2D Sidescroller in a 3D Engine

8-Bit

Howdy all,

I'm going to be working on a game this year for my senior project in school and I wanted to make a 2D side scrolling game that utilizes 3D graphics. I see that Polycount is holding a competition for just such a thing, which couldn't have come at a better time. I figured that there might be somebody who could help point me in the right direction. I have no experience programming but I can handle building the assets and creating the animation. Currently I'm planning on using the UDK engine to make this all happen but I don't know where to begin without the aid of a programmer, or if there's perhaps a more user friendly engine out there somewhere that I should be looking for.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any help you may provide!

natetheartist

check out hourences.com and also look up a guy called chris Abeluhn (or something like that).

Their stuff is preeeeeety good for UDK.

As far as the tech side of setting up a game, thats a big task.

You can start by creating a camera actor in UDK found in the generic browser under actor classes.
From there you can set up kismet that attaches the view to the camera, then lock it to one access of movement.

Hopefully this can help you get a small start. I'll try to find time to give a better reply later.

Bal

Check this out :
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CameraTechnicalGuide.html#Example%20Side-Scrolling%20Camera
UDN in general is a great resource if you're using UDK, don't forget to use it.

JValencia

Here is a tutorial specifically for Side-Scrolling:
http://widff.co.uk/DevBlog/?p=777

If you ever run into any issues, deferentially go on UDN like Bal said. Lots of documentation can be found there for almost any issue you run across into.

Ben Apuna

If you decide to go with Unity it's relatively easy to setup most of the coding. Here's an example project http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/2d-gameplay-tutorial