Since many people visit this site here, I just wanted to point them to my new engine site, in case you don't know:
The Sparklight/3D-Engine is here. It is my latest project and the successor to this engine.
If you are interested in the source code of the Pascal-engine on this page here, send me an email.
I would just pack the directory as I left it the last time I worked on it - and please don't ask me too many details about it: It is over two years ago that I worked on it the last time!!

Hello fellow programmers!

On this page I want to introduce you to my own 3D-Engine. Originally it is designed not only to show and walk in 3D space, but some day it should become a complete 3D 3rd person roleplaying game. Until now it features:
+ about 20 frames on a 80486 DX/2 with 80 MHz and a window size of 317x145 pixels (without lightsources)
+ independent and intersecting planes with four vertices
+ planesizes up to 2000x2000
+ bitmaps up to 256x128 pixels
+ transparent walls, transparent pixels
+ moving objects, walls and floors, controllable by an input-textfile
+ bitmap-animations on planes
+ polygon-monsters: it runs, but is still too slow
+ camera can look in EVERY direction and zoom
+ "Vertigo"-effect
+ smooth sideward movement when walking against a wall
+ stepping on specific planes can initiate animations, movements etc.
+ you can walk over and under bridges
+ non-horizontal floor-planes
+ non-vertical walls
+ you can give the characters created smooth movement with a movement editor + every character can get 16 groups of vertices (like channels) that can be modified with a specific matrix each frame (e.g. left leg, right leg, hips, left arm, right arm, head, and so on as you like!)

AND since the latest upload:
- point lightsources!
- I couldn´t wait to upload this new version, so it only features one source that moves along a line. After it stops you can move it around with the keys <g,h,j,t,z,u>
 

negative aspects:
- half a frame slower in protected mode
- very unhandy 3D-Editor, very complex and buggy
- buggy polygon-character editor
- too slow with polygon-figures
- sometimes the version with the point-light-sources crashes...
- light-source routines are not so fast till now
 
 

The engine is designed to handle a multiplayer dungeon game with not so much elements of shooting and get shot, but to create a chilling atmosphere. Last night I added point-lightsources and was astonished about the mood it suddenly created: Dark tunnels that might hide mighty foes or rich treasures disappeared into the darkness and only a small surrounding was lit.
Although the routines slow down the engine very much, I can imagine a lot of things to optimize, so that a small number of lightsources (~5) could probably be used for one plane at once. Of course over a whole labyrinth there could be much more. Currently I am also rewriting the polygon-routines for the player-character and monsters: It should work with an affine mapper, only triangles and a simple combination of distance and flat-shading. I hope that it will run fast enough.

When I wandered through the twilight in the tunnels I also imagined appropriate sounds to be played. Some time ago I added an easy script-language that handles all actions of the objects in the game. For example if you walk on a plane the moving of an object could be initiated (also delayed) or if sound-routines are implemented, different songs could be played, doors could shut with a bang or torches go suddenly out.

I hope that all these features add to a unique atmosphere of the game. Since I think my engine can never run faster than common 3d shooters I want to specialize more on the gameplay and mood, which I think is too often neglected. By the way, the whole game should be designed more like an role-playing game like the old Ultima Underworld. Maybe also with a parser and stuff like that.

I hope that when my game is finished, it is not too old in comparison to other games...
 

For the ones who are interested in it:
* I use 16-bit Z-Buffering
* vertical scanline-algorithm
* texture-routine can handle clipped polygons with up to five vertices
* most parts of the clipping-algorithm are done in 2d
* Polygons on a polygon-character are NOT perspectively correct calculated (who cares?!)
* no fpu used within the whole polygon-routine
* nevertheless close to subpixel and subtexel accuracy.
* point-lightsources are interpolated every 16 pixel
 
 

So far this demo does not show polygon-figures, because I am working on an affine mapper for these planes. Also this labyrinth has no moving objects. I did not have time to convert an old labyrinth that showed all these features, but it will surely with the upload of the next version. I am sorry for that. But since the last version the speed of the engine was more than doubled (larger window and higher frame rate).
 

One Book Almost Worth The Money

Contact me for questions etc.

Back to link page...