Things aren’t looking good for me. I’m a few levels into Selaco, a new FPS out now on Steam, and I’m stuck behind a bar as a group of sci-fi soldiers unload their rifles and shotguns into my hiding spot. I’m also low on health. So yeah, a bad spot to be in. I take a deep breath and try something.
As smoothly as I can I slide out from behind the bar, toss an ice grenade toward the enemies, and then dash behind a wall. A moment later a boom happens and my foes are frozen. I spot a nearby propane tank, pick it up, and chuck it at them. A second later I shoot it and watch them blow up. On my screen, a notification lets me know I’ve killed enough of these bastards to unlock a new milestone and earned some new crafting materials to make my assault rifle even better. Sweet!
I then remember that the game I’m playing—that lets me do all this and more was built using a modified version of the ancient Doom engine and giggle. This kind of thing happens a lot in Selaco, a game that rarely feels like it’s built on old bones and dated tech, but instead feels like a polished and modern shooter with some slick retro visuals. What’s most surprising about Selaco isn’t that it’s developed in GZDoom, but that it might be one of the best shooters I’ve played in years.
If anyone wants a complete GZDoom game (or 2 or 3 depending on how your counting) right now to try, Hedon is really great. Also, made by a solo dev(music and VA work was outsourced), so absolute flex on AAA game companies.
Makes sense. I’ve always been disappointed that instead of using better processing power to make bigger, more complex games, we used it to make the same games with more complex animations and details. I don’t want a game that only differs from its predecessors through use of graphical upgrades like individual blades of grass swaying in the wind, or the character starting to sweat in relation to their exertion; I want games with PS1-PS2 graphics and animation quality, but with complex gameplay that the consoles of that era could only dream of being able to handle.
There’s something special about a game like red dead 2 or ghost of tsushima that makes you stop and just enjoy the scenery. Games with good graphics have their place, it’s just that they need to also have all the other elements to be any good.
thing is, games aren’t pretty because they model every cell in every lifeform and have 5 gigabyte textures for each individual leaf, they’re pretty because they have good graphical design.
Just lighting alone is like 50% of making a scene look nice, you can literally just slap together a low-poly flat-colour scene in blender and set up nice lighting and people will call you talented.
A prime example of this is valheim: ps2-style models and textures and yet the lighting and general graphical design makes it look lovely and atmospheric, especially combined with the music.
Hell, minecraft’s vanilla textures look downright gorgeous with lighting mods.
it annoys me to no end that people think minecraft looks terrible and attribute that to the textures, it’s literally just pixel art! Other games are praised for having pixel art! aurgh!
Minecraft might be considered ugly, but in that case it’s probably moreso because its lighting is… rudimentary… or that person specifically just doesn’t like the artstyle.
Also something that almost no one ever talks about is render distance! Games with a gargantuan render distance look SOOOOOO much more appealing and are easier to navigate, but people just don’t think about it!
I recently played Satisfactory and holy shit that render distance, when i called down the space elevator it’s the only time i can recall a game ever making me just sit there in awe, never before have i felt such a visceral sense of scale from something on a display!
Hyper Light Drifter is absolutely stunning and its a 2D pixel art game with amazing lighting.
Doom wads and hacks in recent years have been doing some absolutely insane things, and it’s only been getting better as more and more people are realising the things they can do with it. I’m not surprised in the slightest.
Total Chaos has got to be the most mind-blowing to me, it’s a total conversion mod built of GZDoom. https://youtu.be/L7IITZDBvqE
I can’t believe I have never heard of Total Chaos. It looks awesome!
I wonder what other good other good GZDoom based games I am missing out on. :)
Here’s another one, Solace Dreams https://youtu.be/IcrYfmkPl-E also really impressive, though the game didn’t seem all that balanced when this video was posted, not sure if it’s been improved since or if the creators moved on to another project.
Thanks! Looks interesting. I will be sure to check it out.
Triple AAA games are usually very polished. But polish doesn’t make games fun. Polish is important with accessibility, and it’s easy to see why accessibility is important for a big studio casting a wide net.
But fun? That comes from creativity and innovation. Big studios are averse to risk taking, and struggle to attract creative individuals, because the corporate culture seeks to stamp out individuality in the name of process and procedure.
So yeah, more evidence of this. My money is going to Indy devs who prioritize fun over polish. (But polish is good to have too).
Triple AAA
I absolutely love AAAAAAAAA games
Oh you mean the Serious Sam series? Tons of fun!
Ah, the memories… 2001, lan party at a friends house just after we’d turned 18. Way too little sleep, and playing Serious Sam on coop. Good times.
Love me Serious Sam. Really wish Croteam wouldn’t try to be a AAA studio. SS4 only real issue was it was an optimized mess. Great game mechanics, great levels, great music, great writing and VA work, but uglier and more stuttery then their previous games. They switched to using Unreal Engine for Talos 2, so I’m guessing they prioritized on just making the game rather then trying to make their own game engine, which had previously been a point of pride for them. Really looking for to their future games. Expecting a Talos 2 expansion before a new Sam game, but looking forward regardless.
Yeah, exactly the same thing at play in the movie industry as well.
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have played for an hour, works good was greeted with a screen to select between rwo graphics presets for the deck.
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The game has settings for tweaking aim assist and such. It is exceptionally well done. As OP said they ask you if you’re playing on a Deck when you boot up, and it even has a Deck specific options menu for tweaking aim assist and what not. I played the first level on my Deck last night on regular difficulty and had a blast. Then I switched over to my PC and upped the difficulty and also had a helluva time there. It’s a phenomenal shooter.
The Demo was great, Im going to play this today
Let us know what you think of it! It certainly looks like it could be entertaining.
I’m not the same person, but I’ve played a few levels now. I think it’s really good, especially for being early access. Reminds me of original Half Life, so if you like that kind of game it’s a strong recommend!
Most. But there’s a small problem: Us console peasants can’t play it yet. So… Yeah.
It’s on Windows if you’re one of those console peasants
Switch/PS can play the Linux version if you have that installed on them
What exactly is your pc specs? The game has really low system requirements. It’s high compared to OG Doom, but low compared to what AAA means today.
edit: there’s a free demo, so you can just download that to try it out.
My PC specs are 0. You might’ve missed the part where I said “console peasant.”
I guess I also missed the part about being a phone peasant. Not having a gaming PC and not having ANY PC are different. Personally, I’d rather have a bargain bin PC to play indie titles then a console.
@Duamerthrax I’d love to get me one of those raspberry pie mini consoles one of these times.
The Odroid Go line is nice. Not raspberry pi, but a different ARM SoC.
Should’ve got a PC, your loss.
thanks for chiming in!
Been on my wishlist since 2001! I can’t wait to have time to play.
Whattt 2001??
