I’ve recently being playing with both Unity and Blender to determine if I should adopt them for my next game. Whilst working through a Unity tutorial I came to the realisation that I’m biting off way more than I can chew. Learning C#, Unity, Blender, 3D modelling, texturing, etc. I also revisited other examples of the genre I’m building and all of them are 2D games. 3D simply doesn’t bring any benefits to my game.
I think it would be kind of silly to throw away what I’ve learnt over the past 2 years so I’m settling on 2D for my new game and I’m going to stick with cocos2D as my engine. This means I can focus on gameplay and story rather than tools and technology.
There are still plenty of challenges ahead. Whilst I know that the art style is manageable for me in 2D, there is a lot to create. This is also the first level based game I’ve created and as such I’m expecting to need to create level authoring tools (hopefully web-based).
Its a tough decision to make but I think that its sensible to switch the challenge away from learning new tech and continue down the road of honing my game design skills. 3D is something I mean to revisit in future. Who knows, I may even dabble with it on the side.
If you’re considering 3D, from what I’ve played with, Unity is a great option.
… and with that out of the way, and a basic prototype under my belt, its time to begin development for real. Yep, it’s time to start laying the foundations. File->New Project…