Do I need 3D for my game ?

GodotNoob

Hi guys !

I know the title does not say much, but I'm pretty new to all this and I don't really know how to articulate my question. (Also, English is not my primary language so I apologize for any mistake I'm gonna make).

After looking around the documentation, I made the "Make your first game" tutorial which was pretty great and gave me good insights. I'm now ready to try and make my own game (kinda...).

For a first game, I think it would be wiser to start with 2D and not bother with 3D as it requests so much more knowledge. I have an idea for my game but I wonder if I can achieve that with 2D or at least without having to create my own 3D textures/objects/etc. (I read that it's kinda possible to apply 2D asset on 3D object ?)

My game would be top down with a fixed camera. The character would be a diver who... well ... dive ! What I want to display is the fact that my diver goes down and so the environment will be scaled down/up accordingly to the diver depth. (It would be like the fortnite jump with a fixed camera above the character.)

So I was thinking that it would be easier in 3D as the "z" axis is already taken care of and so the scale up/down would be automatically dealt with. But I would like to avoid the 3D as much as possible as I'm a beginner. Like the environment would be in 3D but just for the "z" axis. How would you "emulate" this effect in 2D ? Is it that hard if only the environment is in 3D ? Can I apply 2D texture on a 3D element as I will only see the top of it ?

Do you see any way to achieve that easily ? Is it already out of scope for a first game ?

Worth mentionning that I'm a developer (not a game developer, just a developer) so I think I can handle the programming but not the 3D modeling/drawing/etc.

Hope that it makes any sense.

Cheers !

Dismantled

I think it all comes down to the look and style of your game. 3d might be required if you want the most accurate feeling of a diving descent. 3d allows fortnight to have a realistic feeling of actual scale and perspective when you jump out of the plane. You could fake anything in 2d but it might be a pain to animated the feeling of an ocean descent in a 2d over the top game??? there might be some good examples of 2d water games out there. I would first research looks that other games have been successfully pulled off that and might work for your vision. I think if you using 2d with 3d you will still have to program for 3d? You could use 3d for use in 2d but it would be more in lines of like Donkey Kong Country or something like that( I can't think of any modern versions) where the 3d graphics become almost sprites/frames?

I hope this helps.

Dismantled

https://godotengine.org/article/godot-32-will-get-pseudo-3d-support-2d-engine

The up and coming version of Godot 3.2 is looking to get pseudo 3D support in 2D engine so that might help you out alot!!!!!

GodotNoob

Hey Dismantled ! Thanks a lot for your answer. The new pseudo 3d feature looks very promising, but I wonder if it's going to work that well with the diving. I think I'm gonna go with 3D objects and just apply 2D textures on them. I might try out the new feature in a near future though.

Again, thanks a lot for you insight !