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Someone Explain This Too Me....

Zep

Banned
I was looking at some threads on here, and the topic of 2d vs 3d has become about money.

For instance, in the Castlevania thread people are saying its very costly to make a hi res 2d game. I dont understand how that is...Can someone explain why it would cost more?
 
Higher Res Sprites = More Drawing, More Details = More Money

Same goes for 3D, hence why the industry is going through a consolidation trend.
 
Suikoguy said:
Higher Res Sprites = More Drawing, More Details = More Money

Same goes for 3D, hence why the industry is going through a consolidation trend.


so, its basically laziness? Or Am I Mistaken? Is it that companies dont wanna take the time for development, and be afraid of the game not selling?
 
DaddyZ said:
so, its basically laziness? Or Am I Mistaken? Is it that companies dont wanna take the time for development, and be afraid of the game not selling?
What do you mean? It basically costs more to make a low-res 2D game than a hi-res 2D game. Big game companies don't care how much stuff takes to develop and how expensive it is, they just make sure it sells.
 
If Big Companies (Konami) didnt care, then why release a 3d castlevania game that would turn people away? Im sure SOTN sold a lot more...so why release that and now only make 3d Castlevania's?

It doesnt make sense.
 
It's not about 2D versus 3D, it's about low-res versus high-res. For the Castlevania games, they can continue to re-use sprite and background assets, with significant savings on art costs. Going to the PSP or a next-gen system means that they hafta draw a whole new library of high-rez visual assets, which, while I think it would be worth it in the long term, demands an initial outlay of cash they can't justify to management or the shareholders.

3D games can re-use assets such as texture maps quite easily and impact the look/style of a game less. Plus 3D is still an easier sell, especially with fuckwads like the current approval team at SCEA around.
 
It's really a shame - we finally have consoles powerful enough to handle the incredibly smooth, high-resolution 2D animation we've wanted for years, but we'll never see it since it's not considered viable anymore.

I look at all the amazing detail present in lo-res games like Metal Slug - follow-through on hair and clothing, soldiers using bolt-action rifles going through elaborate reload animations, huge multilayered bosses pulsing with life - and imagine what it could look like now. It brings a tear to my eye.
 
yeah high res 2d is just incredibly time intensive.

Is high res 2D that much more difficult than low-res? I'd imagine if it's being scanned in, it can't be very different at all.
 
Tain said:
Is high res 2D that much more difficult than low-res? I'd imagine if it's being scanned in, it can't be very different at all.

The good stuff isn't scanned in, its laboriously hand plotted. Games you see like Metal Slug with those gorgeous crisp backgrounds are pretty well colored in pixel by pixel. Now take the time it takes to do that x4 because you are working in 640x480 instead of 320x240.

If developers used photoshop or Painter to do backgrounds it would make things quicker but there is a whole new sort of formula to making the art that has to be designed when going to that sort of a look.

It comes down to the demands of the market and the profit and loss sheets for these concepts. 2D on a large scale isn't viable unless the market changes or someone takes a gamble and creates a huge hit.
 
I think you can look at cartoons like this too. I doubt there are anymore hand-drawn cartoons made anymore. Most of todays cartoons are usually done on computer. I mean hell, Kingdom Hearts (a disney game) is in 3D. I don't mind if there aren't anymore 2D games made, but people better not forget the classics. That's all I ask.
 
Making a 2D does not really cost more. It's only because it will sell less. It's only a risk/sales question.
Drawing the arts for a 2D game take the time you have with the modeling and texturing in a 3D game. It does not cost more.
 
We'll see what's up with Metal Slug 6. Supposed to be on AtomisWave, so I guess it's gonna be higher rez than the old Neo Geo ones...... at least... I hope.

Guilty Gear is a great example of how good a game can look in 2D now.

I still say that someone should make a budget console that would be optimized for 2D gaming in high rez and come out with only 2D games for it. I would buy it in a heartbeat (AtomisWave in console format could ressemble this).
 
Have you ever wondered why high detailed SVGA PC games like Baulders Gate came on 5 disks but Fully 3D great looking games can still only use one CD to install? High-Res 2D graphic art takes up waaaaaaayy more space than polygons and textures which can be insanely overly repeated and reused with not as much detailed due to depth of perception. If someone were to make a high-res CV game they would have to model every frame of every character by hand to keep it fluid. Even the highly touted Guilty Gear games have less animation sprites than SF3:Third Strike. While with 3D models all you normally have to do is draw and program one model then the animators just program the movements by meshing the joints of the character. There is an obvious sacrifice. High-res bitmaps can contain hundreds of thousands of different colors and pixel variations while a polygon texture can be as low as 8-bit color depth with decent results.

If you look at a lot of 3D games most textures on a wall or rock or objects have a very low pallette whith a few different hues of the same color. This can save an amazing amount of space when creating 3D worlds and enviroments because their are so many tricks one can use to make a game look better than what the engine is actually capable. With 2D you can't cheat the same way you can in 3D so there are no real shortcuts for creating awsome looking high-res bitmaps especially ones that can scroll and animate instead of static backdrops like say the ones in Final Fantasy 7.
 
RuGalz said:
That system is dead, it's called Dreamcast. lol AtomisWave is just a repackaged DC nothing new there.
Yeah, but AtomisWave is cartridge based, and there are still games in development for it.
 
eshwaaz said:
It's really a shame - we finally have consoles powerful enough to handle the incredibly smooth, high-resolution 2D animation we've wanted for years, but we'll never see it since it's not considered viable anymore.

Well, i'd expect more Viewtiful Joe style 2.5D stuff in the future. It looks 2D but it isn't. Just up the resolution to 720p and there you have your "incredibly smooth, high-resolution 2D animation"
 
Warm Machine said:
The good stuff isn't scanned in, its laboriously hand plotted. Games you see like Metal Slug with those gorgeous crisp backgrounds are pretty well colored in pixel by pixel. Now take the time it takes to do that x4 because you are working in 640x480 instead of 320x240.

If developers used photoshop or Painter to do backgrounds it would make things quicker but there is a whole new sort of formula to making the art that has to be designed when going to that sort of a look.

It comes down to the demands of the market and the profit and loss sheets for these concepts. 2D on a large scale isn't viable unless the market changes or someone takes a gamble and creates a huge hit.

This man has it right. It's not about drawing it on paper and scanning it in at higher res. Nosireebob. If you compiled a 2D fighting game where someone drew on paper with pencil and marker, then scanned it in, the differences between the drawing quality of the frames would be too jarring.

2D fighting games are colored per pixel by hand, and is incredibly time consuming. Think of drawing a fully colored picture of Ryu on MS Paint, pixel by pixel. Then make series of those colored drawing that moves, but each frame of Ryu cannot vear away from the precise design/look. That's the kind of craziness we are talking about. This is why Capcom reuses the same sprites over and over and over........
 
Additionally, people just arent trained in those kind of skills like they used to be. So the ones that have the skills are going to cost more. I also think doing hi-res 2D for a large scale action/adventure game would would be a lot more time consuming than a fighting game.


speaking of 2D, well used to be http://www.amegames.com/vs/gallery.htm
 
Would it be possible to make a game like metal slug in 3d but only show it from one perspective so it appears to only be 2d? Is it possible to make a 3d game appear 2d and keep the aestetics that 2d provides?
 
Any1 said:
Would it be possible to make a game like metal slug in 3d but only show it from one perspective so it appears to only be 2d? Is it possible to make a 3d game appear 2d and keep the aestetics that 2d provides?

Sort of like the Smash Bros. games?
 
Shogmaster said:
This man has it right. It's not about drawing it on paper and scanning it in at higher res. Nosireebob. If you compiled a 2D fighting game where someone drew on paper with pencil and marker, then scanned it in, the differences between the drawing quality of the frames would be too jarring.

2D fighting games are colored per pixel by hand, and is incredibly time consuming. Think of drawing a fully colored picture of Ryu on MS Paint, pixel by pixel. Then make series of those colored drawing that moves, but each frame of Ryu cannot vear away from the precise design/look. That's the kind of craziness we are talking about. This is why Capcom reuses the same sprites over and over and over........

It's not that drastic...

artists draw lofi characters on paper, scan it in, and do their best to block in the colors and shapes of the sprites...

the problem is once that's done, the fine tuning is a killer; having to mess around with pixels to get the edges looking right, as well as keeping within the color limitations...

that said, with the PS3 or X360, it might be possible to simply scan in art at high resolutions resize it to a reasonable size and then have the hardware the scaling and resizing in real time, as well as displaying it at high colors and alpha based anti aliasing on the edges.
But even with that, the workload isn't drastically reduced, just alot of the technical skill in exploiting sprites (with the limited resolution and palette) becomes... outdated.
 
nathkenn said:
Additionally, people just arent trained in those kind of skills like they used to be. So the ones that have the skills are going to cost more. I also think doing hi-res 2D for a large scale action/adventure game would would be a lot more time consuming than a fighting game.


speaking of 2D, well used to be http://www.amegames.com/vs/gallery.htm

... the character in that is 3D...
 
"well used to be" it was originally planned to be 2D but turned 3D due to time/money. I think some of the people from MI3 are working on it
 
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