When beginning initial prototyping on mehanics do you choose to create mechanics in quick 2D designs or stay in 3D to be able to design a mechanic similar to how you believe it will be actually implemented in game?
An example of this is a board based puzzle design I have. Ive invisioned the game to be in 3D for its final build because the board pieces will be interacting with each other (melee combat) and parts of the board will collape and fall away.
But I have wondered if - for prototyping gameplay elements (fun) if creating in 2D would be quicker to iterate on and just fake certain things that dont need to be completely visualized to get the jest of the action.
On the other hand having a basis in the design similar to the final build could be a great benefit for having prototyped elements halfway created - to use for building game ready pieces.
This is assuming prototyping in 2D is quicker than in 3D which - Im not assuming, because it really isnt imo. But if prototyping in 2D and faking elements just to get it “working” for now - to speed up prototyping, is that something people actually do?
I like to stick with paper prototypes to evaluate mechanics, and then only move to digital to start testing the feel of camera and controls. Since the purpose at that point is to test camera and controls, it works best for me to use the same dimension (2D or 3D) as the final game.
Then I’d go with the actual dimensions of the target game.
The only time I’d ever prototype a 3D game in 2D is if the game is fundamentally 2D, but uses 3D graphics. Like a board game port or an RTS game. In that case you can stay 2D almost to the very end of development.
Thanks guys. Much appreciated.
I should have mentioned - paper prototype has already been complete.
Really the reason for even considering to persue this design was the paper prototype was fun to me, a hit with others and has been a real (small) crowd gatherer.
The only thing missing from the paper prototype was the 3D interactive-ness of certain functions.
I guess iterative feature implementation would have been a better description instead of ‘prototyping’.