🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 18:44:11 +0000 (UTC), rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

>>Spalls Hurgenson  <spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Replaying the games, I found the levels a mixed bunch. Some of them
>>were as dull and endless as I remembered - especially the later ones
>>in the ruined Jedi temple - and far too reliant on platforming puzzles
>>(over bottomless pits, naturally) to be fun. Others, however,
>>adequately captured the scale and feel of the movies well enough,
>>especially considering the limitations of the technology of the day.
>
>I really like the verticality of the Jedi Knights, few games, before
>or since, bother to make use of that third dimension.  It was cool
>playing the game back in the day in some high resolution like 1024x786
>and sniping at some three pixel high storm troopers that would've been
>almost impossible to spot at 640x480 or lower.  The platforming elements
>I would have done away with, but at least it was save everywhere so you
>didn't have repeat a sequence of jumps over and over.
>
>>The game remained as ugly as I remembered; even the original Dark
>>Forces, with its blocky 320x200 graphics and sprites looked far
>>better.
>
>Using software rendering instead of hardware rendering makes the game look
>more like what was intended.  A big problem with hardware rendering is it
>can't handle all the lights in the walls that are a big thing in Imperial
>bases and ships.  They're rendered as part of a wall texture which when
>the basic hardware accelerated lighting of the time is applied to it
>means that the lights on the wall look dimmed in darker areas instead
>of remaining bright.

No, it wasn't that - at least not for me. It was the awful, awful,
/awful/ character models (the Stormtroopers in particular). The level
design - the flow, the textures, the furnishings, etc. - looked fine
(given the game's age). And - as you pointed out - they did have an
interesting verticality to them, although as I pointed out, too often
this meant you were dancing around bottomless pits were a misjump
meant instant death. No, it was the character models that really
pulled me out of the experience; even against its contemporaries they
looked terrible, and two decades on they have truely become an
eyesore.