"Retro" PC Games Megathread v9 - From Dusk Till Doom - Games

My only annoyance with the DUSK's weaponry, is the pistol. Outside of some parts of Episode 2 (which honestly, was actually kinda cool), I feel they really don't have a point besides saving better ammo on weaker enemies (who still take a few hits).

I found it fun to use with rapid fire or the super hot thing

the crossbow is hands down the most interesting and unique weapon that wall piercing is going to make for some mad 100% kills speedruns

Yeah, Dusk by all means completely nails it in regards to soundtrack, gameplay, and generally just doing what it can to live up to the gameplay tropes and best values of oldschool FPS games The only thing there really is to nitpick about it is the artstyle and weapon selection, and at the end of the day that's so minimal compared to what it was trying to do with it's gameplay, and I think the most important thing is that it nailed it. Curious to see what the dev does from here.

I personally didn't have any issues with the art style. I absolutely adored how everything looked.

I think the only real thing that bothers me about the art of DUSK is the weapon models. A lot of them are too low poly, that or the polys that are on the models are used in ways that just really dont give the weapon much definition. The lever shotguns in particular, they feel all around fantastic to use but the only thing I can say I'm not fond of about them is that they are way too low detail for the time period the game is supposed to feel like it was made in. Frankly I think if this game was supposed to feel like it was made around the same time as Quake 2, Half-Life, and UT99, the weapons and some of the characters would have a bit more detail to them. If I had one more thing that I could mention that I feel would have helped make the game feel more authentic in this regard, it's that perhaps the characters should have been animated using vertex animations instead of bones. Also, what was up with the stained glass windows on E1M3? Frankly never really had an issue with any of the level textures in the game except for this one, which to me just looked really bad. Love the game as a whole though, really good stuff, and frankly all of this is just thorough nitpicking when the game is primarily made by just one guy.

I think the dev definitely started to figure out exactly how to reel in and nail down the style of the era it was going for in the later episodes, but it had a bit of a rough-er start in general. It's why I'm excited to see how things go from here ( should they choose to make another retro FPS game ) With Dusk and to an extent, Amid Evil, they both at times feel like they're kind of be missing the approach that things back in the golden era of FPS weren't often, if ever, designed visually with the limitations of the hardware in mind, they were designed to be the best they could be, and then they worked around that to get it the best it could be with what they had. I don't believe at all that there was an iteration on the Dusk Crossbow that didn't look really really ugly, I feel like it always started out being 'retro' in it's design and that's why it, and so many of the other weapon models, look so chunky and ugly. Designed to be bad to feel retro - feels out of place when you compare it to something like the Wendigo in Episode 2, which feels like it had a proper design made first, and then they worked to fit it within limitations.

that seems to be how a lot of great modern low-poly art is made - artists give themselves 16 colours, a 64x64 texture atlas, and 100 triangles, and try to make the best looking thing they possibly can

it could do with more weapons on general, but the only thing it's really glaringly missing is a BFG equivalent - like just instantly kill anything less than a boss enemy and clear out the whole room

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109886/20d9903f-ae3d-4874-a8e9-87cf4397d184/image.png

the only thing i really wish dusk had visually was that inaccurate/jittery vertex look of early 3d devil daggers pulls it off really well https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110593/a94885d2-c654-427b-a202-857611629d8e/devil-daggers.gif

As much as I love that effect, and agree that they should have it, couldn't it potentially get really irritating on the eyes considering the speed that you move at? Might sound like a silly question, but I can see that happening.

Dusk doesn't aim for vertex animation look, though?

i'm not disagreeing with you i just really like that look and its interesting to see it emulated

Another thing about this is to me I feel the effect wasn't really that present in a lot of early 3D PC games? The thing that I think confuses most people in this regard is that the animations in games like Quake 1 had a really low framerate, which made them seem as if the pixels were really jittery when in reality it was (to my knowledge) just a result of the vertex animations the game had by default and the low framerate the animations had. As cool as an effect it is, it's more akin to that of what you see in early PlayStation games than anything on a PC at the time. I think what would have made more sense in this regard is if all the characters were vertex animated, it would be in line with how the animations in most games made back then would work. However, I do think the fact it uses bones for animations is passable? Mainly because around the same time dynamic lighting became a big deal within the "world" of graphics (which DUSK seems to be thoroughly steeped dynamic lights), using bones for animations in games was starting to become a standard as HL1 kinda made it a big deal, among other games. Either way vertex anims probably would have been the way to go authenticity wise.

Are the 2 turok remakes worth the sale price of 12€? Can someone explain the appeal of turok games before I get them.

yes the appeal is blowing the fuck out of everything on screen with some of the most awesome weapons ever made for an fps also tribal music and manly grunting

and there's sometimes dinosaurs

games done on the Quake and Quake 2 engine had that issue, but it more applied to animated models rather than static, as they were vertex animated instead of bone animated.

They were made for the N64, but the remasters really beef things up. Classic gameplay of hunting for keys, objectives and bosses to kill, with a large arsenal of weapons to turn enemies into corpses and/or messy bits. The first game is fairly straightforward stuff, perhaps too straightforward. The sequel is the one everyone loves and remembers, and the remaster even helps tone down some of the excessive maziness (though believe me when I say I still got lost a few times, especially in the Lair of the Blind Ones). No real twists or anything, either, so it's pretty much the definition of Retro FPS.

I vividly remember the vertex jitter/wobble/snapping whatever in Q1 and Q2 way back, but modern videos of the games don't seem to have it, so I'm inclined to believe it's dependent on hardware/renderer. After all it's achieved by rounding vertex coordinates, which means smaller values to store, so stands to reason it'd be a way to conserve memory on lower end systems.

The funny thing about the Turok series is that the entries with the most dinosaurs (Evolution and the 2008 remake, if you count that) are also the worst.

It was so obvious in quake 2, the weapons looked like they were made of rubber https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109665/5fa8707b-4af9-4491-8ac1-f95a1e4b8b9a/q2.mp4

If you use the Q2 models ported to Garry's Mod, or use a source port that doesn't replace the models, it's actually more of how the models were composed with the same going for Q1. Bones didn't exist yet for IdTech as far as I know, so instead they took every single vertex that comprises the model and moved them individually for each frame of animation. And because Q2 had actual idle animations and more animation overall, it became a lot more noticeable. Some source ports get around this by using frame interpolation on the models to try to smooth out the animation quirks that resulted. It's why it would be a tricky prospect for one man to animate that sort of thing on an indie budget for DUSK, as an example.

Yo CTF in Quake Champions is fucking sick, I'm loving it

Afaik to recreate it you only need a piece of code that averages vertex coordinates, no need for old school vertex animation

Then I guess I got hit by the misinformation then, my bad.

I wonder if making animations like this for the game would be possible once the SDK comes out, if that's the case then It'd be great to see someone make it happen.

That's BloodGDX finished, don't remember the Bosses getting stuck on walls this much, the EP3 boss didn't move out of his pit of lava and I just shot him without taking damage.

CTF is great, but the rest of this update isn't. They try to do "progression system" but now it's just way too confusing. The only change I would have made to the prior system was to allow purchasable cosmetics with Favor. Now it's kinda lame. Gonna miss my dailies.