What are the pros/cons of using a 3d engine for 2d games?

Posted by mrohlf on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by mrohlf
Published on 2011-08-10T14:56:00Z Indexed on 2014/06/06 3:42 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 235

Filed under:

2d

|

3d

|

engine

What pros or cons should a beginner be aware of when deciding between a 2d game engine (like Slick2D/Flixel/FlashPunk) and a 3d engine (like Unity) for 2d game development?

I am just getting started in indie game development, though I have dabbled a bit with Game Maker, Flash, and XNA in the past. I've heard a lot of positive things about Unity, and its cross-platform nature makes it appealing, but as I understand, it's a 3d engine at its core.

For a strictly 2d game, are there any compelling reasons to work with a 3d engine like Unity? Or would it just add unneeded complexity to my initial learning experience?

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about 2d

Are high powered 3D game engines better at 2D games than engines made for 2D

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm a software engineer that's new to game programming so forgive me if this is a dumb question as I don't know that much about game engines. If I was building a 2D game am I better off going with an engine like Torque that looks like it's built for 2D, or would higher powered engines like Unreal… >>> More
2D Array of 2D Arrays (C# / XNA) [on hold]

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I want to create a 2D array that contains many other 2D arrays. The problem is I'm not quite sure what I'm doing but this is the initialization code I have: int[,][,] chunk = new int[64, 64][32, 32]; For some reason Visual Studio doesn't like this and says that it's and 'invalid rank specifier'… >>> More
Need to know the origin and coordinates for 2d texture and 2d/3d vertices in webgl

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
Long story short, I know my coordinates are off and I believe my indices might be off. I'm trying to render a simple 2d rectangle with a texture in webgl here's the code I have for the vbo/ibo: rectVertices.vertices = new Float32Array( [ -0.5, -0.5, // Vertice 1, bottom / left 0.0, … >>> More
USB packets - receive wrong data

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
i have a little python script which shows me the packets of an enocean device and does some events depending on the packet type. unfortunately it doesn't work because i'm getting wrong packets. Parts of the python script (used pySerial): Blockquote ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB1',57600… >>> More
Php 2d array as C# 2d array/struct

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm using MailChimp's API to subscribe email to a list. Function listsubscribe() is used for email subscription: public static listSubscribe(string apikey, string id, string email_address, array merge_vars, string email_type, boolean double_optin, boolean update_existing, boolean replace_interests… >>> More

Related posts about 3d

How to convert videos to 3D format so that I can watch them with 3D glasses

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Are there any softwares to convert 2D videos to 3D (preferably XviD avi) so that I can watch them with 3D glasses? No matter if it's freeware or shareware. >>> More
In Email, Image (img) Source (src) Tags are rewritten as relative links. How to fix?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm working on sending out an html based email, and every time it sends the image src tags and some of the anchor href tags are modified to be relative url's. Update 2: This is happening between when the body of the email is generated and sent and when it arrives in my inbox. Update: I am using… >>> More
WPF 3D - Need help writing conversion methods between 2D and 3D (Point3DToPoint and PointAndZToPoint

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm new to WPF 3D, so I may just be missing something obvious, but how do I convert from 3D to 2D and (for a given z location) from 2D to 3D? Specifically, I need two conversion methods: Point3DToPoint - If I have an (x, y, z) coordinate in the 3D world, how do I determine the (x, y) coordinate… >>> More
3D point on 3D mesh surface

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All, How can I get a 3D point on 3D mesh surface made up triangulars ? The 3D point may be anywhere on the 3D surface. Thanks. M.Ken >>> More
Matlab 3d volume visualization and 3d overlay

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, so the question ist pretty much the title. I have a 3d volume loaded as raw data [256, 256, 256] = size(A). It contains only values of zero's and ones, where the 1's represent the structure and 0's the "air". I want to visualize the structure in matlab and then run an algorithm on it and put… >>> More