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From Doom To Dunia — the History of 3D Engines
notthatwillsmith writes "It's difficult to think of a single category of application that's driven the pace of desktop hardware development further and faster than first-person shooters. Maximum PC examined the evolution of FPS engines, looking back at the key technologies that brought games from the early sprite-based days of Doom to the fully 3D-rendered African Savannah as rendered by Far Cry 2's Dunia engine. It's truly amazing how far the state of the art has moved in the last 16 years."
People like the FTEQuake folks have integrated Quake1-3 together, which allows you to play any map from Quake 1 through 3, or to incorporate things like shaders into the Quake 1 experience. It's actually kind of neat. Take a look at the screenshots at http://www.fteqw.com/ - it's all I use nowadays when I play FPSes. I'll play some Gears cooperatively with my friends, but nothing yet has beaten the original quake experience for FPS fun.
The euphoria engine looks pretty interesting. I've been doing some work with motion analysis, and so the work they've done on it really impresses me - apparently you can code animations using it without keyframes or motion capture, which is pretty neat (if it works). The tech demo video is here - http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm
Not only Wolfenstein - which arguably was the origin of the engine of Doom - but other significant milestones are missing.
Firstly, Jez San's "Starglider", marketed by Rainbird. Possibly the first 3D game for home computers. ("Battlezone" ran on dedicated vector-graphics hardware.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starglider
David Braben's "Lander" and later the full game "Zarch" for Acorn's Archimedes were AFAIK the first /solid/ rendered 3D graphics on home computers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarch
Of course, Braben's Elite was the first computer game to use any 3D at all - Starglider was /all/ in 3D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(computer_game)
These seem to me to be worthy of a mention, at least an opening paragraph. So, probably, is Maze War (1973!) - just limited box-drawing, but a display of 3D and a widely-used technique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_War
It doubtless inspired 3D Monster Maze from 1981 on the ZX81, a machine which didn't even have graphics as such:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze
3D Ant Attack from 1983, which also provided the engine for Zombie Zombie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Attack
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
IIRC, it was never 3d first-person games that drove hardware development, but space-flight shoot-em ups. Titles like Wing Commander really drove the need for better and better graphics hardware, in fact, Wing Commander was the one that made the 386 chip a necessity and apparently made people upgrade to play it.
6 degrees of freedom, 7 degrees of hurl.
I also remember that game being very difficult. It would be interesting to play it now to see if it's as hard as I remember. I think dretching in tremulous has helped significantly for me to be able to think in 3d which would help, although automatically being normal to the surface in that game probably helps significantly.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I for one applaud the editor for using the print link. It saves me from having to click through probably 5-10 pages. I wish all editors would follow suit.
The first real-time 3D engine I ever played or saw was Midwinter for the Amiga. It was released in 1989, 4 years before Doom, and featured flat-shaded polygon rendering in a true 3D environment. I just remember the environment being incredibly huge and immersive, and I spent many hours walking and skiing around desolate white landscapes.
Wikipedia article (which mentions nothing whatsoever about the game's technical aspects);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwinter_(video_game)
Screenshot of the 3D environment (Atari ST version):
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/midwinter/screenshots/gameShotId,362797/
Gamespot seems to be one of the few that actually recognize how groundbreaking this game was:
http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/unsung_heroes/sec2_10.html
Better known as 318230.