Gaming

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I truly don't know how to explain this to anyone who wasn't around then. (startrek.website)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/gaming

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Here's a decent impression of the times: http://i.imgur.com/mAUyo.jpg

But back in the day (2003-ish) we still had amazing things to look forward to:

translucency (windows were not see-through)
realtime lighting and shadows (shadows were blobs below a model)
metallic reflection, and reflections in general (though working mirrors existed since at least Duke Nukem 3D, but those were a hack; copy the room and player model and flip them around to create the effect of a mirror)
further viewing distances (though this isn't a positive, IMO)
physics (everything was static - models moved, but did not rotate (much))
inverse kinematics

It's crazy how far we've gotten, but view distances spoil everything (IMO), and graphical improvements have slowed down (not stalled, but definitely slowed down) with Ray Tracing becoming wide-spread being the last big graphical improvement (since 2018).

[–] DangedIfYouDid 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Curious to hear more about your stance on view distance because you felt it needed to be mentioned twice.

I can't imagine anything about increased potential being inherently bad in an of itself, but it does present more opportunities for level designers to fall short by under-utilizing the spaces.

There is a level of charm that came from the compromise forced by technical limitations which pushed a lot of detail into sky boxes and other 2D workarounds to simulate a 3D space. Even so, it was always frustrating when you became aware that those details would only ever be unavailable to explore up close.

[–] thehatfox 2 points 9 months ago

Spyro the Dragon launched in 1998, a year and bit after that issue of Next Generation linked. Spurs was one of the first games to make use of varying levels of detail to expand the view distance.

The level design of Spyro took advantage of this to encourage the player to explore the levels with Spyro’s glide jump by making interesting areas of levels in the distance more visible.

The game received a lot of praise at the time for its graphics and gameplay.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

And even then it was amazing. Honestly, some games of the era just never lost relevancy, and I play a few myself to this day.

(Picture - Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, 2003, the best lightsaber fighting game of all times)

[–] thehatfox 1 points 9 months ago

M2 EXCLUSIVE! Full specifications of 1997's hottest new 64 bit game machine

To think what might have been. The M2 would have tough competition against the PlayStation and N64 but it would have been interesting to see what a 3DO successor would have done to the market at the time, especially if 3DO had stuck with the hardware licensing model.