Doom To Dunia (part 3)
A Brief 3D Engine History by Cyberpunk
Here’s the third and final part. Please take a look at parts one and two, if you haven’t seen them yet.
CryEngine
It’s said that Crytek originally developed CryEngine as a technology demo called X-Isle to show what Nvidia’s Geforce 3 was capable of, and it was so impressive, it ended up giving birth to Far Cry, a surprise hit that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Now a multiplatform engine (CryEngine was originally a PC-only game engine, but now supports consoles as well), The engine is in constant development, and Crytek are currently on CryEngine 3.
High on visuals, CryEngine’s use of pixel shaders made for realistic water in Far Cry. Adding to the level of immersion was lush vegetation and no load times as you wandered the vast landscape.
With the help of CryEngine, Crytek would again push the hardware envelope with Crysis, a shader heavy DirectX 10 game (it also supports DirectX 9) that remains one of the most brutal gaming benchmarks available.
Date Released: 2004
Notable Games: Far Cry, Crysis, Crysis Warhead
RAGE
RAGE, or Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, was a joint collaboration between RAGE Technology Group and Rockstar and replaced RenderWare as Rockstar’s game engine of choice. RAGE combines a rendering framework, physics engine, audio engine, network libraries, animation engine, scripting language, and more into a tidy package. Some of those features come from other sources, such the Euphoria engine (animation) and Bullet physics engine, parts of which have been integrated into RAGE.
One of Rockstar’s goals in developing its own engine was to make objects feel more realistic, particularly when speeding around locales in different sized vehicles or running on foot. In addition, weather plays a role in how vehicles handle in Grand Theft Auto IV, the second game to utilze RAGE (Table Tennis being the first). Rockstar also spent considerable time attempting to make explosions look more realistic, mainly through particle effects.
Date Released: 2006
Notable Games: Rockstar Presents Table Tennis, Grand Theft Auto IV, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Grand Theft Auto IV: the Lost And The Damned, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad Of Gay Tony
Infinity Ward MW
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare runs on a proprietary engine, built by Infinity Ward, with features that include true world-dynamic lighting, HDR lighting effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field. “Bullet Penetration” is calculated by the engine, taking into account factors such as surface type and entity thickness. The game runs in a native resolution of 600p for its console versions.
Certain objects, such as cars and some buildings, are destructible. This makes distinguishing cover from concealment important, as the protection provided by objects such as wooden fences and thin walls do not completely protect players from harm. Bullet speed and stopping power are decreased after penetrating an object, and the decrease is dependent on the thickness and surface type of the object. The game makes use of a dynamic physics engine, not implemented in previous Call of Duty titles. Code was included to determine spawning points based on the nearby weapons, and enemy positions and line of sight. The various criteria are meant to minimize players dying immediately after rejoining a match, or being “spawn-killed” due to players simply waiting for players to “respawn”.
The game engine has also been used for the development of two other Activision games. An enhanced version of the original engine was used in Call of Duty: World at War, the fifth installment in the Call of Duty series after Call of Duty 4, while a slightly altered version has been used for the James Bond video game Quantum of Solace.
Date Released: 2007
Notable Games: Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warware, Call Of Duty: World At War, James Bond: Quantum Of Solace, Modern Warfare 2
Unreal 3
The most recent of the Unreal engines, Unreal 3 is a complete development framework for DirectX 10-capable PCs, as well as both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles. According to its developers, “every aspect of the Unreal Engine has been designed with ease of content creation and programming in mind.”
Like Rockstar’s RAGE, Unreal 3 includes some ‘middleware’ technologies, resulting in a smorgasbord of functionality. The robust feature-set includes a multi-threaded rendering system (Gemini), a 64-bit color HDR rendering pipeline, various physics effects powered by Nvidia’s PhysX, particle effects (Cascade), in-game cinematics (Matinee), a complex skeletal animation system supporting up to 4 bone influences per vertex along with full mesh and bone LOD support, and a ton of other programming goodies.
Unreal 3 has been the basis of numerous games, not the least of which is Unreal Tournament 3, which is actually the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series and the eight Unreal game overall. Unreal Tournament 3 is perhaps most notable as one of the first (and few at the time) AAA games to support AGEIA’s (now Nvidia’s) PhysX. The Unreal 3 engine has gone on to become the current most popular engine for game development, and has been used on some of the most popular games of all time.
Date Released: 2007
Notable Games: America’s Army 3.0, American McGee’s Grimm, Army of Two, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Bioshock 1 & 2, DC Universe Online, Gears of War 1 & 2, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Mirror’s Edge, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 & 2, Unreal Tournament 3
Euphoria
Developed by NaturalMotion, Euphoria is an animation engine capable of creating animation on the fly. According to its developers, Euphoria combines artificial intelligence, bio-mechanics, and physics, the end result of which is a much more natural simulation of the human (or creature) body than what’s possible with ragdoll physics.
Part of the reason for this is that Euphoria simulates not just the skeleton, but also muscles and the nervous system. Adaptive intelligence modules control how a character moves and adds to the realism moreso than what is possible through predefined animations.
Rockstar integrated parts of Euphoria into its RAGE game engine, but NaturalMotion insists Euphoria isn’t middleware.
Date Released: 2007
Notable Games: Grand Theft Auto IV, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Dunia
After a successful release of tropical shooter game “Far Cry” in 2004, Ubisoft, having bought the rights of the game from Crytek, developed the next version of the game named “Far Cry 2″. Unlike “Far Cry” this time the game was made available on XBOX 360 & PS3.
A completely new game engine was developed for the game named “Dunia”. This time there will be no concept of “Levels” in the game and everything was based on an open and dynamic environment. It had a lot of eye candy, with new real-time day and night lightening and RealTree vegetation system. Pc gamers needed a high-end multi-core CPU and a good Directx10 GPU card to enjoy the game, whilst console gamers got a slightly parred down, but still very impressive version.
Date Released: 2007
Notable Games: Far Cry 2
Doom To Dunia (part 2)
A Brief 3D Engine History by Cyberpunk
Part 1 can be found here
And so, onwards and upwards, pop-pickers!
Lithtech
What started off as a joint collaboration between Monolith and Microsoft, the Lithtech engine, at one time called DirectEngine, was one part software renderer and one part DirectX renderer. This didn’t last long, however, as Monolith parted ways with Microsoft and bought back the rights to its engine, renaming it Lithtech.
Early on, Lithtech could best be described as the poor man’s game engine. With the notable exception of No One Lives Forever, Lithtech is the engine of choice for cheap, quick games. It says to the customer, ‘This game wasn’t worth the effort of paying for Quake or Unreal.” Though development would continue on Lithtech over the years, No One Lives Forever would remain the high point of the engine’s life up until it was overhauled and again renamed, this time to Jupiter Extended, or Jupiter EX. Technically the fourth version of Lithtech, Jupiter EX supports DirectX 9, a new lighting model, Havok physics, and new content creation tools, and was used in both F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2.
Date Released: 1998
Notable Games: Aliens vs Predator 2, Blood II: The Chosen, F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2, The Matrix Online, Might and Magix IX, No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0
Quake III / id Tech 3
Like AMD versus Intel and Nvidia versus ATI, the game engine wars being fought a decade ago largely consisted of Quake III (now known as id Tech 3) versus Unreal.
As the name implies, Quake III took its cue from Quake II, but it was much more than just a refinement of id Software’s previous game engine. The newer engine marked a departure from skeletal animation and instead made use of per-vertex animation. Without diving into the technical details of both, the switch paved the way for smoother animation.
Quake III also put a heavier emphasis on shadows, as well as introduced shaders, curved surfaces, 32-bit color, and advanced (for its time) networking capabilities. All these effects required a 3D videocard with full OpenGL support and at least 300MHz of computing power, whether it be an Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-2 or Athlon series.
Date Released: 1999
Notable Games: American McGee’s Alice, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
GeoMod
These days we’ve come to expect a certain level of destructible environments, but for many gamers, the first memory of wreaking havoc on virtual surroundings came from playing Red Faction, well before the recent push towards realistic in-game physics. John Slagel, Red Faction’s lead programmer, developed the Geodmod engine, which stands for Geometry Modification.
As the name implies, the GeoMod engine changes the geometry of the world in response to what’s going on. GeoMod does this through a complete real-time subtractive boolean from the world’s geometry. As Red Faction’s lead designer Alan Lawrence explained to Gamespot, “When a rocket hits a wall, we take this shape and basically subtract that shape from the world. So we boolean with that ‘bit’ — we call them GeoMod bits — and that takes a chunk out of the world
Date Released: 2001
Notable Games: Red Faction, Red Faction II
Torque
A fully 3D graphics engine, Torque was first created to power the first person shooter Tribes 2. One of the highlights of the Torque engine was that it featured an in-game terrain engine capable of manipulating levels of details on the fly so that fewer polygons would need to be rendered.
Torque also became known for its built-in world editor complete with drag-and-drop GUI creation. Combined with flexible multi-player network code, Torque was a fairly robust game engine despite lacking a laundry list of titles.
Date Released: 2001
Notable Games: Penny Arcade Adventures, Tribes 2, Wildlife Tycoon
Serious
Several years in the making, one of Croteam’s main goals in developing the Serious engine was to allow for large spaces and large numbers of on-screen characters at any given time. By doing so, Serious Sam became an adrenaline pumped arcade style first-person shooter with near non-stop action.
The Serious engine came as two parts: Serious Editor and Serious Modeler. Game models consisted of 3D files importanted from standard 3D object editors like Lightwave or 3D Studio, whereas the Serious Editor was tasked with creating the world and populating it with characters. The original Serious engine didn’t support pixel or vertex shaders, but those and more would later be added in subsequent revisions.
Release Date: 2001
Notable Games: Serious Sam (entire series)
Max-FX
While Max Payne wasn’t released until 2001, Remedy Entertainment had been working on the game’s Max-FX engine since 1997. It was developed from the ground up as a hardware-only 3D rendering engine optimized for DirectX 7.0.
Max Payne was best known dazzling gamers with its use of bullet-time, which slowed down game play, a trick made famous in the movie The Matrix.
In addition to powering Max Payne, Futuremark implemented the Max-FX engine in its 3DMark99, 3DMark2000, and 3DMark2001 benchmarking suites.
Date Released: 2001
Notable Games: 3DMark (99-2001), Max Payne
Warcraft
Warcraft is the 3d Engine developed by Blizzard Entertainment for use in their game Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. It is the second sequel to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and it is the third game set in the Warcraft Universe. The game proved to be one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month. Warcraft III won many awards including “Game of the Year” from more than six different publications.
Warcraft III ships with a “World Editor” program that allows players to create their own custom scenarios and maps. The World Editor has features such as unit editing and event triggers. Through Battle.net, players can download and play peers’ custom maps. A much improved version of this engine is used within World of Warcraft, and it’s add-ons.
Date Released: 2002
Notable Games: Warcraft 3: Reign Of Chaos, Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Unreal 2
Whereas the original Unreal engine burst onto the scene with the game it was named after, the Unreal 2 engine first appeared in America’s Army. More than just a minor update, Unreal 2 is a highly modified version of the first engine, with the overhauled code adding integrated physics and 64-bit support. It also introduced improved special effects, like true moving water, and is said to be able to handle ten times more polygons.
Date Released: 2002
Notable Games: America’s Army, Brothers in Amrs, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Lineage II, Magic: The Gathering – Battlegrounds, Postal 2, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon 2, and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Tribes: Vengeance, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, XIII
Gamebryo
Fans of Fallout 3, Warhammer Online, and Oblivion all have the Gamebryo engine to thank. So do console gamers, for that matter, as Gamebryo was designed to be cross-platform friendly and is the only third-party engine with Nvidia’s PhysX technology directly coordinated with the Wii toolset. To call Gamebryo flexible would be an understatement.
The Gamebryo engine is written in C++, and supports a host of platforms and technology. Just some of these include DirectX 9 and 10, multi-core development, integration with 3D modeling tools such as 3ds Max and Maya, dynamic collision detection, particle systems, 3D audio, and it dives through the windows to deliver chocolates to your wife/girlfriend. Ok, I may have made that last one up.
Since the Gamebryo engine was first launched six years ago, Geoff Selzer, president and CEO of Emergent Game Technologies (developer of Gamebryo), estimates it has been used in the development of around 200 games.
Date Released: 2003
Notable Games: Bully: Scholarship Edition, Dark Age of Camelot, Empire Earth II and III, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Prince of Persia 3D, Six Meier’s Civilization IV, Zoo Tycoon 2
Doom 3 / id Tech 4
Now known as id Tech 4, the Doom 3 engine ended up being a major rewrite of id Tech 3, though that was never the original intention. But when id Software decided to make the switch from C to C++, an overhaul couldn’t be avoided.
The Doom 3 engine pushed the hardware envelope, requiring DirectX 8.0-capable or higher videocards such as a GeForce 3 or at least a Radeon 8500. This was primarily due to the addition of unified lighting and shadowing, whereas every surface would go through the same rendering pipeline. Most light surfaces were also done in real-time, allowing for more realistic shadows, but at the expense of being able to render soft shadows. To get around this, projected lights could be used to create the illusion of soft shadows.
It was heavily criticied upon it’s release as being too heavy on computer resources, and prompted many gamers to upgrade their rigs. For a long time, Doom 3 would serve as a popular performance metric while benchmarking, but has since been supplanted by much more demanding titles, such as Crysis.
Date Released: 2004
Notable Games: Doom 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Prey, Quake 4
Source
Now a four year old engine, Valve continues to tweak Source so that it stays relevant. Source was first used to drive Counter Strike: Source, but was really developed for Half Life 2.
The Source engine attacks game development on all fronts, including advanced Shader technologies, dynamic lighting and shadows, physics, several effects such as realistic looking reflective water surfaces and real-time motion blur, and much more. It also sports an advanced facial animation system and lip-syncing.
A modern engine, Source now includes multi-processor optimizations, an efficient networking architecture, and hordes of zombies that have never been so fun to kill (Left 4 Dead).
Date Released: 2004
Notable Games: Counter Strike: Source, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Half Life 2 and following episodes, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Postal III, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2
Doom To Dunia (part 1)
A Brief 3D Engine History by Cyberpunk
Let me introduce you to a brief history of 3D engines, without which most of the games we all know and love would not exist. It basically covers most of the well known re-usable 3D engines.
Doom might arguably be the most memorable (or at least the most popular) PC game of all time, and with good reason. Prior to Doom’s release, programmers found themselves in the stone age of game development. For the most part, building a game meant starting from scratch and compiling all new code, but like the invention of the wheel, the advent of the game engine forever changed the gaming landscape.
Of course game engines existed prior to Doom’s release in 1993. But it was id Software’s now legendary first-person shooter that pushed reusable 3D game engines as a viable programming model, and videogame development has never been the same since then.
Space Rogue / Ultima Underworld
In the beginning, there was darkness. Then there was Origin Systems. And low, Origin Systems looked out upon the darkness, and saw that it was alone. Let there be Space Rogue!
What would eventually morph into the Ultima Underworld engine started off several years prior as the Space Rogue engine, named after the sci-fi game with the same name released in 1989. Naming a game’s engine after the game itself is a practice that, to some extent, lives on today.
After releasing Space Rogue, Origin Systems began work on Ultima Underworld and its accompanying engine. After a bit of work, an algorithm was developed that allowed for texture mapping, which was applied to walls, floors, and ceilings. The development team added varying height throughout the map for a 3D effect, as well as inclined surfaces.
Non PLayer Charectors (NPC’s) consisted of two-dimensional sprites, but objects were rendered in 3D. This, along with the use of physics to create movement, bogged the engine down. This led to Ultima Underworld running slow even on higher-end 486DX systems at the time, though system requirements called for a 386-based PC.
Date Released: 1990
Notable Games: Space Rogue, Ultima Underworld:The Stygian Abyss
Doom / id Tech 1
Id Software’s Doom engine wasn’t actually a true 3D engine at all, but a very well conceived two dimensional sector-based engine with 2D sprites representing objects, characters, and anything not tied down to the map. Because of this 2D limitation, rooms could not be stacked on top of one another, but this also allowed for faster rendering on the less powerful hardware of the time. All that was needed to run Doom was a 386 level PC (in low-detail mode) with a standard VGA videocard capable of rendering texture-mapped environments.
One reason for Doom’s huge following was Shareware. The first world of Doom was released for free on one floppy disc, and owners of this disc were encouraged to copy it, and pass it along to their friends. Pretty soon, everyone had the shareware world of Doom, and hungered for more. Id Software had another three worlds for them.
Despite the underlying 2D nature, Doom was, and still is, considered a 3D title. Id created the illusion of 3D with height differences added separately to the environment, and later titles built around the Doom engine would even implement the ability to look up and down, albeit with a distorted view.
Date Released: 1993
Notable Games: Chex Quest 1+2, Doom, Doom II, HacX, Heretic, HeXen, Strife
Voxel
Every Comanche game ever made was constructed with some form of NovaLogic’s proprietary Voxel Space engine, while several other games implemented voxels for specific parts, like rendering vehicles or in-game items.
A combination of the worlds volumetric and pixel, a voxel is a way to represent volumetric objects as three dimensional bitmaps rather than vectors. Think of a stack of legos with each piece representing a voxel, and you get an idea of how the Voxel Space engine rendered terrain. Only these were really 2D bricks with varying height. By rendering terrain this way, graphics were more smoothly contoured and detailed than other flight simulations using vector graphics, along with offering smoother gameplay.
Date Released: 1992
Notable Games: Blade Runner, Comanche series, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and Command & Conquer: Red alert 2, Delta Force series, Master of Orion III
Build
Made famous as the engine upon which Duke Nukem 3D was constructed, Build shared a similar trait with the Doom engine in that both rendered worlds on a 2D plane with sprites populating the map. The Build engine broke worlds into individual sectors arranged in a grid, and the ceiling and floors in each sector could be built to a different height. Coupled with the ability to look up and down with the mouse from the get-go, this presented the illusion of 3D.
But that wasn’t the only 3D trick up Build’s sleeve. By applying special tags to walls or a spot on the floor in a sector, developers could make it so that when a gamer walked into or over the designated spot, he would be transported to a completely different part of the map. One way in which this was used was for creating holes in the ground that a player would appear to fall through, but really would be transporting to a different part of the 2D map.
To get the best out of the Build engine, gamers needed a Pentium class PC and an SVGA videocard, although early Build games, Duke Nukem 3D being the one, also ran on 486-based machines.
Date Released: Late 1993
Notable Games: Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, Extreme Paintbrawl, PowerSlave, Redneck Deer Huntin’, Redneck Rampage, Redneck Rampage Rides Again, Shadow Warrior, William Shatner’s TekWar, Witchaven, Witchaven II
XnGine
One of the first true 3D engines ever made, Bethseda’s XnGine was also a bit buggy early on. The DOS-based engine ran into stability issues on Windows 95 systems, and clipping issues caused gamers to get stuck on 3D polygonal objects in games like Battlespire. Other engines avoided this problem by still using 2D sprites for in-game objects.
XnGine would later make use of high-resolution graphics and be compatible with 3dfx videocards. It would also make possible huge game worlds, such as was seen in Daggerfall.
Date Released: 1995
Notable Games: Battlespire, Daggerfall, Redguard, NIRA: Intense Import Rage Racing, Terminator: Future Shock and Terminator: SkyNET, X-Car
Jedi
The Jedi engine didn’t go on to provide the basis for a large number of titles, but for the games it did power –Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws — it proved highly successful in creating a 3D-like environment. Built from the ground up (some have accused LucasArts of reverse-engineering the Doom engine, but these claims were never proven true), the Jedi engine allowed for areas, or sectors, to be stacked.
Advanced for its time, the Jedi engine also helped make popular the ability to jump and crouch, and look up and down, feats made even more impressive considering this was LucasArts first attempt at an FPS (Dark Forces).
Date Released: 1995
Games: Star Wars: Dark Forces, Outlaws
Quake
Id Software’s first truly 3D game engine, the development team went to great pains to ensure the Quake engine ran smoothly without a ton of processing power. One way they did this was by introducing a new way to render maps that purged certain areas from processing that the player wouldn’t be able to see. Objects, or brushes as they were called, made up the border of the map and created an enclosed space. The map would then be run through a rendering preprocessor, which would identify empty space inside and outside of the border. It would then discard the back portions of the border. This highly effective technique reduced the amount of polygons usually by half and sometimes by much more.
Quake also included 3D light sources, which were added with a second pass of the preprocessor rather than on-the-fly by the CPU, and it also supported 3D hardware acceleration. Later a release of a native port of Quake called VQuake, or Vérité-accelerated Quake, designed to take advantage of the Vérité 1000 graphics chip’s hardware features, including anti-aliasing. OpenGL support would also be added, giving Voodoo and PowerVR owners justification for their graphics card purchase.
Date Released: 1996
Notable Games: CIA Operative: Solo Missions, HeXen II, Laser Arena, Quake, Silver Wings, Urban Mercenary
Renderware
Now we start to get into more modern games, and also games that started to make the console cross-over.
The Renderware game engine claims a ton of titles under its belt — over 200 in all — most of which are for the PlayStation 2 console, but still over two dozen on the PC platform. It’s also been used on the GameCube, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PSP, making it very much a multiplatform game engine.
Originally developed in 1998 as primarily a PC-based middleware solution, Renderware, like most of the engines up to this point, largely preceded the GPU, and this may have led to the engine’s eventual downfall as a leading API.
Before Epic’s Unreal engine began to overshadow Renderware, Renderware proved popular for its ability to allow developers to manipulate art and game processes in real time. A developer could, for example, change the color of a character’s clothing without altering the underlying code and rendering the scene all over again. This also worked for rudimentary physics, like jumping and moving. If movement looked ‘off,’ a developer could go in and alter the physics and see the changes in real-time.
Date Released: 1996
Notable Games: Airport Tycoon, Apache Air Assault, Bratz: Rock Angelz, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Burnout Paradise, Chinese Paladin 4, Cold Fear, Commandos: Strike Force, Dream of Mirror Online, Evolution GT, Frank Herbert’s Dune, G-Nome, kill.switch, Madagascar, Manhunt, Red Jets, Startdon 3, Super-Bikes Riding Challenge, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, 4, and Underground, Trickstyle, and a shed load more
Quake II / id Tech 2
Whereas the original Quake game offered hardware graphics acceleration, Quake II offered native OpenGL support right from the get-go. Other features of the Quake II engine, now known as id Tech 2, included colored lighting effects, and a new game model whereby game code was written in C and loaded from a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) rather than the original QuakeC scripting language. In layman’s terms, this allowed for both software and OpenGL renders rather than one or the other, so if you didn’t own a Voodoo videocard, you weren’t necessarily out of luck, although you took a big performance hit.
Quake II also became known for its moddability. Because DLLs were also used for the game logic, id could release the source code into the modding community (and it did just that in 2001) while still keeping the rest of the engine proprietary. The engine was also incredibly robust, and savvy developers were able to use it to power full-fledged role-playing games (like Anachronox) and add features like dismemberment (Soldier of Fortune).
Date Released: 1997
Notable Games: Quake 2, Anachronox, CodeRED: Alien Arena, Daikatana, Heretic II, Kingpin: Life of Crime, SiN, Soldier of Fortune, UFO: Alien Invasion, Warsow
GoldSource
This tweaked Quake engine helped solidify the PC’s dominance over consoles as a powerful gaming platform, at least for its time period (the PC vs console debate gets a little more interesting with today’s tech). GoldSource brought support for both OpenGL and Direct3D, and was the engine that powered big name titles like Half-Life, Team Frotress Classic, Day of Defeat, and Counter Strike. Needless to say, Goldsrc helped promote 3D videocards with its API support and growing list of gaming hits.
While GoldSource shares its roots with the Quake engine, one developer who worked on Half-Life claimed that some 70 percent of the engine code was rewritten. In addition to adding Direct3D support, Valve also added a skeletal framework.
Date Released: 1998
Notable Games: Day of Defeat, Deakthmatch Classic, Counter Strike, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, Gunman Chronicles, James Bond 007, Half Life, Half Life: Blue Shift, half Life: Opposing Force, Richochet
Unreal
Unreal may have started off as strictly a first-person shooter game engine, but it would also become the basis for a number of RPG titles, the biggest of which might be Mass Effect. But of course it was most known for its use in Unreal and Unreal Tournament.
The Unreal engine was the main competitor to id Software’s Quake II / id Tech 2 engine, and like Quake II, Unreal became a popular engine in the modding community. In addition to having its own scripting language (UnrealScript) bundled with the game, Epic also provided a map editor and modification program called UnrealEd.
Both software and hardware rendering were present in the Unreal engine, as well as collision detection, colored lighting, and a rudimentary version of texture filtering. It also drew heavily from AMD’s 3DNow! and Intel’s MMX and SSE instruction sets. But to take full advantage of the Unreal engine and its heavy reliance on the Glide API, games needed a high level 3dfx videocard, which at the time was a Voodoo 5.
Date Released: 1998
Notable Games: Deus Ex, Harry Potter, Rune, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, X-COM: Enforcer
The Fat Princess Fiasco
Or how to completely spoon up on a dead cert.
Fat Princess, for those who don’t already know, is a downloadable PlayStation 3 exclusive game (though a PSP version of the game is in development). It’s published by Sony and developed by Titan Studios. The game consists of part RTS and part capture the flag, where you control one of 32 players (16 on each team) and the ultimate goal is to capture your own princess from your enemies’ castle, as each side has kidnapped the others’ princess. The name of the game derives from the fact that what you need to do is feed the old girl as much cake as you can, thereby fattening her up and making it as difficult as possible to free her back to your opponents’ base.
The game has a beautiful cartoon visual style and got many people excited about it when it was first shown off last year. Look!
Excitement for the game couldn’t be higher and then finally in April of this year a two week beta was opened to the public. Unfortunately, some issues came out of this beta, such as disconnections, games ending in stalemate and lag problems.
The game finally got a release date and a price for the end of July this year. You’d think that enough time had passed that those problems that the beta threw up would’ve been fixed, but oh no. However, a patch was quickly pushed through and mostly it seems to be working well.
That’s the smallest of errors though, because if you live in Europe, you’ve been treated like Sony’s prison bitch, which is where this blog post comes in.
Firstly, the official Sony Europe blog revealed that the game would be priced at $15 for our American brethren, so obviously this is a premium downloadable game, much like, say, Battlefield 1943 which also sells for $14.99, and equates to £9.99 which give or take is about right. For some reason though, Sony in their infinite wisdom, decided to price Fat Princess in the UK at £11.99.
Ok, it’s only 2 quid more but it’s the principle of the thing. I can’t believe that the pound got that much weaker in the space of time between the release of Battlefield and Fat Princess. What’s going on? Is it greed or the usual tax difference reasons? Not that the latter should matter as Battlefield’s price surely is correct? On the 360, 1200 MS points (what B:1943 sells for) is about 10 quid.
People began to get pissed off and complained in the comments of the Sony Europe blog piece and then someone at Sony did the only thing they thought they could do – they edited the original text and deleted the American price and replaced it only with the Euros and Pounds. Wait, what? That’s right, they clammed up and did a bit of the old revisionist history and hoped no-one would notice.
At the time of writing this, no-one at Sony has explained why the price shot up for Europeans and no-one has explained the editing of the original text. And this is why Fat Princess went from a day one purchase to a game I will never buy.
Just when you think Sony couldn’t screw things up any further, they really, really do.
Music From Games – the game tracks so far
The 7th Guest – Main Theme (Cyberpunk) [vol.13]
1080 Snowboarding – Work Your Body (JimboXiii) [vol.15]
Amplitude – Mekon – What’s Going On? (Craymen Edge) [vol.15]
Amplitude – Quarashi – Baseline (spatular) [vol.5]
Animal Crossing – KK Slider – Humoresque of a Little Dog (mrlakitu) [vol.8]
Battlefield : Bad Company – Milt Buckner – The Beast (Sly Reflex) [vol.13]
Battlefield : Bad Company – Prelude to LC (Sly Reflex) [vol.16]
Beyond Good & Evil – Propaganda (Craymen Edge) [vol.13]
Bionic Commando : Rearmed – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.14]
Bioshock – Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker Suite (Hendo) [vol.3]
Bioshock – Welcome to Rapture (Hendo) [vol.10]
Black and White – The Sailor Song (mrlakitu) [vol.7]
Blue Dragon – Boss Theme (David) [vol.3]
Blue Dragon – Eternity (David) [vol.5]
Big Bang Mini – Luxor (RetroEd) [vol.8]
Burnout 2 – Main Theme (DifferentClass) [vol.14]
Cannon Fodder – Hill Music (Sly Reflex) [vol.8]
Cannon Fodder – War (Never Been So Much Fun) (mrlakitu) [vol.11]
Castle Crashers – Four Brave Champions (Hendo) [vol.9]
Castle of Illusion – Level 1-1 (illdog) [vol.4]
Castlevania – unknown remix (illdog) [vol.7]
Chime – Paul Hartnoll – For Silence (Different Class) [vol.18]
Command & Conquer : Red Alert 3 – Hell March 3 (Cyberpunk) [vol.15]
Creatures II – Stage 4 (Sly Reflex) [vol.9]
D2 – Arto Lindsay – Count The Roses (Ben) [vol.2]
D2 – Kenji Eno – Outro Theme (Ben) [vol.3]
Death Tank – Main Theme (Ben) [vol.2]
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou – Level 2-2 Boss (spatular) [vol.2]
Donkey Kong 64 – DK Rap (DifferentClass) [vol.16]
Donkey Konga 2 – Orange Range – Viva Rock (spatular) [vol.10]
Donkey Kong Country – Aquatic Ambience (RetroEd) [vol.9]
Donkey Kong Country – Life In The Mines (RetroEd) [vol.3]
Doom – Club Doom (JimboXiii) [vol.6]
Dynamite Heady – Battle In The Sky Boss Music (DifferentClass) [vol.11]
Enemy Zero – Michael Nyman – Love Theme (Ben) [vol.9]
F-Zero – Big Blue (DifferentClass) [vol.10]
F-Zero GX – Big Blue (DifferentClass) [vol.4]
F-Zero GX – Captain Falcon’s Theme (mrlakitu) [vol.2]
F-Zero GX – Track 6 (Hendo) [vol.8]
Fable II – Oakvale (RetroEd) [vol.7]
Fallout 3 – The Inkspots – I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire (Ben) [vol.14]
F.E.A.R. 2 : Project Origin – Snake Fist (Bob) [vol.15]
Final Fantasy Tactics : War of the Lions – Battle Theme (sambob) [vol.16]
Final Fantasy VII – Main Theme – Piano version (David) [vol.2]
Final Fantasy VIII – Opening Theme (JimboXiii) [vol.4]
Final Fantasy X – Final Boss Theme (Bob) [vol.12]
Frequency – Freezepop – Science Genius Girl (spatular) [vol.7]
Fuel – Unkle [feat. Ian Astbury] – Burn My Shadow (mrlakitu) [vol.12]
Giftpia – Closedown (Ben) [vol.7]
Gitaroo Man – Legendary Theme – acoustic version (Hendo) [vol.1]
Gitaroo Man – Legendary Theme – full band version (Hendo) [vol.1]
Grand Theft Auto – Da Shootaz – Joyride (Jimboxiii) [vol.8]
Grand Theft Auto IV – Soviet Connection (Hendo) [vol.6]
Guitar Hero II – Freezepop – Less Talk More Rokk (spatular) [vol.2]
Guitar Hero II – Lamb of God – Laid To Rest (spatular) [vol.8]
Guitar Hero II – That Handsome Devil – Elephant Bones (spatular) [vol.9]
Halo 3 – Main Theme (DifferentClass) [vol.2]
Heavy Rain – Ethan Mars Main Theme (Ben) [vol.18]
Hitman 2 – Main Title Theme (mrlakitu) [vol.14]
Hotel Dusk : Room 215 – Secrets (RetroEd) [vol.4]
House of the Dead 2 – Boss Theme (Ben) [vol.4]
House of the Dead : Overkill – Main Theme (Ben) [vol.8]
House of the Dead : Overkill – One Night In Bayou (Ben) [vol.12]
Ico – Castle In The Mist (Craymen Edge) [vol.14]
IK+ – Main Theme (Sly Reflex) [vol.18]
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES1N IT!!!1 (Ben) [vol.16]
Initial D : Special Stage – Remember Me (RetroEd) [vol.12]
Intellivision Lives! (mrlakitu) [vol.16]
Jet Force Gemini – Title Screen (mrlakitu) [vol.10]
Jet Set Radio – Let Mom Sleep (Ben) [vol.1]
Jet Set Radio Future – Like This, Like That (Sly Reflex) [vol.11]
Jest Set Radio Future – Statement of Intent – Bis (CraymenEdge) [vol.18]
Katamari Damacy – Katamari On The Funk (Ben) [vol.1]
Killer 7 – Rave On (spatular) [vol.3]
Killer Instinct – Tooth and Claw (mrlakitu) [vol.4]
Kingdom Hearts 2 – Orchestral Melody (JimboXiii) [vol.12]
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days – Sanctuary by Utada Hikaru (Cyberpunk) [vol.16]
Kirby Canvas Curse – Drawcia Sorceress (spatular) [vol.6]
Legend of Zelda – Main Theme (Orchestral version) (mrlakitu) [vol.13]
Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past – Kakariko Village (RetroEd) [vol.10]
Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time – Saria’s Song (sambob) [vol.3]
Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time – Song of Storms (sambob) [vol.4]
Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time – Title Theme (sambob) [vol.4]
Linger In Shadows (Ben) [vol.5]
LocoRoco – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.1]
Mario & Luigi : Bowser’s Inside Story – Toad Town (RetroEd) [vol.16]
Mass Effect – Love Theme (DifferentClass) [vol.12]
Max Payne 2 : The Fall of Max Payne – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.16]
Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty – Main Theme (Bob) [vol.16]
Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater – Main Theme (JimboXiii) [vol.7]
Metal Gear Solid 4 : Guns of the Patriots – Old Snake (Ben) [vol.10]
Metal Slug – Mission Complete (Ben) [vol.1]
Metroid Prime – Main Menu Theme (illdog) [vol.5]
Metroid Prime – Underwater Frigate Reactor Core (DifferentClass) [vol.8]
Monty on the Run – Rob Hubbard – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.5]
Mr Driller : Drill Land – WDT2 (spatular) [vol.4]
Mystical Ninja starring Goemon – Theme of Ganbare (mrlakitu) [vol.5]
Mirror’s Edge – Shine/Still Alive (DifferentClass/RetroEd) [vol.6]
NiGHTS Into Dreams – Dreams, Dreams – Boyz II Men version (Ben) [vol.1]
NiGHTS Into Dreams – Dreams, Dreams – pop version (Ben) [vol.1]
Night Trap – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.18]
Noby Noby Boy – Secret stage music (Sly Reflex) [vol.10]
Ocean Software – Loading Theme (Hendo) [vol.1]
Okami – Shinsuu Plains II (Ben) [vol.11]
Operation Flashpoint 2 : Dragon Rising – Main Theme (mrlakitu) [vol.15]
Osu! Tatake! Ouendan! – Morning Musume – Koi no Dance Site (Hendo) [vol.1]
Outrun – Magical Sound Shower (Hendo) [vol.13]
Outrun 2 – Risky Ride Guitar Mix (DifferentClass) [vol.7]
PaRappa The Rapper – All Masters Rap (Hendo) [vol.1]
Plok – Title Music (badjuju) [vol.15]
Pokemon – Pokemon Center Theme (Sly Reflex) [vol.12]
Pokemon Blue/Red – Main Theme (sambob) [vol.5]
Pokemon Gold/Silver – Main Theme (sambob) [vol.6]
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire – Main Theme (sambob) [vol.7]
Portal – 4000 Degrees Kelvin (David) [vol.2]
Portal – GlaDOS and Jonathon Coulton – Still Alive duet (David) [vol.8]
Prince of Persia : Warrior Within - Godsmack – “I Stand Alone” (Cyberpunk) [vol.11]
Psychonauts – Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp (Hendo) [vol.4]
Race Driver : GRID – Queens of the Stone Age – No-One Knows Unkle remix (mrlakitu) [vol.9]
Resident Evil – Moonlight Sonata (JimboXiii) [vol.11]
Revenge of Shinobi – Terrible Beat (DifferentClass) [vol.5]
Rez – Area 5 – Fear Is the Mind Killer (Hendo) [vol.2]
Ridge Racer – Rare Hero (RetroEd) [vol.5]
Ridge Racer Revolution – Rotterdam Nation 94 (Jimboxiii) [vol.9]
Saints Row 2 – Aha – Take On Me (Bob) [vol.14]
Sagata Sanshiro – Main Theme (Ben) [vol.15]
Sam and Max : Abe Lincoln Must Die – The War Song (DifferentClass) [vol.9]
Secret of Mana – Opening Theme (illdog) [vol.6]
Sensible Soccer – Menu Music (Ben) [vol.13]
Shadow of the Colossus – A Violent Encounter (RivaOni) [vol.8]
Shadow of the Colossus – Commandment (RivaOni) [vol.10]
Shatter – Boss Music (RetroEd) [vol.15]
Shatter – Granular Extractor (RetroEd) [vol.13]
Shenmue – Looking For Sailors (Bob) [vol.13]
Shenmue – Sedge Tree (mrlakitu) [vol.6]
Shin Megami Tensei : Persona 3 – Burn My Dread (DifferentClass) [vol.2]
Shin Megami Tensei : Persona 4 – Boss Theme (Bob) [vol.11]
Silent Hill 2 – Theme Of Laura (Jimbo) [vol.10]
Sonic The Hedgehog – Green Hill Zone (Hendo) [vol.11]
Sonic The Hedgehog – Labyrinth Zone (DifferentClass) [vol.3]
Sonic and The Secret Rings – Seven Rings In Hand / Secret Steve [vol.2]
Soul Blade – The Edge of Soul (DifferentClass) [vol.15]
Space Channel 5 – Mexican Flyer (Craymen Edge) [vol.11]
Splinter Cell : Conviction – Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt – DJ Shadow (mrlakitu)
Spy Hunter – Peter Gunn theme (Sly Reflex) [vol.15]
Streets of Rage 2 – Intro/Menu (Ben) [vol.1]
Super Castlevania IV – Ending Theme (illdog) [vol.3]
Super Mario 64 – Dire, Dire Docks (mrlakitu) [vol.3]
Super Mario 64 – Title Theme (JimboXiii) [vol.14]
Super Mario Bros. – Underworld (Ben) [vol.1]
Super Mario Galaxy – Ending Theme (David) [vol.9]
Super Mario Galaxy – Gateway Galaxy Theme (DifferentClass) [vol.13]
Super Mario Galaxy – Good Egg Galaxy Theme (David) [vol.6]
Super Mario Galaxy – Gusty Garden Galaxy Theme (David) [vol.4]
Super Mario Galaxy – Stardust Road (RetroEd) [vol.11]
Super Mario Kart – Mario Circuit (RetroEd) [vol.2]
Super Smash Bros. Brawl – Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time medley (David) [vol.7]
Super Street Fighter II HD Remix – Street Fighter Mix (Ben) [vol.6]
Team Fortress 2 – The Art of War (Cyberpunk) [vol.12]
Thing On A Spring Rob Hubbard – Main Theme (Hendo) [vol.7]
Timesplitters – 2020 Planet X (RivaOni) [vol.7]
Toejam & Earl – Toejam Jammin’ (Hendo) [vol.12]
Unreal Tournament 2004 – Phobos Moon Theme (Cyberpunk) [vol.14]
Wipeout 2097 – Chemical Brothers – Loops of Fury (JimboXiii) [vol.5]
Wipeout 2097 – Daft Punk – Musique (JimboXiii) [vol.16]
Wipeout 2097 – Future Sound of London – We Have Explosives (JimboXiii) [vol.3]
Wipeout HD – DJ Mason – Exceeder (Sly Reflex) [vol.14]
The World Ends With You – Calling (CraymenEdge) [vol.18]
The World Ends With You – Deja Vu (RetroEd) [vol.2]
World of Goo – Rain, Rain, Windy, Windy (Craymen Edge) [vol.16]
World of Goo – Regurgitation Pumping Station (Craymen Edge) [vol.12]
Zone of the Enders : Second Runner – Beyond the Bounds (RivaOni) [vol.9]
