remember that if a genre is not worth for the 3D it''s because no one as found yet the way to made it
before mario 64 and zelda ocarina, everybody were agree to say that full 3D exploration and platform games were impossible to make fun using all possibility and they come with a mixed gameplay (crash bandicoot, pandemonium, night)
and fps in not truly a new genre, it''s mostly a change of point of view
the rest is a matter of taste, bloory roar primal fury is intense enough as a combat game, even more than the 2D one ''cause of there damn god camera angle and zoom, and no they are not fragile in this game, took shenlong against yugo and you will know what RAGE mean.... (say, i didn''t like those previous version, but the add of the esquive balance the game damnly)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I''m a huge fan of 2d gameplay, but some 2d genres have just been beaten to death.. It''s hard to surpass something like Super Mario World, for example -- Though I''d like to see someone try! But 3d still has lots of room for improvement and new variations, since it''s relatively new and more complex field.. Destructible walls (which 2d games have had for ages), advanced physics, AI-generated worlds are just some things that need to be added (in the same game of course). It''s easier to be "innovative" in 3d games because CPU speed still causes restrictions. In a couple of years we will have some features in 3d games that aren''t possible or at least not commonplace today, like the aforementioned ones. But not so in 2d. Computers/consoles have long been powerful enough to do just about any kind of 2d game.

What you can do in a 2d world is pretty limited and it requires great deal of imagination to come up with something that feels refreshing. Many genres just become better with the added complexity (and added possibilities) of a third dimension. And the vast amount of SNES/Megadrive/MAME games should keep most 2d game fans happy. I''d be delighted to see a new good or innovative 2d game, but since coming up with one is so hard, it''s natural that most game companies focus on 3d.

It's amusing how many people still confuse 2D/3D gameplay with graphics.

3D gameplay was avaliable WAY before polygons and raycasting engines, and 2D gameplay is widely avaliable nowadays in many games, even if you can't notice it due to the 3D flashiness.

The basic difference between a 2D game and a 3D game is the amount of axis along which the player must interact with to play the game properly.

The 2D versions of Mario and Sonic have 2D gameplay on 2D graphics: the character only moves either horizontally or vertically. The D-pad controls one axis while the jump buttom controls the other. The levels are designed accordling. The only bit of 3D-ness in those games is the rare existance of multiply 2D planes (being able to go to the other side of the fences in Mario, and some more complex loops in Sonic games), but they are too restricted to be classified as a 3rd axis.

LandStalker, as example, was a 3D game under 2D isometric graphics: the D-pad moves the player about two axis, while the jump buttom moves the player in the 3rd axis. The levels contain real 3D data: objects have a X, Y and Z coordinate, and levels can span in all directions (ie: you can have a room above another, or aside another, or in front of another).

Wolfstein , and many other early FPS'es have a 2D gameplay. The direction arrows move your character in two axis, and in many of those jump was no-existant. And even in some where there was jumping, the 3rd axis was not fully implemented in the gameplay to grant it a 100% 3D title.

I'd say DOOM is a "2.5D" game. While the player can, and need to, jump to reach higher steps and it's possible to fall for your death, the levels are all flat by nature: you don't have rooms above other rooms: It's perfectly playable fom the map view. Duke Nukem 3D was a step beyond DOOM, featuring full 3D levels even if it still used a raycasting engine.

Resident Evil games, as another example, are mostly 2D too. The character can only move along the floor, there's no full featured jumping or climbing.

It's also worth a notice that in many 3D games, the player deals with two main axis, and the 3rd one is used less frequently. That's because having the player manage 3 axis all the time can be very hard. Not everyone is procifient on Descent. Often the player walks along the floor, and jumps once in a while. This applies to Quake, Half Life, Tomb Raider, Mario 64, and so on.

The main difference from the games with 2D graphics from past ages, is that many of them focused in side-scrolling: the characters moves in the X and Y plane. While no most "3D" games play much like top-view 2D games from the past: the character moves alone the floor plane, and jumps once in a while.

[edited by - M3d10n on November 13, 2003 12:33:44 PM]

quote:
I''d say DOOM is a "2.5D" game. While the player can, and need to, jump to reach higher steps and it''s possible to fall for your death, the levels are all flat by nature: you don''t have rooms above other rooms: It''s perfectly playable fom the map view. Duke Nukem 3D was a step beyond DOOM, featuring full 3D levels even if it still used a raycasting engine.

Doom didn''t allow you to jump, and Duke3D doesn''t have full 3D levels anymore then Doom had...and both Doom and Duke3D never were raycasting engines (and really neither was Wolfstein3D for that matter) ... I''m not sure how the whole "they used raycasting" myth got started, or even why it still persists now that the source code to those game engines have been publicly released...but I guess some people just can''t get their heads around span buffer rendering and other ages old tecniques that don''t involve raycasting or rastering polygons

Duke3D allowed rooms above other rooms through a very hackish way, but it worked. It''s visible right in the first level, where you can walk below the projector room, climb up the spiral staircase, and enter that room.

But, like I said, it was a rather weird method, and you could do wacky stuff like having two rooms exist in the same space, but a player in one room won''t see the player or objects in the other. Bizzarre, but that was how they faked the multiple floors.

I remember there was a multiplayer level in one of the Marathon games that was like that. There were doors you could walk through to get to a parallel universe. Your radar dots could be right on top of one another, but you''d never be able to see the other guy, or shoot him. But if you ran around the right pillar, you''d come back into phase with them. Made for some fun action, but it''s totally irrelevant to this thread. Just thought I''d share.

Duke3D - specificly Ken Silverman''s Build engine was basied around sectors with the shared vertical walls between these sectors acting a bit like portals....later revisions of the engine for the game Blood and Shadow Warrior had "true" portals in which the roof and floors could be linked to other same shaped sectors on the map...Duke3D allowed this too, except that such roofs/floors had to be visable (the levels where you could dip underwater) unlike the later revised versions which didn''t require such "portals" to have textures...it wasn''t true 3D