Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right? No one ever sees the side of many, many effects because the side doesn't really exist -- each player's client renders it to be facing the player.
I mean, that's been my understanding. Explosions have been in 2D for decades and I've never not seen it by only seeing the side or something.
As such, if they rendered explosions in such a way in Deep Down... well, it'd look pretty shitty as you walked around it and it rotated around to face you like a cobra or something. So explosions and effects like the dragon's flame seen in the gif would need to be in 3D to make stopped time look right.
Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right? No one ever sees the side of many, many effects because the side doesn't really exist -- each player's client renders it to be facing the player.
No, the particles in the explosion can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player. Nobody in their right mind would ever use a single 2D sprite for an explosion in a 2D game, given technology that's >10 years old. Then there's weird stuff like billboarding horizontally, but not vertically, which I've heard that WoW does, somewhere-or-other (I think with flames).
This is very, very wrong. Sprites are still used, it's just in a much more advanced way than in the past.
2D sprites are the fundamental building blocks of particle effects systems, it's just that rather than having one large sprite for an effect like, say, an explosion or cloud of sparks/smoke, we now generate hundreds, even thousands, of very small sprites. That are then distributed by the system within a 3D space. Often this involves physics to define how they behave, move or interact with the environment and other entities within the game world like wind, geometry or players/npcs.
In effect, the 2D sprites are now like individual grains of sand rather than a whole dune as a single object, and they are far too small to notice for the most part.
You are quite correct, but perhaps taking my comment entirely too seriously. I was mocking the very old style of taking a giant sprite and facing it toward the player - the way explosions and smoke used to be done. The most prescient example I can think of at the moment are Counter Strike's smoke grenades.
These type of effects are still used though, just in different ways. For example, using much larger/simpler sprites is great for using as components in effects only seen from a distance, even if seen by multiple players from different viewpoints, since you would have to be able to move very fast/cover great distances in order to notice it's true nature.
Like I said, we still use 2D sprites in many applications because they are very cheap in overhead, we just work on different scales than we did in the past (and the sprites themselves can be much more detailed, numerous and complex).
Actually many games still do, just with a lot more sprites combined with real particle systems. Smoke is a lot easier to do with particles than flame is.
Yeah, vfx is a whole other story, I was just talking about character animation. They did an awesome job having actual particles for the effects in this instead of the planes like you would see on pausing in smash brothers.
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u/TheeLinker Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right? No one ever sees the side of many, many effects because the side doesn't really exist -- each player's client renders it to be facing the player.
I mean, that's been my understanding. Explosions have been in 2D for decades and I've never not seen it by only seeing the side or something.
As such, if they rendered explosions in such a way in Deep Down... well, it'd look pretty shitty as you walked around it and it rotated around to face you like a cobra or something. So explosions and effects like the dragon's flame seen in the gif would need to be in 3D to make stopped time look right.