If you want to please take a look at the fighting scene I've posted, it is 2D but it looks 3D because it's just designed very well.

It is actually the other way around.

It is 3D, but it looks 2D because it is designed very well.

Then there are some quick interstitials with actual 2D drawings to make the illusion complete.

This technique has been used for a long time to produce action scenes in animated TV shows like Naruto, but recently devices are powerful enough to do it really well in realtime.

(Zelda wind waker is half way there, but doesn't look as good as an animated TV show. Also the Naruto game has some ways to go, but it is indeed looking really good)

Well I'm getting schooled again, it is 3D.. ooh well. Thanks for correcting me.

1. The characters.

* Maybe it would make sense to look at one character at a time?

* By characters I also mean attacks. (I think for example jump, kick, punch, combos and all that is part of the character design process?)

Characters without animations could be estimated,a single 3d character made by a freelance will cost roughly $4000 - $6000, roughly 20 business days (infos) . Animations (attacks, jump etc) depends a lot the dynamic and game mechnism, input controller, used engine technology etc . A cool looking animationset which is controlable by the player could occupy an animator/coder fulltime for the main-character. This would be roughly $150.000 to 500.000 for a AAA title with 1 to 4 years development time.

I wrote this thread basically after really really being sure about wanting to develop this game but still now knowing what comes with it, I thought I just look for a couple of freelancers and let's go. Since opening this thread I talked to a couple of forum members and GMAO (Googled my ass off) to find more inf. about this subject. At this moment I finished writing a new thread because I've learned a couple of things but still not enough.. what I can tell you is that I'm not just going to hire freelancers. This game I have in mind should be developed by a company / experienced development who got everything in house.

2. The levels

* Maybe it would make sense to look at one level at a time?

Typically you need 3 roles to create a level. The game designer, who defines the game mechanism, the overall game goal etc. The level designer, who creates the level flow and artists who creates the environment art/enemy art etc. Roughly 4 people (counting two artists, because the artists workload is often higher, not counting testers), which would be (as employee, ~70k income per year, real costs will be higher) roughly ~20.000 per month. Now it depends on the level complexitity how fast this team can produce levels (1 or 2 per month? just arenas ? you need some iterations and a lot of prototyping to create a working level ).

At this moment I should focus on learning more about creating characters, once I'm done with that I can ask about other things that come with the development of this game.

Hmmm, there for sure is no money for a motion capture..

There are some cheap solutions using simple camera, blender and a nerd to plug this together. This should not a budget-showstopper. Hiring an actor to do your motion captures could be a lot cheaper than letting your animator do it all manually, especially if it should look cool.

I've read a lot of postmortems over the years and the overall budget could be subdivided into this (really rough markers):

10.000 => buy some stocks from game development studios or invest in crowdfunding, but this budget is by far too low to create a game if you are not contributing some major skills yourself (coder/artist not game idea guy or game designer)

100.000 => well, this is okay for a smartphone/tablet game

1.000.000 => a small indie game for the PC done by a small team/studio

10.000.000 => a larger indie game, you can start to look for a console support

100.000.000 => yeahh... here starts the real AAA titles, congratulation

1.000.000.000 => comes next

When he was talking about motion sensors all I was thinking about these block buster movies and their BEHIND THE SCENES footage's, so happen this morning I took some time to learn more about this subject and it's still a lot of money but we're able to do it. I also spent an entire night to contact developers who already made fighting games.. now I'm just trying to learn enough to pitch my game to these people. I'm also going to place job offers all over the internet and one requirement should be that they have a motion sensor team in house or at least have experience with working with an other team cos if I hire all kind of different freelancers to do different things that would only hurt the development of the game.

Thank you for explanation in detail..