/v/ - Video Games

>>13887899

>why do things that are hard to make less plentiful than those that aren't?

Gee OP, I don't know.

Gee it's almost as if 2D animation is incredibly hard and taxing and requires a lot of very talented people, and also that fighting games don't make back nearly enough money nowadays to justify that cost and work

>>13887899

Because not every game plays on a flat 2 dimensional plane?

>>13887950

Damn this is a good post

How do I give upvotes on this website?

>>13887969

You're already upvoting this great thread so have an upvote yourself.

I don't know but it's always been my position that 2D mechanics deserve 2D graphics. Not because they necessarily look better or anything like that, but because it's more intuitive to ascertain collision zones when action on a 2D plane is represented with 2D art. Some of the most appalling crap I've ever seen is in games like Darius Burst where they throw and asteroid stage at you and you're expected to know which part of this round, 3D object can kill you and which parts are just background.

>>13887905

>>13887943

And yet 2D animated games still cost less to make than 3D ones and making 3D CGI costs more than making hand drawn animation.

So it's not that.

>>13887959

Yeah but a lot of them do and the ones that do still tend to be in 3D.

>>13888194

>And yet 2D animated games still cost less to make than 3D ones

Depends on the scale of the project and the quality of the animation, doesn't it?

>>13888203

Yes. Drawing by frame at "modern" resolutions is extremely costly compared to moving around a 3D model.

>>13888199

>a lot of them do

Only the indie games though. And most of those with 2D gameplay have 2D graphics.

>>13888210

Yet Street fighter 4 and 5 cost more to make than 3rd strike and Disney 2D movies cost less than 3D ones.

>>13888194

>And yet 2D animated games still cost less to make than 3D ones

Wrong.

Bad pixel art games cost less than 3D games to make. Hand drawn pixel art of the level presented in OP is extremely expensive, just like classic animation in movies.

>>13888230

>Wrong

Skull girls cost less to make than Street fighter 5.

>>13888230

>>13888244

Also 2D weeb anime fighters cost less to make than Injustice despite looking far better.

>>13888244

That's because the game shipped with only 9 characters

It's hard to say why exactly Street Fighter 4 and 5 might be so expensive, but SNK and Arc System Works have both cited cost as the reason they finally sold the fuck out and switched to 3D.

>>13888194

>And yet 2D animated games still cost less to make than 3D ones

They don't

Where did you get this horseshit from?

>making 3D CGI costs more than making hand drawn animation

It doesn't.

>>13888270

>>13888274

>3 times less characters

Street fighter 5 released with only 16 and Skull girls only cost 1.6 million to make which is far less than SFV.

>>13887899

The character models in that game are so awful.

>>13888300

Street Fighter's budget, of course, wasn't exclusively spent on animation you fucking dummy.

The game is far more complex than Skull Girls, especially in the single player part of it.

Skull Girls doesn't even have alternate costumes as far as I know, it's just recolors, the bare fucking minimum

>>13888304

You do realize that those budgets include the marketing price right?

>>13888381

Actually it doesn't. They count marketing and other costs separate. That is why Justice League is only listed as 300 million when it cost 600 million total. Even if that is the case it's not like Disney didn't market their other movies and Aladdin only cost 26 million to make.

>>13888366

>I rather play a game that looks a bit ugly but is complete than a beautiful game that's unfinished and filled with cut corners.

This, 2d animation is great but in a videogame the thing that should be prioritized is the gameplay

>>13888404

of course the first number is in millions, I wouldn't put it beyond you to think the budget for Snow White was 500 dollars seeing the shit you're saying

>>13888366

The only reason it was cheaper is because it used really ugly 3D graphics. It's far cheaper to make a game if it looks like it is running on a ps2.

>>13888404

>Every single source of information.

Except all those sources I put in that proved otherwise.

>lol no, this really big budget sequel

Tanlged wasn't a sequel anon.

You lose again.

>Inflation

I knew you would bring that up. Aladdin only cost 40 million to make adjusted for inflation making it cheaper than any of Disneys 3D movies.

>>13888356

Skullgirls is actually pretty legit and intensive in it's animation, it went for a cartoony nature, sure, but the sheer amount of frames involved outstripped a ton of fighting games that used 2d to date.

There's also a recent trend of positioning 3d models and tracing them to save planning time, so it's even cheaper that way. Hell, Guilty Gear Xrd basically took that and did it halfway, using frame key animation to simulate 2d anims, and that was an experiment.

2D animation is a dying art. There's not much of a supply for good 2D animators, especially if you want to have them in-house.

You also have to consider how the development cycle works. A team specializing in 3D can always pump out assets for other games once they are done with another. Your 2D animator is gonna be useless half the time if you're working on something like an FPS unless he also happens to be excellent at 3D.

It's easier to reuse 3D assets like textures, animations and so on without it being blatant. Even if you could get away with reusing the same sprites over and over again, you're not gonna be able to do that all the time unless you're making only 2D games.

>ugly indie pixel art

It's not my fault its all I can do.

>>13888194

Hollow Knight was made on a shoestring budget

>>13888495

Depends on what you consider shoestring, it received about 57k Australian dollars on Kickstarter

>what's with 2D games not using 2D graphics?

Modern GPUs completely lack 2D acceleration, and any form of 2D is emulated.

>>13888442

It's not impossible.

Brazil's accumulated inflation from the late 19th century to the late 20th century is 4 quadrillion %. The country went from the medieval money printer it was to random south american shithole.

>all this shit about cost

It's about time, not cost. Hand-drawn takes a fucking long time. Skullgirls took years and years to make. Just look at weebshit. Redline, a hand-drawn animated movie took 7 years to make, meanwhile these days they can pump out this 3D CGI shit like nothing.

>>13888483

Yeah basically 2D animation relies on the talent, will and stamina of a small pool of people, whereas 3d assets can be mocapped and animated over and over again by an army of comparitavely less talented people all over the world

>>13889017

Strangely though 2D animation is still cheaper per person. You can buy experienced 2D animators who work for minimum wage but all mocap, modelers and riggers cost career level prices because they require computer skills.

Why did they do that to Raven? Fucking hell NRS is such shit.

2d is dead in America. The days of hand drawn animation that is fluid and looks nice is over as 3d has become the norm. Now all you get is flash shit.

>>13888816

It's the whole mentality that games in 3D are "cooler" compared to 2D games that are cartoony and "for kids".

It's this idiotic fucking mentality the west has that treats anything with hand drawn style to it as kids shit while pushing out CGI and 3D games because it's mature and cooooool.

It's why despite CGI being more expensive to work with despite traditional animation companies still push for 3D because it's what sells not because it's cost effective like you're saying in your post.

>>13889125

>that reddit spacing

Jesus fucking christ im so sorry 8chan.

>>13889137

Honestly the boxes fuck my typing up and I feel like it's a legit looking paragraph then I post it and ..yeah no damn excuse.

>>13889125

No. Nothing you said is correct.

>>13889125

It's all because of Disney. They think 2D doesn't sell well because they had one flop movie that was 2D animated (The one with the black princesses) and therefore they quite on all 2D animation and since everyone follows disney so too did everyone else.

>>13889510

>and style

Meant to say in style.

>>13889510

>4. 3D animation was a mistake and 3D animators are to be mocked and spat upon.

The old generation of animators had hobbys like Ballet, the new generation of animators should be mocked because they have no skillset with a medium that is actually easier to work with (3D animating and modeling) then drawing.

>>13888194

Even if that was the case, major studios have a surplus of cash and a dearth of talent and the games they make reflect that.

>>13888270

The sprites for KOF 12 and 13 were animated in 3D first, then they had the artists draw the sprites on top of that.

>>13888222

How could you know what street fighter 5 cost to make when it isn't done yet?

>>13887899

>What's with 2D games not using 2D graphics?

Unless it's a stylistic choice; i.e Cuphead, there is no reason why game developers should spend more time and money than they have to on animating 2D sprites when they could be using it on more important things.

>>13887899

What if he's a 2d fighting character in a 3d fighting game?

>>13889017

GOOD 3d animation and modelling takes skill (less so than 2D, and less time)

SFV has really good animations, and most of the models are good to look at.

NRS games have bad models and bad animations.

>>13890277

That's asserting that a game will inherently look bad over time because it uses 3D visuals. "Not looking like shit 5 years down the line" is a rather arbitrary reason for using 2D.

>>13888495

Hollow Knight has fairly simplistic animation, Cuphead would be a better comparison and that game took seven years to make.

I really hope Vanillaware's new game is an action RPG or strategy and not a visual novel type game.

traditional 2d assets are extremely inefficient compared to cg and with stuff like photogrammetry that gap is only becoming bigger. you are also working with a much smaller labor force who will need longer to produce. people bring up lab zero a lot but they undercut themselves really hard while making skullgirls which is not a sustainable manner of doing business. japan has remained in 2d for so long because they pay animators dogfood wages, consequently, the anime industry is facing massive labor shortages right now and is moving further towards 3dpd as a result.

>>13889683

this is misleading. they used models as the base for keyframes to keep production quality consistent but the animation itself was 2d.

>>13890277

>How about lasting appeal and your game not looking like shit 5 years down the line?Isn't that reason enough to opt for 2D sprites?

<implying

That's solely dependant on the artstyle and how the developers make use of the game engine, also what >>13890380 said.

>Also what the fuck are those "other more important things" the developers could be using 2D sprites on instead of the animation of the characters ? I didn't even realise that 2D sprites is a finite source

<what is reading comprehension?: the post

I was referring to time and money not 2D sprites and those "more important" things I mentioned would be stuff like; improving the gameplay, bug checking, performance testing, etc.

>>13889510

>everyone agrees with my opinions!

No faggot. 2D animation doesn't automatically look "infinitely" better than 3D animation. Pretty much any comparison that's going to be made to argue this will entail picking something from the lower end of 3D animation quality to compare it to something from the high end of 2D (OP included).

You can say that people turn to 3D because it can be cheaper/faster. However it is more accurate to say that the minimum effort standard for 3D looks better than the minimum effort standard for 2D (unless you want to argue that pixelshit looks good).

>>13889510

>3D animation was a mistake and 3D animators are to be mocked and spat upon.

Nice projection faggot, 3D can be used in a myriad of ways but making it look good also requires skilled lightning, rigging and all that jazz. Shit, classic animated movies have used 3D models for complex machinery since its more efficient and consistent to render a complex machine than to re-draw the whole thing frame by frame. People are willing to overlook that fact back then since unlike today, the production team actually give a damn if the 3D model stands out compared to the rest of the 2D graphics.

A simple comparison is like drawing with a pencil and a drawing pen at the same time. Normally it'll look like shit since the grey lines of the pencils felt out of place compared to the drawing pen's thick black ink.

I won't deny your other points though (2D > 3D).

Everything has its pros and cons, it's up to the directors to make it work really.

>>13891002

What you're saying is that 3D should be a complement of 2D, and I agree. 3D requires as much knowledge of classical animation, if not more. The problem is that now faggos focus entirely on it, disregarding classic animation techniques and classic animation as a whole. Back when pixar wrecked everything with Toy Story, everytime disney had to deal with them they sent 2D animators to supervise the work of 3D animators, although not on a technical level per se, they supervised how they designed the characters or made them move. Basically, they made them draw in 2D so they could draw in fucking 3D, and even today no one has manage to make a 3D "realistic" film without falling into uncanny valley. Then there are techniques like Deep Canvas and the such.

All in all, the problem is that 3D art can be done by anyone, but it can't be don't competently by everyone without basic classic animation knowledge. 3D have only made artists and everyone involved lazier because doing it without traditional techniques is cheaper and faster.

I don't know about the monetary cost of 3D vs. 2D, but I would say the cost in talent is much higher. 3D art direction for characters is usually "uhh make it look realistic in terms of shapes, now apply this shader we custom scripted to make it look a little stylized, done." Apply generic animation engine like Euphoria and you have a AAA game. 2D art requires at minimum an art director who knows what he's doing from a style perspective, likely someone with years of experience. There just aren't that many talented 2D artists who are also willing to put up with all of the bullshit that comes part and parcel with working in the game industry.

>>13889053

> 2D animators

> minimum wage

Found the problem.

2D Animation as an industry is fucking dead in the West and will be in Japan before I die, and the only people who do it are actual autists who don’t want to/can’t do anything else. Seriously, if you’ve ever met an honest to god animator you’ll suddenly feel really good about your power level.

We’ve also hit a point where most people who WANT to be animators are already cartoon fanboys and don’t actually study art or anatomy or anything useful - just the shows they already like - which means we have a generation of garbage artists making second generation impressions of what were already stylized shorthands. Kids coming out of animation college know how to draw a Naruto arms-back run but not how to draw a normal walk down the street, it’s fucked, and there’s no way to fix it at this point. The number of good animators is a smaller pool than most people probably realize.

I’m other words games like Skull Girls, Owl Boy and Cuphead are “cheap” because a handful of animators do it for damn near free for years on end, and their prospects after - while improved - are still extremely limited.

Meanwhile some low energy indie cunt shits out an ugly pixelshit game in a month and probably breaks even. Games like Dust and Hollow Knight are fucking amazing, but those artists short changed themselves and will never earn the living wage they deserve for it. Plus it takes fucking years to complete any single hand drawn game of notable quality, so… enjoy what little they squeeze out, I guess?

>>13890380

Name a single 3D game that has aged as good as good 2D animation.

>>13890277

Lasting appeal is a bad thing.

You don't want your old product to compete with your new one or your remasters to look worse than the original.

Multiple reasons that aren't "waaah muh vidya isn't crafted with more care, surely this signals the downfall of all civilization" hyperbolic bullshit:

1. 3-D graphics can be used at any resolution and look good. At a certain size it may end up being smaller in filesize than all necessary frames of animation would end up being.

2. 3-D graphics can be used at any framerate. Slow-down, speed-up, even 120 FPS can sill look smooth if a skeletal system is used. 2-D has to be as it's animated or faster.

3. 3-D graphics make effects such as fire, dust, fur transparent goo and others much easier to create.

4. 3-D graphics means if a change occurs in design, the cost of redoing animations is much lower.

5. 3-D assets can be repurposed for a variety of new games and props simply by rotating or resizig them.

And finally, good 3-D looks a lot fancier to most than good 2-D. The visual richness is a draw.

>>13890277

>think of how much the world has been improved by our increased access to information

It got worse. A lot worse. Fuck these fags.

>>13891345

You say that's untrue but devs talk about how graphics eat up a large amount of their budget and games (and movies) cost far more today then they once did.

>>13889255

In the years up to Princess Kangz they also had Home on the Range and Treasure Planet, which were financially mediocre and disastrous, respectively. Around that same time they also made the very successful Lilo & Stitch. They also did fuck-all for marketing for Treasure Planet, though, and while it might be raycis, the reality is that most projects that feature black characters don't do well in the US or Europe and they do even worse in East Asia. I think they had been wanting to move away from 2D for some time but the executives in favor of doing so needed evidence that "people don't like 2D anymore" in order to win that battle in the boardroom.

>>13891554

But why? 3D movies cost so much more to make and anons gave shown this in thread. You can either hire pencil monkeys for cheap or you are forced to hire computer animators which are expensive.

>>13891295

>good 3d looks fancier than good 2d

I feel 2d and 3d can equally reach a level of fidelity and life that is unheard of for a long itme.

Anyone arguing that 2d or 3d is better than the other in terms of any level of 'fanciness' I will inherently call an idiotic liar.

It's all about a number of factors that many anons here fail to take into account. I do not feel 2d will ever die out. Every time I see a really nice 3d game I see an equally amazing 2d game to counter it. Despite everything the demand for 2d will be just as strong as 3d. There will be ups and downs to both but I doubt either will completely die out save for some absolutely revolutionary tech for 3d that makes it absolutely perfect in every way.

>>13891554

>Treasure Planet

Ahhh finally a good reason to embed this video

>>13891295

This tbhq fam

While 2D is a nice visual medium, it lacks the capabilities and versatility of 3D graphics. All the more reason for video games to go 3D (which are entertainment that requires user input and also means that the technical spectrum of vidya needs to be broadened to allow players to have more enjoyment.)

>>13891449

>It got worse.

You fucking dunce, do you think the holohoax could ever have succeeded in the age of smartphones? No, it wouldn't. If WW2 happened with smartphones and internet the world would be an infinitely better place right now.

>>13891594

Can you show me any CGI that looks as good as Redine or Hunch Back?

>>13891002

> the production team actually give a damn if the 3D model stands out compared to the rest of the 2D graphics.

I don't know about that. You take a look at the ball room scene in Beauty and the Beast or the Escape with the Magic Carpet scene in Alladin and you can tell the 3d environments stick out like a sore thumb. Even back then it looked uncanny. But most of that was due to how 3d environments were still a new thing.

>>13891618

Great, that video made me remember all those amanzing 2D films that crash and burned it's so sad what happened to the 2D animation industry

>>13887899

>shit that's objectively incorrect

>muh nostalgia goggles

>>13888983

It's true.

It's why there's not a single 2D game that doesn't perform like shit on modern hardware, the graphics driver translates it into a 3D scene in real time and it takes a huge performance hit.

>>13892163

Name one false thing anon.

most comes down to money and lack of talent.

a lot of art and animation students now are just daddys money kids wanting to do steven universe style, not learn anything about acting, life movement, etc.

i mean, most decent animation from the 80s and 90s was shipped out to korea anyway to be made. its just cheaper and simpler to have a computer to most of the tweening nowadays and cheaper.

sucks, but thats the way it is.

>>13889142

That's why you stretch the text box before hitting the reply button to remove the word wrapping parallax.

>>13891883

Nope.

>>13894506

Because Xrd looks like shit?

>>13894618

I just did. Xrd looks like shit. XX series still looks better.

>>13894629

>"I just did. Xrd looks like shit."

Except it doesn't, nigger.

>>13889111

Not all of them.

>>13891295

>And finally, good 3-D looks a lot fancier to most than good 2-D

Said literally no one ever.

>>13894785

But it does, shit-eater.

>>13898193

Give me a break you damned.

JUST WANNA GET BACK MY DICE AGAIN

Reminder Skullgirls is a shieet game that only waifufags support.

>>13889142

Literal same thing happens all the fucking time.

>>13906301

>but you are not a part of that world, and you know it because of the divide

Now that's bullshit, everyone playing those sorts of games would refer to the PC as "I" or "me" and that hasn't changed. 3D increases immersion but 2D does not break immersion like you imply.

>>13889510

No matter how many times I see that .gif, it still kills me inside.

I vastly prefer 2D over 3D, but it's easy to see why 3D's versatility is preferred.

>>13890497

>You can say that people turn to 3D because it can be cheaper/faster

Why do peoples think 3D is cheaper than 2D, if we take fighting game as an example like the OP, 2D walking animation only have 3 frames, in fact, every action like punching/kicking/special moves doesn't go over 5 frames. Alternate costumes are just recolor of the original while in 3D fighting game, theres a lot of customization to the character.

>>13915833

>Faster

With a 3D model, you can iterate on a single model numerous times, and not have to re-animate the whole move again and again. This is a huge time saver, as during development engine limitations or programming tricks can change everything about how a character moves and therefore feels. in a 2D process, you'd have to call in the specialist animator to redraw the character completely. Skullgirls mitigated this by having the first few prototypes use sketched key frames for their characters, but they still needed their animators to redraw every frame over the course of development.

>Cheaper

Think of 3D animation as a form of stop motion animation made for people who do not have the articulation or attention required to make it look sharp, snappy and consistent. The computer does 80% of the work for a 3D animator, and corrections are incredibly simple. Corrections are also very simple for a 3D model. The key difference is that the 2D animator needs to keep their eyes on each detail of what they're animating, while the 3D animator simply needs to adjust a rig- somebody else took care of those details, got paid and never needs to come back again.

If you think the market's rough for 2D animators, its even worse for 3D animation- it doesn't take much skill to animate something in 3D, and they're a dime a dozen. They are probably the most disposable group in the video game industry, and therefore the cheapest to hire.

>>13889666

Satan, I still don't understand what they were trying to do in that scene. Bitch holds the gun, shakes it a little, and the other guy just lets go of it rather than pull the trigger? Are the devs literally limp-wristed like that, and think their lack of strength is normal?

>>13915940

>but they still needed their animators to redraw every frame over the course of development.

Yes, they need to draw each frames, but at maximum each character only have 50-60 frames, that is less than 30 second of animation. 2D also have the advantage of not having to handle real time physic, shadow, lighting etc. Yeah, the game engine handle most of the work but it doesn't mean you can do it with a few clicks, everything have to be manually adjust and tested.

>>13888604

It's crapcom shills. The fuck do you expect?

>>13916062

No it's just pure bullshit and laziness on the animation part. I mean there's a few keypoints that are missing as the change of expression, dynamic action and reaction and the flip of dominance in that once image itself. I agree with you as this is seriously hot garbage as to whomever thought this was okay to bring something like this in should be lethally injected.

>>13906301

goddamn normalfags generally don't like 2D animation as they are for kiddos and no self-respecting adult would play a game that is not tinted with obnoxious amounts of brown and blood like Call of Duty or chock full of stupid gimmicks as consumer bait.

When I play cuphead in the barracks normalfags always ask about it and days it seems pretty fun

>>13916246

Fucked up and forgot the greentext

>>13916246

1930s style cartoons are something "established" in the sense that everyone recognizes them and knows that they were popular 80 years ago. You could take that exact same game and concept, redo the art to look like CalArts grinning potatoes instead, and those same normalfags would ask you why you like playing games for little kids.

>>13916062

The writers have the mentality of 12 year olds. They think disarming someone pointing a gun right at them is badass and not extremely bad writing.

>>13921881

I'm still surprised at how often gun-holding characters in movies or games will still get within arm's reach of the enemy in the first place.

>>13887899

>What's with 2D games not using 2D graphics?

My monitor is 2D.

>>13916101

>No it's just pure bullshit and laziness on the animation part.

Actually the gif obscures the whole scene, the guard actually lets go of the gun as soon as she holds on to it.

>>13915833

>3 frames

>

>does not go over 5 frames

Nigger Guile in OP has about 395ish unique sprites (not including special effects then it's 470ish), his walking animation is actually 12 sprites divided into 6 for going forward and backwards. He has running animations that have a loop but a transition which totals to over 12 sprites running forward. Most of those sprites are transitions sprites for the key frames but each one is a separate sprite and not just the same sprite. The Guile that comes close to your estimates is for the fucking NES and he still has more unique sprites then the numbers you give his walk animation is 8 sprites divided between moving forward and moving backwards and he has four actions that break 5 sprites while the rest don't break 3 in unique sprites.

Combined with all those sprites needing to go together as seamlessly as possible with as little animation as possible you're going to get trial and error on top of that, it's not going to be the absurdity of man hours it was for one game I can think of but it's going to be a long time this is where the cost adds up.

>>13887899

this post is ridiculous on every level

2D is best D after 36D

>>13891590

I would suspect it's partly due to sequels. How much cheaper is it to make a whole new Frozen short in 3D when they just use all the same assets they have but change the animations and record new dialog vs having to redraw the whole thing?

Same for shit like Ironman. The start up is very expensive but everything after the first one just builds on this tech. It's why Lucas said Jar jar was the key to episode 1, if they could make Jar Jar believable (and he was) then they had the CGI good enough to film the rest of the trilogy how they wanted.

Once you get the tech it becomes cheaper than having to start fresh every time. For small projects it's more expensive, for multi work franchises it's cheaper.

>>13942417

That's not for Street Fighter 3.