2D!

2d. Divine Divinity looks beutiful.

3D: fable looks awsome as well

Has to be 3D for me, but it has to be done correctly. It's easier to make a 2D game look great with the right artist (like in the larian games) but when it comes to immersion into a game world I prefer 3D, but only recent games, because only now are the textures and lighting getting to a realistic stage.

3D is harder to get right but they've really come along in the last couple of years - morrowind was good (but too slow) but when I play something like thief deadly shadows with its great lighting and physics (apart from the hilarious rag doll people) I get pulled into the game far more than a 2d engine could ever hope for. Just picking up stuff and throwing it around is fun.

3D for the sake of 3D alone won't be enough to justify the use. fortunately larian realises that there are more to 3D than just the looks. marian has mentioned that 3D helps in reducing memory-intensive 2D sprites & animations to textures & re-usable 3D animation scripts therefore amount of memory needed to build the game. otherwise would be more than 2 cd's.

however i feel that 3D can & should be expanded into gameplay. plowking, great that u mention about lighting as lighting can make gameplay more interesting. imagine playing rogue character that has increased invisibility because he/she walks in the dark instead of well-lighted area. with that, lighting makes sense in the game & not just eye candy that eats up processor cycles. physics will be great only if it makes sense in the game. otherwise, the programmers can work their S-es off getting the physics to work & people pass the feature off as a novelty. that will be a big waste of effort.

I'll go for 2D for the moment since all the good games I've played was 2D (Fallout, Arcanum, DD, Ps: T). The first RPG:s I played was 2D so I'm used to 2D. I'm still young though, and from now on it feels like about everything will be 3D so I'll have plenty of time to readjust. But on the other hand, with 2D you don't have to be a pro in order to make it work. It doesn't have to look too good to serve your purpus (look at Arcanum, it wasn't exactly eyecandy, but it works).

Übereil

Whoa! Y'all misinterpreted my question! I did not ask whether y'all prefer 2D or 3D Engines!

I asked everybody what was their fav. 3D Engine AND 2D Engines are! I was looking for certain specific 2D Engines you like. And, I wanted to know what 3D Engines you like.


I did not ask whether y'all prefer 2D or 3D Engines!

But still, y'all have raise an interesting topic here on what you prefer: 2D vs. 3D.

I like a lot of things about 3D Engine. With 3D engine, I like that I can rotate, pitch, spin, pan, and move the camera around any way I like -- like you could in NWN (especially once you installed HOTU, it unlocked the camera fully) or say Black White.

It must be nice to re-use textures and stuff in 3D engines on the fly, also -- so, you don't need 40 CD's to put an entire game on.

If Divine 2 is to go into 3D, it can't lose the elements that make it great in 2D. In other words, the gameplay that made DD work can't be thrown away b/c the game jumps to 3D. They can't botch the story, make the game linear, or any other basic stuff that makes their series rule that has little to do w/ 3D engines. Just b/c you're in 3D don't mean that the game should become a graphics show and forget the depth of gameplay that made the 2D series work.

An interesting example of a point-and-click Company going from 2D to 3D would be BG series (2D) to NWN (3D). I won't speak on the NWN MP, b/c that was good. We'll tackle the SP. NWN:OC SP component was missing a lot that made BG great. Mainly, these were things that made BG great: it missed a lot things. It did NOT have a lot of non-linearity, multiple ways to solve many quests, decent AI & a story that was executed well. These things don't really have much to do w/ 3D. The gameplay was really lacking. But, one could see Aurora Engine had a lot of potential, as it was a solid game itself. Just, NWN:OC was not a good SP game. The basic gameplay mechanics were there, but the depth lacked -- you could only have one party member w/ you at all times.

SOU showed us hope; that the Aurora Engine can be put to good use. AI was better, story was solid, there were some non-linear elements, some quests w/ multiple solutions. You did have sometimes people tag along w/ the 2-person party b/c they were important to a quest. It would've been nice to have allowed 3 to be in a party.

Then the awesome HOTU Expansion, NWN finally showed us what Aurora could do. HOTU was non-linear (to an extent, like most RPG's), had multiple endings, AI was better, story was very good -- everything worked. Best of all, the # of allowed in a party was upped to 3 -- not only this, but often you'll have other NPC's or groups join your party for a short time even, if you have your 3 in a party (b/c they are important to a quest), though.

Now, back to the other question: what do you like as your favorite 2D Engine(s)? And what about for 3D Engine(s)?

My favouruite 3D engine is the one used in Zanzarah, which is based on Renderware, but unfortunately I don't know much more about it.

Far Cry seems to have a very good engine as well.

2D ... well, I couldn't say; maybe Sacred and / ? But, well, in Sacred and :BD it's actually a mixture between 2D and 3D ...

In 5 years desktops will be poxerfull enough to run the next engine of Unreal 2 (the unreal 3 engine I guess).

Doom³ engine looks nice.
the serious 2 enigine of serious sam 2 looks also sweet

BTW I like a 3D game that looks 2D but isn't.

Don't understand that? Neither do I

no not like that.

Now If I understand right, isn't 3d when it comes out of the screen, you have those silly glasses on? Isn't all movies and games 2d?

nope there is real 3d in theire just take your blow torch and remove the glass that's between you and the 3d environment.

But lews you are very correct it's all 2d but when we talk about 3d we mean simulated 3D. Same way as watching television it's also 2d by that logic. And we all know that we only experience 4 dimensions while everybody knows there are eleven

i like the 454 2D engine that goes from zero to sixty in a millesec.....and doesn't freeze my mousewheels.....somewhat like just awesome!

needs some work but it goes good for now!
after a few-more-trips to the "shop" for some fine tuning...change some plugs...and all should be well again in land!

As far as I am concerned, I would like the Dungeon-Siege-Engine, which makes it not so dizzy as CS or QUAKE

The engine we are currently using for all our projects is the Gamebryo engine with a lot of stuff put on top of it.

Gamebryo ??

www.gamebryo.com