New animations, voices re-recorded, etc.

  • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Ha. Years counted for more back then. Remember, this was back in the day when graphics technology made a qualitative leap every few years. Nowadays things have stabilized and the focus is on boosting framerate and pixel count, but back then each generation was a monumental leap forward in fundamental rendering tech.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Absolutely, I know I programmed 8 bit graphics in assembly on the C64, and played with the custom chips of the Amiga in assembly too. fun times 😋
      I was pissed that you couldn’t write off computers faster than 3 years, because in 3 years a computer was completely obsolete IMO, as in basically useless. Up until at least around when the GeForce 256 came out in 1999. After that 3 years was still old, but not completely useless.

      Nowadays things have stabilized

      I agree, nowadays it doesn’t matter much (IMO) to have a GPU that is a couple of years old. Admittedly I only use QHD/1440p. To render the same in 4K requires a 2.4 times more powerful GPU.

      But oh boy when Voodoo, Voodoo2 came out, and then TNT, TNT2 and GeForce. Those were a lot of major upgrades in just 3 years. (1996-1999)

      • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        I’m still on dual 1080p monitors and a machine that’s more than a decade old and was mid-tier at best when brand new. I’ve only upgraded the GPU and doubled the RAM, yet it still runs basically everything at an acceptable framerate. Hearing that would boggle the mind of my younger self, who struggled for days to get Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware one, not AOL - you know you’re old when you feel the need to specify) to run at more than four seconds per frame in outdoor areas on a fairly new machine.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I only played it years later on Linux. Smooth as butter. 😎
          I was not aware there was an SSI game with the same name, I suppose that’s what you meant by AOL?

            • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              I never played an SSI game, the first RPG game I played was Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen. Which I found to be an absolutely amazing game.
              I live in Europe (Denmark) I don’t think AOL was ever a thing here, we did have Compuserve for a few years until Internet made it irrelevant.