I played around with upscaling PS1 games in retroarch last night and I was pleasantly surprised. There are some YouTube videos that talk through the process m.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDWYeuQ2pI
It can breathe new life into some dated looking games. Highly recommend giving it a try
IMO, that’s the wrong direction. The right direction is to apply some good CRT shaders. Those games were designed for CRT and low resolutions and they can never look great when rendered at higher res. Upscaling works much better for PS2 generation and up.
I didn’t think to experiment with the shaders much, so I’ll give that a shot. I briefly tried the cell shading shader, but that looked way too unnatural for me – but it is neat.
(As an aside, I have my original PlayStation 1 and I really want to snag a real CRT at some point for some true nostalgia.)
I have two real CRTs (a 4" JVC radio TV and a 27" Sylvania), and while none of the existing shaders perfectly capture it, a guy who calls himself “Retro Crisis” on YouTube and Github has some modified CRT shaders that come really, really close.
My only gripe is that he has different shaders per system, rather than a single “this is your CRT so all games will correctly render through this one” shader.
I like how PS1 did 3D differently than pretty much any other system ever, which is why if you look long enough at a model, you will see it warp and contort weirdly as vertexes jump between points because it didn’t have floating point numbers or something like that (can’t really remember the technical details).
It’s super unique and faking this effect in modern engines is pretty neat. It’s also weird playing on some PS1 emulators that don’t have this effect, because it’s better than original hardware.
I honestly think the PlayStation has the better graphics, especially considering it’s older and weaker than the N64. At glorious 240p, I think anti-aliasing is honestly a downside–the CRT mostly does that work already. While the N64 might have better polygons, the PlayStation, in my opinion, renders a better image, with better textures. That’s not even to mention game sizes being several times larger on PlayStation, thanks to CDs.
There is no game on the N64 that looks as good as Final Fantasy IX. Not a single one. IX might not be fully 3D, but the game does respect the hardware it’s on. After all, nobody ever said the SNES had bad graphics for lacking proper 3D. The 2D style could just go so much further on PlayStation. Combine that with FMVs, and I’d struggle to find a game that looks as consistently good as some of the PlayStation’s biggest hits.
The N64 still pushes great graphics, though. I enjoyed my time in Zelda. The games look and play quite well. The impressively 60FPS F-ZERO X has physics that still work great. I still can’t help but feel like it’s just a worse version of modern graphics, while the PlayStation feels like its own aesthetic, and own world. I grew up with modern consoles, and I still enjoy the charm of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs compared to what’s being put out now.
I think the Saturn has pretty good graphics. Being just a little earlier than the PlayStation, it holds up quite well.
It’s clear in Wipeout gameplay that the PlayStation pulls ahead significantly. Much smoother FMVs, better framerates, better textures, cleaner image. Perhaps slightly slower load times, but with that many wins, it’s hard to complain. On top of that, the PlayStation simply sold far better, and saw higher budget titles which fully took advantage of the hardware.
I’m playing Tomb Raider I, II, and III remastered, and you can toggle the graphics between original and remastered, the pixelation in the original is outrageous.
This game is timeless. It was released in a time when the arena FPS was on its way out and server browsers were still the norm for PC online multiplayer, yet it has hardly aged.
I recently tried playing TF2 after a long break (maybe 5 years) and while there is still decent number of user run servers, it’s not always easy to find a relatively full one for many maps.
I haven’t been active in TF2 in years, but I have 2.9k hours, all without idling for items. That game was basically another life for me, around 2010-2016. In that timespan I picked up PC gaming, got into shooters, got into TF2, joined a community, started collecting strange weapons, got my first unusual and traded it, and captained a Highlander team as Pyro.
The game was and still is amazing; I only ever stopped because it was becoming detrimental to my life and schooling. Now, when I try to play, I mourn the loss of my old community servers, get frustrated with my worse skills, and despise the number of bots I run into on Valve servers.
The bots were what initially caused me to stop playing years ago. As much as i’d like to get back into it now though, i let the game dominate my life whenever i play regularly. Not to the point where it was a problem, but i can’t afford to sink that much time into it with my current lifestyle.
it’s been an annual tradition of mine to play this game on Christmas Eve
Oh wow! I’m not the only one! It’s nice that the bot issue seems to be severely reduced, this year is was the first one where I didn’t have to switch servers multiple times to avoid masses of spinning snipers
The time between your purchase and date the game was discounted isn’t listed but most refunds need to be claimed within 2 months of purchase (Valve’s refund policy says within 2 weeks but that they’ll review requests outside that time period). So maybe if you buy a game and next month it’s on sale you could get the sale price?
The “review outside the 2 week period” is typically for when games are updated to no longer be playable. For example, when Helldivers 2 had the PSN account requirement, players who bought the game more than 2 weeks prior could get refunds.
Yup, in steam support you can say you have a problem with a game and one of the options is “it is now available for cheaper” and they’ll give you the difference if you bought it just before a sale.
This happened to me with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor the year it released. I got tired of waiting for it to go on sale, so I finally bought it at full $60 price. The very next day, it was on sale for $5.99. D’oh!
Yeah it’s the main reason I plan to play Half Life 1. I feel like I’ll be able to appreciate Black Mesa more if I go in with the background of Half Life 1 to see all the graphical improvements and work they put in to recreate levels.
lemmy.world
Najstarsze