3D Gaming Coming to the Palm Very Soon
3DAGames is about to release the first of a line of 3D games for all Palm and compatible machines. The first product is called 3D Star Fighter Pilot, which is virtually finished, and is currently just passing through final testing. The plan is to have it on sale by Thanksgiving. Pricing is not yet available.
3D Star Fighter Pilot has 31 playing levels and five difficulty levels. There are twenty different type of enemies that are controlled by an AI, which adapts their behavior to the player's actions.
The real time, full 3D engine technology has been made possible by writing much of the core engine in machine code. A company spokesperson said, "It has achieved a level of performance that many people did not believe was possible on a Palm."
The 3D engine supports all Palm or compatible machines with Palm OS 3.0 or above, in three standard display formats, including full color, grey scale, and the old black and white only machines. The engine can even do real time light sourcing and all particle effects on the old black and white only machines.
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RE: The link doesn't work.
RE: The link doesn't work.
RE: The link doesn't work.
Could you please remove the www from the link. The link works without it (3dagames.com/), but (www.3dagames.com/) is not being recognized by the server.
Muncho's Grass-yer-az
RE: The link doesn't work.
This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
This 3-D engine is new. It will get better. It's a good look at what's to come.
Have a little patience.
RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
BTW... this is a Palm device you know... not a GameBoy! Don't expect too much.
RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
Also, as stated in the root of this thread, based on the picture, this game doesn't look very exciting. Very simple graphics, etc. The thing I want to point out is that this is just the beginning. Notice the shaded surfaces in the graphics giving them a 3D like appearance. That is the big breakthrough here, not the game. Now that someone's got 3D imaging software that runs on the PalmOS, it's just a matter of time before they put out some really intense 3D games. Keep in mind though that they'll never match up to what you see on PCs because of the nature of the screens they're being displayed on.
This article really is great news for the big time gamers amoung us.
RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
This 3-D engine is new. It will get better. It's a good look at what's to come.
Have a little patience
um.. zap 2k was not exactly "less processor intensive".. they had a lot of cool features such as parallax scrolling with multiple layers (which, chews processing time).. not to mention that 160x160 @ 16bpp is a nice chunk of memory (more memory = more time required) this 3D engine *aint* new - people can port code from other platforms quite easily, the trick is to get it running at an acceptable speed. try porting a game like doom :) we have done all our work in m68k asm, and, its a pain in the backside to debug - and, you take advantage of the limitations you have :) luckily - not too many palm developers know how to write m68k native asm *g*
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
Other games!
RE: Other games!
Lordinium is nice but...
RE: Lordinium
While the demo is way to short, the Full Version is great. You'll lose days playing it...
Don't think they can do much
don't forget to leave a few hundred kb in your 8mb only palm
RE: Don't think they can do much
That was a fact. But please do keep in mind at the same time the cost of PocketPCs ... lets just hope when Palm OS based next gen device come out, they will stay as cost effective as they do now.
RE: Don't think they can do much
teq
****** Pilot 5000 => Palm Pilot III => Palm Vx => M505 - I´ve had them all and loved each one of them.
RE: Don't think they can do much
Dreadling has already done some basic texture mapping (shame its such lo res textures and not in colour), but Deity looks great.
Early next year should see some 66Mhz Palms, before the ARM based units arrive. With VFS to handle storage we could see even more great games soon.
-
kHiTeDev
RE: Don't think they can do much
Anyway, interestingly, you're going to see more and more games that won't run on older palms. Which is too bad, backwards compatability has been one of the real strengths of Palm...if you used your 512K very carefully, you could still run some of the latest apps on some of the original hardware.
RE: Don't think they can do much
I just wanted to answer some more questions if I can, about the game and the engine?
The file size for 3D Star Fighter Pilot is around about 160k.
Also, the engine and the current game have been designed to work on machines with PalmOs3.0
or above.
As for screen resolutions, it currently runs at 160x160 but I am working on extending
this to other resolutions as well. That said, it does already work on a Handera330,
but currently at the 160x160 resolution. I would like to see my engine support the higher
resolutions, and in theory it could run at other resolutions. It will just take some more
development time to get it all sorted out. For my first game, it will run at the standard
screen resolution, but I have already got a few emails from people saying they would really
like to see a high resolution version produced as well and I am going to continue looking
into how to add this feature to the engine.
I am also adding a post (near the end of this forum) to give some more info on black and
white machine support to hopefully answer some more questions?.
Thanks again everyone :)
bye,
Alan from 3DAGames.
The unHoly Palm
Like it or not.... Palm is going there. Now if only Palm can see that far into the future and stop telling all it's users what they don't need when the Palm community is writing software in that direction.
RE: The unHoly Palm
Not the first 3D
Tank is wireframe 3D!!!
right?!
Eduardo
RE: Not the first 3D
Not as Impressive as *this*:
RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
I've played with the engine and it is smooth.
RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
RE: 3D game
now if doom can be ported, why can't duke nukem 1/2/3 be ported? even better: x-com, c&c, warcraft can all be ported.
3d games/apps
we have just announced screen shots of our latest creation (as mentioned above) - which, is a doom type implementation of a 3D engine.. z-ordered lighting, ability to look up and down.. and, multiple levels.. its been in development for a while, but, we decided to release the screen shots anyhow.. you can see the screen shots on www.ardiri.com - and, it runs as nice as it looks *g*
RE: 3d games/apps
I think it's great that they're building a 3d game, and this is the first game they've released. Everybody starts somewhere. Look how far you've come from donkey kung to lemmings. I say it's a great start and can't wait to see how they progress.
RE: 3d games/apps
the problem is that it is not exactly "innovative" or new to the Palm.. and, when most developers start out with their "first" apps/games on the palm.. they dont setup a website that says:
"Adding a new dimension to mobile entertainment"
to boast like they are the first of any kind to do it on the Palm.. 3D gaming has been on the palm for a while now, this is NOT new stuff.. till harbaum wrote a 3D engine like this a long time ago, but, got bored with it so he never finished it.. i even believe he released the source code to it too, cannot remember from memory.
its great new developers are appearing, a lot of good developers out there :) ludi games have also done a lot of great titles (rayman, siberian strike), however, get bad reviews due to the size of the applications :( somone is always going to complain somewhere.. palm apps should never be > 256Kb in my opinion.. thats just too big!
// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
RE: 3d games/apps
http://bodotill.suburbia.com.au/space/space.html
Most PC games are using 3D graphics but 3D apps on the palm are lacking, my point was that it's nicer to see a trend toward 3D, it's not much to look at now, but I'm sure they and other developers will improve the quality of apps to come.
I'm with you for prc size though, though it's getting tough to put out a nice hi-res 16bit graphical game under the 256k limit.
Anyone have a idea if apps programmed for ARM processors will end up compiling larger than 68k code?
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