Doom 1 and 2 are ugly?

[HombreSal]

I think it's like the third time I've showed the games to a friend. They all say they're effing ugly and I think they've aged well.

[Redneckerz]

22 minutes ago, HombreSal said:

I think it's like the third time I've showed the games to a friend. They all say they're effing ugly and I think they've aged well.

How old is your friend and what is his canvas of comparison?

 

Sprite based games have a different look than polygonal stuff most of the time (Guilty Gear Xrd disagrees on this general notion, though).

 

[Chezza]

They're right mate, Doom 1 and 2 is ugly business. Lot's of monsters, gore and death. Slaughtering demons isn't a pretty business, but someone has to do it.

[Thermal Lance]

By today's standards... yes. 

 

This has mostly to do with how the sprites were done. It used to be cutting edge back in the day but nowadays it's a fairly hit or miss technique for 2D sprites. Hand drawn sprites usually ages better.

 

[Doom-X-Machina]

Why would something called "DOOM" be pretty?

[Kyka]

what port are you showing it to them in?

 

[snapshot]

Yes they are, simplistic level geometry and detailing, choppy animations...etc mods usually improve on those aspects but unless you decide to mess with those I doubt you're going to think otherwise, at least not by today's standards.

Edited September 20, 2020 by sluggard

[Biodegradable]

Had Doom been made during the days of mid-90s early 3D polygonal graphics where everything looked like pool toys inflated with farts, then maybe you could say that. But no, not here. No sir, your friends need the eyeballs examined. Doom has aged like fine wine as Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud's well-crafted pixel art is timeless.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Biodegradable

[NoXion]

There are ways to make Doom look prettier, although Hunter's Moon is the only mod that I've seen which has animated 3D models that look better than lipstick on a pig. Voxel models can look pretty damn good though, shame I haven't seen a finished mod that adds them.

I thought with the huge success of retro-styled games like Minecraft, we were past the days when people would dismiss a game merely on the basis of graphical fidelity?

[BoxY]

The only time I ever remember that Doom can be ugly is when configuring a clean GZDoom install and seeing the incredibly awful filtering, particles, translucency, light settings, etc., but sadly that's the way that the majority of newcomers first experience the game.

[holaareola]

I find Doom much less ugly than the early 3D games, at least with software rendering.  I also like how rough and collagey it looks with its mix of digitisation and hand-drawn art.  And the distance shading algo pushes so many colours towards gray. It's grimy as hell. It has texture.

 

Compared to, well, it's probably just that I was a teenager with years actually feeling like a significant amount of time, but it felt like games went through a long, truly hideous period of washed out crappy graphics in the mid-late 90s.

 

Shogo epitomises the aesthetic ditch I'm on about perfectly: 

 

Maybe it could be seen as its own aesthetic? I don't know, I just can't get there - give me grainy, gritty pixels any day.  Or Unreal. Nothing should have looked like this after Unreal.

[nname]

4 hours ago, Thermal Lance said:

By today's standards... yes. 

 

This has mostly to do with how the sprites were done. It used to be cutting edge back in the day but nowadays it's a fairly hit or miss technique for 2D sprites. Hand drawn sprites usually ages better.

 

I disagree.

 

Sure, the classic Doom games might not look as realistic as other games nowadays, but the sprite graphics look really clean and simple in my opinion. And the simplicity makes it very appealing to me.

[Thermal Lance]

Just now, xzotikk said:

I disagree.

 

Sure, the classic Doom games might not look as realistic as other games nowadays, but the sprite graphics look really clean and simple in my opinion. And the simplicity makes it very appealing to me.

To you. That is the keywords. It is appealing to me as well. But, it isn't the case for everyone in 2020.

[nname]

1 minute ago, Thermal Lance said:

To you. That is the keywords. It is appealing to me as well. But, it isn't the case for everyone in 2020.

You're right. Most people tend to compare modern games to old games, which can sometimes be an extremely unfair comparison. At least when it comes to graphics. :b

[unerxai]

@holaareola Off topic but that picture makes Shogo look good if you ask me. The character models on the other hand...

 

Spoiler

 

Maybe it was the best they could do at the time. Then again Megaman Legends' anime-like character models hold up pretty well even today.

[Thermal Lance]

1 minute ago, xzotikk said:

You're right. Most people tend to compare modern games to old games, which can sometimes be an extremely unfair comparison. At least when it comes to graphics. :b

I personally think the style Doom went for serves it right. It fits the atmosphere. But, not all the sprites are equal. The pinkies, in all their pinkness, looks wonderful today. Same goes for the cacodemon. Zombies looks alright still.

 

But, every sprite that has mechanical elements to it. Like the spider mastermind for example kinda looks like toys nowadays. At least, to my eyes. Those are the ones that aged badly.

[nname]

1 minute ago, Thermal Lance said:

But, every sprite that has mechanical elements to it. Like the spider mastermind for example kinda looks like toys nowadays. At least, to my eyes. Those are the ones that aged badly.

I can't unsee that now, omg.

 

Perhaps Doomguy was fighting giant bionicles all along?

[holaareola]

52 minutes ago, unerxai said:

@holaareola Off topic but that picture makes Shogo look good if you ask me. The character models on the other hand...

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Maybe it was the best they could do at the time. Then again Megaman Legends' anime-like character models hold up pretty well even today.

Drat, thought I might have found a conventional truth about an awkward phase in 3D accelerated graphics' childhood. Ah well, there is no right and wrong with matters of taste. But they're fun to argue about as long as you don't expect it to lead anywhere.

 

So NO, they were objectively hideous!

 

I checked out the Megaman Legends characters. I agree. I think the flatness of that style allowed them to work more with the grain of the technology available.

Edited September 20, 2020 by holaareola

[magicsofa]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Like for example, I find it really sexy when women have hairy armpits.

What was this thread about tho?

Spider demon always looked goofy to me, at least once I was more than 7 years old. But no, Doom is gorgeous in the way that all good big-pixel graphics are gorgeous: grainy, crunchy, colorful, and easy to look at. The obsession with higher fidelity is natural - everyone likes to see the numbers go up, why should that phenomenon exclude things like screen resolution and polygons rendered? However, all good artists understand that fidelity is just a quality of the medium being used, and the qualities of the medium do not determine the possible emotional responses that could be generated using it. Furthermore, in practical terms, the more complex your medium/method, the more time you will have to spend on any given element, and the more obvious it will be when elements are incomplete. A pixel artist can make a field of grass look "complete" and "full" by choosing the right colors and having them contrast each other just right. But once you have ten million pixels on the screen and the ability to render untold amounts of polygons, a field full of grass becomes an insurmountably difficult task. You start asking yourself, how many blades of grass can I afford to place on the field? How much processing power can I give toward making them sway realistically in the wind? Should I place a texture on the ground to make it look more full? I'm not saying hi-def graphics can't be stunningly beautiful, just that there is an inherent loss of freedom correlated with the gain of detail. There's a reason why you've never seen a high-definition version of a doom sprite that actually does it justice. Pixel art is tailored to work well within its own restrictions, and that requires hinting at detail even when it isn't there. It is made with the forethought that your brain will respond to certain color choices and blending in particular ways, allowing the artist to use those techniques to make some areas pop, some sink below, some areas are sharp, some are dull or blurred. Hi-poly models on the other hand usually seek to actually create those elements. They disregard your brain's ability to reconcile a series of colored boxes into a complete image, instead trying to spoon feed the entire de facto image to you. And without a computer as powerful and non-linear as your brain, it's simply not possible. It's trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It will always look fake until visual sensory input can be replicated exactly as experienced in the real world. High def graphics are not more realistic - they are just more unrealism. Instead of 60,000 unrealistic pixels, you have well over a million unrealistic pixels. That just means more space to fill, more chances to show the disparity between real life and a rendered scene, and more work needed in order to create the same emotional response.

[Chip]

6 hours ago, HombreSal said:

I think it's like the third time I've showed the games to a friend. They all say they're effing ugly and I think they've aged well.

Well, they are wrong. Have they played BTSX? or are they just evil?

[Zulk RS]

I think it's more of a age thing than Doom thing. Because of reasons, I could never play the latest, or even more modern games growing up. While everyone was playing stuff like Call of Duty (Don't remember which one), GTA, Some PS2-era games that I don't quite remember, I showed them stuff like Doom, Lufia, Raptor etc.

 

My friends lumped all of them into "Old and Ugly" and didn't want to play them. I don't remember how old we were exactly at the time but we were all somewhere in the 10-14 year range. It wasn't until years later when we were all in the 17-19 year range where they gave the older, more well-regarded games. I think younger people have a tendency to call whatever game that doesn't have the coolest 3D graphics as ugly and disregard them. Though all this is my own take based on my own anecdotes. Maybe younger people nowadays don't do that since when I was 10-14, we didn't have Minecraft.

 

As for Doom itself, Vanilla Doom is not the prettiest thing to look at but I would hardly call it ugly. If we put some of the PWADs in the mix then Doom has awesome visuals. Just take a look at stuff like Swim with the Whales, Valiant, ZDCMP2, Stronghold or Ancient Aliens.

[Allard]

You wanna see ugly, Operation Body Count is that way. That game is ugly. DOOM is aged, but aesthetically it looks pretty good. The spritework is solid, the textures are nice. It's a nice game.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

53 minutes ago, LiT_gam3r said:

Well, they are wrong. Have they played BTSX? or are they just evil?

Does BTSX use any stock textures or the color scheme from the original games extensively? While I agree that BTSXs have nice visuals, they are irrelevant to this subject.

[Chip]

1 minute ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

they are irrelevant to this subject.

true. Still, they are wrong

[Quizno]

It's an acquired taste. Looks better than early full 3D games at least. What's really important is that the feel hasn't aged. The game plays and feels better than most modern games.

[Kyka]

Seeing as retro FPS is in full swing with such titles as Ion Fury and Dusk, I would have thought that Doom styled retro games were beautiful again!

 

Even to the mainstream and not just to the hardcore Doomheads, I mean.

[P41R47]

4 minutes ago, Quizno said:

It's an acquired taste. Looks better than early full 3D games at least. What's really important is that the feel hasn't aged. The game plays and feels better than most modern games.

SNAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!
(don't wanted to quote you, but since Blocky boy ninja'ed my comment, i had to do it this way. i invite you to this thread, promise you will have some fun in there)

Doom 2 is fugly, thats it, fun game, ugly designed maps but still fun in some way.

Ultimate Doom is not ugly at all, its way better designed than Doom 2 and every map oozes atmosphere and great design.

 

[holaareola]

38 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

.However, all good artists understand that fidelity is just a quality of the medium being used, and the qualities of the medium do not determine the possible emotional responses that could be generated using it. Furthermore, in practical terms, the more complex your medium/method, the more time you will have to spend on any given element, and the more obvious it will be when elements are incomplete. A pixel artist can make a field of grass look "complete" and "full" by choosing the right colors and having them contrast each other just right. But once you have ten million pixels on the screen and the ability to render untold amounts of polygons, a field full of grass becomes an insurmountably difficult task. You start asking yourself, how many blades of grass can I afford to place on the field? How much processing power can I give toward making them sway realistically in the wind? Should I place a texture on the ground to make it look more full? I'm not saying hi-def graphics can't be stunningly beautiful, just that there is an inherent loss of freedom correlated with the gain of detail. There's a reason why you've never seen a high-definition version of a doom sprite that actually does it justice. Pixel art is tailored to work well within its own restrictions, and that requires hinting at detail even when it isn't there. It is made with the forethought that your brain will respond to certain color choices and blending in particular ways, allowing the artist to use those techniques to make some areas pop, some sink below, some areas are sharp, some are dull or blurred. Hi-poly models on the other hand usually seek to actually create those elements. They disregard your brain's ability to reconcile a series of colored boxes into a complete image, instead trying to spoon feed the entire de facto image to you. And without a computer as powerful and non-linear as your brain, it's simply not possible. It's trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It will always look fake until visual sensory input can be replicated exactly as experienced in the real world. High def graphics are not more realistic - they are just more unrealism. Instead of 60,000 unrealistic pixels, you have well over a million unrealistic pixels. That just means more space to fill, more chances to show the disparity between real life and a rendered scene, and more work needed in order to create the same emotional response.

What an excellent, eloquent post. I'll be thinking back to this in the future. The philosophy of graphics.

 

I love your idea that adding fidelity to game visuals can actually subtract something and undermine the very goal the increase of fidelity was pursuing in the first place. An uncanny valley of everything. At least for the moment.

[MFG38]

The youngest generation of gamers (assuming your friends represent that demographic) has been spoiled by graphics - they're too comfortable with judging a book by its cover. It seems as though they fail to understand that there's a ton of technological evolution that's gone into getting video game graphics to the point of being damn near photorealistic, and that attitude clouds their appreciation for old games with "crustier" visuals. It's really a shame.

[m8f]

 

1 minute ago, MFG38 said:

The youngest generation of gamers (assuming your friends represent that demographic) has been spoiled by graphics

It may be another reason. I remember when I was first introduced to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. It was at the same day, on father's computer at his work. I was about ten then, maybe eight. I saw video games for the first time in my life. I didn't know when these games were made, I didn't even realize that these games was made by the same team. I thought: "Why Doom looks so much better than Wolfenstein 3D? The Wolf developers should have made it prettier.". I saw Wolf 3D just before Doom. I wasn't spoiled by better graphics then. What I want to say that it requires an effort to understand that the game quality and amount of fun don't correlate with texture resolution.