@OneTimer1

AB3D1 engine features can be summarised:

- 16 colour wall textures, 64x64 unit size
- Static, per vertex wall lighting - lower and upper corner brightness the same.
- Basic or Gouraud floor lighting.
- RGB (12-bit) rendering, no dithering.
- Bitmap (16 colour) or Vector objects.

AB3D2 engine features:

- 32 colour wall textures, 128x128 unit size
- Dynamic pet vertex wall lighting - lower and upper corners can vary independently.
- 256 colour floor textures, Gouraud lighting
- Bitmap (32 colour), Glare/Shadow (16 shades each), Additive transparency (32 colours) and bump mapped (8 basic colours, 4 variations each) and vector objects
- 256 (palette) rendering, ordered dithering

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@Karlos

Thanks for this details, I didn't knew there where so much differences, just thought AB3D 2 would have been the same thing with some other WADs and better textures.

@OneTimer1

No, but it's definitely an evolution. The AB3D1 sourcecode is in the same source dump as TKG. One of the other major changes is that the game structural data (all the object and alien properties) are exported to a file that's loaded in by TKG, so that it can be modified too.

One experiment I'm keeping for a rainy weekend is to try and use an RGB render target when on RTG. The engine currently relies on mapping tables that take brightness variations of each palette colour and remap them to the nearest available palette colour. It would be interesting to see how it might look if they were mapped to the appropriate RGB value directly and just rendered in true colour.

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The redesigned A and B levels are now merged into main.

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@Karlos

An interesting idea to explore would be to add the option to draw the map on a native screen when in RTG mode.

How useful would it be and would there performance drawbacks?

I don't think any Amiga game to date has had the ability to use more than one display. Would the cool factor alone be enough to warrant implementing such a feature?

@Rob

That's a pretty crazy suggestion. In theory it could be quick, if it stuck to using a 2 colour planar display for the map. It's likely a lot of effort for not much return though.

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@Karlos

Thanks! And this hasn't got any debugging stuff that may mess up two player right?

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@BigD

It hasn't had any for ages. Just don't play the Dev builds.

Do you actually play the two player mode?

Last edited by Karlos on 25-Nov-2023 at 12:22 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 25-Nov-2023 at 12:14 PM.

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@Karlos

Yes, with my son! He finds the atmosphere still quite scary due to the sound design. Playing two player is more bearable as I'm the only threat! Downloaded it now! Thanks again.

Last edited by BigD on 25-Nov-2023 at 12:47 PM.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

How old is he? I was thinking to add some gore splashes here and there, signs of the fight. I didn't this time.

Last edited by Karlos on 25-Nov-2023 at 01:04 PM.

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@Karlos

He's 7! I call the red aliens the 'Tomato Ketchup' monsters!

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Mines more a Minecraft fan. He associates anything low polygon with unfiltered textures with it. Which is fun y when you consider in Minecraft it's a pure artistic choice (and fits with the voxel oriented world).

Last edited by Karlos on 25-Nov-2023 at 02:21 PM.

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@Karlos

Yes, we bought MineCraft for him last February so he's new to it. He likes everything from Turrican, AB3D2 through to Columns to MineCraft. I've taught him the ways of the well rounded gamer!

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: I've taught him the ways of the well rounded gamer!

I knew a few gamers that were well-rounded indeed. One was practically spherical. A life sat testing their gamer's swivel chair to mechanical failure under the relentless weight gain from ingested energy drinks and snacks saw to that.

Last edited by Karlos on 29-Nov-2023 at 09:43 PM.

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@Karlos

We play sport together too and he's supposed to be coming on well as a goalie at school!

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@Karlos

Back on topic...I'm trying to promote your Mod and the engine updates with Retrocengo on YouTube but although he has installed it he doesn't seem to like playing 3D games on the Amiga! It's hard to get him to see what great strides have been made to get it playable, fun and worth playing! I hold my hand up to say that the original game didn't really interest me when it was first released.

HERE is the video! At least he demoed it for a bit!

Last edited by BigD on 29-Nov-2023 at 10:27 PM.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

It looks a lot like he's playing an older iteration from before we added texture override support per level.

It's good that he couldn't open the door for want of finding the two switches either side. He'd have died as soon as the first red beasts appear, the way he was playing.

Maybe he just sucks at FPS games and takes it out on Amiga FPS in general. Maybe a COD guy that needs a bit flashing arrow pointing at the door switch and a cutscene to explain how one works ;)

He does have a point about the performance though :(

Last edited by Karlos on 29-Nov-2023 at 10:59 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 29-Nov-2023 at 10:58 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 29-Nov-2023 at 10:48 PM.

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@Karlos

Yeah, was getting 9-10 frames per second on a Warp1260 under AGA! Does RTG add another 5fps then? That's my experience! He did have a PiStorm but he refused to test software that benefits from it and rubbished that over compatibility with WHDLoad games! His loss!

Last edited by BigD on 30-Nov-2023 at 07:20 AM.

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

I almost feel the need to troll comment his video

There's no question that the RTG version will be faster but I don't know by how much, it will very much depend on the RAM > VRAM transfer speed. The AGA version was upgraded by pipper way back at the start to use Kalms C2P routines which are as close to copy speed as it gets on 060. What is becoming apparent however is that the menagerie of 060 cards out there have very different chip ram write performance.

Ideally, you'd get about 7MB/s, but I've seen it as low as 5. By contrast, my BVision on 040 used to manage 14-15 MB/s without breaking a sweat.

Regardless of this, it's still just expensive to draw. This isn't Doom. It's Gouraud shaded, has two different transparency types, bump mapping and vector objects. This all in part why a PiStorm kills it, but 060 struggles.

Last edited by Karlos on 30-Nov-2023 at 10:45 AM.

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: @Karlos Back on topic...I'm trying to promote your Mod and the engine updates with Retrocengo on YouTube but although he has installed it he doesn't seem to like playing 3D games on the Amiga! It's hard to get him to see what great strides have been made to get it playable, fun and worth playing! I hold my hand up to say that the original game didn't really interest me when it was first released. HERE is the video! At least he demoed it for a bit!

Retrocengo is quite a case...

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