I have surfed high and low in an attempt to find the location to the mythical 2-d tutorial oft mentioned in these forums. Does it exist?
If it does not:
Thanks in advance.
being a 2d artist myself I would love to see this.
I would be happy if i could get svg files into unity or if there is someway to easily get vector artwork into a 3d format (and look exactly how its suppsoed to)
That way you could do some crazy scripted procedural animation/effects that you jsut cant do anywhere else easily
You could actually make a 2D quite easily in Unity, you just use layered billboards and constrain your movement and animation code to x and y.
To do animation, you could use the quicktime importer, or script it using texture offsets (like most 2D games do)
-Jeremy
… also setting the camera to use isometric projection should be useful, as one could then use the z-axis to control the layering of the billboards.
2d bitmaps no problem… 2d vector graphics in 3d space = problem
What exactly are you looking to do?
-Jeremy
I would be happy as a clam if the game looked like Viewtiful Joe Viewtiful Joe - Wikipedia, but Earthworm Jim Earthworm Jim - Wikipedia would work just as well. Icing on the cake for me are the parallax scrolling in VJ, as well as the way the camera moves in 3d space (the game isn’t so much a side-scroller from only one angle, but more like a side-scroller that follows a complex 3d path).
We have started to develop on Torque 2D, but are not too enthused about learning torque script.
I have a comic book artist, a maya artist, and a novice programmer to make this happen, but it’s really a matter of choosing the right engine since we are very motivated.
As for the game controls we are looking for jump/double jump, climb, attack, and pickup/put down of weapons, with each action having a different look.
From what I understand I could use an animated character locked to a certain axis, and then switch the character with a different model each time a certain weapon is picked up?
Then we use 2-D textured planes as the background? Although I suppose if we use Unity we might as well use 3-D backgrounds…
I have searched the manual for specifics on billboards, can somebody send me a link for further reading? Specifically, can I make the face of a billboard always point to the camera?
Also, quicktime cut scenes are still not implemented correct?
Is it ultimately foolish to try and create a 2-D game in Unity in the style of the NES (i.e should I stick with Torque and use Unity when our need for 3-D arises)?
Are there going to be any strange issues? Frame rate problems, etc?
Jeremy: I know how to do texture offsets in Torque, can you point me in this direction for Unity? We could use our sprites for both in this case, and not have to make 3-D models of our art.
Thank you to all replies!
yeah i was wondering how …someone on the board made a paper mario looking thing, and i wanted to present a project for my digital media class or propose one for a 2d game that looks like paper mario with the whole 2d/3d thing goin on
what kind of script would you have to write in order to constrain a texture or something to the xy?
and also, how would you go about animating that image so that it looks like a cartoon in motion or w/e
Not only is this possible. I’d say that Unity is very well suited to this kind of thing.
I of all people am probably not neutral, but I think that TorqueScript represents the worst of all worlds. A slow and unusual language.
Seeing that a 14 year old with no programming experience made a really cool game in Unity (MegaPixel, halfway down on this page: http://unity3d.com/gallery/main/index.html), I think a dedicated team should have no trouble.
On the same page you’ll see other cool projects, many of which are done without your typical “hardcore” programmers.
That would work fine. Now, if you have your character in pre-drawn (or pre-rendered) 2D, you would simply have him on a flat plane which you move around. You could do collision detection in different ways. It all depends on what kind of levels you are moving around in.
Either will work fine.
This script will work perfectly:
Correct. However there’s nothing technically impossible in this, it’ll just take some work by a good programmer. With a bit of luck, someone will create it and donate it to the community.
The Graveck.com guys did a 2D game in two weeks:
I think there’s nothing holding you back, and you can use a lot of the visual dazzle of Unity whether it’s in 2 or 3D.
At some point in production, everyone has a case of framerate problems. Fortunately there’s good information available about how to fix them. And with your kind of game you’ll probably have very few problems.
You’re in luck. Here’s a script that does just that:
Often the UnifyCommunity Wiki has the solution (http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/). It’s a community run spot for sharing scripts, shaders and tips. Browse it for useful scripts and inspiration.
Our pleasure. Unity is very dive-in-able, so check it out and play around iwth it. Dive into the thousands of pages of documentation, and get inspired. I know, coming from Torque it may be a strange mindset to adjust to.
d.
See my reply above. The links in it are pretty much the answers you need.
Enjoy.
d.
Another thing with using an advanced 3D engine/development evironment for a 2D game is as your experience with Unity increases, you can seriously ramp up the coolness of your game(s) by merging 3D effects into a 2D world.
If you go for a 2D engine, you will always be limited to 2D. Food for thought. 
-Jeremy
Viewtiful Joe is a different case because it’s actually 2.5D - 3D objects with gameplay on a 2D, sidescrolling plane. I’m in the process of starting a small business making miniature games one could use as a base for Unity games, and one of these games is a 2.5D platformer. When I get back home (I’m out of town at the moment) I can send you a demo of what I have right now… you would be able to base your game off that.
i may have done something wrong but when i dragged and dropped the texture and script, it comes up with 6 flames on the plane i put it on…
lol what did i do?
lol nm i got it
Sounds good StarManta, but you better hurry… if Unity is as easy as they say it is I might just figure it out on my own
Ive also resorted to planes and using PNG’s on them for transparency… now my concern is collision… what would the best way to get it to collide with weird shaped(organic) objects… and the moment its just doing treating it like a plane(of course)
I have to admit that I am completely stuck trying to do 2D in Unity.
What do I have to do to get some people to contribute time for a tutorial?
I’ll keep track of everything, and do all the art, if I can get some help with the code. Purty Please?
I would
Make 3 planes, all with mesh colliders
Make a square ushape, with the textures pointed in to the middle.
Make the ushap narrower by moving the two vertical planes inward,
Work in the middle of the 3 planes.
Learn via the docs how to translate GO’s by input, and have your character and camera move together…
AC
hrmmm i dont think i understand you, my issue is something like this…
Say theres a coconut tree, and you really like coconuts, so you decide your going to climb up the tree… to get the coconut, but you cant even get close to it because theres a box-like forcefield preventing you from even getting close to it.
I guess you could just create a simple mesh in some 3d program and uv map it and just draw within that bounds, but maybe someone has a better suggestion
(excuse the bad graphics)
You can use multiple primitives. A simple tree would have a cube or capsule for the trunk plus maybe a sphere for the leaf part. If you have something super-complex, then use a mesh collider in that shape (keeping in mind that mesh colliders can’t collide with other mesh colliders).
–Eric