Best 3d Game Engines For Being Creative With?

[Korban]

While all based around the same general idea there's a few sides to this, so I'll try to break it down clearly and concisely.

In regards to Amiga FPS games (and anything else that may be relevant that is in "3d"), what would people consider the most flexible when it comes to utilizing it's engine for an Amiga specific/original title?
Be it via editors, source being available (and able to be compiled/assembled without huge amounts of work, majority of dependencies met, etc.), Amiga originals, or multiplatform/open source?
While Im focusing on FPS style games any other genres in 3d would be interesting to hear about too.

For this part of the question the sky is the limit in terms of available hardware resources (ie. emulation only is fine). Im just curious what the best engine available is for 68k AmigaOS should someone want to go all out and try to push the envelope vs what is available currently.

Additionally, in a similar vein, should someone want to try to make an original title using an existing engine, but for "real" 68k hardware what engine is the most flexible? Visuals dont matter too much here, something Wolf3d-esque would more than suffice, but as above, the priority overall is to make something that very much has its own flavor.

I dont have plans to do this myself currently. Too many existing projects to finish up 1st, but it is something Id wondered about before, and given the recent rise in people being creative on their Amiga's some sort of pool of info on the subject could hopefully prove useful to some people.

Cheers.

[gimbal]

Are there even any? Publicly available, specifically. It seems very premature to be speaking of "the most flexible", at this point maybe you'd just have to be happy with something that works if you can imagine that a whole list of missing features was already implemented but is never going to because the author made the mistake of having a personal life.

[d4rk3lf]

Dread Engine.
KK released SDK for it. You build level on Doom Builder 2, and you can compile it and run on your Amiga. It's great.. not fully polished, but people created lot's of levels with it.

[ Show youtube player ]

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Korban

Im just curious what the best engine available is for 68k AmigaOS should someone want to go all out and try to push the envelope vs what is available currently.

Alien Breed 2, Obviously.

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php...breed&page=211

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by VladR

Alien Breed 2, Obviously.

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php...breed&page=211

Karlos can paint a pretty accurate picture about the user friendliness of the available tools, but it seems doable if you invest the time to do it. Downside is that this engine sucks on pretty much everything thats not a fast 060. ;-) - if thats a concern for the OP.

I forget the name of the engine but there was one mythical never released engine that seemed too good to be true, and the sources might still be around… Looked like the Quake engine, basically.

Edit: Ah, yes.. The Enforce engine

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If my intel is correct, the guy that wrote that engine is same guy behind this:

https://enfusionengine.com/

[Tsak]

A couple more beyond what is mentioned already :

-Gloom : probably the most popular Amiga fps engine for modding in recent years. I've seen excellent total mods for it, even some very experimental ones that completely break the mold of the original game.
-Fears : afaik this game also came with its own editor and the game itself has many interesting features . I've never seen anyone making anything with it though.

[saimon69]

Breathless has been worked a bit on too lately, not sure on the state of the tools there either

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Karlos can paint a pretty accurate picture about the user friendliness of the available tools, but it seems doable if you invest the time to do it. Downside is that this engine sucks on pretty much everything thats not a fast 060. ;-) - if thats a concern for the OP.

Well, thanks to the efforts of @abu_the_monkey, LevelEd is actually pretty enjoyable to use. I've been completely out of time for it recently but it's definitely a lot easier than it ever was before. The other editors (for assets and game linking), however, are a bit of a pain. You just need to be very careful with them.

I forget the name of the engine but there was one mythical never released engine that seemed too good to be true, and the sources might still be around… Looked like the Quake engine, basically.

Edit: Ah, yes.. The Enforce engine

[ Show youtube player ]

I don't want to be that guy, but Enforce was Quake. When it first appeared as an early demo I was very impressed but I couldn't help noticing the striking similarity to literally everything. The 6DOF viewmodel, moving BSPs, the axis oriented texturing, MIP mapping, stepped perspective correction, affine model textures and the shadow mapping.

So I disassembled it. Now, there is a chance I'm wrong about this, but unless the author independently thought of the all the same few dozen exact symbol names for various identifiers in the unstripped code - including stuff from the quakec interpreter, it was created by modifying the quake sources. Likely from the leaked sources.

The v0.1 demo is still on aminet. Running the executable through the strings command on Linux gives these:

worldspawn
path_corner
info_player_start
info_teleport_destination
light
func_door
func_door_secret
func_button
func_plat
func_wall
trigger_once
trigger_multiple
trigger_teleport
trigger_secret
trigger_changelevel
trigger_counter
trigger_push
classname
origin
angle
model
target
targetname
spawnflags
style
message
delay
speed
count

Anyone who has ever written any QuakeC modification will recognise these entity attributes/behaviours immediately. And if you're not, you can just find half of the above qc side definitions here https://github.com/id-Software/quake...iggers.qc#L462

I'm sure it was just a coincidence (¬_¬)

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Tsak

-Gloom : probably the most popular Amiga fps engine for modding in recent years. I've seen excellent total mods for it, even some very experimental ones that completely break the mold of the original game.

I dimly recall a version of Gloom that involved you walking around the place wielding what looked like a hotdog, still firing the same plasma bolts but sounding like Dirty Harry's signature Magnum. Compared to the original/deluxe, it was dire.

[Karlos]

So while not Amiga specific, if you want a highly moddable, well-documented engine and tooling, it has to be said, Quake itself has you covered for the higher end 68K side.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I dimly recall a version of Gloom that involved you walking around the place wielding what looked like a hotdog, still firing the same plasma bolts but sounding like Dirty Harry's signature Magnum. Compared to the original/deluxe, it was dire.

Here's a page with most of the available Gloom content, maps and mods, including map reviews and other info:
https://nitta.sakuraweb.com/gloom-mo...formation.html

Biggest issue with this engine is that there is no way to change the plasma attacks basically. Which severely limits what you can do gameplay wise. But other than that the engine itself has many cool features.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Here's a page with most of the available Gloom content, maps and mods, including map reviews and other info:
https://nitta.sakuraweb.com/gloom-mo...formation.html

It's there! Gloom 3 Zombie Edition. Dirt Harry's Hotdog.

The best features of the engine as I recall were the two player split screen, mini game in game (to get extra lives, that was cool), rotating structures and moving walls/crushers. Visually, it had some nice transparency tricks too, like the green tinted windows in the spacehulk levels.

It had a lot of promise. I would have loved to have seen it with variable height floors and ceilings and different floor/ceiling textures for the obvious zones that would create. Add some weapons variation and hitscanning types and you would have had a good answer to Doom.

[eXeler0]

I feel I have to ask, does anyone know if the Breathless code was ever released or leaked?

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Karlos

So while not Amiga specific, if you want a highly moddable, well-documented engine and tooling, it has to be said, Quake itself has you covered for the higher end 68K side.

As you know, I do Quake maps, but when it comes to modding, we are quite limited on Amiga side compared to PC as we have basically either the Clickboom version or Novas winquake port which are both pretty much Vanilla quake.
Id love to see some degree of mod-ability compared to now. Even just be able to populate a quake map with 2d monsters would be cool + custom weapons and sounds.
For level editing, Trenchbroom is really a good tool already.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by Karlos

It's there! Gloom 3 Zombie Edition. Dirt Harry's Hotdog.

The best features of the engine as I recall were the two player split screen, mini game in game (to get extra lives, that was cool), rotating structures and moving walls/crushers. Visually, it had some nice transparency tricks too, like the green tinted windows in the spacehulk levels.

Yeah, the transparency tricks are excellent. In effect these are wall transparencies, the game allows you to use them instead of decals for some neat effects like fences and other stuff. Nita's mods (like 'Did it came from the desert?' 'Jecht battle' and 'Spekkio battle DX') use them extensively and paired with some good JRPG pixel art, the results are spectacular.

Originally Posted by Karlos

It had a lot of promise. I would have loved to have seen it with variable height floors and ceilings and different floor/ceiling textures for the obvious zones that would create. Add some weapons variation and hitscanning types and you would have had a good answer to Doom.

Agreed. I'm not sure whether variable heights would be possible without major rewrites of the engine. But the engine definitely seems to have room for improvements. Hitscan weapons is the biggest imho, different floor-ceiling textures per sector as well perhaps. The game also has a very intricate (and impressive) particle system which could be used for neat effects. I can't imagine any reason why proper skybox wouldn't be possible either (modders just abused the ceilings to make it look like it).
Other stuff that don't look quite good, like f.e. the excessive player bobbing and the -weird, square based FOV (which dims colors) could also perhaps be worked out to improve them.

Other than that, -afaik- most of these mods were done with whatever resources/tools were available and as such they are quite unstable and prone to crashes. It's a shame no proper coder has ever looked into the sources to do bugfixing, stabilize the editor/tools or expand the engine further.

Originally Posted by eXeler0

I feel I have to ask, does anyone know if the Breathless code was ever released or leaked?

Yes, it is available. Check this post from the recent Breathless thread : https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...86&postcount=1
@Paraj has made various new additions and optimizations to the engine.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Downside is that this engine sucks on pretty much everything thats not a fast 060. ;-) - if thats a concern for the OP.

Not anymore thanks to Karlos and Abu works.
The game fly with a 68030/50mhz.

[rabidgerry]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Not anymore thanks to Karlos and Abu works.
The game fly with a 68030/50mhz.

Does it really? When I'm playing it I get acceptable framerate with my TF1260 but only when overclocked at 100mhz. And when I say acceptable I mean anywhere between 15-25 FPS. I wouldn't call that flying. I also have to make a few concessions on the display options like making the screen smaller etc.

So I'm interested to hear how a 030 @50mhz can get that to "fly" as I must be doing something wrong.

I will say this though, their work has turned the game from a slideshow on my system to an acceptable and enjoyable game. The original AB3D2 was a slideshow for me so when I first tried theirs I couldn't believe I I could actually play it.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by rabidgerry

Does it really? When I'm playing it I get acceptable framerate with my TF1260 but only when overclocked at 100mhz. And when I say acceptable I mean anywhere between 15-25 FPS. I wouldn't call that flying. I also have to make a few concessions on the display options like making the screen smaller etc.

So I'm interested to hear how a 030 @50mhz can get that to "fly" as I must be doing something wrong.

I will say this though, their work has turned the game from a slideshow on my system to an acceptable and enjoyable game. The original AB3D2 was a slideshow for me so when I first tried theirs I couldn't believe I I could actually play it.

You surely won't run the game at full detail on a 68030 but It is now very much playable. I still have it in box and it is night and day between the patched version and the original one.
I'm maybe a bit more tolerant about fps thought.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Not anymore thanks to Karlos and Abu works.
The game fly with a 68030/50mhz.

Can you run at 1*1 full screen and enable frame counter?
I have to see this to believe it and get a reference for what you call ”flies” ;-)
Edit: Then toggle to lower quality, and show what screen size you play at?

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Can you run at 1*1 full screen and enable frame counter?
I have to see this to believe it and get a reference for what you call ”flies” ;-)

Well if you expect the game to run in a decent frame rate in 1*1 full screen on a 68030/50 you'll be disappointed obviously but It seems to me a bit of an excessive demand.

And my flying statements was when compared to the original version that was struggling even with the lowest settings, not to 2024 players expectations.