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I want fidelity, crisp frames, with a cool art style, not some jank and blurry attempt at “realism”. Ban TAA, ban ML upscaling, ban frame generation. Ban AAA.
(All the best games are indie games)
Why the hate against TAA?
TAA can be fine when implemented well. Temporal information can be very useful for adding more detail over multiple frames that couldn’t be obtained without doing more samples every frame.
However, when done poorly it makes things blurry as you move the camera. The information needs to be correctly adjusted for camera movements or it smears all over the screen. It’s also made worse with things like rain drop effects and things like that.
TAA is useful. It’s just too many games just enable it and it without knowing how to use it well and it just degrades the image.
Do you have an example of a game using TAA correctly? Because so far, all the games I’ve played with TAA on are blurry.
Not necessarily, no. I watched this interview with one of the Squad devs recently, and he did a really good explanation of it though, if you want to hear it.
It’ll never be perfect, but it can help, especially in slower paced games, or games where most of what you see is very far away (so it moves slowly on screen).
It’ll always make a blurry mess, thats just how it is. Devs will always play it down because it’s the most straight forward thing to implement and Squad already has a performance issue without UE5.
Doom Eternal has a good implementation of TAA, but you need absurd amounts of sharpening to get the smearing to disappear. In an ideal world, we’d all be using beautiful MSAA,bBut that would maybe be a bit more work than just toggling a checkbox for developers, so that will never happen. :(
It’s completely shit, it’s like covering your monitor in vaseline. All games with deferred rendering should use SMAA.
I recently upgraded my computer with the best possible components, and it makes me so mad that games look worse than they did when I put my last pc together. What’s the point of bothering with graphics at all if you’re going to add a smear filter.
Indie games out here killing it with pixel art.
Because the bigger games are made as quickly and cheaply as possible.
The now so popular UE5 just enables this practice, because it allows an easy avenue to “realistic” looking games with all the fancy lighting. Quick to put together, but in the end, you get a poor performing blurry mess. And a happy nvidia, because you slapped their dlss bullshit on it. So thats the new trend.
If we consider a game as a cake, I think of the graphics as its frostings. Sure, it could make the game look very good, but won’t do shit if the base of the cake is crap.
i’d consider realistic graphics as fondant, sure you can create amazing visuals with it… but that thing is barely edible. give me some buttercream (stylised graphics) instead
One of the things I liked about Blizzard was that they never tried to use fondant. It was all buttercream…
Until Activision made them start mixing fiberglass into the frosting to cut costs
As Alton Brown said, “Cake is only the delivery system for frosting.”
The frosting might give my system constipation though.
I can’t handle getting addicted to Nethack again at this point in time
It’s still great. Like old school Civilization, or even older Zork
I did a lot of stuff in the first Zork (kill the troll, solve the maze, open the gates of hell, etc), but I never quite figured out how I was supposed to win.
They had to start putting graphics in their games before I could beat them.
Hitchhikers Guide was even worse.
Fuck the babble fish puzzle.
Plus getting a third of the way into the game and if you didn’t take the junk mail at the beginning you have to restart.
Also - can’t you pick up tea at some point, when you need to have the item “no tea” to complete the game?
I played the Apple II version. Old games were cruel. I’d get frustrated and rotate between Rivers of Light and The Return of Hercules.
You release the bird from the cage to kill the troll, or maybe I’m thinking Adventure
The troll you can kill with the sword that glows in its presence, if I’m remembering my Zork correctly. I think it regenerates though, so maybe you have to cut the head off, and then it vanishes in a puff of vile smoke, or something like that.
The smirking sneak thief can be dispatched the same way, although I think you can also use the axe you get after killing the troll. I think it wasn’t a sure thing though, like you can give the “stab thief with sword” command a few times and sometimes you win and other times you die.
Although you should give the egg to the thief (he can open it and you can’t) and then kill him and retrieve it from his dead body later, otherwise you can’t win the game. Obviously.
try out Moonring. you might like it and its free
So you thought suggesting another addictive RPG was the correct response here??
Seriously though, seems fun–I tried to go through one dungeon and died very quickly. Looks like it has a lot of depth though, so I’ll probably wait until I have a break to give it a real go. Looks a bit more accessible than Caves of Qud, so I might actually have a chance of getting somewhere.
its very unique for sure. good luck matey
It’s creative bankruptcy. Things don’t need to be realistic, it’s called style.
Stuff like Zeno Clash and Dishonored hold up aesthetically because they aren’t going for realism. And I’d take Morrowind’s arthropod bodies back if I could have the moral complexity and ya know, themes back.
This is also why I prefer the San Andreas era GTA, the graphics are cartoony and the gameplay is fun as hell, the hyper realism style they moved to with GTA 5 is so boring and lifeless
It sounds silly, but San Andreas is really underrated. Like I know it’s considered one of the best games of all time, but the writing, the confrontation with racism and the police and the dynamics of gangs….
I mean, most of the time it’s just fun to get 5 stars and enact your own revenge for the MOVE bombing. But that main storyline is so slept on.
Does ASCII art count? Dwarf Fortress, MUDs, etc. are great fun.
Just don’t understand people looking at screenshots and gameplay videos and commenting on how the shadows on some background detail look slightly better with the FSSMGXTR scaling setting turned to BBXT5 instead of HAMndX3.
It’s the same mindset as people who overclock or tune their cars
I remember people discussing hardware and one of the best advice comments I’ve ever seen was:
“Turn off that little FPS counter and just enjoy the damn game.”
People get so wrapped up in the hardware hobby they forget why they care in the first place, which would be fine if it wasn’t just fuelled by hardware marketing to make everyone else feel like they’re “missing out.”
This is a nice thought. I love a nice looking game, but as long as it runs smooth and I can enjoy it IDGAF what setting is on max or medium, probably 9 out of 10 I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyways.
The ray tracing is a great example for HW marketing bullshit, where you get nicer picture, but much slower framerates and requires crazy expensive hardware, but its all the buzz, everyone is obsessed with it. I mean Im not an expert but wtf is going on with the GPU prices its not normal.
And then they complain that their framerate is too low, causing flickering or lag apparently but it causes blurring instead which they do with motion blur effect already. 🤪
All of this is lost on me. Out of ancient habit, I keep my video streams throttled to 360p to ‘save bandwidth’ even though that hasn’t been a necessity for me for a decade or so.
1080p60fps gives me motion sickness. I have no idea what 4k120fps would do to me, not that I have a capable monitor.
Text rendered onto a screen is also graphics.
How many layers can be peeled before it’s not a video game anymore?
I honestly think it would be interesting to play a game by sound alone, where you play as a blind person (maybe Daredevil or Zatoichi or something) and you navigate the world by listening. Ironically, it’d probably need to be on a VR headset so that the game can detect you turning/tilting your head and adjust the stereo balance accordingly.
Maybe Zatoichi would be best, as you could hear an enemy swinging a sword like “SHING” and “SWOOSH” etc, and maybe that would give you enough information to block or dodge. You’d probably also need haptic feedback to tell you when your blade connects.
Maybe there could be graphics, but only to recreate the sense of smell, like the screen is pure black except when you smell something and then a word appears on the screen like “rose” or “blood” etc.
There is some game where you are blind any the only thing you can see is blood from what ever you killed splashed on the walls. Totally forget what it’s called. But yea yours sounds cooler
The flash game The Blind Swordsman does something like this.
Just remove the video part. Now it’s just a “game.”
Oh. Why didn’t I think of that!?
It will also be more accessible to the blind, being audio only.
The deaf? What about them?
There are rumors that the deaf are able to make good use of text based technologies.
The best I can do is send you text via serial port.
As I said, no graphics
I remember people discussing that Dear Esther was not a video game.
Fuck that’s a nice font
Alright we go back to tabletop until the situation improves
That’s 3 hairs on the arm you see. Give me my $90
I saw a text based porn game yesterday. Was pretty fun but not much porn.
What’s the fediverse etiquette for “can wet get a link to that?”, but in a way that’s not weirder than this already is…? I’ve made it weird. Maybe it was already weird.
Ok ok, i searched browsing history (you know what i mean…).
Thanks!
It was never about fun. It’s about experiencing the game.
When I read a book, the goal is to have whatever experience the book is going to give me, and leave my own life behind for a while.
Getting lost in a AAA fantasy world with super-high-fidelity graphics is an amazing experience.
Journey the game had extremely great graphics that are also good style and made you get lost in the fantasy and experience.
The character still did not have things like visible strands of individual hair. Realistic does not automatically make it good. It just makes it expensive.
Also, it is more expensive on the GPU than it is in terms of creator time.
A creator with experience in making realistic hair using currently available tools, won’t take significantly more time as compared to one with experience in some other art style, making the thing in that art style.
Unless, you manage to get that to run well on a lower powered GPU, in which case, 🚀
Are you referencing the one by Jenovah Chen, who made Fl0w and Flower? Those two games were so good but I never got to play Journey, is it still ps3 exclusive?
Yes they are the developer. There was a pc release.
Duuuuude I’m going to have to try and pirate or purchase that! And Flower too if that ever got a pc release. Fl0w I still have the freeware version.
Sure, until you inevitably hit a pile of immersion breaking jank.
Absolutely not, of course it is about having fun.
Are you going to just experience something that makes you feel miserable? Not an unfun moment for catharsis later, but an entire make-you-feel-awful experience?
Getting lost in a fantasy world is about having fun.Horror games exist though. There’s all sorts of indie horror games that pretty much only exist to tell a very bleak and depressing story and then it’s over.
They’re not for everyone, and maybe not even you, but I would say that experiencing those might be enjoyable but not fun.
That’s a good point. They’re tools that help us feel a variety of things.
Games and books are easier to think of as being “fun” in many cases. Listening to music isn’t “fun” in the same sense, but it allows us to feel all kinds of stuff. Makes sense that games and books can be thought of outside the fun paradigm too.
It’s fun to think of yourself, having had those feelings while playing said game/ reading said book.
Counterpoint: RE: 4 was so much fun.
It’s like you’ve never played a survival horror game…
Senua Hellblade is all about experience. A very depressing one as well. And it’s one of the greatest games of all time IMHO. Graphics, sound and story are more important than grinding XP points in ten different ways. People who say otherwise and praise pixelated mess are those who cannot afford to buy high end hardware to play modern games. I get it, RTX5080 is expensive, but no one is judging you for not being able to buy it, so get off your high horse.
I’ll just leave this link to Mindustry here, I guess…?
I want a fun game that can run on my shitty PC
Lucky for your, there are lots of older games as well as plenty of indie games that focus on gameplay with very limited graphics.
Anything from 6 or so years before your PC fabrication ought to be easy to run at a fast framerate.
Terraria
Are dcss tiles banned? I don’t want to play it ascii
You can play adventure books
Noooo
Fuuuuuck, I forgot all about those. Lone Wolf, Wizards Warriors & You, Fighting Fantasy… They were like a bridge between CYOA and D&D.
Thanks for the unintentional recomendations, sometimes when i can’t play a tabletop rpg and video games won’t fill that gap, but some adventure books manage to help
Yeah, I think it’s interesting to play it in ASCII. It makes you actually read the text logs and use your imagination, which feels more like a book. But it also makes it harder to actually know what’s going on, so I really don’t know about it being more fun…
funnily enough I always found the tiles to be harder to read. For me ASCII is clearer on what the enemy is and how dangerous it is. Always been a huge ASCII fan so maybe that colors my opinion.
Yeah, maybe I would need to get used to ASCII more, too. I just find it particularly tricky in crowded fights to know which monster is where. Like, I can work it out with a bit of time, but I can’t just look at it once and see immediately that the
Cnext to me is a cyclops, which I should be getting away from ASAP. I guess, you’d probably memorize letters/colors like that sooner rather than later, when actually playing with ASCII, though…
Abandon widespread* texture use, return to polygons+vertex colors+in-engine cutscenes (and similar data-saving techniques like soundfonts).
my examples (2D: created with Godot, 3D: created with Blender)
Animated eye
This was using a feature that likely isn’t viable (for common use) due to performance.
And for something not-by-me, see Spyro’s vertex color skyboxes.
* general normal maps are ok, but I didn’t have much luck beyond using generated noise for metal. I even tried some stuff with watercolor, maybe with better shaders it could work but untextured is easier.
Or another example, any material you can just apply without alteration (for instance, make something look like wood) is alright too. Maybe UV mapping is not too bad, but extra per-model work is not ideal.
Woah, you weren’t kidding about those badgers, huh? They look awesome. Love your work!
I wouldn’t call it ‘work’ yet, more practice than anything (lost some steam being unsatisfied with idea prompts though) and refining a workflow (palette, materials, import script, Blender default file). I’m unsure on actual ideas (that are viable for me), too.
Yeah I get it. Exercises and such, but they look p decent. You know how to use the tools. I also have been doing exercises, but mostly coding stuff. I don’t know how to use blender and just started familiarizing myself with Godot today.
Oh and I hope you don’t mind me popping up here. I got curious and searched your username and badgers and this appeared.
And yeah… Inspiration isn’t always easy to come across, but I’m sure it’ll eventually find you. Good luck!
You know how to use the tools
I don’t know how to use blender
I’m not new with it, but I am banging rocks together when it comes to using Blender. Not good with shortcuts and often have issues with modifiers. (I preferred what I casually started with a decade ago, Maya, though it is/was bloated both in terms of size and cost)
If there was other FOSS low/medium-poly software that works well for VC (+material(placeholders)) I would be interesting in trying it. But I’m guessing Blender is as good as it gets.
Godot, fine with that but not too keen on GDscript.
I got curious and searched your username and badgers and this appeared
I was confused at first, but figured that’s what you did (search only hit because of the alt-text as well).
I also have been doing exercises, but mostly coding stuff
I am interested in coding stuff too (a specific niche language), though I struggle with project viability even more there too and have put it on the backburner.
You might be banging rocks together, but the sparks are definitely starting to appear. With a bit more practice you should easily become more “fluent”. I tried Maya a few times back in the day but never put any serious time into it, or any 3d modeling tool. I haven’t even bumped into the limitations and problems of GDscript, but I’m sure they will show up eventually.
And umm… about project viability, idk, I haven’t released any kind of software, but there’s a story I always try to keep in mind. It’s a bit long and you don’t have to read it ofc, but it had a big impact on the way I understand projects now so i’ll share. But honestly, no need to read.
After the glider was invented in the mid 1800s, lots of people were trying to figure out how to make powered heavier than air air crafts. Building something that flew propelled by a motor. Many people were putting a lot of money and time into their prototypes, often risking their lives by trying them out. In the late 1900s Orville and Wilbur Wright were two nobodies with no high school degree running a small bike repair shop. Their shop started doing ok so they put some money into their own flight research just for fun.
They built a little wind tunnel on the back of their shop and did a huge amount of experiments with different kinds of small scale prototypes of different shapes, weights and materials. This way they could discard and test stuff hundreds of times faster than their rivals, who had to build full sized air crafts and not die in them…
This quick trial and error feedback loop allowed them to get an intuitive understanding of what worked. Basically, they didn’t win because they planned more or attempted perfection. They won because they had the advantage of being able to fail several times faster than others due to having low stakes on each attempt. That’s what allowed them to learn faster and be able to design something that did what they wanted.
if you got this far, I appreciate you reading my silly ideas and stories. Would love to hear your thoughts if you’d like to share them. If not, that’s fine too. Either way, good chat.
Good night. :)
Would love to hear your thoughts if you’d like to share them. If not, that’s fine too. Either way, good chat.
I sent you a message, not sure you got it (instance issues?).
I didn’t get it! I made another user with my same username on the now dead kbin.social a while ago. Maybe you sent it there?
I’m Pudutr0n@feddit.cl (the 0 a zero and feddit.cl is a lemmy instance). Does that help? if not, I can share other contact info, if you like.
I love Spyro to bits but that game/camera style makes me motion sick something fierce. Can we get a compromise?
Look at how some of my examples are 2D, motion style is not really core to my point. Many variants of fixed-camera, top-down, sidescroller, even static/semi-static art are possible.
I mean I guess if you make a cool skybox like that you’ll want players to be able to look at it somewhat freely. Is it specific to flying/camera speed or any 3rd-person game? 1st-person? Can settings help, or is this something that would not work with faster-paced games?
I do see that less motion seems to help, one person said higher FOV+big display with distance (among other non-digital things)… though I don’t think I’ve ever had motion sickness from a game (though I think I do have some issue related to inner ear) so I can’t be sure.
I know personally if I’m able to make anything, it’ll probably be on the smoother/simpler side. For example, I made a simple character controller and adding view bob never entered my mind. Probably no filters either.
There was an excellent text based RPG called Roadwarden that came out the other year. It’s just text and illustrations so thought I’d use this post to mention it.
If small amounts of animation are allowed then WORLD OF HORROR was decent too.
Roadwarden is excellent.
