Have you seen sacered? It has 2D sprites background but 3D characters. All isometric. Does doing the background with sprites allow to have more polygons for the characters compared to a full 3D game? In sacred it didnt seem that the characters had more polygons then in a full 3D game. So how much can you benefit from doing the background 2D instead of full 3D?

It looks to me like the game is in 3D, but the camera move is just in isometric view. The background is created with textures (as with all 3D objects) which are 2D. The background is a 2D image rendered onto a 3D model (in this case a flat plain), I don't believe that there are any performance gains. I believe that the game design requested an isometric action adventure game, not a first person or variable camera game.

Hope this helps, and if I'm wrong with any of this, let me know!

There are advantages to doing 3D characters on a more standard 2D isometric landscape. I've experimented with these hybrid systems before. You gain the benefits of the intricate detail of pre-rendered landscapes, plus the benefits of reduced memory requirements and increased flexibility for character animations. In a game that utilizes 2D characters, you need to pre-render a large series of sprites in different facing directions, which can quickly get out of hand memory-wise unless you are doing insane compression or limiting your palette. And even still, it hogs memory.

While 3D hardware is getting to the point that a fully 3D background can look very good, for some people it may be easier to achieve an attractive background through pre-rendering and displaying as 2D graphics. You can model objects and landscape set pieces in intricate detail, but you don't have to worry about the performance hit of trying to render those objects in 3D. It still takes a fairly high level of skill to do beautiful backgrounds in 3D that render quickly. I know I suck at it, at least. [grin]

The game im currently working on called War Angels has 3D backgrounds and 2d bumb-mapped sprites for everything else, including characters.

I have no idea about the advantages/disadvantages from using this method since im not a programmer but thought you might be interested.

Quote:Original post by simonbowerbank


The game im currently working on called War Angels has 3D backgrounds and 2d bumb-mapped sprites for everything else, including characters.

I have no idea about the advantages/disadvantages from using this method since im not a programmer but thought you might be interested.

Looks great!
Did you mean that the buildings, for instance, are 3D?

yeah, the buildings are 3d, everything else is 2d top-down