Decon posted:

Is there a boomershooter/neonostalgia game thread?

peter gabriel posted:

This game rocks

DaysBefore posted:

Indie games are doing amazing stuff and are where the real creativity and drive in the industry is right now (though there are still plenty of awesome AAA games imo). I am super over pixel art sidescrollers though.

Does make me wonder, given that the pixel art craze was started in part by nerds being nostalgic for the games of the 80s, with new age groups rising up, can we expect horrible early 3D polygons to be the new big style? Do we have to relive the visuals of the PS1?

Edit:

Should just feed the entire Stimpire essay to the AI's at this point and publish the result as an official tie-in novel

quote:

Some of the ambitions are already delivered by CIG. It was my dream : get up from my flat in a city and go to my ship, open the door and go to my seat (and not teleport in it). Do some dogfight in space, some mining, land on a planet to do some FPS mission, having some places and tools to do good roleplay, all in a beautiful and non cartoonish game. The alpha deliver to me 100% of this dream and, for now, is the only one game simply delivering it, ambition fullfilled, thanks CIG. Everything CIG is adding to the actual alpha is just pure bonus for me.

Next patch, CIG will give us new FPS derelicts missions and a whole multiplayer event the size of a district of CP2077.

quote:

There is already Elite Dangerous, X3, NMS, etc as good generalist games. That's not what backers want from SC. You have nailed it, we exactly want a game that specialize in everything. That's why we fund CIG, because it's the only one that at least try to do it. ED could have made this switch, but they have secured EDO to the minimum and just put the FPS part beside the flying part. They have missed a big opportunity. Even Starfield will not do it as all clues points toward flying and fps gameplay completely separated. Even flying in space and flying in atmosphere will be separated.

quote:

quote:

You understand that a game that specialises in "everything" is, by definition, a generalist game?

Yes.
And if CIG achieve to specialize in everything = become a generalist game, in the same time it will redefine our expectations toward actual generalist games. By now, we don't expect from generalist games to have the same specialization level than specialized games. No one expect now EDO or NMS to have its fps gameplay at the same level than Escape from Tarkov.

The Titanic posted:

Polygon art is significantly harder to pass off as being "artistic" I feel.

DaysBefore posted:

Does make me wonder, given that the pixel art craze was started in part by nerds being nostalgic for the games of the 80s, with new age groups rising up, can we expect horrible early 3D polygons to be the new big style? Do we have to relive the visuals of the PS1?

peter gabriel posted:

This game rocks

Bumble He posted:

i miss those early 3d games with "naked" polygons though. virtua racing being a good example.
also gouraud shading looked cool, they should make stuff like that again.
the play "i dont have a z-buffer" station's jittery textures i dont miss that much.

The Titanic posted:

Polygon art is significantly harder to pass off as being "artistic" I feel.

Where pixel art can shine is in the quality and creativity of the art and artist, and a lot of it comes down to the skill of the artists to wrangle pixels perfectly. There are cases where the lo-fi pixel density is way too low and they lose that edge though.

On the other hand it's not as easy to manage that for low polygon art, the artistic nature is lost and it quickly starts to look like "programmer art" or another of those low poly asset packs that are everywhere, especially in unity games using those "lumpy" characters that have the hard edged polygon edges.

The Titanic posted:

I think you want to unhinge your 3D artists as best you can, and direct them to create a 80's-90's style while also maintaining modern technical expectations.

Like your characters having an anime shader and looking like a 90's anime. The work involved in achieving that look is actually tremendous.

Khanstant posted:

pixel art can look like "programmer art" too. any art style will vary in its effectiveness based on the artist and creativity poured into it. there are definitely bad art styles and i assume nobody likes that generic "5 minutes in blender" lowpoly style going around with the bloopy trees. the artistic nature isn't lost when working with polygons. that's like saying a painter's artistic nature is lost if they start sculpting.

being a better pixel artist, painter, draftsman, drawler, sculptor, photography, puppetry, programmer, actor/dancer... seriously there's nothing more multidisciplinary than working in 3d and in particular making videogames.

I think where the artlessness comes from is two things: as tools make things more accessible, more people can make more art with less discipline & experience-- and most art isn't the best so there will be more bad art. Additionally the way industry games are made usually involves parcelling out every task until there's a person who only does trash cans or whatever and the art direction isn't solely done for creative choices and there's a million moving parts and people its managing something else beyond just the game in a vacuum.

but starting to mess with blender a couple years ago was one of the most satisfying artistic things I ever picked up, almost right away I felt a lifetime of random art skills and other poo poo all coming together, combined with a golden era of free tools and mountains of resources to help you. when i first tried 3d in high school it was miserable, tutorials were scarce and text based and not very useful, the tools were also crap even if you shared the latest and greatest. now anyone can dl ue5 and drag n drop higher resolution real time graphics fancier than most games that have existed in your life before. but someone who is a good artist and level designer will always make a better looking space than someone with no eye or experience for any of it.

modern shaders are also wild, you can now take the same photoreal models and environments and just use effects to start hammering out an entirely stylized aesthetic, faster/cheaper than making it with 2 hand painted assets.

It's really interesting/hard trying to break down modern tools to emulate old necessities, and kind of amusing how much more work it is now to recreate that style compared to if you could have as many polys and fancy pbr textures and lighting effects as you want. Not that it would've been easy back then, but the workflow would at least be more natural.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szw2f9ENwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53v1akoaorM

DaysBefore posted:

Should just feed the entire Stimpire essay to the AI's at this point and publish the result as an official tie-in novel

wilderthanmild posted:

This is from pages ago, but have they never played another space game? Like it's basically the generic space cockpit from every space dogfight game ever.

I said come in! posted:

what game is this that has CIG backers melting down? It actually looks cool, where Star Citizen does not.

colonelwest posted:

I’m kind of old fashioned, I like modern games to have modern graphics, especially 3D games. I’m of the opinion that consoles made the transition to 3D graphics way too soon, and N64/PS1 graphics just look terrible compared to SNES/SEGA Genesis. They just couldn’t do 3D environments any justice in that era, and everything is just a murky, colorless and pixelated mess.

Kosumo posted:

Yeahs, dancing cat is back!

Now's your health anger?

colonelwest posted:

I’m kind of old fashioned, I like modern games to have modern graphics, especially 3D games. I’m of the opinion that consoles made the transition to 3D graphics way too soon, and N64/PS1 graphics just look terrible compared to SNES/SEGA Genesis. They just couldn’t do 3D environments any justice in that era, and everything is just a murky, colorless and pixelated mess.

peter gabriel posted:

shite!
They have finally found something wrong in my last scan, 3 separate issues with the heart, so waiting now to see cardiologist, yay!
Day to day feeling ok but tired, had a flare up at weekend which was scary, so they upped my meds again today.
Plodding on I guess!

trucutru posted:

Also, it was a great thing that the PSX generation decided blocky 3D was good enough because it let developers get used to the 2D->3D switch before art/texture/poly budgets ballooned, so they could afford to take risks. There were just so many experimental games (even by big publishers) around that time, it was pretty nice.

Mailer posted:

To tie this back into SC, only one of those screenshots isn't "faking it". The whole No Shortcuts feature has put the BDSSE in the same league as Bubsy 3D. This makes me wonder if there was anyone dumb enough back in the day to defend that trash.

peter gabriel posted:

This game rocks

The Titanic posted:

Polygon art is significantly harder to pass off as being "artistic" I feel.

Like your characters having an anime shader and looking like a 90's anime. The work involved in achieving that look is actually tremendous.

no_recall posted:

Its talent and skill and experience at its highest level. You can play with shaders and filters and pull off a "look". But getting an entire game into a consistent art style requires a good art director - who will play the game again and again and again and question your sanity.

Kosumo posted:

Yeahs, dancing cat is back!

Anticheese posted:

Fantastic. I love this

How would you characterize the other stories? The red one (can't remember their names) is extremely "I can't believe it's not Maud'Dib! Qa'pla!"

no_recall posted:

Its talent and skill and experience at its highest level. You can play with shaders and filters and pull off a "look". But getting an entire game into a consistent art style requires a good art director - who will play the game again and again and again and question your sanity.

IronicDongz posted:

it depends. some of them look terrible but the better ones visually are very charming. I love a good chunky polygonal model, and primitive explosive vfx and low poly gibs.

some games (ex: megaman legends) look better than many modern games just on the strength of their art direction.

Lammasu posted:

Now that I think about it, there aren't that many multiplayer VR games outside of VR chat.

4th Stimpire Queen posted:

Bumble He posted:

here's hoping that they find all those modding manuals which are MIA since forever.

Mirificus posted:

4th Stimpire Queen posted:

Even their physical inventory count is slow as gently caress.
I guess they'll just unleash a junior dev in a dark, dusty shared warehouse and have them count stuff one by one with a pencil and a sheet of paper aka "Tier 0 Human Inventory UI".
Any goon interested in their cheap chinese overpriced poo poo awesome merch better put their order in today if there's still time.

Also, quite sad that Tony Z hasn't invented a digital, automated inventory system for their warehouse. They'd even sell their never done before™ tech to Amazon or sumthing.