Monthly Archives: May 2026

Graphics Style References

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Once I had decided that I would be making a game in first person 3D, I knew very soon that I wanted to make something in the Raw 3D look of the mid to late 90s like the Quake engine or the PlayStation. But now that I have started making character models and textures in Blender, I really had to made concrete decisions about how much geometry would be on characters and environment objects, what character faces should look like, and how many pixels a texture should have per one meter of surface.

(Humanoid limbs have seven segments. Hands are cubes without fingers. Cylinders have 12 faces. Faces are a static texture on flat geometry. And 128 pixels per meter.)

The first choice I had to make for a visual style is do I want something in the style of Quake or in the style of Unreal. Unreal also has a really pleasant visual style, but in the end it became clear that it really has to be Quake. While the game Quake itself does have a visual design style that isn’t really isn’t offering anything that would make for a useful reference for any assets in Iridium Moons, I really like the amount of fine grain detail on the textures that really pops out when texture filtering is disabled. And the pixel density on environment textures feels like just the right resolution for me. Quake also has a crisp sharpness to everything that PS1 games generally don’t have. I think it’s the lack of dithering, which I also won’t be using for Iridium Moons.

The other main game that stands out as one of the best looking Raw 3D games with fantastic looking unfiltered textures is Metal Gear Solid. But that game is designed to be seen from a quite high up top down perspective, and the models and textures designed for that in mind, which is quite different from a very close up first person view. So I am going for a higher pixel density on textures, somewhat more polygons on character models, and more small environment clutter objects on tables and shelves. I really like the approach to faces, which is flat heads with a texture that is so low resolution that you can’t actually make out any details on any features. I always hated drawing faces and having to deal with eyes and mouths, and Metal Gear Solid has a style that gets around that while still being consistent with the overall aesthetic. The use of color in this game is really nice, and I just love the use of lighting in the environments, which is something hope to be able to somewhat emulate. I am not going to simulate any kind of graphics artifacts caused by the PS1 hardware, because that’s just a silly gimmick.

A better example of great looking PS1 graphics that are closer to what you would see in first person view is the Syphon Filter series. I feel Syphon Filter makes for a great reference for modelling and texturing characters. I also quite like the character animations, which I think are a bit more smooth with less stiff body posture than in Metal Gear Solid, but still have some of the low-fidelity jitter going on. I also definitely want those transparent pixelated fire sprites for all my fire effects. While the level geometry and environmental decoration is extremely sparse in Syphon Filter, it’s use of darkness and colored light looks really cool to me.

A more recent game that uses a similar visual design but isn’t limited by 30 year old hardware is Peripeteia. As with Quake, the design aesthetic of Peripeteia is very different than what I am going for with Iridium Moons. But I really like how it uses modern computing power to make use of space and scale with its environment. Somewhat unreasonably sized buildings and natural features is something that I think will serve the overall tone of Iridium Moons quite well. I also like how the level geometry is not only big cubes arranged on a square grid but with much more pillars, pipes, and stairs and some environmental objects.

I am also very intrigued by the level of detail seen in the trailers for Compound Fracture, which might be the only thing we’ll ever get of the game. There is considerably more going on in the environment than in the PS1 games or Peripeteia and I think this might perhaps be the perfect level of texture detail, environmental objects, and lighting for me. It would significantly increase the work time on asset creation and I’m not even sure if I will be able to pull this of. But if I could get there one day, that would be really cool. Again, the tone and aesthetic here are completely different than the intended style of Iridium Moons.

Everything I said about Peripeteia and Compound Fracture goes double for Beta Decay. I love the graphics of this game. The level of detail here is probably too high for what I’ll be able to achieve. But having these graphics in bright sunset colors would be an absolute dream come true for me. And I’m absolutely going to combine PS1 style textures with real time dynamic lighting. With tiny texture files, tiny polygon counts, and probably a very limited use of shaders, I think it should still be able to run on a total potato of a computer.

Off our Scopes

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Things have been going very well for the past weeks, with progress on developing my 3D modeling, texture painting, and rigging skills going much faster than I ever anticipated. I am planning to keep focusing on improving my texturing and animating skills, developing an art style, and putting together a basic assets library for the time being. But as things are going now, I think there’s a good chance I might actually start moving on to learning game programming in Godot before next year.

As part of figuring out an appropriate, consistent, and practical art style, I’ve also been thinking again about the overall approach to storytelling, NPC interactions, and gameplay mechanics over the last weekend. These do have some real consequences on how the game world will need be constructed and what kind of expressions NPC models will need to be capable of. Working out game mechanics and a general style of level geometry first and then creating assets according to the needs that arise would probably be the smarter approach in most situations. But with how much I’m putting on my plate with all of this, I feel that mastering Blender first before moving on to Godot instead of doing both in parallel will be a lot more sustainable for me. It could mean that I might have do redo a good amount of assets as gameplay changes during development. But having at least a solid plan now for how players are intended to move through the game world and interact with it should help with reducing the amount of asset work that will have to be redone.

While researching 3D games from the mid 90s and recent indie games with a similar Raw 3D look as references for an Iridium Moons art style, I became aware of Compound Fracture, a game greatly inspired by Dino Crisis. But other than two trailers that look very nice and impressive, there really is very little information on that game. And as it turns out, the first trailer came out almost 5 years ago now. Is it actually going to come out one day? Hard to say, but by now it seems quite unlikely.

This had me check up on some other 90s styles scifi action games I’ve been very impressed by some time ago. Beta Decay had it’s first gameplay trailer 3 years ago. Selaco over 5 years ago. And Peripeteia 6 years ago. Peripetia had a playable build on Steam 1 year ago, and Selaco 2 years ago. And none of these games have a release date yet. That at least one of these four games will be finished eventually is probably almost certain. That two of them will get a full release is quite possible. But three? That seems doubtful. And all four? I really don’t think so. Grainy low-fidelity sci-fi games that exist on the intersection between action, ImSims, and Survival Horror have been a very popular idea that get people very excited for many years now. And getting something that looks really good and fun in trailers seems to be fairly easy. But the track record for such games actually getting finished has been terrible so far. And these are all from people who have way more qualifications and resources than I’ll ever going to have.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, it wasn’t uncommon for popular games to have their follow up being released only one year later. Thief II, FreeSpace 2, Fallout 2, and Knights of the Old Republic II, all come to mind. Though many people at the time thought that it would have been much better if the games had been given another half or full year of development instead of rushing them out like that, it was possible to create beloved classics like that by essentially being just new levels for the same game with no meaningful changes to the engine or gameplay. Game development for mainstream, big budget titles has gotten longer ever since because developers wanted to appeal to new customers who weren’t already hooked by the gameplay of older similar games or the story of earlier games in a series by impressing with more advanced graphics, more spectacular game mechanics and physics, and more size. Simply making another campaign for a game that already exists was not really a commercial option for them, and still isn’t.

But for small indie developers that are targeting the retro-style market, I think this is exactly what the target audience is looking for. A bit more polish, a bit less jank, and taking some lessons from interface and controls evolution would be greatly welcome. But I think a game that has game mechanics that are basically identical to standards from 30 years ago is absolutely viable. Maybe add two or three small innovations to give the game an individual personality, but I think we really don’t need to have 2020s games with low-fidelity graphics as purely an aesthetic gimmick. Every developer and team is free to give it a shot, but I know it definitely is not an option for me. I made the decision to go with a Raw 3D aesthetic for Iridium Moons entirely because this is one way I can make a game look visually appealing while keeping the technical skill required to an absolute minimum.

The overall framework I settled on last week is to aim for a game that could pass as an asst flipped, knockoff-Star Wars themed, total conversion mod of Deus Ex with the sneaking and visibility mechanic of Thief. That’s it. Nothing more.

Actually less even, as I think character customization for different playstyles is better done by selecting your equipment loadout instead of assigning upgrade points to different skills.

Since I am much more interested in stealth and investigation gameplay and environment design and not really into the idea of writing big stories and complex characters, I think it can also be made very episodic. Instead of structuring the overall story like a 2000 page novel series, I see Iridium Moons more like 2 hour adventure movies with their own beginning and end that take place in the same universe and revolve around the same protagonists. This should allow me to get at least something out the door that players can play after 4 or 5 years of development. And if I still have more in me, I perhaps could continue with another episode over the next 2 or 3 years, and keep doing that until I get tired of it. Which seems much more feasible to me than aiming straight for a complete 40 hour game in 10 different locations that gets canceled after 12 years of development with no end in sight.