Does 3d and 2d essentially function the same?

Questions
#1

I believe Defold is a 3d engine essentially. Correct?

Does that mean that the things I learned about 2d operations are the same for 3d except for changing the vectors essentially?

I have over 100 maps to create. it would seem easier to be able to just rotate and animate 3d models over 2d frame control and exporting 100’s of frames for animations essentially.

But it does further bring up my ignorance:

How does going from 2d to 3d affect: cross platform compatibility, implementation, and resource overhead vs 2d?

#2

Yep, everything in the engine exists in a 3D space. For 2D games you use an orthographic projection in your render script and for a 3D game you use a perspective projection.

Everything should always behave the same way regardless of platform and if it is 2D or 3D. For physics we use Box2D for 2D physics and for 3D we use Bullet (toggle between 2D and 3D physics in game.project).

Moving around freely in a 3D space is a bit more complex, but moving on a plane while using a perspective camera is essentially the same as making a 2D game.

But keep in mind that our focus has been primarily on 2D games so 3D is going to be a bit more low level. This fairly recent dev diary by @Epitaph64 will give you an idea of some of the challenges you may come across: Unexplored Territories Dev-Diary

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#3

I may just stick with 2d for now.

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#4

Blastlands was a mix of real time 3D and 2D made with Defold.

It should be quite easy to have 2D models walking around a 2d area and then viewing them with a 3D perspective camera.

You don’t have to use 3D physics if the play area is 2D.

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#5

Just trying to think thru the chemo fog. Do you mean having on a 2d map a 2d sprite screen playing a 3d camera view of a collada obj?

#6

There are a lot of ways to do it. Don’t Starve for example is 2D objects on a 2D play area within a 3D world, sort of similar to Paper Mario in a way.

What Blastlands did was 3D models walking around a 2D play area.

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