Comments on: 2D Versus 3D

By: shadhex

shadhex — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:28:32 +0000

>>Performance: Again not so black & white “truth”, but it’s true that you can draw >>quite much stuff in 2D with a good performance (also the polygon count >>doesn’t matter) – but of course heavy animations and big characters can have a >>big impact on this.
In my “real” work, I’ve created my own 2D engine on top of opengl (using orthographic projection). Most games ranges from 200-300 meg of textures. I might have at most 250 or so polygon on the screen, but since everything is pixel perfect running at 960×600 on an intel 915 mobile chip with 256 meg of texture (shared), it’s truly pushed to its limit sometimes. We did a port of one of our 2D game to 3D and difference is incredible. The cost of the project would also triple. The question that we then have to ask ourselves is “will the better graphic (same game play), translate to more sale?”. I personally don’t think we’ll make up the cost, but you also have to look at it from a long term perspective. If in 5 years, no one in my industry does anything in 2D, we might be left far behind with no product to sell.

>> You can scale units as you want, and it won’t affect the performance. Some >>engines use really witty logic when doing renders, which can help in >>performance (like when doing post-processing effects).
Scaling is also “free” in 2D, when done on top of accelerated 3D. Blending has its cost, but nothing like when we had to do it in software rendering.

So don’t necessarily discount 2D because it is not accelerated. Our next step will be to experiment between 2D and 3D mix, using different rendering pass. Market validation will decide if people are ready for it.

By: Juuso Hietalahti

Juuso Hietalahti — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:33:19 +0000

Yeh, and to add into that: naturally you can use 3D art tools for creating art for 2D games too… depends on the game & art style.

By: Programmartist

Programmartist — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:36:18 +0000

3D has many advantages when it comes to art asset development.
It’s much more modular than 2D. You can work on the animation and character model separately; improving or changing each independently. In 2D such changes require a lot of work. And you can achieve almost any style in 3D that you could with 2D. Games that come to mind are final fantasy III DS, or Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins. These games feel 2D and are fanciful in appearance but benefit from the 3D pipeline.

Just because you use 3D doesn’t mean you have to make incredibly complex art or games. The only thing about 3D is that the best tools , while worth it because of the time they save, are quite an investment.

By: Juuso Hietalahti

Juuso Hietalahti — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:58:53 +0000

Hah, I knew I opened a can of worms when writing about 2D versus 3D… ;)

By: Reives

Reives — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:47:46 +0000

@Psycho:
There’s a market where people actually prefer the style of 2D over 3D, because it’s less realistic per se – in some regards, they may find it more of an escape from reality and more relaxing, if that makes sense.

By: Michel Bartz

Michel Bartz — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:01:29 +0000

@psycho : May be because they don’t have any skill in 3D, or the langage they use is not mean to do 3D. For example, i do games, but in Flash, yes it handles 3D, but i assure you that you don’t want to do that :D

And 2D game rules \o/, also there is the 3D isometric, which can be 2d (Dofus i.e. ) or 3d (Disgaea i.e. ), but it open a lot of door when you don’t want to do it 3D, specially in level design i think. It’s simple as regular 2D with more options in level/game design.

By: psycho

psycho — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:17:18 +0000

Huh, I’m not sure whether there is any pure 2D with shaders. I meant that you can use shaders when you are developing some 2D game (be it in opengl or dx3d or whatever).
For example garry’s http://www.facewound.com/

I dont get it, why anyone would make their game in pure 2D in year 2009, when even your watches have hw 3d acceleration :P

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:00:06 +0000

3D is normally way too costly and time consuming for a small company. Your game may succeed by having some unique hook that makes it cult even though it won’t have the same level of graphics/content as a AAA game. That’s pretty much the only way you can do it as I see it (please elaborate if you have another plan :-))

There’s an error in your last 2D point, I think you meant to say that 2D is an easier route right?

By: Juuso Hietalahti

Juuso Hietalahti — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:33:07 +0000

@psycho:
“shaders”
- good catch. this was the impression of one pro game dev artist , and I’ve only touched shaders in 3D. Added your comment there. (And yeh, good thought on ‘not need to use shaders’. That’s indeed true. Similar to physics – there’s lots of games where you don’t need to handle physics whether it be 2d/3d. )

“simpler level design – you are comparing painting with modelling, its simpler because you have less options”
- yep.

“shadows & lights”
- yep, but they just look better in 3D :)

“yep, its simpler to work with 2d, you need less code, simpler pipeline, and it might seem easier for beginners”
agree on this one. I’d also say that ‘it might require less time to get things out’.

@Ezequiel: yeh, 2D physics can be cool. (just think of Crayon Physics, World of Goo)… but maybe it’s just me but there’s something bit more coolness in seeing the stuff falling/rotating in 3D world compared to 2D :)

By: Ezequiel

Ezequiel — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:21:12 +0000

I think it also depends on what kind of artistic skills you (or whoever is going to do the art) have.

I’m also under the impression that 2D graphics are more easy to handle.

On the other hand, all the cool kids are using 3D, so people expects 3D on the games they buy. I personally like 2D. But I think on 2D you need serious artistic skills, while on 3D you can kind of get away by having technical skills. Or you can also take 3D models and render 2D from them.

Oh, and I forgot about something… Physics in 2D can be cool too, but I guess that depends on what kind of 2D we are talking about. I think I saw some screenshots of your game, I can deduce that with “2D” you mean tiles?