Any Tips on 2D Games Development?

Hello, guys, my name is Saeed, I started to use Unity around a week ago just to test things out and to get an understanding of the program just before I started to take it seriously. I plan on making a 2D just because it’s much simpler compared to making a 3D game. At first, I was planning on making a 2D isometric game just like the environment in Bastion but I want to start off smooth and easy. I plan on making a fighting game and to make it simple I decided to make sure it’ll be pixel art just to make my life easier.

The first task I decided to give myself was to making one character. I looked on YouTube and Google and I found a free good and free program called Piskel which I plan to use when I make my character. But I am very confused on how a sprite sheets works.

Do you guys have any tips for me when making this game? If you do feel free to post in this thread.

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First tip: A good 2d game is not any easier than a 3d game.

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That isn’t really a tip. I mean making a 3D game is just a lot of effort to the characters to the environment. I have looked at many tutorials on making a 3D and from what I have seen it is much harder. When making anything in 3D there are so many faces of the objects that you have to look at the back, the front, the top, the bottom but when handling something 2D you just have to focus on one face.

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… in Unity. Might be easier to make a good 2D game in GMS. Not sure. I’d almost say in some ways it is harder to make a 2D game in Unity than it is to make a 3D game simply because Unity is not really built for it. But perhaps not. Once you have things streamlined and in the flow.

I agree though. A good 2D game or a good 3D game the biggest challenge is in the good.

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Well keep it simple. Work on one thing at a time testing ideas. Not just ideas for mechanics and other game play focused stuff but also test different ways of implementing stuff. So you learn the ways that work best for you.

Rectangles are great to prototype and test things. You don’t need to wait until you have graphics done. If you can make the game feel good with rectangles it will be that much better with the “real” graphics. So don’t let not having the graphics done delay progress. Also a good idea to use rectangles so you can get the sizes of everything now and know how big the sprite images should be when it comes time for you to do them.

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You are right, Game Maker Studios is much better for 2D games since that;s what it is made for but the reason why I’m not using it is because I wanted to learn to basics by first starting off with something simple such as a 2D game then after once I finish it, I’d then move onto a 3D game. Thanks for the tip GarBenjamin.

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Isometric 2D is arguably harder than full 3D, especially in a hand-drawn pixelart style when you need to draw everything in perspective from different angles, while maintaining consistent look and doing animations. That’s not something you’ll be able to do without many years of practice. 2D side view or topdown are a lot easier.

Maybe check out Aseprite:
https://www.aseprite.org/

And Pyxel:
http://pyxeledit.com/

The have different strengths each.

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Thanks for the help Martin-H

Have you researched in the 2D learn section here? Thats where Id start if creating a 2D game in Unity.

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My tip would be for you to consider learning 3D rather than 2D pixel art.

2D is the old way of making computer graphics, it was all they had. You must draw every action in multiple frames, from every orientation your character is capable of appearing on the screen from. So you must become very skilled at math:

Character has Idle, Walk, Jump, Land, Crouch, Crouch Attack, Attack A, Attack B, Take Damage, Fall Down Dead, Use Item, Interact animations.

Each animation has 8 frames, so 12x8 = 96 frames you need to draw, pixel by pixel. This is for one character. Say you want 4 characters (a pathetic amount for a fighting game) this leads you to: 384 frames. Estimating that you will also need projectiles and particles, estimate a clean 400 frames of animation you need to draw. Plus backgrounds, which can take hours each if you want detail. From experience, a frame of animation can take anywhere from 2-10 minutes depending on the size of the frame and the detail of the drawing, and the difficulty of the animation.

So expect to spend several hours straight sitting on your computer putting colored dots into boxes and previewing the animations, and never being satisfied with the results. I’ve been doing pixel art for over a decade and I’m still never satisfied.

Also, you will need to master 2D animation, before you begin, otherwise your work will look incredibly, ridiculously, horribly amateurish and turn off just about anyone who looks at it (we’re very spoiled with 2D animations of very high quality, with all of the japanese games we’ve been treated to over the years).

Also, your work will be maligned for being “only 2D” and thrown into the same boat as all other 2D games, and not really appreciated for its merits.

Simpler isn’t always simpler, and if you learn 3D you will save yourself some time because if you’re serious about making games you will eventually wind up in 3D like it or not.

But how about 3D?.. making 3d models is not easy for someone who has only done 2D. The 3D modelling apps are in general very advanced and complicated with a long learning curve, and just because you move to 3d doesn’t mean you’re suddenly able to make good looking 3d models. Plus as soon as you move to 3d, typically you’re moving into the realm of realism more and more which takes more and more effort, whereas a lot of 2D is unrealistic from the outset and you can get away with things look more stylized or fantasy-like.

With the right tools, I can have a new fully textured, high-quality 3d character with a hundred animations in very little time. With 2d if you want a whole new animation, you have to draw a whole new sprite set.

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The real lesson here is that art is hard. Whether its 2D or 3D, neither one is a walk in the park, and they’re both very time-consuming and require a lot of learning and practice.

In all honesty, you shouldn’t focus on the art at all. You can go either 2D, 3D, or some combination of both. Those are just the presentation styles, and don’t have to actually affect your work. You can make a game with 2D rules, but with 3D graphics. And you can make a game with 3D rules that is presented with 2D sprites. All of that is the details of presentation, and none of it actually matters for the core elements of your game.

Focus on developing the rules and controls of your game first. Block out your graphics using rough sketches and simple 2D shapes. Focus on playing around with different color combinations, and don’t worry about complicated drawings. Get the silhouettes of your characters first, and worry about drawing in all of the details afterwards. Dig down to the core elements of the visual presentation and use those as a basis for developing the mechanics of your title. The graphical polish can and should come later. All the graphical flash in the world can’t save a mediocre game. Make your interactive elements shine first, then you can take your time adding the extra layers of graphical polish to wow the audience.

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I understand what you’re trying to do – it’s basically similar to where I started. Except I wanted to do a 2D platformer game to start. This might be easier than a fighting game, but I don’t know; there are assets for starting fighting games though. Just as there are for isometric games like Bastion. Anyway, here’s what I made (shameless plug):

Just an example of what can be done with Unity in 2D speaking from my own experience. So yeah, if you want to just learn the basics and start simple and then move to 3D, Unity is fine for that; not sure why people are discouraging that here. Working with 2D sprites is way easier than making 3D models, uv-unwrapping, making the textures, setting up shaders, etc. And, yes, once you are comfortable with that, you can move on to 3D. You can’t really do that with GMS.

I used this asset: Corgi Engine. I think it’s just for sideview applications (2D or 3D), but it’s a very complete solution, so the spritesheets and all the animation state machines are set up for you. All you have to do is open the file in your editing software (Photoshop Elements in my case, I hear Gimp is a good free alternative though), edit the artwork, and that’s it. Of course, if you want to do anything really special or unique, like custom AI, etc. you should know how to modify scripts.

Good luck!

3d skeletal animation is more time consuming than 2d one. Additional dimension increases number of parameters you have to deal with.

Skeletal 2d animation is a thing. 2d sketch can be done much faster than a 3d “sketch”.

Check Unity learning section, if you haven’t already.

Rather than trying a fighting game (mortal combat style), try to do something with simpler controls, where a character has a very small number of animations. For example, check Rogue Legacy - one attack animation, one walking animation, and one jumping animation. If you try to do a street fighter level game alone, you’ll sink.

Another option is trying to make a game like Contra. Number of animation frames is very low.

Then there are bullet hell games that can use static sprites.

Yeah, you could do something like this with the Corgi Engine I mentioned above. It’s probably the best starting point, in my opinion. It’s either that or you try making something from the ground up with the example Unity projects and tutorials, but you have to be willing to struggle a lot, especially if you don’t have a decent grasp of coding.

I think people just want to be contrarion to newcomers. It is undoubtedly much harder than 2D.

It depends. A basic zombie game with purchased assets could be easy as a 3D game. Compare that to Cuphead.

OP is asking for tips on making a 2D game where he’s making the artwork himself.

Edit – If he tried to make Cuphead in 3D, from scratch, it would be 10x harder than doing it in 2D.

Cuphead in 3D doesn’t even make sense (the style wouldn’t be the same at all). The point is that 2D does not guarantee that it’s going to be quicker or easier than 3D, whether making the artwork yourself or not. Especially if you’re talking isometric 2D, which I understand can be a real nightmare. I was talking to one of the devs of a game call Star Command, and for a PC version they’re working on they ended up switching it to 3D rendering to simulate 2D, which was actually easier for their particular use case (isometric).

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You guys are starting to argue about obvious things here.

3d model takes 15…50 times longer than a 2d artwork. Maybe even more. For high quality model people on occasion easily estimate a month per one character. However… you get possibility of ragdolls, different clothes, adjusting limb position, etc. On other hand, your model is pretty much “locked” into original shape, and certain effects which are trivial in 2d, are incredibly hard to do.

2d sketch is much faster. Much, much, much faster. Professionals can animate stuff in 2d at speed that is impossible in 3d visuals. You also get ability to make complex scenes that are ridiculously difficult to do in 3d. Something like dog’s transformation from The Thing, for example, various shape shifters and effects that greatly alter look of your character are much easier in 2d. However, you don’t get any ragdolls, limb adjustment requires extra work, same applies to hat/clothing/weapon swapping.

So the long story short, with 3d you get a puppet that can do what puppets do. With 2d you get a movie clip that can depict anything you could possibly want. making a puppet is harder, but might pay off if you need to reuse it a lot or change clothes on it. Makine a drawing is initially easier, since there’s no restriction on what you can draw, but amount of work may pile up, because you can’t alter it in “post production” to the same degree as that puppet.

Also… I recall someone saying that “I’ve seen many times how an amazing 2d concept turned into a barely passable 3d model”. 3d is more reusable but is harder to get right.