The Visual Paradox of Fighting Games.
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
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This video is about visual trends in fighting games.
How "Spider-Verse" forced animation to evolve
• How "Spider-Verse" for...
tags:
#guiltygear #streetfighter #fgc
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (ストリートファイターⅢ サードストライク Sutorīto Faitā Ⅲ Sādo Sutoraiku?) is the third installment of the Street Fighter III series, released in 1999. A sequel to Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, it continues the series' use of the parry system, command grabs, and overhead attacks. At Comic Con 2010, a new downloadable online version entitled Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition was announced.[1] It was released on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade in August 2011. The arcade version of the game was also re-released in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection in 2018.
Street Fighter 6 is the sixth numbered fighting game in Capcom's Street Fighter series. It was released on June 2nd, 2023, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X, with an arcade version later in the year. The eight world warriors from Street Fighter II return, as well as Cammy and Dee Jay from Super Street Fighter II, Juri from Super Street Fighter IV, and Luke from Street Fighter V. The new characters are the drunken boxer Jamie, the judoka Manon, the pankratiast Marisa, the Bushin-ryuu student Kimberly, Lily of the Thunderfoot tribe, and the Psycho Power-wielding JP. The game is split into three modes: World Tour is a lengthy single player mode where you create an avatar character and learn techniques from the masters. Battle Hub is a giant video arcade where you can challenge other players online. Fighting Ground has the traditional fighting game modes such as arcade, versus, training, tutorials, and trials.
Mortal Kombat 1 is a 2023 fighting game developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Games. It is the twelfth main installment in the Mortal Kombat series, and serves as its second reboot after 2011's Mortal Kombat (2011). The game was released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on September 19, 2023.
In addition to being a reboot, the game is also a sequel to 2019's Mortal Kombat 11, taking place in a new timeline directly created by Liu Kang in his ending of 11's Aftermath expansion. In this new timeline, Fire God Liu Kang assembles a clique of fighters to participate in the latest Mortal Kombat tournament in Outworld while contending with an alliance formed by Titan Shang Tsung. Mortal Kombat 1 received generally positive reviews from critics, although the Nintendo Switch version was criticized for its graphics and technical issues. The game sold nearly 3 million copies as of November 2023.
Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting video game developed and published by Arc System Works. It is the seventh mainline installment of the Guilty Gear series and the 25th overall. The game was released worldwide on June 11, 2021. It uses Unreal Engine 4. Intended as a "complete reconstruction of the franchise", Guilty Gear Strive retains the core essence of the series but revamps many features and mechanics, except for the removal of the series’ signature mechanic, the Instant Kill. It introduces the "Wall Break" feature, which allows for stage transitions when a combo is initiated in the corner of the arena. Guilty Gear Strive was released for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows on June 11, 2021. It was also distributed via Sega to Japanese arcades on July 29, 2021. "Limited Edition" and "Ultimate Edition" editions were made available for pre-order; console players who get the latter received early access to the full game on June 8, 2021.
Brawlhalla is a free-to-play 2D platformer fighting game developed by Blue Mammoth Games and Ubisoft for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Steam, iOS, and Android, with full cross-play across all platforms. It also has some of the most satisfying combo mechanics of any fighting game I've played, because doing successful low damage to kill combos is extremely hard. You have to either 100% know where your opponent is going or just make up some wacky play and hope for the best. It makes the kills all the more exciting. Brawlhalla has reached OVER 1 million in esports prize pools this year and over 50 million online players in total.
WE BACK (fr this time)
Discord: discord.com/invite/B6uWue8
Congrats!
Alright that’s cool!
"Capcom's sprite base games may have not age well in terms of mechanics"
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
@@Sad_Rainbow_83 watch it again I said in general not capcom specifically, also a lot of the older games had glitches or weren't balanced properly.
@@typhoonbh yes, I know, and there is not a single Capcom fighting game that has aged bad.
The only one that aged bad is the one that was bad on the beginning. And yes, I'm talking about THAT one.
I really love the fact that Strive character's models are arguably the best looking in the market, and the animations during battle are so unique, but because how expensive they are to make, in the story mode the animations look so freaking bad and things like the trees are weird, man, I love arcsystem
One simple way to massively improve story mode would be to increase/decrease character walking speeds to match their animations. No clue why they didnt do it
@@griglog Probably because speeding up a walking animation that's meant for a specific speed makes it look really weird.
The thing about strive story mode is that it was only animated by around 4 animators. That needed to animate 4 hours of animation. During covid.
"fact"
look inside
bad personal opinion
granblue literally no diffs guilty gear lil bro
3:53 fun fact: the Skullgirls devs claim that the entire budget used to animate Squigly is just enough to animate Ryu's arm
Huh? What's the source for this, I never heard about this
I don’t know what this means lol.
@@epic_sans8229 that they mean is that developers of Skillgirls(another fighting game) claim that the all of their budget they spent on animating one of their characters barely covers animating ryu’s arm in street fighter(assuming street fighter 6)
@@epic_sans8229 yeah still doesn't make sense
@@undeniablySomeGuy
SF6's animation budget for just an arm is bigger than SkullGirl's animation budget for an entire character.
What are you not getting?
When Uni2 came out there was a non-insignificant group of people confused why the game didn't get new sprites, and it really goes to show just how little people know about the actual amount of work that goes into HD sprites, and how advancements in tech can't really solve bottleneck that is making sprites. French Bread with the full weight and resources of Type Moon behind them were only able to produce a handful of characters per year, and on their own for Uni they're only managing 3 characters in 2 years. They are some of the best looking sprites made for games, and up there with Skugs, but far too labor intensive to make quickly in any meaningful way.
Yeah as cool as the art style is it’s not sustainable for franchises looking to make a game every couple years
Very understanding perspective. The work really is intense and takes a lot of time to finish a split second of an attack. On top of adjustments made for the gameplay.
Also, idk if I’m a fan of Skullgirls being called Skugs pahaha
Yeah I was one of those. But honestly tho, uni has been using the same sprites for over a decade now and even tho it's true that 2D animation ages better it's still noticeable specially when you see them alongside other newer sprite work like bbtag
@@BiggBossChanel lmao the UNI characters are by and far the best looking characters in BBTAG. None of the other sprites, even the new RWBY characters, look half as good.
@@skunthundler aight yeah I think you're simply attached to the sprites no need to discuss further
An important point that isn't talked about enough is that the march of technology in video game graphics is slowing down. It costs exponentially more resources to get the same amount of advancements as before so i personally don't think that current realistic games will be as "aged" as PSX-era games are "aged" now.
True
There is also a limit on how realistic an image can be. At some point it will simply be indistinguishable from a photo, and I think we already are pretty close to this point, there is no need to push graphics even further
@@griglog Most definitely this. There are already games out there that people thought was just using real life video (the game where you play as a cop through your body cam camera). So there's no way to push it further, lol
Only way to push it further than complete photo realism, would be to go the complete opposite way of extremely fantastic styles.
Yeah we are already seeing it rn.
Games that came out 5-7 years ago, hell even games that came out 9 years ago, still look great.
I'm speaking of Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War 4, The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn and shit.
Those games are as old or older as GTA 4 was in 2015-2017.
The advancement in graphics has slowed down massively.
That's why guilty gear goes so hard for me. It translate the best in both worlds.
Yep, they transitioned to 3D perfectly in my opinion
Oh yeah, DBFZ too
5:14
XD
Granblue Fantasy did it way better tho.
@@theProClaimer 1000% disagree. Granblue looks better visually imo but it doesn’t come close to guilty gears animation. The way that GG characters squash and stretch
really makes for much more appealing and satisfying movements.
I find the idea that indie developers are more burdened with aging interesting. It's entirely circumstantial, but in a way we have tasked them with the burden of creating something more timeless with less financial security.
Exactly
Totally true although when they really succeed, the staying power is exponential. I’m just thinking about Hotline Miami rn
Welcome to Capitalism, where you can innovate and go broke, or just release your own spicy chicken sandwich into a world of spicy chicken sandwiches and keep on trucking.
@@chebroadnax this is not exclusive to capitalism, it's just the concept of explore-exploit tradeoff, which is unavoidable anytime you're seeking a global optimum with insufficient knowledge.
3:43 This is only half true, unlike other genres because fighting games are locked to a set fps the developers have control over what appears in each individual frame, so while for situations like slow motion they are capable of showing in-between frames in sf6 there are effect smears. Some moves are even nearly identical if you go frame by frame comparing.
Everytime people bemoan the loss of sprites in the modern fighting game era, I point to Kof12/13 and pull up a quote from one of the devs who were making that game.
"In this modern era of HD graphics, we decided to use rotoscoped 3d models and draw over them to achieve the smoothest translation of movement. However, it was intensive for our artists and it took 6 months for a character to be completely usueable to at least add them in a location, never mind the polishing and adjustments. By our estimation, we spent about(in 2011) 150,000 USD for every move for every character. So that standing punch? 150,000. That Standing Kick? 150,000. Ryo's Kyokugen Ranbu(rush super) well, the sprite were already done, but touch ups were still needed. So that still costed 150,000."
People want sprites in games? Know the costs.
I dunno, "we decided to do sprites over rotoscoped 3d" is a hell of a lot more expensive than "we decided to do sprites"
It REALLY depends on the methods you're using to animate something
That's like saying "look at how much it costs to make a movie" and you don't point out that you're making all the effects practical and buying some big name actors
What you're DOING is expensive, and hard to do, not necessarily the act of doing something similar in general
this is why i think it's absurd when people say they want the next KOF to be sprite-based. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has a great stylization to it that i think helps bridge the gap, but a lot of people who straight up do not play SNK games and don't understand why they went bankrupt twice seem to think they've got the ability to just... make another KOF13. every game is at 8K resolution now, these would be million-dollar sprites at this point
There's a video floating around named something to the effect of "Please Stop Talking About KOF XIII", and this is one of the reasons. For as much as people gush about the spritework and think SNK is making a mistake for not sticking to it, the fact is that KOF XII/XIII were infamously prohibitively expensive to develop, and it's not worth it. From KOFXIV onward, they really started hammering their 3D muscles and building them up, and you can really see the progress. While not aiming for pure realism, every game looks better than the last, from KOFXIV to SNK Heroines to Samurai Shodown to KOFXV, and now to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. People who still want 2DHD are not giving credit to the work SNK has put into making its 3D better, especially considering they're going to start branching out beyond fighting games very soon.
It really shows. XIII is beauty in motion.
This is an area AI could be VERY useful for. It would still require artists to touch up, but it would require less of them, drastically cut the time to make them (aka money) and dramatically reduce costs.
0:33 this right here, this is what makes Typhoon the GOAT
That edit is why I find this channel amazing
*YES*
It also does an amazing job of illustrating his point
footsies in a gg game, strive even? 😂
Brawlhalla uses 2d puppet animation, which is technically even easier than traditional 2d or 3d animation. I'm personally not a fan.
Brawlhalla is at its core an ugly game, and you are ugly inside if you play it. Thats why I have 300+ hours on it
@@MicBain I call that Bone animation, and is by far my least favorite form of animation. In some games I’d legitimately prefer still frames.
@RanOutOfSpac it can be done well on rare occasions, but it's usually really obvious and looks pretty terrible
@@RanOutOfSpac to me, it only makes sense to have bone animated arms in games like terraria and noita, where you want that 360 degree of aiming, otherwise I agree
Yup I can't stand puppet/bone animation in anything. It looks bad and I don't like its prevalence in 2D animation. I'd rather see hand drawn or just 3D animation
As someone who did animations for stylized 3d fighting game - we still animate every frame like 2d animators did, the difference is that when we animate in 30 or 60 FPS, game **can** interpolate animated frames and get eg. smooth 120 FPS out of our 30 FPS animation, if we wanted it we could prevent it and have stepped animation. Also we can do exaggerated motions and "give weight to animations". Literally i could get Your examples of good 2d animations and get 3d animation out of that, that got same motion, feeling and "weight". The thing is that i could not, and just make realistic fluid looking motion, thing that is harder with 2d sprite sheet animations. Its just the mater of stylistic decision and as you said money.
Also my animations were adapted to multiple characters, clothing etc. "for free" only requiring sharing skeleton and with 2d animations You have to do all the work all over again.
What is the game name?
The way ArcSys managed to make Guilty Gear Strive's animation look like that kind of reminds me how SNK managed to make The King of Fighters XII and XIII, I mean, the way they had to painstakingly model each frame of animation with 3D models as references. Sadly, I don't any company outside of ArcSys will dare to make a fighting game with an animation style similar to GG Strive, since they have to keep in mind things like alternate costumes, though I'd wish SNK would try to make something like GG but with The Last Blade. Both The Last Blade 1 & 2 and Mark of the Wolves had some of the best animation on the Neo-Geo, and I think it rivaled the animation from Street Fighter III
Arc system works done that first, with blazblue back in 2008.
@@Shimazaki00 I mentioned Guilty Gear: Strive as an example, because it's the most recent and popular
@@pablocasas5906 when i said arc system works done that firts, i refeered to the rotoscope technique, you mentioned in kof XIII, so arc sys was experiments with many 3d and 2d combined techniques, prior SNK rotoscoping implementation.
@@Shimazaki00 well, technically, rotoscoping has been used in many games since the 80s, like the original Prince of Persia, when it comes to fighting games, SNK used rotoscoping for the sprites for Art of Fighting 3, though I think they used actual actors as reference, instead of creating 3D models.
Animation in KOFXII, XIII, Garou, SF3, AOF3 and others look better than these new Guilty Gears.
They exagerated a little in that "2d simulation" effect in the game frames so characters aren't smooth as in those real 2d fighting games.
That transition from footsies to strive was OD def sticking around for more vids
Hey, I loved it too. It was the best transition I have seen recently.
@3:49 you talk about how every frame in between key poses is interpolated and this is seen as a bad thing, but that's not entirely how it works, you have the control as an animator when you interpolate between keys and are able to add a whole lot of snappy movement, overshoot, intentionally have less interpolation ect, its a lot more involved than just "the computer does everything between keys".
YAY WERE SO BACK
!!!
Good video, im surprised Under night was not mentioned, the sprites are amazing. Dont think french bread count as a AAA studio but still
I didn't think of them as AAA either but they did at least appear in the video!
It is good to be reminded how much I love how fighting games look. I tend to look at this genre through a solely mechanical lens; I need to slow down more and just be amazed by the beautiful effects, clever camera tricks and model swaps, and all the neat small details. It's good to take a step back from dooming about a bad matchup and appreciate all the hard work that went into these games.
Thanks for the video!
I just wanted to say thank you, with all the videos you’ve made, along with others I had the motivation to start developing my own fighting game
It’s me and a small handful of friends, who I thank, but I seriously do want to give my biggest thanks, the amount of effort you put into your videos helps me stay motivated because it’s a deep dive on something I’m super passionate about
If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten into coding and programming, or studying the deeper parts and mechanics of characters, stages, musics and play styles
If the game ever gets finished, I’d love to have you play it some day! One of my biggest inspirations for making my fighting game!
Again, thank you so very much!
Wow, that’s amazing! I’m glad these videos inspired you. I very briefly studied computer science in school and quickly changed majors so I kinda know how frustrating programming can be lol. Looking forward to playing your game one day!
@@typhoonbh you’re 100% right, there are times when I want to tear my hair out, but I power through it the best way I can, even if I have no formal schooling
Again, thank you so much for what you’ve done! You make people like me do things that we never thought we’d be doing!
Amazing! Please keep us updated
@@Br1anwastaken I’ll try my best to! As of now, me and my friends are almost out of the plotting/sketching phase! So we can get to the programming within a week or two!
@@gappygames4798 thats so cool! Best of luck!
2D graphics acquire a practical dimension (ironic) in high-precision, high-speed genres. The human brain can only read and compute so many "shapes". While a 3D model has a infinite number of possible points of views and perspectives, a sprite has only a few. Players are very quick to learn and identify each sprite for exactly what they are and it might happen so fast you can barely notice it. Your brain can go "Oh, that's the first sprite of this attack he's doing" and know how to react. Something similar happens in RTS games, which also have a huge 2D-purist fanbase. It's much easier to identify one little guy from a crowd of thousands when it's one of 8 directional sprites with an iconic pose for that unit than it is to identifying a tiny 3D blob among other 3D blobs with a million angles and a million frames of iddle animation each.
I've been making fighting game sprites since I got a PC. It is a skill that takes time to get good at. Lots of trail and error. Easy to start hard to master.
3-D has a lot of advantages of 2-D when it comes to speed, and asset use. Once you make that character you can just rig new models to it for costumes to sell. That's another revenue stream.
With 2-D the best you can do is have extra color options. Otherwise you have to edit every sprite. I know there are new sprite programs with tweening options but they don't have the same apeal as hand drawn sprites. The barrier to entry is also higher, because just like with 3-D animation you have to learn to rigg the 2-D puppet.
Personally I prefer the style of Xrd over Strive. While I love the colors and designs of Strive, there's way too much 3D camera motion and characters have a bit of smooth shading on certain parts, so it looses that energetic 2D effect in my opinion.
Fair
Me, I like strives animations and poly counts, but xrd have better character designs and more life
@@ratedr7845 Yeah, I think Strive's animations and high poly models are awesome, and I even personally like the bright colors more. There's just a few things that scream "2D" and it's kinda annoying because it was so close to being (in my opinion) perfect
If there ever will be a next Guilty Gear I would really like to see something stylistically between Strive and XRD, maybe even with Accent Core and Missing Link motives in overall setting
4:38 Actually Pocket Bravery, a brasilian Indie fighting game, managed to surpass the numbers of sprites of Skull Girls.
the rise of stylized 3D graphics is something I was looking to for a while now.
in the earlier days of 3D it was like using smears, multiples, and other techniques was "done because of hardware limitation" instead of just looking better and being more intuitive because our eyes don't see in frames.
Many people tend to forget the spectacular The Last Blade. It's a snk game from the 90s and it looked gorgeous
Loved that game played it online on mame and ggpo
I dont play fighting games, but even am starting to see the players as squares
Bro is talking about 3D moving like 2D without mentioning how Multiversus animates every character like a cartoon.
Also about the Pixar Effect, Luca and Turning Red are great examples of how the industry as a whole is using 2D as inspiration to make their movies more dynamic. Pixar is cooking.
multiversus looks like ass tho lol
The problem with multiversus's animation is that they don't have any weight. The build up and follow through in all of them are all over the place and causes the attacks in the game to have pretty much no impact. Compare a regular hit in 3rd strike or even sf6 to something like bugses down air, they really should have taken more notes from sakurai when it came to translating 2d into 3d.
That being said, I do think that Multiversus is a bit too rigid despite being animated like a cartoon. While the characters may squash and stretch, there's very little wind up. This could be argued to making snappier combat, on execution there's little weight that is used on each attack, visually telling me this move has little impact. To me it gives the impression that these characters are more like action figures than cartoons, even the actual cartoons like Bugs and Tom and Jerry don't really feel like cartoons, because of how little they exaggerate them.
A good example of what I'm talking about would be comparing Link's boomerang in Smash Ultimate compared to Batman's batarang. When Link is about to swing his arm, he lingers a little bit before throwing. Batman however he swings it as soon as you press the button. While yeah, you could charge it, even when letting go Batman barely gives any visual indicator of the move's completion, compared to Link's wide swing of his arm.
These are all valid points, but before 3D was possible, *every* fighting game was drawn. Drawn animation is generally more expensive, but we have countless examples of fighting games being made despite that being more expensive, at a time when the playerbase for fighting games was much smaller than it is now. The main reason it's not around now is not primarily technoligical or labor related; it's taste, unfortunately. Disney is a great example of this. Princess and the Frog was their final drawn animated movie because it did so poorly despite being both a good movie and looking beautiful. People who vastly prefer drawn animation (which does include me) are loud, but a minority. To most of a fighting game's audience, drawn animation will seem less appealing than 3D animation. We've had a recent revolution in 3D animation mimicking the feel of 2D animation (Spiderverse, recent ArcSys games, the new TMNT movie, The Last Wish), and by no means is this animation style cheap, but it still has many technological advantages over purely drawn animation
Literally dont know how you dont have more subs, production quality is insane. Definitely the most underrated fighting gamr content creator, keep up the good work!
Thank you! I appreciate it
This fills the Core A Gaming itch I’ve been missing on RUclips since he stopped uploading frequently years ago. Awesome video! 👏
When it comes to fighting games in particular, I appreciate the visual style of 2D games perfectly well. The reason why I have never gotten into one is actual the twitch factor.
No, I'm not talking about Twitch the streaming site. I'm talking about reading animations quickly enough to respond to moves via twitch reflexes. In a smoothly animated 3D game, I watch for the first hint of where a move is going to go, and react to that. But with 2D, the transitions are so jerky that it's hard to react. Add to that the fact that 2D games tend to be faster paced, since 3D games broadcast a little longer to give players more of a chance to understand the 3D space. But even against the fastest 3D characters, I'll take them over 2D any day.
"3d animation is cheaper is becuase is computer generated"
Only applies to games like strive. If you plan to make realistic movements you have to resort to motion capture, easily multiplying the amount of workers needed for them.
Not only dose sf3 animate really well, the pixel sprites are jam packed with detail despite their very small size. Actually insane artisty on display with that game.
0:20 This image is KOF 13 hate speech.
I have so much respect to the people who made the hololive vtuber fighting game, Idol Showdown. Sprite based artwork is so time consuming and expensive that I respect the effort and dedication to do all that work for free. Not only do the sprites look great, but it shows the dedication and love the devs have for the game and the source material.
A point that your video mentioned in passing but it is important to talk is how games like 3rd strike don't have balance patches. It is not rare for balance patches to change slightly the animation of moves to last more or less, and this in 2d is insanely time and cost effective.
True
Iirc 3rd Strike specifically was a massive influence on the animation of Skullgirls, and it shows
Even though skullgirls is one of the best looking games I've ever seen, I shall remain a happy spectator.
My hands aren't prepared.
same
Got it on Switch sale...
YOU ARE NOT WRONG
True. I love everything about the style of this game, but it’s so technically hard and the skillfloor is so high that I don’t even know if I will ever start grinding it
Great video, but I’m surprised Smash didn’t come up? That series is 3D but outside of 64, every entry still looks great, which I believe can partly be attributed to the particle effects and more distinct artstyle
Good point! Although I thought smash smash 64 was also 3D?
@@typhoonbh they meant 64 doesnt look good, not that its not 3d
The unmentioned side of fancy graphics: sacrificed move readability. My friend cannot play new Guilty Gear Strive well because their 3D animations are harder to read and when two characters are close you can barely see what is going on there, despite him playing rather well the 2D GG games and other fighting games. He is still a formidable opponent in GGStrive but he is visibly frustrated when playing it.
2D isn't used anymore not because of the "relentless march of technology" but because it's extremely expensive. A game that chose to go 3D over 2D is making a monetary choice to spend less resources on visuals (at scale), which isn't necessarily a bad thing if they allocate those resources to more features/characters/mechanics/etc.
It's the same reason why you won't see traditional animation anymore. Even if you like 2D animation, it's all digital now. Games like the recent ArcSys titles try their best to emulate 2D style, because they clearly know it's aesthetically pleasing, but of course utilize 3D models for it. The process is more expensive, but still not as expensive as straight up hand drawing every frame of every fighter like they used to. And don't even bother thinking about adding alternate DLC costumes down the line - instead of rigging an outfit and letting your physics engine handle the rest, you're having someone draw new outfits on every frame of the character.
It's kinda important to recognize this, because there will be a point where generative AI gets good enough to make the process even cheaper (at the expense of some visual style, just like how the move from 2d to 3d inherently makes a stylistic tradeoff). Keep in mind, artists will still be the ones utilizing these generative AI tools, they will still ultimately have a job but it will heavily rely on using AI as a tool to make the process more efficient even if it ultimately results in a worse looking product. I foresee people will, eventually, become desensitized to gen AI as the models improve more over time and professionals ultimately lose to their employers who tell them the project has x resources and this can't meet the criteria of 50 characters unless they use AI, and that will be the tradeoff they make to meet that character limit. Their hopes will be for the game to be fun enough and the style passing a threshold to be presentable (especially with a team of artists spending their time touching up and modifying the AI gens to be more cohesive).
4:00 - As an animator, I would love to be able to earn my laurels for my 2D art. I mourn missing an opportunity that was never mine professionally, only privately. Such is life.
"Imagine having to go frame by frame to animate each character's moves" is read like a threat, while I'm can only read those same words with an elation unparalleled even by eating.
0:34 That edit was SO CLEAN!
0:35 that transition was fire! 🔥🔥
i know this is about fighting games, but a shi--- a gacha game came out yesterday called ZZZ. the animations in that are drop-dead gorgeous. seriously, it's like schoolgirls but in 3d and with unlimited fps. (not the art style, just the animation)
i hope someone uses that style to make a fighting game one day. it might be BETTER than what guilty gear offers. i mean, maybe-as-good-but-in-a-different-style, but a style i'd probably prefer because it's butter smooth and still extremely stylized.
Doing sprites is not cheaper than doing 3D models. It’s especially not cheaper when you’re talking Street Fighter 6.
Arc System Works is also a smaller independent developer that makes lower budget game and they were able to manage doing 3D fighting games frame by frame. The models in their games are also relatively simple in comparison to other 3D fighting games. What makes them look so good is that they’re cel shaded, but you look at them without the cel shading and they look like models from the 360 era...and not even fantastic looking character models from that era.
The funny thing about what Arc System Works is doing is they’re mimicking bad animation. They’re mimicking the looking of not having enough frames of animation. When they were doing sprites I’m sure they would’ve killed to have them move like 3D models, now that they’re using 3D models they’re doing more work to have them look like their old sprite based games that were on the lower side of frames of animation for fighting games. People, people that played fighting games, used to complain about how Arc System Works games looked animation wise in comparison to Capcom games. Now that they’re recreating that in 3D people seem to love it, and movies started to copy it.
dhalsim animation in sf6 has more worked to it than any other fighter
The man , the myth , the legend is back!!!!!
I'm glad you touched on the difficulty of selling weight and impact in a 3D fighting game-- I do think developers have tried a LOT of tricks to get this to work, but a LOT of the resulting combat doesn't feel quite right for me outside of cinematic supers and other moments where the animators don't have to worry about responsiveness. Arcsys is leading the way here, but (as you point) their approach isn't really easily reproducible OR necessarily appropriate for another game with a different art style.
I'm sorry, but as a 3D artist, your point at 3:45 about interpolation frustrates me a bit.
The whole "the computer just interpolates between keyframes" is one of those myths about 3D animation that sadly refuses to die, despite being only partially true. Because yes, the computer does interpolate between certain frames, but the artist has control over precisely how that interpolation happens, making it another srtistic choice.
Additionally, due to an overlap of dozens of different motions for a single action, with keyframes at different overlapping intervals, the argument of "the computer interpolates everything" is simply disingenious and doing a disservice to the amount of care artists take to make 3D animation look as appealing as it does.
Great video! I really loved the in depth look on the visual aspect of this genre. One thing I would challenge would be the statement "Capcom sprite based games may not have aged well in mechanics". Classic games like ST, A2 or the Versus series are still played regularly today on Fightcade, and I think offer a good alternative to a lot of modern design philosophies in games like SF6. In fact, I would argue that they have aged extraordinarily well if you are looking for an alternative to said design philosophies. Take for example frame data and pressure in SF6 which is based more on spacing traps and locking most plus frames behind Drive Rush. It can feel very fun and exciting to go to an older game where frame data is a lot less "stingy" with its plus frames. Anecdotally, I love SF6 but in this past year I have had an absolute blast learning Alpha 2 and 3 in depth for the first time. They are extremely fun and I would encourage anyone to explore older fighting games!
We also gotta remember that games and hardware and more importantly the general audience want high resolution. The 720/1080p of last decade does not suffice as the standard. The higher the resolution the more pixels their are to manipulate and adjust. Same goes for 3d models, what once was a few hundred pixels has turned into thousands for a single appendage. Add onto that the file size of 4k resolution and you now have a more time consuming, nore expensive, less friendly product
worth putting in the extra effort to animate everything by hand, the end result is simply just that good
Honestly would prefer it if more 2D games went with a handrawn style like Cuphead and Skullgirls, instead of only using pixel sprites or 2.5D models.
It just looks a whole lot smoother, and will age even better than the alternative.
Am I the only one who really likes the look of KOFXV? It's very stylized, without having to go overkill on the labor like Guilty Gear, but is a far cry from the (imo kind of boring) realistic look of MK/Tekken/SF6
2:45 this is sooo true
photorealism doesnt have to age poorly. look at Mirrors Edge, a game that still to this day is absolutely gorgeous, more visually stunning than many trying to achieve realism, and color palette aside, Mirrors Edge really does look photorealistic. but it has a timeless artstyle despite that
also for the sf6 looking bad when the next game comes out kind of deal, that's entirely dependent on the style. ngl it doesnt really look like it leans into its artstyle or put a lot of effort into it. high resolution absolutely, but somewhat undercooked visually
for your third strike comparison, 3D doesnt have to generate the frame between keyposes, and you can still use smear frames in 3D
Gotta love how Brawlhalla is one of those games where you get to see Spongebob Squarepants, Jin Kazama, Ezio Auditore Da Firenze and Anakin Skywalker on the same screen beating the shit out of each other on Suzuku Castle
Yk this helps me quite a lot as someone who wants to maybe develop my own fighting game at some point
Im sorta in the process of 2D games and im still well far away from FG creation but i might drive myself crazy just drawing 1 char but it might end up having a cool 3rd strike+streets of rage 2 look thatd be borderline impossible to recreate inb3D
the video style kinda reminds me of core a gaming, which is really well made.
keep up the good work
You can literally do all of the tricks of 2D with 3D, they just choose not to.
That was the point of mentioning guilty gear
More time consuming, probably, more expensive, I don't know about that. You have to pay programmers, and modelers and still need animators, you have to pay for systems upkeep, tools, render farms, servers for support. 3d can take less time because essentially the computer is doing the in-betweens, but then as you noted, it may be smoother, but it doesn't have the same effect, and it's more floaty than 2d, so in order to cover some of that you have to modify keys, and the ways the renderer does stuff. You have to program in squash and stretch when in 2d you can just draw it, follow through, overlapping action, so basically 3d animators have to also learn what 2d animators do. Now if you're going totally PBR then you have another beast to contend with, lighting, musculature on the models, the way it moves, so in a sense the could be even more work. The plus size is that you can do it once and apply it to multiple characters, but you also have the tradeoff, of trying to vary it so it doesn't look the same as everyone. 2D kind of forces you to animate uniquely. That being said you can apply a lot of the 3d "helps" to 2d. You can come have the computer interpolate 2d, but that also results in some "floatiness" -- but then you can create an algorithm that varies the framerate based on how fast the action is supposed to be. I wouldn't be quick to judge either 2d or 3d as being easier or cheaper. Alot of 3d animators will swear up and down they can't draw to save their lives and it's a whole lot harder to do 2d, but then again, 2d animators will claim they know nothing about that computer nonsense, drawers and 2d animators can just put stuff down on paper without the need for expensive equipment or long start up times. So trade-offs. I think the move to 3d is similar to the move from 2d to 3d games, once Doom came out, everyone had to do first-person shooters, so it's kind of a fad. It's kind of a fad with 3d too. Eventually AI is going to beat everything out, and you won't need either. (This is not to say they won't exist, people still like creating and going to plays, but they're just not the predominant form of entertainment anymore), so it will be with games cartoons and movies -- someone will handcraft something for the fun of it, and there will always be someone to watch it.
We all know that Sueny Graystation's (-r) の Tinkken = Hooman Centapeed garbodge level of shartfaxtory.
Fun video. I appreciate the routes your mind took to get to these conclusions.
I spent years working off of arcsystems foundational concepts for a 2D look in 3D. The sad truth of the matter is that there approach is hyper specific and only functions in an extremely controlled environment. It looks phenomenal don't get me wrong, but look at the difference between the story mode animation and the in game animation and you'll see just how quickly it goes off the rails when you take it out of its designed space.
"Some cartoonish aspects"
You mean like his neck being wider than my waist? 😂
this is a very well produced video.
good stuff
Sprites have something that 3D don't. It's something that happens when you read a comic book too. The brain fills the gaps. Is something similar to what happens when reading a book, but with images... For some reason in a 2D fighting game you can draw impossible moves or even deform the bodies a bit but with 3D models the same moves look weird. Like Ryu or Ken's crouched fierce punch, in 2D models you can buy it, but in 3D ones... Not so much 😅Well, with 2D sprites at least. These new ones that look like Flash animation are quite different.
3:35 hopefully stuf like this will improve drastically as AI is incorporated into frame interpolation between keyframes!
New 2D fighting games definitely need more of a vector paint artstyle instead of a pixel art style if we will ever have any more of them. Even then, the animation budget is much higher when you aren't just working with small pixels. But, maybe something like Rakuga Kids would be good for an indie dev to do. Something that can be done using vector paint, so every character/attack/UI element can be scaled without distorting or showing pixels.
I don't know... I think if certain features are scaled back it could be possible... SF6 took 4-5 years, had a team of about 300, and is estimated to have cost as much as $20 million. Third Strike on the other hand took 3 years, had only 13 people working on it, and cost $8 million. It had a troubled development (no one on the original team had ANY experience with fighting games) and they had to bring on Shinichiro Obata (from Darkstalkers) to save the project. It would never make "all the money" like shareholders want though, so likely it will be indie teams who could deliver.
What we need is financial viability... we need a type of game that doesn't NEED huge cut scenes, story modes, and flashy effects; likely focusing on the competitive aspects and if anything innovating on the training mode (people keep playing fighting games when they become good at them; it's a huge barrier to entry). We need a way to make sprite work and animations faster, which would greatly reduce costs. This actually seems like something AI would be perfect for...
Well… in the case of Rivals they are not changing from 2D to 3D out of neccessity , it is more a stylistic choice, given that otherwise their gameplay would feel stale and not innovative if they were to stay 2D pixel art unless they hire a powerhouse on 2D animation which would be too costly.
Wouldn’t the fact that they would not be able to afford a dedicated 2d art team prove that it was necessary to make the move? Also I included the point that 3D allows them to innovate more in terms of gameplay
this transition at 0:35 was sick
itd be sick to see a street fighter in an arcsystem works style. I've personally never liked how street fighter looks in 3D. Street fighter 6 looks the best out of the 3D street fighters. But something about the bulky characters is still kinda off putting to me. The 2D sprites is where the characters look best to me
I always thought that when a new darkstalkers will ever get announced it would benefit from a high quality sprite art style
That HOME track was nice 😄
The true lesson from this video is that Guilty Gear Strive is goated
man, I've never heard anyone refer to fighting games as beautiful, this is super interesting
Arc system works perfected the art of 3d with 2d animations, by sheer nessesity to "strive" and set them aside from other developers, and that is why even bandai namco comitioned them a dragon ball game, that was a testament to commitment in evolving as a company and leave a mark no one else can do, and they were doing it since the first guilty gear un 98. prior XRD, they had tryed 3D before with games like guilty gear 2 or battle fantasya (even in blazblue they worked with 3d models to then draw their 2d sprites by rotoscoping their 3d models back in 2008). but Guilty Gear XDR sign was the milestone of their effrorts to take a path no one has gone before then.
SF6 has the best animations ever, Tekken 8 still looks animated like the first Tekken games
Bro... the editing in this game is absolutely incredible. Who is your editor?
I edit my own videos, that’s why I don’t upload often (I’m also lazy)
@@typhoonbh I feel. How did you learn to edit? And what software do you use? I'm looking to get into videography(?) myself
It may be cost effective to create puppet like 3d animation with minimum amount of details but if you really want to reach the amount of details that 2d-hd sprites offered 2 decades ago, the budget is going to be much higher. Not to mention extremely resource intensive. That’s something only recent fighting games like SFV and Tekken 8 have barely touched.
The camera angles are the only upside to 3d games.
So I still believe in the resurgence of 2d especially with the high definition HD graphics that were superior in detail and resolution to what was made 2 decades ago.
New typhoon upload
I don't know why I like ggst style so much and you just describe it very well. well done man!
Them’s Fightin’ Herds is another one using 2D animation!
In the end its still 2D since your monitor is 2D 😂
VR fighting games soon
@@typhoonbh You do noticed its still 2D screens being positioned in front of your eyes right 😁
I'm someone who has played most of the big fighting games, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Dragon Ball Fighters Z, The Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi games, and even the Final Fantasy Dissidia on PSP (the complete version)... But NONE of them have drawn me in the way that the Guilty Gear Strive has, the game looks awesome, has cool mechanics that don't disrespect the more traditional aspects of fighting games, and has the characters with the most personality. I honestly mean it when i say it's the greatest fighting game yet from my point of view.
There's also another game that use 2d sprites, Fraymakers, a platform fighter made by the people behind the fangame Super Smash Flash 2. And because they do clean sprite animation their development pace is way slower, than rivals 2, for exemple, they do not provide new content as fast as Rivals, making the game suffer of that.
I literally just did a paper for school on the importance of character design and visuals for the success of a fighting game taking KoF 14 (and Shun’ei) as a case study
Guilty gear strive is by far the best looking and feeling fighting game out ATM in my opinion
I still think SF IV is the best looking 3d street fighter, because the art direction is the most cohesive. The broad-strokes paintbrush aesthetic was incorporated into EVERYTHING, from the fonts to the character portraits to the visual effects; even the character models to some degree. It's like they designed everything around the Mario Strikers aesthetic, and it RULES.
SF6 just looks so awkward to me, from the designs to the posing to the animations. JP's bizarre posture, Blanca's awkward aerial swipes, it all has this uncanny feeling like the Mortal Kombat games.
Good analysis, nice insights, cool video. : )
always a good day for a typhoon video
Yes another video from typhoon is here! Finally!❤
The paradox is that there are both 2d and 3d fighters
Ive been playing fighting games since the mid 90s. I disagree that learning new games is a massive undertaking. Once you learn any game. You automatically have a reference point in pretty much every game. Learning Street Fighter will essentially give you access to the skillset to learn most 2D fighting games. Quarter/half circle, dragon punch, charge attacks etc. Its pretty much universal. Usually only game systems vary, and they isnt even the case in modern games. The only real stretch are 3D games that add more layers, but still totally accessible if you understand fundamentals.
When I was talking about “picking up a new fighting game” I meant when a person learns a new fighting game, new to them, not that the game itself is new. I was implying that fighting games are harder than most games, I probably could have clarified that.
That makes sense. It's just like this for now. Wait until the AI generated 2D games start rolling out. That will be the true renaissance
@@xer05tar I don't know if im ready for that yet lol
This video is so sick i need more
I got this video recommended to me one billion time
Good for you
You know what might work for Capcom and Street Fighter, they come out with a new Alpha game but make it sprite animation drawn with the video quality that game can do today, It wouldn't really cut to the people playing SF6 and SF fans for go nuts.