Obiwanshinobi wrote:Voxel art? That would be interesting, but that's not what you're talking about, is it?
Why not, that's also an option, which in fact could obsolete pixel art to a significant extent. The reason it isn't used much (speed & cost) is pretty much the same pixel art isn't being used in modern games aside from static images, and static images don't need third dimension. It's a pity because I love good pixel art. But it's so much harder to make compared to realtime 3D of similar quality that being a realist seems like a more feasible option.
Obiwanshinobi wrote:What I would like to see come true is the good old dotting coupled with vector graphics in some competely new way. No, not polygonal graphics pretending they are 2D (even though I adore Ōkami and like the looks of Love), but crafted 2D lo-res art animated as separate points rather than bitmaps.
Heh, that's a fine piece of technology there. Certainly shows that what I have semi-envisioned is kind of doable with very modest hardware. I just want something that would allow artists to work in low resolutions, but get rid of all scaling artifacts once and for all. Release pixel art from the closure of the past I say. It needs a way to thrive on big modern displays too, not just portable devices.
The constellations analogy was inspired by Space Giraffe and Gridrunner Revolution (and other simple, yet mighty slick implementations of pretty light sources, as in Quake II engine powered games or Jedi Knight). "What if" - I thought - "What if a game had graphics made entirely of stars or sparks and darkness?" Not necessarily abstract graphics, that is. They might be depicting all sorts of stuff.
When I was a child, stars looked like in those early 8-bit space shooters to me, so colourful and twinkling. Then the colours faded away and nowadays the night sky from my memories is to be seen only in Bosconian, Gradius and the likes. So dots are still good for something after all.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
Obiwanshinobi wrote:"What if" - I thought - "What if a game had graphics made entirely of stars or sparks and darkness?" Not necessarily abstract graphics, that is. They might be depicting all sorts of stuff.
When I was a child, stars looked like in those early 8-bit space shooters to me, so colourful and twinkling. Then the colours faded away and nowadays the night sky from my memories is to be seen only in Bosconian, Gradius and the likes. So dots are still good for something after all.
This is my colleague's brother's creation, a free-scrolling first-person hybrid of AudioSurf and Rez. 3D graphics but no polygonal models. Currently one of Steam's bestsellers.
More videos: [1], [2], [3] (this one is seriously crazy).
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
ZacharyB wrote:Hey developers, is 3D easier or cheaper to make? Or did everyone move to 3D because they had to maintain that look, that style, to survive in a modern marketplace?
I think shmups work especially well in 2D because you don't have to animate a lot of sprites (usually..) Just lots of bullet trajectories.
I too am curious about this. Seems like I ran across some page on the web where someone said "using sprites are too expensive"...Really??! Maybe more pain-staking or tedious, but how the hell could it be more expensive than 3D renders, esp. when you throw in things like cut scenes.
Hopefully you all have seen Muramasa: The Demon Blade developed by Vanillaware? Not an STG, more like a side-scrolling action game. Absolutely beautiful sprites.
If we’re talking making one sprite versus one render of a 3D model then, yes, 2D is easier. But that’s not how it plays out.
The easiest example to use here is a fighting game, since it uses a lot of different animations. In a 2D game you have to draw every single frame of animation by hand, whereas in a 3D game you need to make the initial character model then animate by tweaking a skeleton in a process roughly a thousand times easier. You can also start play testing earlier with basic animations, perhaps pulled from a mocap shoot, which produces literally hundreds of animations in a single day. Making the character model can take some time but, unlike 2D, it doesn’t need to be finalised before the animators can start working on it - it just needs a skeleton.
Now let’s say, for example, after play-testing one of your characters kicks is proving too powerful; it’s angled so it hits people from a long distance and is anti-air and is superseding other normals. You want to angle it down slightly so it’s just a long range poke. In a 2D game you need to redraw huge parts of that animation, maybe even all of it. But in 3D it’ll take a couple of seconds to make it representative of its hitbox (rotate leg bone) and a bit longer for any other cosmetic changes as the leg is moved down (new hand positions, spine rotation, whatever)
3D cutscenes are expensive and hard to do, but you’ll notice that 2D equivalents don’t exist! Likewise a lot of modern 2D games cut corners wherever possible, mainly because the volume of work compared to older games is much higher. Muramasa makes its characters out of many parts and animates through rotation, scaling and warping tricks over supplying a new graphic as much as possible. BlazBlue used 3D models for a base of all its animations and then, once they were working, were drawn over by 2D artists. King of Fighters 12-13 does this too, though SNKP vary in honesty about it between interviews.
The expense comes from the standard Time is Money mantra. 2D art just takes much, much longer requiring you to hire more people or take longer to develop, and requires artists with more specialised skillsets.
This is my colleague's brother's creation, a free-scrolling first-person hybrid of AudioSurf and Rez. 3D graphics but no polygonal models. Currently one of Steam's bestsellers.
More videos: [1], [2], [3] (this one is seriously crazy).
Phew, yeah, quite. Although it's pretty abstract, it looks good and I believe those who are modelling the soles of soldiers' boots for another Medal of Honor would rather be working on something like that if only it was where the big money is.
Reminds me of Vib-Ribbon in a way.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
