Hi all,

Recently I was sorting out some old backups I had and I stumbled across something that absorbed a worrying amout of my free time one drizzly summer in manchester

Somewhen in 1997 I began to play with AB3D2's unweildy editors and made some new graphics/effects/models and such. Never really managed to create any good new levels but tarted up some of the existing ones a treat.

Anyhow, I blew the dust off and started playing it for fun on my spare 1200 (forgetting how slow it was!) and thought I'd take some screenies for posterity. Then I played the original unmodified game and took a new pride in what I managed to achieve so I thought I'd share them...

First set
Second set
Third set
Fourth set

Excuse the poor picture quality - images were taken at 2/3 screensize via a TV card so they are a bit grainy in places. Fullscreen just wasnt an option. If only I had a nicely overclocked 060 card

Perhaps it's time for a Warp3D based engine replacement?

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Mm.. nostalgia... looking good. Scary game.

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Mainframe: Amiga 3000 Tower, CSPPC233/060, 128+2MB, 36GB hd, Prometheus, Voodoo5 5500, 10Mbit
A1G3XE 800MHz, 768MB, 150GB Raptor, 9250, OS4.1

@Crusher

Yeah, AB3D2 had much more intense atmosphere than either DooM or Quake IMHO

-edit-

That said, I pinched graphics from both Doom, quake and even quake2 (the latter was added later to make a new sky). Many busy hours converting image palettes and stuff...

-/edit-

Must be played in dark and with a good sound system....

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Loved Alien Breed series - shame its unlikely we will see the series making a come back on the A1...

But we can hope

@Bobsonsirjonny

Looked like fun, shame I've never got to play the Alien Breed series.

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SiG Na TuRe?

@Karlos

Ah, those bring back some memories! An updated engine would rock.

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After a decade away from the scene, I am back!

@ED209

The series was great fun to play. AB, AB2 AB-Special Edition 92, AB-Tower Assault were all in the overhead 2D category. AB3D and AB3D2-The Killing Grounds were of the 3D variety.

AB3D used a 2x2 chunky copper mode and resembled most other early 3D games for the amiga like Gloom and Fears, only it was much faster and had a much mor intense atmosphere. AB3D2 was a 1x1 resolution, only it needed one hell of a fast CPU to make it playable at max resolution, and owing to being a real mess in the sources, adding RTG support to ease the slowdown prooved to be a real headache, one in which most eager coders gave up on. Again it had an awesome atmosphere for the time it was released.

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@Karlos

Ahhhh, the memories. :)

Eeeeeeerrrrrrrkkkkkkkk...........heartattackkkkkkk! :(

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I can't remember, but did those AB3D have RTG and AHI support by any change ?

They might get a nice boost when ran on modern Amiga hardware....

Martin

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Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

@Karlos

I agree. The atmosphere was excellent in the whole series. I think that Team 17 released the source to this game (although I believe that it was written by someone else) making a port to the A1 not an impossibility.

A ported version with some improvements would not be a waste of time and would give the A1 it's first worthy 'Amiga Only' title.

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Sam

The AB3DII RTGpatch compiled for PPC (AOS4) would be nice.

@fryguy

Yes. and (when no AHI support is available in AB3D) the 'Nalleh Puh' Paula to AHI patch......

Ah, we need that anyway :)

Martin

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

@-Sam-

Quote:

I think that Team 17 released the source to this game (although I believe that it was written by someone else) making a port to the A1 not an impossibility.

It's written in 68k ASM though.. I think porting an entire game to C or PPC ASM would be too hard.. but I dont know much about ASM, so maybe I'm wrong.

@jahc

I think you may be right. I remember someone saying at the time of the source release that it would be difficult. This was probably the reason why.

Ah well, the struggle to fill the OS 4 software catalogue goes on. It seems as though there is only Hyperion that have any major titles being readied for release. Hopefully this will change soon.

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Sam

@jahc

I believe you are correct sir. If this is the case then it certainly would be a rather large and unpleasant task port it. However if the source code is out there and freely available perhaps that would allow at least for "tweaking". Not sure how feasible it would be to add functioality to the game via PPC extentions?

In any case assuming it would run with the RTG and Paula->AHI PPC ports and even if the 68k emulator in OS4 only gains a nominal increase over 060 speeds then I would think the game would be very playable.

@DrJohn

The sources are a *total* mess. I once spent a month with devpac just trying to assemble the thing, let alone try to update it.

If we look at the engine, however, it's clear that the features it uses are pretty much recreatable with Warp3D (apart from the bumpmapping effects). I dare say it would be easier to create a new engine that can read data for the old one rather than attempt a port of the existing code.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@-Sam-

The source was completely 68K asm (with some AMOS utilities), and was a complete mess. Porting to OS4 would mean a complete rewrite.

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