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Here’s your monthly dose of Icarus Wing’s wisdom. This week, as you may have guessed from my snazzy graphic, I’m going to be discussing the age old dilemma of sprites versus models. No, not a wrestling match between a popular lemon flavoured drink and a group of scantily clad beauties, either. It’s a tale as old as time… well, it goes way back to when Quake was released anyway. Although the majority of us would now concede that DooM is the superior game, back then many of us, me included, went all “gee-whiz” at the snazzy 3D graphics that Quake could provide us with.
| HOWEVER PRETTY SOMETHING LOOKS, IT'S THE GAMEPLAY THAT COUNTS |
Now, call me naïve, but I was only about 15 (I think), maybe less, when Quake came out, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass about multiple floors. In fact, DooM was so well constructed that I didn’t notice it didn’t have multiple floors. What amazed me about Quake were the models. They weren’t sprites, like in DooM. They were 3D – you could see them from every angle. Forgive me going al “gee-whiz” again, but it was big news back then.
 | | A shot from the model heavy ZanZan |
Today, it’s not big news. Every game has models, with more polygons than you can shake a super-shotgun at. Quake 3: Arena has ‘em. Half-Life has ‘em. Diablo has ‘em. They’re all great games – but none of them are as much fun as DooM. Which suggests that however pretty something looks, it’s the game-play that counts… in other words, you can polish a turd all you like, but it’s still a turd.
Now, of course, we can have 3D models in DooM, either as an alternative way of playing some of the ports (ZDooMGL or Doomsday, for example) or as a way of adding that little bit of spice to our TCs (take the awesome ZanZan and the forever upcoming Ninja DooM).
 | | The title screen from Adventures of Massmouth, which features some great sprites |
But what’s the point if you agree with me and say that game-play is all-important and eye candy comes second. Well, it’s always nice to looks at a pleasing graphic, plus it takes a lot more time and effort to produce a decent model with nice animations than it does to draw something in paintbrush. I don’t mean to demean the work of artists who produce really nice sprites, it’s just it’s a lot easier to make a crappy sprite than it is a crappy model.
So, in the end, which way do we go? Well, that depends. If you feel that all these DooM mods are making the engine into Quake, then stick with Sprites. There are lots of good ones out there – especially those old favourites, the DooM monsters. And if you’ve got a fast enough computer to run ZanZan, more power to you. The decision, as they say, is yours.
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