quote:Original post by clayasaurus
3D games are more detailed and people are more likely to spend money on them, they take more time and energy to produce.

They aren''t more detailed. Old 3d games (pre-bumpmapping days) are even less detailed. It''s that 3d-ness that attracts people. Immersion, so to speak.

However, immersion isn''t always necessary. There are types of games that don''t require player immersion such as RTSes, RPGs, and puzzles. These are the games that can still survive even when done in 2D.

3D, although it''s technically more difficult, can be more useful than 2D in some applications of (technical) game design. In game cutscenes, skeletal animations, physics, and many more that simply can''t be done (or has less effect) in 2D.

Players really don''t care whether it''s 2D or 3D. If you do it in 3D and make it appear 2D (i.e Super Smash Brothers for N64), they probably won''t even notice that it''s 3D. Or vice versa, you do it in 2D but using prerendered 3D graphics, they probably think it''s 3D. Think how you want players to play your game, how you want your game to look like. Then from that point, you can decide whether it''s best done in 3D or 2D.

quote:Original post by miles vignol
in very specific cases, i like 2d over 3d -- namely in RPGs.

i think the baldur''s gate series is still the high water mark for RPGs. by having essentially hand-painted maps, you''ve got uniqueness at every step. you''ve got artistry.

Uniqueness? Never viewed the area map and looked at the obvious tiling? Or seen how often a certain tree gets re-used?

I''ll be honest and admit that I am somewhat biased - I''m about an hour away from completing Baldur''s Gate 1 and I''ve found it to be one of the worst-balanced, buggiest, poorly-written and poorly-programmed games in quite some time. So my opinion on the graphics are probably a little coloured by everything else.


Back on topic though, I find 2D and 3D suit different types of game. Thief and Unreal Tournament wouldn''t be half as good in 2D, but a lot of 3D rpgs wouldn''t really suffer for being 2D and might even be more playable. Certainly you have to wonder whether the development time spent on 3D features might have been better spent on more gameplay in a 2D game.

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Generally I prefer 2D games to 3D games, for me many 3D would be better played in 2D, however, there are games that I wouldn''t imagine without a 3D perspective.

For example, Zelda OoT is glorious in 3D, I can''t imagine it being the same sucess in 2D.

However, take one of a common 3D multiplayer first person shooters. Remember that 3D == Not seeing what''s behind you. So poorly designed levels make 3D a pain in the ass.

I find the "2D versus 3D" ridiculous. Long time ago 2D was constrained by resolution, pallete, sprite counts, blitting speed (PCs) and limited tile layers (consoles). A while ago 3D was constrained by polygon count and texture resolution. And both were constrained by RAM amount. Now the constraints are a lot more lax, so it''s very possible to have 2D graphics with really smooth animations, huge amounts of sprites on the screen, smooth scaling/rotation, alpha channels as masks. And 3D games can have characters and anvronments with enough detail to not look like origami figures, along with pleasant clipping distances and on-screen detail.

Now both are plain choices you can make when designing your game. Want to make a sidescrolling plataformer? There''s a load of ways you can do it, and you may choose the one that suits your skills and needs, like:

- Use full 2D graphics (sprites and tiles) and lay them on different overlayed planes for some cool parallax effects;
- Use 2D backgrounds, but use 3D models using orth´graphic projection, if you can''t afford drawing all the sprite frames, or if your game requires it;
- Use 3D backgrounds with projection, but use 2D sprites if you is capable of and desire such look;
- Build it all with 3D objects, and use either orthographic or perspective, depending on the effect you want to achieve