Well, it is a niche product; charge a nice price for it (as for ex. Jeff Vogel and Vic Davis does). We will buy it anyway.

You have real fans on this, you know. Well help spread the word.

Oh, and: "I can haz more gaem to play nao?" :)
 

This happens to me a lot, the amount of resources needed in any 3D game are far more than 2D resources BUT 3D does help bring the user in... or so they say :P

Plus it's what the kids like.

I still work with 2D because I'm a chicken to try 3D but I feel your pain when it comes to ridiculous amounts of time spent on small things.
 

A great deal of speed comes from your tools. And your knowledge as a 3D level designer... but even the best 3D level designer will have some issues making a good level fast by entering vertex coordinates in Notepad :-P.

Having failed at the past multiple times (i stopped announcing things since 2003 i think :-P) while trying to make that FPS i want to make (which basically is about 40 FPS ideas -and constantly increasing-, however i mystically refer to them collectively as "the FPS"), usually because of my art and/or tool suckage i took upon myself to do pretty much everything. Well, except sound because i can't figure out how to learn making proper sound and music.

Currently* i'm making Runtime World, a generic brush-based 3D world editor. Having used other editors, i'm trying to make it as easy to use (for me) as possible. It should beat all other editors easilly and provide lots of tools for the designer.

Realistically making a good 3D world editor is very hard. Yesterday i added the ability to move brushes around and today the ability to switch views in viewports. I still need to work on about 26 tasks for the first public alpha release (0.1), at which point people should be able to drag and create simple brush-based designs.

Well, beyond that i also work on a 3D engine that will use the above tool (i decided to separate the tool from the engine because every week i come up with another design for the engine and also i'm planning to use the editor for a Flash-based 3D engine i might make... and supporting other engines via plugins wouldn't be a bad thing to gain some extra eyeballs for the editor to fix bugs and make it more awesome).

And of course i'm also trying to learn 3D and proper level design.

I think i've already lost any hope of finishing a full game. Well i'm doing some Flash games at least...
 

If you've every used the Oblivion Construction Set, all the buildings are premade, as well as nearly everything else.
 

I don't know anything about anything, but would it be possible (for some future game, I'm sure it's too late for this one) to set up some procedural way of going the nitty-gritty map design.

Perhaps you could pair it with some evolutionary algorithm so the procedural system gives you 5 options for wall/floor/lighting/etc and you pick the 2 you like best and then it gives you another 5 based on variations of those two and so on.
 

This is why my small team of 2 devs + 1 artist game up on 3D. I person creating 3D assets just takes way too long to be viable.

2D is still the way to go for solo or small teams.
 

You and me both.

Working in 3D is definitely a painstaking process, better suited to larger teams -- at least when you're talking business model. For us, it's more about the experience and the experiment.

But yeah, I wish it would go a lot faster too.
 

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As much as some might want it to be, 2D is not the panacea! It depends far more on the skills of the team members. (I'll get back to that in a minute.)

Quote: "I get really jealous of those tile-based games where an entire map can be put together in hours."

Yes, but how long did it take to create the tiles in the first place? And how were the tiles created? E.g. if the game were Diablo then 95% of the content was fully modeled in 3D before being rendered to 2D and cleaned up for use in the game.

And the same thing can be done in 3D anyway -- prefab 3D "tiles" can be created and then put together to build the level (a la Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, etc.)

So, it's not really a matter of 2D vs 3D, it's a matter of how detailed and unique you want your game content to be. I mean, you could easily build an entire game out of only 5 tiles, 2D or 3D. But how fun would the game be?

I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious here, but: The more unique and detailed the architecture or locations, the more time and effort must be spent. I.e. you can't just copy prefabs around to build a level, you have to go in and create each bit individually, even in 2D. And it can certainly be just as tedious to hand paint good 2D content as it can be to model good 3D content. (Note that I said "good".) Extra time and effort must be spent.

Quote: "2D is still the way to go for solo or small teams."

Completely disagree. It's not about 2D or 3D! It's about the capabilities of the team. For example, if you've got the mad skills that Eskil Steenburg has, then you can single-handedly create something like this. (And all the necessary tools too!)

It would be more accurate to say, "Limit the scope of the game, and therefore the quantity (and quality) of the required content, to match the capabilities of your dev team."

So yes, if your team lacks 3D skills, then you should not attempt to make a 3D game. Seems pretty straight up to me. =)

Edit: link fixed.
 

I remember a quote from Richard Garriott when Ultima IX came out. Of the move from 2D isometric to 3D he said something along the lines of "I'm ecstatic I'll never have to implement roof-popping code again." Keeping in mind, of course, that they rewrote the engine from the ground up with every new game. So, hey, no roof-popping code! ;)
 

xenovore -- I'm not saying it's *impossible* for a solo or small team to work in 3D, just that it is generally not time-efficient to do so.

I don't know the scope of the game that Eskil Steenburg is developing, but I did notice that the his first post was about 2 years ago, and one of his posts admits that he suffers from insomnia, with his days being "wake up, work on the game, go to sleep".

I'm not taking anything away from his work -- it is truly remarkable. But he does not represent the average developer. Who among us are of his caliber?
 

I see 3d as small team do-able, just keep the camera overhead and distant. First person is very art intensive, not so much so when the ceilings don't matter.
 

@ Chris:

My primary disagreement with your posts is the broad generalization you use, like "2D is still the way to go for solo or small teams." No, it's only the "way to go" if you're making a 2D game! It's only the "way to go" if your dev team lacks the skills to make a 3D game! And if a team wants to make a 3D game because the game concept simply won't work in 2D, well then it will never be more "time efficient" to make the game in 2D!

Quote: "Who among us are of his caliber?"

Yes, Eskil is exceptional, but neither do the rest of us need to build our engine, tools and content completely from scratch! We can take advantage of the resources -- the engines, editors and content -- already available in spades.

At any rate, I think it's really more about personal preferences and skills than anything. I don't personally find 3D to be much more difficult or time consuming than 2D; I actually prefer to work in 3D. Others do not, apparently. But, don't try to dissuade people from making 3D games just because they are working alone or on a small team; maybe they actually do have the skills and determination to succeed at it.
 

Another example of "prefab 3D" that springs to mind is Dungeon Siege. The editor for that offered quite a large range of prefabbed "terrain tiles" that you could stitch together however you wanted, with enough variety to let you keep the world looking pretty good and not too copy+pasted (though there was a bit of that).

I think it worked fairly well, although it was a bit of a pain if you made a mistake and needed to resize a room or something.
 

I've said it, but I'll say it again: I'll buy it when it's ready :). No questions asked.