Combining 2D and 3D in Game Design

I am working currently to research game engines that can combine both 2D and 3D images in both the setting and the game world, and I hope to be able to bring to life in game development some the focus on light and beauty that I have pursued in my art as a painter. For this purpose, there is an entire generation of remarkable new game engines that take full advantage of advances in both display tech and software and coding languages and tools of all kinds. Currently I am working with Wintermute on the suggestion of a very kind master of game design and story creation, and am finding it a joy to work with. I am including some of images from an current game design project that uses this combination of 2D and 3D as examples of what is possible. River Dreaming

I will also include in this article new developments and resources for game engines and other design aspects of this work.

Something that I seek in working with highly visual game settings is to create the mood and feeling of immersion, of a special time and place, and how life is made up of moments that can change not only our lives but our view of life itself. We can never really know what wonders or surprises wait, and for a story to bring that to life is a special way to share that.
>















Dancing for the Joy of the Sea

Resources

Wintermute Engine Development Kit is a set of tools for creating and running graphical
“point&click” adventure games, both traditional 2D ones and modern 2.5D games (3D characters on 2D backgrounds). The kit includes the runtime interpreter (Wintermute Engine, or WME) and GUI editors for managing and creating the game content (WME tools) as well as the documentation, demonstrational data and prefabricated templates.
website: http://dead-code.org/home/
You will need Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. which is needed for other tools and softwares too.
some of the most popular indie engines are:Torque Game Engine TV3D SDK 6 3DGameStudio C4 Engine Unity Cipher 3Impact Beyond Virtual Deep Creator Darkbasic Pro

Nebula Device ttp://nebuladevice.cubik.org/: The Nebula Device is an open source realtime 3D game engine developed by German game studio Radon Labs. It is written in C++ and scriptable through Tcl/Tk and Lua, with support for Python, Java, and the full suite of .NET-capable languages pending. It supports DirectX 9, but work on support for OpenGL is ongoing. It runs on Windows, with ports being done to Linux and Mac OS X.

DX Studio 1.31 http://www.worldweaver.com/ The DX Studio™ system comprises of both a fully functional real-time 3D engine, and easy to use 2D and 3D editors. You can build rapid
prototypes of user interfaces or games in minutes, or complete interactive applications ready for deployment. Documents can run full-screen or inside other documents (as a COM / ActiveX control) and supports interactive menus, scenes, 'boned' animated characters and inter-document communication over a network. here is a list of some of the free and commercial ones:

Free Engines

Agar (engine) - High end app for 2D and 3D computer games Allegro library - Free crossplatform C/C++ game programming library, has full functionality for
graphics, sounds, input, timers, both fixed or floating point, 3d, compressed datafile and a GUI. Axiom Engine - A fork containing the core of the OGRE graphics engine
Open GL
Haaf's Game Engine - Game Engine that is 2D Hardware Accelerated
Baja Engine - High quality game engine
Boom - A port of the Doom source code from TeamTNT
Build engine - A First person shooter engine runs Duke Nukem 3D
Cadabra 3D Engine - and easy game 3D engine devl tool.
Catmother - A BSD-licensed engine from a company that open sources their engine when they quit business.
Crystal Space - A general framework for developing 3D applications and also an extension of this, Crystal Entity Layer
Cube - primitive but effective engine used to create a fps community game successor to this by the same people is Sauerbraten Engine.
DarkPlaces - One of the best gratis Quake engines
Delta3d - Integrates other well-known free software projects into an easy-to-use API
DGD - An object-oriented programmable MUD engine
Doom engine - The open source software engine first used for Doom and Doom II and Eternity
Doom 3 engine - Used by the games Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey, Quake Wars
Engine - A source port of the DM engine and GZDoom - open source port from the Doom engine based on ZDoom
DXFramework - A simple, teaching format 2D/3D DirectX-based game engine for Visual Studio
DX Studio - Real-time professional 3D engine and editing suite Worldweaver Ltd see notes above.
Eclipse - A 2D MMORPG engine(Open source)
Elysium Source - A 2D online game engine done with VB6
Epee Engine -Is an 2D/3D open source cross platform graphics engine for entry level programmers.
Exult - A free software remake of the Ultima VII game engn.
FIFE - A free software 2D ISO engine supporting the assets of Fallout 1 & 2
Game Blender - A sub-set out of Blender game maker.
Game Maker - Object-oriented game development software come with drag-and-drop interface and its own scripting.
GQ - A Quake engine that wiht features drawn fromTomazQuake and DarkPlaces
Genesis3D - AWINdows real-time 3D engine
GemRB - A free impl of the Infinity Engine
Irrlicht Engine - A cross-platform simplified 3D graphics engine.
Multiverse Network - multiplayer platform, with server, client, and tools. Gratis for devel and
individual use--revenue sharing if there is commercial deployment). for MMOG
Nebula Device - A realtime 3D game engine German game studio Radon Labs.
OctLight - A Java game engine with scene-graph and renders on top of Lightweight Java Game
Library (LWJGL) using OpenGL
Open Game Engine is an open source library that puts together game making elements
OGRE Engine (OGRE3D ) - Obj.-oriented graphics rendering engine. Online RPG Maker - Online RPG/2D engine comes with scripting. Panda3D Engine - Rapid development engine based on Python
Pentagram - A project to create a game engine that is capable of running Ultima VIII: Pagan
PlayerWorlds - a simple, and widely used 2D Online RPG Engine.
PLIB - A game engine - includes 3D, Audio, Music, GUI, Window manager and is portable
Linux/Windows/MacOSX.
ProQuake - A modified Quake engine
Quake II engine - The original free software Quake II engine from Id Software
Quake III engine - The original free software Quake III engine from Id Software
Reality Factory - A free open-source game engine that is intended for non-programmers and is
built on the Genesis3d Graphic Engine. RealmForge - An open-source game engine for the Microsoft .NET Framework, predecessor to
Visual3D.NET
Sauerbraten - A upgraded engine forked from the Cube engine
Sonic Robo Blast 2 - A heavily modified Doom Legacy engine for a 3D platform fan-fiction game of the same name.
Stratagus - A cross-platform real time strategy game engine
Toi - 0.9.2 is out, looks pretty cool....http://www.toi3d.com/A 3d game engine currently in
development with promises of both MMO and single player capabilities.
vbGORE - Open-source online RPG engine in Visual Basic 6 (2d via 3d hybrid engine).
Well of Souls - A 2D engine with scripting in QUEST and a visual world editor.
Yake - a component-based, object-oriented, partially generic engine written in C++
Zak Engine - An easy to use 2D games engine using DirectX 8.1 and 9 . sprites, tiles maps, sound and music in several formats, scripting (AngelScript), and particle systems.

Commercial Engines

Arcane Engine - Wolfpack Studios for Shadowbane
Aurora Engine - For Role-playing games Blade3D - NextGen engine layerd on top of Microsoft XNA.
BRender - A real-time 3D graphics engine for computer games, simulators and graphic tools
C4 Engine - Next Gen engine by Eric Lengyel
Coldstone game engine - a veteran suite for Mac/Win for RPG - adventure-style games
CryENGINE, CryENGINE2 - The game engine used for the first-person shooter computer game Far Cry.
and it successor CryEngine 2 being used for Crysis, very cool graphics and a great editor, dont
know the cost, but prob not cheap to get a license.
Dagor Engine 3 - cross-platform game engine with3D, physics, game logic, AI, good toolset for
content
Deep Creator - 3D engine
EAGL (EA Graphics Library) - A cross-platform graphics engine used by Electronic Arts in EA
Sports titles.
Earth-4 Engine - The graphics engine used in Earth 2160
Electron engine - Obsidian Entertainment uses this in Neverwinter Nights 2, build on Aurora
engine
euphoria - A real-time motion synthesis engine by NaturalMotion
Gamebryo - A cross-platform 3D computer graphics engine coded in C++
Havok (software)[1] - Very High-tech cross platform (PC, PS3, Xbox 360 etc) middleware Engine. IMUSE - Specifically designed to synchronize music with visual action
KjAPI - A C++ technology to create games and 3D applications PC only I think.
Lithtech - Quake style alternative. and Lithtech Juipter Ex - used byMonolith to create the game F.E.A.R 360, free range full 3D, full motion.
Medusa (game engine) - A C++ 3D game engine made by Palestar and used in the DarkSpace MMO. Has world simulation, single tool version control, asset realisation, cross-platform fit with
integrated client/server net sys.
morpheme - A graphically-authorable animation engine from NaturalMotion .
Odyssey Engine - Used to create three dimensional computer role-playing games, used Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Power Render - A general purpose software development kit for games and 3D visualization
Reality Engine - 3D game engine by Artificial Studios
RelentENGINE - A next-generation FPS engine supporting massive interactive environments, uses shader model 3.
RenderWare - A very popular 3D API and graphics rendering engine
Retribution Engine -FPs Engine
Revolution3D - A 3D engine by X-Dream Project
SAGE engine - Used to create real-time strategy games
SCUMM engine - Used in LucasArts graphical adventure games
Torque Game Engine Advanced - A next-generation 3D game engine support modern GPU hardware and shaders.
TOSHI - A fourth generation cross platform game engine from Blue Tongue Entertainment Truevision3d - A 3D game engine DirectX API
Unigine - Cross-platform middleware has nice graphics
Unity (game engine) - sweet and smooth 3d gen.
Unreal engine - many swear by this one. and Vengeance engine - Unreal 2/2.5
3DGame Studio - http://www.3dgamestudio.com/
Vision Game Engine - A commercial gen used in tons of titles by companies like T2, Atari, Neowiz and Threewave. Available for PC, Xbox, Xbox360 and PS3 - http://www.trinigy.de/
Visual3D.NET - 3D platform and visual development environment built upon Microsoft .NET 2.0 and
XNA Framework for PC, Xbox 360, Win Mobile C#, Visual Basic, J#, C++.NET, JScript.NET,
IronPython, also has visual scripting.
Virtools - A 3D engine high-level devel, game prototyping rapid devel. Win, Mac, Xb, PSP
White Engine - Square-Enix's proprietary 7th gen engine for their PS3 projects.
Zero - 3D game engine in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Star Wars:
Battlefront II Maz 3D Game Engine - Designed by Students C++ &