Considering Unity as a 2D platform

Hello; let me start off with a brief explanation of my situation.
My computer died and went to heaven. The emergency backup computer I am using is not well-equipped to render 3D, and more importantly, I can’t install Maya on it so I can’t create 3D models. I have access to another computer that I believe I can install Maya on and create 3D models with, but it is not a machine that I can depend upon regularly using.
So my goal is to create a 2D sprite-based game, since that is within my abilities.

And looking around for viable solutions, I have recently noticed that Unity is being used to create 2D games. I find this very intriguing, so I’m looking into it a little more. It looks like it doesn’t not actually handle the 2D games as a 2D environment, but cleverly aligns a series of flat polygons to face the camera. This is totally fine, so far as I don’t need to create all of these polygons myself inside of Maya.
I have seen a number of programs and tools that enable one to create sprites that work with Unity. This is very promising. But what I have not seen are very viable options for creating 2D levels.
Since I cannot have regular access to a 3D modelling program, I can’t depend upon creating custom meshes for each of my levels. And since I want neither tiny levels nor gigantic memory costs, building my levels with large pre-drawn sections is not viable. I need some sort of ability to have tile-mapped levels; I need an ability to build a level with repeating tiles set up in the order and placement I want.

I have not worked with Unity before, so I don’t know what sort of options it has. What can I do to create 2D worlds with Unity?

In the Asset store, take a look at 2d Toolkit. It looks pretty good, but I have not purchased it myself. It’s $55 though. If I were to make 2d games, that’s the tool I would get. Sorry I don’t know more about 2d in Unity, but I don’t. :slight_smile:

You wouldnt need any mehshes to create a 2D game if you didnt want. nor any polygons. The engine is perfectly capable of doing what you want it to , with or without external tool kits.

Have a look at the level editor here.

Actually 100% of everything in Unity is done with polygons, including everything that’s 2D.

–Eric

well , more so , modeling polys - custom models is what i was leaning towards … but yea , you be right of course… still doesnt change the fact that you would not need to model 3d to make a 2d game at all. You could make a game with nothing more than unity and windows Paint.

I suppose the one thing that would be useful 2d or not , would be the colliders (and i believe those are in simplest terms a series of vertices, just as a mesh would have , but without all the renderering?).

Either way , thats my point. And i believe his question was just about whether he could or couldnt,

PS : had a look at that thread Eric , nice stuff as usual , didnt know that was there even.

I can create 2D tiles, but since they still need 3D object to be placed upon, I still need a 3D editor. They may not be complicated objects but they still need to be made. They also would need some finely-placed UVs so that the tiles can have padding on them; creating an intricate 2D environment would require a lot of the tiles to not be tilable, which means if they don’t have padding they produce anti-aliasing blur.
Add to that the fact that we’d easily want some tiles/sprites to not be exactly square, not the same size, etc, and it just doesn’t seem reasonable to build a level without continual access to a 3D editor.

My first glances at that indicates that it would be astonishingly challenging to build a level like that and require a fair amount of programming skills. I mean that example shows it using just one tile and its location is determined with a text document. Creating a level with the number of differing tiles a non-abstract design would require… I mean if I need more than 36 different tiles in one level I’m going to have difficulty declaring the tile for that square.
I will take a closer look at it in the next couple days, though.

lol - seems i have confusd your 2d intent. Your not just looking for 2d simple, but either way , i really cant see unity not doing waht you want it to. Its pretty legit.

Unity do not have anything with a “TileMap” editor out of the box , so you either have to rely on third party tool for those that can do the job within unity, or hook up some tliemap editor like Tiled, but then you will have to handle the import of your data from it in unity etc…or just make your own tile like editor, I can’t see another way to do it in a simple way other than the one i mentioned.

So then I guess the question would be if someone has made a decent tilemap editor that integrates with Unity, ‘cuz I sure as **** can’t make one.
Though as I think about it, perhaps I am overestimating how much I would need to be able to produce 3D models. I mean, if I can create a set of blocks, or rather squares, I could just repeat those with different textures, right?
I mean, I assume that Unity lets me scale polygonal objects in any dimension, and lets me assign textures on a per-object basis. Add object snapping inside the editor and I would only need one polygon square. I could add a second one if I want to have a version with and without padding, or add different squares with different sizes of padding (to account for the various resolutions I would use for the textures).
With all of that I could just place in all my squares in a big ol’ grid and then reassign the textures for each one. Any oddly sized objects could just be resized in the editor.
How hard is it to change the texture of a specific object in a level? Do I have to scroll through a giant list of properties or can I just drag-and-drop a texture like in UDK? Can I assign multiple textures at a time?