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Heresy: There is no reason to expect a 2D-isometric engine again. But now we do have one...

Captain Shrek

Guest
Oh boy.

This is going to earn me some real bad rap, but I could not contain this rage any longer.

Why the hell is the codex so excited about a 2D isometric game engine similar to Infinity engine???????

I mean guys if it were still 1998 it was A-OKAY to say that Infinity engine was the best thing since the invention of sliced bread. But it is now fucking 2012; with the end of the world looming overhead you still want an age old technology.


Why?


Let me summarize my reasons to oppose it:

1) A 3D engine is a 2D but better: A 3D engine is of course automatically a 2D engine with more projections possible allowing you to navigate through a lot of perspectives and giving you more tactical choices. To ask for less is either nostalgia goggles, sheeple-tude or plain retardedness.

2) A 3D engine can look better: It can. Before you say that graphics are not important and that I am graphic whore, please notice that this is the second point; meaning that after the mechanics is handled correctly there is NO FUCKING reason to expect bad quality graphics. Only retards are still happy with pixel graphics when better options are very much possible and available.

Now I have been here for an year or so and the typical defense I hear for infinity engine is:

1) It has beautifully crafted background

Please dear retard, that beautifully crafted background has nothing whatsoever to do with the engine. It has to do with talented artists. A talented artist can USE A 3D ENGINE TO MAKE A BETTER AND MORE BEAUTIFUL BACKGROUND.

2) Infinity engine allows better control over party dynamics during battles:

Again this has nothing whatsoever to do with the 2D of it. As stated earlier 3D engines can do that better.


I can understand how RPG engines have been disappointing since infinity engines; NWN or NWN2 (it is the same engine anyway) could not capture the artistic beauty of IE games.


THAT DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.

Art is not upto the engine but up to the artists. It does not even matter if the same artists worked on these games. The engine if designed well can give you the freedom to make beautiful games. Just because past attempts at 3D game engines failed does not mean that e.g. Obsidian should make 2D engines. They probably are using your retarded Nostalgia to save money on making a revolutionary 3D engine that can make better content.

Think over this and now tell me why are you so excited over 2D engines.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Show me a single 3D game that looks as good as IE art can or shut the fuck up. Working in a 2D environment is fundamentally different on the artistic side and has a lot of advantages.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
What can 3D engine offer to RPG what 2D can't? Destructable environment (strange that you can destroy doors with fireballs in Arcanum but not in Skyrim, huh?) or projectile mechanics come to mind, but that's more realm of simulation - TBS or RTS. Modding? Yeah, maybe. Going down the stairs or up the stairs (superior positioning using obstacles and terrain levels)? 2D games had that.

I don't mind to see Silent Storm with swords and magic though.
 

dibens

as seen on shoutbox
Patron
Joined
Dec 4, 2011
Messages
2,629
Show me a single 3D game that looks as good as IE art can or shut the fuck up. Working in a 2D environment is fundamentally different on the artistic side and has a lot of advantages.

The infinity engine's art is still 3d models just in fixed perspective. It seems for many people it's aesthetically pleasant to the eye because of this fixed view- we see the big picture, rather than being thrown inside the room with rotating camera and zoom. Remove those two and you'll have the same engine, only better. And no, 2d has no advantages over 3d anymore. It's actually more restraining and time consuming when you have to fix things. Just the fact that you can't effectively adjust resolutions without fucking up the view distance and UI is a point in favor to 3d.

But this is obvious since 2007, I don't see where is OP going with this.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Show me a single 3D game that looks as good as IE art can or shut the fuck up. Working in a 2D environment is fundamentally different on the artistic side and has a lot of advantages.

The infinity engine's art is still 3d models just in fixed perspective. It seems for many people it's aesthetically pleasant to the eye because of this fixed view- we see the big picture, rather than being thrown inside the room with rotating camera and zoom. Remove those two and you'll have the same engine, only better. And no, 2d has no advantages over 3d anymore.

If that is true then why aren't we seeing games that look better than areas in PST/IWD/BG? We should be literally drowning in games that make them look like shit. The only explanation is that either the talent of every artist has dropped by 90% this decade or you are full of shit.

BTW, infinity engine only used 3D models for character sprites, which are near universally agreed to be at best okay-ish. The areas, which are the real strong point, are pure 2D art.

It's actually more restraining and time consuming when you have to fix things. Just the fact that you can't effectively adjust resolutions without fucking up the view distance and UI is a point in favor to 3d.

But this is obvious since 2007, I don't see where is OP going with this.

This isn't an argument for 3D looking better. This is an argument for 2D being harder to do. And yet it still looks better. Why is that?
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
Show me a single 3D game that looks as good as IE art can or shut the fuck up. Working in a 2D environment is fundamentally different on the artistic side and has a lot of advantages.

The infinity engine's art is still 3d models just in fixed perspective. It seems for many people it's aesthetically pleasant to the eye because of this fixed view- we see the big picture, rather than being thrown inside the room with rotating camera and zoom. Remove those two and you'll have the same engine, only better. And no, 2d has no advantages over 3d anymore.

If that is true then why aren't we seeing games that look better than areas in PST/IWD/BG? We should be literally drowning in games that make them look like shit. The only explanation is that either the talent of every artist has dropped by 90% this decade or you are full of shit.

BTW, infinity engine only used 3D models for character sprites, which are near universally agreed to be at best okay-ish. The areas, which are the real strong point, are pure 2D art.

Sorry bro, but the backgrounds in IE games were 3D maps pre-rendered from a fixed perspective. As for why we're not seeing games that look better than that, I'll leave as a project for you to undertake.
 

Kahlis

Cipher
Joined
Jun 23, 2012
Messages
408
The orthographic projection is the biggest advantage to keeping it 2D. Any and every real-time 3D game that uses "realistic" perspective usually has too narrow a field of view or the camera is too close to the ground. You have to pan around a lot more, because things quickly distort as they near the edges of the screen. As gameplay is effectively on a 2D plane most of the time and for many of the turn-based games you think in terms of "tiles", there's a certain subtle, underlying irritation to how everything doesn't appear to be equally distant at a first glance. You can have a 3D engine using orthographic projection, but that looks horrifying as you rotate the view and all of the parallels start skewing. At that point the only way to make the transitions nice is to not transition at all, and just instantly do 90 degree camera rotations.

Other problems with using a 3D engine include the mere fact that not everybody will be able to run everything at optimal settings, and many 3D games don't exactly scale back well to accommodate older hardware. Models from a game in 1998 look fine because they were designed "as-is" to be as immediately recognizable as possible, same thing with textures, but in most newer games lowering the settings just turns everything into a sort of homogeneous blur. What's the point if the game's mechanics barely make use of it all? Also a bit of silly nostalgia talking here, but there's a wonderful crispness to prerendered backgrounds, maybe from 256/16-bit color limitations, or maybe from the really harsh 90's prerendered 3D lighting and shadows.

Isometric 2D art is nice because one gets to assess everything at a glance and while there's lots of advantages to 3D, I think they help the developer more than they do the players. Level design doesn't really demand all that many view angles (even less so now, considering how Call of Duty has less verticality in it than Doom) so I imagine a lot of people see no inherent advantages in going 3D.

Maybe someday we'll have a totally outrageous new Jagged Alliance game set inside of MC Escher paintings. Maybe then a full 3D environment would be justified.

If that is true then why aren't we seeing games that look better than areas in PST/IWD/BG? We should be literally drowning in games that make them look like shit. The only explanation is that either the talent of every artist has dropped by 90% this decade or you are full of shit.
Maybe somebody here on the Codex would produce a 3D game as detailed as the renderings created for the Infinity Engine games, but we're definitely not going to be seeing anybody mainstream doing it because only PC hardware could do it right. No money to be had there in their eyes. And for those who would have to put the texture or model quality on medium/low, the consistency of the entire scene falls apart and it looks like shit. Too many variables to account for. Foliage without smoothed alpha textures. Chunky specular maps. It's just best to design a perfect prerendered scene as-is. True isometric 3D games just give me an ARPG vibe.
 

Ion Prothon II

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 10, 2012
Messages
1,011
Location
Ołobok Zdrój
Show me a single 3D game that looks as good as IE art can or shut the fuck up. Working in a 2D environment is fundamentally different on the artistic side and has a lot of advantages.

The infinity engine's art is still 3d models just in fixed perspective. It seems for many people it's aesthetically pleasant to the eye because of this fixed view- we see the big picture, rather than being thrown inside the room with rotating camera and zoom. Remove those two and you'll have the same engine, only better. And no, 2d has no advantages over 3d anymore. It's actually more restraining and time consuming when you have to fix things. Just the fact that you can't effectively adjust resolutions without fucking up the view distance and UI is a point in favor to 3d.

But this is obvious since 2007, I don't see where is OP going with this.

- True 3D cannot give the same perspective as in 2D isometric graphics. It's three- point perspective, which makes the view more complicated, especially when a precission is needed- like a tactical view in combat. It's possible to switch to ortographic projection to avoid it, but nobody does it.

- Pre- rendered graphics is comparable only with high- end realtime rendering. Don't forget modern 3D graphics is additionally ruined by shader effects!

- Free camera turns the game into a rotating hell for players and encourages level designers to do crap. Not surprisingly it's getting replaced by fixed-angle camera for some time.

- 3D models of characters and stuff are not an argument; it can be mixed with 2D background, as in Infinity (but with actual 3D models rendered, instead of pre-rendered sprites). The same goes for visual effects.

Tell me more about obvious things since 2007! Since 2007 we got some isometric 3D games, where 3D turned the gameplay into failure or hindered it significantly: like NWNs, DAs, Witcvher.
It's mostly about usability, but aesthetic is also a viable argument: games indeed look worse than the decade- older 2D ones with pre-rendered graphics: Infinity games, Commandos series, etc.

To make the 3D in games usable, it has to be stripped of its all 'advantages': by applying fixed camera, ortographic projection, careful level building.

But hey, at least production costs are lower. :M
(are they really?)
 

Surf Solar

cannot into womynz
Joined
Jan 8, 2011
Messages
8,827
The funny thing is that Captain Derp doesn't realize that Production Costs are actually even higher to produce quality 2d prerendered art these days, due to the additional amount of time one has to spend on them in post production.
 

MMXI

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2011
Messages
2,196
Captain Shrek does have one point, and that is that the graphics of the Infinity Engine games are needlessly limiting. Have you realised just how much stuff is baked into the scenes? All those barrels, stacks of hay, tools, torches, paintings etc. The biggest problem with the Infinity Engine games was their lack of environmental interactivity. You couldn't block passages with furniture, you couldn't pick up junk leaning against walls, you couldn't destroy barricades except through scripted sequences etc. This lack of free interactivity with the environment had knock on effects on the RPG credentials of the games because the interactions were largely limited to those between characters.

I guess this is the advantage of tile-based 2D games with individual objects as sprites. It's what the Ultima games did for the most part, and almost all of those games were more interactive than the most interactive of Infinity Engine games. So while Icewind Dale may have the best graphics out of all cRPGs, it did come with a hefty price in terms of potential game mechanics.

You can have a 3D engine using orthographic projection, but that looks horrifying as you rotate the view and all of the parallels start skewing.
Actually, it doesn't. I'm using this right now for my engine and it looks fine. Rotating the camera feels like adjusting the orthographic camera to your liking. Because there is no perspective, you don't have to constantly adjust the camera, meaning that camera position changes are much less frequent.
 

Surf Solar

cannot into womynz
Joined
Jan 8, 2011
Messages
8,827
Captain Shrek does have one point, and that is that the graphics of the Infinity Engine games are needlessly limiting. Have you realised just how much stuff is baked into the scenes? All those barrels, stacks of hay, tools, torches, paintings etc.

This is not directly a problem with the engine or 2d art per se, you could easily create interactive items and enviroments. It just needs additional rendering and ofcourse additional time to put it in. But yes, I agree, in tile based games it is a lot easier to do that, a problem I am having myself in my own game aswell (since unlike Fallout, I don't use Tiles).
 

MMXI

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2011
Messages
2,196
This is not directly a problem with the engine or 2d art per se, you could easily create interactive items and enviroments. It just needs additional rendering and ofcourse additional time to put it in. But yes, I agree, in tile based games it is a lot easier to do that, a problem I am having myself in my own game aswell (since unlike Fallout, I don't use Tiles).
I knew you were going to reply. :P

Yeah, it's not a problem with 2D, like I said. It's a problem with Infinity Engine-like graphics. Including individual objects into huge pre-renders to use as map backgrounds has its costs, and depending on the kind of game you want to make, and depending specifically on the amount of interactivity you want players to have with the environment, it could be a good thing to opt for something even simpler.
 

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