I want fidelity, crisp frames, with a cool art style, not some jank and blurry attempt at "realism". Ban TAA, ban ML upscaling, ban frame generation. Ban AAA.
(All the best games are indie games)
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Why the hate against TAA?
TAA can be fine when implemented well. Temporal information can be very useful for adding more detail over multiple frames that couldn't be obtained without doing more samples every frame.
However, when done poorly it makes things blurry as you move the camera. The information needs to be correctly adjusted for camera movements or it smears all over the screen. It's also made worse with things like rain drop effects and things like that.
TAA is useful. It's just too many games just enable it and it without knowing how to use it well and it just degrades the image.
Do you have an example of a game using TAA correctly? Because so far, all the games I've played with TAA on are blurry.
Doom Eternal has a good implementation of TAA, but you need absurd amounts of sharpening to get the smearing to disappear. In an ideal world, we'd all be using beautiful MSAA,bBut that would maybe be a bit more work than just toggling a checkbox for developers, so that will never happen. :(
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It's completely shit, it's like covering your monitor in vaseline. All games with deferred rendering should use SMAA.
I recently upgraded my computer with the best possible components, and it makes me so mad that games look worse than they did when I put my last pc together. What’s the point of bothering with graphics at all if you’re going to add a smear filter.
Indie games out here killing it with pixel art.
Because the bigger games are made as quickly and cheaply as possible.
The now so popular UE5 just enables this practice, because it allows an easy avenue to "realistic" looking games with all the fancy lighting. Quick to put together, but in the end, you get a poor performing blurry mess. And a happy nvidia, because you slapped their dlss bullshit on it. So thats the new trend.
I can't handle getting addicted to Nethack again at this point in time
It’s still great. Like old school Civilization, or even older Zork
I did a lot of stuff in the first Zork (kill the troll, solve the maze, open the gates of hell, etc), but I never quite figured out how I was supposed to win.
They had to start putting graphics in their games before I could beat them.
Hitchhikers Guide was even worse.
Fuck the babble fish puzzle.
Plus getting a third of the way into the game and if you didn't take the junk mail at the beginning you have to restart.
Also - can’t you pick up tea at some point, when you need to have the item “no tea” to complete the game?
I played the Apple II version. Old games were cruel. I’d get frustrated and rotate between Rivers of Light and The Return of Hercules.
You release the bird from the cage to kill the troll, or maybe I'm thinking Adventure
The troll you can kill with the sword that glows in its presence, if I'm remembering my Zork correctly. I think it regenerates though, so maybe you have to cut the head off, and then it vanishes in a puff of vile smoke, or something like that.
The smirking sneak thief can be dispatched the same way, although I think you can also use the axe you get after killing the troll. I think it wasn't a sure thing though, like you can give the "stab thief with sword" command a few times and sometimes you win and other times you die.
Although you should give the egg to the thief (he can open it and you can't) and then kill him and retrieve it from his dead body later, otherwise you can't win the game. Obviously.
try out Moonring. you might like it and its free
So you thought suggesting another addictive RPG was the correct response here??
Seriously though, seems fun--I tried to go through one dungeon and died very quickly. Looks like it has a lot of depth though, so I'll probably wait until I have a break to give it a real go. Looks a bit more accessible than Caves of Qud, so I might actually have a chance of getting somewhere.
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It’s creative bankruptcy. Things don’t need to be realistic, it’s called style.
Stuff like Zeno Clash and Dishonored hold up aesthetically because they aren’t going for realism. And I’d take Morrowind’s arthropod bodies back if I could have the moral complexity and ya know, themes back.
This is also why I prefer the San Andreas era GTA, the graphics are cartoony and the gameplay is fun as hell, the hyper realism style they moved to with GTA 5 is so boring and lifeless
It sounds silly, but San Andreas is really underrated. Like I know it’s considered one of the best games of all time, but the writing, the confrontation with racism and the police and the dynamics of gangs….
I mean, most of the time it’s just fun to get 5 stars and enact your own revenge for the MOVE bombing. But that main storyline is so slept on.
Just don't understand people looking at screenshots and gameplay videos and commenting on how the shadows on some background detail look slightly better with the FSSMGXTR scaling setting turned to BBXT5 instead of HAMndX3.
It's the same mindset as people who overclock or tune their cars
I remember people discussing hardware and one of the best advice comments I've ever seen was:
"Turn off that little FPS counter and just enjoy the damn game."
People get so wrapped up in the hardware hobby they forget why they care in the first place, which would be fine if it wasn't just fuelled by hardware marketing to make everyone else feel like they're "missing out."
This is a nice thought. I love a nice looking game, but as long as it runs smooth and I can enjoy it IDGAF what setting is on max or medium, probably 9 out of 10 I wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyways.
The ray tracing is a great example for HW marketing bullshit, where you get nicer picture, but much slower framerates and requires crazy expensive hardware, but its all the buzz, everyone is obsessed with it. I mean Im not an expert but wtf is going on with the GPU prices its not normal.
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Text rendered onto a screen is also graphics.
How many layers can be peeled before it's not a video game anymore?
Fuck that’s a nice font
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That's 3 hairs on the arm you see. Give me my $90
I want a fun game that can run on my shitty PC
Lucky for your, there are lots of older games as well as plenty of indie games that focus on gameplay with very limited graphics.
Anything from 6 or so years before your PC fabrication ought to be easy to run at a fast framerate.
Terraria
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Are dcss tiles banned? I don’t want to play it ascii
You can play adventure books
Noooo
Fuuuuuck, I forgot all about those. Lone Wolf, Wizards Warriors & You, Fighting Fantasy... They were like a bridge between CYOA and D&D.
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There was an excellent text based RPG called Roadwarden that came out the other year. It's just text and illustrations so thought I'd use this post to mention it.
If small amounts of animation are allowed then WORLD OF HORROR was decent too.
Roadwarden is excellent.
Abandon widespread* texture use, return to polygons+vertex colors+in-engine cutscenes (and similar data-saving techniques like soundfonts).
my examples (2D: created with Godot, 3D: created with Blender)
spoiler Animated eye
This was using a feature that likely isn't viable (for common use) due to performance.
:::
And for something not-by-me, see Spyro's vertex color skyboxes.
* general normal maps are ok, but I didn't have much luck beyond using generated noise for metal. I even tried some stuff with watercolor, maybe with better shaders it could work but untextured is easier.
Or another example, any material you can just apply without alteration (for instance, make something look like wood) is alright too. Maybe UV mapping is not too bad, but extra per-model work is not ideal.
I love Spyro to bits but that game/camera style makes me motion sick something fierce. Can we get a compromise?
Look at how some of my examples are 2D, motion style is not really core to my point. Many variants of fixed-camera, top-down, sidescroller, even static/semi-static art are possible.
I mean I guess if you make a cool skybox like that you'll want players to be able to look at it somewhat freely. Is it specific to flying/camera speed or any 3rd-person game? 1st-person? Can settings help, or is this something that would not work with faster-paced games?
I do see that less motion seems to help, one person said higher FOV+big display with distance (among other non-digital things)... though I don't think I've ever had motion sickness from a game (though I think I do have some issue related to inner ear) so I can't be sure.
I know personally if I'm able to make anything, it'll probably be on the smoother/simpler side. For example, I made a simple character controller and adding view bob never entered my mind. Probably no filters either.
Vintage Story has the graphics of that other voxel graphics based block game. The gameplay is so good that I bought and play VS, and Terraria, but I haven't ever played more than 30 minutes of the other block game.
Graphics barely matter. Gameplay is king.
Hyperbole and a half style artwork.
I miss her :(
Hope she's doing ok
I've yet to actually play it, shame on me, but A Blind Legend took an interesting approach to being graphicsless!
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