What concepts do you already know or understand? Have you done any programming yet? Have you taken a look at game engines at all? Have you done anything with 2d yet?

@pbivens67 What about my other questions? What did you use for the 2d games? Engine? Language?

The reason I'm asking is to get more idea what you know and possibly have a better idea what would be a good next way to go to get into 3d.

@JoeJ Hey, someone else knows Magic Carpet!!!! It's always been one of my faves.

JoeJ said:

Main problem is content. Modeling characters and animating them becomes a showstopper quickly for a single guy.

This is a lot of why I'm asking what they know and/or have done. I'm not sure the whole doing sprites instead of 3d models is really the best recommendation since it still takes artistic skill to do so. I would recommend instead drawing 3d primitives as the “3d version” of using circles and squares for 2d.

And just like 2d, you probably want something much more simple. You could easily do some of the same things you do in 2d(Breakout, Asteroids, Pong), but do it in 3d, either constrained to a plane or even with gameplay expanded into 3d in some cases.

I was more worried about what languages, etc… they may know so I could maybe suggest a specific game engine that would be a closer fit for what they are already familiar with.

JoeJ said:
Yeah, why can't we get one of those remakes of that? Still the best approach to mix strategy elements with FPS to me.

100% It is actually one of my “dream” projects I think I will actually eventually do, just have some other stuff to do first and some learning and practice to get in so I can do it properly.

JoeJ said:
Doom is quite ‘simple’ too, as it's just a twin stick shooter with ego perspective. Complexity like BSP trees can be avoided, also a full understanding of 3D math is not yet needed. Breakout might be already a tick harder because fast physics.

If you do it with “traditional” 3d instead of the BSP trees and “fake” 3d DOOM actually uses, I could see it being more simple…but there is still some complexity to it. I think Breakout would be much easier because you don't really need physics so much, since it is simple movement and collision response(which is technically physics, but the simpler kind).

JoeJ said:
Not really a precise answer. Did some realtime 2D games like Pong / PacMan already? What else?

Indeed, please tell us what you have done, and what you used to do it with. There are plenty of options to choose from to move into 3d, but what my opinion thinks the best one for you is will depend on your answers to these questions.

Regarding content, one can likely get at least some models from free (or cheap) collections, which should remove much of the time constraint otherwise involved in such things.

JoeJ said:
Yeah, why can't we get one of those remakes of that?

Someone did actually start making such a thing, as I recall. It looks like the project has seen slow updates over a fairly long period.

Here's a link, should you be interested:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/269610