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3D First-Person Games, So Far
Gernot Ziegler writes: "One of my professors (Stefan Gustavsson) has written
a good summary that explains the history & technical background/innovations that Doom, Quake & Unreal brought with them when they were released.
Check it out." It's a pdf file. Gustavsson ends with a list of hopeful questions about where such games can go, after nearly a decade of running and violence. What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there ;)
The statement about the DOOM file format being "more or less officially documented" is mentioned in several books and web sites that attempt to (re-)write the history of 3D games, but this is wrong. When DOOM was released, the WAD file format was not documented at all. It is only with the release of DOOM II that we got two useful pieces of information from John Carmack: a list of new LINEDEF types used in Doom II, and the source code for the BSP compiler in Objective-C. Several people (including myself) had decoded the WAD file format and written their own BSP compilers in the meantime, but the release of id's code allowed the developers of DOOM editors to compare different algorithms and to improve their editors.
I was a contributor to the "Unofficial Doom Specs" and the main author of DEU (Doom Editing Utilities). From December 1993 to April/May 1994, I spent a large amount of time reverse-engineering the WAD file format until I got the first working editor. To the credit of id Software, I must add that several things changed after the release of DOOM II: the unofficial level editors that were initially frowned upon (maybe not by John Carmack, but at least by Jay Wilbur, the biz guy) were allowed and even encouraged.
When Quake was released (first the QTest1 demo, then the full game), the same things happened, but a bit faster: initially, no information was released about the PAK file format, so I cooperated with Olivier Montannuy and others to write the "Unofficial Quake Specs". But soon after the game was released, John Carmack provided more information about the game, which allowed several good editors to be developed in a relatively short time. The usage of Quake-C allowed a lot of modifications without having to modify the executable, so that was another nice move.
-Raphaël
I predict Verse will make it before anyone else. It features noodity :P
***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***
As 3D maps go, Video games such as Bards Tale used 3D type maps for moving around a city. Not true 3D but boxes, but then, these are older games. Even thinking, I think there were some older C64/Apple demos that used Wolf type 3D maps, but I cant think of any at the moment.
Wolfenstien 3D wasnt the first, but was the most popular. People were building upto realastic games for quite some time.
Some games I think they forgot about, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D, SkyNet, Blood Series, SIN, Solider of Fortune, KingPin, Shadow Warrior, RedNeck Rampage, and TRIBES! Hell, even new titles like Max Payne and upcoming DN4E are leaps above Q3A.
A real history on FPS games, should include 8bit computers and consoles. I think it would be cool for a list of games, dates, and engines they used. Even a quick blurb on what the developers/programmers were thinking when they came out with the games.
Ahh, I'm too old... I remember playing Ball Blazer!
- There was a simple maze/combat game, whose name I don't quite recall (I'm thinking it was MazeWars) which offered a first-person perspective mode. Web searches turn up references to games of similar description on Sun workstations and Xerox Altos, which suggests an eaven earlier date than 1989.
- Spectre, which was released a few years later for the PC under the name Spectre VR, was a wire-frame tank simulation, but you played it from the first-person perspective: as if you were sitting in the tank itself. The Mac version was released in late 1991 or early 1992.
While DOOM may have popularized the FPS genre, it was nowhere near originating it.I will say, however, the DOOM, and Wolfenstein before it, were the first games to produce anything like a sense of real motion on non-workstation class hardware (I'd seen nausea inducing games on SGI workstations back in 1991, but most PCs and Macs couldn't render quickly, or smoothly, enough to fool the eye). I'm still impressed with what DOOM could do on a lowly 40MHz 386.
>It (DOOM) was designed by talented people with good skills and academic degrees in
>computer science.
None of us had degrees in computer science. Romero, Adrian, and I don't have any degrees at all, and Kevin's is in political science.
>It even had a simple but multithreaded "operating system" of its own to handle asynchronous
>updates of graphics and playing sound while performing the game simulation.
No. We made the startup sequence busy and techie in a sort of imitation of the NeXT workstations we were using at the time, but there was no multithreading going on. The sound was done with interrupt driven processing, which doesn't qualify.
With the source code open for years, this should have been easy to check.
>a resolution of only 320x240
320x200
I would take issue with some of the other vague statements made later on, but they aren't pointed enough to debate.
John Carmack
Hey, I had a "first person 3D" game for a 16K RAM TRS-80 Color Computer way back in the early 80s. Of course it didn't live up to Wolf 3D's graphics, but Wolf isn't nearly as good as Doom, either. BTW, the secret to killing whatever big nasty that lay at the end of Dungeons of Daggorath was to drop everything you were carrying except your sword and then flail away it the monster. They monsters would put picking up things on the ground ahead of fighting on their priority list.
This discussion seems to leave out a lot of interesting or important games and focus on just some popular 1st person shooters. There are many multiplayer 3d flying or space simulation games from the early Spasim ( http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/spasim.html ) through to today's Air War and World War 2 Online efforts. Shouldn't many real time strategy games be considered 3d multiplayer games, Homeworld for example. None of the 3d multiplayer role-playing games are discussed, even though they have much of the "different modes of interaction than firing big guns at everything" that the article wishes for (hacking everything with a sword, for example).
Even in the 1st person shooter area, it fails to discuss my favorites Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear. Playing these is not at all like playing Quake with a different colored shirt, as the article suggests. The feel is very different; it is more like a hunting game, where you are both the predator and the prey (I won my most tense and exciting game by firing one (1) well placed shot) with no health packs or body armour that you can pick up to fix yourself.
The article is an interesting discussion of how id software has sold a lot of hardware upgrades; but it seems short on discussing new or different directions for 3d multiplayer games.
I think some form violence will be the main mode of interaction in most 3d multiplayer games for some time to come. Otherwise, why do you need the graphics? I can play an economic game like Railroad Tychoon in 2d just as easily as 3d. As for creating some sense of community; why do you need to generate complex 3d graphics for that when you have something better: language. Imagine how confusing and bandwidth intensive Slashdot would be if it were a 3d multiplayer non-goal oriented environment.
The good folks who did Warbirds have been developing World War II Online ( http://www.wwiionline.com ).
There will be goals in the sense of successfully performing missions, being able to control campaigns by being able to post missions for others, etc. but you can pretty much wander around and drive/fly continuously from west France to Belgium- until the Me109s find you....
If you try this game please note the stringent hardware requirements and that it's a bit buggy/laggy due to the absolutely breathtaking scope of what they're doing.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there
This is definately one thing that has never been, "build it and they will come." Multiple people have tried building 3D worlds and they end up sucking. The main problem is that if a game is goal free, what's the point of being there? The coolness factor wears off in time, and users go back to communicating to people using a single window rather than a full screen environment.
The most likely way something anywhere near the Metaverse will originate will be through the current massive online games. As these game companies expand their product lines, multiple games are going to join into a single multipurpose game engine. The games themselves will only become a part of the social experience you're buying, you'll be able to wander around the "waiting rooms" with your avatar and talk to people. Exciting.
So in conclusing, the beginnings of the Metaverse are already here. Sign up for your EQ account today and get in on the ground floor, I suspect Verant will be providing what you're looking for in 5 years.
There are several goal free "worlds" out there already. Some of the best are:h eronscall/default.asp
EverQuest - Http://www.everquest.com
Asheron's Call - http://www.http://www.microsoft.com/games/zone/as
Ultima Online - http://www.uo.com
And many, many more . . .
Of course, Ultima Oline is only pseudo-3D as I speak, and I am very dissatisfied with what has happened to that game over the years. Goal-less metauniverses are interesting, not only from a gaming point of view, but from an anthropologic standpoint as well. People in the games tend to exemplify the same characteristics as "real" human masses do. Even the sensless crimes are reflected in our games. You name the character trait, and I am willing to bet that it has a reflection in a persistant-state game (what was formerly called a metauniverse).
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
Doom, the beginning?
Ehhhh, that isn't the first FPS, or even the first wildly popular FPS. There's a little game called Wolf 3D, see? It wasn't some archaic thing, every nerd at that time got it and played it.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
... here. (Boy, that was slashdotted fast.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Or, if you're into this free software thing, you might want to check out Verse. It's not quite there yet, but we do have a nice trick or two that ActiveWorlds can't match... If you have a DiVX-codec and bandwidth to burn, check out our showreel. It's pretty nifty.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}