Rambunctious Ramblings

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about 2D vs 3D games. We seem to have a tendancy to think that 3D is the natural way to go. After all, all the triple A game titles are 3D games, so why not embark on creating a 3D game?

2D games allow you to focus on gameplay, not graphics and complex programming
One of the first things that comes to mind is that 2D games really are that much easier to program, which means that you can focus much more on the game play. It’s interesting that some of the biggest hit titles recently have actually been “2D’ in terms of gameplay, but using all the glorious 3D rendering techniques available. The fact is that when you build a 2D game with 2 dimensional gameplay, you’re really focused on the gameplay dynamics and not off wondering how on earth you’re going to implement it.

Some examples of really good 2D games are:

• Diner Dash
• Tetris
• Bejeweled

Diner Dash, an amazingly addictive 2D game. Funnily enough, it is being re-released in “3D” but the basic game view and gameplay is still 2D.

Some examples of 3D games which are actually 2D are:

• Little Big Planet (arguably you can move backwards and forwards but you are still constrained to a 2D plane of movement)
• Street Fighter IV

Little Big Planet….3D but um… 2D (most of the time)

Programming in 2D is much easier than 3D
Let’s get one thing very straight — once you go 3D, your complexity goes through the roof. With 2D graphics, you only have to worry about 2 axis, which is fairly straightforward. As soon as you go 3D, you have to deal with a lot of complex mathematics.

The content pipeline for 2D is very simple — usually it’s sprite based. You create in Photoshop (or whatever 2D package) and import the image to use as a sprite in your game. In Flash, it’s even easier because you simply import whatever assets into Flash or create it in Flash. With 3D, you’re suddenly dealing with a plethora of issues ranging from:

• File formats – OBJ, COLLADA or FBX?
• Texture processing?
• Rigs and animation (even the most advanced game engines haven’t really sorted this one out in an elegant way yet)
• 3D physics
• Lighting

3D content is REALLY HARD
Programming aside, making 3D content for games is really really hard! You need to be good at many things:

• Modeling (Poly [Max, Maya, Soft] and Sculpting [Mudbox/Zbrush])
• Texturing
• Materials* (in the context of games you need technical assistance here to ensure the materials display in run-time)
• Lighting* (same as above)
• Rigging* (same as above)
• Animation* (same as above)
• Exporting to runtime* (same as above)

If you look at all the successful game studios out there making 3D games, they employ many artists. It’s not uncommon to find people who specialize — for example, have a character modeler, a character animator, and a TD. But then there’s also the issue of getting everything working in run-time, which means that you need an animation programmer too.

For a 3D game to be successful, it needs to be good in many areas or it fails
The complexity of realtime 3D means that your game needs to look really good in many areas or it fails miserably! If one thing is even off (geometry, shading, animation, etc.), you distract the viewer so much that it goes straight to “FAIL”. That’s not to say that 2D is more forgiving. You still need good artwork, but with so much complexity involved in 3D, you have a much higher chance of failing especially if you don’t have the expertise.

Image swiped from Chris Evans’ blog

2D games can look really good
It really just comes down to the art. We tend to associate 2D artwork with Flash vector-based casual games (don’t diss them, some play really well!). I’ve seen some strictly 2D games recently (also using Flash) which sport incredibly original and great artwork.

E.g.Machinarium

Machinarium Preview 02 from Amanita Design on Vimeo.

For me, all this means is that I’ll probably make a 2D game and try to make it very good, instead of trying to make a 3D game.

Tags: Game Development