Adventure Gamers - Forums

diego - 28 November 2013 01:02 PM

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.

Just because most of what came after it looks like shit, doesn’t mean CoMI doesn’t look mediocre. I mean, this, with its cut-out characters stiffly cycling between 10-or-so frames, is still a very long way from that.

I guess the best you have nowadays in traditional animation, game-wise, would be The Banner Saga, which is a huge step up from CoMI, and, while still not on a Snow-White level, seems comparable to, say, a nice Sunday morning cartoon. However, the gameplay is such that the full, HQ animations are only needed for some cutscenes, while most of the strategy/RPG phases only require the smaller sprites shown in the second half of the trailer. (And we don’t know how long the game is going to end up being…) For a full-fledged adventure, where you’d need lots of HQ animations all the time, it’d probably be very expensive.

Then again, quality 3D animation has its cost too, and if it’s not done properly it shows—as is the case in the game this thread is supposed to be about.

nomadsoul - 28 November 2013 12:53 PM

@pierce

Your immediate social circle might not be the best indicator of mainstream success.
For cross reference here is some 2D games breakdown.

360 only
Limbo 892,000 total units
Braid around .5 million

Non AG
Castlecrashers 2.6 million (360)
AngryBirds I dont need to mention i guess

So add PS3/PC sales too and its a lot for indie game with limited workforce.
So it doable for not just AG to be 2D but gameboyish/flashbased type 2D
Angrybirds can worth billions too.

For more reference, you can see if upcoming 3D game Witness will do better, and it
does look AAA.

And Spelunky, and Binding of Isaac, and Alien Hominid, and the Monkey Island remakes (which clearly did well enough for them to do two of them), not to even mention that there are still many popular 2D games on the Nintendo DS (though obviously, the 3DS has started to place its focus elsewhere), etc.  There are some series out there, like Metroid and Castlevania, where you STILL have fans begging for a new traditional 2D entry in the series.

You can certainly make the argument about pixel art being a turn-off to some, but really…suggesting that 2D games aren’t popular and don’t sell JUST because they’re presented 2-dimensionally instead of 3-dimensionally completely ignores many of the biggest 2D games of the last generation.

TimovieMan - 28 November 2013 04:07 PM

Stasis manages awesome graphics on an even smaller budget in comparison, but the thing is: Phoenix Online doesn’t have any people with the same artistic talent as Christopher Bischoff

While I agree for the most part, I always get a bit itchy when reading statements like this. It’s a deeply flawed and unfair comparison, in my opinion.
Bischoff, on top of having a cool name   , has full creative control over his project and made all the right decisions to get the most out of his available resources. Which are basically he himself for the biggest part and so the game is tailored to his abilities. And I agree he is really talented. No doubt about that.

But compare that to a game that relies heavily on closeup character interaction and dialog, a camera that moves all over the place and basically portrays the everyday world around us, with many different locations.
A game, where you have a whole group of individuals working together. Planning, drawing, modeling, texturing, animating, programming; all interwoven, and at each of this steps things may go wrong for various reasons and there is simply no more time to go back or hold production to fix it, like a single person could do easily.
The low budget is certainly to blame, and I totally agree that Moebius is not quite up to scratch visually, but to say that’s because of a general lack of artistic talent is a bit unfair, or at least not very nice. I’m pretty sure most of those guys and gals involved could come up with something great for a personal project.

This budget thing is not a good excuse. If JJ is so revered she should have gone
for higher goal confidently (that her fans would meet her target). The target was
even lower than Tim or Doug iirc.

Now the Guy here, who mentioned the India outsdourcing thing, i have idea of
Indian artists(game market and Dev scene) and that explains all the graphical problem.
The reason why India is chosen probably because the labor is super cheap thanks to exchange rates.
I knew India is hot target for cheap labor, but didnt know as revered
Developer/Maker will target that market not for labor but for artists.

Sorry, I misspoke. I didn’t want to imply that only the budget is to blame and personally I have some problems with the chosen style and execution. (I.e. I don’t like it.)
But at the same time these choices are dependent on the budget.
(And again, perhaps a less ambitious approach would have been sensible, in order to allow for a more polished look, but personally I’ll wait until I have actually played it.)

As for the goal, I think she got more or less all she could get.
Some of the choices concerning the campaign were certainly questionable, but I don’t think she ever could get enough money to do a game like Moebius the proper way and apparently a new Gabriel Knight, the one thing that could have gotten her more money, was not an option.

So, as I see it, there are shortcuts, or there is no game at all.

Of course you could do better, even on a small budget, with a lot of luck, experience and better planning, or if you have all the time in the world on your hands, but mistakes happen and you don’t get a second chance if you have that little money and reserves. (Unlike Tim Schafer for example. )

I have to wonder if some of these artists aren’t the same people who worked on The Silver Lining—that is to say, amateurs now thrust into a more professional role with better tools at their fingertips.  There are certainly some similarities in character anatomy across all three of their games (TSL, Cognition, Moebius.)

TimovieMan - 29 November 2013 06:57 AM

If things need to be redone, that’s just as hard if it happens with a group as if it happens to a single person, because a group can “spread the load” while the single person has to do all the changes/fixes himself. In fact, if it happens to a single person, chances are that production is going to be put on hold for significantly longer. Especially if it’s a passion project by a guy who still has a day job…

What I meant, but didn’t write (I see a pattern emerging) is this:
The guy who works on his passion project in his free time can afford to put the project on hold, redo stuff, and take as long as he wants. As far as the project is concerned, he has to answer to no one but himself and isn’t responsible for anyone else’s income. If it takes two years, it takes two years. If it takes four, well, then it takes four. To a degree that’s true for larger fan games, too, but it’s certainly no longer the case for a game like Moebius that gets by on a bare minimum budget.
I assume they have set a bit money aside for polishing and reworks, but it can’t be much.
Things obviously change when you decide to do a Kickstarter, even for the one guy project, but he can still operate and decide relatively autonomous. Basically he can’t run out of money unless he loses his dayjob. A project like Moebius can run out of money and has to operate and plan completely different.

nomadsoul - 28 November 2013 10:24 PM

This budget thing is not a good excuse. If JJ is so revered she should have gone
for higher goal confidently (that her fans would meet her target). The target was
even lower than Tim or Doug iirc.

One thing that bothers me about Moebius, is that I think the production is too ambitious for the budget and for the team. Are all the different camera angles and close ups really necessary, especially when the character models and their animations are the weakest point? Slightly more old-fashioned adventure game production would have been easier to make to look top notch and it would have been cheaper and faster to create as well. I’m not talking about pixelated graphics, but HD graphics with less camera angles and close ups.

teme - 03 December 2013 06:42 AM

nomadsoul - 28 November 2013 10:24 PM

This budget thing is not a good excuse. If JJ is so revered she should have gone
for higher goal confidently (that her fans would meet her target). The target was
even lower than Tim or Doug iirc.

One thing that bothers me about Moebius, is that I think the production is too ambitious for the budget and for the team. Are all the different camera angles and close ups really necessary, especially when the character models and their animations are the weakest point? Slightly more old-fashioned adventure game production would have been easier to make to look top notch and it would have been cheaper and faster to create as well. I’m not talking about pixelated graphics, but HD graphics with less camera angles and close ups.

In the end, due to animations the net effect will watered down, i mean if we just
look at HotelDusk, that 2D art would have fared better.

Anyway, i dont know what was the target of Moebius but given mass reception of
graphics it might end up as another miss

Just browse through comments…

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/jane-jensen-s-moebius-sort-of-explains-more-of-its/2300-8265/?utm_source=gamefaqs&utm_medium=partner&utm_content=news_module&utm_campaign=homepage&comment_page=1

-Looks like the blew all their budget on the 1995 poser license.
-All of the characters move like they’re made out of rubber.
-So this is not a Sims 3 Expansion Pack?..
-Wow, that’s pretty hideous. It’s like those Chinese 3D re-enactment people decided to get into game design.

I guess it all depends on what your standards are for this sort of thing.  For me, the graphics meet my expectations, and are a clear improvement over the studio’s last effort, Cognition.  That’s all that matters for me.  They convey what they need to convey, and the studio is clearly improving.  I suspect they will only get better.  Every game making experience is learning experience, especially for a young studio.

Re the GiantBomb comments, Jane’s name gets people talking about this game who wouldn’t normally bother talking about a small(ish) budget, indie adventure game. The people who are taking potshots at it aren’t going to buy it anyway, and the fact that they’re saying mean things isn’t going to keep the people who love adventures and Jane’s games from playing it. I do think a lot of people are being unnecessarily mean and I don’t really understand why, but that’s the internet for you.

We used to hear the same things at Telltale before Sam & Max came out. I remember when Culture Shock released and it got good reviews, people were incredulous in the comments that reviewers actually liked the game. But these pre-launch potshots really have nothing to do with the actual game… people are picking at what they see because they feel this need to pick at it and these assets are all they have available. Once the game is out and people can talk about it as a whole, the conversation’s going to change (or at least it’ll have more substance).