Edit: Sorry, made this thread when I was in crappy mood, I really shouldn't talk about things when I'm angry.

Was angry at how some people think making highly detailed sprites/sprite animation is same as making sprite game on facebook,(and how in general some people seem to think 3d being automatically better than sprites) so I made rather badly worded opening post. You can see it below at quotes. But yeah, sorry.

-_-

Not sure if this is a joke thread or serious.

I typed up a long troll response to this thread, but then deleted it because he may just be horribly ignorant.

The choice between visual quality and price isn't always a difficult one.

I would reply but I don't think I know enough and, thus, I'll just keep quiet and not look like an idiot :P

Then why isn't your avatar in 3D? You waste everyone's bandwidth with that fantsypantsy 2D avatar of yours! It's like "Ooh ooh everyone look at me, I'm sooooo retro with my 2D sprite avatar".

I used to prefer 2D sprites in RTS games because 3D was implemented so poorly in e.g. Warcraft 3, but Age of Mythology showed it can be used well too.

This is interesting. I know that Planescape: Torment had limited character art because they didn't have the money to pay artists. Which is one of the reasons why they did not have armour for the main character, as that would require drawing more sprites.

How much 2d art costs compares to 3d I don't know. You would have to compare like with like (i.e. a really good professional artist and a really good 3d modeller/artist). If you hire the best artists in the business then I suppose 2D won't be cheaper.

One thing I know for sure:

2d sprites age a LOT better than 3d....

Sprites are more resource-intensive than a lot of people realize. They are also hard on machines built for 3D with lower processing power, like the PS1 or 2. That said, in the grand scheme of things, they are still a LOT easier on a typical computer than detailed 3D modeling.

Do not think it is a matter of cost directly as it is of time, resources and target platform, a 3D game is neither cheaper nor more expensive than a 2D one, as it is difficult to compare directly.
For 3D you do a model and can get the game to do the animations based on a skeletal frame.
For 2D you have to draw the same thing from different views and for each animation, even using a 3D rending to 2D is alot of work (just look at Diablo 2).

Eh... that is true for PS1 and N64, but I think Xbox-level and up graphics will age quite nicely. I don't ever see a time where Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is too ugly for me to play.

Whereas 2D always looks like art, but at the same time might not always offer the best gameplay. As much as I love Fallout 2 it feels limited now that we have real 3D worlds to explore.

Umm, sorry, I was in kind of bad mood when I made this thread ._.; Wasn't really thinking straight, just being kind of emotional because I prefer sprites to 3d and I saw some guy claiming that one game with detailed sprites look like facebook game and was overpriced because of that. It just made me so angry that someone would think that highly detailed sprites and animations are at same quality as facebook games.

Really, both sprites and 3d are very expensive if done with good detail and lot of work and both are cheap if done lazily. Sorry for wasting time, I was really in bad mood. Heck, I forgot I made this thread rather fast after I made it because I really did this in spur of moment -_-;

I think you're confusing 'cost to make' with 'performance' on old systems (like mine)

I can easily run games like The Witcher Enhance but my old PC chokes on recent SNES and NES style games like Gorril Slayer and Offspring Fling.

It's a pretty strange phenomena and I'm not sure what causes it but CPUs used to have a more difficult time running 2D games at full frame rates along with full resolution.

And old debate used to be about how the Sega Saturn was more competent at running 2D fighters in full res where as the PSOne had to drop the resolution down to keep up with Saturns frame rates.

As for expense of creating sprite games though, look up these programs:

http://www.yoyogames.com/make

http://www.gimp.org/

http://inkscape.org/

Total software investment is $50 for liscence to publish with Game Maker
And once you learn how to use these programs you can pretty much spam 2D games like these kids did:

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/

Voxels...

I'm guessing you're fairly young and just learning the basics. I'm pretty sure all Facebook titles are Sprite games. A sprite is basically any 2D image that was designed to be moved around on screen with a control device.

Like you can cut out a picture of someones face and if you can program it to move that face around with a control pad - That's a sprite.

3D graphics are ones that are built with polygons and not pixels.

Some of the titles that look 3D on Facebook are sprites that were drawn by exceptionally good artists.