Space game: 2D or 3D?

Jubulani · 2005-12-07T01:18:05

I'm doing a bit of work at the moment trying to design a space game. At its roots it'll be multiplayer, and combat oriented (Small group multiplayer only ie. Me and my brother get in medium fighters and go at it until only one of us is left, or we work together and square up against some pirates). My biggest problem at the moment is deciding if the game should be 2D or 3D. I want the game to be as fun as possible, so I'm looking at this from a gameplay perspective only. The game is complex enough that adding a third dimension would add negligible complexity to the programming, and I'm planning on doing the rendering in 3D anyway (So as to get real time lighting and whatnot). A few thoughts I've come up with so far: 2D Pro's: Top-down view of the action - I much prefer this method of control to the enforced first-person view of a 3D game. This more relaxed view also allows some things impossible in a first-person view, like zooming, or scolling the view to find out whats going on a long way away from you. Less hardcore - The controls can be simpler, and the game can be made 'cartoony', to appeal to people who might not normally play such games (like my dad, or my sister). 3D Pro's: 'Realistic' - Pointless realism for its own sake should definately be avoided imho. "I KNOW I can't teleport in real life, but 10 mins to walk back to town to sell stuff is NOT FUN." etc. So this isn't really a pro , but its worth mentioning. More complex - Someone familiar with games, and not immediately turned off by the more complex control system necessary in a 3D game might see a 2D game as too simple or childish. Even if the gameplay is deep, they might not stay to find out. I'm sure I've missed a few. Having actually gathered my thoughts enough to make a post about it, and looking back at what I've written, I'm becoming more convinced 2D is the way to go. There are enough 3D games out there anyway that no-one would notice another. What do the smart people at Gamedev think?

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Jubulani December 05, 2005 09:45 AM

10 comments, last by Iron Chef Carnage 19 years, 2 months ago

Stani R

1,070

December 06, 2005 09:51 PM

Quote:
Original post by NIm
I've given a bit of thought to this, and I believe I have a unique solution to this particular quandary. My world is going to be 2-dimensionsal, and space-ship controls will be 2-dimensional, but the world itself will exist in 3d space. This world will endure all sorts of manipulations. Space itself will curve, in a visible way. There'll be curvature due to gravity, natural curvature(make the world a sphere or a torus), and perhaps even artificial curvature. I need to get a solid grasp on NURBS before I undertake something like this, so I'm very much in the talking about it stage.

This sounds like an interesting approach but I'm not quite sure that I see how you want to go about it (not surprising since you are not sure yourself either ^_^). It might make for a very disorienting experience though.

Iron Chef Carnage

1,845

December 07, 2005 01:18 AM

I lost the link, but "Cloud", a Korean game where you flay around in a hospital gown and solve puzzles with puffs of cloud (which totally rocks, by the way) has a pretty handy third-person control of 2d flight in a 3d world. Might be worth a look.

Found it: Clicky

It's free and quite fun. No excuse not to play it now.

Space game: 2D or 3D?

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Space game: 2D or 3D?

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