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2.5D is more of a retronym after the age of "full" 3D engines came to be. Before then, we'd call anything 3D that looked 3D, and the lines do certainly get blur
by chungy 8y ago
2.5D is more of a retronym after the age of "full" 3D engines came to be. Before then, we'd call anything 3D that looked 3D, and the lines do certainly get blurred.
Wolfenstein 3D for example is practically a 2D game, you could redisplay it as a top-down shooter reminiscent of early 1980s games (much like the early Wolfenstein games, actually), and not lose anything. There is no Z axis in consideration for any game logic.
Doom, on the other hand, actually does have a Z axis, determining which floors can and cannot be reached, how they are displayed, whether projectiles hit enemies or not, and so forth. The (original) engine and map format don't allow any rooms-over-rooms though, so it is still considered 2.5D -- somewhere in between a 2D game and Quake.
- blihp 8y agoI remember many of the isometric drawn/pre-rendered games with a fixed PoV (i.e. Zaxxon etc) being described as 2.5D back in the day. We knew they weren't exactly 3D but then again, they weren't your typical 2D platformer/side-scroller either. Battlezone was considered a 3D game back in its day so the rendering technology wasn't really the dividing line. It was more a question of if the game environment being navigated was 3D and if it had a reasonably realistic spatial representation on the screen.
- Andrex 8y agoTo make things more confusing, 2.5D these days is also often used to describe (actually) 3D-rendered sidescrollers, like the New Super Mario Bros. games.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoIndeed. The term 2.5D has been obscured to the point that it no longer carries any useful meaning. We should all stop using it. New Super Mario Bros is a 2D platformer with 3D graphics.
- bluedino 8y agoZaxxon was definitely 3D. You scrolled forward, could move side to side, and could also change height (and you had to, to avoid obstacles and shoot enemies)