Aside from a texturing effect, it’s just simple sprite batch. The animation is all being done already in the video, so that just has to be redone in their own engine. They already have animation in the gameplay, so the concepts aren’t new to them. The only new thing would be a pixel shader for the texturing effect, but I mentioned that only in case someone pointed it out that this wouldn’t be standard for sprite batch — I’d argue it’s not needed at all. If they really wanted it, a single day crash course in pixel shaders could reveal how to do it, but I wouldn’t even recommend it. Just ignore it, and draw the sprites as you wish for them to appear in the animation. I doubt it was something they wanted, they likely just added it in because their video editor allowed it so easily. In any case, the pixel shader shouldn’t be the blocking point here; if anything, it’d be the tool they make to edit/display the animations that they make, but I am guessing these guys could handle that no problem. I’d like to see it actually! 🙂

Starglider, I wasn’t in any method saying that “any game experience can be crammed in 50 MB” — who would say such a thing? Nor did I call anyone “lazy or incompetent”.

I said the game experience will suffer with more and more compression. My point was that the limit is not whether you can compress it more — you always can — but that you have to decide how far you want to go before it gets too low quality. If you reach that limit, then you have to be more creative or change the game. In this case, they were already 20 MB smaller than they needed to be, and added videos. That was the wrong choice. My point is you can get it under 50 MB if you have to — it just requires sacrifices at times. I would never say any game experience can fit. That’s just silly. But a $1 game can be made in some manner or another — and I said this type of creative solution requires more effort, acknowledging that it can be argued that this additional effort is worthy or not. I would not call someone lazy for not doing it. But I stand that you cannot use this as an excuse to being ‘forced’ into the $3 range. There are many options, that take time and effort — and some require more smarts, yes, but I didn’t go there; none of it is rocket science — to get under 50 MB, and they all don’t maintain the original.

This reminds of me how artists are upset when their textures in AAA games get compressed too low, since their work is being ruined. But in the effort to reduce the number of GB’s used, it’s a decision that has to be made.

I’ll see if it’s something I can change, but otherwise you’ll just have to keep checking back.

I want to say, for the record, I have no problem with some XBLIGs being priced at more than 80 points. But the game’s content has to justify the higher price point. I don’t feel that Kobold’s Quest is worth $3. That’s a price I associate with a deeper experience than just generic side scrolling.

oh god not a “lite” version. Look, if you do multiple releases they are supposed to be different games, not the same game stripped down so you get a second chance at new releases or to deal with bad decisions you made the first time you released a game. If you thought Kobold’s Quest should have been $1, you should have charged that much to begin with. If you want to make a separate level pack that’s cheaper for Kobold’s Quest that’s fine, but please don’t go spitting a “lite” version out.

That would probably work, most likely with better video quality than the general purpose video codec. However you need to think in terms of bits, pixels and shaders to come up with solutions like that, and most XBLIG developers just don’t have the graphics programming experience for it (in fact I think a majority of XBLIG developers don’t go further than drawing with SpriteBatch). Assuming they were prepared to invest the time to learn this stuff, wouldn’t you rather see that effort go into improving the main game (with visual effects or gameplay) rather than implementing an ad-hoc video codec for the cutscenes?

Jason, I admitt that I jumped to conclusions with my response, but your were essentially saying that any game experience can be crammed under 50 Mb and that anyone who doesn’t do so is lazy or incompetent.

I apologize for my commenting being all over the place. I believe the solution was not to use video, but to make your own sprite drawing engine for rendering the animations yourself. At this point, the size footprint would be the animation frames themselves, and could be drawn with a pixel shader to have the same effect you desired. This could be compressed like crazy, I believe.

Although I agree that if you’re going with $3, then make use of it. However, it also means you need a $3 game with it. And on XBLIG, not many people are willing to spend $3 (even though it looks like a steal on Steam). Funny.

P.S. It’s Doucette not Douchette.