Came across an example of a criminally underrepresented art style...

edited in General
...and my brain felt full of wonder. Bevis and I spent the next two hours discussing how we should redo all the art for all our games to look like this (we've tried to get this style right before, but never got it quite the way we wanted, I think, I speak for myself).

It's halfway down the page at polycount. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92802&page=369

Retro 3D seems to me to be SUPER hard to get right. Or at least, there is very little language out there for it, as so few have attempted it, and forging new ground into the cultural landscape is really arduous. This makes Oliver Janaschek's achievement really brilliant in my eyes (and I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes it).

(Other notable exceptional exceptions are of course Fez and arguably Proteus... Off the top of my head. Very few of the examples I've seem in a retro 3D style have been fully realised... If there's more great Retro 3D artwork I'm not aware of I'd love to know).

Comments

  • I always thought Interstate 76 was really amazingly well done:


    People might think that I-76 looked like that because it was old, but no, that was a specific art style that they chose. And it worked. So beautifully.

    I've also been in love with MechWarrior 2's enhanced imaging mode since forever.
  • Always loved the look of Vagrant Story. Great game aswell :)
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    Some old 3D looked really cool! (Interstate 76 and Virtua Fighter look super rad!)

    I think the thing I was trying to say with the thread title was that there are very few contemporary games (like in the last 3 years, that I'm aware of) that revert to simplistic 3D as a style choice and still look awesome (like the way fez looks awesome).

    And that retro 3D art is super fresh territory right now (because it's been a generation since the first wave of 3D games... and that generally means a revival is due).

    Or Mirror Moon image
    I guess. Though it's pretty abstract, so I'm not sure it applies.

    And there were a lot of old 3D games that looked just plain awful:



    Do you think Journey could be placed amongst this? It's not all that lofi... but it certainly limits its polygon count as a stylistic choice.

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  • Well, this might not count as it is actually retro but you can't get a better example than another world's intro video:

    one of those games that seems to be even better now, looking back, than when it was when i first played it.

    A lot of games recently have gone the 'voxel' route which I suppose counts as retro 3d, my favourite example being voxatron (which looks really cool but I haven't played it)

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  • Ah! I was gonna mention Journey :) And another obvious one was Minecraft. Other really cool new retro games for me was Sworcery:

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    pixel design done well is actually a lot more time consuming than normal... Plus it doesnt suit all types of stuff.
  • I don't think Journey is very retro 3D :/

    Breath of Fire 4
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    I think the thing that makes an art-style retro 3D or not is how it handles polygons - is it pointing them out with a nod and a wink, or is it hiding them with texturing and smart shaders?

    So I'd say Journey doesn't seem to be retro 3D to me. Yes, it's stylised and gorgeous, but just because it's not photorealistic doesn't make it automatically retro. It's also not a style that wants you to see individual pixels ;)

    Voxatron and Minecraft to me are both artistically informed by a low-poly and pixelated aesthetic. I think the thing that pushes Minecraft over the edge into retro 3D for me is how the icons of the items are extruded into 3D models when you hold them in the game world. That's just all kinds of hilarious.
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    Yeah, I have to agree now that Journey doesn't qualify as Retro. It wouldn't take much for it to point out it's low poly-ness (with a wink), but the game doesn't do that (not that that is a bad thing). Journey is, like you say, just very stylised, and obviously awesome. (I wasn't really thinking when I posted)

    But THIS IS GREAT:
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    Also. How could I have missed Voxatron?! Derp. Nice one Raithza! Also Another World STILL LOOKS EXCELLENT :)

  • Oh fuck yes, Darwinia!

    I once read a magazine interview where they said one of the hardest parts of the development was writing the shader that made the units all pixelated :)
  • Well I don't think it's really all about "retro" and "pixel", but a stylised, simplistic art direction that goes more for shapes than detail, which I think Journey fits in. But hey that's down to individual taste.

    Darwinia was great. Looking forward to whatever else Introversion makes :) Defcon was fun for a while until I realised I sucked at RTS-type games.

    Does anyone remember Elite? I really wanted to play that game. I read about it before I had a computer or anything at all:

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  • Of late, I have become particularly enamored with untextured, un-smoothed polygon 3D, that uses "high-end" physics and lighting. Whereas early PS1 era 3D looks distinctly dated, this type of 3D is in my un-humble opinion, stylish, elegant and more importantly, timeless. I feel that this aesthetic truly embraces the computer aesthetic in a manner not dissimilar to 2D pixel art. Here are 2 examples that demonstrate this beautifully.

    Radiohead - Go To Sleep


    The Chumscrubber (Game Sequence)
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    THIS. Four Fourths. It's only a demo now by the guys who made Solipski (awesome). I have no idea what the game does but it looks cool.

    http://mikengreg.com/4fourths/

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    Ooooh! Four Fourths looks intriguing.

    I remember Rez being a very graphically interesting game at it's time (though it's aged badly I think).

    And then Child of Eden, which is essentially it's sequel, sort of feels old already.

    (I think Child of Eden may have been much better served by a more limited style, rather that switching around and doing nothing particularly well... in fact I feel it does some things really shitly, like at about the 1 minute mark of that video)

    I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more graphics in games similar to that Radiohead video. It seems to me to be under-explored, though it is still a bit hard for indies to do the animation and modelling necessary (though getting easier).

    Louise Hermandez (who is very cool) made an interesting game experiment. It does some awesome things with art style. It's not a purchasable game though, please don't view it as a commercial product. http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/upload/VO_01_PC.zip

  • Hey guys. Cool screenshot of Elite there. Always been interested in that game, but never seen it live and working. Anyone seen Inferno by DID/Ocean (an x-wing sort of thing)? I had a VHS promo video tape of that game and it made me drool: gouraud shading and huge vector-graphics space-stations. Also never seen a working copy :(

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    Fuzzy Spoon drew my attention to FRACT OSC:


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    More goodness. The rim lighting here, the motes of star dust, the bloom and what might be a distance shader (or really should be a distance shader), really makes me happy:

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  • These are awesome.
    BlackShips, what do you mean by distance shader? depth of field?
  • I think he means to shade according to distance away from view - so like your typical fog effect, things being paler the further it goes.


  • Fairly relevant I think
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