Fake software look in recent games

[LexiMax]

3 hours ago, markanini said:

Holy crap, that's the definition of patronizing.

 

It's not patronizing, you just don't like the way it looks.

[Sparktimus]

3 hours ago, markanini said:

I couldn't come close to the superior taste and intellect of those that think that games belong on museum walls. Personally, my interest in games comes from having fun playing them. What is my punishment for besmirching the good name of Prodeus, sir?

 

Nice job completely ignoring any points that were made just to once again flail at this strawman you've set up.

 

No one in this thread is arguing whether or not certain games or games in general belong in a museum. No one is coming at you because your opinion on a certain game or art style. The only thing here that's "patronizing" is you invalidating developers and entire fanbases and writing them off as some sort of hive-mind that just consume anything that looks retro for the sake of it based completely on your own hang-ups with it. Nothing is ever that simple. And even if it was, so what? If that's what they like, that's what they like. There's no need to act like a galaxy-brain just because it's not your cup of tea. And there's definitely no need to accuse developers of being "patronizing" for not designing every single thing they make to your exact specifications lol 

[Kinsie]

5 hours ago, markanini said:

Personally, my interest in games comes from having fun playing them.

I'm not convinced you do actually enjoy them, considering how weird you're being.

 

What's some good stuff you've played recently?

[Herr Dethnout]

Just now, heliumlamb said:

who knows, maybe one day this thread will be in a museum?

Or closed... who knows v(' -')v

[heliumlamb]

1 minute ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Or closed... who knows v(' -')v

well, the internet isn't too far removed from a library, which isn't too far removed from a museum. to think that art is exclusive to existing in museums for one to go "🤔🤔🤔hmmm, i would spend Many Monies on this.🤓🤓🤓" at just honestly displays an ignorance, willful or otherwise, to what actually is art, and how much of it we observe and interact with on a daily basis without even realizing that we are observing and interacting with art.

this thread ending up as a part of some interactive, offline archival display in 30-50 years doesn't seem too far-fetched.

[JBerg]

I personally think that Cultic's visuals are awesome but yeah, not a fan of most of the music (some songs are good). Very fun game too if you're someone who enjoyed the original Blood.

 

And I don't care if you think that I'm stuck in the past. I play what I want.

Edited October 24, 2022 by JBerg

[Herr Dethnout]

25 minutes ago, heliumlamb said:

well, the internet isn't too far removed from a library, which isn't too far removed from a museum. to think that art is exclusive to existing in museums for one to go "🤔🤔🤔hmmm, i would spend Many Monies on this.🤓🤓🤓" at just honestly displays an ignorance, willful or otherwise, to what actually is art, and how much of it we observe and interact with on a daily basis without even realizing that we are observing and interacting with art.

this thread ending up as a part of some interactive, offline archival display in 30-50 years doesn't seem too far-fetched.

I was talking about a moderator closing this thread hehe

[D4NUK1]

On 10/21/2022 at 10:03 PM, Herr Dethnout said:

WRATH:

 

Ultrakill:

 

 

Ultimately taking about graphic 

Preferences, will end in talking about :

 

>The director/maker/artist choices 

>how well express or attract the viewers /players. 

>how much the players have power on changing the designs. 

 

And i really don't have a problem with the last one. I understand why some games take the choice on how they approach this specifics. But it's also how implemented. 

 

Every game can't approach the design of new modern graphics because they are mostly doing what they learned so far, many many of this new devs games are firsts or maybe on the less than 10 games. 

 

As a modder/developer you should try the best you can without compromised stuff. 

 

This it's mostly for games with limited textures as Ultrakill, WRATH, and Cultic. 

 

But filters yeah, i would like to see some games without filters, like again, Cultic or Prodeus but that's mostly curiosity as the gamw plays and feels good as they do.  After some tweeks of brightness and contrasts thou. 

 

 

[markanini]

Just now, D4NUK1 said:

 

Ultrakill:

 

 

Ultimately taking about graphic 

Preferences, will end in talking about :

 

>The director/maker/artist choices 

>how well express or attract the viewers /players. 

>how much the players have power on changing the designs. 

 

And i really don't have a problem with the last one. I understand why some games take the choice on how they approach this specifics. But it's also how implemented. 

 

Every game can't approach the design of new modern graphics because they are mostly doing what they learned so far, many many of this new devs games are firsts or maybe on the less than 10 games. 

 

As a modder/developer you should try the best you can without compromised stuff. 

 

This it's mostly for games with limited textures as Ultrakill, WRATH, and Cultic. 

 

But filters yeah, i would like to see some games without filters, like again, Cultic or Prodeus but that's mostly curiosity as the gamw plays and feels good as they do.  After some tweeks of brightness and contrasts thou. 

 

 

 

Hopefully devs will be smart enough to know it's a vocal minority on the internet that demands retro graphics, and makes it optional. I can't act like it's not getting old and this thread proves I'm not the only one. Dusk was released in 2018 and made a statement with it's graphics, and backed it up with engaging gameplay. I can't say the same about the majority of titles discussed. Those that have been solid in the gameplay department had various levels of graphical complexity, but not in a hipster kind of way: Doom Eternal, Shadow Warrior 3, Postal:Brain Damaged. And HROT lets you adjust the visuals to make it look like a normal game in settings just like Dusk did. These games had larger reach too so that's what I prefer to see, substance over surface.

Edited October 24, 2022 by markanini

[LexiMax]

2 hours ago, markanini said:

Hopefully devs will be smart enough to know it's a vocal minority on the internet that demands retro graphics, and makes it optional.

 

You don't make a convincing case for this anywhere in the thread, just that you are personally not a fan of them and some people agree with you.

 

Me personally, I wasn't a fan of Dusk's art-style, and don't really plan on playing HROT or Nightmare Reaper for similar reasons, but I'm not irritated that those titles exist and have audiences.  I'm certainly not obstinate enough to assume that I'm some sort of unserved gaming minority (or silent majority, whatever) who needs to be catered to.  I would especially not subsequently list out several recent games that I did enjoy playing, without seeing the contradiction.

 

In short, there's loads of games out there, and not every single one needs to cater to your preferences.

 

^{As a footnote, I also didn't like Prodeus' artstyle, but the game was actually a successful Kickstarter so clearly there is an audience for it.}

Edited October 24, 2022 by AlexMax

[Sparktimus]

1 hour ago, markanini said:

Hopefully devs will be smart enough to know it's a vocal minority on the internet that demands retro graphics, and makes it optional.

 

What exactly are you basing this claim on? Do you have any proof that this is indeed only a "vocal minority"? This is quite a broad statement to make based solely on your personal preference. Both Cultic and Prodeus seem to be pretty popular despite not meeting with your own criteria with how a game should look and feel. 

 

Trust me. It's far easier and less contentious to simply say "I'm just not a fan of these games" instead of tripping over yourself to prove that people actually hate these games when that's clearly not the case.

[indigotyrian]

4 hours ago, AlexMax said:

 

You don't make a convincing case for this anywhere in the thread, just that you are personally not a fan of them and some people agree with you.

 

Me personally, I wasn't a fan of Dusk's art-style, and don't really plan on playing HROT or Nightmare Reaper for similar reasons, but I'm not irritated that those titles exist and have audiences.  I'm certainly not obstinate enough to assume that I'm some sort of unserved gaming minority (or silent majority, whatever) who needs to be catered to.  I would especially not subsequently list out several recent games that I did enjoy playing, without seeing the contradiction.

 

In short, there's loads of games out there, and not every single one needs to cater to your preferences.

 

^{As a footnote, I also didn't like Prodeus' artstyle, but the game was actually a successful Kickstarter so clearly there is an audience for it.}

 

To add onto this I do think there's some great examples out there of doing a "retro" style purely for cynical reasons (e.g. perceived ease of implementation, appeal to majority, etc.) and that these titles usually end up falling flat because you can really tell the people putting it in don't get it at all. However to state that every implementation of a retro art style is like this, and that only a very small niche really wants it and that everyone else demands high-fidelity 4k RTX-On hyperrealistic blood-coming-out-of-the-monitor graphics isn't just deeply myopic, it's factually incorrect when looking at market data.

[Kinsie]

6 hours ago, AlexMax said:

Me personally, I wasn't a fan of Dusk's art-style

I'm pretty the vast majority of Dusk's art assets were done by the one developer who also handled sound, game design and most of the level design. And I definitely remember both that developer and the rest of the dev/publishing team openly, lovingly refer to his visual style as "macaroni art".

 

Their new games have actual artists involved!

 

8 hours ago, markanini said:

Hopefully devs will be smart enough to know it's a vocal minority on the internet that demands retro graphics, and makes it optional.

Vampire Survivors, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Rimworld and ULTRAKILL make up half of the ten highest-reviewed games on Steam. The people, they love the dots and triangles.

[Graf Zahl]

Why do I get the feeling that those who are in disagreement over design philosophies here are actually talking about totally different things? To me 90% of what's being said misses the actual point  - from both sides!

 

Most of the counterexamples here are 2D games where totally different rules apply.

In 2D - and even most isometric games - there is no lighting or shading - the assets normally get displayed as-is.

This removes the most significant issue of the whole topic of "fake software look" from the discussion. With 2D assets you design 1:1 what will be visible on screen. Either the assets look good or they don't - regardless of whether they are retro styled or not.

Yes you may say that even a 2D game can use shading to simulate depth, etc - but that's not retro style anymore. Back in the day great care was taken to ensure that such things did NOT result in visible image degradation, either by tweaking the palette or by tweaking the images themselves. Which was relatively easy because with 2D there was far more control over what went to the screen.

 

Not so with 3D games. Here lighting is a crucial factor of the whole design - and it is here where things get murky.

 

Doom is the best example here - it has some visual limitations but they were solely owed to the limited tech at the time. We got ample proof that all these assets can be used 1:1 using modern tech to ensure their uncompromised rendition on hardware that supports it.

*THIS* is where people tend to disagree whether replicating these limitations has artistic merit or not - NOT whether doing a retro styled game has merit in itself. After all it's not the assets that look like this, but the end result of a low-tech 3D processing engine.

 

And it's here where you may get in conflict with customer expectations. If you do a retro design with outdated retro tech to render it - despite the option of using something more advanced - there's a good chance to get raised eyebrows from the customer base (i.e. 'this looks worse than it has to'.)

 

5 hours ago, Kinsie said:

ULTRAKILL

 

How does that fit in here? The visuals are so deliberately weird and cheesy that it totally falls off the grid here.

 

[LexiMax]

 

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

If you do a retro design with outdated retro tech to render it - despite the option of using something more advanced - there's a good chance to get raised eyebrows from the customer base (i.e. 'this looks worse than it has to'.)

 

You might not like the look of these games, but it's clear they have an audience, so whatever "customer base" you're talking about is missing that crowd.

 

I really don't get why some people in this thread are doing mental backflips to justify a stance that's essentially "Please stop making games I don't like the look of."  Don't they have enough games to play and enjoy?

Edited October 25, 2022 by AlexMax

[Sonikkumania]

6 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

I really don't get why some people in this thread are doing mental backflips to justify a stance that's essentially "Please stop making games I don't like the look of."  Don't they have enough games to play and enjoy?

While I don't really consider myself to be involved into "some people" in this case, I have to state, isn't that the whole purpose of internet discussion boards? To come across with our opinions? Yes of course it's easier if we just don't participate in things we dislike but is it a discussion anymore if there's just people who approve the subject?

[LexiMax]

10 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

While I don't really consider myself to be involved into "some people" in this case, I have to state, isn't that the whole purpose of internet discussion boards? To come across with our opinions? Yes of course it's easier if we just don't participate in things we dislike but is it a discussion anymore if there's just people who approve the subject? 

 

This goes both ways.  They are allowed their opinion, and I am allowed to voice my incredulity as to why some people have a weird chip on their shoulder about what certain game developers choose as an art-style or what artstyles a certain segment of the gaming population enjoys.

Edited October 25, 2022 by AlexMax

[Graf Zahl]

8 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

 

 

You might not like the look of these games, but it's clear they have an audience, so whatever "customer base" you're talking about is missing that crowd.

 

I really don't get why some people in this thread are doing mental backflips to justify a stance that's essentially "Please stop making games I don't like the look of."  Don't they have enough games to play and enjoy?

 

The mere existence of this thread proves my point. If you make a game that looks out of sync with current tastes you will have to be prepared to get negative responses.

You can either deal with this constructively, or like too many people in this thread have done, getting defensive about it.

 

In that context it doesn't really matter what I think about these games and that there's too many I don't care about. I never complained to an author of any of those, though.

 

 

 

[Sonikkumania]

3 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

 

This goes both ways.  They are allowed their opinion, and I am allowed to voice my incredulity as to why some people have a weird chip on their shoulder about what certain game developers choose as an art-style or what artstyles a certain segment of the gaming population enjoys.

Yeah I agree, but I just replied to you the most natural way I thought of.

[LexiMax]

17 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

The mere existence of this thread proves my point. If you make a game that looks out of sync with current tastes you will have to be prepared to get negative responses.

 

There's nothing wrong with negative responses and not liking something, but I draw the line at "developers should wake up and stop catering to you" as well as implying that such an opinion has the weight of the entire gaming community behind it.  That's tribalistic Gamer rhetoric and is why much of the thread seems defensive, because it's a shitty take with shitty framing that deserves pushback.

Edited October 25, 2022 by AlexMax

[D4NUK1]

23 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

While I don't really consider myself to be involved into "some people" in this case, I have to state, isn't that the whole purpose of internet discussion boards? To come across with our opinions? Yes of course it's easier if we just don't participate in things we dislike but is it a discussion anymore if there's just people who approve the subject?

 

And also critics are valid if they work on the second or another product. 

 

For example, i could say Project Warlock and Nightmare Reaper had a really ugly Sprite Art clashing with the textures of the levels. 

 

Project Warlock fixed this on they second game, Nightmare Reaper had another developer with more time for the sprites works. 

 

They visions are sprite works, and models like that, so they keep pushing that art-style with fixes of they previous interactions. 

 

Some day will get the standard of Selaco or Shadow Warrior III. But in the meantime people still uses and love sprite work, retro art and many chunky pixels. 

[Kinsie]

4 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

How does that fit in here? The visuals are so deliberately weird and cheesy that it totally falls off the grid here.

It's low-poly 32-bit style visuals to the point of having a customizable "PSX mode" that crunches down the resolution and enables affine texture warping. In other news, exactly what the OP is complaining about.

[magicsofa]

The color choices are definitely interesting, I find the saturated reds and blues together to be a bit sickly looking.

But I don't see a setting that enables texture warping or "crunches" the resolution (lol... aren't you supposed to be able to change the resolution in a PC game?). Adding a "bug" that wasn't there before for teh retro effect could be seen as fake, but I'm confused what part of Cultic is "fake software." If the resolution is low, the resolution is low. Seems like the OP is in fact complaining that a developer chose low res, and supposing that they only did it to join the fad.
 

On 10/22/2022 at 8:53 PM, markanini said:

I wonder how many game devs decided to add fake software visuals when they realized their mediocre game *cough*prodeus*cough* would be mindlessly elevated by a niche segment that thinks anything that looks like it's from the mid 90s should be exhibited in museums.

 

 

So people who enjoy this aesthetic choice are the minority, but they somehow brainwash sensible people like you into buying the same games? Don't you have any willpower?

[indigotyrian]

10 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

The mere existence of this thread proves my point. If you make a game that looks out of sync with current tastes you will have to be prepared to get negative responses.

You can either deal with this constructively, or like too many people in this thread have done, getting defensive about it.

 

I think we've conclusively proven that "current tastes" doesn't exclusively include bleeding edge fidelity and GPU-igniting graphical prowess and in fact there is much room in the gaming space for much more lo-fi approaches. It's people like the OP and you who are getting defensive about this fact, backed up with hard data in the form of repeatable market success, insisting that it is in fact all of the millions of people buying these incredibly popular retro-aesthetic games who are a tiny niche minority.

Edited October 26, 2022 by segfault

[RDETalus]

17 hours ago, AlexMax said:

I really don't get why some people in this thread are doing mental backflips to justify a stance that's essentially "Please stop making games I don't like the look of." 

No one has said that.

 

What is being said is that "you should be prepared to have a smaller market share if your game focuses on art that isn't popular." There is no statement here about what is right or wrong, merely what the reality of the gaming market is. 

[LexiMax]

8 hours ago, RDETalus said:

What is being said is that "you should be prepared to have a smaller market share if your game focuses on art that isn't popular." There is no statement here about what is right or wrong, merely what the reality of the gaming market is. 

 

You personally might have gone into this conversation with the best of intentions, but I think some of the people in this thread just don't like a particular artstyle but instead of leaving it at that would rather spin a narrative that developers who don't cater to their preferences are somehow shooting themselves in the foot in some big-picture way, or that the audience they're targeting somehow doesn't matter.  I find that asinine, and you can find examples of it all over the thread.

 

The reality is that the gaming market is that it's huge and has room for a variety of different types of games and game-players.  If a developer wanted the widest reach, most players and largest revenue possible, they'd probably make a mobile F2P game with an art-style stolen from Fortnite.  EDIT: Or...ironically...Minecraft.

Edited October 26, 2022 by AlexMax

[magicsofa]

7 hours ago, RDETalus said:

What is being said is that "you should be prepared to have a smaller market share if your game focuses on art that isn't popular." There is no statement here about what is right or wrong, merely what the reality of the gaming market is. 

Yeah, stupid indie developers will always be cursed with a market share as small as Minecraft and Terraria

[indigotyrian]

7 hours ago, AlexMax said:

The reality is that the gaming market is that it's huge and has room for a variety of different types of games and game-players.  If a developer wanted the widest reach, most players and largest revenue possible, they'd probably make a mobile F2P game with an art-style stolen from Fortnite.  EDIT: Or...ironically...Minecraft.

 

The funny thing is that copying the Fortnite/Blizzard house style (they're basically interchangeable imo) is a very popular thing among studios that try their damndest to capture the largest possible audience, and more often than not they end up flopping or only capturing a small percentage. Meanwhile, doing something unique and interesting and not necessarily what one considers to be "popular" AAA photorealism graphics has proven time and time again to at least play a part in widespread appeal among gamers of basically all stripes.

[Herr Dethnout]

On 10/24/2022 at 6:33 PM, AlexMax said:

^{As a footnote, I also didn't like Prodeus' artstyle, but the game was actually a successful Kickstarter so clearly there is an audience for it.}

Wow didn't know that Prodeus was Kickstarted backed, and less that it actually doubled his original claim of 52k $

Truly amazing eh

[LexiMax]

2 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Wow didn't know that Prodeus was Kickstarted backed, and less that it actually doubled his original claim of 52k $

 

It's funny because I actually tried Prodeus for the first time tonight thanks to Game Pass, and I gotta say, I went from ambivalent to impressed real quick.