The third dimension was there all along...

May 3, 2019 2:33 PM

“Recently, the popular YouTube channel Boundary Break worked closely with developer Yacht Club Games to do a special episode taking a look at the developer’s beloved Shovel Knight series. What the YouTuber found is that the Shovel Knight games are actually 2D games built in a 3D engine. Seeing a game that looks so retro and very 2D get spun around in 3D is trippy. Yacht Club Games developer David D’Angelo explained that this was because the engine was built before the studio knew exactly what they were going to make. While they wanted to make a 2D game, by making the engine 3D it gave them more options and made it easier to debug the game and bring it to multiple platforms.” [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz (13 comments total)

It's neat to see the rotation, but this isn't really a quirk specific to Shovel Knight: pretty much any 2d game written in the last decade is going to on some level be a 3d game behind the scenes, simply because to modern graphics APIs and hardware, everything is 3d.
posted by Pyry at 3:30 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

I guess it's that rotation that is the most fascinating to me, because it feels like we get a bit of a glimpse at what is going on behind scenes and that's what I enjoy most about this story.
posted by Fizz at 3:43 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Have there been any faux 2D sidescrollers that went 3D, say, for warping into secret levels or whatnot?
posted by porpoise at 4:27 PM on May 3, 2019

Have there been any faux 2D sidescrollers that went 3D, say, for warping into secret levels or whatnot?

Super Mario 3D Land on the Nintendo 3DS and Super Mario Odyssey have some tricks like this where they mess around with 2D and 3D planes. It's kind of trippy.
posted by Fizz at 4:51 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yeah, an early-ish use of 2D gameplay with 3D graphics shenanigans is Einhander, Square’s foray into 2D shooters from 1997.
Also one of the best games of all time, imo
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:26 PM on May 3, 2019 [3 favorites]

2D get spun around in 3D is trippy

That reminds me a bit of the animation technique Disney would use to make their background scenes more dynamic looking. Basically, they would stack glass panes of painted backgrounds on top of one another, and then move the panes in and out to make it look 3d.
posted by littlesq at 5:31 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

And yes it is very interesting that 3D engines are now often the easiest/most robust/multi platform ways to make 2D games. Unity, Unreal, etc. I sometimes wonder if the era of interesting games that don’t use well-established 3D engines is mostly over...
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:31 PM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Boundary Break is one of my favorite Youtube series right now. He's really amazing, and been getting more and more things like this lately. Go check out his other vids, as they're really fun.
posted by strixus at 6:01 PM on May 3, 2019

Have there been any faux 2D sidescrollers that went 3D, say, for warping into secret levels or whatnot?

I haven't played it, but basically all of Fez. And Super Paper Mario.
posted by pwnguin at 6:01 PM on May 3, 2019 [6 favorites]

Aegis Defenders is this way, too! As is basically any 2D game made in the last 10 years. But it’s nice to remember that my daily grind in the editor is actual magic to other folks. Like working in the kitchen at hogwarts
posted by GilloD at 6:38 PM on May 3, 2019 [4 favorites]

So what you're saying is the King of Cards expansion is still not available
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is this somehow different than Super Mario World using multiple parallax fields?
posted by Brocktoon at 2:05 AM on May 4, 2019

When I first managed to successfully convince my grandparents to buy me a Sony Playstation in 1995 I did not have the heart to ask them to buy me a game on top of that, but I knew it didn't have a pack-in. So I saved up the change from my lunch money for a whole Fall and went to one of the local video rental places when they had a sale of Playstation games that presumably didn't get rented very often. The ones I got were Mortal Kombat 3 and a game called Skeleton Warriors" which I knew nothing about but was $15 so I bought it. Turns out it was a 2D platformer but since the PS1 was so awful at sprites and 2D it was made with a 3D engine. The actually neat thing about it was if you jumped it would move the camera up a bit and the ground would tilt as the camera moved. It was a very forgettable game content-wise but I would have loved a Donkey Kong Country type game using that engine on e.g. an N64.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:20 PM on May 4, 2019