How to make BETTER PS1 graphics

9 tips how to improve your PS1 style game
Retro gamedev asset packs:
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Patreon: / mmmarcis

[@Marcis.]

Did you find any of the tips useful?

[@tvorimeahrameslovenskehryv1821]

Of course. This I was finding thanks.

[@Marcis.]

@@tvorimeahrameslovenskehryv1821 Awesome!

[@bobmaster698]

yes!

[@litjellyfish]

It was really good. And correct. Compared to others. As I did work myself back in this era only thing I missed really was the mention that PS1 render out to a 16 bit framebuffer so it can be a bit of banding and also the pretty noticeable dithering. That also is part of the charm :)

[@potat0az566]

at the beggining, in unreal engine how do you force the resolution like that? i have looked everywhere i would appreciate help

[@scream-beam3519]

you know your stuff. a lot of people think “bad” graphics = the ps1 aesthetic, but it’s not the case. ty, you’re work is beautiful and nostalgic

[@Marcis.]

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@aziskgarion378]

If you take Vagrant Story and up its internal resolution is epsxe or duckstation, you'd almost mistake it for a Dreamcast game. That game was a thing of beauty at the end of PS1 life.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@aziskgarion378 Late PS1 games looked much better than early ones. The devs learned how to get much better graphics out of the same hardware. Just COmpare Final Fantasy VII, VII and IX, there is clear progression. Another game that looks really good, especially with higher internal resolution is Ridge Racer R4. And with the wobbly geometry fix it holds up really good even today.

[@tvorimeahrameslovenskehryv1821]

PS1 graphics is the best maybe at picture it dont see without psx texture effect.

[@Marcis.]

@@HappyBeezerStudios It's true for all console generations. It's amazing what devs can squeeze from an aging hardware!

[@MilesDoodles]

It's so cool to see someone who ACTUALLY understands PS1 graphics You're great man, keep it up

[@RanchboyAle]

Amazing! changing the color index was what my texture needed.

[@Marcis.]

Excellent!

[@im_Dafox]

Hey man, stopping by to say a huge thank you. Tried the indexed color trick for my ongoing game's textures, and the step up was instant. I've tried to pixelate them earlier in Dev, but turned out pretty meh and I didn't stick to it. Your trick really took my whole visuals to another level so, Thanks a lot 🙏

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Good to see people not just suggesting to mage it ugly and geometry warping. Those are real tips to get much closer to the aesthetics of the hardware limitations.

[@nebula54]

thank you man i had no idea about indexed colors

[@CaptainPanick]

These are some great tips, thanks man!

[@robotinfluence]

Straight to the point, need more devs like yourself

[@Marcis.]

Thanks!

[@DeathAtYourDoorStep]

Good vid. Wish I can get a tutorial how to use decals with PSFX in unreal. Can't seem to get those to work. Keep up the good work

[@Marcis.]

Thanks! For UE4 or 5?

[@arciks11]

I think 180K polygons is number it can output if displaying triangles is literally the only thing the PS1 is doing. Add textures, game logic, animations, sound and all that and number of polygons goes down. In Andy Gavin's blog about making Crash Bandicoot there are such polygon numbers from someone that worked at Activision at the time. early years - 300-600 poly if you want decent performance. Crash 1 - 1800 Polys Crash 3 -3100 Polys It should be noted that Crash games had an advantage of being on rails meaning programmers could more precisely control what would be displayed at every point in the level. So if one wants to throw a guess at what a game with non fixed camera realistically could push in polygons in later years... Let's be generous and assume around 1500-1700(I'm completely spitballing here). Granted this doesn't go into tricks that games like Spyro used where they would use LOD methods to keep good draw distances.

[@akioasakura3624]

someone who actually knows their stuff. big up

[@mysteriousstranger9496]

Can you do a video on special effect? Like how did they go magic effect, water, fire, rain, snow etc

[@ethanwasme4307]

Thaaannnkkkssss!

[@Marcis.]

You're welcome!

[@BigSaur]

Love your work ;)

[@Marcis.]

Thanks! Haven't heard from you in a while!

[@BigSaur]

@@Marcis. I went on an adventure :D

[@Marcis.]

@@BigSaur An adventure?

[@BigSaur]

@@Marcis. Little road trip to recharge :)

[@DuckTheFinn]

I think making a post process to emulate a crt screen would be a good idea, since the ps1 games were often played on those instead of crisp modern screens. It softens the image too, and doesnt look as jagged and ugly

[@Marcis.]

For sure! I prefer the CRT look. I often use CRT shaders with an emulator.

[@sulphurous2656]

I like to use both at times. I like the pixelation shader for the crispness, but the smoothing of the CRT shader is nice too.

[@lukabrasi001]

this is really well said. i hate it when people slap an affine texture warp, stretch a 64x64 texture over large areas, models are disconnected by proportion because they couldn't figure out the bone rigging and so on... people think, hey, it's PS1. let's make the game look shitty but keep in mind these games were once AAA titles going at full price. they had to look they best they could to justify their retail prices. i'm actually developing a game that takes after Medal of Honor 1 and Underground in terms of setting and gameplay, and i make heavy use of the PS1 look, but actually incorporate modern techniques which create this postmodern retro look where palette limited small textures have normal and roughness maps. in some places, the effect looks so good, you'd think the lighting is pre-baked into the textures themselves

[@Marcis.]

I'd love to see your project! MOH on the PS1 was awesome! One of my favorites.

[@xb2856]

great tips

[@Marcis.]

Glad it was helpful!

[@xb2856]

@@Marcis. Yeah, your project is really inspiring too, looking forward to seeing some more updates!

[@KillerDudeT19]

I really wanna try and mix the retro ps1 style with the modern lighting effect that ue5 uses like lumen. Thanks for this video

[@Marcis.]

It would look surreal I think. You're welcome!

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@Marcis. Do it! I've played a Deus Ex inspired Doom map and it's amazing how good the whole thing looks considering what it's based on.

[@Marth8880]

Oh hey, I actually did this for my game Psychosis! I think it turned out nice :)

[@KillerDudeT19]

@Aaron Gilbert just checked out the trailer to your game it looks amazing!

[@sulphurous2656]

I've tried it out at the start of this year and it sold me on the viability of such an idea. I don't particularly have any objects towards trying to "enhance" some aspects of PSX visuals as much as I once did after trying this out. It's basically the same style, but more. That's also why I'd say that keeping millions of colors in your textures might be down to preference more than anything.

[@user-xl1qq4yx9x]

good video

[@LucioBlackwine]

pls a tut on how to make the crashing cars

[@polaritymakina8440]

I would love More of these tutorials, im just breaking unto game dev and 3d modellinh, and i grew up on ps1 so this is is the style i want to go for, is there a discord comminity anywhere for this type of game design?

[@Marcis.]

Yeah, I have a server discord.gg/MVXtkeN You can also search for Haunted PS1. r/ps1graphics also has a discord community

[@rohang8246]

How to make ps1 style snow or rain or explosion?

[@AdamBarkerThe]

what would you recommend I do for the player shadow? I am working on a ps1/ps2 style game and trying to get the shadow to stick closer to my character in unreal and at a lower quality.

[@Marcis.]

Probably a blob shadow or a decal.

[@AdamBarkerThe]

@@Marcis. do you know how I would do the blob shadow? sorry, I am very new to this program and can't find a video on that specific type of shadow stuff.

[@Marcis.]

@@AdamBarkerThe search blob shadow unreal engine. The first video should do the trick.

[@AdamBarkerThe]

@@Marcis. thanks a ton man! subscribed.

[@stalinmceizn]

A cardboard box, huh? It sounds like you talk down to those ppl, but they did the very best they could back then. With the now better knowledge and interpretations of the systems, it sure could have looked better.. now. You are on to something there, keep it up!

[@ethanwasme4307]

what options do we have for lighting? because the default directional lights are too modern :P

[@Marcis.]

Use a dot product of the vertex normals and a direction vector.

[@redvoiddd]

İ need your textures man

[@Punisher1992]

I noticed, if i set the Image compression to Vector, like you did, the file size tripples. And how do i set screen percentage without the game getting blurry?

[@Marcis.]

Yeah, that's what's supposed to happen. Add the following line to Rendering Settings in \Project\Config\DefaultEngine.ini under [/Script/Engine.RendererSettings] r.Upscale.Quality=0

[@Punisher1992]

@@Marcis. thanks bought your stuff some time ago, still try to figure out how you did the vertex lightning static and dynamic actor xD

[@studiotouge]

How would you recommend setting the game resolution lower? I have tried lowering screen percentage but it doesn’t seem to work within the viewport

[@Marcis.]

There is a project setting in UE5 regarding the screen percentage you need to modify for it to work. Can't remember what's it called but if you search for screen percentage it should come up.

[@studiotouge]

Edit: finally found the settings in scalability on the top right of screen and just needed to adjust there while PIE was playing. Thanks for the reply @@Marcis.

[@arnoldvermeulen5357]

Is tessellation possible in your PSXFX asset pack?

[@Marcis.]

It's possible but it won't work with affine texture mapping if your goal was to reduce the warping effect.

[@arnoldvermeulen5357]

@@Marcis. Seems like my comment keeps getting deleted... Might be because of the link I posted. Anyways, it's not for reducing the warping effect, but more to make it pop. If you google "David Colson PS1", the first link should be a blog post. About 2/3 down in the page you should see a video of Medal of Honor demonstrating the effect.

[@Marcis.]

That's what tessellation was used for. To reduce the texture warping. This pack doesn't tessellate surfaces. The only way you could achieve that "pop" is by building your levels out of modular pieces with several levels of detail for each piece.

[@svrvphimprod]

how do you actually lower the game resolution tho? I kept searching for this but could never figure out how Edit: figured it out lol

[@yourcommander3412]

I agree with all - but if I had my way; characters would still use ragdoll :D Not very ps1 retro but hey - Its just how I am.

[@Marcis.]

There are a couple of games with ragdoll physics on the PS1 so it's not off limits!

[@yourcommander3412]

@@Marcis. Actually did some research and found "dave mirra freestyle bmx" have a rudimentary ragdoll system. Its quite funny.

[@Marcis.]

@@yourcommander3412 you can find all kinds of gems!

[@ABaumstumpf]

The poly-count of the PS1 was not really low. Lower than the theoretical peak of the N64, but the N64 also suffered greatly as its co-processor could create way more polygons than its graphics-chip could render and that chips was seriously limited in its performance when more "complex" filters were used - as well as having nearly no memory for graphics when compared to the PS1. In general most PS1 games didn't come anywhere near there poly-limit - that was mostly relegated to tech-demos like the T-rex and my god did it look awesome (i think that one pushed a bit over 200k tris). I really don't understand why it now seems to be necessary to explain people why drawing at 1080p and then downscaling has a negative impact on graphics-quality and performance, but i have seen that sadly these tips really are needed. I have seen a "tutorial" on how to get a pixel-art look in Blender that concluded you should render at 2560*1920 and then downscale 8x8 to get a nice 320x240 image ..... no, just no.

[@FineappleRyan]

Comment for the algorithm

[@willreynard3816]

What's the game at 2:55 called?

[@Marcis.]

Silent Hill

[@willreynard3816]

​@@Marcis. Thanks! I really should have the guessed that. The rain effects look amazing

[@JohnDoe-pk8lc]

What is the game at 03:58?

[@Marcis.]

Colony Wars: Red Sun

[@JohnDoe-pk8lc]

Cool thanks

[@sxgbln5868]

hey man if you need someone to model or texture ps1 assets tell me, i could help for free!

[@Marcis.]

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.

[@SageX85]

Why are you destroying so many videos filled with bad advise with your wisdom???? XD

[@Raylightsen]

Dude, NOBODY is making ps1 games. What's your point?

[@Marcis.]

You're absolutely right! I'm just trying to put google out of business by uploading videos. The more I upload the more they have to pay for bandwidth, servers, etc.

[@TheSavageBountyHunter]

I thought the idea was to get out of PS1 graphics .. now we are going back to it 📈📉

[@Marcis.]

You thought wrong