My First 3D Game

[cairnswm]

Last night I started working on some 3D stuff. I've been avoiding 3D with a passion but lately decided I better start trying it out again (Mostly as there are kids half my age on www.nag.co.za that know more about it than I do... Making me feel bad ) - anyway I downloaded GLXTreem v2 and gave it a try.

Here is a screen shot of what I got right after about an hour - the lazers are particle effects:



Not quite sure what I've going to do with this - maybe make a 3D space invaders - or the attack by Luke against the death star - I've always thought this would make a great 3D game.

[cairnswm]

A first download:
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/downloa...on-Install.zip (0.5MB)

You will also need FreeImage.dll available here:
http://www.cairnsgames.co.za/files/freeimage.zip

[Traveler]

Looks pretty good!
How is GLXtreem doing for you? I've downloaded and tested some of the demos of this new version, myself a couple days ago and I must say they were very impressive. Especially the little shooter (the physicsdemo iirc) was quite nice.

I thought you were working on something else though. Perhaps an opportunity to combine it with your 3d endeavour?

[technomage]

That looks really good. I'm beginning to wish I wasn't writting my own 3D engine now I've been working on Alert Fighter for a while now and I don't have particle effects done yet. mind you I've been writting the support stuff like asset loaders and managers, editors for generate the assets etc, this is the stuff people don't think about when writting a game, I know I certainly didn't..


Is that a Sky box background? or just a flat background?

I'll try and download the demo and give it a shot later today.

[cairnswm]

Thanks guys.

Actually all the code, models, textures etc in this little App come from the GLXTreem Demos I just did a liberal dash of copy and paste.

The base of the game is the Models demo - I replaced the Jeep with the space fighter. Also added a couple of extra fighter for fun.
I then took the Skybox from the Path Following demo and added it to the program.
I then took the point emmitter from the Particles demo and modified it so that the particles would come from the sources I wanted them.
Using the rotation logic of the Physics demo I was able to start adding rotation for the Space craft.

Sorry - absolutly nothing original in that exe

I do not want to be writting engines. I am prepared to write wrappers for existing engines. I believe there are enough people out there who are good at writting engines. I want to write game and am therefore very thankful for engine writters. So I am always happy to use engines.

On what I think of GLXTreem - I used GLXTreem until the end of 2003. I then found a lot of problems on screen color depth, resolution etc and dropped it in favor of SDL. Yesterday I wanted to do some 3D stuff and remembered the ease GLXTreem had for loading Milkshape models. So I downloaded it at 8pm last night - it took about an hour - and by 10pm I had the demo you see there. So so far I am very happy with it

[technomage]

Thanks guys.

no worries

I do not want to be writting engines. I am prepared to write wrappers for existing engines. I believe there are enough people out there who are good at writting engines. I want to write game and am therefore very thankful for engine writters. So I am always happy to use engines.

I would love to use someone elses engine, I had a hard time finding an engine that did what I needed it do, so I ended up writing my own from scratch. Many engines are FPS engines now, apart from FreeSpace2 I don't think I've ever seens a space combat engine that people can use.

I wanted to do some 3D stuff and remembered the ease GLXTreem had for loading Milkshape models.

If you still want to use SDL I have a milkshape model loader which is jut about stand alone, I can let you have a copy if you want... :?:

[FNX]

Hello,
I think it's a good start for you

I would learn how to code 3d stuff but I'm too lazy and in love with old
school games to.. I've promised myself to never code 3d games/apps
so i'll continue with 2d. Maybe i'll add particle and lightining stuff to 2d.

About using someone else engines well, it's always the same question,
better to use already existing code (with potential limitations) or write
my own one (more time needed but re-code what already exist?)?


Let us know about updates

PS: there is always younger people doing something better ops:

[Sly]

I do not want to be writting engines. I am prepared to write wrappers for existing engines. I believe there are enough people out there who are good at writting engines. I want to write game and am therefore very thankful for engine writters. So I am always happy to use engines.

I would like to use someone else's engine, but I have never found one that I would deem suitable. Most engines I have seen, especially for Delphi, heavily use classes and dynamic strings. Yeah, they're easy to use, but horribly inefficient when it comes to memory usage. This may come from my commercial game development background, but efficiency is key to making a good engine.

I want a lean, mean rendering machine, and I will probably have to write it myself.

[cairnswm]

I do not have the low level understanding to be able to write engines etc. For this reason I use engines in what ever state they are. If the engine is not fully optimised I can live with it. I dont need 1000FPS, as long as I get above 30 FPS on my notebook I can be reasonably happy it will
behave well on other peoples PCs. My game typically do not need such brute power

[Traveler]

Perhaps a bit off topic but I was wondering if you, Sly, could elaborate a bit more on your argument of classes and dynamic strings being inefficient?