Unit 78 - 2D and 3D Computer Game Graphics

Comparing 2D and 3D games

A 2D game is a game designed with 2 dimensional graphics. The avatars are flat, and can only move left, right, up and down. A 3D game incorporates depth into the graphics, making the game 3D. Depth adds perspective to the game, making the screen look like you are looking down a street or an alley etc.. 3D games feature 3D isometric avatars, and more realistic game physics.

Super Mario Bros (1985) is a popular 2D platform side-scroller game. Mario, the main character, who must reach the goal, jumping over blocks and pipes, avoiding monsters and collecting coins, lives and power ups to progress through the levels. Platform games have limited physics, such as gravity.
 Mario is designed with 8-bit graphics, and is designed with raster images, which pixelate when zoomed in. Zooming on reducing the quality of the image. Mario was created with just 16 pixel high, and 12 pixels across.

Tetris is a 2D puzzle game, in which players must rotate falling blocks to completely fill a line of blocks, in order to remove the line of blocks, and receive score points for each line completed.
 The visual artistic style of Tetris is abstract, and uses bright colours and geometrical shapes, which make up the coloured blocks.
 The original Tetris, from 1984 used a display of 256x192 pixels, giving the screen a total of 49,152 pixels.

 The original version of Tetris was created with 8 bit graphics, but as new versions were released to different platforms, this bit increased to 16, and eventually 64 in the current versions.

Crash Bandicoot (1996) is an early 3D platform game, in which the goal is to get Crash from beginning to the end of the level, running, jumping and spin through obstacles, sometimes utilising motorbikes, skis and wild animals to reach the end.
 Crash Bandicoot was designed to look cartoony, in order to increase it's target audience. The cartoon graphics made the game appeal to the children at the time of release, and also to give the game an exciting and fun atmosphere.
 Crash Bandicoot had a pixel resolution of 512x240. As sequels and remade versions were released, the resolution increased, as better hardware was developed.

Battlefield 3 is a 2011 3D FPS video game, created with a photorealistic/ military visual art style, and is based on modern military combat. The aim of the game is to complete the objective, whether it be as simple as kill the enemy team, or destroy enemy communication stations, using handheld weapons, or vehicles, such as tanks, jets and helicopters.
 Battlefield 3 is designed with 64-bit graphics, complemented with an image resolution of 1280x704 for consoles, with a higher resolution for PC. Image resolution was reduced for console, as reducing the resolution by 16 lines "increases performance, and saves memory[1].
 Whilst BF3 is designed with raster images, when zoomed in, whether it be an in game zoom optic, or zooming in on the HUD, the quality does not pixelate as much as previous games.

Forza 4 is a photorealistic racing video game, in which the player advances through in-game seasons, using cars from family hatchbacks to LMP racers, and everything in between. Forza is designed with 64-bit graphics, displayed at a resolution of 1080x720, running at 60 frames per second.
 Forza 4 features and in-game livery editor, in which players can paint and apply stickers to any car in the game. This livery editor uses the following file extensions: .bix, .xds[2].

Computer graphics have come a long way since the early video games, such as Pong. Resolutions are getting clearer, sharper and more detailed, and games are looking more and more like reality.

Bibliography

[1] http://bf3blog.com/2011/09/battlefield-3-runs-at-just-under-720p-on-consoles/

[2] http://codeescape.com/2011/01/forza-2-and-3-texture-extraction-tool/