XNA 2D Game Engine with Lighting and Shadows

Our 2D tech is available in SunBurn 1.3.2: http://www.synapsegaming.com/

See the latest 2D video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5YU8LYcQvE

Original description: 2D top-down demo I put together to test using SunBurn (http://www.synapsegaming.com/) lighting and shadows in sprite based games. The results are excellent, and this technique also works great for side-scrollers.

For the sprites I baked down the XNA skinning example "Dude" character into animated frames, and made some crude developer art pipes. :P

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• XNA
• 2D
• game
• engine
• lighting
• shadows
• sprite
• scroller
• top
• down
• SunBurn

[MrKnightCraft]

its 3d the objects are moving in all 3 directions (the light can move up and down

the movement is 2d and maybe the 3D objects are just plane 2ds but its still 3d

[bobthecbuilder]

@MrKnightCraft the only thing 3D in the video is the light gizmo (only used and seen in the editor, not in-game). the scene, player, and pipes are all traditional 2D sprites. ;)

[Viking009]

Is that forward or deferred shading?

[bobthecbuilder]

@Viking009 I believe this project was using forward rendering - but SunBurn Game Engine supports both forward and deferred rendering, so it could be either of them.

[bobthecbuilder]

@AaronPr19 Really? Well it's a good thing we're using 2D sprites then, which I guess makes this 2D (as mentioned above). :)

[bobthecbuilder]

@MasterOfAllVideos Nope, it's using the SunBurn Game Engine's 2D rendering :)

Check out the link in the description for more info - awesome stuff! :)

[bobthecbuilder]

@mrdkaaa no height maps used, normal maps can be used for bump / specular highlights but are not necessary for lighting and shadows. :)

[mrdkaaa]

@bobthecbuilder Hmm, no height/normal maps, but just plain flat 2D?

[areyoucallingmeauser]

This might help clarify some things.

There is some depth in almost all 2d due to draw-order. Whenever two 2d objects overlap there is implied depth as one is "on top" of the other.

[TheodenN]

This is more like 2.5D.

[lukechalfantt]

God, some people are so dense... I can't believe the amount of people who don't believe this is 2d.