2d/3d Debate

This is probably the most critical decision to be made, and will have ramifications on almost every other part of the game. Some key points:

- Style: How closely do we want to mimic Homestuck's artistic style? 2d will almost certainly give us the closest approximation to this, but cel-shaded 3d might work as well.

- Combat: With 2d, we could have a Zelda-esque hack and slash, or a side-scrolling hack 'n slash similar to Odin Sphere. 3d, on the other hand, would allow for a 3rd person hack and slash, or a first-person shooter/hacker/slasher/caster type deal.

- Workload: While I'm not confident enough to say that 3d would make too much work for us anymore, I find it hard to believe that it would actually reduce the workload.

Note that the vote is there for convenience only so we can see what which people want at any given time. Feel free to change your vote/suggest new choices as appropriate. The vote is not there do decide a "winning" option; a good argument is much more likely to get an option used than simply having more people vote for it.

Last edited by AgentPaper on Sat 9. Apr 2011, 04:44, edited 1 time in total.

My personal experience says it's much harder and time consuming to make 2D sprites than 3D models. The downside with 3D models, however, is on the programming side: it means your entire game engine will have to be made differently. If you want to do it that way, make sure you have the required skill sets in your team.

I think 2D would be much easier for programming, and utilizing multiple viewpoints could mean keeping sprite counts down. Additionally, 2D could be used to express different art styles which could in turn be used to denote different types of gameplay. It would also keep filesize and framerate manageable, because realisticaly, there would be a lot to render. 2D gives us the ability to 'cheat' such as zooming out to a world map when leaving the game space, plus it would be easier to keep the art direction constant. It would require being a bit more creative with it's use, but I think it could work as well, I not better than 3D for our purposes.

Of course I don't have experience making 3D games, so I could be wrong.

Added an option do distinguish between 2d or 3d sprites for the 3d isometric option. You'll unfortunately have to vote again if you already have, even if you voted for an unrelated option.

2D could be used to express different art styles which could in turn be used to denote different types of gameplay.

If you have multiple art styles, your already high sprite count will be increased another level.

Let's try to make a quick count of how many sprites are going to have to be drawn:

Supposing we have reusable templates for basic characters, we can count 1 player template, a few friendly NPC templates and a few enemy NPC templates, so suppose you have, at the very least, 8 character templates to prepare. (And I'm not even looking at equipment and appearance here)
Each character, must be able, at the very least, to walk, jump, attack, activate various items, die (presumably in a few ways). So lets count at least 10 different animations per template.
If you keep things simple, at any given time, the player can be looking at one of 8 cardinal directions, which means redoing animations 5 times (3 sides are mirrored) for each action.

You're already at 8*10*5 = 400 animation sprites for character templates only.
If you have different art styles, you would presumably have to redraw everything to fit the new style, which increases that count exponentially.


Here is my suggestion: have the game in a top-down view. During beta development, run the whole thing in 2D with ridiculously basic graphics. When comes time to actually put time in for art, do it all in 3D.
Having the game run 3D graphics in a 2D perspective is going to get you the best from both worlds: easiness of 3D graphics, and coding that won't be as hard as a complete 3D perspective game.

What you could do is mix the two. 3D character models and a 2D isometric world. Like the Sims but cartoonier and with more violence.

Character models should be easier to do in 3D.

World generation needs a lot of variety, and I think it should be easier to get that out of 2D than 3D. You need to be able to handle stuff like the 'Land of Blood and Kittens', the 'Land of Ticking and Sulphur' or the 'Land of Silliness and Frogs'. In my mind that's easier to do when all you need is a pack of sprites.

It would be a possibility, but frankly, reskinning a model is no more complicated than redrawing a sprite. I'm concerned it would look weird to have 2D mixed with 3D. Even the "2D" environment in the Sims is actually 3D, allowing for model reuse, lighting, easy retexturing etc.

The question is also how it would LOOK like if you use 3D models. Keep in mind that most of you are pixel artists (i think so O.o), and with 3D models the game could very very dangerously fast look plain shitty. we are not a professional development team after all.

So, I´d say we should use 2D sprites, unless someone shows some nice, cartoonish, good-looking 3D models to prove me wrong.

don´t ask me why, but i had something like the character models from mabinogi in mind:


Maybe just a little more like MSPA, and a little less japanese.

The question is also how it would LOOK like if you use 3D models. Keep in mind that most of you are pixel artists (i think so O.o), and with 3D models the game could very very dangerously fast look plain shitty. we are not a professional development team after all.

So, I´d say we should use 2D sprites, unless someone shows some nice, cartoonish, good-looking 3D models to prove me wrong.

don´t ask me why, but i had something like the character models from mabinogi in mind:


Maybe just a little more like MSPA, and a little less japanese.

Hey, so did I!
But they would be probably really hard to make...
Unless someone says otherwise?

I think if nobody is able to make models like this, the 3D/2D debate is over. It´s just because of the mere ABILITY to create 3D models at all.

I`m just saying that i think the Game would LOOK BETTER with 2D sprites than with 3D models.