Is it me or is 2D games much more difficult than 3D

So I was getting bored and I tried my hand at 2D game, like with sprite sheets, and I found myself incapable of doing anything remotely borderline noobish. So is 2D game creation more difficult, or just more tedious? Thoughts?

 

Whatever it is one happens to be working on at the moment tends to be the most difficult and tedious thing. At least this is my experience ;D

 

It depends on the game being made and whether I have to do my own artwork. It likely doesn't help any that Unity doesn't really have much of anything to really assist with the process of developing 2D games.

 

I thought unity was one of the best tools for 2D mobile stuff? Or am I wrong.

 

If you don't mind having to build or buy a proper map editor for your game.

 

Yeah despite how much I love the old SNES 2D games, I couldn't have the patients to sit there and make one.
I find Pixel Art (detailed Pixel Art) much more harder than extruding some polygons and applying a smooth modifier, or Sculpting inside ZBrush, much more easier lol...

Then go take photos of real stuff, and convert it to a seamless texture, much easier than sitting there trying to pixel by pixel make something look good, espically like a 64 x 128 Sprite, good lord, imagin making like a 20 frame animation of everything moving with that many pixels (8192) pixels. I feel bad for Duke Nukem devs lol.

 

Another insanely daft question, but do you fix the character and move the background, or move the character and fix the background?

 

I do neither, if I do end up doing a sprite, I just leave the background transparent and paint on it that way.. Not sure if that's the proper way to do it, but that's what I do personally. But I don't make very many 2D things.

 

Sorry bro, I don't get what you mean. Do you have a screenshot or something.

 

I figured you were talking about Animating.
If you were, then Transparency = no background, so the frames of animation you make, all you do is change the pixels of the character not fix character fix background, all you do is put the pixels where you want and done.

But then again, I'm still not entirely sure what you meant by it now sense you said that lol.

 

3d games are much more difficult.

However, in 2d games you might have more animation work, and that animation work might have higher art requirements.

For example..
This is character's concept art (taken from final fantasy 6 concept art gallery):


Here's the character (on the top right):


You need to be able to draw even for pixelart.

 

I think a lot of people think 2D games are easier to make than 3D games just because they are.... well 2D and not 3D. In my own experience having dabbled in 3D many years ago and again very recently and having done a lot of 2D work... I think 2D is no simpler to make than 3D and in some ways is more work. Particulary the graphics being drawn frame by frame using onion skinning or whatever. Don't take this post the wrong way... 3D is a lot of work as well. And in some ways can also be more than 2D. They each have pros and cons as far as development goes.

Tools always make a huge difference whether 2D or 3D. I personally don't plan on using Unity for any more 2D projects. I think it makes it even more tedious than it normally is. However, for 3D I think is a very smart choice.

Beyond the direct comparison of workloads there is also the aspect that you can make the same basic game in 2D and 3D and even if everything is the same as far as mechanics, scoring and so forth the 3D version may be a bit more immersive or look like it is a bigger accomplishment so in order to get the same attention you may need to do more work on the 2D version jazzing it up a bit here or there.

 

Thanks for the insight garbenjamin! I must admit I haven't spent too long on it, but was dis-secting some of the existing 2d games like hippocoder's other brothers etc and some of your own, and was thinking hot damnnn there's a S*** tonne of work involved there. I began to explore 2.5D styles when I first started my noob to pro in a week thread, and I thought it might seem easier, at least avoids too much pixel pushing for a similar-ish feel. I wanted to explore it a bit more because I like the whole retro thing, but it is interesting how you guys talk about 3rd party tools, I've never used anything of such, kinda just used to banging out my own levels and rigs inside blender.

 

Regarding comparison of workloads.

Scenario 1.
Problem. "Character needs to look up or aim at something"
3D: Rotate few bone. Can be done procedurally.
2D: Draw several animation frames, fully coloring them.

Scenario 2:
Problem: Character needs to suddenly transform into monster, growing wings, fangs, and ripping clothes in the process.
2D: Draw several frames.
3D: Produce complex construct of multiple meshes, lots of particle effects, and other VFX woodoo. Result may still look subpar compared to 2D and will take longer.

Also, it is hard to replicate 2D look in 3d game.
Very few games managed to do that successfully.
On of the examples is Guilty Gear Xrd Sign

 

YES!!!!!! I'm working on a simple one right now and man i'm walking up the walls here. I'm kinda getting the grips now tho

 

It's also a matter of your own skills.
There are quite a lot people that are be able to model a decent house in a 3D application, but can not draw a house with proper shading and perspective on a sheet of paper.

3D does some things, you don't need to care about. Like perspective and lighting. But it requires a lot technical knowledge.
And as mentioned, 3D can be less time consuming. Doing hand drawn animation frame by frame, can take a lot of time (depending how detailed your drawings are).
If you have your 3D-character done with a complete rig, you can animate it way faster.
That's the reason why some games like Clash of Clans, have rendered their sprites in 3D, rather than drawn by hand.

Personally I prefer 2D, because it is timeless and with 3D comes a bunch of new issues, like getting the look right, or being dependent on some graphical features (GI, shaders, post fx etc.)

 

Once when I was digging into the person behind our friendly neighborhood @hippocoder-man I came across The Other Brothers website and watched a vid of the game. Looks great to me but unfortunately it was only available for iPhone and I game on PC and consoles. Supposed to be coming for Windows at some point but who knows when. You'd think they'd want to take my money but for some reason they don't seem to want it.

Anyway, I agree it looks like good fun with a lot of class & personality and you can tell a good amount of work went into it. Reminds me of the older games (the great ones I mean!).

 

I fancy giving it TLC but it's not the primary focus at the moment... :/

 

I didn't see this mentioned above, so I will point out that there are some cool ways to leverage Unity's animation system in 2D as well: you can break your character into pieces, parent them together and use an animation to drive them to do what you want.

The simplest thing I can think of here is a skull with a detachable lower jaw. That way you can get away with far less 2D sprite drawing, and put the pre-drawn pieces together in very interesting ways.

 

Nah, a bunch of old 2D games did stuff like that procedurally (e.g. Abuse) and it's easy enough to make separate parts and use bones to animate them (Zombieville USA if you want a Unity example). Incorporating 3D techniques to make 2D art is ancient, such as the use of pre-rendered graphics to make sprites in Xevious in the early '80s.

--Eric

 

I can draw decent 2d art asset but the colors are a lil bit meh... Anyone willing to critique some basic stuff i'm planning on putting into my game??? It doesn't look like cartoony 2d art, but more like pseudo 3d art.

 

In general, 2D development is 33 1/3% easier than 3D development.

 

Back in the day we used 1D development: text mode terminal games!

 

Quoting myself from this thread:

But this is only talking about authoring animated content. Including the rest of the development process, generally 3D game development will be more difficult. For example, compare 2D rotation to 3D rotation. Good luck. But as already mentioned, it really depends on the game you're making. Feature scoping can make a big difference on the "ease" of development.

 

That's still technically 2D though. A 1D game would be more along the lines of this.

 

I think 2D is much more difficult. Consider making a table in a 3D program. Easy enough. Just attach 4 cylinders to a cuboid. Done.

Now try and draw this in 2D. First mark out the perspective. Then draw a cuboid. Now try and draw the cylinders for the legs but careful with those curves! Now the shading...

So when you are drawing 2D things you are actually trying to recreate all the lighting and shading and perspective effects that are done for you when making something in 3D. So even though it has one less dimension it is actually more difficult!

 

Not more difficult, you're just not used to it so you don't have that instinctive knowledge of the workflow for 2D games. It would be the same if you exclusively worked in 2D and then tried going to 3D.

That said, given that 3D is the most common type of game nowadays, it wouldn't surprise me if the toolsets and workflows for 2D games were less robust.

 

not more difficult, probably not more tedious either, but it all depends what you are comparing it to like as example, I made my very first game and 2D in unity in a weekend on ludum dare, which is very simplistic and a little buggy, but it's possible, if you don't expect perfect outcome from first try https://farelle.itch.io/hatchling

I personally feel more comfortable with games in 3D but ironically I feel more comfortable drawing in 2D *shrugs* it all comes down to, how much your game should have, how complex it is...like 3D cubes that move around in unity is easy, think the same way with sprites (unanimated sprite, that moves left and right) and it's practically the same effort.
add moving background to 2D game, is probably as complex as building a basic 3D level in unity.

 

One thing to consider is the long run, i.e. how much work does it take to make the scene feel cohesive and detailed enough to not be found repulsive or empty. Animating a sprite may take longer for you, but make a room in 2D and 3D and see which takes longer for you to feel satisfied with it.

 

Part of the hurdle of doing 2d in Unity is that it does it by keeping most of the user interface that was designed for 3d development, and much of it is not 'relevant' and adds extra workflow steps that could be automated or are just not needed. Ie too much complexity and trying to remain open to too many types of games. A narrower tool more specifically crafted for 2D would be easier and quicker to use. Unity does do 2D and you can do awesome 2D with it, but it is a bit of an unnatural experience, for me anyway. It's getting better though.

 

2D is simpler if for no other reason than the ability to do custom animations by just drawing them. no mocap needed

 

You don't need mocap for 3d either... It's purely optional.

 

Pixar movies are 100% animated by hand.

--Eric

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I just realized that I've been making my 2D game with the GUI system instead of the actual 2D setup. Don't know if I should care.

I will argue against this to the end of the Earth. There is no such thing as visible or tangible 1D[Edit: Except, in number theory].

 

You're probably making the argument that a pixel has a visible, measurable dimension perpendicular to the direction of movement. Or perhaps you are making the argument that a pixel has a color, which is considered another dimension.

 

The argument is that anything visible has to be at least 2D, which is correct. You can, however, have 1D movement, even if it's represented by 2D objects. So, next challenge: make a game with only 1D movement.

--Eric

 

Infinite runner click game where you need to tap the screen to keep an object from hitting your character.

 

I think the thread would be more accurate if it referred to art creation rather than game development in general. Also, 2D art might be harder to make, but generally you need a lot less of it if you look at things from a per frame perspective. There's nothing else really that's harder.

Looking at the average finished game, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the 3D one was magnitudes more difficult and time-consuming even considering the slower art creation in 2D. Mainly because people expect more realistic physics, animation, behaviour, sfx and a lot more content in 3D. It might be easier to sculpt a terrain in Unity than to pixel draw some hills and valleys, but it'll take a lot more work to fill out the scene whereas there's only so much that can fit into a 2D scene.

I will say though that I'm impressed with some 2D games that really bring things to life with only a few pixels.

 

Yeah, Unity is kinda crap for 2D. If I feel like doing 2D, I'm either using GDevelop ("klik"-like program, very nice to use and 100% free) or stuff like BlitzMax (same company as MonkeyX, surprisingly it's like their older products such as Blitz3D and BlitzBasic free even for commercial use). Then there's Superpowers (which I haven't try) and GM (which I don't particularly like).

 

Wow. I didn't realize Blitz3D had become free. Granted I don't think I would ever find a reason to use it now.

By the way did you see that the Candy Crush engine was released for free?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ki...ga-is-giving-away-their-engine-defold.392799/

 

Yeah, but still I'm royally pissed at King for trying to trademark word Candy. And yes, this was a pun.

 

Assuming 2D game uses rectangles and 3D game uses cubes:

2D is way easier by far, exponentially so, from personal experience over quite a few years. Eliminating the art, we find that a 3D game with 3D movement is not just another dimension, it throws up a snowball effect of extra issues that keep on growing. I could list them but I've noticed nobody really listens to what I say, so I'm probably just going to offer less advice going forward.

 

Have you seen me try to draw a rectangle without using code? At least Unity gives me a cube.

 

If you toss art aside, you will find doing a full 3D game to be a major undertaking even with cubes though.

 

Ah. You modified your post. Games with 3D movement are definitely more involved than those with 2D movement.

 

Indeed there are 2 different things to discuss here.

Programming/Design: To me, 2d is much easier here. I'm sure everybody agrees, assuming that a game can actually be done in 2d(though many games that are done in 3d would play just fine if done in 2d). The code is simply much easier, including physics etc... in 2d. I don't think anyone will have an argument there.

Art: Here is where things change as far as this argument. I used to use GMStudio(and predecessors) for games. It is great for 2d, better than Unity in fact, but sucks at 3d. Since I'm now interested in 3d, I've invested in Unity, bought a few assets, etc... Therefore, I feel like I'm qualified to discuss both sides of this argument(not necessarily more than others here though). In my specific case, I was never an artist. I was never able to wrap my head around drawing things, etc... In general, for 2d art, pixel or otherwise, you need some knowledge and skill as far as perspective, etc... along with color, shading, etc... I was never able to get that. On the other hand, I was able to understand the technical concepts, the coordinate systems, etc... and I was able to understand the same thing for 3d concepts. The difference here is that with 3d, you (or at least I) can get away with things easier. In 3d, I don't have to worry about lighting/shading, or even materials hardly, as I can use GameTextures.com or other sources. In fact, when I was doing 2d games, I was using Blender and pre-rendering art. I found it much easier to create 3d forms, move verts around, etc... than try to pixel things out. It is like 3d is more technical and 2d is more artsy(though it isn't exactly the case).

Another bit I've found about 3d vs 2d art. Considering I can't seem to get around doing 2d art directly, it applies even more so to animation. I can quite easily rig my crappy 3d model and render some animations out, and my end result will be much better(and much quicker) than trying to draw the same thing directly in 2d. This applies most when you have varied animations. And in 3d, it is much easier to re-use things than it is in 2d. You can change material/textures on your human, maybe move some verts/forms around, and you have a totally different character. You could then do a bit of tweaking to make the animations right, and you are done. With 2d, you can't as easily just shift pixels around, and then shading changes too. So maybe if you know what you are doing with 2d, you can get a single frame done quicker than you can get a 3d model done, but the work done after that is where 3d suddenly pulls ahead of 2d in terms of speed of creation. I'm sure it varies per person of course, but that has been my experience there.

One thing I'm noticing as well...the resources for 3d are much more complete than for 2d. Much of the reason is just that with 2d things aren't as possible as with 3d generally, and/or would be more difficult to use. An example...you can use texture websites like GameTextures or even just textures.com(formerly CGTextures). You can easily use these textures in your game directly for things, or you can paint with them on your models. You also have other texture creating software besides direct creation from photoshop, like your Substance Designer, and then things for generation like CrazyBump. Pretty much none of those things can directly apply in the creation of 2d art. I guess technically you could copy/paste textures as part of your sprites, but it isn't really the same. About resources, I'd say this applies to learning as well. For any good 2d tutorial, you will find a many more 3d tutorials. I know it is about what is needed/popular, but I thought I'd mention it.