Jul 5 2012, 1:24 pm
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Sphinxe1
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Without actual art every game would end up being text based because you would have no idea what is happening aside from possible sound effects
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Lugia319 wrote:
IMO the gameplay should be made before you even start programming. If not, you're probably herping around and won't get anything done. It's no use explaining it anymore. If they haven't gotten it by now they never will. | |
Sphinxe1 wrote:
Without actual art every game would end up being text based because you would have no idea what is happening aside from possible sound effects Text-based RPGs dominate the net man. | |
Lugia319 wrote:
IMO the gameplay should be made before you even start programming. If not, you're probably herping around and won't get anything done. Honestly... I don't want an immature 13 year old to make a game, nor do I think most of them are capable of doing it. | |
Lugia319 wrote:
Sphinxe1 wrote: Yeah text based games should be considered facebook imo I like to see whats happening...like comparing a movie to a book. Its like reading a book for fun instead of knowledge... | |
Sphinxe1 wrote:
Yeah text based games should be considered facebook imo All I have to say about this is Dwarf Fortress. An incredibly fun, deep game that uses almost no art, just text. Besides DF, a large majority of the earliest online gaming was text based, and there are still a lot of good text based games that don't involve spamming your friends for more Facebook game money. I like to see whats happening...like comparing a movie to a book. I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here, but I can only assume that you mean reading a book for fun is bad? I personally love reading books, and find them much more engaging than movies precisely BECAUSE you have to use your imagination. Regardless, it's a matter of personal preference, and as such is meaningless in the context of this debate. Overall, yes, having reasonable art is important, but an indie/hobbyist game should spend a nearly negligible percent of its development time on art unless the game is specifically an "Art game." There is almost no chance of getting the same quality as a triple A title in an acceptable amount of time, so trying to compete on the basis of your graphics is pointless and doomed to failure. The people who look for high quality graphics in a game aren't going to be interested in your BYOND game, so catering to them is a waste of time. As a side note, I lol'd at this. Killalongjohns wrote: Enough with the "I've been coding longer than this guy, I must have superior intellect" crap. You have no power or control over who does or doesn't have a place in this argument (or any argument), so your opinion is invalid. I made this username nearly 5 years ago (which, may I remind you, is longer than the time you've been on BYOND) But seriously, experience is king. How long you've been here is irrelevant, but someone who has more experience, more knowledge, and more skill automatically gains a certain level of authority compared to someone who has none. | |
Yes, but I don't like the way most of the more experienced people use their "level of authority". And technically, someone who's been coding for a year could have much more knowledge and skill than someone who's been coding for 4. May I remind us all, again, that this is all extremely off topic?
Back on topic: As an example, the only reason I tried out Eternia:Prologue is because of the stunning graphics I saw in the screenshots. | |
In other words. He doesn't like it when adults tell kids to shut up just because "they're more experienced". Or maybe he doesn't like it when college grad is making double his salary when he's been working since he was 14 and never went to college.
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I do have to say that the graphics quality is what attracts your audience. If you think for a moment that just because your game has great gameplay but bad graphics, that it'll still be as popular, you're sadly mistaken. If I see a game on the hub with crudely drawn graphics and no indication why I should bother with my own time to play it, why would anyone else? It's like attracting moths to a flame when you use pretty graphics. They're their to get people logged into your game an playing. If it's terrible or boring, they'll leave, if not, they'll stick around for a while.
I'm certainly not saying that you can have a bad game with nice graphics and it still be good. Each quality has it's own role in how you gain and keep your audience. The nice graphics are simply there to get people to see what your game is about. The gameplay itself is what carries your game and keeps players interested. There are exceptions to this, however. There are games with awful graphics but nice gameplay that do amazingly. This is because people who have played the game and gotten past bad first impressions saw that it was actually a good game. From there, it's a he-said-she-said ordeal where players start talking about it to their friends, "Hey, play this game, it's kinda cool." From there, it just snowballs into popularity. The trick here is getting players interested in your game to begin with. Graphics is one way, word or mouth is another. | |
Like I said, Minecraft and other games like RotMG and even NEStalgia for a BYOND example don't do anything spectacular, or "stunning" as Killa likes to put it, when it comes to graphics. Do people still like these games? Yes.
Killa and Kaio think I meant "bad graphics" as in eye-burning, inconsistent, indistinguishable artwork that looks like a toddler drew it and are thus arguing a point that was never trying to be made to begin with. Like many others have mentioned, if you want to prioritize graphics so much, you've already defeated yourself by opting to use BYOND over some program like Unity where you can create a 3D world. Eternia for instance. That game will never be able to compete against WoW when it comes to graphics. It's just not possible. It can, however, compete when it comes to actual gameplay because whether or not you made your game in 2D or 3D has nothing to do with how fun it actually is. Which goes back to my original point: gameplay > graphics. You should prioritize gameplay because it simply isn't possible to compete when it comes to graphics. Do you really think for a second Notch thought graphics were going to make his game popular when his character models looked like this? Or do you think the actual concept of a randomly generated world that you can build and survive in - AKA gameplay - is what he was focusing on the most? | |
I actually think the graphics of Minecraft suit it best. It just wouldn't be the same if you have more realistic landscapes and monsters. The stylization makes the art fun.
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I'm not saying they don't fit - I'm saying Notch put more effort into making the game fun as opposed to making his models as awesome as possible. It couldn't have taken long for him ( or whoever made it ) to draw that model as well as all the other graphics for the game. And he even got sound effects for the game from some free sounds website. It's apparent the only thing he was truly putting effort into was the game itself.
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Graphics are graphics...once they seem cohesively consistent it won't appear terrible. Minecraft reminds me of the Snes type blocky style. Which makes it cool... If you're saying you can have super crappy graphics and still make lots of $$ because of good gameplay... Possibly but even more likely if you had Ok graphics and good gameplay. I don't think minecraft is the very first of its kind either. Reminds me of Tetris to another level :)
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"good" and "bad" are how you ultimately describe graphics but there's a lot that goes into that. Graphics could be simple or detailed, consistent or inconsistent, complete or incomplete (has effects, animations, shading, etc.). People focus on the level of detail but that's really the most irrelevant part. Minecraft's graphics work because they're consistent and complete, it doesn't matter that they're simple. You can take 3D models that are more detailed and easily create a game whose graphics are overall much worse.
Many BYOND games have detailed graphics but often lack consistency and almost always lack completeness. Not only are people spending 90% of their games development time on graphics, in the end they're still making games that don't look that good. The only reason these kinds of BYOND games are graphically appealing is because they appeal to the BYOND users who think the same way. Whenever you see someone applauding a BYOND game for having great graphics, put the screenshots of that game next to screenshots of some non-BYOND games and you'll easily see how bad the BYOND game looks. In How I Met Your Mother terms, it's The Cheerleader Effect. | |
Yut Put wrote:
Sphinxe1 wrote: Except for text-based games =) What you've quoted there looks at the function of art, not the form. It's a perfectly valid observation but when people talk about the importance of graphics they're typically talking about the importance of having *good* graphics, not just the importance of having graphics. The people here who are saying that developers should spend less time on graphics certainly aren't trying to suggest that people should make games that don't have any graphics at all. When you're talking about the quality of graphics those statements get less insightful. Considering that most BYOND users consider "art" to mean "highly detailed anime style graphics", if we make that replacement those statements you'd get: I think highly detailed anime style graphics is just as important to a game as gameplay. As silly as it is, that's actually how many BYOND users think. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
you've already defeated yourself by opting to use BYOND over some program like Unity where you can create a 3D world. Eternia for instance. That game will never be able to compete against WoW when it comes to graphics. That's extremely subjective-- 2D isn't automatically better than 3D. I'd rather play a game like this over WoW, going by graphics alone anyway, any day of the week: http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg522/ scaled.php?server=522&filename=40920175zh8.png&res=landing I think this discussion is odd in general. If a developer has access to good art, they should use it-- most of the time it won't take away from their code development because the art will come from an artist. If they don't have an artist, or funds to commission art, then they'll make their game anyway. Either way, the gameplay is going to make or break the game. I can't really see how you can focus on art too much because it's usually a benefit that comes from being in a multi-man team, on BYOND anyhow. If this wasn't BYOND, I could understand how you could criticise someone for focusing their budget on art instead of programming and game design. | |
What I meant was, graphically, you can't create a more realistic, detailed world with a 2D engine. Your opinion may be that you like 2D games more, but the fact is the best designed 2D world can't compete with the best designed 3D world. It's the whole reason 3D exists in the first place - so games could have advanced graphics over the 2D games from the SNES/Sega Genesis years.
Of course some people may favor 2D games over 3D for whatever reason, but the point is if a developer wants to prioritize graphics, it doesn't make sense to use a 2D engine. You can't achieve aesthetically what this game achieved using BYOND no matter how hard you try. | |
Writing A New One wrote:
I think this discussion is odd in general. If a developer has access to good art, they should use it-- most of the time it won't take away from their code development because the art will come from an artist. It's possible to work on the graphics and gameplay in parallel but most BYOND users don't often do that. Even when the project has separate people working on those things, the developer rarely focuses on gameplay. This is mainly because BYOND has a lot of inexperienced game developers who don't know how to make games or have bad ideas for games (ex: "make an RPG" or "make a naruto game") and find it easier to just play around with the superficial details than to figure out how they'd actually want their game to work. With BYOND it's easy to build prototypes. Before you bother to waste an artist's time you can take a few hours to make a playable prototype of the game to see if it'll be any fun. If you don't do this, it's most likely because you have no actual ideas for how the game will work and you probably never will. | |
What players likes most a base 32x32 or a bigger one?o-o
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It is definitely important to make games look good, but that doesn't have to mean the artwork takes forever to create.
I think the RPG genre tends to require "realism" more than other genres - a triangle shooting at squares while flying through a "starfield" of dots is more acceptable than a triangle leveling up by killing squares with its battle axe. But even so, instead of drawing 8 directions complete with movement animations, one could decide to draw just one forward-facing image for each character. Then its much easier to focus on making them look decent (you only have one frame to spend time on) and to make them varied. Graphics can be detailed but not necessarily appealing. It is a matter of preference and will vary between people, but sometimes I think high-detail 3D games aren't all that great to look at, and even make it hard to see where to go. Here's an example: Here we have somewhat high-end graphics from Call of Duty. Despite the level of deatil, the scene overall just looks like a washed out gray cloud. Now, not every part of the game looks like this, and it can certainly give you that feeling of being in a war-torn wasteland. But sometimes it just gets to be too much, when there are so many broken pipes and planks and shit everywhere you don't notice them anymore. Anyway, the point is simple graphics are okay if they clearly represent what they are supposed to. | |
