Comments on: Options For 2D

By: Emme

Emme — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:43:45 +0000

I say: go with pixels, its really damn easy, and the limits you have with pixels are actually quite interesting to “exploit”.
You dont have to draw 16 frames of animation, You can of course, a la Flink or Metal Slug, but basically 8 frames are enough for cartoony look and style.Pixel art is en vogue again, and thankfully it distinguishes itself greatly from the flash style art you see everywhere now.

By: BrainCandy

BrainCandy — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:32:27 +0000

Another solution would be 3D with a cell shaded look, to simulate 2D.

By: Fili

Fili — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:58:37 +0000

Doom 2? Voxels? Where ?!!? Doom 2 uses flat floors and vertical walls. Not even Doom 3 had voxels.
Voxels are used for terrains, like in Crysis and Delta Force, but not for in-doors games like the Doom series.
The problem with voxels is that they require drawing pixel-by-pixel, while video cards are optimized for polygon rendering. That’s why when video acceleration appeared everybody dropped voxels.

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:16:54 +0000

I loved Voxels since I saw one game using it on Amiga, and Delta Force 1 on PC. After that I only saw polygon games which I hated first, but then had to get used to them since nobody had skills to make Voxel games anymore. Doom 2 and Crysis used Voxels again, and idTech 6 engine uses it too.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:31:46 +0000

God I hated voxels :D

By: Fili

Fili — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:27:44 +0000

@Lumooja the same is true about 3D voxels: you can build your whole world out of voxels and have simple physics for each.

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:50:53 +0000

One thing where 2D graphics is better than 3D graphics is that you can build the whole screen from pixels, and you can destroy and build everything pixel by pixel, and have also a simple self-made physics for each pixel.

It will be possible with 3D in a few years with Unlimited Detail Engine, but today everyone still uses polygons which can’t do that.

By: Juuso

Juuso — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:32:25 +0000

Well, right now I’m trying something like this:

By: Fili

Fili — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:25:08 +0000

You should drop the “pixel” stuff. Most 2D artists hate doing pixel art because it requires painting one pixel at a time and they can’t focus on the whole picture.
Also, unless you’re developing for a resolution-challenged device like an old J2ME phone, pixel art is useless. If I want “retro” I go play vikings :)
I’d like to see a game with hand-drawn backgrounds and hand-drawn characters, but in an obvious way. I mean extremely flat, like your whole game is nothing but a coloring book with some cut-out characters, also from a coloring book.