Some questions about 2D and 3D video games.

Hello everyone,

I really like video games arcade 2D game mechanics. And I would like to ask you about this and other topics related to video games.

Some time ago, in the first breakthrough on Mortal Kombat 9 lei in a magazine On-line videojuegs, "The new Mortal Kombat erased at a stroke many of the innovations of the last decade. It still using three-dimensional graphics, but the gameplay will be 2D the displacement is just across the stage to corner the enemy and avoid the "magic";. the new Mortal Kombat, limits the scan to a single plane Thus, fighting increased in accuracy and speed, and jumps back. -one regain leadership of the movement more generally 3D- harmed in the fight. "

1- Reading an article about Ghost \ 'n Goblins, he explained, that \' \ 'With the arrival of the generation \' on the 32-bit market, there was the implantation \ 'final on the three dimensions in the world videogame. The vast majority of the most successful franchises in the 2D era, had many problems to adapt to new times. Many of them stayed on the road for several reasons, among which certainly was located, little or no success they had, to move their mechanical to three dimensions. \ '\'

Why this was so.?

The ark games, they were not ready then, 1995, for passage of 2D, 3D to the new mechanics.

But what now? .What Is your current situation.?

Do all arcade games can go from 2D game mechanics to other 3D artists and developers if they know that things change, and things do not.?

Why the contrary, there genres 2D mechanical born to play, that over the three dimensions, irretrievably lose its essence.? ? What might those genres of video games.?

Do 2D mechanical games are less playable than 3D mechanics, to be more limited and less spectacular, deep and immersive.?

Is this the retro fashion.?

http://www.vandal.net/retro/lo-retro-esta-de-moda

You can be right reportage \ 'Heirs another dimension \ "about the lack of a control interface for 3D games, and the timing of the 2D games? http://www.pixfans.com/herederos-de-otra-dimension/

I also read that \ '\' In 1995, with the advent of 32-bit consoles and final implementation of the polygonal environments, there was a great change in the way of playing games. 3D games, are clearly imposed on developing classic games in 2D. The cause is none other than commercial. 3D games sell much more than the 2D games, the public prefers the former, rather than the latter, for reasons such as greater immersion in them. However, 2D games, still survive despite having already been nearly two decades after the aforementioned change. \ '\'

Why this is so.?

This is curious, all this, now with the advent of systems more immersive viewing or immersive games such as Virtual Reality, because some people in game forums, argue that "Immersion is not the main thing in a game for me or for most players. You just have to see the success of Breakout, Pacman, Tetris and Angry Birds now well above the games more immersive trying to get, say Dead Space for example.

RV + first person is not the future, in the sense that it will be predominant, is a part of the future. "

It is also curious that while some people argue that the mechanics of 3D game, has only brought real news, a few genres.

_Simulators (As Flight Simulator)

_ Exploration Aventure (as Tomb Raider, Outcast,)

_ FPS / TPS (to Silent Wire, Metal Gear, Blofestein Half Life, a real, ...)

_ Racing games road vehicle drive. As Forza, Ned for Speed, Collin Mc Rae, ...

While other perons not think so. Hence the questions, I do it in this topic.

This gotta be the most complex thread I've seen on Gamespot in years and way out of my league but I'm still gonna write my opinion. ;)

***Disclaimer: My main language is not English and my writing style is a bit all over the place, so please give me a break. When people get mad at my arguments on forums the first thing they always attack is my writing to claim that I'm stupid and this is starting to make me develop a complex. ;(

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My closest experience to developing a game was an openGL class I took 2 years ago. There I drew a few basic polygons and scenes using vertices, the base to all graphics and what some people might call the "geometry" of the game. The more vertices you add the more complex the object can be but at the cost of more CPU cycles. I animated those polygons by hand and frame by frame, and this is when I realized how fundamentally different the approach to render and animate games can be. Although with how widespread 3rd party licensed engines are these days, a ton of games share a ton of similarities, thus creating kind of an uniformity in the presentation across the board.

Now, 2D and 3D games could be rendered either by polygons or sprites, but for 3D, polygons have a gigantic advantage on both: visual quality and ease of creation. Polygonal 3D games games are made by pure math, and depending on how good or bad that math is the proportions and animations can greatly vary in quality. Sprite based games on the other hand are made pixel by pixel and when they are simple anybody could create something like those Mario Bros characters on Nes using MS's paint, but when they are more complex shapes the difficulty of its creation far surpasses those of a game made with polygons. And yes, it's totally possible to create a 3Dimensional sprite based image, the real problem it's when you have to animate it. Because there is no math involved with sprites the animation have to be made by hand, frame by frame, so of-course the final results would be inferior to a 3D game made by polygons since true perfection (not the relative one) is only achievable through numbers. This is the reason why sprites are tied to the 2D plane or asymmetric gameplay at most.

Based on the paragraph above you should be getting the idea that sprite based games are harder to make and that's indeed true. Harder means more time which translate to more money. The publisher's top priorities are always to minimize the economic impact of the initial investment, which is one of the biggest reasons why sprites are not as wildly used anymore unless it is a small project like most indies. And while sprites still have its charm, to the mainstream 3D and polygons is what really let devs bring in the realism that they crave so much.

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From a gameplay perspective the 2D and 3D planes are fundamentally different no matter if it's sprite, polygon or whatever. 2D gameplay since it's more limited by default the mechanics tend to rely on more stricter timing than 3D to make it challenging and fun. Because the timing on 2D plane has to be so much more strict than on a 3D plane those animation need to be fast and precise, thus limiting the amount of frames a character can have at any given time depending on what the dev wants to achieve, and these tend to be directly tied to the frame-rate of the game itself, especially if we are talking about a fighting game. 3D games on the other hand offer an infinite amount of possibilities that 2D could never even dream of but I'm already tired of writing a post that only like 2 people will read if lucky, so it ends here.