2D and Indie scene

#1 2d gaming will never die, just like 2d cell animation will never go away. Heck, my favorte game on the XBox360 right now is a 2d game(Geometry Wars).

An Alien Homonid style game is perfectly doable in T2D. Viewtiful Joe is actualy rendered in 3d and doesn't use sprites, even though the gameplay is 2d, so it will be a harder fit. Check out Melv's latest .plan, though, and you'll see that using DTS shapes in T2D will be possible soon.

#2 Well, VJ is a 3D game with a fixed-pitch camera and 2D effects. But AH is a wonderful shooter/platformer ala Metal Slug and other excellent shooters. Part of its charm is in the difficulty, amazing art style, and fast action. It isn't in a 2D/3D argument.

But it really depends on what your target market is. If you are planning a pitch game for publishers, 3D will probably be the way to go unless you have an amazing art team of huge fan following (like Newgrounds). Or unless you are already a shaker in the system to pull weight and get VJ done. Of course, other games such as Blowout and Pandemonium and rail-shooters like Panzer Dragoon 1,2, Orta, and Sin & Punishment take the track camera and run with it. And some people absolutely love rail-shooters. It is a niche market, but its one that most of the biggies aren't gunning for. If you take the Treasure quality approach, you should be able to draw a rather rabid fanbase. Look at the number of people who claim to have played and love Radiant Silvergun as one of their favorite shooters. It's often higher than the distribution numbers and the pricetag of a used copy (around $200). Personally, I find it worth it since it was released several years ago and it (and Devil May Cry) are my "sit around and veg" games. But not many people would pick up a replacement copy for their horribly scratched import back when it was relatively cheap.

If your game is fun, people will dig it regardless of whether it is 2D or 3D. Publishers may have a bit harder time with it, though, unless it brings something significant to the table.

#3 Yeah I guess you guys are right.
Ah rail shooters. Love 'em - so you recon rather do those types of things in TGE/TSE?
I see a lot of gameplay mechanics that is a lot more suitable and fun in2D than 3D though.
Look at Pacman for instance, Great game 2D VERY basic. Do that in 3D and its not the same the 3D pacman games suck ( the ISO ones are more or less the same ) Sokoban as well, a lot of puzzles Adventure games etc. When it gets "ported" ( the game play I mean ) it sort of loses its feel and that "little something". So yeah David you make a very valid point in your last sentence esp.

#4 There's a lot of games that are definitely more fun in 2D than 3D. Your Pac-Man example is a great one. Another one would be King of Fighters. I love the 2D games, and while the 3D game made an okay transition, it didn't have the same punch. But it comes down to gameplay. One of the reason that I feel so many games on the PS1 were so horrible is that the developers saw 3D games as a huge market and took ones that would have been not only playable but much more fun, and converted them. This led to horrible control schemes and even more horrendous gameplay. And then we had Treasure (who I love BTW) who made Mischief Makers, a 2D game for the N64. Just because you can push polygons around the screen like crazy doesn't mean you have to. MM was one hell of a fun game (though no Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, or Guardian Heroes).

#5 Just look at all the games coming out at bigfishgames.com and gamehouse.com - there' s definitely a resurgence of 2D casual gaming. There's a lot of talk about this at the indiegamer.com forums as well.

#6 Gish.... 2d game... IGF Winner, definately still a lot of people out there who love 2D games and on top of that 2D indie games.

#7 ... and with T2D you can do anything but it obviously depends on the developers skill and ability to follow through a project.

"Can T2D do..." is not as relevant as "Can Fred do..."! ;)

Back to the subject though; I don't think people, when you get down it it, really care whether it's 3D or 2D. It's on a computer screen, it's fun, it's immersive ... you've got a winner.


- Melv.

#8 Well 2D Game is much faster, easier and cheaper to create than any 3D game (especially with T2D).

Melv is right, people (except Hardcore Gamers) don't really care as long as game is fun and they don't have to constantly upgrade their machines...one of the most played games this days seems to be solitare. My wife for example don't want to touch anything related with 3D (she say's that it's too confusing for her) ;)

#9 I think that the fear of 3D comes from developers implementing extremely horrible and unintuitive controls within so many 3D games. It seems that UI and controls are the last thing designed and thrown into to work more often than they are put in with slick integration into gameplay. Part of it comes from the complexity of controls, but I think more of it comes down to laziness and a disconnect in design between 2D and 3D games. Early Playstation and Saturn titles are excellent examples of attempting to take 2D gameplay elements and screw it up in 3D. I'm not talking about simply converting a 2D game to 3D and "ruining" it. Instead, I'm talking about taking the entrenched control scheme inherent in a number of 2D games and applying it badly to 3D games. Unfortunately, this practice is still with us today, though it is a reiteration of these bad control schemes that keep coming back to us.

For me, one of the best games to look at from a purely control-oriented viewpoint is Tekken. Matching right and left arms and legs to buttons in the same position as the limb they represented was a genius moment in control. Regardless of whether 2D fighters are better than 3D or whether Virtua Fighter is better than Tekken, the control scheme works extremely well and extremely intuitively.