A few questions before buying (For an RPG)

[Jon]

I asked a few questions over on the Unity forums, however the post wasn't directly related to 2dtk and didn't get much attention, so I'm reposting it here with a few more questions:

I'm considering giving Unity another chance, however I have a few questions beforehand:

• How easy is it to make a top down 2d game in Unity3D?
• Is it possible to make a procedurally generated 2d (Top down, of course) game using the free version? I don't plan on making use of scenes for levels, but rather creating the entire (Fairly large) worlds on the fly. I already know all of the logic behind doing something like this, just not with Unity. From what I've read in the past, it sounds like I have to load every single asset I plan to use in the world ahead of time, which obviously isn't ideal... Or am I wrong? I'd be really interested in any articles or tutorials regarding this. Or just experiences.

Now for some more questions:

• What kind of performance can I expect given my game type*? Unity's rendering engine doesn't really seem designed for 2d, so I'm a bit concerned.
• What's going to happen to 2dtk when 4.3 comes out?
• I looked through the showcase forum a bit, however most of the games I found were platformers... Are there many, if any, top down 2d games made with 2dtk? If so, where?
• Is it possible to apply shaders to portions of the map? I.e. water tiles with shaders applied.
• How well does 2dtk do with loading and unloading resources on the fly (In Unity free)? Obviously with a procedural world it'd be a bad idea to load everything at once.

*I plan on using 2dTK to make a top down, Zelda: A Link to the Past style RPG, but procedurally generated (Completely in-code). Ideally with huge world sizes.

[unikronsoftware]

1. Making a top down 2d game is fairly easy. It really depends on how you go about implementing it. One way is to use the character controller + tk2d tile maps for collisions, etc.

2. Yes, create a large tile map, and fill it as needed. The tile map max size out of the box is 1024x1024 tiles, but you can change that depending on what platform you're targeting, etc. Or if you want to code a bit, you can keep your tile map as a central window into your (infinite?) world and build chunks based on where the character moves. I.e. move the world rather than move the character.



1. There is no difference to the GPU whether your'e drawing 2D or 3D content. tk2d lets you optimise for your GPU in a few ways, so I can't see how this could be very different to any other engine.

2. We're working on a 4.3 update right now - it will support all of 4.3's features where it makes sense. 2D physics is already working.

3. No idea, perhaps someone else could comment on this.

4. Yes, you set up material overrides on the sprites, and the tile map just works with it.

5. tk2d doesn't do anything special here that Unity doesn't - you will have to figure out how to do this in Unity. Resources.Load / unloadUnusedAssets will cover most of it.

[Jon]

Thanks for the quick reply. I have one more question:

Is 2dTK designed primarily to target mobile? Because I'd kind of like to only target PCs, but it feels like you guys focus on mobile rather than PC.

[unikronsoftware]

Yes, our main target is mobile. But that's not a bad thing - most mobile specific optimisation tends to give performance gains on PC too

[Jon]

Yes, our main target is mobile. But that's not a bad thing - most mobile specific optimisation tends to give performance gains on PC too

Alright, hope so . My main concern with the mobile centric approach is the resolution issue. How well does 2dtk handle high resolutions, and resolution changes? I.e. 1920x1080, changing fullscreen/windowed, lowering down to 800x600, etc..

[unikronsoftware]

tk2d doesn't handle resolution changes, it is built on Unity so its down to how well Unity handles that. Its always been adequate for me, but YMMV. Resolutions are not a problem.

[Jon]

Thanks for the fast reply. I'm still doing my research, but it looks like 2dtk is right for me. I just need to see how Futile works out for me, since I prefer a code focused approach. The lack of Futile's documentation, community, etc. makes 2dtk ideal, though, as long as I can do near everything in code using 2dtk.

As for resolution, does the entire world stay in memory by default? That's why I figured resolution would be an issue, sprites / tiles not being loaded and all that.

[unikronsoftware]

That depends on how you create it. Unitys asset management is very straightforward for trivial uses which is part of where its appeal lies, but when you try to do complex things with it it can get in your way. FWIW, substantial amounts of tk2d code is simply working around things in Unity...

[Jon]

That depends on how you create it. Unitys asset management is very straightforward for trivial uses which is part of where its appeal lies, but when you try to do complex things with it it can get in your way. FWIW, substantial amounts of tk2d code is simply working around things in Unity...

What do you mean?

[unikronsoftware]

Linking up references in Unity will automatically load assets. If you don't want to automatically load them you will need to use Resources.Load, and work around default behaviour. Unloading an asset is easy enough, but its not as easy to unload a reference to a prefab. Stuff like that.