A time and a place

2D vs 3D.  The age-old argument.

Of course, being an anime fan, I have a preference for 2D, at least for character designs and animated films.  But sometimes you just have to pick the mode that is best (or cheapest) at the particular task.


Even within 2D there are what I term "levels of elitism".  Genuine pixel-art graphics is spectacular but is really expensive since it takes a lot of skill.  Most people would opt for painted, and so would I.  With today's powerful hardware, there is really no need to design against hardware limitations.  The only limitations today are budget or skill.

For isometric animations, rather than animating by hand (or with Flash) in 8 directions ad infinitum, it's simply more practical to build a single 3D model, animate once, then use a camera rotation script to establish all angles for the prerendered frames.  I'm also finding it more practical to make man-made or boxy prop objects in 3D, while still keeping the organic look of the scene through handpainted trees.

Now that's just 2D vs 3D in terms of prerendering.  In the end the game is still 2D.  Now about fully 3D games?

My opinion -- use only when the gameplay really needs it, meaning that the gameplay requires 3D.  If you just have 2D gameplay I don't really see much of a point aside from prettier graphics from bloom effects.  I won't argue with other developers, but that's my preference.  Believe me when I say I'm only making a 3D game because the gameplay idea can only be explored through a fully 3D environment.  Otherwise in most cases... such as story or turn-based menu games --  2D is the best.

Status Update

The main SRPG is on a mini-hiatus as this month of March is really busy.  I'm still waiting for assets to trickle in until I can safely close the door and declare "Okay, I've got enough assets.  Now let's try to make a story given what we have."

I don't want to blame the artists since it's the nature of things that unless you employ somebody full-time, you can't expect to delegate all your characters to one person.  So what ended up happening is that I have multiple people working in parallel, and after I get my priority characters, I probably will just wait until the original agreement was filled, and won't commission any more characters.  My expenditure is already reaching the $5K mark which is the halfway point, but I don't even have a half-finished game.

But I have a pleasant surprise in that I'm full steam on making a small 3D spin-off game set in the same universe!  Yes I originally did not plan to devote some budget to this, but the potential of this game could be farther reaching than the original game (which I only expected to be somewhat significant in the visual novel and JRPG communities).  With this 3D game, I could potentially reach into the entire indie games market!