Art Direction: 2D or not 2D, that is the question !

[Screwball]

Hi all,

Well my engine for my upcoming game is now stable and I have begun to add gameplay elements into the basic rendering and interaction parts I have already done, but one of my biggest concerns is the Art required to get this completed. I am getting semi-worried about wether or not I am heading in a good direction as far as the "theme" is concerned.

A little background first. My game is basicly a theme/sim game, mainly due to the fact that I love the theme and if done well could sell pretty decently. My initial thoughts were that it would be good to make a game simmilarly (sp ?) style to Theme Hospital / Dungeon Keeper, using that cartoony style, but I am not begining to second guess this a little.

So basicly what I am after is any thoughts / or 1st hand experiences in regards to promoting "cartoony" based products compared to "3D" (or pre-rendered) based products ? Do people get turned off by 2D style games ? Any tips on what I should be pushing if I go a 2D style game ?

BTW here is a concept piece I did up in a few hours as an example of the style of the Art direction.

[gpetersz]

I like your concept!

It is always a hard to decide if the one should be 2D or 3D.

3D advantages:

1.
3D gives more great effects to add quickly and might allow the game to
be more clearly visible to the player (rotating, zoom in / out).

2.
3D gives good result if you don't allow zooming (if you view Age of Mithology, or Spellforce from the birds view they look great, but if you zoom... brrrr).

3.
Longer and more animation sequences can be generated with less effort when modelling instead of pixeling.

4.
Nice lighting and other 3D effects can be used real-time.

Disadvantages of 3D:

1.
If you use 3D then the minimal config should be higher.

2.
In MY opinion 2D still generates nicer graphic, I still love the 2D games better (it depends on game genre, but a theme game could be 2D).
To be more exact, I LOVE the graphics of Zoo Tycoon (previously rendered, but 2D in display) than the new Zoo Tycoon 2 (full 3D, and I think it is ugly).

3.
3D is more incompatible then any 2D. All VGA can produce 800x600 (even 1024x768) nowadays, while there might be compatibility issues with 3D accelerators. (okay it is a lessening problem but still exists)

4.
Your game outdates faster. If it is 2D then it can't be outdated (it is outdated for 10 years now...)! It is evergreen. :D

So my vote is (if you are here for personal opinions) then do it in 2D.

[mahlzeit]

Looks fine to me. But it depends on what the sim is about: if it's supposed to be humoristic, the cartoon style matches well.

[Anthony Flack]

Yikes! That looks frighteningly similar to a game design I have and still plan to do one day. I was also rather shocked when the Sims came out; because that looked quite a lot like it too.

Well, I guess cartoony suburban isometric isn't exactly a unique idea. Of course the games probably play entirely different.

Anyway, I think the 2d look is just fine. I also agree that one of the nice things about 2d games is they simply don't date any more. They yam what they yam.

[Sparks]

In the right hands, 3D can look as detailed and rich as 2D.
But the main factors are ressources, 3D can take longer than 2D,
depending on the workflow.
But then there are advantages, changes to the geometry can be done quicker
to lowpoly models, sometimes, and texturing is generally quicker for prerendered stuff since its easy to use procedurals and stuff.
There is no right or wrong in this case, but I know that laying out UVs is a pain ;)
Animations can be blend in 3D easier than 2D, if thats even an issue.
2D takes more HD space than 3D.For Your case, a 128x128 textur would be sufficient for each of the characters, which probably takes less space than the frames in all 16 (32 ?) directions.
Sorting the (overlapping) objects might be more difficult in 2d than 3d.