Let it be known...

I find Darkplaces and HD texture packs disgusting. Now THAT is inconsistency! 

Seriously, takes 2 secs to type in a name and chrome remembers it for next time. 

...it's okay. It's still a bit annoying not knowing posting consistency etc, but, whatever, a thread contribution is a thread contribution.

Snide comments via anons, trolling or otherwise, are deleted. That IS something where posting consistency / history is required for context. 

Also, Kinn, the weapon "models" are sprites

and then you made them look indistinguishable from normal/diffuse/specular-mapped models from the mid-late 2000s...

https://youtu.be/b6d9PO3x30g 

Seriously though, you can tell when playing the game. Videos fuzzy the effect.

For more hot normal-on-sprite action, I recommend BRIGADOR.

I can't defend AMID EVIL's visuals anymore. I've already admitted that it's UGLY IN THE BEST WAY. I mean, I DO have eyes guys. :p It's gaudy and garish and not for everyone.

---

ION Maiden is really coming along. A testing branch already has mouse movement feeling smooth and modern. Performance is better and the vsync issues are being investigated.

For anyone experiencing stutters at 144 fps, cap your frames at 120. The game loop updates at 30hz and interpolates at 120hz. If you don't have Gsync, you'll need to change your monitor's refresh rate to 120.

The update should be out soon. 

Amid Evil looks more interesting than Dusk for me. And Ion Maiden is fucking great.

Amid Evil's oversaturated effects seems to be a homage to the style of some old games, specially N64/Saturn/PS1 ones. Even if the game lacks visual harmony, at least it looks like the devs are putting effort into the art.

Being an independent developer sucks, specially if the team is just a couple of guys. Either the gameplay, the level design, the sound fx, the voice acting, the music, the models, the sprites, the textures, the animations, the visual effects, or something else will suck. Most likely, several of these aspects at once. But if the developer is openly honest about his limitations, some flaws can be forgiven.

What bothers me the most in many pseudo retro games are misleading advertisement, developers who doesn't tolerate criticism, and developers who uses "stylistic choices" as an excuse to lazy out on some aspects of the game. A lazy style is still lazy, despite being a style. 

Deliberately gaudy and garish, as much as I want to keep slagging it off, at this point I can just say "fair enough". If it's a deliberate choice then although I think the effect is ass (and not the sort of ass that appeals to me), then I can see what they are getting at. I guess I find it a bit of a pity personally because the level design and gameplay functionality does actually have some appeal, unlike many other of these games, and with different GFX style could be a winner. Oh well. 

If I see another post by FoldingChable, then I'll remember "oh that was the dude that was talking some sense about AE even if I disagreed". That context is useful. 

Nah dude its great having lengthy discussions of opinions with multiple anons and having to use random ass context clues to determine which anon is which so as not to confuse "anon thats a total fucking bellend" with "anon thats actually kind of reasonable" 

ion maiden seems great. played the demo and it looks better than I expected. I hope they will be able to finish the game

Also be aware that the game is going to run like shit on older computers 

It's curious to see Ion Maiden being labeled as a "spiritual sequel to Duke Nukem 3D". The art style is substantially different, in that while DN3D used prerendered CGI assets (All characters, cutscenes, title & intermission screens, etc), IM uses hand-drawn art.

IM's art managed to be of such high quality, that people don't notice how fundamentally different from the DN3D style it is. Ion Maiden is not simply rehashing old approaches. 

So now that the Early Access version is out, I can talk a bit about Amid Evil. I played a test branch of the Early Access version a week or so ago. I've always been critical of the visual style of the game (didn't really like the color usage that much) and thought the game looked garish and not that great. I got a key because of a semi-rant on Twitter about it, and promptly booted the game to see for myself.
Honestly, the videos really don't do the game justice because a whole lot of detail is lost to video compression. The game looks pretty good in motion, especially the third episode that reminded me of the first Tomb Raider a lot. My only problem with color is found in early Episode 1, the rest of the game looks good for the most part, with some great style at times (E1M2 comes to mind, this map is a real beast and one I wish I had made cause it's brilliant at times). The weapon viewmodels are apparently lightmapped sprites, which is pretty amazing considering how good they look.

The level design ranges from good to very good. There was not a single bad level in the version I played. E1M1 is very tame/simple but things get serious as soon as E1M2, which is very open and has vertical layers serpenting around. The game uses very little enclosed, Painkiller-like arenas which is very welcome. The third Episode has a lot of exploration gameplay too which I liked a lot (especially in E3M1). The Episodes only have three main levels and one boss each, but there are 7 Episodes planned total, each with its own style.

The game itself is a lot of fun. All the weapons are great to use and pack a punch. Even the base axe feels very powerful. My favorite weapons are the trident thing and the Mace of Torment which I find extremely fun. The weapons have an alternative, even more powerful attack once you gain enough souls from fallen enemies. It acts exactly as the Tome of Power from Heretic/Hexen, but I find it more interesting in Amid Evil since you actually have to fight to trigger it a vast majority of the time (and you can chain it with greater soul pickups). In the version I played the enemies didn't bleed much and had almost no pain frames; I wonder if that was changed because it was a bit distracting and it was hard to tell whether I was actually hurting them at times.

Overall, Amid Evil is a cool game. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel but it's a solid Heretic-like in some aspects. It runs well, has cool level design, great weaponry and feels good to play. 

Yeah, YouTube compression can completely ruin some visual styles, and is way too influential on the public impression. 

j/k etc etc etc. Good post. 

It looks like Hellscreen won't be funded. Less than 3 days left, and not even 20% funding achieved.

Despite the campaign mentioning classic FPS level design, the lack of any actual classic FPS level design in the videos gives an impression that despite wanting to do it, the developer doesn't know how to do it.

It's a shame, as the visual style and the artwork are fantastic, and the music is great. 

http://steamcommunity.com/id/PresidentSkele/recommended/562860/ 

Shitty review. If people are going to criticize devs for not following earlier designs, they should also bash the devs of the original Doom for trashing Tom Hall's design of it. 

Let's bash quake because it doesn't have an axe-ogre who pisses on dead bodies =D

https://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=100 

...that is one of the few genuine flaws with Quake.