While I love the world of 2D gaming, and will never personally leave it for my own enjoyment, I can't help but think its a bit hopeless trying to iterate the hundreds of stories that brew daily in my head through a two-dimensional game. I have many great stories that I'd love to see made into games, but they would never be received, in my opinion, by a wide audience, because we, as a gaming society, perceive 2D games as aged.
The rare 2D game gets out that has some merit to its name and reaches a wide audience; Braid and Limbo are to XBLA games that come to mind. In this day and age, however, generally, a game developer/designer is stuck with a 3D environment: gamers want 3D games.That being said, I've been looking into some different platforms on which I could start developing 3D games. I've been recommended to learn C#, C++, XNA, Dark BASIC, and a slew of others, but I was curious what 64Digit's community had to say on the subject. Suggestions on languages/platforms to learn and/or thoughts on the 2D vs. 3D gaming of today and yesterday are welcome, as are any other comments deemed necessary by their makers.~IP
Good luck. No idea about "professional" languages, but I suppose Unity would be a good start… don't rip me to pieces, guys!
And I, personally, would love more games in the style of Limbo - see programmers and artists do things that were not possible back in the 90's for 2D games in times when 2D games are a minority (barring indie ones).Some games suit 3D environments, some games don't.
So are we referring to 3D environments or 3D gameplay? Because there are several games that can work without one or the other. The new Donkey Kong Country is 3D, but it's also a platformer. Kirby (what few 3D ones they had) is also a platformer. SSB (bless its heart) is a platformer, even though that's what it requires.
3D gameplay, on the other hand, I find more fun, but much less straightforward. Though exploring is definitely something people enjoy in 3D games, they can become lost much more easily with that Z axis. When you have to look up, down, all around for aliens that are trying to eat your heart, it can be hectic, which translates to fun for some and frustration for others.However, 3D platformers tend to impress me for some reason.I have no idea what the hell I'm arguing.XNA is a terrific framework. It facilitates development very well, and it gives you easy access to a huge range of platforms with little extra work (PC, Xbox 360, Zune, & Windows 7 Phone).
It really depends on what you are trying to do with your game and how flexible it needs to be. But there is plenty of good choices, so base what you want to do, how much time you have/want to spend on it, and your own personal skill.
I think the above commenters have basically said this, but make sure you have a good reason for doing 3D - the "number of dimensions" choice should serve the game concept, not the other way round.
If you are just getting into 3D, aka learning the basic 3D concepts, I'd suggest C#/XNA, because it's easy to learn so you don't have to spend all your time struggling with the language-specific bits. For pure learning-of-3D, I'd really suggest C++/OpenGL but in all probability you don't know C++, which can take a while to get used to.
I played with C++ a few years back, but didn't stick with it like I had wanted. I'm going to give XNA a try and see how I like it, plus developing for the Xbox 360 sounds a bit fun ^_^