I love doom and wolf3d but i have my reservations about quake and unreal.
I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.
I agree that good 2.5D games look better than a lot of the shoddily done full 3D games, but unreal and quake are not good examples. Unreal in particular had absolutely beautiful graphics.
"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium
They don't look better, they were just more playable on the hardware available.
Collector of old computers, hardware, and software
I think the thing was they were low enough resolution that your brain filled in the blanks, whereas when the resolution went up a bit the art maybe looked a bit cheesy or something and game designers didn't pull up their game for a couple of years, relying on the tech to wow.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Keep in mind that by that time 2D video hardware was pretty mature, we've had a good 20 years by then to perfect 2D graphics.... The thing with polygons is that they tend to look pretty pointy if you're limited in the amount you can cram into a single model, and textures can look pretty washed out, stretched, flat, and grainy if you don't have a very high poly count to work with. 3D was just alot more challenging with the hardware of the time.... atleast we PC gamers had it alot better than early attempts at 3D on consoles...... Without a doubt, Quake looks light years better than Starfox!
yeh this is what I thought as well Wolf3d is fairly late in the grand scheme of 2D graphics. (any vga game is really) so years worth of knowhow
Late 90's 3d games like Quake were almost starting from scratch again.
But I agree, I remember been disappointed with Quake and Need for Speed 2 vs their earlier titles when I first saw them (still am really)
The more realistic the style, the more detail the eye requires to have it look good. Given that moving to 3D requires more resources, the detail level dropped so that early hardware could handle it. High-detail sprites look better than low-detail 3D models.
https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys
Interesting, a friend of mine made the same comment in 96 when I was literally drooling over quake shareware. I have to admit that QTest did look "better" because there were no monster but only the eerily lit labyrinths which where a sight to behold.
Quake's models were nonetheless very well made for the time, especially when taking into account that the people responsible were not well versed in creating such content. Take a look at the shambler when he walks - weight and power, a little master-piece. Only stupid looking character were the small knights with their dorky sword attacks... seemed like the player was magnetic and magically pulling them towards him.
Doom and Wolf had the advantage that every actor is a near "pixel-perfect" beautiful, comic style cut-out only being scaled and, in Doom's case, shaded. The viewers eye is restricted to the xy plane which further helps the very simple world geometry to hide its brutal, but effective, minimalism. Add to that, the already mentioned, low resolution which perfectly touches up the rendered content and you have a winner... especially in Doom's case.
Restrictions are the minds/brains best friend which successfully creates what pleases the owner the most - it's a combo that even the most bunga-bunga-mega hardware in the world has trouble to beat.
And as a quick ode to 2.5D goodness...
I still have a source mod of ChocolateDoom lying around, which I did in 2012, that renders the game in full 24 bit color(+colored sector "lighting" and crudely hacked transparent masked walls/sprites) and it looks dandy.
Quake's art was actually quite top notch and all the monsters are well animated. However that game was rather rushed and didn't implement a lot of things and spackle that Doom had (weapon drawing/holstering, sound pitches, transparent textures, proper invisibility effects, automap, etc). Hell, even at the time, many people loathed at some of the things Quake did instead, like automatic doors and the "ugly" particles replacing the familiar sprite effects they would all come to expect. It was going to be worse (sprite torches anyone?)
3D cards kind of changed this, setting off a silly war against "pixelated graphics" leading to a love for low-res bilinear filtered stuff because it's less "grainy", and 2D games as a whole used to be highly disregarded in the late 90s unless they're strategy or card games because use those 3d cards while you have them 😐
I don't think it's about nostalgia though. there's a LOAD of rough 2.5d and 3d games from the 90s alike (and frankly many of them do look better than the recent Unity-based dorksploitation "90s games")
