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Upsides and Downsides to 2D and 3D
Author
2D
- Easier to program
- Doesn''t sell as well these days
- More addictive and easier than 3D games
- Not as much space to put items, weapons, etc.
- Characters are less human looking
- You can see a whole lot more infront and above you than in 3D games.
3D
- Harder to program
- Harder to maneuver characters
- Fuzzy controls
- Characters more humanish.
- More facial expression.
- More area to put weapons and items.
- Takes up more space than 3D games.
Do you agree? Disagree? Want to add something else? REPLY ALREADY!
Top quality games don''t kick ass as well as these.
http://danavision.homestead.com
Prepare to be blown away!
-------------------------
Magic Card
quote: Original post by Magic Card
2D
- Easier to program
- Doesn''t sell as well these days
- More addictive and easier than 3D games
More addictve and easier than 3D games is a very subjective statement and depends very much on the game in question. A 2D game can be very boring and also very challenging.
quote:
- Not as much space to put items, weapons, etc.
What do you mean by that? There''s plenty of place for weapons and so on in in Baldurs Gate and Diablo (which is both 2D games as far as im concerned). Even platform games can have plenty of rooms for such things. It''s all a mather of (level) design.
quote:
- Characters are less human looking
Not necersarily. The old ''Prince Of Persia'' had an exellent animated main character which looked and moved very ''human like''.
quote:
- You can see a whole lot more infront and above you than in 3D games.
I agree with this one. Top-down, isometric and platform views lets the player get a better overview of the world which makes it easier to use strategic or tactical approaces. This is especially an advantage if the user must control more than one character/unit as once. But this is not always what you want. 3D could be said to be more ''realistic'' and help the player get the felling of ''being inside the game''.
quote:
3D
- Harder to program
- Harder to maneuver characters
Harder to maneuver? I find it quite easy to maneuver in quake. And 3th person 3D games as Tomb Raider does it quite easy to make more complex maneuvers such as climbing and so on.
quote:
- Fuzzy controls
- Characters more humanish .
- More facial expression.
- More area to put weapons and items.
- Takes up more space than 3D games.
What do you mean by ''Takes up more space''? I guess you are saying that 3D games take up more space than 2D games? What kind of space do you mean? Baldurs Gate have a large game world and comes on 5 CD''s.
quote:
Do you agree? Disagree? Want to add something else? REPLY ALREADY!
Top quality games don''t kick ass as well as these.
http://danavision.homestead.com
Prepare to be blown away!
-------------------------
Magic Card
Well I hope I wasn''t too hard on you. But I think that putting up a list of pros/contras for 2D and 3D games is a very difficult thing. Especially 2D games spans a very broad spectre from platform games to RPGs to Real-Time-Strategy.
Whetever you should use 2D or 3D depends entirely on the kind of game you wants to create and the ''feel'' that you want your players to experience. And then of course on the skills of the people developing the game.
Regards
nicba
I would say that 2D games take up more space.3D let you texture an object then view it from all angles, 2D means different sprites for maybe 16 directions for every single animation. The amount of art in Age Of Empires II is staggering.
I also dispute that ''2D dosent sell as well these days''. Personally I would much rather play AOE II than ANY of the 3D zoomy rotatey RTS games, even though my monster video card can play any of em. Also be aware that a whole bunch of peole bought their PCs 3 years ago, they have pentium 200s with 4 or 8MB video cards, and they are confined to playing the older 2D games. Try telling the guys who did SimCity, AOE II or Rollercoaster tycoon that 2D games dont sell. They sell very very well......
http://www.positech.co.uk
I also dispute that ''2D dosent sell as well these days''. Personally I would much rather play AOE II than ANY of the 3D zoomy rotatey RTS games, even though my monster video card can play any of em. Also be aware that a whole bunch of peole bought their PCs 3 years ago, they have pentium 200s with 4 or 8MB video cards, and they are confined to playing the older 2D games. Try telling the guys who did SimCity, AOE II or Rollercoaster tycoon that 2D games dont sell. They sell very very well......
http://www.positech.co.uk
Author
When I said SPACE I meant more MEMORY on a computer. Take for example, Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver. That game takes up about 750 megabytes. Wheras a game like Commander Keen takes up maybe 20-30 megabytes.
When I said more SPACE I meant more AREA. In Diablo, you''re looking down and you can''t jump to get something or dig to get something. In a 3D environment you have a whole world to put things, and even trees to climb to get to them (if you''ve ever seen this tell me!).
Top quality games don''t kick ass as well as these.
http://danavision.homestead.com
Prepare to be blown away!
-------------------------
Magic Card
When I said more SPACE I meant more AREA. In Diablo, you''re looking down and you can''t jump to get something or dig to get something. In a 3D environment you have a whole world to put things, and even trees to climb to get to them (if you''ve ever seen this tell me!).
Top quality games don''t kick ass as well as these.
http://danavision.homestead.com
Prepare to be blown away!
-------------------------
Magic Card
I think this thread is an indication of the feeling that 3D is getting kinda "old" - it seems that perfectly good game concepts are completely RUINED because they had to do it in 3D. I''m talking the latest ultima here, for example.
The general idea is: 2D isn''t better or worse than 3D. It''s different. They both have their applicable areas, strong points and weak points.
#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~
**I use Software Mode**
The general idea is: 2D isn''t better or worse than 3D. It''s different. They both have their applicable areas, strong points and weak points.
#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~
**I use Software Mode**
no in terms of memory it is undisputable, 3d takes far less. Comparing recent games to commander keen is not logical at all. Blizzard outright admitted that warcraft III is going to be 3d mainly for memory considerations (they probably would have gone 3d anyway though). In a game like myth each unit has over 400 individual sprites! As you can see 3d takes almost 0 memory conpared to 2d. They might end up taking the same amount but that''s because they''ll put more into the 3d game because they have so much room. Baldur''s gate is a great example. You don''t see many 3d games taking that, and if they do that''s because of cutscenes which again, are 2d.
personally I think in the future top down 3d will become pretty popular. For some games I really hate any attempt to move the view to the player, except for games where it is appropriate.
personally I think in the future top down 3d will become pretty popular. For some games I really hate any attempt to move the view to the player, except for games where it is appropriate.
I think you''re a little confused, Magic Card...
First of all, Soul Reaver came out last year and Commander Keen came out in the 80''s. Take a game like Baldur''s Gate or Diablo 2 ... BIG BIG games but in 2D.
Second, the reason that you can''t jump over rivers and dig and stuff in Diablo is because they didn''t program that in, not because 2D doesn''t let them.
And just because it''s 3D doesn''t mean you can do things like climb and dig, etc. This all has to be programmed in.
But back to the original question: I love 2D and at the moment think that 3D is in its infancy. Once programmers master it and do away with clipping errors and other major problems we can start making some REALLY kickass 3D games. Until then, I''m sticking with 2D (i''m making an isometric one right now).
Alex
Atypical Interactive
www.atypical-interactive.com
First of all, Soul Reaver came out last year and Commander Keen came out in the 80''s. Take a game like Baldur''s Gate or Diablo 2 ... BIG BIG games but in 2D.
Second, the reason that you can''t jump over rivers and dig and stuff in Diablo is because they didn''t program that in, not because 2D doesn''t let them.
And just because it''s 3D doesn''t mean you can do things like climb and dig, etc. This all has to be programmed in.
But back to the original question: I love 2D and at the moment think that 3D is in its infancy. Once programmers master it and do away with clipping errors and other major problems we can start making some REALLY kickass 3D games. Until then, I''m sticking with 2D (i''m making an isometric one right now).
Alex
Atypical Interactive
www.atypical-interactive.com
Apparently Magic Card has not yet seen any sort of games except PC games lately! Take a look at the SNES(I know its kinda old now): lots of tile based 2D games on it wich allows you to jump, dig ect. Just look at Zelda3! Also contrary to popular beliefs, Doom and Duke3D are 2D games. See any polygons? Nope. There all sprites, and I know ''cuz I made so many Doom WADs my hardrive is running out of space (on my P133 anyway). So it all depends on what you do with your program and how you implement things in it.
I really think 2d,3d,first person, and third person does depend upon the game and the genre. Daggerfall, for instance, suffered from being first person IMHO. First person worked well for the times in the towns, but in the dungeons it didn't work well. It did not allow much ranged combat. There's was way too much hack-and-slash. At least in my opinion...
Edited by - Nazrix on 4/22/00 8:44:33 PM
Edited by - Nazrix on 4/22/00 8:44:33 PM
To the deluded person that thinks there''s something inherent about 2D that causes it to use more memory:
2D - 2 Dimensions.
3D - 3 Dimensions
Logic: 3D = 2D + 1D.
I.e. 3D is more!
What you are talking about is sprite-representations against polygonal representations. That has nothing to do with 2D vs 3D, it''s a choice. Sprite-representation in 3D boils down to either using voxels or going image-based.
The poster talking about Duke3D and Doom - you are right, to a point. The maps in those games are 2D, and so are the characters, however the engines allow more degrees of freedom of movement than a typical 2D representation, and hence they were called "3D" games ( probably because of the perspective projection ).
The same goes for the over-hyped top-down polygon games (I think Total Annihilation? ).
I had a HUGE argument about this game with a colleague because he claimed it was 3D, and I asked him where the 3rd dimension went
. T.A. is a good example of using polygonal data with limited degrees of freedom - it is pretty much a 2D game.
The Quake series are 3D games - overpasses, tunnels, up-down movement and looking, even some rolling. I think they work really well, but not much better than Doom or Duke3D ( I actually bought Duke3D after finishing it completely in a ripped version, because I wanted to support 3Drealms ).
I think Duke3D is a good example of how you can use "older" technology to achieve pretty nice effects at much lower cost. That''s why I''m looking forward to DNF.
#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~
**I use Software Mode**
2D - 2 Dimensions.
3D - 3 Dimensions
Logic: 3D = 2D + 1D.
I.e. 3D is more!
What you are talking about is sprite-representations against polygonal representations. That has nothing to do with 2D vs 3D, it''s a choice. Sprite-representation in 3D boils down to either using voxels or going image-based.
The poster talking about Duke3D and Doom - you are right, to a point. The maps in those games are 2D, and so are the characters, however the engines allow more degrees of freedom of movement than a typical 2D representation, and hence they were called "3D" games ( probably because of the perspective projection ).
The same goes for the over-hyped top-down polygon games (I think Total Annihilation? ).
I had a HUGE argument about this game with a colleague because he claimed it was 3D, and I asked him where the 3rd dimension went
. T.A. is a good example of using polygonal data with limited degrees of freedom - it is pretty much a 2D game.The Quake series are 3D games - overpasses, tunnels, up-down movement and looking, even some rolling. I think they work really well, but not much better than Doom or Duke3D ( I actually bought Duke3D after finishing it completely in a ripped version, because I wanted to support 3Drealms ).
I think Duke3D is a good example of how you can use "older" technology to achieve pretty nice effects at much lower cost. That''s why I''m looking forward to DNF.
#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~
**I use Software Mode**
This topic is closed to new replies.
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