Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

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Reactor
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Reactor »

It's not just the spriting - of course, a 8-bit sprite is easier to make than a 24-bit model, if someone is skillful enough, he doesn't need anything else than MSPaint. But there's another thing: the level editing. Compare a 2D level editor for a side-scroller to a 3D FPS or TPS level editor for a game! The difference is earth and sky. By the time you fix together a small map for a 3D game, you can churn out 8-10 levels for a 2D side-scroller/top-down game. Trust me, I did both ;) OK, making good RTS game maps takes much longer, even 2 weeks (Dune 2000, Red Alert, Red Alert 2 creations of mine). Main thing is: creating levels in 2D is a trillion times easier.

The only thing which doesn't really differ is the programming part. Coding the environment, enemies, scripts, switches, keys & door and all the good shit which are mandatory is just as time-consuming in a 2D sidescroller as it is in a 3D game. Mind you, we are talking about building up the game from zero, not modding or fixing together a TC using a freeware engine.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by hardcore_gamer »

NeuralStunner wrote: Good-looking 3D animation is probably going to involve motion capture
Not sure if I agree with this. Aren't the monsters in Doom 3 animated via traditional keyframe animation except for the actual human characters?
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Project Shadowcat »

Kinsie wrote:
Rachael wrote:Also indie developers have a lot more value on their personnel, not seeing them nearly as disposable as AAA developers see them.
Show me a Kickstarter project that paid its staff a livable wage above the poverty line, and I'll show you a Kickstarter project that didn't get funded because it asked for "too much".
Harebrained Schemes did a pretty good job of that, but this is more the exception than the rule. To make it even more "hard mode", they are based out of Kirkland, WA, which is practically right next door to Microsoft, and the cost of living there is fairly high.
Here's 3 out of 4 of their Kickstarters, all of which succeeded.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/we ... un-returns (Shadowrun Returns)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/we ... lem-arcana (Golem Arcana)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/we ... battletech (Battletech)
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by NeuralStunner »

hardcore_gamer wrote:Not sure if I agree with this. Aren't the monsters in Doom 3 animated via traditional keyframe animation except for the actual human characters?
Who's going to know if an animated demon is realistic or not? Besides, are Doom 3's animations actually good-looking? :P

(I mean to say realistic animation but I think that got lost in an edit - That's part of what I meant though. Convincingly animated people.)
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Kinsie »

Project Dark Fox wrote:
Kinsie wrote:
Rachael wrote:Also indie developers have a lot more value on their personnel, not seeing them nearly as disposable as AAA developers see them.
Show me a Kickstarter project that paid its staff a livable wage above the poverty line, and I'll show you a Kickstarter project that didn't get funded because it asked for "too much".
Harebrained Schemes did a pretty good job of that, but this is more the exception than the rule. To make it even more "hard mode", they are based out of Kirkland, WA, which is practically right next door to Microsoft, and the cost of living there is fairly high.
Harebrained are pretty great, yeah. Battletech had publisher backing, though, and while it's been long enough that I don't remember I wanna say the Shadowrun games had some form of additional financing involved?
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Project Shadowcat »

Kinsie wrote:Harebrained are pretty great, yeah. Battletech had publisher backing, though, and while it's been long enough that I don't remember I wanna say the Shadowrun games had some form of additional financing involved?
I am under the impression that all of their Shadowrun games were completely funded by Kickstarter, except for SR Dragonfall, which was driven solely by SR: Returns' sales.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Kinsie »

Project Dark Fox wrote:
Kinsie wrote:Harebrained are pretty great, yeah. Battletech had publisher backing, though, and while it's been long enough that I don't remember I wanna say the Shadowrun games had some form of additional financing involved?
I am under the impression that all of their Shadowrun games were completely funded by Kickstarter, except for SR Dragonfall, which was driven solely by SR: Returns' sales.
Hmm. I could have swore that they had some extra money men along the way, but I can't find any evidence of this online at the moment so I must have misheard things. Either way, they're something of a sad rarity.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by hardcore_gamer »

NeuralStunner wrote: are Doom 3's animations actually good-looking? :P
For the most part they are pretty decent, yes.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by wildweasel »

hardcore_gamer wrote:
NeuralStunner wrote: Good-looking 3D animation is probably going to involve motion capture
Not sure if I agree with this. Aren't the monsters in Doom 3 animated via traditional keyframe animation except for the actual human characters?
Regardless of how your animation data is created, I can comment that rigging a model for said animation is an entire skill in itself. A skill that is, honestly, far beyond me. That's true of a lot of 3D work, though; it's such a completely different paradigm compared to drawing stuff, that the skills almost don't translate between them at all, and it doesn't help that most decent modeling software has an interface that follows none of the rules established by the contemporary OSes on which they're built. Maya alone has literal hundreds of toolbar buttons, pie menus, context menus, contextual pie menus, functions that change entirely based on whether you're holding one, two, or three modifier keys...there are multiple ways of selecting things, all of which can be combined, and all of which have different effects on whatever you do with the selection afterwards.

Essentially, if you want to get into 3D modelling, prepare to make it one of your major skill sets. It's not something to have as a passive hobby. Even generating "programmer art" with it, can be a massive undertaking that requires a literal hour or more to figure out where the most basic functionality is.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by Reactor »

That's right, I've took a look on the interface of a modeling software once - it was like trying to control a spaceship with the instructions all in Chinese. But even that would be easier. And it was only Blender, not Maya or something more advanced.
No wonder modelists are in scarce and receive gigantic payments - modelling is...uh...a lifestyle.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by hardcore_gamer »

Reactor wrote:That's right, I've took a look on the interface of a modeling software once - it was like trying to control a spaceship with the instructions all in Chinese. But even that would be easier. And it was only Blender, not Maya or something more advanced.
No wonder modelists are in scarce and receive gigantic payments - modelling is...uh...a lifestyle.
Blender is infamous for having bad and complex UI. It also is able to compete with Maya honestly except for some things like animation tools. Autodesk software is overrated and overpriced. I personally just use Modo and Zbrush. Houdini is good for VX and is free if you aren't using it to make paid products, though the free version comes with some limitations such as limited resolution for renders.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by hardcore_gamer »

I would like to add, isn't level design in a way a form of 3D modeling? I mean when you think about it when you are using something like Radiant or Hammer in a way you are modeling a level.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by InsanityBringer »

I mean, sure, but hammer and radiant are both really simple when it comes down to things. Using them to make an actually topologically sane 3d model would be hell, if not impossible. Of course, level design software not from the late 90s tends to be a lot more complicated, and probably closer to actual 3d modeling software, since the level of detail in games has progressed beyond what I assume you can easily do with basic brushes.
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by leileilol »

a lot of "blender its impossible to learn lol blender hard" here

it isn't if you don't expect a typcially strict outdated 4-pane 'easy' limited app like milkshit or whatever. Learning the ropes via the keybinds, getting a habit of g, r, e, tab, space and W along with clicking will make you learn the general overall functionality of it pretty quickly to the point you'll wish other apps worked that way

(until major Blender releases like 2.5 happen again to rearrange the default UI, breaking previous workflows happen and regress every very-linked tutorial out there, anyhow)

and also I'd like to point out blender's versioning isn't walled down through silly overpriced subscription models with limited usage terms,so you're not too SOL when you have to grab an older version to use an older version only script for some format no one cares to update the script for. At the risk of sounding Stallman-esque, Blender's Freedom is a very important part (.....in which the price tag of nothing invites a lot of newbies to increase the "lol blender too hard" noise)
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Re: Why is 2D more popular among indie devs than 3D?

Post by hardcore_gamer »

InsanityBringer wrote:I mean, sure, but hammer and radiant are both really simple when it comes down to things. Using them to make an actually topologically sane 3d model would be hell, if not impossible. Of course, level design software not from the late 90s tends to be a lot more complicated, and probably closer to actual 3d modeling software, since the level of detail in games has progressed beyond what I assume you can easily do with basic brushes.
DoomEdit (the Doom 3 editor) was basically just a beefed up Quake/Radiant editor and pretty much the whole game was made in it safe for some of the more complex models you see in the game. I personally completely hated the editor though since I found patch meshes (the way you created something that wasn't just a simple brush) to be a complete pain to work with.
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