I think demand and whatever people want and agree with is only consequence of the ammount of marketing and advertising, from 3D games are better than 2D to the war against terrorism is right and cool, with a lot of advertising you don''t need to care about what people want, most of the editorial content of magazines is paid, anyway I still prefer 2D games rather than all the 3D ones.

As long as we view images on 2D screens, there is no valididity in the idea that 3D should replace 2D because it is a closer model of reality. Games are not a model of reality ... they are art and entertainment. They are art, because they expose to us the vision / creation of another human being. They are able to be as realistic or abstract as the creator and technology allow. But more realistic is not in any wat better from either an art OR an entertainment point of view. Entertainment wise, I''ll admit that I find the graphics of HALO to be much more compeling than Doom ... and the game more fun because of it. But isn''t it interesting to note that people don''t always like realism. Like action movies, or hot chick with boob jobs, or explosion sounds in outer space ... etc etc etc ... and in games ... almost everyone I work with fondly remembers "time pilot", "combat", "joust", and "cinepede" ... all of which are decidedly unrealistic ... even though they are not purely abstract games such as "tetris", they still benifit from their simple, extrarealistic (read extra as in extramarital affairs ... ) interfaces, which allow the player to simply concentrait on the mechanics and fun of the actual game, instead of being burdened by their slight failings in modeling reality. I find movies and games which are mostly realistic much more disappointing in their shortcummings, than media which is completely unbound by the real world.

That''s my $0.05 ... keep the change.

quote: Original post by Xai
As long as we view images on 2D screens, there is no valididity in the idea that 3D should replace 2D because it is a closer model of reality.

Gee, then I guess we''ve been watching movies totally wrong all along. We should have been looking for a way to "flatten" them to two dimensions instead...

Your statement is a crock. Feel free to disagree.

quote: Games are not a model of reality ... they are art and entertainment. They are art, because they expose to us the vision / creation of another human being. They are able to be as realistic or abstract as the creator and technology allow. But more realistic is not in any wat better from either an art OR an entertainment point of view.

So, if the subject matter of a game is close to a possible real-world situation, we should still ignore "reality." So we shouldn''t try to create more realistic physics and motion in sports games? So we should pursue more realistic intelligence behaviors and gameplay options in the so-called "strategy" and "role-playing" genres. Good God, man, you''re asking us to go back to the Dark Ages of Computer Gaming!

I understand what you''re trying to say, but you fail to consider than "realism", art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive (nor are you limited to 2 out of 3). Realism is the objective in all games that mirror real-world situations (most notably flight, combat and racing/driving simulations) - but only so much as does not detract from the art and entertainment.

See Game Design for more discussion.

[ GDNet Start Here | GDNet FAQ | MS RTFM | STL | Google ]
Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Red alert 2 ?
Sim City 3000 ?
Starcraft ?

2D aint dead by a long shot, but look at this as an opportunity. 2D is mostly concentrated around bliting bitmaps to a surface. Ask yourself whats the best hardware to do this ? yep you got it, you general 3D texture mapping hardware. you can take advantage and write blit routines that are far faster than anything you''ve written before. OK so its a bit more difficult, There are loads of tutorials, articles and example code on this site alone to get you going.

2D aint dead, it just got faster.

Get coding.

quote: Original post by LordKronos
My opinion on this whole topic is kinda split. I do kinda agree with the trend towards using 3D to replace 2D, even for games that arent stirctly 3D in nature. Yes many of these games would look better with hand drawn 2D tiles, but I think we are just at a transition phase here, where companies learn slowly what does work & what doesnt work, where artists learn to think a bit differently when they design graphics, and where programmers learn more how to generate "2D-quality" 3D graphics. A lot of the stuff going on now, especially with advanced graphics techniques like shaders, will help(are helping) programmers. And with this process, artists/modelers need time to learn how to adjust their work to take full advantage of this stuff. 2D graphics has been stable for a LONG LONG time, but even after several years of being mainstream, 3D graphics is still very immature. So I guess I see where 2D has its benefits NOW, but in the long run 3D is where its at, and if companies dont adopt 3D now that will only make the transition take longer.

On the other hand, I have one other unique perspective with 3D which it seems I NEVER see anybody bring up: people who CANT play 3D games. My wife cant play a lot of 3D games because they just plain make her sick. This is especially true in 1st person view or 3rd person (where the camera follows the character). The movement of everything makes her dizzy. It was funny, one time I was playing Unreal Tournament and kicking major behind, and she needed me to do something. So I told her I couldn''t stop or it would screw up my game. I told her I would do it, but she had to take over my game for a minute while I did it. She was only playing for like 2 minutes, but she was noticably disoriented by the time she was done (and I was a little proud, she at least go me a kill:-) ). Not all 3D games do this. For the most part, she is fine with games that use 3D to simulate a side scroller, and most racing games are fine with her. I think for the most part her problems are when the camera does more than just slight/gradual movements (side scrollers and racing games seem to have pretty smooth camera movement).

It kinda sucks for her too, because all these new games come out, and every time we look at the back cover we have to question whether or not she can play the game. And all of her old favorite games are moving (or have moved) into 3D, especially into 1st person.

Does anyone else have (or know anyone who has) these problems?






Edited by - LordKronos on January 16, 2002 9:41:48 AM

I agree with your wife. I like race (action) games, like Midtown Madness. Also the 2d side scroller Disney Tarzan is very nice. It uses some 3D techniques in a 2D world. The graphics are from high quality. I don''t like Doom or any other FPS. I played the full game, but every time I got a headache or get dizzy, from the camera view. Also I don''t like the 3D platformers, like Earth Worm Jim. I played those games and it worse.
The problem for us is that those 2D side scrollers aren''t available for the PC. So only race games are nice in 3D.
Also some arcade games like 3D Pinball. But most arcade games I played too much, like break out, etc.
So I only will buy in the future Race games.
Also a solution for your wife is to buy a Gameboy Advance.
Or you can use a PC gameboy emulator. So she still can play side scrollers.

quote: Original post by SA-Magic
I''m sure the game would have sold a fair bit, though I suppose magazines would have slated it for not advancing enough in the realm of graphics. :-/

Yeah many reviewers are morons, simple as that. Many of them gave StarCraft a "fair" rating when it came out, because it didn''t have 3D graphics. And then they got their asses kicked into oblivion when the game sold a few million copies.