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Comment by mikemaccana | Hacker News Reader

You know how when you play things you played as a kid, they don't feel like you remember them, because your standards have unfortunately changed?

First programming I ever really did (in terms of understanding logic and its effects on end product) was Doom PWADs when I was a kid.

15 years later, I can get:

- Doomsday engine on my Mac

- 500MB of high-res textures hand-crafted to replace all the original walls and ceiling/floors.

- MD models for every object and monster

- High resolution re-sampled sound and music

- My original WAD - me and a friend made one of the largest (and highest tech - deep water, transparent textures on doors, invisible platforms) Doom II wads ever - lost it, but the internet still has thepath.zip

And play Doom II like I remember it, not like how it was.

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I really wonder why so many people consider models like this http://risen3d.drdteam.org/caco.jpg (guessing you use those) superior to pixel art like this http://images.wikia.com/doom/images/e/ef/Cacodemon_encounter...

Is it just the "it is something different/new and thus feels fresh" or do you really consider it look better objectively?

I wonder if it's possible to get this old image of Cacodemon and make bigger nice one with that technology of depixelization which was on front page yesterday (or was it two days ago?).

That tech specifically didn't work with anti-aliased images.

In a 3d environment, sprites have systemic issues regarding viewing angles. If a bad guy runs directly at you, or at you from a 30 degree angle, he looks exactly the same. Models convey more information than sprites do about their environment.

This isn't a blanket statement about models and sprites, but given a free camera and a 3d world, I think models work better. They don't have to look better, though: I'd say that Quake looked a lot worse Duke3D, even though they were both released in '96.

Unfortunately with a lot of these fan graphical enhancement mods and addons, the content creators lack sufficient knowledge of visual/art styles and experience applying them.

This deep understanding of game art is necessary to successfully translate a particular 2d art style into 3d, or suitably reimagine it in a more 3d compatible style.

Scale the pixel art up to 1920x1200 and run the modern version at the same resolution, and you'll see why.

In terms of aesthetics, I'll freely state that I find the model to be more attractive than the pixel art. That's not to say that 3D models are always superior. I love pixel art. I think the old, 2D Sam & Max looked a lot better than the new, 3D models that Telltale Games are using. Still, the creator of the cacodemon model actually strikes me as the better artist. Also, it's not because it's new or fresh. The 3D model looks almost quaint compared to most modern productions. It does, however, strike me as more malevolent and sinister, possibly due to the shape of the mouth and the relative size of the eye.

For the record, I'm not posting this as a critique of your tastes. I just wanted you to know that some people really do find that model to be objectively better.

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