This man knows what’s up. And the clown should move across the stage with the action so that it is always in view.
It’s cheater 3D backgrounds. They drew 2D backgrounds and attached it to 3D geometry so that when you moves around the stage you got a parallax scrolling effect. For all intents and purposes, they’re 2D backgrounds, which is why they aren’t disgusting. For example:
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These stages were all painstakingly pieced together from the ripped textures of the game when I was bored. This is essentially how the stages started out, they made the 3D geometry later so that when you moved around in the stage it looked like you were actually moving around in the world. Neat trick, not really a 3D background. Or at least a 3D background in the sense that the background is comprised of 3D models.
Holy shit, is that what the top of Little Innsmouth looks like?
That’s really pretty.
Yep, that stage is surprisingly tall. I could be completely wrong about this, but that stage leads me to believe that Skullgirls started out as having traditional Marvel super jumps that took you 150 feet in the air, which would allow you to see the tops of those buildings. If you’re having a Painwheel mirror match and both of you fly, you can get pretty high up, but not all the way to the top.
I don’t think the Skullgirls backgrounds are “for all intents and purposes 2D backgrounds”, if anything I think they are prime example of 3D backgrounds done well. They use technology to achieve effects not possible (or feasible) using traditional 2D backgrounds, but without compromising the art direction and look of the game. I don’t think anyone would seriously argue that games like MvC2, KOF94ReBout or The Rumble Fish has good-looking backgrounds, but I don’t think that’s base to condemn the idea of them entirely - there’s obviously huge potential. As long as the game does a good job of putting the character in the 3D space convincingly, and the art style of the backgrounds don’t clash with the characters, I have no problems with using 3D in backgrounds. I think ASW does this very well in BB and P4U; whatever complaints I might have about the backgrounds there are purely aesthetic, not to do with the technology used to render them.
If I were to make a list of my most favourite fighting game backgrounds, it’d probably be populated entirely by 2D backgrounds, but that’s primarily because those have been done and done well for 20+ years, whereas there are really only a handful of games that have done 3D backgrounds successfully. As long as 3D backgrounds in future games incorporate what made great backgrounds of yore so good, I don’t see why that couldn’t change, though.
The reason I say that they are for all intents and purposes 2D backgrounds is because there is no actual 3D depth to them, they are still 2D flat images (for the most part) that just happen to slide around. It’s about as 3D as cardboard cutouts on dolly tracks. Basically, you’re still looking at 2D images, not 3D models (again, for the most part), so I can’t call it 3D. It’s only “3D” on a technical level because they plastered 2D images to flat 3D geometry.
And personally, I think Blazblue and Persona 4 stages look like shit. They’d have good design direction if they didn’t look so god awful and out of place, but that’s just me.
I think the key here is to make sure we all agree on what a “3D” background even is. If you take 2D as ‘hand-drawn’ and 3D as ‘polygonal models with textures’, which I think JohnGrimm does, then SG definitely is more 2D than 3D in terms of aesthetic, since the hand-drawn art is the focus, and the parallax just spices it up.
I myself am a fan of the hand-drawn. The bystanders can have more character while being less distracting, and just in the picture alone you can warp the perspective of the level.
Unless it’s a clown house level. Then 3D ALL THE WAY BABY, CLOWNS4LYFE
I think everyone that even remotely played MvC2 has that clown burned into their brain. First time I saw it I couldn’t stop laughing at just how distracting it was.