Who wrote the 3D routines for Unreal and how is it done?

[ImmortalA1000]

If you look at the 3D levels of Unreal, the only levels I bother with, it's pretty obvious you could have done some sort of rally type game with so many scaling objects on screen.

Does anybody know what trick/feature is used (if any) to make this awesome 3D routine? I seem to remember 3 decades ago reading about it using some feature/trick of OCS and hence the limited colours on each section being scaled. There was a PC/SNES Rally game by Europress where the A1200 release got canned as it 'was not powerful enough' but this game is more impressive than what is going on in that PC DOS 486 for home use at best era game.

Two of the three programmers listed on the game never did another Amiga game according to HOL links. Crazy!

Why is it all the best game engines are never sold/shared/reused? This, Turrican 3, Lotus II, Beast 1, Elfmania/Shadow Fighter etc etc

[saimon69]

I did mail some time ago Frank Sauer and ask him same question and he said that unreal sources got lost
However it seems is using a 320x100 routine in dual playfield (hence only 8 colors) for all the objects in foreground; a similar routine was used for Drivin force and i wish someone build a proper Power Drift clone with that

[jotd]

for me the impressive parts are the 2D parts...

Why is it all the best game engines are never sold/shared/reused? This, Turrican 3, Lotus II, Beast 1, Elfmania/Shadow Fighter etc etc

because they're not really engines. The code is reused from one game to another but an engine has a "generic" feature that isn't present here.

Turrican 3 source is public and available BTW.

Digging in the supercars 2 source and hacking it (a lot), the "engine" is not generic at all.

And the assets (specially graphics) have a custom format which is specific to the game (specially sizes)

If you want an engine, there are a lot of them around (RedPill, Scorpion ...) although I'd like an engine that allows to code in C or asm around it.

[grond]

Both the 2D and 3D sections are impressive from a technical point of view but to me are also proof of how impressive coding alone doesn't make a good game...

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by jotd

for me the impressive parts are the 2D parts...



because they're not really engines. The code is reused from one game to another but an engine has a "generic" feature that isn't present here.

Turrican 3 source is public and available BTW.

Today nobody is really up to that sort of coding level as Turrican III on OCS/ECS, hardly any were back then when brand new A500s/600s were on sale in the shops still A bit too late now...but back then Turrican III was a work of art and perhaps a phone call to Factor 5 from other publishers wanting very similar games would have been a good idea?

What you are talking about is a game construction/development tool like those used by Cinemaware or Codemasters on the C64 to fleece thousands out of Mastertronic for bugger all effort by selling people some rubbish with some badly written manual in a big box.

A game engine is exactly what I am talking about in this context, it is the guts of the ASM 68k core that pushes stuff into copper/blitter/DACS,68k and RAM 50/60fps in those games.

If I wanted another 'sprite scaling' racing game of my own graphic/audio design within all the technical restrictions of what Lotus II is clearly limited to....I ring up Shaun and ask him the specs for all the bitmaps and samples and music format and then send them over to him with his fee and he plugs them in and there you have it...your new rally game or F1 game and it isn't shit like all the racing games that aren't written by Shaun.

IF a coder at a development team was worth a shit the he could easily work out what needs to be done via an unprotected/disassembled copy of Lotus II and a few phone calls to Shaun. Not my fault most people trying to convert 68000 based arcade games to Amiga were clueless nob-jockeys is it? That's their problem, my problem was all my wages being spent on bullshit back then.

I am proud to say I had just one tape with 5 copied cartridge games for my C64 and 130+ original games.....on the Amiga I quickly realised what kind of scum was in charge of deciding who got what contract for conversion and what was deemed worth 25 quid of my wages so I INSTANTLY turned to try before you buy pirate disks. I only bought about 15 original games on Amiga but then there are only 10 games worth a shit technically you can run on a 1mb non AGA Amiga anyway so I still got shafted

But the REAL reason this never happened is some greedy scumbag owners of the biggest software publishers with ZERO respect for Amiga owners just farmed out their licenses to any ass-wipe who claimed he could write such things and the publishers then put any old choppy wank onto disk and shoved them on shop shelves and BINGO people look at SF2 Amiga and quickly decide PC is a better games machine based on the US Gold PC DOS release of SF2 on the shelf to the left. VERY DAMAGING TO AMIGA! The farming out of conversions and releasing whatever bollox they finally came up with regardless of technical abilities proven by other game engines was just easier. Lazyness and lack of respect by UK Software publishers....who then got shafted when people with taste moved to consoles where you got something worth a shit for your money based on abilities of host hardware (remember Megadrive had a shit sound chip...just move on and accept it or get a different console etc if you liked good music as well as good coding/graphics).

Turrican III looks like a great Megadrive game, sounds like a great SNES game....that's how ALL Amiga games can be in the hands of talented developers....a rare breed in Amiga dev community.

It's a lot easier for Shaun Southern to plug in your bitmaps to make a new racing game than someone doing it illegally....hence no other racing games worth a crap on Amiga ever came out. Throw enough money at him and he would do it no problem.

Ditto for Rastan Saga Amiga version and a phone call to Reflections and get them to use the awesome Beast 1 overground level game engine code to do another game, just swap and go! The hard work making Beast 1 ASM code a reality is done, this is essentially a second production run of an already set up manufacturing process vs Beast 1 effort needed being the first release candidate prototype coming out the end of the production line.

The 3D routines in Unreal are more than adequate to rival the so called cutting edge game engine of Network Q Rally by Europress showcasing SNES and PC DOS (486 era at the time). And yet no AGA version as promised ever turned up. All they had to do was call up those guys and offer them the job.


What I am talking about is like the quick and dirty creation of R-Type on C64 by Rainbow Arts after Activision cancelled the SUPERIOR but slow to develop original C64 conversion. All Rainbow Arts did was pull out the Katakis graphics (might as well seeing as Activision got the game banned from sale worldwide in the courts) and plug in some vague resemblance to R-Type in 6526-0-vision and SID-o-rama audio. Why wasn't this sort of deal being done all the time on Amiga when it was painfully apparent 99% of Amiga games are NOT coded by talented people (some of that is because they are converting some shit ST game engine...and I mean shit because it is not as good as say Lotus II on the ST...like Super Hang-On by that ZZKJ talentless idiot). ST is the easiest 16bit computer to write games for in the world FFS. WTF was he doing at Activision, why was he even being paid? His Amiga games are even more pathetic, luckily Super Hang-on for Megadrive is 'US Gold' 16bit quality so people think Amiga version is good...erm no.

It's still a re-usable game engine....as long as they are not some clueless C coding prick trying to do Vulcan Venture on the A500 or some other daft dream scenario

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by grond

Both the 2D and 3D sections are impressive from a technical point of view but to me are also proof of how impressive coding alone doesn't make a good game...

There is nothing wrong with the 3D section at all, perhaps you are just not that type of gamer. It's fast, smooth, the dragon doesn't obscure too much of your view etc and the coding is of sufficient quality it is the users who are making the mistakes and failing at finishing a level and not the fault of choppy game code some C coder who handled the project and shit out some US Gold quality bollocks......which is usually the reason Amiga games are shit lol

[saimon69]

Those routines for 3D were so good that i would love to see a clone of Galaxy Force or Power Drift use them

[jotd]

@ImmortalA1000 yes, I agree: the devs master their engine and can create more games like that with different graphics & sounds by copying & tweaking their source code. But changing sound and graphics (and levels) doesn't make a new game.

If you want to create a top down racer from Supercars 2 sources (which I have) it may be possible

Well, ATM I'd just like new tracks for this game and noone has provided me some, let alone a whole new set of graphics

Side note: a lot of Lotus 1 code is reused on Supercars 2. So devs already do what you say.

[skan]

There's a similar pretty impressive 3D game called Shockwave, routines like those were pretty common in the early 90's IIRC (Ah, the good old world before texture mapping! )

[roondar]

Shockwave (I'm assuming you mean the 3DO original here) uses texture mapped polygonal GFX for the terrain and many of the objects though, it's not a pseudo-3d game

[Belgarath]

http://hol.abime.net/1911 ShockWave :P

[roondar]

I stand corrected! Cool stuff, I'll check it out