attempts at naturalistic 3D images.

That 3D graphics somehow age worse than others gets parroted a lot but that doesn't make it anything more than a meme. (...)

To add an example to the thread, The Longest Journey uses 3D characters on top of 2D (mostly? pre-rendered) background:

It's nothing odd but natural order of things in next step it's fitted to "world space" eg as in RAGE. And the better media the less objectionable staticness because the more personalized the remote rendering . But it's silly season for a while now with "realtime" raytracing, "dynamic" lighting without cast shadows, temporal superslop and other clap-trap.

I generally find Ray-Tracing looks WORSE than traditional rendering, chews up my graphics card, and offers virtually nothing in return. The only tangible benefit I could see from it would be "blocking" light sources, but even then it's something that barely adds anything when a lot of scenes are already well lit from other sources.

 

[tritosine2k]

This thread is merely a periodic reminder that 3D graphics age terribly in general, (...) Stylization can probably help as well relative to attempts at naturalistic 3D images.

That 3D graphics somehow age worse than others gets parroted a lot but that doesn't make it anything more than a meme. (...)

To add an example to the thread, The Longest Journey uses 3D characters on top of 2D (mostly? pre-rendered) background:

It's nothing odd but natural order of things in next step it's fitted to "world space" eg as in RAGE. And the better media the less objectionable staticness because the more personalized the remote rendering . But it's silly season for a while now with "realtime" raytracing, "dynamic" lighting without cast shadows, temporal superslop and other clap-trap.

I generally find Ray-Tracing looks WORSE than traditional rendering, chews up my graphics card, and offers virtually nothing in return. The only tangible benefit I could see from it would be "blocking" light sources, but even then it's something that barely adds anything when a lot of scenes are already well lit from other sources.

Good for offline/remote rendering, RACKET for realtime/ per client:
https://www.techradar.com/news/comp...ew-nvidia-s-chief-scientist-david-kirk-270078

 

[KIss My Ass]

Like 99% of the PSX and N64 libraries look like complete dog shit. The only exceptions were basically 2d games.

 

[Ash]

BRO THE POINT IS THAT PEOPLE MADE UGLY 3D GAMES INSTEAD OF DECENT LOOKING 2D GAMES

Seems like a few posters in this thread are missing the point. Yeah, games jumping to 3D got a visual downgrade, but they got a gameplay upgrade in most cases (three dimensional exploration, combat, puzzles etc). The main appeal and intent of 3D was three dimensional gameplay, no longer constrained by the limitations of 2D. So ya'll just look like pathetic graphics whores.

Like 99% of the PSX and N64 libraries look like complete dog shit. The only exceptions were basically 2d games.

And yet there was so many great games. PS1 library is the best console library in existence.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Not early 3D, but I remember someone fawning over The Matrix: Path of Neo and how it looked 'super realistic' and recommending it to everyone.

Well, I borrowed a copy from my uncle's sister's best friend's coworker's third wife's brother's son and prolonged my life by at least 5 years by laughing my ass off.

Shit looked like everyone's suffering from severe skin issues, didn't shower for a few weeks, and just spent at least 24 hours in a gym during the hottest day of the summer.

That would've been tolerable if the game was good, but to no one's surprise, it wasn't. Given that Infogrames rushed games out the door for a quick buck and discouraged internal and external studios from collaborating or sharing their knowledge with each other, it's a surprise if they published anything half-decent in the 2000s.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

The Myth series.



I can't deny it's ugly as hell, yet 25 years ago it thought it looked gorgeous and deep down I still do. Arrows that are actual, physical projectiles; dwarven cocktails that shake the earth; chunks of flesh blown everywhither. I just love the look and feel of it.

/e: second video, at 4:48. How gorgeous is that?

In my experience most of these "early 3D-games" looked ugly because of the very crude polygons they were built on. Myth III (not so much Myth 1 and 2) looks ass ugly, ironically mainly because they switched to the more "modern" hype of "polygonize everything!" that was all the rage back in the late 90ies. While in the original games the 2D-characters may have looked a bit wonky they had much more character than the soulless tin soldiers of MIII who always seemed somehow detatched from the whole narrative and the game's gritty, brutal world.
Especially Myth I looked glorious - both software and 3Dfx. And I really think it still does because it has its very unique aesthetics that fit its scenario perfectly. If you look at one of Myth's main graphical "features" it's the almost crazy detailed gore effects. Everything felt very organic, realistic and almost disgusting in the original games. In Myth III it's just polygons falling apart (unfortunately it's almost impossible to correctly recreate the graphics of Myth 1 on modern systems - to see it in its glory you'd need a Voodoo 1-3 and a CRT-screen. Even glidewrappers like nglide or Zeckensack's are not able to do this).
It's rather interesting that the only game that tries to capture the gameplay essence of Myth, it's only "spiritual successor" to this day - Nordic Warriors - comes with its own graphics very reminiscent on the soulless aesthetics of Myth III: Units almost floating around, no real grittyness, no believable gore system, everything very plastic-like.

 

[Dhaze]

(unfortunately it's almost impossible to correctly recreate the graphics of Myth 1 on modern systems - to see it in its glory you'd need a Voodoo 1-3 and a CRT-screen. Even glidewrappers like nglide or Zeckensack's are not able to do this)

Thank you for saying this, now at least I feel less crazy for thinking so. Not too long ago I was talking to two friends, younger than me by a few years and who didn't really begin to play video games until 2005 or so; and they derided me a little when I assured them that The Fallen Lords, on a CRT, with the Voodoo 3 3000 my dad bought for christmas '99, was a beauty can not be readily replicated on current hardware.

And I really think it still does because it has its very unique aesthetics that fit its scenario perfectly.

That really is the thing, isn't it? I find that a game of relatively poor 'graphical fidelity' so to speak, but possessed of a strong, highly idiosyncratic aesthetic will always age in a relatively graceful manner.

 

[Semiurge]

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

And I really think it still does because it has its very unique aesthetics that fit its scenario perfectly.

That really is the thing, isn't it? I find that a game of relatively poor 'graphical fidelity' so to speak, but possessed of a strong, highly idiosyncratic aesthetic will always age in a relatively graceful manner.

That's true. And the graphic representation of Myth 1 and 2 was also perfect to give you that gritty, dirty, down-to-earth feeling. Man these bodies exploded in dozens of individual pieces and these entrails flew over the battlefield while sprinkling blood over everything... It was a glorious and a grim beauty. The models, while crudely animated, were finely drawn and very detailed - compared to the polygon stuff that came afterwards.
By the way, one detail I never forgot: There were actually right- and lefthanded soldiers.

(unfortunately it's almost impossible to correctly recreate the graphics of Myth 1 on modern systems - to see it in its glory you'd need a Voodoo 1-3 and a CRT-screen. Even glidewrappers like nglide or Zeckensack's are not able to do this)

Thank you for saying this, now at least I feel less crazy for thinking so. Not too long ago I was talking to two friends, younger than me by a few years and who didn't really begin to play video games until 2005 or so; and they derided me a little when I assured them that The Fallen Lords, on a CRT, with the Voodoo 3 3000 my dad bought for christmas '99, was a beauty can not be readily replicated on current hardware.

Back in... 2005 I think it was... I became active at the Magma forums (the guys who kept Myth alive on modern OSs) to talk about this issue. It took me some time to actually convince them that there is a significant difference between their OpenGL translated graphics and the original games. To my utter confusion they especially didn't notice the horrendous color transitions/bandings which is a direct result of the missing 16bit dithering. After some comparison screenshots and much more posts they finally believed me and actually managed to implement some kind of 24bit rendering in their Myth 2 patches. From then on it looked much, much better - but still not as the original on the intended hardware did. Unfortunately they didn't use that same modification for their Myth 1 patch (Myth 1.5 still looks terrible with this banding issues).
I know what you mean, it took many years for me to actually understand why exactly Myth didn't look the same as back in the days. I tried to figure out what it was, why the graphics are not as smooth and clean as they once were. I think that's mainly because of the washed-out effect of CRT-screens. I'd be cool if there was a way to emulate that effect on a modern screen to try it.

 

[luj1]

Deus Ex can look sort of interesting when rendered in 16-bit colour, with dithering

A bunch of these games can look great. Here is my setup of Quake 2.

 

[luj1]

The Myth series.

Battle Realms looked cool too

 

[Dhaze]

By the way, one detail I never forgot: There were actually right- and lefthanded soldiers.

Yes! Man, how it gladdens me to see some people still remember that. My brother and I—we alternated playing; 30 minutes each—noticed it when we first loaded into Crow's Bridge. Ensued a lot of fruitless conjecturing on our part, as to the possible superior strength of right- or left-handers.

To my utter confusion they especially didn't notice the horrendous color transitions/bandings which is a direct result of the missing 16bit dithering.

At times, things surrounding MythDevs and Project Magma were a bit strange. There was a sort of effervescence to it all. Which was natural, I think; after all it's not often in gaming history that the actual original developers give all the source code, resources, and tools needed for a community to take the helm. But along the way, major improvements made to the games sometimes trampled over this or that specific aspect of the games as they had been created by the Bungie guys, and it wasn't always easy to clearly recognise what was happening.

I seem to recall early and animated discussions concerning The Fallen Levels, more specifically the behavior of Thralls and Ghôls vs. Bowmen, discussions that eventually led to the Anti Clump feature. But I might be wrong; I'm fuzzy on the details and the timeline.

And dear lord, glancing at the Tain forums I see that people still occasionally post there, amongst whom Jon God himself. Bless his heart. How many hundreds of hours did he spend, re-texturing all those maps?

I'd be cool if there was a way to emulate that effect on a modern screen to try it.

One can dream, uh? Oftenwhiles I see the wonderful work some talented and hard-working people put into various pluggins and wrappers; and I too hope to see, one day, the uniqueness of CRTs somehow transposed to modern screens.

Battle Realms looked cool too

That it certainly did, and it still looks cool to my eyes. And I would say it is greatly helped in its graceful aging by its rather cartoony aesthetic. 'Vivid colors and brightness' almost always trumps 'muddy and muted' when it comes to still looking good twenty years down the line.

 

[shaanghai]

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

The Myth series.

Battle Realms looked cool too

Battle Realms was another damn fine game. It aged very well graphicwise. And gameplay is rather unique too. I think I should play it again sometime. I had countless hours of fun with this game.

By the way, one detail I never forgot: There were actually right- and lefthanded soldiers.

Yes! Man, how it gladdens me to see some people still remember that. My brother and I—we alternated playing; 30 minutes each—noticed it when we first loaded into Crow's Bridge. Ensued a lot of fruitless conjecturing on our part, as to the possible superior strength of right- or left-handers.

I still fondly remember the many hours I and a good friend played this game, alernating from mission to mission. The many hot summer evenings in 1998 we've spent inside playing Myth 1, trying to beat this game. I especially remember the Gjoll. Good times in the relatively peaceful and carefree late 90ies...

To my utter confusion they especially didn't notice the horrendous color transitions/bandings which is a direct result of the missing 16bit dithering.

At times, things surrounding MythDevs and Project Magma were a bit strange. There was a sort of effervescence to it all. Which was natural, I think; after all it's not often in gaming history that the actual original developers give all the source code, resources, and tools needed for a community to take the helm. But along the way, major improvements made to the games sometimes trampled over this or that specific aspect of the games as they had been created by the Bungie guys, and it wasn't always easy to clearly recognise what was happening.

I seem to recall early and animated discussions concerning The Fallen Levels, more specifically the behavior of Thralls and Ghôls vs. Bowmen, discussions that eventually led to the Anti Clump feature. But I might be wrong; I'm fuzzy on the details and the timeline.

And dear lord, glancing at the Tain forums I see that people still occasionally post there, amongst whom Jon God himself. Bless his heart. How many hundreds of hours did he spend, re-texturing all those maps?

Yes, I remember some of them were pretty pissed because I, a newcomer in the forum, dared to tell them the game looked worse than it did back in the days. But some of them were damn fine guys. Melekor once helped me when I desperately looked for a way to bypass the bug with Myth 1 not starting if you have more than 512 MB of RAM. This fine fellow created me a .dll injection that helped to get around that bug (I wanted to play the original game via glide wrapper instead of using their own patch 1.5).

And Jon God did a fantastic job with his textures. However I still play the game in its purest form myself.

Yes, there were differences between original Myth TFL and the Fallen Levels. I still find that the Dwarf molotovs react differently on the Fallen Levels. Anyway, the Fallen Levels are a fanastic achievement, even though I still play the original Myth TFL myself.

I'd be cool if there was a way to emulate that effect on a modern screen to try it.

One can dream, uh? Oftenwhiles I see the wonderful work some talented and hard-working people put into various pluggins and wrappers; and I too hope to see, one day, the uniqueness of CRTs somehow transposed to modern screens.

I just noticed that there is - for example - ShaderGlass that tries to achieve exactly this goal. I managed to start Myth TFL in software mode but unfortunately if you use a glide wrapper to play the 3Dfx-version of the game, this one overrides ShaderGlass.

 

[curds]

I think it probably depends on how old you are. The early 2000s was when I first started gaming, and I generally enjoy early 3d graphics.

 

[shaanghai]

Fucking Time Commando

 

[Hobknobling]

It is pretty crazy how much the pre-rendered animations progressed in a short span of time on the same platform:





There was only three years between the releases of Tekken 1 and Tekken 3.

 

[luj1]

Neverwinter Nights looks like absolute dogshit, and it did look that even back when it was released

Not quite. Blocky meshes were noted, however reviews praised textures, shadows, animation, spell effects, post processing.

Gamespot:

The graphics engine is solid, but it isn't drop-dead gorgeous, like it would have been by the standards of a year or two ago. Many of the enemies you'll face look great, especially some of the larger ones. However, some of the character models look blocky, though the smooth animations and good-looking shadows make up for this. Likewise, some of the game's environments don't look as good as others, particularly the caverns and catacombs, which are rather generic. There aren't that many types of environments overall, but the game's cities and especially its dense forests, where rays of sunlight cut through the canopy above, look excellent.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/neverwinter-nights-review/1900-2872002/

IGN:

Neverwinter Nights looks really amazing, with some of the best use of lighting and shadows I've ever seen in a game. The real-time shadows are really incredible, and it's little touches like this that are going to be making me wish that it was in every game. This is the stuff we all expect when we hear "real-time" shadows...they dance on the walls, wrap around solid objects, stretch as you get further away from a light source, and are cast from actual objects in the game, like individual slats in windows and the ribcage of a skeleton. Textures are crisp and clean as well, and look particularly nice and 3D with bump-mapping enabled video cards.

While the character models themselves are a little blocky, every item you find in the game will appear on your body if you're wearing or holding it, and this gives you a lot of variety in your appearance. The animations in the game are also very nicely done, with some class and move specific ones, like the monk's kick attack, really adding to the overall atmosphere of the game.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2002/06/21/neverwinter-nights

Game Chronicles:

Well, to sum it up in one word: “Wow!”. Graphics for a Bioware game have never looked better. The reflections in the water, the fog on the docks, and the spell effects are truly breath-taking. I would highly recommend a high-end video card if you are planning on purchasing this game and playing it for any amount of time. The game does require a DirectX compatible 3D accelerator, but nothing less than a GeForce 3 will really do this game the justice it deserves.
The feature that really caught my eye was the ability that the player has to zoom in and zoom out using the roller on a Microsoft Intellimouse. When you zoom in on the player you can see all of their clothes in the exact detail as what is in their inventory. The weapon that your character carries is also the exact replica of the weapon in their inventory.

Overall, you can tell that the graphics are a bit dated and are not the same caliber as the graphics of Dungeon Siege. This tends to happen when a game is in development for five years. As I stated before, however, a Bioware game has never looked this good.

http://www.gamechronicles.com/reviews/pc/neverwinter/nights.htm

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I don't remember Shogo Mobile Armor Division being that ugly but who are ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes? Quake on Stealth II Verite chipsets looked quite nice and even had anti-aliasing. Blood II had noticibly ugly 3D models. Or maybe just because it was one of those games where the developers used digitized images of their own faces for some of the scientists, and it was them that was ugly, not the models.

 

[Dhaze]

That is amazingly funny. The gait; the tight shoulders; the narrow, clenched ass... that character runs exactly like Matsumoto Hitoshi playing Aho Aho Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8zV15BAgtc&t=90s

I just noticed that there is - for example - ShaderGlass that tries to achieve exactly this goal. I managed to start Myth TFL in software mode but unfortunately if you use a glide wrapper to play the 3Dfx-version of the game, this one overrides ShaderGlass.

Thank you for linking this, it looks interesting. I'll have to try it next time I'm in the mood to play Imperialism 2.

The many hot summer evenings in 1998 we've spent inside playing Myth 1, trying to beat this game. I especially remember the Gjoll. Good times in the relatively peaceful and carefree late 90ies...

Speaking of '98 you just reminded of a game I expected to have aged very poorly, when in truth it doesn't look half as bad as what I had imagined:

 

[Dexter]

Not quite. Blocky meshes were noted, however reviews praised textures, shadows, animation, spell effects, post processing.

I remember when NWN came out, almost everyone thought it looked shit especially coming off Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate 2 a year and a half earlier. I especially remember the tiles, their repetitiveness and environments being a point of contention, also that you couldn't move the camera up beyond a certain angle being a sticking point and Meme once the camera was unlocked relatively early on and there was a complete lack of a ceiling or sky outside. I don't care what some random "reviewers" said at the time. They were as much an authorative source of general sentiment back then as they are now. Though even most of your quotes basically boil down to "it looks like shit, but we're going to praise it and give it a high score anyway".

I don't base my opinion of the sentiment on the Codex, but even a quick Search for "Neverwinter Nights" here proves this, for instance just search for "graphics" on the first page here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/neverwinter-nights-why-are-you-guys-so-negative.5146/