Game Worlds - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 89

■ 3D. Three true dimensions. Thanks to 3D hardware accelerators and modeling
tools, 3D spaces are now easy to implement on hardware that supports them. They
give the player a much greater sense of being inside a space (building, cave, space-
craft, or whatever) than 2D spaces ever can. With a 2D world, the player feels as if
he is looking at it; with a 3D world, he feels as if he is in it. 3D worlds are great for
avatar-based games with exploration challenges, such as the Prince of Persia series
(see Figure 4.3 ). Most large games for personal computers and consoles now use
three dimensions, but many small casual games still need only two.
FIGURE 4.3
Prince of Persia, a fully
3D environment
■ 4D. If you want to include a fourth dimension for some reason (not counting
time), implement it as an alternate version of the 3D game world rather than
an actual four-dimensional space. In other words, create two (or more) three-
dimensional spaces that look similar but offer different experiences as the avatar
moves among them. For example, the Legacy of Kain series presents two versions
of the same 3D world, the spectral realm and the material realm, with different
gameplay modes for each. The landscape is the same in both, but the material
realm is lit by white light while the spectral realm is lit by blue light, and the archi-
tecture is distorted in the spiritual realm (see Figure 4.4 ). The actions available to
the player are different in each realm. The realms look similar but are functionally
different places governed by different laws. In the movie version of The Lord of the
Rings , the world that Frodo inhabits while he is wearing the Ring can be thought
of as an alternate plane of reality as well, overlapping the real world but appearing
and behaving differently.