In many cases adding modern graphical techniques to older content does that. It also has an awful tendency to make things that were not flaws but technical limitations of the time, such as lower polycounts or 8-bit paletted source content, really stand out badly (see some of the Quake mods with high resolution textures for a great example of that).
In case of the BFG edition on my 360 (compared to the original PC 2004 version), the texture compression is way less noticable.
When running the PC version on "high" the compression (meaning texture distortion) on pc is quite obvious.
On 360 most content seems to be intact. In fact, my first impression was that compression is only used on some and not all textures.
What does look a bit odd though is the low polycount on the meshes while using higher res textures on the face models in the bfg version.
Makes the low polycount jump right into your face.
What people don't seem to be understanding is that "graphics" is a lot more than textures up close, or fancy post-processing effects, or a load of settings that they can ramp up to max and see if they can bring their PC to it's knees. "Graphics" is an integrated whole, it's how everything fits in together, it's the entirety of the presentation. Get one thing wrong, or get one thing that looks out of place, and the whole experience is just horribly jarring.
Perfectly right. People today seem to be focused on glitches.
Maybe that's the same phenomenon that makes bad news on tv raise the TV-ratings.
I've come to the conclusion that people simply are in a bad mood today due to the BS going on in this world and tend to see the bad instead of the good.
This affects every aspect in life. Including games.
The 90s where a rather peaceful time with very few economic problems.
That's why most gamers back then focused their attention more to the pros instead of the cons.
In many ways that makes PC gamers today not wildly different from the console gamers they so easily deride, despite an annoyingly smug sense of superiority/elitism and a desire to come across as if they somehow know more. (Fair disclosure: the last console I bought was a PS2 10-odd years ago.) The irony is that years ago PC gamers did understand this stuff. Something has changed and that is no longer the case.
The games market in the 90s was way smaller and the consumers were mainly "freaks" and nerds devoted to their hobby.
Back then, most gamers were "living" their games and were interested into every topic related to their hobby.
Today, everybody and their neighbours play games. This also affects the pc community.
Typical evolution of a product that turns to massmarket.
Similar effects are visible when it comes to bands and their music.
So people are just not understanding what they're asking for, then too ready to complain when they don't get it.
Being able to design, program and maintain a working engine is something exceptionally great. This is not anywhere near designing a web space.
I'm not into rocket science but when Carmack says that programming games is more complex than shooting rockets into the sky, he's definitely right.
Games are a massmarket product today. Massmarket like vacuum cleaners, refridgerators and coffee machines.
At least that's what everybody thinks.
But this couldn't be more wrong.
With programming games, the layer of abstraction has come the highest possible level without totally destroying the performance.
A level of abstraction that 95% of the people on this planet wouldn't be able to understand.
Yet they all complain as if they were talking about a flat tire on their car.
» Thu Nov 15, 2012 8:19 pm 
