I guess I'll never understand this hype around true 3D back then, or any hype around new features in video game graphics for that matter. It all seems to be done to promote new hardware, and also results in "eww, this is not 3D" reactions from some people (critics included as it turns out). It seems like people fail to understand that the artistic quality of visuals in a game is something completely separate from the underlying technology, and believe that "bad graphics" is an appropriate term to describe previous generations of video tech.

Personally I had a great aversion to polygons when the first "true 3D" games started to come out. It seemed to me that models made of simple geometric shapes would never achieve the same level of detail that sprite images could have. This however did not prevent me from enjoying F-19 Stealth Fighter which actually used untextured 3D models long before games of the Quake era.

MrFlibble wrote:

I guess I'll never understand this hype around true 3D back then, or any hype around new features in video game graphics for that matter. It all seems to be done to promote new hardware, and also results in "eww, this is not 3D" reactions from some people (critics included as it turns out). It seems like people fail to understand that the artistic quality of visuals in a game is something completely separate from the underlying technology, and believe that "bad graphics" is an appropriate term to describe previous generations of video tech.

Personally I had a great aversion to polygons when the first "true 3D" games started to come out. It seemed to me that models made of simple geometric shapes would never achieve the same level of detail that sprite images could have. This however did not prevent me from enjoying F-19 Stealth Fighter which actually used untextured 3D models long before games of the Quake era.

I never really liked the first polygon games either. Dungeon Keeper 1 vs 2 and Carmageddon 1 vs 2 are good examples, IMO. In both series the first game used low-res (but still quite detailed and well animated) sprites, and the second jumped to low-poly models with blurry textures and awkward looking animation. I could never see that as an improvement.

Oh and I tried that DNF mod last week... And I can say it's pretty good so far! Much better than what I've seen of the official game.

jwt27 wrote:

Oh and I tried that DNF mod last week... And I can say it's pretty good so far! Much better than what I've seen of the official game.

The Duke3D mapping/modding community is fantastic, they do a lot of excellent stuff.