Adventure Gamers - Forums

Zifnab - 07 September 2014 07:45 PM

Huh? I was under the impression it costs nothing: Acquire AGS or adventure maker for free, and proceed to make the graphics. Where is the cost coming from?

Dan_Dan_91_07 explained it pretty good. It comes from the fact that producing hand drawn animation is crazy time consuming, and thus, expensive. Working with what people here call 2.5D art (pre-rendered assets, that is) is just insanely more cost efficient. I totally agree that BS1 and COMI etc greatly benefited from their hand drawn style, but I guess they had budgets that could handle that. BS5 didn’t.

I don’t think a game’s budget should be a part of how you rate a game in any aspect, however. If it looks good, it does and if it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t. Using 2.5D art in BS5 was the only logical decision. Had they gone for traditional hand animated 2d sprites, that would have blown the entire budget on animation and had none left for building the actual game. I think they did an excellent job with what little resources they had. (Though I still cringe at the static backdrops!)

I’m totally with nomadsoul and you other folks here that the key is for the games to have their own distinct style that’s designed to fit the team and budget. KZ0 is indeed a good example of this. Going for realism in this age is very, very expensive, and simply no longer a strategic choice for a non AAA game.

Diego, I hate to break it to you but you’re looking at this trough insanely rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. None of those pictures look a whole lot better or a whole lot worse than the other, new or old.

I do agree that some of your select “realism” franchises suffer from not really following the times however, but for the genre as a whole I couldn’t agree less. Look at what Daedalic, King Art, frogwares etc. etc. are doing. It’s looking better by the day.

There is hope!

Lambonius - 08 September 2014 02:40 AM

OrionO - 08 September 2014 02:00 AM

The new developer (Co-Developed by Phoenix online and Jane Jensen) of this Gabriel Knight remake

Fixed that for you.

Already trying to deny any involvement in a game- not a good sign.

http://www.postudios.com/blog/?p=3397

We are extremely happy to announce that we are working together with Jane Jensen’s studio Pinkerton Road to develop a re-imagining of the groundbreaking game that was Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father.

OrionO - 08 September 2014 02:00 AM

So, in the case of the lower art quality in this Gabriel Knight remake, I would fault the artistic choices and the shallow, careless graphical representation of the main character, rather than blaming budget or technical limitations.

First off I will admit that I too dislike the “new gabriel” but please remember that both you and I are looking at the whole thing, again, with nostalgia glasses firmly glued to our eyes. I love GK1. So do you, clearly. We will find faults in everything that doesn’t match up with how we remember the game.

GK1 was an awesome game but certainly not without its visual flaws. Non scaling characters made the backdrops all warped. Mixed resolution on various assets stuck out like a sore thumb. Etc. Updating the visuals makes good sense.

The updated version will likely be a better game in every single aspect than the original. It will work better with a new audience than the original. Does this mean that people like you and me are going to like it? No, not necessarily.

We bonded with a pile of pixels and now they have been replaced with another pile of pixels. And we don’t recognize the gabriel we bonded with. That doesn’t mean that a new generation of gamers won’t be able to appreciate the new look.

Let’s hope they somehow manage to strike a balance so that old and new fans alike will find the visuals appealing. It’s no small task they’re up against.

(I personally think the MI1 remake failed miserably, but again, nostalgia. The MI2 remake was way better for some reason, though still somewhat lacking, in my opinion. It lost some of the crispness, some of the edge.)

Zifnab - 08 September 2014 03:57 AM

Yeah, just what I thought - it costs absolutely nothing. Did van Gogh have “a budget” when creating his masterpieces I wonder?

(the answer is of course no)

Planet Earth calling Zifnab.

Here on Earth we commonly use something called “money” to sustain life. We use it to purchase food for the nutrients we require as well as shelter, since the climate here on Earth can be somewhat dodgy sometimes and the occasional snowfall really is a lot more pleasant when you’ve got a roof over your head.

I’m pretty sure Van Gogh had similar needs.

If the activity we Earthlings spend our time on does not generate money, it can not sustain us and thus we need to find a different money-generating activity. Thus, doing neat things like working for free doesn’t really work here in the long run. Tough rules here on Earth.

Side note: You can make perfectly good 3d characters in free software as well.

theo - 08 September 2014 04:18 AM

I’m pretty sure Van Gogh had similar needs.

Van Gogh put his art before everything else. He produced hundreds of paintings and sold only one. His brother Theo supported him financially.

Should Van Gogh be a role model for developers? Nah.

Zifnab - 08 September 2014 05:41 AM

The problem is, developers have invented this “budget” bollocks to justify getting 2 million for their Kickstarter and making rubbish like Broken Age with it.

In one of the episodes of the DF documentary a team member talked about Shay’s reflection on the polished floors. He was so proud of it. My first thought was that DF should stop spending money they didn’t have on non-essential stuff.

I don’t agree that Broken Age is rubbish, but it could have been much better.

Meanwhile, freeware developers and the developers making far better games than Tim Schafer after they come home from work are showing exactly why your argument is wrong - you can make fantastic stuff with your talent without spending enormous amounts of $$$ on superfluous (and superficial) design features (otherwise known as wasting money).

Names?

The thing is Zifnab, if you want to do games professionally, then you pretty much need a budget, considering not everyone has a load of talented friends and family who are willing to work for free for the duration of the production.

Sure, in a communistic utopia it could be done, hell that’s how they did propably the most expensive movie ever filmed. Tolstois War and Peace, which is estimated costing around 100 million dollars in 1966 currency, throwing it somewhere over 500-600 million of modern moolah. They did it, as no-one had to worry about costs and they could be as elobrate they wanted.

If ever I hire someone it is definitely going to be someone who has a brother who can support them financially so I don’t have to pay them anything. (That or they’re also going to have to work full time at a japanese restaurant.)

Curse me for not figuring this amazingly sustainable strategy out on my own!!!11

edit: lol sorry if I came off as sounding super grouchy. I’m not. I’m just defending developer’s rights to get paid for the hard work they do, and it rubs me the wrong way when fans of the genre seem to believe otherwise.

edit2: By the way, I totally agree that the money on the big-name kickstarters probably could have been spent a lot more efficiently. So we share some common ground there at least.