2D to 3D gamedev

[freebird17]

Hello all!

I've recently gotten into game development on my own, and I've been using Twine to make a TiTS-style game. While I really do like the way it's turned out, there's no doubt that a 3D game is more pleasing to look at and experience. So my question is, how hard is it to switch? And most importantly, is it feasible for someone to make a 3D game (using Unity, for example), all on their own?

 

[CardinalRed]

If you want to make a real 3d game, i don't think you can do by yourself without experience.

If you want a 3d game like those around here (2d images of 3d renderings), then just get a program and start rendering. There's DAZ studio and honey select 1/2 if you want to start, or blender if you are up to the challenge.

Good luck.

Regardless of the engine, I think you'll want to choose RenPy over unity, but in the end it's up to you.

 

[freebird17]

If you want to make a real 3d game, i don't think you can do by yourself without experience.

If you want a 3d game like those around here (2d images of 3d renderings), then just get a program and start rendering. There's DAZ studio and honey select 1/2 if you want to start, or blender if you are up to the challenge.

Good luck.

Regardless of the engine, I think you'll want to choose RenPy over unity, but in the end it's up to you.

Thanks! I am currently doing my own 3D rendering for text-based game images. I experimented with Unity a little bit, but I really just got stuck on the world building aspect. I'll look into RenPy tho!

 

[Jofur]

If by 3D you mean pre-rendered DAZ type stuff. Then it's very doable by a single person. Especially using something like Renpy. A lot, if not the majority of games on here are solo projects I think. It's A LOT of work, but doable.

As far as something like Unity goes, real time 3D is not much harder than doing a 2D game from an design and programming perspective I my experience. In some cases it's even easier since you can reuse assets a lot more and you are given more design freedom. It mostly comes down to if you are better at 3D art over 2D art. But learning a full game engine and programming is probably gonna take a lot more work than learning to use something like Twine or Renpy, especially if you just want to make simple visual novels/"sandbox" type games and stuff.
I wouldn't necessary recommend learning Unity and C# just to make porn games, but I would recommend making porn games in Unity if you already know it. If that makes any sense.

 

[FromOtherSpace]

Hi,

As far as something like Unity goes, real time 3D is not much harder than doing a 2D game from an design and programming perspective I my experience.

Never tried 3d, only watched some tutorials on this topic while looking for infos about godot game engine. For what I seen, 3d don't seem any different on coding part. Except your player can moove in more directions (which make level design "harder" depending on how you allow the player to move) and that you use others nodes/objects, all work the same.

I experimented with Unity a little bit, but I really just got stuck on the world building aspect.

Doesn't unity got something that work like a 3d tileset? I pretty sure that I saw a video about it. In godot it's called Gridmap. You can choose a bunch of meshes (3d objects), put them in a ressource then you just "paint" your world with it.

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[Jofur]

Never tried 3d, only watched some tutorials on this topic while looking for infos about godot game engine. For what I seen, 3d don't seem any different on coding part. Except your player can moove in more directions (which make level design "harder" depending on how you allow the player to move) and that you use others nodes/objects, all work the same.

There's a tiny bit more vector/rotation math stuff. But even as someone who's terrible at math I've have no problems figuring it out. I suppose the biggest issue I've had with 3D is implementing animations. Specifically stuff like blending and making transitions look good. Which you don't have to think about as much if you are hand drawing everything. That said being able to reuse animations without redrawing anything more than makes up for it. Additionally, pathfinding can be a bit trickier due to the added extra dimension. At least if you want something outside Unity's built in navigation system.

Doesn't unity got something that work like a 3d tileset? I pretty sure that I saw a video about it. In godot it's called Gridmap. You can choose a bunch of meshes (3d objects), put them in a ressource then you just "paint" your world with it.

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There is a built in tilemap editor that can be used with both 2D sprites and 3D models, but I think 3D support is spotty at best. It predominantly made with 2D in mind. But I've never used it myself so I could be wrong. If you spend the money there are a lot of third party ones out there as well that are probably better if you want 3D.
Honestly that's one of my main issues with Unity. They have a huge amount of features, but often they feel unfinished or not sufficiently developed and you end up being forced to use a third party tool instead. Great for prototyping, but when it comes to actually making the damn game it can be a bit frustrating.

 

[Tompte]

Will you be able to make a fully interactive 3D game like Custom Maid 3D in Unity on your first try? Probably not. But you got to start somewhere.

A lack of math skills hasn't stopped thousands of people from making games in Unity.
Sure it helps, but Unity and similar engines moves all that to a higher abstraction level so if you understand words like translate, rotate and scale you don't necessarily need to understand the underlying math.

That said, the math (linear algebra) is well worth learning and is useful in more ways than I can count. It's actually pretty simple. For instance, if you want to multiply a 3D vector with a 4x4 matrix you just multiply the number in each cell in a certain order and it spits out another vector. That's it. It's just multiplication. That's all you need to know in order to do rotation in 3D space.
You want to do projection? Same thing. Scaling? Same thing. It's just with different matrices. What are bones in an animation rig? Oh they're matrices, multiplied together.

Seriously, it's the best piece of math I ever learned.

 

[shark_inna_hat]

Maths used in realtime 3d is simple, especially the part where a you move (translate) a point/vector by adding a homogenous component to it and applying a shear in a 4D space Also quaternions.

I can't agree that is the best piece of math I learned, but it helps in writing shaders and shaders are the best piece of programming I've learned.

You don't need that knowledge to make a game, but it might come in handy to make the game you want to make (and not just another asset flip).

One should know why you can render 100 objects with a million polygons each but you can't render a million objects with 100 polygons each, but you can render it if it's copies of one object and other gotchas like that.