Oldest AoD Screenshots (pre-Torque)

[luj1]

There is a whole bunch on the Codex gallery page from looks of it:

https://rpgcodex.net/gallery.php?album=10

Probably the clearest one:

Looks like Nethergate, would bang

 

[Kalin]

Geneforge 1 with its greenish menu

Half-way through you actually love it long-time. Always hated rotating camera though, consistently disorienting and a yuge turn-off. If AoD would've featured the mock-up graphics in this thread or some snazzed up version thereof I would've been all over that and then some. Still was, obviously, because AoD is an awesome experience in every single respect except the looks department. Thinking about it, a Geneforge-style system would've served it better. Back in the Teron demo days you could still initiate combat freely and kill any motherfucker etc. Liked it better, but I get why they did what they did.

 

[v1rus]

I completed Age of Decadence quite recently and loved it. My biggest gripe was with how the game looks - not the quality of the graphics, but how bland, generic and devoid of personality it looked.

Sure, its just a couple of screenshots, but I seriously lean toward the old style from what I've seen. Oh, well.

gewd gaem is gewd

 

[Tacgnol]

I completed Age of Decadence quite recently and loved it. My biggest gripe was with how the game looks - not the quality of the graphics, but how bland, generic and devoid of personality it looked.

Sure, its just a couple of screenshots, but I seriously lean toward the old style from what I've seen. Oh, well.

gewd gaem is gewd

Best part of AOD was the 2d art like portraits etc, those were entirely top notch.

Shame about the 3d art, but then I guess you can't have everything. I'm glad Vince and co focused on the story over graphics.

 

[v1rus]

I completed Age of Decadence quite recently and loved it. My biggest gripe was with how the game looks - not the quality of the graphics, but how bland, generic and devoid of personality it looked.

Sure, its just a couple of screenshots, but I seriously lean toward the old style from what I've seen. Oh, well.

gewd gaem is gewd

Best part of AOD was the 2d art like portraits etc, those were entirely top notch.

Shame about the 3d art, but then I guess you can't have everything. I'm glad Vince and co focused on the story over graphics.

Yeah, portraits and loading/story screens were p. good, that goes without saying.

 

[JarlFrank]

I completed Age of Decadence quite recently and loved it. My biggest gripe was with how the game looks - not the quality of the graphics, but how bland, generic and devoid of personality it looked.

Sure, its just a couple of screenshots, but I seriously lean toward the old style from what I've seen. Oh, well.

gewd gaem is gewd

I think visually the 3D graphics of AoD are pretty good, but they do feel lifeless in a way. I don't think it's due to the quality but more due to the lack of interactable detail, and a relative staticness of the world.
Most NPCs can't be talked to, most buildings can't be entered, etc etc. There's just a lot of empty space.

 

[vazha]

I unironically prefer the 2 d version. I also want the Prelude to Darkness source code being found.

 

[Tavernking]

Vault Dweller, now that we've seen the success of 2D iso RPGs like underrail, do you think Age of Decadence would have been successful as a 2D game?

I think I recall you saying in one of your posts that you guys felt you had to move to 3D to be taken seriously.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller, now that we've seen the success of 2D iso RPGs like underrail, do you think Age of Decadence would have been successful as a 2D game?

Why not? 2D RPGs will always be popular, if done well. Stoneshard sold twice as much as AoD and Underrail combined, while still in early access.

I think I recall you saying in one of your posts that you guys felt you had to move to 3D to be taken seriously.

By whom? People either like your game or they don't. We switched for two reasons: first, we ran into a problem and our programmer thought it would be better to switch to a proven engine than try to fix that problem and hope it's the last one. As it turned out Torque came with plenty of problems of its own but we didn't know it back then. Second, 3D does make many things easier, namely proper animations vs sprites where switching weapons or armor or shield increases the number of sprites exponentially.

 

[JarlFrank]

Second, 3D does make many things easier, namely proper animations vs sprites where switching weapons or armor or shield increases the number of sprites exponentially.

What's your opinion on 2.5D, as in using 3D character models on 2D backgrounds? A good example would be the Shadowrun Returns games. They had gorgeous backgrounds, and the character models were pretty good too and had lots of animations.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Second, 3D does make many things easier, namely proper animations vs sprites where switching weapons or armor or shield increases the number of sprites exponentially.

What's your opinion on 2.5D, as in using 3D character models on 2D backgrounds? A good example would be the Shadowrun Returns games. They had gorgeous backgrounds, and the character models were pretty good too and had lots of animations.

ToEE would be an even better example. Anyway, it's a great option if you have an artist who can paint those 'gorgeous backgrounds' you mentioned.

 

[Ol' Willy]

As it turned out Torque came with plenty of problems of its own but we didn't know it back then.

Is there some your dev log or thread where some technical problems of Torque Engine are explained more thoroughly?

 

[JarlFrank]

Second, 3D does make many things easier, namely proper animations vs sprites where switching weapons or armor or shield increases the number of sprites exponentially.

What's your opinion on 2.5D, as in using 3D character models on 2D backgrounds? A good example would be the Shadowrun Returns games. They had gorgeous backgrounds, and the character models were pretty good too and had lots of animations.

ToEE would be an even better example. Anyway, it's a great option if you have an artist who can paint those 'gorgeous backgrounds' you mentioned.

Shadowrun Returns uses a tile-based map editor where 2D assets are placed on a grid, not individually hand-drawn backgrounds. I guess 3D is, overall, still easier to build with because 3D asset creation is easier than 2D asset creation. I build Thief fan missions and dabble with Blender so I know how easy it is to plop down various different-sized buildings in 3D and texture them, and when I was on the Realms Beyond team I worked with a 2.5D editor similar to Shadowrun's which I found a bit more limited in comparison because you can't spontaneously create brush-based architecture but have to use the pre-made assets that are there.

Overall though, I find 2.5D editors easy enough to work with especially if you have a lot of assets and if your terrain base is 3D too (in RB we had full 3D terrain sculpting, but all the objects were 2D).

Shadowrun editor:

Realms Beyond editor:

Both games managed to have quite "gorgeous backgrounds" but nobody needed to paint them all by hand, they're just great arrangements of flexible 2D assets.

 

[Vault Dweller]

As it turned out Torque came with plenty of problems of its own but we didn't know it back then.

Is there some your dev log or thread where some technical problems of Torque Engine are explained more thoroughly?

No. Now that I'm older and wiser, I know that every engine has its share of problems, big and small. Even with Unreal 4 we had to deal with a number of issues already, like the dialogue system refusing to work when we did the first Steam build. Worked fine in the dev build, didn't work at all in a Steam build (that was a month before we started beta-testing the combat system which has quite a bit of dialogue and in-dialogue scripting).

 

[Elhoim]

What's your opinion on 2.5D, as in using 3D character models on 2D backgrounds? A good example would be the Shadowrun Returns games. They had gorgeous backgrounds, and the character models were pretty good too and had lots of animations.

3D is way more flexible when designing levels and iterating. I'm personally liking the current CSG way, 3D with a fixed camera. Is easier to make visually interesting levels and extremely comfortable when playing.

Here's a shot for you:

At one point I did some comparison shots between TGE and T3D for a thread or article, but I can't find them.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I have to say, Prelude to Darkness sure is a pretty good game.

 

[AbounI]

Maybe I'm a bit late for your request JarlFrank , but what about this screen, a mix between two old 3D screenshots ?

 

[Nick]

Here is the first published 3D screen, IIRC.

Speaking of the 2D era, there are even earlier screens from the time when we were developing our tile-based SDL engine from scratch, before we had any real AoD art (or artists). Those are extremely ugly, though, and barely related to the game.