How are indie devs using low poly graphics?
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- Опубліковано 19 сер 2024
- Low Poly is being used as the art style for an increasing number of games. They're not just ripping off Playstation graphics though. Let Josh take you on a journey to explore where the aesthetic came from, why people are using it now, and how it is being evolved for modern games! Hopefully you'll find a low poly game you like to look of in the process!
Check out my other videos:
Top Free Low Poly Games - Coming Soon!
Pixel Art - • How Pixel Art is chang...
Roguelikes - • What does the future o...
Indie Game Music - • How do soundtracks aff...
Low Poly Extra reading:
The History of Low Poly - killscreendaily.com/articles/poly-generational/
Games in order of appearance:
►Shelter 2: www.mightanddel...
►Fract OSC: fractgame.com/
►Malebolgia: / malebolgia-game
►Job Lozenge: fromsmiling.com...
►Adam's Drive 32: primaerfunktion...
►Eidolon: www.icewatergam...
►Spyro 2: en.wikipedia.or...!
►Star Fox: en.wikipedia.or...
►Wipeout Pure: www.wipeoutpure...
►Temple Run: en.wikipedia.or...
Y2K: ackkstudios.wo...
►Drift Stage: www.driftstageg...
►Sky Rogue: nihilocrat.itch...
►Skipping Stones: www.skippingsto...
►That Dragon, Cancer: thatdragoncance...
►Glitchhikers: glitchhikers.com/
►Lovely Planet: www.quicktequil...
►Waiting for Horus: wiki.xxiivv.com...
Music:
Lovely City by Calum Bowen
The Custodian of Records by Emo Step Show
97 by Lightsoda
Lovely Mountains by Calum Bowen
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Do you think they're official Cybertruck model is actually super low poly?
@@thedude4039 You don't?
@@drivingthechange9503 I do... that wasn’t rhetorical, it was more of a statement...
@@thedude4039 Ok then mate, have a good day😀
I use low poly graphics because I feel when your brain is fed less information about something, your imagination goes into overdrive filling in the "gaps". So even though what you are seeing on the screen doesn't look that amazing, you experience it stronger because your brain is interpreting it in its own unique way.
I fully agree. There’s something magical about giving people shapes and forms instead of concrete implementations of objects.
thats one smart take. agree 100%
I'd say probably the biggest reason that low-poly can be relevant again is advancements in lighting engines. All those low-poly scenes you show off here look gorgeous, but with the lighting engines of the 90s, would they look as good? Probably not.
They would look better with those. Some time in the future, the modern games are going to be monochrome games in a 4x4 pixel resolution.
so fucking true
Better lighting, higher resolutions, and better textures. That's what makes this work, it's not exactly the same as the old poly graphics, of course.
you could actually make 2048 work on a 4x4 monochrome screen
Old games with good art direction look amazing when upscaled to modern resolutions.
I love low poly because it's easy to make and it is beautiful.
Shaders are what's allowing the low poly to look good. Today we have tools that can make just 1 simple polygon to do some crazy things using shaders (think of it like programming the polygon to look good, without actually changing it), allowing clever ways to polish your graphics.
I like it more than the 8-bit style that every indie game was doing forever.
2:46 is the livingroom layout from Full House.
Just wanted to point that out.
Had to pause the vid at this point to find a comment like this and thumb it up
i needed the validation that someone else saw it thank u
zegafregaomega same af
I noticed that
There is also that tendency in arts of revisiting things considered classics in different art movements.
Remember the Renaissance? That was a revisit of the old greek and roman art styles.
+[Vitz!] very good point, i think people have done some interesting art with their favourite parts of low poly.
LINKS TO ALL THE GAMES IN DESCRIPTION
Gaming Faster than Light! thank you!
Do you have any links for how to create a low poly game? This shit is seriously interesting...I love the look of low poly in high def, so sharp...so about the gameplay! Seems like the easiest way to make a 3D game and I need to learn!
Hi there. I use unity in combination with Blender. You can look for low poly blender on UA-cam. There are some nice instructions how to do stones and trees. And Unity is a free editor to use your models.
DGaming Faster than Light! It
There should be a game where every time you lose health your resolution gets worse, and when it's 1x1, you lose.
William Huang I like that idea
can i use this idea for my work?
William Huang that would be
Awesome
Sure Emre.
William Huang like in perfect dark with the tranquilizer lol
Great video with a lot of interesting information. I would love to add to the Anti-Alias part - even a low poly game can suffer from jaggies (yes, that is a real word) on what is supposed to be a smooth line. That effect becomes less relevant at higher resolutions / higher DPI - but you can definitely lose somewhat of the "definition" when anti-alias is not applied.
WeaselZone Very true, jaggies can be pretty ugly.
+WeaselZone i like jaggies, they're part of the charm for me
Even tho there are already some good low poly games out, they can get still better. Just google "low poly landscape" and you'll get gorgeus results.
These things looks just beatiful and I absolutely love the lighting.
If you know astroneer, this low poly game is pretty awesome but there are no good light effects yet (early access)
yeah, a good graphic.
what i care about is how the planets look. And the whole surface has a weird look for me because of all the weird colors.
We reached the pinnicle of graphical potential, and realized that it wasn't worth reaching. Games from the PS1 era may not have the smooth curves and sharp textures of today, but they have unforgettable aesthetics. That isn't to say that you can't accomplish an iconic look with high poly, but...Why? If you can make something look great with a few hundred polygons, why bother with thousands?
I use lowpoly because I prefer the look of it over the modern styles I always did. The fact that it also means I can fit an entire game on a free USB stick from a tech expo and play it on my wristwatch is also a bonus. I also find it to be a fascinating piece of semi-lost technology to be able to change 32 bytes of memory and wind up with a completely different character texture. Ah... why does no one use palette swapping and sane storage methods anymore?
The way Y2K uses color is genius. Thanks for sharing that one with me!
Ooo that title! IT'S SO GOOD!
It's SirCrest that thought of it!
Gaming Faster than Light! That's the joke
Ctop crop stop being so dumb and stupid. U nerd
You're the worst Crest.
SirCrest Internet references!
I love that Lovely Planet music in the background! Makes me want to play it again.
why Polygons? It looks good, is easier to create and works on every device without remodelling :D
Also with some games, (mostly indie games) low poly can work fairly well with the game
HEY!
@Mel Florance not biting off more than you can chew is not laziness. Indies have very limited resources to work with, and so they need to simplify the creation process in order to actually get stuff done. If one decides that a good way to speed up the process is to use less polygons, then I say go for it!
2:46 Hey, the Full House living room!
low poly is just easier lol
Pretty much lol
lol lol
Yes cause he mentions how low poly means more performance, but 99% of the games he show are so small you could give them the graphics of The Order 1886 and still run like butter. Compare these games sizes to Xenoblade, Hotizon, Legend Of Zelda breath Of The Wild and Geard Of War. These games should then be three times as big of not five with much much larger environments like an mmo but no they are smaller than Until Dawn so there is no excuse besides laziness
Getindor it's also overdone at this point. Moving to low poly is the only way to avoid being another indie game with nice pixel art
because I want to flood the market with stupid ass games buy my dumb games!
low poly = pixelart for 3D games :)
It's not always the graphics that hooks me. It's the gameplay.
Exactly!
Why didn't you mention the behemoth: Minecraft?
+Caio Marchi I didn't because the graphics aren't the most interesting part of minecraft. :)
+Gaming Faster than Light! Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Minecraft Voxel and not poly?
I'd say it's both because there aren't many polys floating about but its more relevant to talk about it with voxel stuff. :)
+Liam Brown It's Voxels to the most extreme level, even the air is rendered.
Morphine explain
Indie developers have evolved to Ps1 and N64 era!
Yay!
Indiemon digivolves to...
LOWPOLYMON!
You're not even wrong.
Well, I mean, retro devs *have* been stuck in the SNES era, to be fair
Ghost Of A Tale and Warshift. WAY above ps2 graphics and top ps3 up to ps4 and xbox one standard and they're indie games
Wonderful video, thank you! 3D art like this must be more popular for many reasons you mentioned. Well done! :D
I will tell you when peole start using low poly.
It was exactly when designers wokeup from nightmare and see that Minecraft - low poly game made in java, is played by milions and milions of people - ultimate proof of graphic does not need to be good, if you have good concept.
It uses voxels, not polygons.
Well, I'm pretty sure the internal renderer does use polygons.
+Gum Skyloard
Voxels are just polygons that are used as 3D pixels
Do you really think Minecraft is the first game to with low tier graphics, to sell on many different platforms? The best selling game of all time hit those same check boxes and came 25 years earlier. That would be Tetris. And also Wii Sports came 3 years earlier and also proved graphics are not an end al,l be all.
Singletrack Dan wat
this song: The Custodian of Records by Emo Step Show, thank you for mentioning that title in the description. Its pure gold.
1:33 i think I was 14 when Unreal came out. The first time I saw it, I thought that someone was tricking me with a video. I was in awe, and in my childmind I knew that full photo-realism was right around the corner because we had nothing to compare it to. Who knew it was an unreachable peak.
I love low poly!
Same here!
Same, low poly is nostalgic.
wow, i had no idea that there were so many gorgeous games like these! You need to get more exposure man, make more videos in this kind of format!
I plan to! I've got a couple of ideas for the next one. Hope you'll stick around until then :)
they also dont smooth the low polys. You can still make a low poly sphere look smoothed if you turn on the smoothing.
+uchiha clannie smooth shading. in blender
+uchiha clannie This is indeed a very big difference between low poly models used for realistic graphics and low poly models used for 'low poly' style graphics. Also, simplistic textures are very important.
because we were stuck with low poly for so long it has become an art style in and of itself
There’s something timeless about low-poly
I’ve been considering how to execute my future animations, and low poly seems to also make production faster
This will also give a timeless appearance because I won’t use actual textures, so will have a clean and fresh look using minimal shading and flat colors
3:42 I accidentally found the developer's tumblr "floopydisk" for drift stage and it is a museum of 70-80 aesthetic purity. I told him the pictures make me happy in an indescribably way and he calmly replied that was just my third eye opening. Fun guy.
Low-polygon worked so well with animation-inspired games back in the 90s.
Your channel is getting incredible day by day. Keep em coming, man!
😁
the long dark is the most appealing indie low poly games imo. i love how such pixelated neverending snow survival game still could give me a creepy vibes when it gets dark or when being approached by wolves and bears
Very cool introduction to "Low Poly" - I have not even known about this genre/style/trend! Thanks! I've been searching for "flat shaded games" and came here by surprise. I never was a real video gamer, but am interested in video games as an art form, and study this as a hobby. The trend of evermore photorealism is not my thing, also not the large amount of violence. I was looking if there is something else, already found certain trends. As I loved the look of early 3D flat shading as in the early 1990ies (i.e. Virtua Racing), I started to search into that direction. And your video about "Low Poly" now opens a new interesting path of my research. Thanks!
For me, as a 3D modeler in a team working on a low poly game, it was all simply just a style that I first started making models in when i first started modelling, and I never quit it, after seeing a very sudden uprising of low poly work about 2 years ago, I decided i wanted to make a game of my own, I then proposed this idea to my team, and we liked it, and there you go.
In other words, the reason is because of a program called Blender, and a game called Before. (IMO the first TRUE low poly game that started this new(sort of) genre.)
I wasn't aware of "Waiting for Horus", which looks amazing. Thanks for clueing me in.
0:13 "2D Polygon" is a pleonasm -- like saying "2D circle", for instance.
A polygon is a shape in two dimensions per definion, while a _polyhedron_ would be a shape in three dimensions (consisting of polygons).
_Polytope_ is the general term to describe this group of objects.
"2D Polytope" would describe polygons, and "3D Polytope" polyhedrons.
the polygon is a 2-dimensional shape, but it can exist in a 2D space, or in a 3D space (theoretically in even more dimensions).
Polygons in a 3D game are still flat, but they can combine together to produce volumes.
So while a polygon is always flat = two dimensional, it makes perfect sense to talk about a 3D polygon, as a flat polygon that exist in a 3D space.
I agree, sometimes simplicity is better in graphics. A good example is the Unreal Tournament games. UT99 had a fairly simplistic look with brightly coloured characters and relatively simple backgrounds. The later games added more complexity to both models and environment, and were worse for it, as the enemies did not stand out well, which was a problem in a fast paced game such as that.
I enjoy low poly because it allows me as a player to fill in the gaps with my own imagination. It also should make modding easier for certain games do to models being easy to create! All this PLUS being aesthetically pleasing! Sign me up! So many oppurtunities for player created content!
damn!!! I never realize how horrifying spyro graphics was, we really have come a long way.
I've an emulator on my PC. I can play the games again!
They're bootyful.
Spyro wouldn't be so bad if the playstation 3d matrices worked on floats instead of integers, It's where all the poly jittering came from. It's whole numbers and nothing in-between.
+RBRat3 and here I thought it was a GameCube only game XD.
Ben -G it looks worse on modern screen. If you go load it up on a CRT, it'll suddenly look a lot better
added this to a game dev playlist because of some of the cool methods used
Nice touch with the lovely planet music in the beginning. :)
Thanks, it's a brilliant soundtrack!
*downloads lovely planet completes a couple of levels and checks scoreboards , realises the top 20 times are hacked and then gives up
2:47 deadass the living room from full house
I have a fondness for lowpoly art, not only from being a 3d artist but from growing up with a playstation.
This was a great video and you covered a good selection of games.
One type of low poly style I've not seen is what you'd get on playstation with wobbling face normals, Its not Z-fighting but looks geometry related.
You'd see it when a flat floor or wall would wobble as if the direction of the triangle that splits the face is flipping. Have you seen a game that mimics this effect?
+GetBant I haven't and it's a really interesting effect. I had a conversation about it with a friend and we don't know what causes it but it could be used well to do something weird or funny with the models!
The living room in 2:48 reminds of the full house living room in some ways
Been saying it for about ten years now, new dev studios seem to focus more of the looks of a game while ignoring the substance of it. I'd much rather play a game that didn't look as polished as some AAA titles, so long as the story is engaging, over something EA vomits out...
Nothing has chnaged
I consider low poly, 32 bit era graphic as art style so I would like to see more games with low poly world which can create a sense of wonder something that AAA games cant deliver
i just like minimalist art tbh and seeing how popular games with mimimal art are makes me very happy
I remember thinking about making low poly stuff a while back now, as a way of making developing a 3D game more viable for one person or a handful of people. I looked back at games on systems where the low poly count was a necessity and decided that the games often still looked good because the art was good, and the detail and technology were irrelevant to this. Deciding that higher poly count games with "HD textures" and whatnot are the only way of making pretty games would be a bit like deciding the only good life art are photos or incredibly detailed paintings.
There are a lot of low poly games around now that look amazing. I'm convinced from what I can see today that (usually larger budget) games developers are forgetting the importance of good art in a game, and spending too much time and resources on trying to produce technically impressive games over beautiful games. Beauty isn't a combination of high resolution textures, complicated lighting techniques and particle effects. Beauty has nothing to do with showing off the PS4's hardware, or the GTX 980. Beauty is often a subtle thing, and, well, low poly models can often capture that subtlety. Using low poly won't immediately make a game look better, but what does it give you? I'd say an opportunity to develop a more subtle style for 3D models, but also I'd say it frees up your capacity for creativity.
I am a game developer and I develop Quiz & Battle and Fitting City!
The Next Game of Mine - Mahogany High - is going to be based on Low Poly Models as I want it to be compatible with older computers.
Kids that played old school low poly games back in the day are now adults. Most of them still love those games' aesthetics and see the old games as master pieces.
I am from that generation and for me low poly games are pure nostalgia, I simply love them.
And most importantly low poly modelling is a lot easier than modelling in super high polygon counts. High poly modelling, detailing, skinning and texture baking are very time consuming and technically very tedious tasks and for developers with little experience, money and time this asset creation process gets even more difficult.
So indies find low poly modelling and pixel art to be more achievable.
that dragon cancer destroyed me at the time and still makes me sad when i think about it :(
Why low poly?
- Works well on any computer
- Do not weight the game, leave it calm and relaxing
- Easy to create
Can't wait until 4k 60fps 3d games with high detail are retro
Insightful! Thanks!
+Jay Mehta You're welcome!
I want to thank the devs of abyssrium for utilizing low poly graphics in the game, that's how I love games, low poly graphics and pixel art
I think the long and short of it is that Low-Poly is the Black and White Photography of PC Gaming.
Consider that B&W Photography used to be the norm, color was for the pros and high-end. Eventually color became the mainstream, the norm.
Now B&W Photography is used by amateurs because it's easier to develop... literally. It has a distinct and separate artistic style. Most-importantly, B&W is a simplified version of photography which allows for the eyes to focus on the subject, the overall composition, the real meaning and message in the photo, without distractions.
Partially because of lighting and texture advancement. With good lighting and specular maps on every surface low poly games can look really really great
0:25 isn't quite true. Sure most of the time the sphere has more polygons on it but it's most of the time not them being subdivided so much that they are so tiny that you can't see them, but instead they are just smooth shaded. Every low poly mesh could look less blocky if it is smooth shaded.
Also low poly games till use anti aliasing and texture filtering just like every other game. Sure you can turn it off but it is the customer's choice. Anti aliasing was made to smooth jagged edges and even a straight line (2 vertecies) create jagged edges so the amount of polygons is irrelevant.
MizManTheFryingP but then it looks like playdough it’s a mix between not lowp and not highp and shaded smooth
oh no the legend 27 is back. Will you forever haunt me?
The only low poly games I like are Shelter, Shelter 2, and Meadow. I love the quilted patchwork affect and the natural colors which gives it great atmosphere. If you actually play the game, you can tell the developers put a lot of thought and detail into the environment, from turkey tail mushrooms to the sparkling crystal caves, to the roe deer grazing under the redwoods to the eerie feeling when wandering the mangrove swamps. I definitely recommend these games to anyone who loves nature and a relaxing game.
IMO most low poly games look lazy and odd to me, but the Shelter franchise is something special.
low poly are easier because their simplicity models makes devs work alot easier, after the game making was complete, the devs start to improve the model and became realistic model
another thing is, on the og crash bandicoot. the box showed a different model of crash, higher poly but still not high poly either
Sometimes low-poly might need more resource to handle, because with low-poly you might not be able to combine faces that much. Well, it only becomes an issue if you are having tons of models in the scene, but the point is, nowadays it's not really a way to reduce resource usage but more for creating styles.
This house looks like a typical stock house in 90's sitcoms like Full house and Family Matters. 2:35
@2:46, The house looks like the living room from Full House
thanks a lot for bringing up That Dragon Cancer. I'm sad now
Good for people working independently, without a big team, making everything realistic is a time consuming headache, especially when you want to make a lot, its ALSO for artists who know the don't need much to communicate and can clearly send an aesthetically pleasing message without many polygons
2008 : Shiny high poly graphics
Now : That One Flying Mask Game
I'm not really a fan of low poly flat color sharp edge style, that's really just for devs who want something that's easy to model, but low poly with good textures and style is 10/10
i'm sure another reason for this style gaining relevance once again is that game devs born during the era of early 3D gaming are coming of age, and using it as a means of nostalgia. similar to how the early '10s were scattered with 2D spritework
I just started making an rpg but I am independent so I use low poly if you are making something I suggest synty studios
I wasn't alive when people had to use low poly and I still like the artstyle. It makes art a lot easier too, and that's nice.
The game Final Fantasy XII had used lower polygon counts compared to Final Fantasy X and X-2 because they were better at designing textures which could look better than what polygons could give the object/character. Note: the 2:50 house plan looks like Full House's.
How?
Worth watching just for the word: "computeryness". "Computerishness" sounds a bit more mature tho. I remember the special technofever buzz I got; the exciting feeling of interfacing with the "computeryness" of a game, with its crude, obviously computer-generated sounds and blocky graphics. Now you play a concept and there's not much to suggest that it's coming from a computer.
More of this please, this is what I subscribed for :P and if you continue with more of this then you will implode in popularity, as a gamedev myself your 'big' videos are very interesting, I even had to pull out a notepad. I even frequently send people your pixel art video when I'm too busy facepalming to reply to people seeing my work and asking why I'm trying to make the game look old. When it does not. Haha. Yes, this ^ this video is good stuff, now make more.
You're right, I need to make more of this kind of video. I'm working on the next one now though! BTW I'm always open to topic suggestions so if there's something that you'd like to see get a video then tweet me or comment or whatever :)
Gaming Faster than Light! Procedural generation might fit well into your "series". While, certainly not exclusive to indies, it is something quite useful to indies, and a lot of indie games (especially rogue-likes) use it to expand the world, variety, and replay-ability. I also feel it's not well understood or appreciated by most players. But, there's really a beautiful art to it. If you decide it might work well for another topic I could probably help you by answering questions or perhaps pointing you in the right direction (depending on how much you know about the subject already).
I could even dig up some stuff I've written if you want to take a look. You wouldn't want to use any of it in your video, it's not nearly polished enough and hasn't made it into a game (yet). But it could help in understanding how it works. Anyway, let me know if you're interested I'll help where I can.
Send me an email
I'd say a huge reason for the ever-growing use of low poly is that we are basically at the peak of graphical realism, look at star citizen, we are so good at making real games that we are getting bored of real lighting and real graphic styles. There are no sun shafts in real life, our eyes don't see lens flares like game cameras do, we have gone back to low poly because we have reached our peak of realism and now there is no where to go, developers are bored of making realistic looking games, so they create these low poly games to make a difference. I have been working on a low poly RPG in unity 5 for a year now because I didn't want to make a game that could be TW4 or something like that, leave this art style to the boring devs like CD Projekt Red. Realism is so last year! XD
I would also say expense is major driver of low poly. It takes huge teams to make realistic games. That's not to say creativity doesn't play a part, but expenses are definitely a big part too.
SkyfoxPlays lol, we are not even close to reaching the peak of realism. We are far from the best Hollywood CGI, which is, itself, far from the peak of realism.
I know, trust me, this is one of those comments you write that one time and then totally forget it was even there. XD
Necro thread, sorry. Human eyes can interpret up to 1000 "frames per second" while a resolution of 8k could maybe get closest to what it seem like with a 20/20 vision (questionable?). We have much, much farther to go before we hit even a glimpse of "realism". People back when the first GTA came out, they thought it was so realistic with beautiful graphics. We look back at it now, this statement is now a complete joke. Same as now, although it is way more realistic, we are in the same shoes as they were, back then. Lets wait 10 years and then try to say Crysis 3 has the best graphics.
Yeah, it's kind of similar to the reason abstract paintings came about.
I'm honestly really impressed how much artistic insight and knowledge you have. It's not something most youtubers understand much of the intricacies. While I'd say many huge ones like the AVGN or Projared might have valid great opinions but not exactly to this level of understanding.
So in that respect, well done ! Great video and super interesting to someone who has been a 2D hobby animator for years, recently trying to get into 3D as well.
Though, I have to ask - Are you an artist yourself? I assumed your channel banner had been drawn by a friend or even commissioned for some reason but now I'm thinking you likely do all your own graphical work if you have this much understanding.
+Tam Anon A lot of the insight I got for the video came from interviewing professional game developers and reading articles. I'm not what you'd call an artist but my stick men are rock solid. As for the channel banner the mustachioed character is from a UA-camr friend of mine Clueless Evil but the rest of the designs etc that you'll see on the channel are mine :) Great to hear you're an animator. What sort of things do you animate?
Gaming Faster than Light!
Mostly silly flash loops.
aha darn, I thought I had you pegged.
+Tam Anon Silly is my favourite! Are they online anywhere?
Gaming Faster than Light!
uhm ! not really but I have www.thebackalleys.com/dump/files/498/9357Xm_watlol.swf This is silly !
www.thebackalleys.com/dump/files/498/4620Ox_redgreenblue.swf (Seizure warning)
just stuff made for /f/ back a long time ago, nothing like actually resembling real hard animation hehe
haha wow. That second one is pretty intense.
While not the best game out there, Back in 1995 had a great Sega Saturn/PS1 aesthetic. Banned Memories looks like it's gonna be an even better PS1 era survival horror throwback. I will say that I'm glad we're getting some new art direction in indie video games, especially after the long slough of mediocre 2d throwbacks to the games of the late 80's to early 90's (not all of them were bad, some were great in fact). So, let's see what the future holds in store for us.
Actually in the past low poly was hidden with shaders. Phong Shading for example can make low poly ball look like a ball instead of an icosahedron. Some geometric looking games such as Grow Up and Grow Home however use icosahedrons the way they are because Phong Shading often comes out as being ugly, it's part of the aesthetic of Grow Up and Grow Home to have raw geometry.
In fact nowadays we just use very small triangles to replace Phong Shading which is famous for being kind of ugly (it only existed to give the idea of smoothness and roundness to objects that aren't really round. Not to make things prettier.).
I always wanted to make a game that looked like a Atari Jaguar game, little did I know that was a whole damn art style!
Great video. I subscribed due to the quality of the video/research, along with you putting such great effort into citing the games and music in your description. Great work, keep it up!
The bgm gave me nostalgia
Game development is now more accessible than it has ever been
And the best way to break into the industry is to make something simple and keep ramping it up from there
So low poly is a very viable solution to having pretty graphics and keeping a low workload
I think the reason that low poly works with modern games is because of things like anti-aliasing, higher resolutions, and shaders.
The reason that old school low poly games look bad has more to do with textures and lighting. not the actual amount of polygons.
Just look at the game at 1:42. it's practically a lighting and shader effect showpiece. Plus all the edges have been smoothed with anti-aliasing.
I always think its funny how jiggly the characters in spyro games were
The lovely planet music pops off
It's the new retro style... or more like the definition of retro is advancing. Remember when retro graphics were those 8-bit pixel deals? When that got to the point of oversaturation, some turned to 16-bit pixel graphics while others turned to low poly, just to stay fresh in the eyes of retro gamers.
Not saying that 8-bit stylings are going to go extinct, just that it's not the dominant face of retro it once was.
it would be nice to see low poly graphics revived again. its like playing a new game for Playstation one or NDS..
low poly games in their early stages looked ugly because not many developers really knew how to use it properly and how to make it look nice... something they mastered in the days of pixel art with the nes/genises/snes but since low poly was really only around for one generation (n64/ps1) there wasn't much time given to really perfect the art form but now we see that it can be used for a much more minimalist and simple art style which i love and it looks far better and simply beautiful because instead of trying to make it look realistic like what n64/ps1 developers tried doing they instead give it a more stylised look
Someone told me that 8bit graphics have aged better. He's gonna *real* feel bad about the 32 bit revival.
Loving your newer content. Seems like you've really grasped your style!
Thanks buddy! I saw your PAX video, you gonna be back on youtube any time soon?
I am! Not gonna do LPs anymore (at least not for a while) and instead will be focusing on edited content I can fully control. Plus, a lot less of it.
It was just too stressful to do so much at once. Had to take a break.
TheNerdSlam I get you. Looking forward to seeing what you get up to!
I've been noticing this trend in the new android games that were published from late 2016, nice commentary though!
The low poly art style is like that one kid in Middle School who's really ugly, but later on they turn attractive in High School.
Assets for modern AAA games take a lot more work to create now than they did in the past because there is more detail that must be added. This is feasible if you're a massive corporation, but If you have a small team with limited funds, this just simply isn't possible. Low poly is popular because it is really the only way indie devs can make games without going bankrupt in the process.