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Comment by Minor49er | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't played it yet, you would probably love Prodeus. It's basically a modernization of the Doom/Quake formula, but with satisfying pseudo-retro graphics and really thoughtful level design. It's also made by two people (I think three technically, but the site lists two) who have worked on AAA titles like Doom 2016, the new Wolfenstein, and Bioshock: Infinite

Prodeus also has a shotgun that can snipe enemies at far distances with a long range incendiary mode

https://www.prodeusgame.com/

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I kinda wish the "retro graphics" could be turned off at least in 3D games.

I don't really get the appeal to start with. DOOM wasn't retro, it had amazing graphics and required good hardware to run acceptably. Monkey Island wasn't "pixel art", it was state of the art on the hardware of the time.

Many games of the era had high resolution modes, and got them as soon as it was remotely practical. Duke Nukem 3D could be played at 800x600.

In the case of Prodeus, the devs aimed to solve the problem of sprites, but in a true 3D space. With a lot of Doom ports, when mouselook was enabled, it showed just how flat everything actually was since looking up and down in true 3D would make them look like cardboard. But with Prodeus, everything is 3D but models render as if they were sprites at fixed angles. I really like this aesthetic and haven't seen any other games do something quite like it. I stopped consciously noticing it partway through the campaign

I love fixed angle sprites in 3d environments like the original Total War games. https://spicyburn.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/6/7/126751672/35724...

One of my favorite aesthetics next to isometric RTS with smooth animations like the old Stronghold games.

That looks like the same engine Warhammer: Dark Omen used. I played that quite a lot.

But I guess I never developed the nostalgia for the technical limitations of the time. Even back in those days I clearly saw them as a limitation to be tolerated. The sprites meant that I couldn't correctly perceive the rotation of the units, since there were so few angles available. This meant sometimes I couldn't tell if the game was buggy and my units were looking the wrong way, or the sprite system just wasn't able to display their true state. The sprites were a means to the end of rendering units with more detail than 3D tech of the time allowed, not something that in itself was appealing.

I think what would be more interesting is not to imitate the exact state of technology in the 90s, but try leaning into the same approach with modern tech. Render the hell out of those sprites at ultra high res and levels of detail, and try to make a sprite game that uses sprites because even a GTX 4090 couldn't render that in real time.

Though at this point in time it might already be too late for this to make sense, since the amount of detail a modern video card can produce is insane.

interesting! It'd be in cool to see someone use sprites to render a total war like game with historical scale (100k units) though at that point I think the real bottleneck is the cpu and pathfinding though.

Prodeus also seems to have an option to use those 3D models rather than the derived/simulated sprites. Saw it in an article a while back and thought it sounded cool... might have even stumbled on the article here at hckrnews?

A/B video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb-hPYOIwMw (warning, digital blood)

Looks like it is on XBox/PC Gamepass for those who have an active subscription, but it is cycling out at the end of the month.

After having played the game for so long, the model version looks really uncanny and doughy to me. I'll have to give it a shot just to see how the other enemies and objects look in the game

There's also Ion Fury, which is based on the Build engine, but it pushes that engine beyond what was feasible in the 90s.

https://ionfury.com

Does it have anything in the way of multiplayer?

Never loved doom, but quake 1/2 consumed a lot of hours in multiplayer.

Always keen to see modern twists on the original, fast paced, movement focused, fps style.

I like the prodeus aesthetic, but I’m not sure it’s that style. But I’ll buy and see. Thanks for the tip.

P.s if you visited their site and couldn’t find the game, it’s on steam. I couldn’t find any link to buy from their website.

I've yet to try it myself, but it does indeed have multiplayer. Some users have been recreating Unreal Tournament deathmatch maps for it recently

Impressive. What engine? Custom? Cause that level editor gif looks sweet…

web search suggests Unity, with the level editor being coded custom as part of the game.

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