Making Graphics Like it's 1993

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Engine & Rendering Techniques

  • Many compare the engine to early 90s shooters: structure is closer to Wolfenstein 3D–style raycasting (orthogonal walls, fixed floor/ceiling) than Doom’s full BSP, though some features echo later engines.
  • Clarifications: Doom and Build (Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior) differ; Build uses sector/portal traversal and trapezoid wall rasterization rather than BSP, enabling “room over room” tricks and dynamic walls.
  • Debate on floor rendering: one side claims Doom approximated floor perspective via patches; another notes per-row perspective divides and links to Doom’s floor code.
  • Several posters advocate sector/portal-based raycasters (like Build) for more flexible geometry than grid-based Wolf3D.
  • Classic VGA details: mode 13h linear 320×200, Mode X/unchained modes, 0xA0000 framebuffer, and tradeoffs between ease (linear) and power (planar) are discussed.

Art Style & Asset Pipeline

  • Strong appreciation for the posterized, palette-quantized look; people like how near-black tones “crunch” into distinct bands.
  • Interest in the sprite pipeline: 3D renders → postprocess → palette mapping; some note how surprisingly crisp the results are compared to usual “mushy” 3D-to-sprite conversions.
  • Discussion around consistent pixel scale: raising sprite resolution for a few objects would visually clash unless everything else is raised too.

Modern APIs vs Retro Constraints

  • Some argue it would be more interesting or practical to use modern OpenGL/GPUs for the same aesthetic, especially to support higher resolutions and prevent nausea.
  • Others counter that the charm lies precisely in using period-appropriate software rendering, and that modern GPUs are so fast at low-poly scenes that extra occlusion culling may actually hurt performance.

Protagonist & Representation

  • The calico pattern implies the cat is (biologically) female; this triggers a side thread on how rare female protagonists are in FPS/“boomer shooters”.
  • Posters cite Steam tag counts and modern multiplayer shooters with selectable female characters, disagreeing on whether “rare” is accurate.

Reception, Nostalgia & Critiques

  • Majority response is highly positive: praise for the technical depth, self-imposed constraints, coherent art direction, and “1993” feel.
  • Several express renewed appreciation for early 90s graphics ingenuity and share personal anecdotes of writing software renderers back then.
  • A minority criticizes the “no AI” positioning and the claim of early-90s techniques while using modern tools like Blender, calling it nostalgia bait; others defend that tooling updates are reasonable for a solo project.

Shared Ideas, Tools & Side Notes

  • Multiple posters share related experiments: custom engines (including Flash and DOS), lightmaps, fixed-point math, and palette-based lighting/look-up tables.
  • Palette animation and palette swaps (e.g., water, lava, recolored enemies) are highlighted as powerful low-cost effects.