Games that were originally designed in 2.5D (for the most part) were done so due to constraints on hardware limiting them to pseudo 3D or latterly the 3D environments just weren’t real enough. Games in the survival horror genre thrived on this – think Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil.
So some of you may be thinking why would we develop a game in 2.5D using pre-rendered backgrounds when we could easily do everything in a full 3D environment?
Well, there are several reasons.
Suspense – a fixed camera means that an enemy may be lurking in just around the corner, but you can’t manipulate the camera to see them. It also allows the camera to remain focused on a particular area of the screen in build up to a particular event (anyone remember the first meeting of the zombie dogs in Resident Evil when they came crashing through the windows?).
Scene from Resident Evil (Playstation)
Since the camera is fixed, there is no need to waste computational power on rendering a fully 3D environment, so all the backgrounds can be prerendered allowing a higher quality (they are all ray-traced). This does mean that things like shadows and reflections are a bit more of a hassle, although most things are possible with workarounds.
As a result of not rendering the full 3D environment, more time can be spent rendering the 3D characters, allowing for higher polycounts and framerates.
So basically The Twelve Titans is an attempt to bring back some of the things that made the Surival Horror’s of the early 1990′s through to the early 2000′s so special.
April 27, 2009 at 7:21 pm |
Yes! this is a brilliant basis for the game. And damn right I remember the dogs. Oh the dogs. They still haunt me…:)