Well, first, yes- definitely play Exp:C, it's a lovely game. I had some complaints about it, but I honestly can't remember them. I guess the devs did a lot right with the game then, haha.

One thing I've noticed though, is that 3D envs like in Exp:C and XCOM EU do make you feel like you have less control over the battlefield, and that's what matters to me; the challenge shouldn't just come from having greater multipliers for enemy hits etc. I think navigating such an environment with your troops makes the whole ordeal more visceral, immersive basically.

But it's true that some games are better off without 3D, like Disciples III- the other Disciple games, which are a bit mixed IIRC, are so masterful in what they do with what they have in the game.

Overall, I don't think either type of env design or aesthetic is superior over the other, it depends on how it is used. That said, I get more excited about 3D strategy games than other ones, granted they're not poorly made.

I can't say for sure as I haven't played it, but it looks like AOW3 is going to be another example of 3D done right in strategy games. I've seen some gameplay trailers, and everything about the game seems divine- the gameplay is phenomenal, and the 3D environment is used to enhance the gameplay; for example, there are some instances where the enemy can climb structures to get out of your reach, or you have to scale walls to get over in enemy domain, but in the meantime your units' defenses are weakened. I think those are some thoughtful considerations as far as using a 3D env goes.

It's nothing groundbreaking, but I like it when the environment is used in a thoughtful way. I think a lot of people would stop complaining about 3D envs if devs paid more attention to using the env to enhance the gameplay.

If you don't want to be treated as a child, I'd recommend not behaving like one. You responded to a post to somebody else and got all bent out of shape. It's not my fault that I'm right.

I see, so there's no examples where somebody did a good job of it? This game is a pretty good reason why 2D isn't a good idea, the perspective is crap and quite honestly if you compare it to something like HOMM3, it's pretty clear which one is better. One thing that 3D does do for you is it helps with the problem of perspective.

You can, but it's a lot more work and I've never seen a case where it really worked. You wind up having to do all the artwork a second time as you can't just render the shadows, you have to draw the shadows specially for each time of day. And in cases like this game, you can easily wind up with crap perspective making things look ugly.

I'm aware of that, I've been gaming for nearly 30 years. But, we're talking about creating games now where the resolution of devices range roughly from about 800x600 up to well over 1920x1200. Variability of screen size and dot pitch is more of an issue now than it was back then.

And regardless, the reality is that now it's a serious issue that needs to be planned for, and as such games madenow need to go further in dealing with it.


Well, considering that they haven't gotten the visuals right on this game, I'm not sure how 2D is any better than 3D. At least if they were doing 3D models, they could much more easily handle things like occlusion. I mean even blender allows you to prerender things with appropriate masking.

There's no reason why you can't use 3D graphics and fixed camera angles. There's also no reason why you can't use 2D art and mix in 3D effects as appropriate. Since at least the early '90s 3D games had 2D textures on top of them. There's really no reason why they can't go back to using that and then throwing in full 3D effects for things like spells and shadows.

Anyways, I've got better things to do with my time than to argue with somebody that's clearly not looking at things objectively. The game itself is ugly. I don't see anything about it that really warrants the use of 2D only graphics. They could have just gone incredibly old school and done it like Civ I, which is mostly what they have, it doesn't even look as good as Civ II.
I think collecting vinyl as a collection is very different from collecting it because of the delusion that it's a better sound experience.

Personally, I think mixing 3D and 2D is what makes for the best experience. If you don't need the camera to rotate, you can easily take 3D models and render them to 2D, then draw over the top of them to get something that looks like what they did in older games. But, because you have the models, it allows you to do real time rendering of things like shadows and spell effects as if the objects were 3D.

I'm a bit surprised that people are arguing with me, because the hybrid approach has a ton of benefits for this style of game.

The main issue is that studios with the money tend to go purely 3D and the ones touting the 2D graphics are the ones that don't have the money to do that right. It always looks like ass when you do 2D sprites and don't get the perspective right. It's kind of like you were opting not to have them rendered in perspective and kind of like you were. It never looks right.

I don't care much for your tone sir. I'm afraid you'll have to continue "being right" with someone else.

Right, it was the tone, and not the fact that your line of reasoning was completely indefensible and built on a framework of fallacious reasoning.

Actually, you didn't respond to many of my arguments, but I don't mind overlooking that.

It really was the tone I'm afraid.

I guess it probably all depends on the time needed to create the needed 3D models.

I once saw a guy (talented amateur) making a 3D model of a ship. Took him a year (free time only) and come out splendid. The only thing is that is was basically too much time for too little impact. Making all these 3D models is still so much effort if you basicaly just want to have only one perspective...

edit: This is a good example of a less optimal 3D graphics. http://pandora.proxy-studios.com/ The graphics looks uninspired and typically 3D. Not very appealing. And still I guess a lot of work went into it.

It definitely depends upon the specifics. For small buildings and units, you're not going to want to go super detailed. And that doesn't really matter whether it's 2D or 3D.

If you're not going to bother with changing the perspective,moving the camera or lighting, then there's not much point in using 3D models for that. But, that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't use 3D for the effects. One of the nice things about 3D is that it allows you to get subtle parallax effects going on with taller buildings that you can't really do with 2D.

Like anything else, it really depends upon the attention to detail that you apply. One of the nice things about a good 3D modeling program is that it will give you the appropriate masks to use when having things being blocked by other things. Whereas when you're drawing it by hand, you have to do that manually, or just not have any holes in the items.

It will also make it a lot easier for you to make sure that you have a consistent perspective applied throughout the game, but when doing it for disparate units and items, it can be challenging at times to get right.

Ultimately, I have a hard time taking anybody seriously that insists upon comparing mediocre 3D with the best 2D, which is probably why I was so annoyed in that other subthread. At least you're looking at things from a bit more of an open minded perspective. Truth is that both can work, and both can be hideous, but in practice using a bit of 3D in a 2D game tends to result in a better experience.

EDIT: As far as that game goes, the colors need fixing before I'd worry about anything else. And that's something that doesn't work regardless of the numbers of ds used in the graphics.

I actually decided to not reply anymore because I thought that our discussion would be harmful to the thread, but as people are continuing to discuss this very same thing...
There is no "of this type". The game has 2D graphics, how a 3D rendition would look like is perfectly open.

Most computers, no matter whether they are desktops or mobile devices, have 3D acceleration these days because a notable portion of the consumers plays games and even 2D games/applications (heck, even the operating systems themselves) usually use hardware acceleration by now (even Hotline Miami wouldn't run properly on Intel chipsets because of its use of surfaces for decals - they actually had to patch in the option to turn those off).

When I say "perfect" I actually mean perfect. ANY inclusion of perspective in a game with mechanics that are purely two-dimensional makes the orientation less-than-perfect. Perspective means distortion. Distances change, shapes change etc.. And ultimately all the possibilities that developers have come up with for 3D representations of 2D games over the years are workarounds. Extreme use of colors, abstract proportions, 2D icons hovering above the 3D view, 2D minimaps complementing the 3D view. 3D isn't just better, it comes at a price - sometimes it's totally worth it (for instance in RTS games that highly depend on the atmosphere and authenticity), sometimes it just isn't (turn based games where everything is ultimately presented through icons and symbols either way, no matter whether it's 2D, 3D, 5D or whatever).

According to that logic nobody should ride bikes anymore because bicycles are technologically inferior to cars. People who ride bicycles don't do so for the sake of using inferior technology, they do so because they perceive benefits in riding a bike that are absent in driving a car. This is an infantile analogy but it's perfectly adequate. And it makes you that ignorant fat guy who always chooses to go by car and calls everyone without a car a schmuck, in complete denial of any legitimate arguments for riding a bike. :P

SuperTux is an odd example because it uses a simple 2D engine with parallax scrolling, just like most classic Mario games. And in terms of artistic value SuperTux is utter ass.

Aliasing mainly becomes an issue in case of high contrast, a typical example being characters or vehicles in front of the environment (and you usually want high contrast there in case of strategy games). And I've worked enough with both 2D and 3D to know that simple alpha transparency at the borders of 2D sprites practically eliminates the issue while you will need anti-aliasing in case of 3D games (which is still a very expensive tool - my brother bought an office PC just two years ago and can only dream about using AA in most games). By the way, I'm not saying that you don't ever need anti-aliasing in case of 2D, for instance rotating 2D sprites will often result in some really ugly stuff but the game and style we're talking about here generally does not rotate the sprites.

There's a gigantic difference here. The units in a 2D game like this are clearly represented through icons (in every sense of the word - well, except the religious one). It's an abstract and artistic representation of some form of military presence on a battlefield which itself is presented in an abstract manner and follows extremely abstract rules (believe it or not, there are no hexagons in reality and there's not a limit of ten guys standing in one square mile or something). Using static images is perfectly legitimate here (and allows for highly artistic means to perfectly distinguish units, like for instance a unique stance - a stance is not quite enough in case of 3D where the silhouette is altered all the time) and simply moving those around the screen is perfectly legitimate as well. However, 3D models introduce a certain level of authenticity, it lowers the level of abstraction by far and that also introduces new responsibilities. Moving around static 3D models will make the player feel like he's commanding lifeless statues. It's like a crappy movie adaptation of a good horror/fantasy/sci-fi novel that gets ruined by awful props.

I agree, but your point was that there is no reason at all to use 3D anymore.

You can also make "cool effects" with 2D and those would be pretty much the weakest argument for choosing to go with 3D.

Not true. Already back when SVGA was introduced as an option in some games (like say Red Alert) the developers' solution was simply displaying a higher portion of the game area, you can pretty much always do that. The main problem is the GUI but guess what, scaling the interface is also a serious issue in 3D games and is successfully being solved in different ways these days (like vector graphics).

To each his own. That some people are getting excited over the game - and its style in particular - means that it is a good thing to some people and that's justification enough for the developers to make the game this way. And heck, I showed the Kickstarter page to a good and rather young friend of mine who never even played those hex-based war games and his first comment was "amazing art style". It may not be your cup of tea, and I respect that, but denying the validity of any arguments for choosing this style is simply ignorant.

And let me add that most fans of turn based or "grand" strategy games I know never considered the introduction of 3D in games like Civilization or Europa Universalis a good thing and wish those series' had remained 2D.

No, our discussion isn't harmful, the fact that there's so many fucking hipsters in here is the problem.

The game itself looks bad, it's not because they chose to go 2D only, it's because they couldn't be bothered to decide whether or not they were using perspective. The result is a game that looks like it's done by amateurs and targeted at hipsters that are looking to be retro for no particular reason.

Compare the graphics with something good like Civ II, HOMM2 or even Civ I and you'll see what I mean.

2D graphics can be gorgeous, but you kind of have to decide whether it's going to be 2D, 3D or pseudeo 3D using perspective tricks in order for it to work. And this game doesn't really do that, they fail miserably at the graphics because they clearly weren't aiming for this, they failed to hit their target and wound up with this.

I almost didn't read this thread, because I read the title as "new crappy looking strategy game" (it was obvious from the title that the poster is a bad graphics worshiper). While my reading of the title was accurate in this respect, I'm still happy that I found out about it because I like to encourage more hardcore mobile games, so I might end up pledging something if I find that the game has other redeeming qualities.

As for the 2D vs. 3D argument, the line these days (and frankly for many years) has been blurred. Using 3D rendered objects in 2D games has been done often, using 3D techniques to render 2D is very common these days, and 2D and 3D are often mixed. Take for example Broken Age, and pure 2D game aesthetically, but it uses 3D techniques for drawing the scenes and even some 3D objects. Pillars of Eternity is another example of a game which uses a static viewpoint, but is rendered using 3D techniques and created (far as I remember) using retouched 3D rendering.