Blog post about 2D got several comments. The discussion got me thinking that is there really need to use 2D engine for games? If you can create 3D models and render isometric/top-down views – what’s the benefit of using 2D engine?

One obvious advantage is that you can render very high polygon objects in 2D (as in Lylian game for example). Another reason could be if you are doing a physics based game and want to stick in 2D (thinking of Crayon Physics)

Besides these, is there any reason? Why not use 3D engine, and then render stuff in 2D?

(I’m talking about downloadable indie games, not Flash games for example)

I’m pondering what pitfalls there might be in 2D development.

You perhaps could share a link or two and lead me near to some good articles?

Or perhaps share your own experience.

After clearing my mind about donuts, I think it’s time to put some stuff up about the things I might wanna do next. Baby is coming… but there will be game development ahead.

As mentioned in my earlier post, I’m trying to climb to a higher level in game making. I like scripting and adding content – not all the technical stuff.

I checked Unity3D. I’ve been reading tutorials already, checked some things from the forum, ordered & read a book about it and toyed around a bit. (Okay, all this took like a few days in total, so I’ve really gone through Unity fast-forward mode digesting all the information about it). It seems a reasonable candidate for game development plans I have (more on these below)

Here’s list of things that are currently on top of my head right now:

• Block stacking type of game. I’m very proud of my Highpiled game. It’s fun game. It has potential to be a really cool game. It’s also technically relatively easy game to create – it’s more about content. I have several ways how this could become a cool casual game. I’m not totally sure if portals would accept it, but it’s possible. I think it would also be good way to get familiar with Unity.
• Another block game. I have some other ideas on how to approach the whole block stacking thing, and I suppose there are some ways to make a more portal friendly block game. But if we forget portals – would making this be fun? Quite possibly. Even if it would be just a prototype, it would be a nice way to test the waters with Unity.
• Dead Wake 2 (or porting Dead Wake to Unity). At the moment this option is probably the lowest in my hierarchy (due the fact that I don’t have Unity experience so much), and that it would require something more in the game (besides of course the suicide-for-point feature). I can see ways how this could be fun.
• Edoiki: Couple of years ago I ended Edoiki development (mainly for the reason that the project was too big for me). I now have some fresh ideas which resonate into something like “thief meets crimsonland” type of genre. I think adding stealth in the Arkanoid genre (since that’s what Crimsonland and other games are: if you sit down for a moment to think about you’ll agree with me). It would mean quite new design for Edoiki, but somehow it might be a cool thing to do. And now I’d have better tools and skills to pull the project successfully in the end. I have no doubt on that.
• Hidden object game: I sort of hate all the current hidden object games. Yet, I’d wanna make a hidden object game that I like. Must be something in my water.
• Guards: There has been this one game I’ve wanted to do earlier. It was about having several mini-games inside one bigger game. It would be easy way to prototype (since one mini-game is a really small thing) and continue development – or stop it – after doing 1 or 19 mini-games. It would be bit like doing “prototypes”, but using the same theme & graphics style in one game. The mini games could be about a “guard doing his training”.
• Traitor game: This is something that’s practically not used in video games. There are social/party games (like Mafia / Werewolf) and board games (such as Battlestar Galactica) which have brought me the best gaming moments ever in my life and are – in my opinion – something that would work also in computer screen if produced well. In these games, there is one (or sometimes more) traitor in the group… yet nobody knows who it is and the accusations fly over the room. Since it requires multiplayer (at least 3 people, preferably more) it’s slightly more complex to do – if wanted to do properly. IRC/forum versions just don’t quite do the trick. A better approach would be needed.
• Or something totally different: As you can see. Getting ideas is the easy part. The 0,01% part of the game production.

I’m leaning into “Unity + the simplest possible game to make” formula, but we’ll see. You are free to comment (bearing in mind my new ignore everybody attitude).

In my earlier Dead Wake lessons learned I mentioned that I would share some more lessons from the project.

Here’s some more of them:

Pay for the stuff you are actually going to use
Dead Wake was a game where I did actually put quite a bit of money into. Engines, tools, programming aid, art, animations. There was quite a bit of stuff where I put money. In retrospect I can say that there was some stupid purchases (like the fact that I paid for some animations that never got in the final game – that’s just plain silly and the lesson is “pay for the stuff you actually aim to use”). But the good thing is that I chose to *pay* for stuff.

Many, many years ago I tried to do everything on my own since “it was too expensive to pay for other”. Well – I figured it out that instead of trying to do everything by myself, I should – like you know – get other people to do stuff they are good. And focus my own efforts on something else.

Indies shouldn’t do “realistic” looking art
I think one thing that made the project take longer than I anticipated, was the fact that I chose a “slightly realistic” (as in comparison to for example “cartoony”) approach. Okay, those low poly zombies look low poly, but the dark atmosphere in game and all suggested that the stuff needs to look pretty realistic.

I feel that artwise this caused some issues. People expected “more” from things. Shadows needed to look really good, and barrels needed to look barrels. And getting such art might not be so easy… and the fact that AAA studios are doing ultra-good looking art (just look at Alan Wake screenies for example) it means that I’m sort of a competing in a league where I shouldn’t be.

It is somewhat “easier” to go with perhaps more cartoony look or something like that. If gamers see a cellshaded cartoony indie game they say “cool!”, but if they see “realistic” looking game that does not match AAA games they say “this looks crap”.

(Okay, they didn’t say that to me – but I felt that I was somewhat competing with Left 4 Dead art for example. Naturally my game has tons of better shadows, but hey – maybe Valve is learning.)

Sticking to what is important
There were many type of suggestions from the Dead Wake community members. One very early suggestion was “bazookas”.

It was pretty easy to say “No.” to that.

The game is not about bazookas. Play quake live if you want bazookas. You ain’t going to find them from my game.

Making it moddable (by use of scripting)
One of the very early approaches for me was that I made my own system for doing “templates” in the game. Each object has a template: weapons, zombies, objects… and all are simple text files that can be edited in Notepad or something.

I initially thought that this would be for modding, but later realized that this actually was really fast & easy way for me to edit numbers. I could change different values and test them in the game pretty easily. I didn’t need to alter game code to be able to try different weapon damage values.

Consider leaving controversial features in the game
One of the features that I accidentally had programmed early in the game (something like in version 0.5) was that the guy could shoot himself.

Yes, that’s correct. I had made it so that bullets hit any person, so you could shoot yourself in the game.

I don’t know many games where you can do a suicide, and considered leaving that feature. Some community members thought “it was hilarious”. I even considered making it so that the player could get some bonuses for shooting himself with the last bullet. I wasn’t trying to promote suicidal behavior, I was simply thinking how they do this in zombie movies. Sometimes the people in zombie movies leave one bullet for themselves. So, in a way it could fit the theme.

I didn’t leave that version there, but in retrospect I think it could have got a pretty good publicity & made a “nice” viral marketing thing.

(In the end my technology change so that the feature was “automatically gone away” and it would have required work to code it in the game again. I suppose I thought it wasn’t worth it – and perhaps some people could have found it disturbing. Who knows, maybe in Dead Wake 2…)

Multiplayer was there too soon
I started the game with multiplayer in my mind. I think that I was trying to test the multiplayer option perhaps too soon (and was too low-level in it) and this cause more of those “engine dev” instead of “game dev” stuff.

Ditching stuff (like multiplayer)
The good thing was that after using Leadwerks engine for some time I decided to “drop the multiplayer for now”. I thought that it would require quite a bit of work and that I would do it later “if I had time”.

Well, I didn’t – so it was good that I decided to leave it later.

I think multiplayer is another feature that would greatly add interest in the game, but it would have been simply too much work at that time – so it was good that I decided to focus on other things.

Have a great art pipeline
I had a horrible art pipeline. Leadwerks has many good features, but the art pipeline isn’t one of them. The engine uses its own internal models (which is good for efficiency) and there’s tons of plugins available for exporting yor models from pretty much any format… but for me this took tons of time to do.

I bought some art packs, but needed to do all sort of pipeline work to get .X files to become working .GMF files in the game. It’s can be a huge timesaver to have a good art pipeline available.

Over and out
That’s it for now.

Dead Wake has been receiving pretty good feedback (also more ideas, and then some complaints about certain (known) issues… and then some questions about “what to do to get it working on my computer”). It was so nice to hear the following:

“I love the whole zombie barricade thing. The objects hold well enough to stop the zombies, yet they can push through at a reasonable rate. It’s pretty scary when your barriers start breaking down and they come for you.”

“Once I figured out the game was about preparing your defences it started making interest. Kind of slightly reminds me these siege games like ‘the hord’ which I was playing when I was a kid.”

I hoped that people would get this type of feeling, and seeing that some people have experienced this.

After listening to tons of ideas, implementing some of them in the game, leaving some out and hearing ideas on “how to make things better” (at the time of writing there’s hundreds of threads and replies in the “suggest ideas” Dead Wake sub-forum) is cool - but I must admit that after doing the game it’s also pretty cool to hear some good stuff about the thing you’ve created.

I’ve been using one computer screen as long as I remember. In fact, I didn’t even realize that you could have 2 monitors until I saw this happening some years ago.

At one point I tried doing stuff with 2 monitors. The end result was that I didn’t like it. To me, the gap between monitors is irritating. Therefore I simply like using a solid one monitor. Large screen enuf and good resolution enuf to handle several windows in my view.

How you like to work? With one monitor. Two? Or perhaps even more?

Today I was visiting one nearby supermarket and out of curiosity I checked the console “department”. I checked the games… and started ponder how “old fashioned” it would be to buy from those shelves. I buy all my games online (hmm, with the exception of sometimes going through some shelves when I feel like need for gold digging) and I stared those games and felt that I’d never want to buy those 67 eur games that way. I have purchased some brand new games… but that’s via Steam. Not from supermarkets. I guess I might consider ordering some game that would be delivered to my home. Might. If it couldn’t be ordered online (like that’s going to ever happen). Hmm, maybe it’s just me but I prefer downloadable stuff.

What about you. Do you purchase games that come with physical boxes? Do you like going to supermarkets checking out for some new games to add to your collection?

Kotaku and Gamer Bytes reported that game called I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 was the best selling Xbox Live indie game for the year 2009.

Pretty darn cool.

Interesting that the game was priced $1. Would have been pretty sweet to know how much the game would have sold when priced $2. Or $5. Or $25.

Congraz to the developer - awesome job.