[Disc] I don't like the idea of 3d games in Flash

[mr_malee]

whoever invented graphics is a moron. Text based is the future. Nothing can push the imagination further.

[WesIsGood]

Wow Wes, what a loaded piece of flamebait this thread is.

No it's not. Your post, on the other hand.

[.hooligan]

Text based is the future. Nothing can push the imagination further.

Haha, I'm going to pump out a heap of text based games now , thanks for the hot tip Big M.

PS - Should I use 2d or 3d text?

[rachil0]

I don't think 3D is really being pushed thaaat hard in flash communities. Even with all the new rotation properties and transformation pipelines, F10 is still very much a 2D composition engine. I expect 3D projects will be the exception and not the rule in flash for a good while to come.

I did enjoy metroid 2D a lot more than metroid 3D - super metroid wow what a game! But I think mario and zelda have been the other way around, especially Mario Galaxy and Majoras Mask respectively. So I don't really know where I stand, except that I am outing myself as a wimpy Nintendo fanboy.

Moving on, I love both 2D and 3D games. I think what really makes a difference for me is not 2D vs. 3D, but rather first person camera versus third person camera. Platforming in third person is always gonna beat platforming in first person, IMO - regardless of how many dimensions. I think adventure and puzzling is almost always better in third person, because you more readily recognize the connections between your avatar and the environment. In first person camera, your avatar is unique, (literally) a singularity, and that causes a disconnect between the avatar and the environment. Sometimes this is what you want - like in doom, it is supposed to be you against the world and this avatar/environment disconnect fits and reinforces with the atmosphere of the game: evil world outside, safety only behind the gunsight. (IIRC that exact phrase might have even appeared in their design doc for doom).

HL2:Portal is the exception I guess. Puzzling in first person done well :shrug: [EDIT: Or is this an exception at all? On second thought, the REAL avatar of Portal is ... dah-da-dah ... the Portals! And you do view them in third person after all. So hmmmm ]

I do enjoy the extra programming challenges associated w/ 3D, and I have this vague feeling of additional self-expression when making 3D content that I don't really experience when I am dropping sprites/tiles in 2D. Granted, all my content is crap regardless of how many dimensions I throw at it - so I guess the additional self-satisfaction doesn't really result in higher quality results!

PS: Render, I think extracting 3D geometry from tile maps is a pretty novel idea. Really digging the screenies and hoping to see more soon

[hatu]

3D is good but I'd rethink using the basic action game 1st or 3rd person cameras in web games. Those just need as much screen space as possible.

[Incrue]

In miniclip the poorest 3d games stay on the top 10 a lot more time than the best, most polished 2d games
As for 3d in flash, well, sometimes i see it as an exercise for the future, but then adobe cames with a z, wich makes a lot of the exercise useless, that makes me wonder if, when cames the day flash can finally make some decent 3d, with decent gpu suport and all, are we really going to make our own engine or use others ones, or all the stuff will came with flash already and we can focus on the gameplay
But anyway,today iso 3d that rotates like renders portfolio is totally doable, its a pitty there arent many games like that

[dnalogic]

There's a great post on another forum, which sums up my feelings on the 3d beat-em thing...
http://digg.com/gaming_news/Gaming_B..._Of_Yesteryear

Streets of Rage 2 and 3 are still two of my favorite games of all time. It's really a shame they haven't made the jump to 3D. I think one of the problems with their modern equivalents is that they always feel the need to have ranged weapons. ***** that, let me get with 3 of my friends and get in the face of every character on the screen. If I want to shoot guys I'll play an FPS. Right now, I just want to bash a skull in with a pipe.

Another problem is the need for collision boxes in 3D. In SoR and most (all?) of the old school beat 'em ups, you could punch 5 guys at a time because they occupied the same space. It was fantastic! News flash: I'm not looking for realism.

This genre is in desperate need of a successful modern facelift.

regarding what tomsamson, captain404, and renderhjs are saying - that 3d environments can contain 2d environments within them, that 2Difying 3d might work better in cases, and about the transition of a top down view to an isometric view.:
because of the work already gone into making the 3d environments and camera, its quite easy (literally changing 3 numbers) to make these environments switch between an aerial view, or an isometric view instead of a perspective one. (possibly even snapping the camera to one of 8 directions too?).
and it does add a degree of 2dness like "Last Ninja", and remove some of the distance judging problems. i added that as a camera option to my thing now. im sure renderhjs can likewise just do perspective representation of the tile map, but chose isometric for asthetics and genre.

i do think that attempting a representation of 3d on a 2d screen should have a definite purpose too, as, like captain is saying, the keyboard and mouse and a flat screen arent the greatest for this. so if you are going to take on this limitation then it should be for an added reason, like having the players attack from all 3 dimensions, left-right, fwd-back, and up-down, and the games should not just be 2d games with slanted graphics.
(im working on it for my thing)

thank you bryce. and yes, while it has taken ages to make the thing functional, i can now sort out making it play better. and ironically because a team hasn't been involved there are no overheads except my time and sleep, so i am free to experiment with it and try and make a different type of 3d game without worrying about taking a risk. so hopefully it will end up cool.

alcapw,wattz. yeah i feel that a lot of high end 3d games are almost a merger between gaming and filming, and likewise imax,pixar,etc are coming from the other direction. guess they will meet in the middle. well out of the reach of flash home games makers, needing huge cash and huge teams.
but that there is still room for creative 3d games from little people and teams, albeit in a different style.

did anyone play Elite on the Beeb?
you can spend like 12 hours without wanting to leave the screen. fantastic.
i spent even more time playing that than putting 10 Pences into the Final Fight arcade (but a friend spent 15 pounds to complete it).

Wes. did you ever play any of those virtual reality arcades? or any of the aeroplane shooter sims that have the strap-in gryoscopic seats, that spin you (and the screen) around?

i guess the best 3d games are things like 'dance revolution' because they are the only ones that are really in 3d. ie you jump around and its the real world.

re:f10.
i dont think it will usurp many of the 3d engines already made. but, i can see a lot of potential for taking a tile-rendering engine and tweaking the code for z axis to make a 3d game that way.

[Incrue]

to dnalogic: what tom means is, if you're not doing to prove yourself you can do it in flash but you are doing for the fun of the masses, then go to miniclip, play cab driver or monster bash, for the masses things like that is 10 years old stuff, if they see a 3d game worse than that they dont give a damn if it was a great achievement on the flash standarts

[Incrue]

re:f10.
i dont think it will usurp many of the 3d engines already made.

Off course not, but my point was that, IF things keep comming that way, flash itself will came with his own 3d engine

[dnalogic]

if they see a 3d game worse than that they dont give a damn if it was a great achievement on the flash standarts

well, yeah, good. nor do i. i couldnt care less about i being flash. i just want something that has penetration to work in. there arent any fun to play roaming streets-of-rage beat ems in any technology, except possibly consoles.
and i couldnt just use an existing engine, coz i needed raw speed as i wanted to have a huge world.

if someone remakes 'MotherLoad' in css but lamer, then i dont expect anyone would be interested in playing it, just because its done in css.
im not doing flash for the sake of doing flash. but i am doing a game for the sake of it being fun.

f10. yeah. i agree. im confused. i agree with you. i think its more likely that theres going to be a bunch of off the shelf 3d games creation tools from 3rd parties, once f10 is out. i think that will be the key in decent 3d games being made in flash.

i am interested what the high-end 3d flashers (papervision, etc) will do once flash 10 is out.
i also wanna see what alternativa comes out with as a games demo.
i also wanna see that guy who rewrote the irlift(?) engine in as3 has been up to.

:-)


EDIT...

ok. this is insane. im replying with whole essays to some of these posts, and getting invovled in all sorts of fascinating debates. anyways, am gonna drop out of the threads, and have a go at implementing some the really sweet ideas that you guys are bringing up on 3d gaming. (renderhjs, with a 'posts' count that high, i am astonished that you have time to produce such high quality work!!)
see you all when i have something else new to show, and i look fwd to checking up what people bring up in this and other 3d threads.
d

[dnalogic]

irrlicht. i mean.

[lesli_felix]

The input and display we have on modern PC's/Consoles is the perfect platform for playing and displaying 2D games.

3D will be better one day, but for now what we're actually comparing is genuine 2D with a flat depiction of 3D, so it's not a fair contest.

[Cortana]

This post is a little late...

I don't like 3d games. Yes, some of them are fun. I loved Counter Strike, Super Mario 64, and The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. But, it seems like almost every 3d game is just a clone of all of the rest. Some guy running around, shooting at or otherwise attacking things. (or racing, I suppose) There's something intrinsic to three dimensions that makes it less suitable to fun games, in my opinion.

An interesting argument. But couldn't you apply the same opinion to 2d games? I could easily say some are fun and all 2d games are clones of all the rest also. Most are puzzle games or platformers or shoot em ups for example.

I'm sure it's also a matter of the player's perspective. In 3d games you can't see everything that's happening. In 2d games, you are completely aware of everything.

Hmm? In 2d games, you are only completely aware of everything when the whole level is visible on the screen at the same time. In 3d in some games you are able to see a lot more visual information (if the programmers are good enough).

Even simple 3d shapes can sometimes be very confusing if forced in to a 2d space.

What 3d shapes are you referring to?

[Ray Beez]

I think games today have too many colors. It's just so overwhelming. Whatever happened to carefully defining the obstacles, enemies and your player with just 8 colors? At least then you knew, the YELLOW things that look like mashed potatoes is BAD--AVOID!! RED rectangles are walls. And the GREEN pointy thing that looks like a dick, is your player, the swordsman with 2 frames for a walk animation. Awesome times.

[mr_malee]

this man is to blame

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

[Al Capwn]

I'd like to see more 1D games. They're all just lines.

[the--flash]

3d games are the money maker for Next-gen consoles, not counting downloadable content. 2d games are usually shifted over to downloadable stuff, or handhelds (like the DS).

Back in the old days when 2d junk was the bees knees, there were an amazing amount of nonsense floating around. I think that idiotic system the Neo-Geo had about two thousand fighting games, and each one was a little clone of the last. Fighting games were popular, so people copied them.

Now, shooter games (or violent games in general) are the cat's meow. If you look at the 360/PS3's library, there are so many shooter games out there it's insane. Seems every 5 minutes a new one is put into developement. If something sells, people will copy.

I wouldn't be so quick to condemn 3d games...2d games are alot more precise, which is what makes them different. Most of the old 2d games are Tile-based, while 3d games can pretty much apply a collision mesh to anything.

Also, Mario 64 was awsome. Bob-omb Battlefield was just nuts...I always wondered how the pink bob-ombs kept the fight going, there were like four of them and fifty of the black bombs.

[WesIsGood]

Yes, everyone is right. It is quite clever to extrapolate my skepticism towards 3d gaming in to a hatred of progress in general and then make humorous statements that might follow from such an outlook.

Well played, sirs.

[rachil0]

this man is to blame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

That's a really interesting biography, never seen that. And an additional career change to aerospace engineering? Respect. Clearly a sharp dude.

Yes, everyone is right. It is quite clever to extrapolate my skepticism towards 3d gaming in to a hatred of progress in general and then make humorous statements that might follow from such an outlook.

Well played, sirs.

By responding only to the negativity and ignoring the good comments that people have posted, you are validating (and spreading) Ray's opinion of you.

[.hooligan]

That's a really interesting biography, never seen that. And an additional career change to aerospace engineering? Respect. Clearly a sharp dude.

Yeah it was a good read, had to laugh at him stealing the apple II computers from school