Adventure Gamers - Forums

I don’t personally see 2D art as outdated if the art in question takes advantage of the modern resolutions and such. But sadly the higher resolution we go with traditional art, the more expensive it comes to produce. Not the background art itself, but the animation. And while I have appreciation on what cellshaded 2.5D games have tried to do, it is a difficult match to get right, so more often than not, the end result can look a bit off.

I like what Broken Age is doing with the paperdoll technique. It has allowed Double Fine to stay more concistant with the traditional art style and I think as an animation style it’s somethig more developers should start looking into. Potentially it could help to make animations more smoother and fluent.

tomimt - 28 November 2013 05:11 AM

I don’t personally see 2D art as outdated if the art in question takes advantage of the modern resolutions and such. But sadly the higher resolution we go with traditional art, the more expensive it comes to produce. Not the background art itself, but the animation.

^This.

I suspect this may be the reason why some of your friends (gray pierce) may find your carefully selected, modern 2D games to have an “outdated” look. Memoria has fantastic backgrounds, yes (though, some scenes have managed to forget to polish some disturbing digital brushstrokes), but the animations show clear signs of a limited budget, and that’s true for almost any 2D game from the past 15 years. Yes, many 2D games of today looks good, but they’re not exactly showcasing what can be done with 2D when budget isn’t of the issue.

For my part, I can’t really think of any 2D games since Curse of Monkey Island (1997) where everything, in game animations aswell as cutscenes, are done with such a passionate level of expertise, that it could compete with a Disney movie. If a 2D game was made today, with that kind of effort (and budget), with widescreen and HD resolution, I doubt people could claim it looks outdated even 50 years from now. 3D art get’s outdated as the technology curve rises. 2D art (without techological limitations such as a pixellated look) is timeless.

Curse of Monkey Island is indeed fantastic looking game. There was definetly a lot of money used to make it. If you’d release a 2d game today with comparable budget and skill there would be no question about the AAA status of the game.

tomimt - 28 November 2013 09:59 AM

Curse of Monkey Island is indeed fantastic looking game. There was definetly a lot of money used to make it. If you’d release a 2d game today with comparable budget and skill there would be no question about the AAA status of the game.

According to this info, CMI has sold 40,538 units so far in 1998 as of July, with a revenue of $1,576,281.00 American Dollars (that’s a 9-months period).
Also I remember the claim that Grim Fandango was the only LucasArts adventure that didn’t sell.

So it seems like the budget of CMI was under $1.5 mln (including publishing costs). This doesn’t seem that much. If so, Double Fine could’ve easily afforded itself to make one.

gray pierce - 28 November 2013 10:28 AM

@Dag: In terms of Memoria I never got to show them an animation. (which look great to me btw) They lost interest halfway through the opening segment because of the way it looked and some of the gameplay.

If they’ve seen the opening segment and some gameplay, then surely, they must’ve seem some animation? Unless you were showing them photgraphs of you playing the game? And then there’s the bad voice acting which quite likely helped turn them off.

Also I will not argue that 2D can look amazing (even though to be honest I think Memoria looks way better than CoMI) but too all non AG gamers it is a thing of the past and so any 2D game ever produced no matter how great the graphics will be perceived as retro at best and horribly outdated at it’s most likely.

I find it rather strange how you know how visual presentation of a game is perceived by every single human being without an AG background. You must possess knowledge of a level I could never hope to achieve, and as such, I forfeit the argument (Though I can’t resist to add, that I find it unfathomably puzzling that you don’t see the difference in quality between the animations in CoMI and Memoria )

Kurufinwe - 28 November 2013 11:30 AM

And of course the animation in CoMI looks mediocre nowadays, both in terms of resolution and frame rate. Making something like that, fully 2D, with today’s quality standards, would cost much, much more than $1.5m.

Exactly, and a 2D game of that scope hasn’t been made ever since, which is why I believe if such a game were made today (without the limitations apparent in CoMi by todays standards), no one, including gray’s friends, would think it looked outdated.

The animation quality in Memoria isn’t even close to the animation quality in Curse. I remember playing Memoria the first time and thinking how nice it looked, but how the animation quality stood out as clear improvement target. And then, of course, the characters started to talk.

I’d say, if you’d do a game with CoMI quality today you’d be looking at least 5 million budget with traditional animation style.

Kurufinwe - 28 November 2013 11:30 AM

We know from Tim Schafer that Full Throttle cost around $1.5m (then, so that’d be $2.2m now with inflation). CoMI had considerably more content and higher-res graphics, so I’d expect it cost quite a bit more.

And of course the animation in CoMI looks mediocre nowadays, both in terms of resolution and frame rate. Making something like that, fully 2D, with today’s quality standards, would cost much, much more than $1.5m.

There’s no official info on LucasArts’ budgets and sales (and that’s a shame!), I just compared the facts. If those were the sales after 9 months, and they were satisfactory (the 4th game followed in 2 years after all), this means the budget was below $1.5 mln. Full Throttle could’ve costed more for different reasons, this doesn’t necessary mean graphics. King’s Quest costed over $700.000 - in 1983

Also take into consideration that Kickstarter and online stores = significantly lower publishing costs. My guess is that Tim could’ve afforded a cartoon adventure in similar style, even in high res. Of course, Jane’s case is very different, but who talks about Disney quality? Simple stylish 2D with simple, yet effective animation would’ve worked better than those seriously flawed 3D models. And I think that’s what she was aiming at (before moving to Phoenix).

Kurufinwe - 28 November 2013 11:30 AM

And of course the animation in CoMI looks mediocre nowadays

Perhaps only resolution-wise, but I’d say the animation has gone a step backward since - just look at the papercut-dolls trend, like that in Chains of Satinav, or “3 frames per second” eagle from BS5.

Apart from Toonstruck, I can’t really think of a better animated title before or after it. I’d argue that backgrounds are matched (or perhaps surpassed, like in The Whispered World but that’s a question of a style/individual taste question) but not the actual level of animation.