Emporer-Wakamoto said: Well she still has MvC, that's something!
One should ask if that is even an accomplishment anymore. It seems it doesnt matter how obscure you are, you can get in the game as evident in 2 and 3. I mean seriously, Taskmaster? And i get that Mike Hagger is pretty popular(I was happy) but you'd think Capcom would have chosen even more popular characters given the smaller roster of characters 3 has compared to 2.
HaroldRowsdower said: How sad... having lost her job as a game character with the game's cancellation, she's resorted to being a stripper to make ends meet.
She would make more money than being a pirate depending on where she strips (I don't know of any specialized fetish clubs, but damned if a cosplay strip club wouldn't make a ton of money).
Tetsamaru said: ...given the smaller roster of characters 3 has compared to 2.
That was a major, MAJOR letdown. If Capcom had kept with the hand drawn sprites they could have had a massive roster.
Sprites are something that takes a lot of time and effort, especially these days where just plain old sprites wouldn't pass anymore. It's much easier to move onto 3D Models on a 2D plane then do HD sprites.
@Emporer-Wakamoto: To make a 3D fighter you have to first make an engine that will support 3 dimensional movement on 3 planes but make sure that certain areas of the planes cannot be moved through (such as walls and the floor). That step already has more programming effort that has to be devoted to it than regular 2D. I wont unleash a wall of text explain the finer details of the game making process. To make a long story short: One of the main reasons why there are fewer 2D fighters on consoles is that the developers are convinced the gaming community are wanting "better graphics" and see 2D as outdated.
RiderFan said: To make a 3D fighter you have to first make an engine that will support 3 dimensional movement on 3 planes but make sure that certain areas of the planes cannot be moved through (such as walls and the floor). That step already has more programming effort that has to be devoted to it than regular 2D.
Incorrect - it is trivial to make an engine that renders 3D graphics yet restricts character movement to 2 planes rather than 3. Developing an engine that produces 3D graphics does not mean the movement is automatically set to 3D - it is up to developers to dictate how game entities will move around in the 3D space.
Second, once you have an engine for your game, you actually have to make the characters for the game and that's where 2D's ineffectiveness from a development standpoint starts to show. Yes, one sprite is easier to make than one 3D model, but once you have the 3D model down, you can easily animate that same model very easily, allowing you to develop animations for moves, poses, etc. every quickly. By comparison, a sprite will have to redrawn tens of thousands of times to make equivalent animations, moreso if you want the animation quality of say, King of Fighters XII and XIII. If a game developer wants to modify those animations, the 3D artist simply has to fiddle around with the 3D model's skeleton, while the 2D artist will have to heavily modify the frames involved in the animation, if not redrawing those sprites entirely. You also have to factor that there are many more professional game developers who are versed in 3D art as opposed to 2D art, meaning they can be hired for cheaper than 2D artists.
And there is truth in high-defintion 2D being expensive. When the switch to HD 2D came, Arc System Works went from 26 characters in Guilty Gear Accent Core to only 12 in the first BlazBlue, while SNK Playmore nearly went bankrupt developing the even more intricately-animated King of Fighters XII, and only managed to produce 22 characters for it anyway (as opposed to 50-60 characters in KOF2002UM). When you're developing for a 720p resolution, 2D comes with major costs - Arc Sys chose character count and SNK chose their financial solubility to pay for it.
That was a major, MAJOR letdown. If Capcom had kept with the hand drawn sprites they could have had a massive roster.
No they would not, unless they wanted to stick to a standard-definition resolution game which is guaranteed for niche/bargain bin status in this gaming era. The sprites used up to Marvel vs Capcom 2 were optmized for 384x224 (arcade) and 640x480 (Dreamcast/Naomi) resolutions, not the 720p standard of today. Capcom would have to redraw their sprites for high-def resolutions and thus run into the same character-count and production cost limitations mentioned above.
