Retro game development

[hunterjwizzard]

Does anyone ever do retro-style game development where the objective is to recreate the look and feel of old games?

 

[cjs]

There's plenty of people doing this in the MSX world. I believe that there are a couple in the Discord server The MSX2 Channel (that invite link valid for 7 days only), and you might also check the msx.org forums.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Thats definitely interesting, I'll take a look. I was thinking more in the 3D era retro but still.

 

[NeXT]

For PC's and such there's been quit a few new 3D titles released, either on their own thing or on existing open-sourced engines like the Doom or Quake engines.
However there's been a few new projects since Covid that looked to build new games for consoles. The problem there has been there are no working or fully-featured open-sourced development environments for things like the Nintendo 64, so there's been a few recent titles that came out and were promptly swatted down legally that once you look through the carpet blame of Nintendo being no fun it boiled down to you can't develop on a platform much less take financial donations to develop a game while using first party developer tools you were never authorized to use. I'll use Portal64 as an example because it was a double-whammy of using Nintendo's SDK without permission and Valve never approved of the use of their copyright. Great game and it was amazing what they were able to do with the Nintendo 64 but just.......no thinking ahead about their actions.
Some of the smarter new releases remained entirely secret until after their release.

 

[cjs]

Thats definitely interesting, I'll take a look. I was thinking more in the 3D era retro but still.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Just thinking of a couple of well-known 3D games off the top of my head, I know that Sublogic FS1 Flight Simulator, released in 1979, wasn't hugely popular, but Elite, released in 1984, was massive.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Ah. My initial read of the site you pointed me to made me think it was 8 bit stuff.

I work in IT now but my actual training was in 3D modeling, and I specifically took the time to learn and develop low polygon modeling techniques(which aren't taught anymore) and I'd been thinking it'd be fun to find a project to join.

 

[krebizfan]

The Sinclair game contest gets about one 3D entrant each year. Got an idea for something you want to write; write it.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

The Sinclair game contest gets about one 3D entrant each year. Got an idea for something you want to write; write it.

Oh I can't code to save my own life. But give me some concept art and a polygon count and I'll give you a model.

 

[Plasma]

Thats definitely interesting, I'll take a look. I was thinking more in the 3D era retro but still.

3D Realms has some retro shooters: Ion Fury (Build engine), Wrath (Quake), Kingpin (Quake 2)

 

[krebizfan]

Oh I can't code to save my own life. But give me some concept art and a polygon count and I'll give you a model.

Neither can most of the entrants. By setting the bar low, it encourages the submission of barely functioning prototypes and solves the frequent retro problem of someone spending 5 years perfecting a 6 month project. There aren't similar contests for a lot of other systems which is a bit unfortunate.

If you thought 2023 was crap, think again!

csscgc24.blogspot.com

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Neither can most of the entrants.

Well then let me rephase that: I don't really want to code.

I'll tell you my tale, feel free to ignore it since its not that interesting. Between 2004 and 2007 I studied at the venerably ITT Technical Institute of Oxnard, California, where 80% of the nations onions are processed. Real impressive credentials, I know</sarcasm>. For about 2 years near the end in there, I lived, eat, and breathed 3D Studio MAX. I spent on average 60 hours a week outside of class working on 3D models. My trained specialty was environmental and asset modeling, and I specifically developed skills as a low-polygon modeler because I liked the challenge of working within constraints.

Well then I graduated and 2008 came along complete with a major crash of the video game industry. My degree wasn't worth very much to begin with, so I took a job doing general IT work. By the time the industry recovered enough that entry-level jobs started to come back, the nature of games had changed such that my skills were no longer of any value. I continued a career in the technology world and am doing fine.

But late at night I still sometimes yern for those simpler times when I sat alone in my room building entire worlds. So I had the thought late last night - there can't be a ton of people left out there who know how to make a tree out of 4 triangles, maybe I can find some retro group to hook up with.

 

[cjs]

Ah. My initial read of the site you pointed me to made me think it was 8 bit stuff.

Oh, it all is! Unlike some on this site, with their modern 16-bit computers with literally hundreds of kilobytes of memory, I am into real retrocomputing. Sure, you're allowed to have 64K, but you shouldn't need more than 8K for any of your programs, or preferably 4K :-)

I work in IT now but my actual training was in 3D modeling, and I specifically took the time to learn and develop low polygon modeling techniques(which aren't taught anymore) and I'd been thinking it'd be fun to find a project to join.

I think you could definitely be a big help to 8-bit programmers looking to do new 3D games, where being able to do cool stuff with a low polygon count is super-critical because of the lack of power of those machines.

Another Discord server you might check in on is MSXgl (again, 7-day expiry on that link). The guy running that is the author of the MSXgl game library, which is a surprisingly sophisticated framework for developing games for MSX computers (4 MHz Z80 CPU, 16-64K RAM, TMS 9918 or similar VDU with 16 or 128K RAM, etc.). Really, it's almost the Unity of the 8-bit world. (I say this knowing nothing about Unity. :-))

There are a fair number of developers there working on stuff, and more than a dozen quite decent games completed using the framework. Nobody there is doing true 3D stuff yet, as far as I know, but I suspect that part of the reason for that may be the lack of the kind of expertise you could provide.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I'll definitely have to look into that one too. I posted on the first one, we shall see.

We used to have a lot of fun in class doing 'speed modeling' competitions, where the teacher would give us a subject and a polygon count, then we'd have an hour to work. Whoever built the most elaborate product using the fewest triangles won. I got so good at finding triangles to trim, I could create entire scenes with the same budget as my classmates would take for one or two assets. Of course that doesn't mean my scenes looked very good by the standards of the time, but hey. For 8 bit 3D games I bet even my lackluster texture work would look fine!

 

[cjs]

Of course that doesn't mean my scenes looked very good by the standards of the time, but hey. For 8 bit 3D games I bet even my lackluster texture work would look fine!

What are these "textures" you speak of? Is that the thing where some monochrome monitors have that slightly textured surface that reduces glare? :-)


(Source.)

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I meant by the standards of the mid-2000s.

Also I'm pretty sure those are vector graphics