Maybe not bankrupt – but wasn’t the whole reason KOFXII was released was because they ran out of time and budget to do everything they wanted? That’s why KOFXII was the ‘stopgap’ before XIII could come along.
What isn’t mentioned here however is that Mike’s engine does cut some of this out since lighting is done in real time.
I believe LZ saves on time and money simply by finalizing all the animations in roughs and only sending them out for clean-up and color afterwards (if you’ve been watching the Salty Cupcakes stream, you’ll see Mike demo Squigly with rough animations in game). This off course leads us to the point of the whole thing - while technically, 2D does cost more than 3D, Lab Zero/Reverge played it smart and figured out a way to streamline and save on their pipeline. In the end, this means that, yes they were able to do HD (1440p) 2D art assets cheaper than it would traditionally take to do a character in 3D (as Mike’s example of taking $175,000 just to reskin a model in Battlefront 2 demonstrates).
Most of their costs come from salaries because most everything is done in house. Aside from the modelers and animators, you also need to pay the IT staff that makes sure that their infrastructure is running, the HR staff taking care of all the people, and so on and so forth. Being on a smaller team and working with less mouths to feed also has its benefits. One of the reasons LZ can do so much for less is because they only have 8 full time employees.
Peter Bartholow, CEO of Lab Zero
“It’s not just the squash-and-stretch stuff, but also the crazy Darkstalkers-esque morphing our characters do. Modeling and rigging all of that would be really time-consuming and expensive, to do it at any level of quality.”
You could’ve provided a link to where you saw that. In fact that parts you bolded agree with each other. It doesn’t automatically invalidate bchan’s argument that if they wanted to spend less money that would mean sacrificing their stylistic choices to create highly morphable characters.
Here is the link for those interested.
I had asked Ravidarth if 3D was never an option after reading the great discussion in this thread.
Oh so that was you that asked. LOL
I didn’t think adding the link was necessary as long as I properly quoted him.
Don’t use the freakin’ size tag that way. It hurts the eyes.
Is this argument 3D vs 2D or if Skullgirls wanted the same quality in 3D vs how it is in 2D?
Because I’m pretty sure what they did with the characters is a benefit of 2D that 3D doesn’t provide at their budget. Like if the cast was normal humanoid like VF, Tekken or SF I’ll agree 3D would be cheaper, they aren’t doing anything that would benefit from using 2D.
I see the argument like if SF4 was 2D it would cost more than 3D. Highly probable.
But what Skullgirls did in 2D would’ve cost more in 3D, wouldn’t it?
While 3D is easier to make a whole new alt outfit, there is a reason Morrigan lost her win pose where she changes into different clothes and the massive eraser cannon or Shang Tsung limited to morphing into only his opponent instead of anyone else randomly.
What??? Please reread the bolded again. SMH
You’re oversimplifying his thought process.
Bchan said they are ok with sucking up the cost of stretching and morphing characters. Ergo if they didn’t want to stretch and morph, 3D would’ve been cheaper.
Ravidarth’s statement concurs with that point.
You are focusing so much on the part you bolded it seems like you are interpreting it to mean 2D will always be more expensive than 3D which wasn’t bchan’s intent.
How can I oversimplify his thought process when he literally said:
Are your posts today just a series of April Fools jokes? It’s seriously the only excuse I could think of for what I’m seeing.
In the piece of text you quote he says " But if the knew they were going 3D it probably wouldn’t be designed the same way it is now…" What Ravidrath says, supports that statement. You aren’t even making a point.
If Dhalsim was the hardest and most expensive character to make in SF4, I wonder how they’ll try to do a DS4.
Bchan made a general statement that 3d is cheaper than 2D especially in fighting games, then went even further to say that Skullgirls would’ve been cheaper had it been made in 3D. Somebody agreed with him in general but disagreed about using Skullgirls as an example due to it’s use of stretching or morphing. Bchan agreed that stretching and morphing is more advantageous in 2D, hence the reason they’re willing to go the MORE EXPENSIVE ROUTE to attain it. Peter responds that if they made it in 3D it would’ve been MORE EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING in order to attain it.
I’m fairly certain that’s the gist of it…
Either that or it’s probably my posts today are just a series of April Fools jokes.
If disney animates the game is the only way i’ll accept it.
Even Disney uses 3D now.
:bz
[quote=“JohnGrimm, post:215, topic:159364”]
Even Disney uses 3D now.
[/quote]Paperman is really good but I didn’t think it deserved an Oscar.
Adam and Dog>
Adam and Dog came out in 2011.
It was still nominated at this year’s Academy Awards alongside Paperman.
Wow. Still going. O.o
Yes, it is true that doing all the squash and stretch would be more expensive in 3D. It has been said in an interview somewhere that certain darkstalkers characters weren’t possible in 3D because of this.
However my whole argument is predicated on the fact that Skullgirls is going specifically for this style, and thus 2D is a better choice. If they went 3D, it’s unlikely they’d use this design philosophy, and thus production would be cheaper.
As d3v pointed out, their engine is specially designed to help them save 2D costs, and this is because 2D is traditionally the more expensive and time consuming method of doing things. The fact that they need their engine specially designed to handle certain 2D tasks shows you how desperately they want to save time and effort in doing 2D.
So yes, while it was my mistake to say “making Skullgirls exactly as it is now” is cheaper in 3D, I still stand by my statement that if they really wanted to do 3D, it wouldn’t be this way, and it’d be cheaper than the way they HAVE gone with 2D.
2D is still the more expensive route. Skullgirls developed a special engine that helps tip it in their favor, and allows them to go for the specific style they want. Going to 3D would require design sacrifices, but would cost less overall.
And, this doesn’t change my point about other traditional fighters, which are still cheaper in 3D. Street Fighter IV, the example brought up before, is a prime example of this.
To quote d3v: