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History of "Gods Eye View" 3D Game Perspective?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "A lot of games today feature a 2D or 3D 'instant replay' system that lets you watch the game you just played on a map or from a third person 3D view. Some multi-player games also let you watch live games in play this way. I'm trying make a time-line on the history of this feature and was hoping the Slashdot crowd could help me out with names, dates and other info on games that had replay features. I think the Army SIMNET tank simulator was the first to have this (called the 'flying carpet') sometime in the late '80s early '90s. References to games with replay are harder to find because it usually wasn't advertised. I'd particularly like to find the first game with user controlled 2D and 3D game replay/spectating and the first replay systems with automatic camera controls creating cinematic 'wide world of sports' quality real-time movies of the game."
I seem to vaugely remember the old car driving game 'Stunts' having this. I'm sure there's plenty of information floating around the interweb about it. This is in contrast to a game like "Test Drive ", which I don't remember having the feature.
Anyone else remember this? Or am I making it up?
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If this sig is witty, it was probably borrowed from someone else's sig.
The earliest racing game I can remember with this style of god-view replay was Papyrus's "Nascar", released in 1994. Here's a web site about the game, with some screenshots -- the screenshots that show more than one car are from the built-in replay system, which gave multiple angles of replay either during the race (when paused) or after the race. I'm not sure if you could save or edit replays, although these capabilities were added in later versions. Same goes for the TV1 and TV2 cameras, which simulated live TV coverage of a real NASCAR race, by following the car you selected with various camera views -- this existed in later versions of the game, and certainly existed in advanced form by 1997's Gran Prix Legends (also a Papyrus title), but I'm not sure if it was part of the original Nascar release.
Again, not sure if this was the first racing game with this feature, but it's the first one I remember.
Still nobody cares.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
who is it that is suing you for patent infringment for using a 3rd person cam in your software?
It really pisses me off in a game such as Toca Race Driver 2, where with such pretty graphics and fun physics you could get some really cool replays happening if only the replay engine provided a reasonable set of controls.
steve
the original civilization (if not civ 2) had a replay at the end of the game, with a minimap showing power influence over the course of the game. you had zero control over the replay and didn't even see any action, other than the map changing color depending on cities springing up and who owned them, but it was nice watching your color slowly branch out and take over the world. (for some reason i think this feature got taken out of later releases in the franchise.)
Developer: Dynamix, Publisher: Sierra, Year: 1991. Damn, I played alot of this game. It was the first game I ever saw on a computer making use of an Adlib sound card. It had playback and I think it had a free moving camera, can't remember exactly though.
Microprose Formula 1 GP (the first one - 1992 or earlier) had replay functionality - not 'God's Eye', but lots of camera angles anyway. You had to have lots of RAM (for the day) to be able to use it. A 1Mb Amiga 500 didn't cut it.
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The most excellent Falcon 4, an awesome F16 combat flight sim, had the replay feature. It allowed the selective storage and replay of complex combat missions, as a 3d wire frame display of relative positions and vectors, as a learning tool so you could figure out how you got killed.
The current Free Falcon software is also truly excellent. I am fairly sure the replay feature is still there.
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
Man, that game was awesome. When my friends and I found out that you could hit the cow and it would "moo", that's all we wanted to do.
Anyhow, it had both "ghost racers" that represented your best lap, and a replay mode when you cracked up spectacularly.
This game was released in 1984/85 by EA Games for the Commodore 64. Still the funnest racing game I have played. I beleive you could replay the entire race after the fact. Great way to waste time when you were 15 in the 80's For a full review goto http://rds.planetflibble.com/
Offhand I recall from Bungie:
Bungie Released Marathon 12/21/1994 - you could save "films" and during film playback you could cycle through the viewpoints of the other players (in other words still locked in 1stPP).
Bungie Released Myth: The Fallen Lords 11/14/1997 - you could save "films" and during playback you could turn the "auto-follow" camera on and it would try to display the most interesting action in the game in a somewhat cinematic style. It worked reasonably well. On 12/31/1998 Bungie Released Myth II: Soulblighter which had a slightly improved "auto-follow" camera (about 10% better). Oh and this is all 3rdPP.
Sadly, Bungie abandoned replay code in their subsequent games which was a great loss for the fan community - there's nothing like spanking somebody's ass and having the evidence to back it up, especially ten years later when you're old and tired and you don't have any friends anymore.
I'm not sure how relevant you'll find this, but replay systems have long been used in games to display rolling demos. The stuff that's going on in the background while you're prompted to "INSERT COULD"? That's often a demo. The only difference here is that the player wasn't able to record their own.
No lawsuits or patents going on here...
Way back in 90-91 I wrote several replay systems for the Virtual World Entertainment multiplayer cockpit simulator games "BattleTech" and "Red Planet". One replayed the game on a 2d scrolling map (overhead view), another generated a play-by-play description of the game (text plus a map with highlight points marked), a third did a cinimatic 3d view that could either be live or a recorded game. You could manually control the cameras or let the computer do it.
I was thinking about this the other day and decided I needed to look into the history of this feature. I'm pretty sure other people had 3d replay before me, but couldn't remember if anyone had tried to do the cinematic-style with automatic AI camera control.
Milo from Kangaroo Koncepts
I remember trying to follow Chuck around in some X-plane, then watching the playback as I swerved all over the place behind him, all in a "chase plane" view... I have no idea what year that was, but it was fun.
Witty signature omitted for brevity.
quake1, or more properly, quakeworld was the first i can officially say i remember, for a truly free-controlled observer. maybe heretic, but i'm not sure. i don't know if i'd count racing gamed with a set camera-path/stations.
I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but the old game Netrek had observer slots where people could log in and observe a game as it was played.
Netrek came about in the early 90's and it was played mostly in university computer labs. It's a 2D online game with two teams of 8 players. The object was to capute the other team's planets. The game featured arcade style realtime combat and excellently balanced game mechanics.
Anyway, as the game is being played, up to 4 people could login as observers and basically see things from the point of view of one of the players or from a stationary location. You could switch from player to player at will. To keep things fair, you were limited to observing the players of only one team.
Also, I recall an experimental INL tournament server that could record and playback an entire game.
MobyGames has a chronological list of games, alot with screenshorts.
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The first multiplayer online game I can remember that had a replay mode was Modem Wars by Dan Bunten. It was strictly 2D of course. This was in the mid 1980s, and it was aimed at Commodore 64 owners with a 300 baud modem. Since the data stream to cover everything that was happening in the game had to be so small, it was trivial to put in an option to record it to a file and play it back. So he did.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
I vaguely recall that the old 2D RPG "Empire" on the PLATO IV system had a god's eye view, and that was back in the early 1970s. Don't remember if it had replay though. That surely must have been the first god's eye view, it was probably the first online gaming system ever. We used to call it the PLAY-TO system because of all the great games.
I have a vague recollection of some early Apple ][ sidescroller game that had a replay, also some early Amiga game. Maybe someone else will remember..
That was in what, 1991 or so?
Man, I get that soundtrack stuck in
my head everytime I think of that game.
J
I think "Death Track" and "The Magic Carpet" both had replays (i think).
:))
;)
like everyone else, it's a LONG time since I've played these games and can now only vaguely remember....
oh, just rememberred... Microprose Soccer (2D, WAY OLD), I'm sure they had some sort of "god's eye" replay of goals! (I LOVED this game
oh, the memories of monochrome monitor's.... those were the days
I worked on a prototype networked 3D environment for a TV game show called Cyberzone, which had the "spectator" feature.
There were 5 3D computers in the network, one each generating a first person view and a map view for each of two teams, and then a "virtual camera" in the vision gallery. This was used to get a view into the game zone for the tape, and could select any of the player's viewpoints and many others.
The pilot episode was filmed in late 1991 at Anglia TV in Norwich (England) and was a star network based on 9600 baud serial cables.
By the time the series was actually comissioned in 1993, we had a more robust thin Ethernet solution to the networking problem, and the BBC made one series of the program before it became a casualty of regime change in the organisation.
The program was critically panned, but there was one positive outcome - Craig Charles (of Red Dwarf fame) bought me a drink.
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4D Sports Driving (aka Stunts) already had that feature in 1990...you could choose different camera angles (including a series of TV cameras automatically placed along the track), and you could save replays to disk. Coolest racing game ever...
frotz grue
First "God's Eye View" game I ever heard of, or played. You played one of two (little "g") gods over a board of a "world", with a zoomed view. You could direct your followers in several ways, and do minor miracles, like raising/lowering land, earthquakes, volcanos, floods, swamps, etc. Normally the other god was computer-drive, though it had a multiplayer mode so you could play against someone else.
It came on 5.25" floppies.
Search terms of "populous" and "bullfrog" will get you to some good hits.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Definitely Stunt Island. Besides flying around an island pulling off all sorts of stunts, you could direct your own movies in a quite detailed way.
Myth was one of the first games I remember to put special emphasis on the camera itself, gameplay was pretty good. But the camera thing was the big deal at the time. http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/89360.asp?q =myth
Indy 500 had replays back in 89-90 sort of time. Great for qualifying at the front of the grid and then standing on the brakes and swerving at the start :)
I'm sure Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga did a similar thing at a similar time.
I've got this really silly Modern English research paper due in three weeks, and well, I figured since I'm an aspiring programmer and all I would show my teacher just how "smart" I am by requesting that you all do some research for me. What I need is all the information you can gather from around the web (c'mon, I'm far too lazy to goto - haha! get it?! - the liberry). I also want this information to be about video games and then.
ah crap. can you just write the dang paper for me?
Release by either EA or LucasArts in the late 80s or early (pre 1992?) 90s that had a replay with several options for the camera angle. User controlled was one of the options. I'm too lazy to look up the name.
Lasers Controlled Games!
...had what you're talking about. This was circa 1983. You could either look out of the windshield or straight down on the (very small, gridded) "world". I had a ball flying and dogfighting with that thing, green-screen and all.
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A flying-things racing game where you could set all kinds of view angles / replays.
terpmotors.com
So this is news? It's not like I'm working for the CIA or something. I'm just looking for background on a game feature that I did a lot of work on back in the early 90's. If I get enough data a timeline of will eventually appear on my website.
By the way, it's "Nexialist" which comes from an old A.E. Van Vougt book and is basically just a tech version of "jack of all trades"
Milo from Kangaroo Koncepts
I believe that the 1990 NES Play Action Football had a fly-over instant replay option.
The earliest game I can think of with the "God's-Eye View" perspective is Zaxxon. I can't believe nobody's mentioned it yet.
Those games rocked.
Expensive, but I think I still have dreams about them.
We used to hang out between courses at the Montreal location and when it closed down, there was a lot of stuff to buy.. (being the only francophone location, they couldn't re-sell the "monde virtuel" or "velocité=victoire" stuff elsewhere)
Jaques Villeneuve used to be a regular there between races, when he had the chance to come back to Montreal.
I started playing on version 4, I think, (when you didn't have to remember the coolant flush codes)
Good times...
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I remember Star Wars: Tie Fighter, which came out in 1994 had a pretty good 3D replay, controllable by the user. You could do slo-mo, speed up, pause, and switch from tons of different perspectives and angles. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think Star Wars: X-Wing, which came out in 1993, also had pretty much the same replay system.
Need for speed had replays and I believe it predates (or about the same time) had it. Not every speed in the series had it but I believe it was the first one (or #2) and Porsche unleashed for sure had it.
Seem to rememeber lots of cams and maybe even replay in the boxing game 4D boxing - At least I think it was called 4 d boxing - You could build your own boxers via training and then duke it out in the ring... Neat game that was.
Ant attack had several camera angles so you could switch perspective in the 3D world of Giant Ants and exploding sleep grenades while you jumped about saving maidens in distress... aaahh the good old Sinclair.
It would be interesting to build something like that with todays physics
:o)
Umm, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the laws of physics more or less constant?
Just because I'm surprised it didn't come up...
Although they hardly had the *first* 3rd Person camera, they were one of the earliest games I know of to give the user control of the game perspective in real-time during combat--Bullfrog Entertainment's Syndicate War's and Dungeon Keeper. Circa 96/98 if memory serves properly.
Syndicate Wars even had a perspective that zoomed out high enough to be *almost* in space for when you were sending your little death squad around the city.
It's been years since I've played this game, but IIRC, you could replay a whole race. That alone was really awesome, but you could also design your own courses and save them on the cartridge. Granted, it took about 10 min. to do so, but I'd never seen a game that you could save stuff on before that one.