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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The link doesn't work.

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 3:50:57 PM #
Too bad the site isn't working. I'd like to see more about the upcoming 3d games.

RE: The link doesn't work.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 3:53:49 PM #
It works fine for me.

RE: The link doesn't work.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:11:42 PM #
Yea, works fine. I'm not even a game player, but I have to say it looks very cool.

RE: The link doesn't work.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:50:58 PM #
At first, the link didn't work for me either, but I hit the refresh button and it loaded just fine.

RE: The link doesn't work.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:51:18 PM #
Hey Ed!

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.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:51:49 PM #
Yeah, it doesn't work for me either. If you go to www.safeweb.com, you can see the URL fine, however.

RE: The link doesn't work.
jackie_bebe @ 11/14/2001 7:12:25 PM #
try it with a .net

it works.

This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:39:49 PM #
My Atari 2600 was almost better than this - And my C64 was MUCH better.

RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 5:03:40 PM #
Your C=64 had a 320 x 200 screen. Do you think that could have something to do with it?

RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
CKMOOSE @ 11/14/2001 6:34:52 PM #
Zap! 2016 is a top scroller and much less processor intensive.
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.
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 10:06:18 AM #
Nice to see we are adding bloatware apps (and I include games when talking about the Palm/Palm-like devices) to the platform. ...and I thought I had a BUSINESS platform all these years!

BTW... this is a Palm device you know... not a GameBoy! Don't expect too much.

RE: This sucks. Zap2016 blows it away.
skoty @ 11/15/2001 10:11:49 AM #
First of all, there are a ton of business apps out there for you. Rest assured, you have a business device. In order for the PalmOS to be more widely accepted, they need to cater to everyone's needs not just businesses. With all the news that's been going on lately about Handspring and Palm setting up there Enterprise partnerships, I would say that they aren't dropping the ball on being a business related device.

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.
ardiri @ 11/15/2001 11:14:54 AM #
Zap! 2016 is a top scroller and much less processor intensive.
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!

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 4:51:45 PM #
I want a version of Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot on a handheld. Any developers up to that?


RE: Other games!
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 5:14:13 PM #
Try Kyle's Quest...

RE: Other games!
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 5:22:08 PM #
No, I'm talking like all out, MMORPG style playing. Not just a little Zelda clone. I know I'm dreaming, hopefully it won't be too far off. For now I just need a laptop and some 802.11.

RE: Other games!
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 5:45:25 PM #
Is Lordinium anything like what you want?
www.lordinium.com

Lordinium is nice but...
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 10:30:52 AM #
I didn't really figure out what I was doing in the game before the demo ran out.

RE: Lordinium
I.M. Anonymous @ 3/4/2002 7:05:12 PM #

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

dhchung @ 11/14/2001 8:19:40 PM #
with a 33MHz processor and a 160x160 resolution. Don't expect too much for a "3D" game....

don't forget to leave a few hundred kb in your 8mb only palm

RE: Don't think they can do much
popko @ 11/14/2001 8:32:01 PM #
I agree. Current Palms are too limited in terms of screen res as well as horse power ... so maybe the next gen OS and hardware will do much better. For now, PocketPCs is the king of handheld gaming(IMHO, they even beat the ones on GameBoy Advance).

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 @ 11/15/2001 4:37:48 AM #
Hmm... I agree on the screen resolution, but not on the horsepower. Do you remember the game "Virus"? (That was way back in the days of the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST.) It was one of the first decent 3D-Space Shoot'em up that I can remember. It ran quite well on the Atari ST - which only had a 8MHz 68000 CPU. So it should be possible to implement something similar on a 33MHz Dragonball Hardware...

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
EdwardGreen @ 11/15/2001 8:06:02 AM #
Yeah the 8Mhz ST could do some great solid 3d stuff at 320x200 in 16 shades. I'm sure a 33Mhz Dragonball should be able to match its performance!

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
kisrael @ 11/16/2001 11:32:10 AM #
Yeah, my first 386 16mhz had some decent 3Dish games. Thunderstrike? I think was one of them (maybe the name is wrong) but had you flying over a reasonably detailed landscape. And "contiuum" would scale pretty nicely...

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
Alan @ 11/17/2001 7:39:57 PM #
Hello, thanks everyone for your posts. :)

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

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 8:24:06 PM #
Well... I wish someone at Palm would comment on this. Doesn't this game go exactly against Palm doctrine? As Palm users we don't multimedia. We don't ned it. The Palm is a business platform, not a gaming device. What are these writers doing comming up with a 3D game? Isn't this considered Bloatware? My gosh... could this mean that the Palm is headed into the direction of where PPC is today?

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
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 8:33:23 PM #
Like it or not. Palm can go anywhere (but PPC can't.) But you better get out of here.

Not the first 3D

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/14/2001 9:22:28 PM #
Ed, what about Tank?

Tank is wireframe 3D!!!
right?!

Eduardo

RE: Not the first 3D
I.M. Anonymous @ 2/2/2002 8:14:57 PM #
what about 'dreadling' - the doom-like clone (ok - more like castle wolfenstein 3d - the very first 1st person shooter for the desktop) thats been available for palm for over a year?

Not as Impressive as *this*:

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 12:50:45 AM #
I saw some really *awesome* screenshots on a Japanese website of a new game ardiri.com is working on. You gotta check it out: http://www.ardiri.com If you are interested in 3D games, surf over there right now! (I just hope the frame rate is decent)

RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
ahecht @ 11/15/2001 2:49:23 AM #
looks like an updated Raygin (which is another 3D game for the palm)

RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
bas @ 11/15/2001 3:32:30 AM #
trust me.. this is not an updated raygin...
I've played with the engine and it is smooth.

RE: Not as Impressive as *this*:
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 11:39:59 AM #
Where could we get to 'try' the engine? Any links to demos?

3D game

I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 4:28:44 AM #
It might be 3D, but it's very ugly, isn't it??

RE: 3D game
popko @ 11/15/2001 5:33:21 AM #
yeah sure it is. this is doom (even worse in my opion) graphics in 2001. but hey, as long as the fps are good, i'm sold. why? lots of readon and geforce 3 owners run max payne in low-res to get the max fps possible.

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

ardiri @ 11/15/2001 10:58:38 AM #
wireframe 3D gaming? *yawn*.. sure, it may look nice, but, there has been heaps of wireframe stuff out for quite some time.. my first palm app was a simple 3D cube (source code available).. there are a number of 3d games around.. 3d tetris, raygin (old), dreadling (wolf 3d clone) and games like void and tank (wireframe tank game).. now this.. it looks ok, but, is just an extension to a game like "tank" (they fill polygons and have color) not anything special really :) [if you know 3d stuff] - they also only use half of the screen for rendering (160x100). i'll still download and mess with it.. one part of a game is to display it right, the second is to provide a control mechanism that works :) we'll see how they have done this when they release the product. also, the use of a "black" background on non color units will kill them. the grayscale screens smear when you use black.. you wont be able to see much with these graphics.. it'll look great on TFT screens.. :)

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*

:)

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/

RE: 3d games/apps
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 11:18:52 AM #
Looks very nice, when is it coming???

RE: 3d games/apps
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 12:11:03 PM #
Aaron: You should be more supportive of other developers/projects, you always post a negative response to just about every innovative game out there.

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
ardiri @ 11/15/2001 4:50:15 PM #
Aaron: You should be more supportive of other developers/projects, you always post a negative response to just about every innovative game out there.

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
I.M. Anonymous @ 11/15/2001 7:06:31 PM #
You're right he did
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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