“Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod • Hacker News Board

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#91

Post by jstummbillig » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

t0suj4 wrote: post #85

jstummbillig wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Big fan of Doom > Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas. Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily , and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices…

It looks like you've single-handedly dismissed all the pixel art created today by saying that. The art direction was simply chosen based on the available technology.

> It looks like you've single-handedly dismissed all the pixel art created today by saying that.

Hm. I feel one has to read my comment very carelessly or interpret lot of words very unfavourably to arrive at that conclusion.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#92

Post by anthk » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #21

My highly sophisticated game from the 1970s used 'A' for armies, 'B' for battleships, etc.

VMS empire?

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#93

Post by giraffe_lady » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #81

sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

Also: Big fan of Doom > Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas. Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily , and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices…

Artistic choices made to adapt to or account for technical constraints are still interesting artistic choices.

I mean you even see this in mainstream western art theory with colors. Only very very recently have painters had a full spectrum of colors and hues available without heavy constraints on some of them like price, toxicity, ability to mix or age in the presence of other colors.

The workarounds painters used could be highly technical, like using combinations of colors that causes optical illusion-like effects implying the difficult color. Or they could be not at all, like simply choosing to paint a setting where you wouldn't need to represent the difficult color.

These later changes, this opening up of technique and color, doesn't diminish the artistic merit of works that came before and had to struggle directly against those constraints. I don't think any artist at any time has been totally free to express their vision without technical constraints.

I think there's a lot of value in understanding the constraints when approaching a piece of art, and some value in trying to understand what the artist may have attempted without those constraints. But the constraints don't really affect the merit of what the artist did accomplish, only what they felt able to attempt. This feels really similar to me.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#94

Post by plorg » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:35 PM UTC

pcwalton wrote: post #34

sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

RTX Doom isn't an exercise in art direction any more than the Cornell Box is an exercise in art direction. If you want an experience shaped by an art director, pick up your favorite title on Steam. This is a hack that was probably a lot of fun to write and a lot of fun to look at. Hacking support for bleeding-edge GPU technology into a engine from 1993 that doesn't support 3D meshes at all is an impressive feat. I'm…

I get the feeling that GP was responding more to the article than to the project. The article spends a lot of words suggesting the project makes all other DOOM ports obsolete. Definitely the title suggests that. And given that value judgment I think it's plenty reasonable to offer a critique of "this project is technically impressive but leaves me wanting aesthetically."

I suspect if a different article (say, the project GitHub) had been submitted the comments here would be much different.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#95

Post by valgaze » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

DLSS & ideas like it outside an idea are really interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning_super_sampling

Ex. run the base game at an insanely crummy/low resolution. On low(er) it’s possible to run a model to kinda “upscale” in each frame in a performant way.

Or even this CNN initiative from Intel where they took Grand Theft Auto & “painted” it with dashcam footage from rural Germany: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P1IcaBn3ej0

The results are pretty interesting— all “brown” southern CA mountains were green like in Germany

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#96

Post by jstummbillig » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #93

jstummbillig wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Big fan of Doom > Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas. Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily , and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices…

Artistic choices made to adapt to or account for technical constraints are still interesting artistic choices. I mean you even see this in mainstream western art theory with colors. Only very very recently have painters had a full spectrum of colors and hues available without heavy constraints on some of them like price, toxicity, ability to mix or age in the presence of other colors. The workarounds painters used co…

I agree with all of this.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#97

Post by alar44 » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

t0suj4 wrote: post #85

jstummbillig wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: Big fan of Doom > Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas. Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily , and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices…

It looks like you've single-handedly dismissed all the pixel art created today by saying that. The art direction was simply chosen based on the available technology.

To be honest I hate modern pixel art games because the sprites can rotate and move around but not respect a pixelated canvas. I see it as laziness or at the least, a lack of actual art direction.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#98

Post by spion » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

sgillen wrote: post #32

Am I the only one who thinks this actually looks pretty good? Maybe it’s because I did not play the original doom when it came out.

I played the original and likewise like it. I think it adds a nice twist to the old familiar levels I fondly remember from the past. I don't think its mind blowing or anything but it seems like a fun new "flavor" to try.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#99

Post by gentleman11 » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

Ray tracing in quake 2 also looks worse. The games have very good lighting baked in and aren’t designed for ray tracing realistic lighting - it throws the colour pallet and focal points out

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#100

Post by busterarm » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

This needs its own megawad of levels designed to take advantage of the new lighting features. There are so many cool things that they could do with this.