There's a middle ground here... but when the argument centers around such a polarizing game and developer, it will never be reached.  I'm all for taking people outside of their comfort zone (although it aint my style personally) but all artistic merit is lost when you're some teenager that just wants to push people's buttons and nothing else.  Trolling in executable form.

I was gonna buy Bionic Commando, but it sucks.

Fixed.

Organizing a meetup through the internet with semi-strangers is like herding cats.  I say we all take a peek at our friends lists when we sign on (under the TIGS group) and join a server another TIGer is on if the lag aint too bad.  I know I've seen a few TIG people join my games from time to time.

It would look nicer but I don't think that's necessarily related to the size of video memory, just the contents of that memory.  Again, 3D games (Especially one that you would dump that much money into) would have way more than diffuse color information per character/object/whatever.  Even if you didn't you need textures for surfaces you wouldn't even see every frame.  You need memory for normal maps, ambient occlusion, light maps, shadow maps, offscreen postprocessing surfaces, etc.  For each character you also need geometry (in some case several versions for LOD unless you use tesselation) which can get pretty huge per vertex when you have a complicated skeleton, and you also need bone matrices for the characters.

Also, you'd be going out of your way to make your game memory intensive if you don't compress.  It just doesnt make sense.

There's nothing wrong with having pride in your work.  Besides, calling a review "well deserved" is pretty low key compared to some of the horn-tooting that goes on around here.

Dark Gaia, I'm getting a hang when I try to Begin a game, fades to black and does nothing indefinitely.  I'm on Windows 7 so any known problems with Vista might apply.

[1) whether 2d games are generally more hardware-intensive than 3d games anymore, or whether this is a myth]

I think this is due to the perspective of the game and complete lack of interface. The non-scrolling stages present an environment that's segmented, much like a movie. The lack of interface gives all the action a greater sense of intensity and a sneaky sort of realism that isn't what you usually think of when thinking of realism in games.

That said, there need to be more games like this. I've got a concept for a 3D game that would hopefully play like this but I can only hope that I could execute the concept well.

I never thought of the lack of interface, you're right in that it helps to pull you in to the world more.

1) whether 2d games are generally more hardware-intensive than 3d games anymore, or whether this is a myth
Lets say you have something like an HD sprite. 32bit, alpha channel, fully animated. Lets say it's bounding box is 256x256 in size, kind of big, not too bad. How many frames does it have? lets say 10 seconds at 30fps - something to expect from a well animated hero or villain.

When you do a cube x*x*x, you'll find it ends up growing a hell of a lot faster than you'd like because you're dealing with volume. In this case, a volume of animation frames:

256*256*4(bytes=32bits)*30*10/1024/1024 = 75 megabytes for one good sprite.

This single sprite has taken up a huge chunk of your VRAM and you haven't even loaded anything else yet.

If you have 2D games, it becomes a question of texture memory, not GPU intensity. All modern hardware uses the same acceleration for 2D as it does for 3D and that power is abundant. In spite of all the 3D requirements, the resolution still manages to increase with each generation.

So are 2D games more intensive? Different requirements. Apples and Oranges.

2) whether 2d games outsell 3d games, or vice versa
2D games outsell 3D games. If you look in the casual markets, mobile phone games, everything like that - 2D outsells. Girls tend to prefer 2D games because guys are wired for spatial awareness from hunting animals (and now hunting eachother in FPS), go figure.

3) whether video cards being specialized towards 3d currently makes 2d games run faster or slower than they would if those cards were specialized for 2d
No. They could probably make a 2D card for *cheaper*, with larger VRAM for sprite memory which would put the price right back up. Then you'd just get an underpowered 3D card without the ability to play 3D. And who'd want that. XD

Your arguments are similar to Paul's but I'd say your math is a bit flawed:

a. It doesnt account for texture compression.  Most textures in games today are compressed and decoded on the GPU, making their memory footprint much smaller in the ballpark of 16:1 for most HW supported compression schemes (DXT/BC).  These are not as lossy as you might think, especially if the graphics are cartoony or only use a few colors for shading rather than gradients.

b. While your animation might be 10 secs long and your game running at 30fps, you dont have 30 unique frames of animation for each second or even for multiple seconds.

All in all, the video memory argument doesn't hold up.  And I think we've talked about it too much already. 

As for sales, it's all a numbers game.  Of course if you include phones, mobile, etc. 2D will outsell 3D because there are not many 3D games on those platforms.  I don't think it's too relevant anyway.  A game is good for the most part because of it's gameplay regardless of what dimension it happens in or how its visually represented.

Are you all seriously comparing this kid to Dali?

I see your math homework under there.

MY BEAR MONEY!

I think it's funny how Paul and Super Joe centric this forum has become.  :D

He seems to be in more video games than movies these days.  I thought he was good in a cheesy kind of way as the Russian Premier in Red Alert 3.

I like the Kirby/Snoop mashup from YTMND more though, that other video had a link to a YouTube version.  My brother and I were cracking up when we first heard it since it mixes pretty well, especially when the Kirby theme changes up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXzg0D-cKds

That world looks epic.

We're men in tights.

I wonder what the hold up is.  Is Derek working on the cool announcement post/pic?  Those are usually worth the wait.

Psssh D-pads are so 1996.  But yea, Saturn controller had the last great D-pad, not to mention 6 face buttons.

G4, Gay 4. Gay 4 Yu. You're gay and so is Yu. You are gay and Yu is gay and You are Yu You see it's true. Joe's game comin' at ya with the alabaster white teeth lookin' blaster. Watch ya hands, gonna get chopped off "EMILY" you yell but Super Joe just scoffs. Y'ain't understand you're such a dumb dick but dust off ya mouse 'cause this a pro click.

Now we're talking.

On the contrary, being "the guy that ported Knytt" might look very good on his resume.  Practical, and to an extent non-creative, skills like this are very attractive to employers in the game industry.  Sometimes they even prefer people on the design side that "just" mod, make levels, or write tools for games (although those skills are a bit more creative).  Basically that's exactly what a game designer does at most major studios and they have less need for core people that can build a game from scratch.  This is especially true if they're licensing engines most of the time.  There's a guy on my team that came from Epic and he got hired there because he wrote a tool that auto-documented UnrealScript code, boring huh?

Also, it's pretty douchey to reply with this:

how about making an original game? no? :\

when someone is clearly excited about his project and other people genuinely appreciate and are looking forward to the end result of his work.  At least be more constructive or inquisitive about it.

for instance, i can't think of very many 2d games which are prettier than out of this world, even though it's very old. whereas 3d games don't age as well.

This is very true, especially for 3D games that try to go for realism (which are many).  I was just thinking about that exact example when I watched a playthrough of Out of the World recently on YouTube.  That game still looks good today and the atmosphere and direction beats a lot of what's out now.  How awesome is the escape and fight sequence at the end with the two aliens?

I'd say the more cartoony games from a couple of generations ago will age better.  I think Ape Escape, Sly Cooper, Mario Sunshine, etc. still look good today and won't be as offensive as say Half Life 1 will be 10 years from now.

I'm all for not beating dead horses, but people need to stop being thread Nazis around here.  I mean, the only reason this thread is around is because people couldn't handle 6-8 posts explaining 2D on 3D performance as it pertains to Blueberry Garden.  Sure there was some sidetrack in that thread but it was coming to an end and wasn't completely irrelevant to the conversation. 

If you don't like where a conversation is going, change the flow of it or ignore the thread.  If you have nothing more to say then stop reading the thread.  If you keep checking back at that point then well, I really don't know what to tell you.

Also, I fail to see how defining what a 2D or 3D game is could be irrelevant to a thread titled "2D vs 3D discussion".