Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
- Freaklore1
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
[quote="Matt"]I'm just waiting for a few years when the following make a comeback per the 20-year cycle rule:
- beautiful, haunting, surreal castles-and-rayguns settings (Unreal)
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This is something that i wish would see more,we dont see these kind of settings often in the gaming industry nowadays.
I want to play a FPS game where you explore these haunting and surreal castles/ruins that ooze with atmosphere while also having a bit of sci-fi elements added into the mix.
The kind of locations that feel familiar but not quite since there are some elements that also feel out of this world.
The original Unreal and some other games from the late 90s and early 2000s did a pretty good job on creating such environments.
- beautiful, haunting, surreal castles-and-rayguns settings (Unreal)
...............................................................................................................................................
This is something that i wish would see more,we dont see these kind of settings often in the gaming industry nowadays.
I want to play a FPS game where you explore these haunting and surreal castles/ruins that ooze with atmosphere while also having a bit of sci-fi elements added into the mix.
The kind of locations that feel familiar but not quite since there are some elements that also feel out of this world.
The original Unreal and some other games from the late 90s and early 2000s did a pretty good job on creating such environments.
- Kinsie
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Another example that is pertinent to this topic is the Amiga game Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds.Graf Zahl wrote:This example has nothing to do with shooters but some 25 years ago I was working on a game that as a gimmick had some arcade games. One of it was a Pac Man clone and its programmer was really proud about the monster AI which always made them follow the player. The result: A thoroughly un-fun game because it always ended with the player being cornered. The end result was that I just excised the entire AI system and replaced it with random turns at each corner. After that it actually did become fun to play. Granted, there may have been a better solution but the lesson was clear: AI always needs some careful balancing to work. If you go too far it will kill the game.
I forget the exact details, but as I understand it the game had a fairly sophisticated AI system where upon hearing the player, monsters would head to where the sound was made, then if the player was no longer there, they'd split up and look for them in different places. All very sophisticated, all very impressive, all things the player never actually saw because they were somewhere else, all weighing down on the Amiga's limited CPU and contributing to the game's serious performance issues.
- Graf Zahl
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
What I actually find most insulting about this type of game is that they do not get made with a retro engine but mostly with Unity, which ultimately only highlights the lack of effort that was made.Chris wrote: I've said it before, but the charm of old-school graphics is the amount of hard work to get around the limitations and pull off impressive results. "Retro" isn't an excuse to lack talent or not put in effort for quality. Having a mess of pixels or as few polygons as possible doesn't give you "retro charm", the charm came from what developers managed to make out of a small 4-color 8x8 sprite or with their polygon budget. It was making an effort to push against or mask their limitations, not simply being in those limitations.
Taking an old engine and trying to make something good with it will always get my respect, but when I see that people try to reenact Quake in a modern engine it's only really worth a shrug.
I know I might be in the minority but I always found Quake to be a really pathetic game. It surely had a revolutionary engine but what was made of it didn't do anything for me. It didn't use 3D to create realistic places, instead it used it to create gimmick structures to show off the engine's capabilities and looking back from now, I just prefer any Build engine game that ever got made over it. They universally have better level design and it's very obvious that the effort didn't go into making the tech good, but the game.
As long as those modern retro games do not show the same kind of effort I'll thankfully pass. But we all know that such a game can be made on a far lower budget. I fear that Ion Maiden may be the sole outlier in a whole see of retro crap, because such a game actually requires some work to be done well.
- Kinsie
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Quake's development was... a difficult, poorly-managed one that went through a lot of different phases. In the end, turning what they had into a "Doom clone" was the only way to salvage the project. Throw in an arbitrary 1.4mb BSP size limit to reduce memory usage and what you basically had was Doom-style maps that were more vertical, but also more limited in size.Graf Zahl wrote:I know I might be in the minority but I always found Quake to be a really pathetic game. It surely had a revolutionary engine but what was made of it didn't do anything for me. It didn't use 3D to create realistic places, instead it used it to create gimmick structures to show off the engine's capabilities and looking back from now, I just prefer any Build engine game that ever got made over it. They universally have better level design and it's very obvious that the effort didn't go into making the tech good, but the game.
David L. Craddock's "Rocket Jump" is a fantastic book-length article (soon to become an actual book) about all the internal drama at Id over the years.
Another interesting data point to consider is games that use retro engines, but don't use retro art styles. Blendo Games have used the Quake 2 and Doom 3 engines for indie projects, but you wouldn't really be able to tell from their very different art styles.Graf Zahl wrote:As long as those modern retro games do not show the same kind of effort I'll thankfully pass. But we all know that such a game can be made on a far lower budget. I fear that Ion Maiden may be the sole outlier in a whole see of retro crap, because such a game actually requires some work to be done well.
Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Kinsie wrote:Another interesting data point to consider is games that use retro engines, but don't use retro art styles
I wonder if you will still find it "interesting" if an even more retro engine like ZDoom is used to make games with non-retro art styles, or would you still repeat the same pessimism like when modern graphical features were added into the engine...Kinsie wrote:interesting
- Chris
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
What I find interesting is when devs actually use retro tech to make something. Granted, AFAIK Ion Maiden uses a modernized version of the Build engine, but it is still the Build engine at its core. I've also heard of a retro brawler looking to recapture the style of an old NES title called River City Ransom, and did so by actually making the game run on real NES hardware (there was still a native PC version I believe, but the game itself was capable of being built for and run on a real NES system). I remember hearing something similar about a recent game for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive.Graf Zahl wrote:What I actually find most insulting about this type of game is that they do not get made with a retro engine but mostly with Unity, which ultimately only highlights the lack of effort that was made.
- Kinsie
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Xeno Crisis recently finished Kickstarter funding. It's being developed as a homebrew Genesis game, with other platforms presumably being handled via emulation.Chris wrote:I remember hearing something similar about a recent game for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive.
There are actually a number of developers and publishers out there putting out new (or reissued) games for old console hardware, with varying degrees of success and/or quality. I believe Blzut dealt with one of them while doing the Super Noah's Ark re-release?
EDIT:
You might be thinking of Retro City Rampage, a NES-style game inspired by the developer's past efforts to develop a GTA "demake" for actual NES hardware. It still counts as a "proper modern retro" game though, because the developer went to the effort of porting it to MS-DOS! (And even Windows 3.1, but that port wasn't completely finished)Chris wrote:I've also heard of a retro brawler looking to recapture the style of an old NES title called River City Ransom, and did so by actually making the game run on real NES hardware (there was still a native PC version I believe, but the game itself was capable of being built for and run on a real NES system).
- Chris
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Hmm, I think I may have gotten my wires crossed at some point. The game I had in mind was actually River City Ransom Underground, but it doesn't appear that was actually made for the NES (though it almost looks like it could be). I may have heard about Retro City Rampage once and confused it with River City. Still though, I think RCRU is an example of good retro-style art.Kinsie wrote:You might be thinking of Retro City Rampage, a NES-style game inspired by the developer's past efforts to develop a GTA "demake" for actual NES hardware.
Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
All I can hope is that devs will make "retro" games by using the mechanics that made them good, and not by just marketing them like that.
...right?
Oh, God, who am I kidding? The second gaming "journalists" start talking about the return of retro shooters, the market will get flooded with games like Strafe.
I don't want to be an asshole, but just to give an example of what I mean.... https://youtu.be/8ZdXs8U3cxI
BUT HEY. We can use the momentum to actually come out with some good titles, and show people that heart and effort is what made old shooters good, and not just nostalgia.
...right?
Oh, God, who am I kidding? The second gaming "journalists" start talking about the return of retro shooters, the market will get flooded with games like Strafe.
I don't want to be an asshole, but just to give an example of what I mean.... https://youtu.be/8ZdXs8U3cxI
BUT HEY. We can use the momentum to actually come out with some good titles, and show people that heart and effort is what made old shooters good, and not just nostalgia.
- Caligari87
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Ugh. For some reason that gameplay was painful to watch. Like, literally my eyes hurt trying to watch it, and I play tons of shooters so I'm pretty sure it's not me. Also looks like they're cloning Doom 2016 in the most obvious ways, and it just comes off as a bunch of copycat cringe. Even the music sounds like they listened to the Doom 2016 soundtrack on repeat and then made something as close as they possibly could without just copying it.The visuals are way too busy too.Zan wrote:Oh, God, who am I kidding? The second gaming "journalists" start talking about the return of retro shooters, the market will get flooded with games like Strafe. I don't want to be an asshole, but just to give an example of what I mean.... https://youtu.be/8ZdXs8U3cxI
Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
The problem with Pac Man is that the player doesn't have any real advantage over the enemies. They move at about the same speed, with the same movement constraints. If a ghost touches Pac Man, the player loses a life -- except for the short time where the player has an active power pellet. With a power pellet, Pac Man can disable a ghost by touching it, but it's only temporary, as the ghost comes back after a few seconds.Graf Zahl wrote:Wrong. You cannot make AI too good or the monsters will always outsmart the player.
This example has nothing to do with shooters but some 25 years ago I was working on a game that as a gimmick had some arcade games. One of it was a Pac Man clone and its programmer was really proud about the monster AI which always made them follow the player. The result: A thoroughly un-fun game because it always ended with the player being cornered. The end result was that I just excised the entire AI system and replaced it with random turns at each corner. After that it actually did become fun to play. Granted, there may have been a better solution but the lesson was clear: AI always needs some careful balancing to work. If you go too far it will kill the game.
The ghosts having non-optimal behavior is what makes the game playable because it balances out the advantages that they have over the player otherwise -- number, combat superiority most of the time, infinite lives. If you give them optimal AI behavior, then you need to give the player some other advantage -- or remove another of the ghosts' advantages. Otherwise, it's like playing tic-tac-toe where the enemy is allowed to play twice each turn -- you can mathematically prove that winning is impossible.
In a game like Doom, the player has a lot of advantages -- high mobility, high damage output, ability to reach places monsters are blocked from reaching, ability to replenish health and armor. These advantages would remain over the monsters even if the monsters were smarter. So it would still be viable, depending on level design.
- Graf Zahl
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Sure. But even for an FPS you can make enemies too smart. At some point the game just stops being fun.
Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
Indeed, my Ai teacher once told he was requested by a small game company to improve the ai of the monsters, and so he applied machine learning to improve the monsters ai and left the monster to be able to learn with their mistakes ingame...Graf Zahl wrote:Sure. But even for an FPS you can make enemies too smart. At some point the game just stops being fun.
Once a close beta was released, people were telling the game sucks, mostly because the monsters were getting so smart about how to beat the players that the game was actually impossible to progress.
Sooo, they had to roll back and use the old dumb macro ai, else no one would play it and would get lots of negative reviews
- Matt
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
And then there are totally basic, common-sense things like
"If the enemy is there in front of you and you can see them, and there's no immediate threat to run away from other than the enemy itself, you should shoot"
which makes Map15 almost totally unplayable in HD as you get shredded by the two shotgun guys you spawn in the view of.
I've gone back to the old random A_Chase logic.
"If the enemy is there in front of you and you can see them, and there's no immediate threat to run away from other than the enemy itself, you should shoot"
which makes Map15 almost totally unplayable in HD as you get shredded by the two shotgun guys you spawn in the view of.
I've gone back to the old random A_Chase logic.
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Re: Are retro shooters a growing market or merely a fad?
You aren't alone here. I don't like Quake much either, in spite of having made many attempst at liking it. The biggest problem I have with the game is that on one hand, the new 3D graphics meant it was too realistic for the abstracted level design to look any good, and yet on the other hand it wasn't good looking enough to actually be visually pleasing. This and the fact that the animations feel/look stiff and lifeless means that the gunplay feels unsatisfying. The texture design for the tech base levels is also utterly horrible and make my eyes bleed.Graf Zahl wrote: I know I might be in the minority but I always found Quake to be a really pathetic game. It surely had a revolutionary engine but what was made of it didn't do anything for me. It didn't use 3D to create realistic places, instead it used it to create gimmick structures to show off the engine's capabilities and looking back from now, I just prefer any Build engine game that ever got made over it. They universally have better level design and it's very obvious that the effort didn't go into making the tech good, but the game.
90% of gamers who complain about stuff like this just suck. As I pointed out earlier, most gamers are casuals who don't care about getting better. They just want to feel good about themselves for finishing the game. The only time I consider good AI in a fps to be unfun if it's things like the AI having unrealistic ability to always hit the player the moment he pops out of cover. But things like being able to use tactics and behave smart will never make any fps bad.Graf Zahl wrote:Sure. But even for an FPS you can make enemies too smart. At some point the game just stops being fun.
I thought Dusk was at least moderately successful. So it hasn't sold that many copies after all?Kinsie wrote: looking at SteamSpy, Dusk has sold roughly half the units of, to use a completely loaded example, Fire Pro World, a niche sprite-based Japanese pro-wrestling simulation on a platform that Japanese users generally ignore.
EDIT: According to gamespy it sold about 20 thousand copies so far. No doubt this will get higher once the third episode is out, but I must say this is a very underwhelming number considering how much free publicity this game has gotten. It's been covered by many popular youtubers as well as on zero punctuation on the escapist. Odds are that hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people have seen this game or at least heard of it. And it it's only sold 20 thousand copies? If a retro shooter only sells this much in spite of all this publicity then other ones that don't get as much free press have zero chance whatsoever. In fact now that I am aware of Dusk's poor sales I'm not sure if I even agree with my original OP anymore, since clearly there is virtually no market for this sort of game at all.