Pros and Cons for 2D vs 3D? (iPad)

Unity Engine
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1

I want to develop a game on iPad from a top down perspective. I’m not really looking to sell it, mainly play with my brothers. The best way to describe the game would be multi player tower defense. Similar to Demigod mechanics if anyone knows that game. Art style would be futuristic tanks, robots, etc.

I’m not an artist, so either way I’ll be paying someone to do the artwork, but I want to know about performance and the amount of time required to get the artwork right. I plan to make the game 6 players down the road (big family) so the number of objects on the screen could potentially get pretty high. (Maybe 100 tanks). If it was 3D the models would be incredibly low poly.

Animation seems to me like the big problem with 2D if you are paying someone to do it. With 3D I just need to have a few particle effects, and a model that can swivel. But with 2D you would have to draw a whole bunch of frames. Would this cause an issue for performance compared to 3D?

Are there any tower defense-like packs on the asset store? I’d love to buy a 2D and 3D and try them both out.

2

Sorry I forgot to add that if I was to go the 2D route am I safe in saying that sprite manager 2 would be the best way to make the least amount of work for me? That would mean I’d need to have pro iOs and pro Unity, right?

If I went 3D what advantages would I get out of pro besides custom splash screen and being able to make $100k or more, which won’t affect me. I would imagine that all the lightmapping stuff would already be too much for the iPad to handle if there are 100 objects on screen, even if they are low poly.

I’m only going to be doing this project in my spare time which is not much.

3

Well in order to get to use batching you would need to keep the models pretty low (less than 300 polys) so it wont look that good. Now if you did a 2d version its only a quad and can look as good as the artist make it. If you look at the top iphone games most of them are 2D