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

[WesIsGood]

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.

I'm thinking that it might be something mathematical. In 3d, the viewing area is so big, that no individual enemy/obstacle is important anymore. In Super Mario Brothers, for example, every turtle is an obstacle that needs to be overcome. But in Super Mario 64, you can easily just run around anyone that you don't feel like dealing with.

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. It's also just hard to get a realistic feeling 3d environment on to a 2d screen. I don't even mean just in coding or anything dealing with the specifics of game design, but just in general. Even simple 3d shapes can sometimes be very confusing if forced in to a 2d space.

I'm a big math guy, and it feels like I should want to create a 3d engine of some kind, but I just don't feel motivated at all to do so.

Just wondering if anyone else felt the same way.

[RipX]

I feel exactly the same!

RipX

[.hooligan]

Yeah I agree too, I love seeing what people can achieve in 3d but games are really starting to feel the same. There are some well executed 3d games but 2d works a lot better in my opinion.

[dnalogic]

ok, my opinion is going to be a little biased, but..

i think the reason "3d games in flash" are generally crappy is that the task of making a 3d game in flash is so huge, that it takes nearly all the time to get the mathematical and structural part done, that there is little time left to work on the game play.

i havent really seen any finished 3d games flash that are anything more than cursory graphics demos (yes im trying to make one). my favourite being the quake renderer.
there are so many hurdles to get over to get flash to show something in 3d in the first place that the task is more suited to maths minded programmers than games programmers.
its as if though everyone who reaches the last hurdle of creating the renderer, then gets bored and does something else, just to see if they can. noble sure, but no finished games.
if the papervision / sandy / away people were driven by game creation rather than sophisticated 3d tool creation then there would certainly be good playing 3d games already.

look at it this way...
a crappy 3d game is just as lame to play as a crappy 2d game. and there are *plenty* of really really awfully rubbish 2d games on flash. but there are also good ones because the technology has reached the point where the structure creation is an already solved problem, so its only left to work on the game play, and so you see a few really nicely put together games.

also, its about emulating console games.
at the moment, in flash, its not possible to just copy a 3d console game concept, and use your own graphics. but it is possible with most of the 2d snes/genesis games. a game like sonic is such a work of 2d-gaming history because the industry has had since pacman to refine its game play ideas in two dimensions.
when flash comes along people can just copy all of the innovative bits of sonic into their own version.
when 3d technology moves on, and the 3d sonic is born, and the technology is handed down to all the things like flash. at that point flash games programmers can copy the 3d masterpieces into simplified versions that are good to play. until then, we either lack the examples, or the technology of 3d games to copy.

also, the number of good 3d games that exist in the world are fewer than the number of good 2d games that exist. so its not just a flash problem.

flash as a non cutting edge gaming technology will always be a step behind the cutting edge game stuff.

look at the evolution of desktop OS's, and the evolution of mobile OS's.
when the first GUIs came out, im sure plenty of people would say "I don't like GUIs, but some of them are good".

new tech takes time to get good, and 3d isnt there yet, and 3d flash is even further behind, i agree.

my 2 cents.

[realMakc]

its as if though everyone who reaches the last hurdle of creating the renderer, then gets bored and does something else, just to see if they can. noble sure, but no finished games.
if the papervision / sandy / away people were driven by game creation rather than sophisticated 3d tool creation then there would certainly be good playing 3d games already.

Amen.

But it is not always just about getting bored. It's getting frustrated most of times.

For quick example, just yesterday I took cortes/doob voxel head and tried to put in sandy starfield to make something like doom's lost soul. This means, of course, removing all of optimizations and precomputations; the price for that is having to go from 300k voxels to at least 10 times less, which makes this specific head to look much less fitting to the purpose (those funny holes around mouth are almost no longer visible, etc)... so I scrapped the project.

Same goes to quake-style environments, once you get right lighting, clipping, sorting and texture animation, your render starts to crawl already, and even if you find a way to add moving models without further slowdown, you just cant match good old quake itself... speaking of quake, I remember that adobe quake demo made with cpp compiler, I wonder where did that ended up?

[WesIsGood]

Yeah, I'm totally open to the possibility that someone could come out with a new and innovated 3d game that blows my 3d socks off, and makes me change my opinion. It's just that so far, that hasn't happened, and I'm suspecting that it might be because of some fundamental flaw of three dimensions, and not just a matter of game developers not having had enough time to perfect it yet.

But obviously if people start coming out with really fun innovative 3d games, then this suspicion will be proven wrong. And though I mentioned flash in the title, my post was pretty much about 3d games in general.

[tomsamson]

There are lots of great 3D games, too and some are also quite unique and original. Portal for example, sure, there are meanwhile various 2D clones of that,too but i think the portal mechanic is way more interesting to use in 3D space.
I think some game types/gameplay elements will always work way better in 2D and others always in 3D.
Let´s take platforming games as example: Mirror´s Edge, a new game by EA coming out soon is right now hyped for its great first person view parcours type platforming. And while i like it that they do something which few first person view games do and i appreciate what i saw of the execution so far and many things of the presentation art style and feel look lovely, i feel like at the end of the day the platforming in first person view will always be way more tricky than platforming in sideview, and besides being original for platforming in first person view, just controlling the character and beeing able to make more varied and "tricky" jump passages while still having it better controllable by more players would be much more a possibility if it was sideview.

3D can have its advantages though, especially for giving a more immersive believable world feel. Next to such things there are also technical differences which lead to way different gameplay feel.
Like for exaple in many 2D sideview games the baseline was having a tilebased map with art made in 2D. A tilebased engine and with it the map editor usually means one can make maps super quickly (once having nice tiletypes ready) which then usually meant developers could make lots of maps,test em right away, tweak em quickly etc so there was an automatic focus on gameplay focused map design.
In 3D games, even in comemrcial engines its usually still way more time consuming to come up with a map and even way more to so to tune it for gameplay. Similar things could be said about handling enemies, AI etc.
On the other hand back in the golden days of 2D gaming the engines and machines running the games weren´t tailored for running heavy physics sims, animating characters or objects procedually and based on a sim controlled by the physics engine (in most cases). While this again could have some benefits for certain gameplay elements and game types, it also lead to less believable game worlds in a way in many cases.

This paragraph is to dnalogic: I appreciate what you do there with your sorta 3D game and while its an exceptional achievment for being done in flash i feel like the same game in 2D or more 2D like perspective would have way less control issues (which you can of course reduce with auto aiming, lock on, bigger hit areas for enemies etc) and yes, you could focus more energy/time on the gameplay as you said yourself. Besides that i don´t get why someone would work on a sorta 3d game like this in flash at all besides the pure point of getting praised for the achievment made for flash terms.
But yeah, sorry that´s just my personal view on it,as i said its an exceptional achievment for beeing made in flash

Well, to sum it all up i think 2D games will always have their place, 3D games will become more common, also in the web games field and then there will be all sorts of interesting combinations and in between things which noone thought of yet or which weren´t possible in the past.

[dnalogic]

This paragraph is to dnalogic: I appreciate what you do there with your sorta 3D game and while its an exceptional achievment for being done in flash i feel like the same game in 2D or more 2D like perspective would have way less control issues (which you can of course reduce with auto aiming, lock on, bigger hit areas for enemies etc) and yes, you could focus more energy/time on the gameplay as you said yourself. Besides that i don´t get why someone would work on a sorta 3d game like this in flash at all besides the pure point of getting praised for the achievment made for flash terms.

aha! but you havent seen the same vision i have :-)

i certainly am not doing it for praise though!! if that was the case then i'd put out all my source code, and get more praise!!
but nooohhhh.

im doing it because of exactly this reason that this thread is about. crappy 3d games.
i want to make a cool kick ass 3d beat-em up. my attempt so far is way short of what id want it to be like. i want a 3d roaming "streets of rage", and i dont want to just remake streets of rage, because it isnt exciting for me to play anymore.
i want to play a great 3d thing, and so im trying to make one. i would use c++ or something, except that the game is part of a larger concept, and c++ games cant be played on peoples browsers.
so. i am stuck with flash and its hoop jumping as3 requirements, to get its browser penetration. the reason i put the demo up is to get comments like the ones i have - which are about its short-comings and control issues. (it had not occured to me that the controls are rubbish, for example, and thats something for me to change before it goes live).
i have invested way too much time in making all those little characters animations for it to be just a graphics demo.
i am attempting to solve a problem (in part: the lack of an online 3d 'streets of rage' style beat-em up) and flash was the most sensible tool for me to use in my opinion.
if i really wanted praise for making a cool game, then i would have posted it on several forums, in its uncomplete state. or id ditch the fighting thing and use the engine to make a solid 3d driving game, which would be simpler than all this hit combo stuff.

But yeah, sorry that´s just my personal view on it,as i said its an exceptional achievment for beeing made in flash

hahaa! token compliment!
but, thank you :-)


oh but hey...
3d driving games. WAAAAAY better than 2d equivallents.
even 'Hard Driving' arcade game was fun.

i went to a computer graphics demo fair thing once, and there was a stand with a 3d game like duke-nukem. the guy had a 3d viewing goggle headset and wii style controller, the idea being that you can really be immersed in the game and your movements set the direction. it looked really smooth. so i waited for him to finish demoing it and had a go.
when i put on the goggles i didnt have a clue what was going on. it was a big mess. my character crashed into all the walls in a lopsided kind of way and got stuck in a corner spinning around. at which point the guy took the goggles away from me quickly as i was making his product look bad.
*******!

[tonypa]

I guess it depends if F10 provides simple ways to access its 3D logic or not. Once the actual "showing stuff in 3D" is solved easily without spending years writing suitable engine, you can start to play with ideas.

[Captain_404]

I think perhaps the main difference between 3D games and 2D games is the fact that, well, they occur in two entirely different dimensions. Crazy, right?

As such, 3D and 2D games require entirely different structures to function.

Your mouse, for example, only registers movement through two dimensions and so if you're making a game that uses exclusively the mouse to control it, you would probably be better off making a 2D game, where you can have a full range of motion.

The mouse is a fundamentally abstract form of input, your cursor can be anywhere at any time inside a 2D plane. However, once you take this into a 3D world, you'll have to map a button to move through the extra axis, and then you don't have a free range of motion.

All this goes to say that our computer input systems are generally built to handle two dimensional environments (your desktop) rather than three dimensional environments.


I'd also say that once you create a 3D environment for a game, the general instinct is to make the game more lifelike rather than cartoony, since you are observing the game world in a more lifelike fashion.


This certainly doesn't mean that the 2D world is a better environment for the abstract sort of games you seem to enjoy, but it does indicate that our current technology is best suited to making those kinds of games in 2 dimensions.

I do, however, still disagree with you Wes, I think that once the proper technology is realized there are infinitely more possibilities for 3D worlds. Not necessarily because I can think of any, but because you can essentially create 2D games in a 3D environment (just look at some of the recent games for the DS) and in addition to that, you can create games that can only be played in 3 dimensions.

[renderhjs]

I am in favor for 2d at most times and that just not for games but in general as visualisation.
With 2d you usually have:
- better overview: important for structured and herichal data, think of a platformer with different jump platforms, or a OS with lots of structural table data.
- simpliefied, ease to read: we are used reading magazines and other print media therefore our eyes are specialized in recognizing characters and illustrations on 2d surfaces. I think the same applies for example on web design- in usually 2d works best
- fast to execute: not just does the design task but also the programming job take less effort and complexity. And because of that there is so much more space for exploring different aspects besides the state of the art of the visuals. For example physiscs, particles, typographics,...ec.t are more to explore.


with 3d you can do well:
- fsuck the player in the game world,- it feels more natural looking not from a abstract perspective like topdown, pixel- iso, side scroller, ect. I think it helps alot transporting the atmposphere way more in some cases.
- exploring mechanics Because in 3d projection you usually see only a limited portion moving the camera is a usual task. Imo. thuis mechanic works best for puzzle, adventure and alike games where you need to find items ect. Seeing objects from different angles can help understanding complex objects better.

hmm well I am certain there are more pro´s working with 3d but usually personally I am more interested in that topic from a design and technical view- not gameplay wise.

so from that a few thoughs on:
technical side
Most flash games or movies are utterly crap from a technical perspective. Some stuff I see on the net and sometimes here on the forum resembles powerpoint presentations alot and I think that says it all.
So seeing once here and there some technical impressive demos (be it 3d, physiscs, particles, ik/FK, sound, emulation,...) is something I really enjoy - partly because with such a big contrast it gives hope and speculation on who the perhaps better future of flash might be.

design side
I like working with 3dsmax alot- its like playing with clay and optimizing every view of the model.
The reuseablilty is very high- not just can you reuse objects mutliple times but also can you display it from different angles. In other words: you give multiple impressions by having to create it just once. I did not wanted to post this before but here is something I am working on recently

Its a 3d test tile set (recycling LTTP tiles) for a new engine,- trying to find out myself what the benefits are instead of the 2d- and how I can share some of the designs. What´s the best way of navigation and when to show what and how.

in the end the 3d chapter in Flash just started and its main attention its gets is because its fresh in the flash world on stands someway out of the crowd.

[tomsamson]

to tonypa: I think the basic additions in flash 10 regarding 3d features will for most people only mean they have nice semi 3d effects or semi 3d games,its not as if it would come with a 3d map maker and model files importing with their animations and similar features out of the box.

to dnalogic:
I think there is room for a really nice 3d free roaming gameplay featuring fighting game. But yeah, to say it blunt i don´t think flash is anywhere near capable enough to be able to do such a game with it yet.
In my eyes to make a free roaming 3d fighting game have more sense and nicer gameplay than a 2D one the player and enemies should be able to make use of the environment. And i don´t just mean better hitting opportunities when beeing at higher locations but also interacting physically with the environment. Hanging at higher platforms, climbing up, Kicking an enemy down the stairs etc, have all of this realistically simulated and procedurally animated so it has propper impact on a simulated body with simulated bones. Could this be done well in flash in 3d right now? I don´t think so.
Again, your game is shaping up to be a great technical achivment for flash but gameplaywise it feels like a more limited version of river city randsom or even just double dragon to me with way more difficulties to hit enemies as one wants while at the same time enemies atack from all directions.
Again, this is meant as constructive criticism, i´ve listed several points in my previous post how i think these problems could be reduced, but yes, i stand by my opinion that i don´t think a 3d free roaming fighting game could be made in a way in flash right now which makes me think: hey, yeah, it toally makes sense this is done in 3d, it either looks way better (and plays just as good as a 2d view game) or hey, it also plays much nicer and in ways only possible in this 3d view.
I won´t go into if you want to do propper 3d on the web do it in unity3D again (and even in that something as i described above would be tricky and take a long time to make) so yeah,if you think flash is the best option for something like this then that´s fine.

And yeah, i totally agree, most good 3d racing games are way better than most good 2d racing games (from memory the only 2d/semi 3d racing games that still hold up in my memory are micro machines and rock´n roll racing ),
so yeah, a good example for a genre that is overall way better suited for being done in more 3d engine/view

[tomsamson]

to render: zelda is always a weak spot for a oldschool gaming nerd like me,love any such pixel look zelda art modernized
On the other side these perpective/iso looks at the room would be way worse gameplaywise than the classical view that room had. If you´d guide your character around in there and it would have such a view as static view it would be hard to guess where to go/what´s all in the room. So yeah,you´d either have to make the camera controllable by the player or make it adopt automatically to the player position or change the design of the rooms/parts making up the room to be playable nicely at this perspective.
Nice concept though

and yeah,i agree with the other things you said mostly,so not much to add to those

[renderhjs]

@tomsamson: I can change the rotation X axis for the camera in the engine- so that you get a seamless transition from almost original to iso or topdown.

oh and just another thought: I think lots of us hate hypes hence the reason we get threads like this- which is a good thing because you actually question the use and the real benefits from something that strikes with rather eye candy arguments.

[Son of Bryce]

I don't like 3d games.

It really feels like a lot of the negativity within this thread towards 3d in Flash is from people that don't like 3d games to begin with. Game consoles have been doing 3d for over 10 years now and sales are constantly going up. So these 1000's of 3d games must've done something right. Right?

The games will get better over time, it's inevitable. The quality of 2d Flash gaming has surely risen, there's no reason why 3d won't rise either. The biggest problem is that barely anybody has the experience right now. Or the time and resources.

I'm very impressed by dna's game demo. You can criticize it for being a bit rough around the edges but it's an incredibly fast first-generation 3d Flash action game with a huge world. Yeah, the tech is amazing. But as dna said, there's such a huge price of entry on the tech side that it's hard to get to the gameplay. But now that he's paid that price of admission, hopefully he can start working on the second generation and making something that plays better. Oh yeah! And he did it all by himself! Imagine what would be possible with a team, you know?

You can argue about Shanty Town being horrible because it doesn't live up to your childhood memories of Double Dragon and the like. But there's still unique opportunities available by using the game engine.

How about making it an dungeon-crawling RPG. So you don't have to deal with targeting problems because the action will be menu based. And this type of game takes advantage of the immersion and exploration that render identified as positive things about 3d. That would sure be an experience that you wouldn't be able to get in a 2d flash game.

Instead of simply criticizing what you already hate about 3d game, why don't you use your energy to think about something that you'd like to see in 3d. Something new, something fresh. You know, we have the capabilities to turn our dreams into reality.

[WesIsGood]

Also I should say just so there's no confusion, that I was very impressed with dnalogic's 3d engine, and my post had nothing at all to do with it. I have had this opinion for a long time now, and just ended up posting about it today because I was thinking about future projects, and how eventhough I think that programming a 3d engine would be a fun challenge, I have absolutely no interest in doing it.

[WesIsGood]

You know, we have the capabilities to turn our dreams into reality.

My dreams are all in 2d.

[Ray Beez]

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

[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

[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.