Video game graphics
Examples include MUDs (multi-user dungeons), where players could read or view depictions of rooms, objects, other players, and actions performed in the virtual world; and roguelikes, a subgenre of role-playing video games featuring many monsters, items, and environmental effects, as well as an emphasis on randomization, replayability and permanent death.
Other uses of these overlays were very detailed drawings of the static gaming environment, while the moving objects were drawn by the vector beam.
FMV-based games were popular during the early 1990s as CD-ROMs and Laserdiscs made their way into the living rooms, providing an alternative to the low-capacity ROM cartridges of most consoles at the time.
Full motion video was also used in several interactive movie adventure games, such as The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery and Phantasmagoria.
Games utilizing parallel projection typically make use of two-dimensional bitmap graphics as opposed to 3D-rendered triangle-based geometry, allowing developers to create large, complex gameworlds efficiently and with relatively few art assets by dividing the art into sprites or tiles and reusing them repeatedly (though some games use a mix of different techniques).
Sometimes, the screen will scroll not only forward in the speed and direction of the player character's movement, but also backwards to previously visited parts of a stage.
Examples of games that make use of pseudo-3D techniques include Zaxxon, The Sims and Diablo (isometric/axonometric projection); Ultima VII and Paperboy (oblique projection); Sonic the Hedgehog and Street Fighter II (parallax scrolling); Fonz and Space Harrier (scaling); and Half-Life 2 (skyboxes).
Federica Romagnoli has stated that in her opinion, high-budget 3D game graphics "display...levels of artistry once more commonly found in films"[3] because of their capability to render complex cinematography and CG characters and the optimization of video game consoles and PCs to be able to handle such content.
The principal advantage of this technique is its ability to display a high level of detail on minimal hardware.
Backgrounds in fixed 3D games tend to be pre-rendered two-dimensional images, but are sometimes rendered in real time (e.g. Blade Runner).
The developers of SimCity 4 took advantage of fixed perspective by not texturing the reverse sides of objects (and thereby speeding up rendering) which players could not see anyway.
A similar technique, the skybox, is used in many 3D games to represent distant background objects that are not worth rendering in real time.
Used heavily in the survival horror genre, fixed 3D was first seen in Infogrames' Alone in the Dark series in the early 1990s and imitated by titles such as Ecstatica.
Further examples include the PlayStation-era titles in the Final Fantasy series (Square); the role-playing games Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve II (Square); the action-adventure games Ecstatica and Ecstatica 2 (Andrew Spencer/Psygnosis), as well as Little Big Adventure (Adeline Software International); the graphic adventure Grim Fandango (LucasArts); and 3D Movie Maker (Microsoft Kids).
However, the absence of an avatar can make it difficult to master the timing and distances required to jump between platforms, and may cause motion sickness in some players.
[5] This viewpoint poses some difficulties, however, in that when the player turns or stands with his back to a wall, the camera may jerk or end up in awkward positions.
Augmented reality games typically use 3D graphics on a single flat screen on a smartphone or tablet, or in a head-mounted display.
