Silent Storm (2003) is a WWII themed game from the time period, not brown at all, quite colorful as I see it. And to be honest, Q2 is very brownish :\

Halo isn't brown at all. Nice and colourful.

Which are the richest opengl palette games?

RacoonRider wrote:

And to be honest, Q2 is very brownish :\

Q2's design is weird. From that point ID made not games, but techno demos. The reasons probably are close to the fail of Unreal 2.

you clearly are new to id software games. EVERY one of their games has been a groundbreaking tech demo. Even the original Keen trilogy. Carmack was about pushing the PC towards the future to be competitive with specialized gaming consoles (which were definitely superior hardware at one point as far as action gaming goes) and he had a team of creative talent to help him get his point across. Unfortunately this creative direction had shed some of the talent (Hall, Romero)

lightmaster wrote:

Which are the richest opengl palette games?

Star Trek Voyager Elite Force and Heavy Metal FAKK2 come to mind. Both are 2000ers, id tech 3, and really want to use every color in the palette (even trek despite that dull grey ship it's half set on)

Skipped HMFAKK2 :·( , STVEF's Holomatchand playing with other bros @ some LANs!!, Thanks Leilelol for the info

kixs wrote:

Not sure exactly what you mean by "brown". But, for me, SS was graphically very beautiful and colourful - at least what can you […]
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Not sure exactly what you mean by "brown". But, for me, SS was graphically very beautiful and colourful - at least what can you expect in the desert scenes 😉

SS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5BPUHDXO4

Q2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTyyKMmlf6E

To me, Q2 looks all brown and lacking contrast 😉

RacoonRider wrote:

Silent Storm (2003) is a WWII themed game from the time period, not brown at all, quite colorful as I see it. And to be honest, Q2 is very brownish :\

Silent Storm is WWII, but it's not FPS. It seems to me the post-2000 brownie trends (which also happened to be in conjunction with the demise of 3dfx) only happened to FPS games.

Some Quake 2's backgrounds are brownie, but the lightning is outrageously psychedelic that it's ridiculous.

Munx wrote:

Color returned soon after that, though. 2004 had FarCry, Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, etc. It wasn't until around 2007 when developers figured out they can hide ugly parts of their games with Grey and Brown filters (Modern Warfare is the biggest culprit here).

Indeed. Also, non-FPS games didn't seem to suffer the "color reduction" design trend. Freedom Force is healthily colored despite being a 2002 game.

Munx wrote:

And I don't think games went backwards after 3dfx, though I would agree that graphical advancement started to slow down, with Geforce 8000 series being the last major push. Pretty amazing how 3dfx pushed 25fps@640x480 in 1996 to 60fps@1024x768 in 1999.

It seems 3dfx-era games tend to be vividly colored, like Screamer Rally, Hydro Thunder, and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. It's probably the reason why the OP thinks game graphics went backwards after 3dfx died. Whereas the graphics didn't actually go backwards, but merely designed to look washed out to appeal to realism. Post-3dfx graphics engine is perfectly capable to display nice colors, though, so I guess it's a matter of design trends and choices instead of the technology going backwards.

archsan wrote:

Wasn't 1999~2000 also the year of endless Matrix' Dolby Digital demo scene? 🤣

Indeed. 🤣

MDK2's also very vividly colorful and uses OpenGL 😀 most of the color is biased towards shades of blue though, but it's 500% more colorful than its predecessor (which was sensible for the indexed palette anyway,) Also Bioware was developing Neverwinter Nights around MDK2's dev time and had very brown looks in the previews in '99/'00 (as did the final release), so the lack of color has nothing to do with 3dfx's demise.

Also to note there have been less colorful 3d games prior to 3dfx's success. Mechwarrior 2 is a great example, the only breakage of color are the weapon effects and the hud.

and finally a lot of the big games released post-3dfx were designed for several years while 3dfx were still alive. Operation Flashpoint kept a lot of its 1999 looks and Glide support (save for the particle system). Anachronox is as blocky as it was in 1998. Even Half-Life 2 began development before 3dfx acquired STB.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman: thanks for clarification. I used to play Q2 like no other 😁 But graphically I like SS better.

leileilol wrote:

MDK2's also very vividly colorful and uses OpenGL 😀 most of the color is biased towards shades of blue though, but it's 500% more colorful than its predecessor (which was sensible for the indexed palette anyway,) Also Bioware was developing Neverwinter Nights around MDK2's dev time and had very brown looks in the previews in '99/'00 (as did the final release), so the lack of color has nothing to do with 3dfx's demise.

Indeed.

leileilol wrote:

Also to note there have been less colorful 3d games prior to 3dfx's success. Mechwarrior 2 is a great example, the only breakage of color are the weapon effects and the hud.

Another title came to mind: Jane's F-15. It is a 3dfx game whose colors are pretty washed out. On the other hand, Enemy Engaged: Apache Havoc, which is post-3dfx, is more vividly colored.

Is it the popularity of post-3dfx FPS that happen to be brownie/greyish --like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty-- that makes the OP thinks games go backward after 3dfx died?

kixs wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman: thanks for clarification. I used to play Q2 like no other 😁 But graphically I like SS better.

Same here. While I like vivid colors, I think Q2 is too psychodelic sometimes, where your metallic-colored shotgun constantly changes into improbable, acid trip colors as you walk around.

Anndd... let's not forget No One Lives Forever (2000) and NOLF2 (2002). Another set of example of funky, colorful style that's not overdone. 😀

After 3dfx died games have better and bigger textures, and far more triangles are used because of T&L and in Serious Sam are also micro textures. Enclave for example in 2003 look far better than any older game runned on 3dfx.

I don't know about that. UT shipped with a disc full of 512x512's and 1024x1024's for s3 cards. Large textures were already on the horizon. Even 3dfx had their own texture compression format (FXT1) and very very very few games used it.

What about Undying? That game had some great graphics for its age.
I think is was released in 2001 or something.

^I mentioned Undying in the first page. Not only the graphics was stylistically good for its time, but the sound design really gives you the atmosphere. Very exciting to play in the dark with your surround speakers turned up. 😀

I even intended to buy it at recent GOG summer sale only to find it's already on my digital shelf since I forgot when.

archsan wrote:

^I mentioned Undying in the first page. Not only the graphics was stylistically good for its time, but the sound design really gives you the atmosphere. Very exciting to play in the dark with your surround speakers turned up. 😀

I even intended to buy it at recent GOG summer sale only to find it's already on my digital shelf since I forgot when.

Undying is one of my favorite games of all time.