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2D & 3D Graphics Techniques

Edit on Github | Updated: 20th December 2025

This is a Work in progress page to list interesting articles on 2D graphics techniques to create cool effects.

2D Graphics effects

How Doom’s Melting Screen Works

The YouTuber decino has created an excellent video explaining how the 2d melting screen transition works in the original Doom. It is well worth a watch!

Pseudo 3d Roads

For information on how to create 2D games that look pseudo 3d (e.g outrun) Check out: Lou’s Pseudo 3d Page


3D Graphics effects

Sonic R’s “Impossible” Fading transparency

The video by GameHut provides a technical breakdown of a challenging graphical achievement on the Sega Saturn: implementing transparent object fading despite the hardware’s limitations.

The Saturn’s sprite-based polygon rendering caused transparency corruption when polygons were distorted, leading to objects popping in, as seen in Daytona. The solution involved a clever two-step process called “twelve layer transparency”: first, stripping away the polygon’s Gouraud shading by storing and calculating three additional sets of lighting data [03:43], and then using the Saturn’s eight available color calculation ratio hardware registers to fade the now-unlit texture over the background [04:07].