Retro is better

[Karlos]

I like the old 256 color and 32 color games, they have a certain warmth to them. Plus the hand drawn graphics is always nice to look at.

Hand drawn graphics are nice for 2D.

In 3D, whats the deal with those awful jagged lines even on higher resolutions I still see them, it makes the game look toyish. Considering the graphics power we have nowadays I shouldn't be let down in the graphics department.

What do you think?

Use whatever advanced graphics tweaking tool that came with your card and:

1) Increase your fullscreen antialiasing settings to get rid of polygonal edge jaggies.
2) Use supersampling rather than multisampling for edge antialiasing
3) Use supersampling antialiasing for transparent texel edges

Finally, I think you need to install the absolute highest definition texture packs you can find for your games if you don't like the fact that at staring at a textured surface from point blank range reveals the texel edges.

[Karlos]

I like 3D when it actually improves gameplay. Sadly it seems a mantra now that games must be 3D even if it doesn't add anything useful

That's true. It's a pity too because modern 3D hardware is capable of very flexible 2D graphics rendering.

[Karlos]

Is  there a reason this has  to be an either/or type thing? Personally I love hand-pixelled 2D graphics in games, but I equally enjoy some of the phenomenal detail that has found it's way into modern 3D offerings too. Remember that many of the textures used in these titles have also been created by hand by talented artists.

[Karlos]

Well, the thread is about 'retro' gaming and 3D pretty much qualifies itself right there, so yeah.... lol

I thought the thread was intended to be a "which is better and why?" question, otherwise why ask what we think at the end of a post praising 2D and criticising 3D?

[Karlos]

I'm a bit curious, actually. I've experimented with a 2D tiling stuff in the past that used 3D hardware to render tiles, in 32-bit depth with simple (read gouraud) lighting effects and antialiased "sprites" (32-bit images moving over the top). I can easily imagine some retro style games doing that on modern hardware with pixel-shaded sprites and tiles for highly realistic lighting effects.

Where does that sit in the spectrum of 2D versus 3D ?

[Karlos]

I've always wanted to try out this theoretical real-time antialiasing trick with Amigas. You have the game set in EHB mode, all your BOBs and background graphics would use the first 32 colours, and all the BOBs have a EHB mask behind them which slightly overlaps the BOB its under (the pixel artist would determine the best mask). This would give the illusion of an outline around the characters which is semi-transparent and would help blur jagged edges, and could also be used for shadows below the characters. Or shadow character bad guys!

I'm not sure that'd actually work. The second 32 colours are always going to be the same as the first 32, just half as bright.

For antialiasing, you need to be able to blend foreground and background pixel colours together in a ratio proportional to how much of the pixel the foreground occupies using the blend equation below

pixelColour = fgAlpha*fgColour + (1.0-fgAlpha)*bgColour

where fgAlpha is the alpha channel value of the foreground for that pixel (in the scale 0-1, where 0 is completely transparent).

The alpha channel is where the antialiasing comes in. If you imagine a perfect 45 degree diagonal edge that you were antialiasing, it might cut a pixel perfectly in half and as such, the pixel at that point would have an alpha channel of 0.5.

What EHB ought to be good for, however, is realtime shadows.

[Karlos]

For what I'm thinking of EHB would work fine. The edges of the characters in my game are all black for example, but if they were EHB instead of black they'd help the edges of the characters blend in better. I have played around a lot with the concept in Personal Paint and it actually looks pretty nice, I wish I could use the effect in my game so the characters didn't have such jagged edges, especially when they're in front of lighter coloured backgrounds.

I'm fully aware it's not REAL antialiasing, doesn't perform the same action, and can't be applied to anything other than the concept I've already toyed with, but for softening the dark edges of some characters it looks better to have a pixel of darker background colour than black.

Ah, you mean you'd be using the 50% brightness shades to smooth the transition from your sprite to a black edge? Yep, I can see how that works.

[Karlos]

Have you ever try Hurrican ?
http://turrican.gamevoice.de/hurrican_site/
To me, this is how 2D games should use modern graphics capabilities.

Regards,

Frederic

Now that's what I'm talking about!