Adventure Gamers - Forums

Our art style has two purposes:
  1. It’s what we can afford within a $260K budget (which is what we will have available for game development if we just hit the minimum $400K Kickstarter goal) while still having the funds to develop a new game engine and make excellent content.
  2. It makes it easy to see where you are and maneuver your character, which allows us to add more depth to combat and environment puzzles.

What is that art style?  It is top-down, NON-isometric, 2D, tiled.  We will make the tiles as attractive as possible.  See the MacGuffin’s Curse demo for the basic engine we are using.  Currently we’re looking at vertical walls rather than the oddly angled ones in MC, but it will give you the general idea.

We do not plan to use the Rampart isometric look.  We’re familiar with the style, and it looks good, but our engine is not suitable for it.  I’ve seen Quest for Glory described as an isometric game also, so it isn’t a very useful term for describing the look of a game. :-)

Isometric looks a little nicer, but it’s harder to see what’s going on.  Dungeons of Dredmore uses an isometric perspective on about the right scale, and I have trouble maneuvering around it.

We do have some isometry - You won’t look down on the heads of characters or the tops of objects; instead they are angled so you can see more, and we can have animation and expression.  So the game is basically flat, top-down, but with isometric objects.

We will also use as many of the “background-style” screens (the painted examples on the Kickstarter page) as we can afford.  If the Kickstarter pulls in more then our minimum budget, there will be more of that.  But we are only promising stuff that we know we can deliver.  If the Kickstarter explodes (in a good way), we can start to consider ways we can improve the look, and discuss them with the backers.

Our goal is to make the game look really good, with the amount of art we can afford.  There were around 40 artists on Quest for Glory 5 for 3 years.  QfG4 credits 9 and took a year to make.  So let’s see - 9 artists for 6 months at $50,000/year is… about the entire game budget for Hero-U.  Although we love beautiful art, we think the players might want some game design, writing, programming, music, and testing in there as well.  Just a thought. :-)

I don’t think people are reacting negatively to the top-down perspective in itself, it’s more about the “cheap cartoon” art style in the dungeon screens, which clashes with the beautiful painted backgrounds you’re showing as well as the general Quest for Glory-feel we’re hoping for (hence backing the project).

Personally I’d much rather have it be good-looking pixel art like say Final Fantasy VI than cartoon art that reminds me of a flash game from 2002.

Kolorabi - 22 October 2012 07:28 AM

I don’t think people are reacting negatively to the top-down perspective in itself, it’s more about the “cheap cartoon” art style in the dungeon screens, which clashes with the beautiful painted backgrounds you’re showing as well as the general Quest for Glory-feel we’re hoping for (hence backing the project).

The art is just placeholder art for now, as stated in one of the updates and, IIRC, earlier in this thread. That it will look cartoony is more or less given, but I’m sure it won’t look “cheap”. Actually I don’t think it looks that bad right now, but I see people’s point, and wouldn’t complain if they raised the quality a little

From the update:

“Concept vs. Final Art

Most of you understand that games are developed using “placeholder art”, but I am adding this since we’ve seen some complaints about the “test dungeon” art in the video.  In previous games, we sometimes represented a character with a grey box or a red “X”.  The “game images” you see in this Kickstarter project are all placeholders.  Some of them are really beautiful placeholders, but they may or may not be representative of final game art.

In particular, the 2D top-down image included in the video is a concept piece.  That is the point of view you will have in the game, but the actual image is a placeholder.  The actual Hero-U game will give you the freedom of movement and tactical actions that the top down view allows, but it will be carefully crafted to look Really Nice in the game.  As it is, our prototype is way nicer than boxes and X’s. :-)

We will also have closeups of characters for dialogue and combat, and beautiful background screens for key scenes.  The number of background screens we can afford will be partially dependent on the budget we raise from this Kickstarter project.

We will share more concept art, design notes, and other information about the game in future updates.  We will also have links to press coverage and our blogs, testimonials from backers, and Other Cool Stuff.  Thank you for reading this!”

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/posts/332460

Jannik - 22 October 2012 09:54 AM

The art is just placeholder art for now, as stated in one of the updates and, IIRC, earlier in this thread. That it will look cartoony is more or less given, but I’m sure it won’t look “cheap”. Actually I don’t think it looks that bad right now, but I see people’s point, and wouldn’t complain if they raised the quality a little

Yeah, I know, I just felt that Mr. Cole seemed to interpret the criticism the wrong way. At least as far as I’ve seen, it’s the style and not the perspective that put a lot of people off. Which is why it’s so super important that they post some dungeon art that shows something closer to the finished style as early as possible. I’m pretty sure they’re losing a significant amount of “sales” with every day that passes before they get that up.

IndieGames.com has an article on Hero-U.

http://indiegames.com/2012/10/kickstarter_projects_hero-u_co.html

Monolith - 22 October 2012 03:02 PM

about 100k in 1 day.

1st 24 hours: 82k
2nd 24 hours: 12k
3rd 24 hours: 11k
so about 100k in.. 3 days

Should we start getting worried already? We need about $10,000 per day, and we’re only at $8,000 today (and it’s only day 4!). That would suck, because the more I read about how the game will play in the various interviews, the more excited I am about it.

Should be start getting worried…?  Definitely not.  We’re exactly where we expected to be at this point.  Kickstarter projects typically have strong beginning and end phases, but a slow crawl in-between.  This is why Kickstarter recommends short durations of 30 days or less (we actually went with 32).  The general rule of thumb is that projects that reach 30% of the goal make it all the way to the goal 90% of the time.  We are very close to that.

Ref Final Fantasy VI graphics - Yes, those would be great.  That project also had a development budget in the $5-$10 million dollar range.  FFXII cost $35 million to develop.  We will make the best-looking game we can with the budget we get, and that will be very good looking.  But it won’t be AAA-title polished amazing-looking.  Those games cost millions to make.  Even Shannara, the game we did for Legend with mostly still graphics, cost double the Hero-U budget to make.  (It was beautiful, by the way.)

If you’re judging Hero-U on the graphics, you aren’t giving Lori and me much respect as game designers.  We’re making the game fun, and think we can immerse you in an interesting story with good puzzles.  The art will be very attractive, but we don’t have the budget to do a full background for every screen and animate every action of every character.

Eurogamer has a story on the kickstarter now!

Like I said a couple pages back, it was inevitable most of the major gaming sites would pick up the news about Hero-U. Tons of people read these sites, and the coverage should help big time! But overall I think being 25% funded only 3 days in is a very good start.

inm8#2 - 20 October 2012 09:56 PM

One thing I find a little odd is that you can get the QfG games in the $50 tier, but this isn’t included with higher tiers unless you add $15 to the pledge (aka $75 + $15 for the Senior tier + QfG game pack).

However, the QfG pack is only $10 at GOG.com. I suppose there are kickstarter fees and other considerations, but it just occurred to me as a small oddity.

I pointed this out elsewhere and this was the reply I received;

“The $15 extra was chosen as if you’re buying those games through the Kickstarter (instead of directly) it’s more about supporting the Kickstarter then anything else and you’re only doing it if you really care about this project. You make good points, but that was the rationale for it (good or not).”

I didn’t feel like pressing the matter further (namely because I already own all the game offered and “fighting” developers on Kickstarter is tiring and has made me no friends), but I couldn’t disagree more with that rationale. *shrug* Hope it works out though.

Gonchi - 23 October 2012 01:49 AM

inm8#2 - 20 October 2012 09:56 PM

One thing I find a little odd is that you can get the QfG games in the $50 tier, but this isn’t included with higher tiers unless you add $15 to the pledge (aka $75 + $15 for the Senior tier + QfG game pack).

However, the QfG pack is only $10 at GOG.com. I suppose there are kickstarter fees and other considerations, but it just occurred to me as a small oddity.

I pointed this out elsewhere and this was the reply I received;

“The $15 extra was chosen as if you’re buying those games through the Kickstarter (instead of directly) it’s more about supporting the Kickstarter then anything else and you’re only doing it if you really care about this project. You make good points, but that was the rationale for it (good or not).”

I didn’t feel like pressing the matter further (namely because I already own all the game offered and “fighting” developers on Kickstarter is tiring and has made me no friends), but I couldn’t disagree more with that rationale. *shrug* Hope it works out though.

Let’s see… If you add $15 to a Kickstarter pledge, $1.50 goes to them and Amazon payments.  Then we pay $9.99 to gog.com for the game (they haven’t been able to offer us a discount), and someone needs to take the time to email the key to the supporter.  That’s $3.51 added to the game funding if you don’t count the labor.  We figure that anyone who would rather spend $10 than $15 will pick up the games directly from gog.com.  If we offered them for $10, we would *lose* $1 plus labor on every transaction.

Ah, we evil money-grubbing game developers!

Monolith - 22 October 2012 09:30 PM

Well Bastion definitely didn’t cause near 400k to make. So I don’t think its impossible to provide a better quality game that that for the budget you’re asking. Keep a reliable and trustworthy team and you wouldn’t have to spend so much money.

Ref Bastion “costing a lot less than $400,000”...  First of all, we don’t actually get $400,000 from the Kickstarter.  After fees, expenses, and premiums, $260,000 will go into the game.  From 5 minutes research of Bastion, I learned on Wikipedia that “The game was built over the course of two years by a team of seven people split between San Jose and New York City.”

Senior software engineer salaries in either of those cities run around $100,000, so let’s assume that everyone worked for half that.  $50K x 7 x 2 = $700,000, or 2.5 times our development budget.  That’s just salaries, and doesn’t include office space, computers, tools, health insurance, marketing, or other expenses.  I doubt Bastion came in under $1 million.

Let’s get real on game costs, please.  Just because an indie developer works for seven years on a game while living in his parents’ basement does not mean the game was “free”.  If he’s competent, he could have earned about $500,000 during that time by working for a game company instead of developing his indie game.

If you want quality games, you work with great people, and they are not cheap.  Our team will be working for bare-cost-of-living income; that includes Lori and me.  And it’s still going to cost at least $250K to make any sort of high-quality game.  We are crazy you know - I made $110K/year at my last job, and Andrew a similar income.  We’re making Hero-U as a labor of love, and asking for the bare minimum that will allow us to make a quality game.  We could all make more by working for someone else on projects we don’t care about.

That’s all I have to say on the subject.  Please don’t take this as me getting defensive; I’m just trying to educate people on the real costs of making games.  There’s a reason Lori and I didn’t dive into indie game-making after leaving Sierra, and that’s that we wouldn’t have been able to pay our own bills, let alone hire or contract a team.