The inconsistency of 3D art in modern shooters

[neoalphazero]

I've played Zero Gunner 2 for the past few days and have to commend Psikyo, the game's textures and art have held up well in the four years since it's release. Revisiting the game after a month with Trizeal and Gigawing Generations has added to that appreciation. The shift from 2D to 3D art in shooters hasn't been very smooth, whether it's technical or a matter or time and money alot of companies are not performing at the level that today's hardware is capable of. We've seen Naomi get a thorough running with Border Down, Shikigami, Psyvariar 2, and Ikaruga plus Gradius V and R-Type Final have pushed the PS2 quite a bit. But then we've also had:

Night Raid- Abstract or no, there's really nothing memorable about this game.

Cho Aniki PS2- The PCE games actually looked GOOD. They presented a odd fantastic art style but great color and unique designs. The PS2 game seems to see itself as a joke and nothing more, levels lack unique themes, have little color (though it gets better later), and feature run of the mill enemies like eels and monkeys in trees. Enemies used from previous games look horrid, the entire game looks cheap.

Shienryu Explosion- Some nice color and a peachment for rotating levels doesn't save the game from being repetiitive and non-descript.

Chaos Field- From the second the attract screen appears and you see that lump of a mothership, you know you're in for a treat. Geometric bosses against PSone backgrounds. Nice.

Gigawing Generations- What the hell happened to Takumi? The great character designs are axed and despite being a faster game, Generations is visually inconsistent compared to Gigawing 2. The entire game is bits and pieces of the other games, the effects are amatuer photoshop junk, and the designs are unrefined. Granted I like the bullet patterns and Takumi's use of depth in levels but that doesn't make up for the faults.

Trizeal- Yeah, the colors are nice and simple graphics give the game a retro quality. It's a PSone game and completey sub-par graphically. The company boosts a whooping four employees, which is the blessing and curse. The game probably didn't cost much to produce but it also is clear the game was made by a small team who needed the game out to pay the bills (as they told us).

And maybe that's the general problem. That without the backing of larger companies or a extremely marketable franchise (I'm thinking Shikigami) that shooters will not maintain a certain graphical standard that 2D art afforded, as the investment by a group will not be met by consumer response and therefore cuts in art and design will continue.

Enough ranting. Your thoughts? *-neo

[raiden]

my bottom line is I try to keep away from the 3d stuff. 2d is much more reliable.

[LUNardei]

my bottom line is I try to keep away from the 3d stuff. 2d is much more reliable.

This is my idea too...

[it290]

Well, given the (lack of) popularity of shmups today, I hate to say it, but I think 3d art is the way to go for smaller companies. You mentioned some games with average/bad 3d art, but there are plenty of 2d games like that, too.

3d art can get you better results in less time, since you don't have to animate every frame. And, as you mentioned, it can look really good given if done properly. I'll always prefer highly detailed 2d art, but in a game like Trizeal, I really think the 3d graphics (even though they're kinda weak) are better than what could have been produced with equivalent time/money in 2d, unless you had a very talented artist.

[Dandy J]

It all comes down to art direction. Good art direction and talent, it's going to look good, if not, it won't. Like Ikagura, for example; Treasure has great art direction and is very talented. If Mr. i-suck-at-art wants to make a game these days, he's gonna go with 3D. If this was 10 years ago, he would make the same shitty game in 2D, and it would suck just as much.

The fact that 3D art seems more inconsistent is because, like it290 said, 3D is more common/popular these days. There are significantly more artists who know the ins and outs of 3D modeling and animation than those that are talented with 2D. Whether they are good or not just comes down to the good:crap ratio. 99% of all games these days are 3D, so there is going to be more 3D crap.

[visuatrox]

my bottom line is I try to keep away from the 3d stuff. 2d is much more reliable.

Amen!, it takes several times the budget and skill to make a 3D game look as good as a 2D. And with shmups do we really even need realtime 3D?, pre-rendered sprites look 3D enough for me

[dai jou bu]

It all comes down to art direction. Good art direction and talent, it's going to look good, if not, it won't. Like Ikagura, for example; Treasure has great art direction and got some 3D engine expertese from G.Rev.

Fixed it for you.

Mentioning G.Rev makes me want to play Senkou no Ronde.

[Blade]

2.5D all the way for me.

Sure the ships and stuff can be rendered in 3D, but the game should stay Non-Isometric. Backgrounds, sure 3D is good, but that's it.

Ikaruga is a perfect example of this.

[CMoon]

but the game should stay Non-Isometric.

It bothers me ever so slightly that in Trizeal the laser bends toward the center of the screen. This doesn't effect game mechanics in any other way and your ship doesn't drift toward the center or anything like that. But it is almost like they were THINKING about taking the Raycrisis route (or whatever) then just made it cosmetic instead. *whew!* Another crisis narrowly avoided (haha, I make a funny!)

[it290]

Amen!, it takes several times the budget and skill to make a 3D game look as good as a 2D. And with shmups do we really even need realtime 3D?, pre-rendered sprites look 3D enough for me Smile

I disagree entirely -- there are a lot fewer capable pixel artists in the the world today than there are 3d artists. And as I mentioned above, 3d animation is much less time consuming than 2d after all your models are completed.

Sure the ships and stuff can be rendered in 3D, but the game should stay Non-Isometric. Backgrounds, sure 3D is good, but that's it.

I know you mean 'isometric' as in Zaxxon, etc., but isometric in 3d terms actually means a lack of perspective warpiung -- Ikaruga for instance has an isometric viewpoint, if it didn't, you would (for example) see the ship get smaller and see more of its sides on the edges of the screen, whereas with an isometric viewpoint you're dealing with a 'flat' lens.

[icepick]

[It really does come down to artistic direction, in my opinion. I had the whole of the below text typed up before I remembered that this was about general 3D graphical quality trends, not the "3D vs 2D" beaten-to-death debate. 2D's well-established, 3D less so, time and funding (and experience) are deciding factors. Speaking of Trizeal; In the S.O.S., the writer mentions having just gotten into 3D (if I understand correctly), and I think that you actually already answered that one for yourself. MileStone are new too, but I can't speak for the others that you mentioned.

Moss are new (right?), but Raiden III had some experienced higher direction going for it (unless I'm mistaken). The first Psyvariar (at least the background aspect) looks rather plain in comparison to Psyvariar 2. Triangle Service's next scroll shooting game will probably look better than Trizeal for a number of reasons, and this (aside from being addicted to shmups) is one of the reasons that I'd really like it if they decided to produce another one for their next title (for closer comparison). They seem to have a lot of projects in the wings already, though, so they'll probably appear as they should--Mostly as though they had been produced on a very small budget, since they indeed have been.

So, anyway. I'll leave my previous text in case it's of any interest.]

I like it how in Ikaruga (from what I've seen in movies) there is a clear sense of depth, but this is possible in 2D rendering as well (as I noticed in the "sky base" level of Giga Wing, and thought was pretty cool!). I like how immersive Border Down's levels are, making you feel as though you're actually flying through a futuristic city instead of on top of a picture of one, but then, I've never played a 2D-rendered scroll shooting game with multiple scrolling backgrounds (a la Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis/Mega Drive, one of my favoritest games ever) and I'm sure that I'd like that just as much.

I like it how the backgrounds in Perfect Cherry Blossom (only seen the first couple of levels) are 3D, but have somewhat of a 2D quality. I'm thinking that games will probably trend towards such hybrids (in the artistic aspect), where it's 3D-rendered but not done in the obvious vanilla fashion, until it gets to the point where you know (for a fact) that something is 3D-rendered but if you had no prior knowledge, you wouldn't know how it was rendered. That, in my opinion, would be excellent.

It bothers me ever so slightly that in Trizeal the laser bends toward the center of the screen. This doesn't effect game mechanics in any other way and your ship doesn't drift toward the center or anything like that.

I just noticed that myself, the other day--I thought that there was something wrong with my TV!

I think that they did that so that you could move half of your ship off of the screen to the sides, and still be shooting onto the screen, if you know what I mean. It looks funny, but I think that it actually does affect gameplay, but for the better. If it went straight ahead, you'd either be shooting only one laser onto the screen when you move all the way to the right or left (on the lower part of the screen), or they'd probably have made it so that you couldn't move [the hitbox] as close to the sides of the screen as you can.

[qatmix]

3D art does save a lot of time and effort compared to drawing 2d sprites. Obviously even with 2D you can do rotation and scalling of sprites. However 3d for a shooter gives alot of free and easy depth and animation. For example on time hunter if it want to do a spinnign box I would need to draw these frams by hand, and thats a time consuming task. whereas with 3D I would just need to Build and texture the sides of a cube which are displayed.

Obvioulsy with 3D you have the problem of frame rate, you could draw elaborate detailed backgrounds in 2D and a machine would easily cope, but Even TypeX woudl struggel with a really Hight detailed Backgorund geometry and Hundreds detailed 3d objects ont eh screen and keep the game runnign silky smooth.

So its horses for courses. In the 18 years that I've been working in vodeogames Ive done a huge amount of art in both 2d and 3d. I enjoy both and think shooters can look great in 3d (Ikaruga/GradiusV) and also 2D ( Gunbird 2, Parodius)

Timehunter is 2d and thats great for the look of the game which we want to implement. The next game will probably be 3d but thats because the style of the game will benefit from it.

[Darkcomet72]

3D art does save a lot of time and effort compared to drawing 2d sprites. Obviously even with 2D you can do rotation and scalling of sprites. However 3d for a shooter gives alot of free and easy depth and animation. For example on time hunter if it want to do a spinnign box I would need to draw these frams by hand, and thats a time consuming task. whereas with 3D I would just need to Build and texture the sides of a cube which are displayed.

Obvioulsy with 3D you have the problem of frame rate, you could draw elaborate detailed backgrounds in 2D and a machine would easily cope, but Even TypeX woudl struggel with a really Hight detailed Backgorund geometry and Hundreds detailed 3d objects ont eh screen and keep the game runnign silky smooth.

So its horses for courses. In the 18 years that I've been working in vodeogames Ive done a huge amount of art in both 2d and 3d. I enjoy both and think shooters can look great in 3d (Ikaruga/GradiusV) and also 2D ( Gunbird 2, Parodius)

Timehunter is 2d and thats great for the look of the game which we want to implement. The next game will probably be 3d but thats because the style of the game will benefit from it.

AGREE.

3D offeres a wider amount of possibilities for shmups, especially in level design. I would love to see more shmups using 3D to it's fullest potential for level design. A Perfect example of this is TRIZEAL stage 5's bridges, when you go down the corridor. The bridges can come up and you can crash into them. I haven't played R-type final, but I heard that the level design involves background objects, too.

The biggest problem with 3D shmups these days is that very few of the games actually take advantage of the 3D for interesting level design. Most 3D shmups can be done in 2D. Hopefully, more developers will see 3D as a interesting tool for more innovative GLD(Gameplay and Level Design).

[alpha5099]

I'm not a big fan of 3D graphics in general, just because of the push for photorealism. It makes it very difficult sometimes. I've had some heated arguments trying to explain why Perfect Dark and GoldenEye are better than the crap I'm forced to play with friends, some who insist those old games are "unplayable" because of the graphics.

Only very recently have 3D graphics really been presentable. Lots of people seem to oggle some of the 3D effects these days, but I rarely see the big deal. They've lost all charm, and they still have a ways to go if they intend to push the photorealism as far as they can (which they shouldn't).

Two games that do impress me with their 3D graphics are Thunder Force V and Rez. TFV is ancient, but I still really like it. Looking at just the last few levels, it's design is very similar to Rez. Lots of cyberspace visuals. I really like it. Abstract forms are very nice.

[WarpZone]

A Perfect example of this is TRIZEAL stage 5's bridges, when you go down the corridor. The bridges can come up and you can crash into them.

I'm not familiar with that example; however, I had felt that was one of the more problematic ways to integrate 3D. The player has to take into account approaching objects from the background, and it can be difficult to determine when they intersect the 2D plane- especially true with lone projectiles. Also as R-Type Final demonstrates, it can be a problem with walls and barriers where it's difficult to tell how close to a wall you can actually get, and how much space you have to maneuver.

Still, these problems can be overcome. Sin & Punishment (though not a 2D shooter in the strictest sense) has an audio beep when projectiles come within range to be deflected. Gradius V's texture artists also ensured that a line was "painted" across the texture at the place where it intersects the plane, so you can always tell how close you are to a collision.

Anyway, I'm indifferent to a sprite-based or polygonal approach. Both have been shown to be valid choices in the past.

[Frogacuda]

The company boosts a whooping four employees, which is the blessing and curse. The game probably didn't cost much to produce but it also is clear the game was made by a small team who needed the game out to pay the bills (as they told us).

Not really an excuse, considering the core Ikaruga team was 3 people, and the Border Down team was 5 people. The fact is that there seems to be no correlation between team size and graphical quality in shmups with 3D graphics.

Truth be told, it's probably more expensive to produce the kind of high-end 2D graphics we see in newer cave games. Cave is one of the largest shmup developers around with over 90 employees, so they can afford to do that.

[it290]

IMO, the graphic quality in Trizeal has more to do with programming and less with the actual art. The textures and models aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the style is nice enough. The game engine struggles with slowdown enough as it is- if the programmer had been able to push more polygons and more/better quality textures, I'm sure the game would look nicer.

[BrianC]

The company boosts a whooping four employees, which is the blessing and curse. The game probably didn't cost much to produce but it also is clear the game was made by a small team who needed the game out to pay the bills (as they told us).

Not really an excuse, considering the core Ikaruga team was 3 people, and the Border Down team was 5 people. The fact is that there seems to be no correlation between team size and graphical quality in shmups with 3D graphics.

Truth be told, it's probably more expensive to produce the kind of high-end 2D graphics we see in newer cave games. Cave is one of the largest shmup developers around with over 90 employees, so they can afford to do that.

Sometimes small teams can perform amazing things. Many of the Activision Atari 2600 games were designed by one person, especially the shmups. However, they are some of the best looking and playing games on the system. Super Turrican for the NES (not a typo) was designed by one person and turned out amazing.

[qatmix]

The Ikaruga main team was small, but the Art was actually contracted out to Grev and another art team.

Im not taking anythign away from the comments, I just thought you should know

Also Turrican on the Nes was a port form the original version. All of the GFX had been drawn and then converted to the NES. This was quite a simple job and ususlly the dev tools would do 80% of the work and the rest would just be simple touching up.

As to the activision 2600 games, You will find that most 2600 games were written by one man, Its quite common for even most 8 bit titles to be done by a one man team as well.

Cheers

[dai jou bu]

I do believe Rayforce is the only game that has successfully illustrated three-dimensional depth only using sprites, especially with that lock-on laser. The game still impresses me even today, and it's over ten years old.

[SheSaidDutch]

Star Monkey from Small Rockets seems to hold up pretty well IMO
considering the graphics, but they still retain a certain charm.

[WarpZone]

The Ikaruga main team was small, but the Art was actually contracted out to Grev and another art team.

According to the credits, director/composer H. Iuchi did the background art, and D. Suzuki did the enemies and objects. They are two of the main three- the other being a programmer.

I'm curious as to how exactly G-rev contributed to the game, though it's clear they didn't do the main artwork.

[Frogacuda]

The Ikaruga main team was small, but the Art was actually contracted out to Grev and another art team.

Not true. There was one solitary G. Rev employee who helped on the background art, but most of the backgrounds were tetured by Iuchi himself, and the models and foreground textures were done by Yasushi Suzuki, the character artist/illustrator.

The was also another G.Rev employee credited as "sub-programmer". That's it. The vast majority of the work was done by Iuchi, Nakagawa, and Suzuki. Murata did sound effects and 2 G.Rev guys helped. That's it. It was done on a shoestring, but it still looks fantastic, just because the people doing it were talented. That's what it comes down to.

[D]

Anybody seen Guilty Gear X (and above) in action?
To my knowledge one of the few games that use High Res.

Perhaps some day in the FUTURE (as if this hadn't been possible for a long time allready) we will get high res 2D shooters.

Sammy, go ahead, base a shmup on the Gealty Gear franchise.
Call it "Guilty Gear Shot" for all I care.


that would be really nice.

[Skyline]

It bothers me ever so slightly that in Trizeal the laser bends toward the center of the screen. This doesn't effect game mechanics in any other way and your ship doesn't drift toward the center or anything like that.

I just noticed that myself, the other day--I thought that there was something wrong with my TV!

I think that they did that so that you could move half of your ship off of the screen to the sides, and still be shooting onto the screen, if you know what I mean. It looks funny, but I think that it actually does affect gameplay, but for the better. If it went straight ahead, you'd either be shooting only one laser onto the screen when you move all the way to the right or left (on the lower part of the screen), or they'd probably have made it so that you couldn't move [the hitbox] as close to the sides of the screen as you can.

Actually, the game sorta did take "The RayStorm Route".

While playing, just travel up the side of the screen. You'll notice that not only does your ship start banking towards the center a bit (at the top left of the screen, you'd be in between the words "1P" and "SCORE") but that it'll be a bit smaller.

The playfield is like a trapezoid, with slght object scaling. When the lasers bend, they're just staying in relation to your player's position. It's more noticeable when you're playing in Yoko.

[Recap]

Anybody seen Guilty Gear X (and above) in action?
To my knowledge one of the few games that use High Res.

Perhaps some day in the FUTURE (as if this hadn't been possible for a long time allready) we will get high res 2D shooters.

La Petite Princesse for PS2 is going to have true hi res 2D graphics. Some things will be 3D, thoe.

Sammy, go ahead, base a shmup on the Gealty Gear franchise.
Call it "Guilty Gear Shot" for all I care.

It's rumored that the GG authors, Arc System Works, are working on a classic shooting game called provisionally Damu Deva.

[captain ahar]

i really have to dig up my copy of ikaruga again. never got farther than stage 3.

[qatmix]

Time Hunter is also in Hi-Res

[kemical]

it would be interesting if cave went the realtime 3d route in the future, i wonder if they would actually do things differently than the rest. (meaning correctly).

you go 3d if you want to do more detail and interactivity, not less, currently (imo of what i've played and seen at least) 3d shooters lack the detail of 2d shooters (as far as whats there and how your brain fills in other stuff as being there) and they also lack the interactivity they should have when compared to what 2d shooters already do and sense of weight/mass or whatever it is that a good 2d shooter has in it's backgrounds/foregrounds that make it feel right.
(they need to get rid of the swooping camera movements that dont relate to your ship's movement that break the whole interactivity/in the world feel, or they should compensate for it with more interactivity or make it gameplay related.. they just in effect make 3d a gimmick when really it shouldn;'t be)

a good example of 3d done nicely in a game that could be 2d would be the 3d backgrounds in mvsc2 ? or whatever the newer capcom fighters are with higher res sprites on 3d bg..


a good 3d shooter doesn;t have to be photorealistic either, I think the general problem of 3d shooters doesn't even relate to how the artwork looks, it's more related to what is lacking that should be there and also poorly chosen camera rides/movement that make you feel disconnected from the background rather than existing in it.


i think i mrambling..