If there is a successor to Thimbleweed Park, I think it would be great if the Adventure would use some more modern technology. I still remember the time of Monkey Island 1+2 very well. Both games were technically a real progress at that time. They weren’t “retro”, they were groundbreaking. But I’m also aware that this has a lot to do with money and that progress doesn’t come from nothing.
I think the E3 2017 Trailer of “The Last Night” is very impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupdeq1MoVw Optically pixel art, but equipped with modern effects and very opulent. I’m not an expert, but I suspect that this is not really pixel art, but modern 3D graphics with pixel art as textures.
I don’t know if some effects can be integrated into a future Terrible Toybox Adventure, but I wish it could.
The question is: Would that work with the TWP graphics. “The Last Night” is a very dark themed adventure. In comparison the colours of TWP are more “brighter” and comic like. I’m a little bit skeptic that “better” graphics would keep the charm of TWP.
Huh, I was more bothered by some of the weird 2D stuff in the old 3D games. It felt so out of place. I think Terminal Velocity looks and plays about as good as it ever did.
Tomb Raider by contrast plays terribly — it was never great but now it’s just plain awful — but it also looks just fine to me.
(Which isn’t to say that I like these fauxels — faux voxels, that is.)
uhm… I’m puzzled, since you gave a “like” but then you wrote a message in which you say “you don’t like”.
Anyway, when I saw the first manga image I thought “wow, that’s beautiful, but that’s a still image. Probably it would look far worse in motion”.
Actually, the animation of the guy with the baseball cap isn’t bad at all.
No, let me rephrase: it’s good. I like it.
I wish Ron would try another kickstarter, this time promising to innovate the genre (with his new UI and all). And asking for more realistic money this time. With the credibility given by his past deliveries, he might make it. If not, what’s there to lose?
I admit I have no idea of how much it costs to organize a kickstarter. 4 months? But I see Ron has been building prototypes for the sake of experimentation for a year now. It doesn’t look like he can’t afford to lose 4 months on a kickstarter. I might have no idea what I’m talking about though
I think, it depends on whether you want to animate a cartoon character or a realistic human. Well, the above example of the Anime character seems to be post-processed - or even drawn by hand - as both pictures are not similar enough to be convincing. But, after all, the result depends on the algorithms you use.
I guess Sam & Max may have looked interesting, if they had been animated via such a tool for a pixel-style adventure game. Keep in mind that such a technique has been used for many cartoon series over many many years.
By the way, it reminds me of some Telltale adventure games, in which something like that was done in a higher resolution, in order to recreate a comic style (e. g. Borderlands and Batman). Compared to drawn animations, the motions look smoother. Maybe this would look more appealing to people who hardly ever played any 2D adventure games. Take a look at Prince of Persia from 1989, which became famous for its smooth animations that were made possible by Rotoscoping, which is quite similar to the technique mentioned above.
If the room screens are still classic pixel-art, the effort might not be too huge for an indie game, I guess, unless the licensing costs for the required software were exaggerated. I assume that the lack of experience with this technique would be the biggest disadvantage, if Ron and Gary were about to do something like that for their next game.
“The Last Night” is a very dark themed adventure. In comparison the colours of TWP are more “brighter” and comic like. I’m a little bit skeptic that “better” graphics would keep the charm of TWP.
