Extremely quick test using a screen space shader for billboard

Importantly, the objects in the distance are actually at the specific positiont they *should* be, but the shader maintains the sprite scale constant, so they never shift. I'll add some way to shift between different levels of sprite detail later.

The trees are not the same kind of billboard as everything else, because imo objects like the trees and grass should scale normally similar to how DOOM does it

You can see some parallax in the houses in the distance because they're a lot closer than the castle and the mountains, so they really move with the camera. This is imo part of the interesting behavior you'd expect with these kinds of layers.

I know my test is shitty but to be honest I haven't seen one single example that does it this way

This is just a test, I'll add more things later. Meanwhile, follow the actual game I'm currently working on with a lot of actual artists and other talented folks!

first actual attempt at implementing the video -- good job!

Best so far! Hell yeah

you're getting close, trust

dude!!!

I was literally so pissed off at all the comments saying that it's already been done but also the comments saying that it's impossible and it'd break if you turned the camera lol

yours has the most accurate perspective i've seen imo (or that would even work at all). gave me a lot of ideas aesthetically, i honestly think the original videos are going viral because the preference sloptimization machine is simply doing its thing. AI is getting too good

This is the closest I've seen by far! But the major thing I think people want from the concept, are pixel art sprites that render in full 3d and don't just turn to face the camera.

Tbh from all that I really appreciate people testing different methods to achieve this effect. It really shows how hard it is to achieve that!

in a real scenario you can replace the billboard behind a big ass section where you "venture into the city" too all of this is possible with current hardware and enough time, people just aren't creative enough (and people don't have unlimited time either)

Needs more depth and volume for the terrain. Otherwise, pretty cool.

if you can afford a bit of smart interpolation ;-p : → ( this is what we used in first stage, + smart shaders in back stage ). Part of our Proland project

Boss!😎

don't know what I'm looking for but this looks awesome!

i love gamedevs

this is making me sick tbh

I wonder what game mode it would have if I wanted it to go viral these days, that’s usually done with co-op versions.

best demo ive seen so far

Hey this is the first I've seen that's actually close

I reckon they'll still be like "this isn't what we want"

Looks like it can be done lol

Thats the game we want to play!

to replicate the look, you basically need to make a 3D game all 3D as much detail as possible then just apply a camera shader to make the camera output pixelized (literally just a 2D shader) from there restrict colors to any "palette" of choice (you'd have to modify the shader)

This is actually phenomenal. Nice work.

It's missing the composition of the original

I wonder how the guys at Sad Cat Studios are handling their trees for Replaced. Those do look 3D and pixelated at the same time. Maybe that’s why they are mostly silhouettes.

closest I've seen so far, I think the biggest problem is that the hill isn't sloped enough

Y locked billboarding keeps the trees from looking like you are flying

hey can i contribute to this effort?

Yep this is about what I expected it to look like. I have a hard time thinking about how it could be less disorienting

add a more irregular ground level

Go for this art direction and you'll nail it

This is by far the closest to @de5imulate viral post Still far but really really cool 🙏

First genuinely good attempt iv seen so far

Oh man, this is so good! I'm trying to optimise my version for rendering more and more sprites at distance, but I also render all grass as billboards for cooler effect. What tools do you use for making this?