Looks great. Where is that from?
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How do you feel about the animation in Guilty Gear XRD?
- Thread starter Dr. Kaos
- Start date
Looks great. Where is that from?
Pretty sure it's Sword of the Stranger, I wanna say.
JoJo ASB is okay but they need to improve the pacing of matches and give it that Ultimate Ninja Storm style story mode, I would forgive if the gameplay wasn't improved at all if we got that. Need at least Parts 1 and 2 in that style.
I meant to say "wouldn't be too much more work", edited the original post. >_<
These 3D sprites are superior for 3 reasons.
1- You get to move the camera for free, which looks awesome for ultras, throws and cutscenes.
2- You can create costumes that will mostly animate by themselves thanks to physics engines (and sell them as DLC...)
3- You can animate the characters closer to 60 FPS, whereas sprites are hand-drawn and even SF3 tops at 12 Frames per second per character where every sprite repeats for 5 frames.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I think it looks great, the "jank" is there in ArcSys games so it's easier to see what frames are the active frames and what are not
I think the points about games evolving and street fighter being used as an example are misleading.
I don't think anybody claims that SFIV feels like SFII, feels like SF3. They all have "different" animations sets, but they feel nothing similar to me. visually and gameplay-wise
XRD on the other hand, FELT exactly like i am accustomed to with guilty gear, and i think that is just Arcsystem works' approach to how they design their games. Consistent feel throughout.
I think that if they were to add more frames in each animation to speed up the look, it would look too dissimilar. For example, Street fighter 3 visually has an extremely different visual feel than street fighter before it simply due to added frames. If the goal is to keep a consistent visual feel as well as gameplay feel, i think adding frames would detract from that.
I understand the argument that "a series should change and evolve." But, there is more ways to do that than simply making the game look smoother (for aesthetic considerations, not gameplay fps considerations). Guilty gear xrd is arguably the most radical design change ASW has ever made, accusing it of not being evolutionary to their series is not really accurate.
I don't think anybody claims that SFIV feels like SFII, feels like SF3. They all have "different" animations sets, but they feel nothing similar to me. visually and gameplay-wise
XRD on the other hand, FELT exactly like i am accustomed to with guilty gear, and i think that is just Arcsystem works' approach to how they design their games. Consistent feel throughout.
I think that if they were to add more frames in each animation to speed up the look, it would look too dissimilar. For example, Street fighter 3 visually has an extremely different visual feel than street fighter before it simply due to added frames. If the goal is to keep a consistent visual feel as well as gameplay feel, i think adding frames would detract from that.
I understand the argument that "a series should change and evolve." But, there is more ways to do that than simply making the game look smoother (for aesthetic considerations, not gameplay fps considerations). Guilty gear xrd is arguably the most radical design change ASW has ever made, accusing it of not being evolutionary to their series is not really accurate.
the method is strictly the same and is universal. Basically several sets of models for anything that can change topology. Look at the 4gamer xrd wiki for some examples of crazy frames you may not even notice during .play.
No, you're thinking of a limitation that only existed before skinning was a thing.
Actually, like most 2d fighting games (including Xrd since it mimics the process in 3d), skullgirls frames can be freely positioned on a 60fps basis but use 15fps on average, like sf3. It's a similar process to how 2D Disney movies can go up to 24fps but usually hover around 6 or 12. Basically if you use too many frames in a hand drawn animation it'll usually lose its impact. There's a whole presentation by their lead animator about that on GDCvault, or you can get a disney animation book like The Illusion of Life to get the longer version of the explanation.
Sprite memory size grows up quadratically (ie a lot) with resolution and so you're quickly limited on consoles (unless you're Mike Z and instead of sticking to old sprite formats you made your own very efficient one and slapped awesome compression algorithms on it). Each frame also has to be fully created by hand, and you can't have alternate costumes and so on. In contrast using 3d models to mimic sprites means infinite resolution (since they're vector-based), very light memory footprint, alternate costumes, comparatively easy animation (even with the weird tricks they use), being able to hire 3d animators which are more plentiful in the game industry (2d is becoming kind of a lost art), etc. They've also mentioned they wanted something that looked revolutionary, which they couldn't have achieved with pixely sprites.
Also, their workflow has involved 3d models for years (all blazblue and P4A characters are touched up 3d renders, and so were a few GG chars) so they're essentially streamlining the process.
yo_soy_el_topo
Member
Thanks for the answers to my ps3/ps4 questions all!
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
This last one isn't necessarily better or worst, b/c when dealing w/ 2D-style fighters, you don't actually WANT a full 60fps style like Tekken or Virtua Fighter. That would make a lot of things typical for 2D fighters, like precise cancels and super-tight 1 frame links, MUCH more difficult to do consistently.
FWIW I think the SFIV games do a great job of knowing where to emphasize fluid motion and where to emphasize "jump" animations for sense of speed and kinetic impact. It follows the frame data models of the 2D Street Fighters pretty well, even if it has some "other" problems and doesn't quite look like an anime in motion (tho I'd argue SF never really aimed for a typical anime look aside from the Alpha games).
Imagine playing Tekken (maintains constant 60 unique frames per second) with Street Fighter's hitboxes and frame data...it would be a complete mess.
I can agree with this BUT....SF games, no matter it 2, 3, Alpha, 4 etc...they always share some basis of similarities. There's a universal blueprint towards framework and design they all share, even if they don't quite play the same.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
I assume another advantage of the 3D models is that it allows for the creation of totally unique animations for every situation without having to literally go back to the drawing board. It also allows for animations to be tweaked and adjusted without having to edit master bitmaps for 2D sprites.
Agreed. I meant that having the option is better than not having it.
Wonko_C
Member
I love it. The Gameplay parts look indistinguishable from a sprite-based game to me. And the super/cutscene animations nailed the anime look, so that's a win in all 2 fronts. It reminded me of this:
http://youtu.be/mucMR5RUiKQ
Very well done CG anime movie that makes me forget it's all actually in 3D.
http://youtu.be/mucMR5RUiKQ
Very well done CG anime movie that makes me forget it's all actually in 3D.
looks great!
JordanN
Banned
Going 3D is much more smarter. You can crank out a game in less time and reuse the assets at any resolution. I honestly prefer this method now.
2D spritework is exceedingly expensive and time heavy. Watching the creation streams for Skullgirls has been really illuminating. This "tech" is in it's infancy, but if this 2D emulation reduces the cost of development by 15%, it's worth doing. My guess is that we'll see this animation style quite a bit over the next few years.
Xion_Stellar
People should stop referencing data that makes me feel uncomfortable because games get ported to platforms I don't like
I heard no complaints about the PS3 version as far as performance goes but honestly if you're going to buy a PlayStation system you might as well future proof and get a PS4 because looking at the release schedule of next year it's quite obvious games are making a transition to current generation consoles and Fighting games will not be an exception to this.
abstract alien
Member
Never been a fan of the janky style of animation. I know it's deliberate, so I can't hold it against it. It just isn't my thing. Gorgeous visuals though, for sure.
Muchi Muchi Pink
Member
They are trying to catch the feel of 2D games with the "iffy" animations, it also helps to actually see what move an opponent does tbh. So yes, I'm feeling okay with it.
Slamtastic
Member
Complaints about animation in fighting games often stems from a lack of understanding of intent. Arc intentionally used methods to capture the feel of the previous titles, just like how in MK they used the same method for animation as they had simce the first (with the normal camera that recorded the sprites swapped with ones to record the poses as mocap data) and a lot of people didn't "get" it. If people understand series identity ot would help.
Trouble, or "trouble", is that the generation of people who played MK2 and 3 religiously are gone. There's no reason to adhere to those old standards anymore, especially when you're essentially rebooting the brand. When you're starting from scratch, it doesn't matter if people identify with the origins of the series, they are throwing all of that stuff out.
KuroPyonyo
Banned
So the artists in the 90s were superheroes, thats what you guys are saying?
I still don't get how games with neogeo level tech can just look so much better then anything a decade later. I mean GG XRD looks fine, I'm no graphic whore, I would even play it if it looked a lot worse. But games like Metal Slug 3 are just more appealing to look at.
How can it be that back then with a lot less budget creating a ton of awesome sprites was not a problem, but nowadays with all the technological advances making a good looking game is hard?
If memory is the problem like Chev says, then why not just go back to 480p and scale it up?
Well from what I've seen of MKX they've vastly improved and done away with a lot of the janky animation from previous entries. Everything has a better flow to it and it's definitely for the better. You can still have a higher frame of animation and still achieve a sense of 2D animation. Street Fighter increasingly got better animation through the ages (outside of its 3D counterparts) and it didn't hurt anything.
The instant kills in this game are a great example of what could have been.
I mean, put it this way. There was a reason why those sprites never changed ever. How long did it take for the Metal Slug sprites to get updated? 10 years? 15?
And no one would be down for scaling a game up from 480p. That's a hard sell in a genre that's already a tough sell to most. It's sort of acham's razor, right? Let's take Skullgirls again, there are all these people who say they want games with hand drawn sprites or characters with that old school level of sprite work, but then they also don't want to buy a game that only has 10 characters because "it's poor value". You can't have it both ways, making games is expensive, and people are going to try and find way so make things cheaper, even if it means abandoning old tech and replacing it with new tech that looks similar, but is cheaper to use. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't. Let's look at the Naruto Storm series; CC2 has essentially made those games look like an anime in motion, they are visual marvels. But the gameplay they abandoned was dramatically better with what they built to support the new direction of a 3d fighting game.
There's gonna be a lot of give and take over the next few years as smaller developers learn how to use these new tools in interesting ways.
No, see, that's the thing that's important and problematic about quadratic growth, console video memory didn't grow at the same rate. Basically the sprites and textures grow faster than video memory does, and so storage tech that fit in 200p doesn't anymore at higher resolutions, especially if other aspects (sound, animation frame count, etc) have to scale up too. And that's an old problem, 3d consoles have never really had the amount of memory good sprite animation requires unless you go for vector anim (like vanillaware) or are a compression wiz (skullgirls, again).
Because then it just looks like a scaled up 480p game (ie like KoF13). And they wanted more. Really, there's more than just a jump in what Arcsys did. they didn't double the resolution, they effectively can go as high as they want now, as long as the GPU supports it, models will look perfectly crisp in 4K.
And as was mentioned before, it decouples animation and look, ie alternate costumes and even very practical things. The ur-example right now would be Sol's Dragon install. It almost entirely reuses the same anims as regular Sol with new effects. Before Xrd, this was just a flashing effect on the standard sprite, because they had neither the memory nore the budget to animate an entire new look just for an effect. In Xrd it's a separate model that still can reuse the regular animations and thus looks awesome.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
The only one here who's saying that is you.
Not really a proper comparison since plenty of the people who are picking up this game are fans of the previous GG games. GGXrd is ArcSys bringing GG into a modern age with vibrant visuals and some changes to game mechanics and a tutorial mode to make it easier for newcomers to get into. As far as I've seen they've done a good job at captivating people going by the reveal and news threads where you have many people saying that the game looks exciting enough for them to try it out for themselves which I'm very comfortable using as a general indication of how people see the game.
I'm not sure if you've seen the game yet but they are not "rebooting the brand", "starting from scratch" or "throwing all of that stuff out". Xrd is an updated Guilty Gear for arcade and current gen consoles. If ArcSys really thought that mimicking SF3 or Garou or whatever would have been an improvement gameplay wise over what they were doing before then they would have invested in that. If they didn't because of budget, lazyness (lol) or whatever reason you want to insert the game end product as it is now looks amazing regardless and is a significant achievement for them.
But with that mindset, the people who would have bought this game because it's a guilty gear sequel would have done so regardless. My point is that if ASW was simply interested in making another GGXX iteration, they could have done so with the same sprites/music/backgrounds, just as they have over the past 10 years. They recognized that it was time to do something different visually and sometimes, older things, tried and true as they may be, have to fall by the wayside to make room for something that matches the visual fidelity of today. I think it was the right decision as Xrd looks absolutely gorgeous.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Yes, this is exactly what they've done. They just happen to disagree with you on one specific point.
As someone who owns probably 9 iterations of GGXX, I would have been supremely disappointed if GGXXX was simply using the same sprites from 10 years ago with a handful of new characters here and there. That would not be acceptable to me.
All of this talk about sprite work, though, makes me wonder when KOF will update their sprites again, as the KOF13 sprites are quite lovely.
omnislayer
Member
The next KoF is supposed to be 3d unfortunately.
I'll wait to play it for myself to finalize my opinion, but from the videos I've seen, it does look janky. Rather than go with the limited frames to emulate the movement, I would have liked to have seen them go with strong pose Holds on the animations to give the same sense but keep things fluid.
---Warning: Poor Example----
You don't need to see a punch go from chest to air over the duration of 10 frames evenly. 4 frames could be held at the chest, 2 for the transition (interpolated) and 4 frames for the punch in the air.
---Warning: Poor Example----
You don't need to see a punch go from chest to air over the duration of 10 frames evenly. 4 frames could be held at the chest, 2 for the transition (interpolated) and 4 frames for the punch in the air.
Well..is it 3D, or is it Maximum Impact 3? It's okay if it's MI3, it's bad if it's KOF14.
I get what you saying but I don't get what you saying. I am a little lost, are you laying an image over two frames or more or we talking about variable frame rates or something else?
I know that if you use too many images over a lesser framerate you get this dreamy feel to the animation. I remember my class mate placed one image over each 1.5 frames, at 24fps, it was dreamy and doesn't look realistic if that is what you aiming for of course.
KuroPyonyo
Banned
My takeaway from this is just as modern game design doesn't align with my tastes, general development apperently does the same.
I dont care if your game supports 4k, has tons of costumes or a freely moving camera. That adds nothing to the core game. Whatever more these devs want, it's just meh to me, nothing more than meaningless fluff.
OmegaDL50
Member
Have you ever played any 2D game with an extremely low resolution assets and then scale it up high res?
This is what happens when you do so. (that is 480p base res scaled to 1080p by the way)
Nah brah. Seems like a lot of people are saying it since they don't care for animation improvement in the Guilty Gear series.
No one is saying anything about imitating those games. We're talking about frames of animation improvements.
Think of it like sheet music (in fact animation timing sheet kinda look like that). Each frame is a beat, but you do not need a note every beat to make a tune. Maybe you only need a note every two beats (which is called animating on twos) or four beats (animating on fours) etc. In 24fps Disney animation animating every frame out of 24 actually isn't a common occurence, many sequences are animated on twos or fours.
Take Alex's s.HP from third strike. The game's on 60fps, the move lasts 35 frames but only uses 16 sprites, ie roughly half, but it's not just animated on every two frames. Frames 13-14-15 each last one beat because it's a fast portion of the move but then frame 23 lasts four beats because it's a slow recovery.
Rule of thumb is overanimating (ie using too many hand made frames) slow moves will tend to make them jittery, so you only put in frames where needed.