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How the creator of Alone in the Dark came back to games
- myko 3y agoI love the Playdate but without a backlight it is so hard to play
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NickM 3y agoMaybe this is ridiculous but I kinda like the lack of a backlight: it forces me to find nice bright places to play in, and discourages hanging out in the kind of dimly lit areas that tend to sap my energy and mood.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- smokel 3y agoI remember Alone in the Dark (1992) as having a totally crazy rendering engine. Looking at footage on YouTube [1], I now see that a lot of the more complex background rendering was probably done offline. The Sierra adventures at that time (Kings Quest V and the like) had painted backgrounds where the actionable items would stand out because they looked like crap. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGaVrMr9N8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGaVrMr9N8
- chpatrick 3y agoMany games of that time had prerendered backgrounds with basic realtime graphics on top.
- smokel 3y agoTrue, but only a few combined flat shading, Gouraud shading, texture mapping, and vector balls :)
- holoduke 3y agoEstatica was a cool game for its time. https://youtu.be/9SsR5fPjGu4?si=Eu6RmO-vlsC8Fps5 https://youtu.be/9SsR5fPjGu4?si=Eu6RmO-vlsC8Fps5
- block_dagger 3y agoYes! Had a fun time with this one as well.
- blueboo 3y agoMany? In 92? I don’t think so. AitD was the first in my (admittedly non-comprehensive) experience. 92 was full of sprite-based pixel art adventures, to be sure. Relentless/Twinsens was 94. RE and FF7 were years after that
- Waterluvian 3y agoSpaceship Warlock did it in 1991 but was a Mac game so it went deeply under-appreciated. Admittedly this might fall outside your definition depending on if the focus is “3D scenes rendered to 2D” or “pretending they’re full 3D with a handful of actual 3D characters on top.”
- fzzzy 3y agoMade in Macromedia Director I believe
- rzzzt 3y agoAnother World also fits the bill (the 20th Anniversary edition a bit more than the original as it has a hand-painted background).
- robert_tweed 3y agoAlone in the Dark was notable at the time for using Gouraud shading [1]. You can see the effect on some of the polygons here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGaVrMr9N8&t=480s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGaVrMr9N8&t=480s The reason I remember this is that it inspired me to spend ages implementing Gouraud shading in my own graphics library (written in assembly language), only to discover that flat polygons look better most of the time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouraud_shading
- pandaman 3y agoUnless you mean pre-rendered backgrounds, there was no Gouraud shading in that game. It does seem to have a little texturing on some parts of the model, most likely ramp lighting and pretty expensive as they could not texture the whole character. E.g. here you can see each triangle in the model in whole untextured flat-shaded glory :) https://www.mobygames.com/game/325/alone-in-the-dark/screenshots/dos/698285/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/325/alone-in-the-dark/screens... except the textured collar lit by recomputing the palette colors.
- smokel 3y agoSome items in the inventory, such as the knife, and the book appear to have some kind of "metal shading", which was typically implemented as a modified Gouraud shader. It could all be texture mapping of course, but somehow I doubt that. And what about these fancy ballroom dresses? https://www.mobygames.com/game/325/alone-in-the-dark/screenshots/dos/530802/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/325/alone-in-the-dark/screens... We can only do two things now: contact the original author, or reverse engineer the binaries! Does anyone know if there is a DOS emulator that allows you to visualize and override RAM access easily?
- pandaman 3y agoYeah, it had different algorithm to render inventory and also could add/remove some objects to the background (those figures in dresses do not move if I recall, only toggle in and out). The inventory was not free camera with only controls to zoom, so you could do a lot of tricks with pre-computed shading. The general purpose rendering of the animated character and items they held was flat shading though.
- _kidlike 3y agoI LOVED these games that had painted backgrounds and actionable stuff popping out like crap...
- erkmene 3y agoI have a small nitpick with the video you shared: unfortunately that one and most others on YouTube are “talkie” CD versions which replaced the amazing MIDI music with rather uninspired symphonized CD tracks. Here’s a different longplay with the MIDI soundtrack: https://youtu.be/iSwYY2eoKhQ https://youtu.be/iSwYY2eoKhQ
- block_dagger 3y agoAlone in the Dark is one of my most cherished childhood experiences. I almost see the Vagabond in the library when I close my eyes. Thanks to the author!
- simplemts 3y agoSame! My early childhood computer / tech introductions, all ran on a 286
- wahnfrieden 3y agoToy Commander was incredible
- simplemts 3y agoLoved this game as a 10yo
- bullfightonmars 3y agoI never played Alone in the Dark, but I loved Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure.
- stevenwoo 3y agoThe ending where you see everyone one more time is so sweet.
- qingcharles 3y agoLBA was also amazing. So surreal. AitD was the scariest game I've ever played.
- LarsDu88 3y agoWhoa! This guy created Toy Commander? That was one of my favorite Sega Dreamcast games!
- TapamN 3y agoOn the topic of the Dreamcast: the writer of the article, Jörg Tittel, appeared in the Dreamcast comedy horror game, Illbleed. https://illbleed.fandom.com/wiki/Jorg_S_Baker https://illbleed.fandom.com/wiki/Jorg_S_Baker
- pauldenton 3y agoThe PlayStation 1/N64 and Saturn era had a lot of Resident Evil clones that followed in the vein of Alone in the Dark. It was a combination of factors. 1 stick meant Tank Controls had the best of both worlds for aiming and shooting but serving double duty. Silent Hill/Turok Fog meant you didn't need to render things that were far away on the most rudimentary of 3D Hardware.
- waltbosz 3y agoI remember trying to play AITD on a 386. It was unplayable, super slow framerate and unresponsive controls. My friend had a 486 and it played so smoothly in comparison. Also, sad personal story about the Play Date. For a 40th birthday present to myself, I got on the waiting list for a year but ended up cancelling the order a month away from my ship date because of some income issues. I thought it was more prudent to feed my kids than get a new video game. Ah well, such is life.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chem83 3y agoAitD 1 was great. I didn't care for 2 and 3 at all. The modern ones also don't interest me. Glad to know Frédérick is doing cool stuff.
- lencastre 3y agoAlone in the Dark from Infogrames (?) in early 90s was the bomb! Equal parts scary and fun. I still shudder when I remember the ballroom scene’s soundtrack and avoiding to disturb the guests otherwise the instakill skybeam would come for you no matter how fast you ran anywhere in the world, you had to load a previous save. Good times!
- Shugyousha 3y agoI thought I wouldn't need a pkaydate even though I like the concept because it can only render at 30 FPS. Turns out that 50 FPS is the limit: https://sdk.play.date/2.0.3/Designing%20for%20Playdate.html#_refresh_rate https://sdk.play.date/2.0.3/Designing%20for%20Playdate.html#... That is more acceptable to me!
- kettro 3y agoI love mine. The refresh rate is absolutely not an issue at all IMO.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- sph 3y agoI watched a let's play of all Alone in the Dark games recently (on supergreatfriend's YT channel) and I am sad to say that after the first, which was already very janky but with a cool atmosphere, they all went downhill from there. Especially with the original trilogy, I felt that the game creator and the players had two different visions for Alone in the Dark: players wanted more (cosmic?) horror, the creator wanted obtuse horror comedy, so we got the pirate tree ending, zombies with machine guns and zombie pirates in 2 and zombie cowboys in 3. All the reboots over the years didn't do the franchise any favour either. Maybe the new game that's in development will give what the players wanted all along.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoPlaying Alone In The Dark in the dark of my uni room is one of of the few thing sI vividly remember from that time. I remember is vividly also because my girlfriend came once into my room and patted me on the back while I was playing with headphones on and I almost jumped off the window. The neighbor student came to see what was going on because I yelled that loud.
- mortallywounded 3y agoHe came back and made a first person flappy bird.
- diamondfist25 3y agoI remember pissing in my pants going thru the first scene at the mansion
- illys 3y agoFrédérick's career started even earlier, with 8088 PC and CGA: He is also behind PopCorn, the very best CGA bricks-breaker. All done with his friend Christophe Lacaze in assembly with great graphics, transitions, smoothness, gameplay... A great fun with the mouse. Worth a try if you still have a DOS machine (the original version has proper speed on XT 4.77 MHz; a later version - very similar - can run on any DOS machine at the original speed).
- qingcharles 3y agoDamn, he wrote PopCorn? I wasted too much time on that.
- ornornor 3y agoI had won a copy of the game through a contest on Kazibao (a now defunct platform for children to chat with each other when the internet was new) and never received it. Instead I had the poster hanging in my room. I should have pushed harder to get my copy but I was a kid and didn’t know any better at the time. Now I regret never playing it!
- goodboyjojo 3y agothis was a pretty good article. im going to get a playdate console to play around with it and have fun playing games for it.