I 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.
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.
Unless 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/screens... except the textured collar lit by recomputing the palette colors.
I 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:
The thing that really kinda bewildered me is when I learned that so many games like that: Final Fantasy 7, Baldur’s Gate, had full 3D scenes created and then rendered individual frames for backgrounds. I had thought it would have been easier to just draw and paint scenes instead.
Feels like so much work. You fully realize an entire scene and then capture a couple angles at most.
Of course I should have known better given the handful of times a scene comes to live via an FMV cutscene.
Many? 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
Alone 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!
Playing 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.
Frédérick'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).
Alone 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.
The 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.
Readit News
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&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://youtu.be/iSwYY2eoKhQ
Feels like so much work. You fully realize an entire scene and then capture a couple angles at most.
Of course I should have known better given the handful of times a scene comes to live via an FMV cutscene.
Relentless/Twinsens was 94. RE and FF7 were years after that
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.
AitD was the scariest game I've ever played.
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).
Turns out that 50 FPS is the limit: https://sdk.play.date/2.0.3/Designing%20for%20Playdate.html#...
That is more acceptable to me!
Dead Comment
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!