I was wondering how well Unity 3D handles a full 2D game, by that I mean no 3D objects at all, everything done as sprites, animations done in sprite manager 2 for example.
Is Unity 3D still clunky as was mentioned in another post? Could it handle a commercial Hidden Object Game with everything done in 2D, background, objects, sprites etc, no 3D objects at all, so I don’t mean just restricting the z-axis. Would there be likely to be glitches or would it be all smooth sailing, and would there be overhead with the 2D that might not be encountered using 3D?. There are vquite a few animations, one character has 40 animations, all 2D would that cause a problem if Sprite manager 2 was used, sould it slow the engine down? The game would also have to play on quite low end PCs would that be possible if the game was done in 2D?
Is Unity 3D capable of this or should a dedictaed 2D engine be used?
I myself am doing a 2D game in Unity3D too. Being a Unity user for some time this was the obvious choice for me. You should check out these links, they might give you a few tips and/or inspire you.
Even though your game will look ‘2D’, its great to have all the 3D power such as particles/shaders, texturing and the ability to import great looking shades/textured assets and the more advanced lighting features that a 3D engine can offer.
The difference between 2D and 3D in my opinion is just a different camera angle.
I’d say that it is easier to use Unity if you have more experience with that. It’s actually quite fast, solid, just like it is for 3D. Quickfingers did a good talk on this to the LUUG which might still be around somewhere. I’d say roll with Unity!
I’m now leaning more towards using Unity after watching the videos, I suppose if it will perform on the iPhone and iPad it will probably perform on the PC.
I’d say it depends on the target platform. I recently completed a 2D game for Android in Unity and while it took a little longer than it might have in a 2D engine, porting to other platforms, especially iOS is pretty straightforward. The only limitation I ran into was a large build size. Build stripping would reduce that though so I highly recommend going Pro for mobile build targets.