The Golden Axe Remake that Never Was...

[Obviously]

Yeah, there's a reason why highly detailed and wonderfully animated fighting games often reuse assets in their re-releases and sequels and it's not laziness, it's often economic necessity.

[Bottino]

what kind of bullshit is this?

You make one model in 3D, maybe slap on some texture and bend it to any shape and form, instant fluid animation. For 2D you have to spend a ton of time making all the individual frames of animation. The time it takes to make couple of frames is same as making that one model, but once the model is done all work is done, while with 2D you have only scratched the surface. But if 2D means Mortal Kombat then it can be cheaper than 3D, all comes down to your actors and photographic/cameraman skill, and all moves can be done very rapidly.

The truthful kind. 3D-ish 2D just requires a few 3D artists. REAL 2D requires teams of artists, and teams of "tweeners" to animate between the key frames. Look at any documentary or book on traditional 2D movies/cartoons and you'll see traditional 2D is horrendously labor intensive. Even Japan is having trouble paying all the folks needed for making anime (which is the worst paying job in the industry as well).

"Modern" 2D simply uses a fixed camera with 3D, and the computers replace most of the teams of people. It's far less expensive... which is why games switched to it as quickly as possible.

Yeah, there's a reason why highly detailed and wonderfully animated fighting games often reuse assets in their re-releases and sequels and it's not laziness, it's often economic necessity.

[kool kitty89]

The truthful kind. 3D-ish 2D just requires a few 3D artists. REAL 2D requires teams of artists, and teams of "tweeners" to animate between the key frames. Look at any documentary or book on traditional 2D movies/cartoons and you'll see traditional 2D is horrendously labor intensive. Even Japan is having trouble paying all the folks needed for making anime (which is the worst paying job in the industry as well).

"Modern" 2D simply uses a fixed camera with 3D, and the computers replace most of the teams of people. It's far less expensive... which is why games switched to it as quickly as possible.

There's also more and more CG stuff displacing traditional animation in general, including a lot of cell-shaded style 3D models replacing what was previously done by had-drawn animation. (and there's a lot more options for computer assisted 2D animation types too, like some of the things flash allows -and even more so for less detailed more "cartoony" stuff rather than super detail-intensive animation -some of that stuff also makes it easier to do high framerate animation too, I've noticed a lot of Cartoon Network's recent stuff in HD tends to have a good amount of 30-60 FPS stuff . . . which actually looks kind of wrong at times, especially for 60 FPS )
It's the same reason that mid/low-budget cartoons have dramatically improved in visual quality over the last 2-3 decades. (compared to low budget animation techniques of the 60s up through the 80s which didn't change all that much)

On that note, doing those sorts of cartoony 2D games is a fair bit easier in general, and especially well suited to some modern 2D computer animation techniques. Which is part of why those types of games are fairly popular in the indie developer scene.


Aside from that, if you want really nice and detailed fluid 2D animation, there's probably some other compromises you could make too. Sort of a cross between the "mortal kombat" approach and direct 3D animation would be building said 3D model and then using that to create 2D animation cells . . . or really more like the methods used for high-end prerendered CGI eye candy in 2D games of the mid 90s. (except now that's a cheaper option )
You'd be using models built around a 2D art look, along with shading and filtering applied (during rendering and in post) to give it a more convincing 2D look, possibly including some by-hand touch-ups.

Still more labor intensive than just using 3D models directly, but should be a huge savings over conventional 2D animation, and close enough to be a realistically attractive option next to "just using 3D."



In any case, even with ACTUAL 3D, there's a lot you can do to give it a hand-drawn animation look and feel to it too. (both in terms of modeling and rendering -shading, filters, etc)

[bultje112]

The truthful kind. 3D-ish 2D just requires a few 3D artists. REAL 2D requires teams of artists, and teams of "tweeners" to animate between the key frames. Look at any documentary or book on traditional 2D movies/cartoons and you'll see traditional 2D is horrendously labor intensive. Even Japan is having trouble paying all the folks needed for making anime (which is the worst paying job in the industry as well).

"Modern" 2D simply uses a fixed camera with 3D, and the computers replace most of the teams of people. It's far less expensive... which is why games switched to it as quickly as possible.

if this would be true then indy games would be 3d like limbo and outland. but fact is those are incredible 2d games made by 1-3 persons.

[The Coop]

if this would be true then indy games would be 3d like limbo and outland. but fact is those are incredible 2d games made by 1-3 persons.

Never played Outland, but if memory serves, Limbo looks like it was made in Flash (or a program that allows you to animate like Flash does), which is considerably easier to animate objects with, than by drawing every needed frame. I could be wrong, but that's how the game looks to me.

[kool kitty89]

if this would be true then indy games would be 3d like limbo and outland. but fact is those are incredible 2d games made by 1-3 persons.

Never played Outland, but if memory serves, Limbo looks like it was made in Flash (or a program that allows you to animate like Flash does), which is considerably easier to animate objects with, than by drawing every needed frame. I could be wrong, but that's how the game looks to me.

Yeah, see my points made in my previous post on "cheap" modern 2D animation.

Detailed, hand-drawn frame by frame animation is the really expensive stuff. Simpler, cartoony, and easily animated via posing segmented/jointed 2D models (and similarly, distorting 2D vector models/objects) is MUCH easier . . . and a lot easier than detailed 3D stuff too. (shares a lot of the advantages of modern 3D modeling too, but can look "good" with far less overhead in actually drawing/designing the models)

[NeoVamp]

if this would be true then indy games

Let me just explain to you the difference between Indy games and Indie games.

Indie Game


vs

Indy Game

[Why-Disciple]

Visually that game looks good but halfway through I started feeling like it would have ended up like the Turtles in Time remake that got the mechanics completely wrong. Would have liked to see how it turned out though.

[M4R14NO94]

And if you make the game like KoF XIII or Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, with considerably larger and more fluid sprites than older fighting games, the animation process takes even longer... as does making the backgrounds (unless they do them with 3D polygons instead of as 2D sprite work).

In the case of KoFXII and XIII that's actually the case: they do somewhat simplistic poly characters, do the animations, and then do a pixel-art equivalent of those.

http://kofaniv.snkplaymore.co.jp/eng...tion/index.php

[old man]

Let me just explain to you the difference between Indy games and Indie games.

Indie Game


vs

Indy Game

What is the name of that "indie" game you've got there?

[NeoVamp]

What is the name of that "indie" game you've got there?

http://www.indiegames.com/2009/09/fr...ourney_to.html

[old man]

Thanks Bogard cat. I would rep you if I could. I collect free "indie" games. I'm not sure how I missed this one.

[NeoVamp]

Glad I could help, I just googled for "best indie game" in google image and this was the cliché-est looking image I could find.

[Love Face]

Sad as it is to see traditional animation only getting taken up by the niche-iest of niche developers, I think one thing 2D enthusiasts (myself included) can get excited about is how sophisticated the "Flash-like" cg-assisted techniques have gotten and that some developers are actually taking advantage of them. In addition to Limbo, the recent Rayman games and Shank series are some awesome examples. If anyone hasn't seen the recent Rayman games in particular, I think they're gorgeous to the point of making any 2D fan cry flat tears of two-dimensional joy:


I know I'd be waaaay more excited about the upcoming Castle of Illusion and Flashback remakes if they looked like this : ) Although the Flash approach still isn't traditional 2D animation, I think it's at least a huge step over the "fixed-perspective 3D" one that sadly seems to be the norm these day in that developers can still take advantage of cg-assisted processes (ability to work off a single character "models", automated tweening, programmatic lighting and physics), but art asset production refocuses on actual 2D artistry rather than "sculpts", and the 2D plane overall serves as the foundation for work rather than just "a camera constraint."

Another game that I think does this approach extremely well is Dragon's Crown. If there isn't going to be a bona fide Golden Axe remake, at least for now there's this : )

[Love Face]

Ooooo - not sure if anyone is still checking this string, though apparently a month ago Ubisoft announced a 2D JRPG named "Children of Light" based off the Rayman engine/it's looking mighty gorgeous...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/...airy-tale-jrpg