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Comment by ferguess_k | Hacker News Reader

I recall Unreal has an option to switch to use the 3dfx card, and if IIRC, it has some additional features like more colourful lights and such.

Unreal was such a beast back in the day that it completes beats Quake 2 and other contemporary FPS even on software rendering. TBH it still looks beautiful even by today's standards, if you ignore the low polygon counts.

I'm not a person who cares too much about graphics, even for FPS (I don't really enjoy most of the modern FPS except Wolfenstein, which has interesting gameplay), and I argue that too much graphics eye candies simply decrease the overall quality of the game, but 3dfx definitely was a huge bang back in the day.

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the performance boost also made a significant difference in how well the game played: i remembered when the voodoo 1 came out i had a 100mhz pentium and running quake (in low resolution) was "fine" but ran at like 20-25fps. With a voodoo that game ran at a smooth 60fps which made it so much more fun for such a fast-paced game (while also running at a higher resolution with smooth textures and improved lighting effects). It made a huge difference on multiple axes.

Yup it was really a huge difference. FPS really needs 60 FPS and up. Anything less feels clunky.

Playing diablo II (R) now on a 2k 165hz display with a card that can run it that fast makes it real pretty. A lot of love went into that game.

The percentage change in resolution you ran the games at was also absolutely mind blowing too.

For the most part we went from running the game at 320x200 or 320x240 to 640x480 in that first round of acceleration. I think in terms of % change it is a bigger leap than anything we've really had since, or certainly after 1920x1080.

So you suddenly had super smooth graphics, much better looking translucency and effects, and the # of pixels quadupled or more and you could just see everything so much more clearly.

Yeah that's true. Software rendering at low resolution is not a good sight to look at.

I remember back in 1997, when Quake 2 was just out, I sit in a net bar (where you pay to use a computer) and played an hour of Quake 2 in software rendering. The game was interesting, but I felt a bit sick, half due to the resolution, half due to the almost infinite brownish colour. A girl behind me murmured, "This is not as half fun as Duke Nukem", and yeah I completely agreed with her.

I think I still agree with her somewhat. Quake 2 is a great game, but Duke3d is a fun one.

Where Quake2 really shined was in multiplayer, especially mods like q2ctf.

Quake2 was released at just the right moment to take advantage of both 3D acceleration and broadband Internet access. Playing a game of q2ctf, in 3D-accelerated 800x600 mode, with 60 ms ping was just fucking amazing.

Unreal had a small menu where you could switch between different renderer backends precisely because of things like different cards having different... Driver quality let's say.

Yeah exactly! OldUnreal guys did a lot of work for this classic game. I believe they even have access to the source code.

> I don't really enjoy most of the modern FPS except Wolfenstein, which has interesting gameplay

Which Wolfenstein?

Both the 2009 and the more recent reboot trilogy (old blood, the new order and II).

Ah, yes, I should catch up on those one day. I thought you might be referring to Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. :)

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