Prototype
HD-2D Render Port
The same battle, rendered in 2.5D
Rebuilding what the camera sees without touching a line of what the game does.
The idea
HD-2D puts hand-drawn sprites on a real 3D stage: the ground has depth and perspective, the characters stay flat pixel art and turn to face the camera. It gives pixel work a sense of place that a top-down plane cannot.
The question was whether an existing, shipped, balanced game could be given that treatment without becoming a different game.
The constraint that shaped everything
The simulation does not change. Not the pathing, not the ranges, not the timings, not one balance value.
This is not modesty about scope. Every balance decision in the live game is backed by player data, and a renderer that quietly alters how units move or how far they see invalidates all of it. Keeping the sim untouched is what lets the port stay comparable to the thing it came from.
How it is built
A 3D battlefield built from purchased modular environment assets, with the existing troop sprites billboarded on top so they always face the camera.
The post-processing grade came over from an earlier 2.5D prototype rather than being written again, which is the kind of reuse that only exists because the earlier project was built to be borrowed from.
The work is sequenced in gated phases, each one ending in something runnable, so the port can be abandoned at any gate without leaving a half-converted renderer behind.