5 ms·

This is great to see. Quake and Doom were all about elaborate fake 3d and elaborate fake raytracing to run fast and look amazing on slow hardware. As technolog

This is great to see. Quake and Doom were all about elaborate fake 3d and elaborate fake raytracing to run fast and look amazing on slow hardware. As technology improved, first we got a real 3d engine and now we finally have a real raytracing engine.

mbel 8y ago
What do you mean "fake 3d"? They are as 3D as any other computer generated images with linear perspective. Quake is even using a rasterizer like nearly all games today.
- kkapelon 8y ago
  Doom used 2D sprites, so "fake 3d" if you ask me.
  - mbel 8y ago
    So does plethora of today's AAA titles for subtle details like particle effects, grass and others.
    - kkapelon 8y ago
      yes. but sprites (i.e. enemies and weapons) are the primary method of interaction with Doom. Grass and particle effects are secondary.... How many FPS AAA titles today use sprites for enemies and weapons?
      - jandrese 8y ago
        Funnily enough the sprite based enemies were a real strength for Doom compared to many of the fully 3D games that came out in the next generation, including Quake. Because rendering full 3D enemies was taxing for the hardware you couldn't put too many of them on the screen at once. In some games more than 2 or 3 would cause it to chug. So you only ever run across one or two enemies at once in the games, unlike Doom that wasn't afraid to throw a swarm of pinkies at you because you just picked up the chainsaw.
        kkapelon 8y ago
        Agreed. I think "Painkiller" is one of the few games that actually managed (much later) to put a healthy amount of enemies against you just like Doom did..
      - sneakernets 8y ago
        Doesn't matter, to the Doom engine they are tall cubes , albeit with increasingly awful collision detection as the cubes increase in size.
        kkapelon 8y ago
        So according to your definition Doom is a full 3d game, even though as a player I actually see 2D weapons and 2d enemies?
        sneakernets 8y ago
        Of course it is in the "game" sense. It handles X, Y, and Z axes in game on mobs and the player, although it is selective in which mobs get the "Z treatment". Monsters are infinitely tall, projectiles aren't. It's not a limitation of the engine as much as it was a design choice, as Y-shearing was too ugly in Carmack's opinion, so it was removed in favor of a very forgiving auto-aim. Nothing's stopping someone from adding code to render 3D models or "portals" in the game, and in fact it has already been done, with no 3D acceleration needed.
  - morganvachon 8y ago
    The terms "fake 3D" and "2.5D" in reference to Doom and similar games has nothing to do with sprite based mobs, it's about not having a truly 3D map. Doom's maps were drawn in 2D top-down with a height variable for any wall or platform. You couldn't have one room above another, which is why elevators in the game were solid (you couldn't stand under the floor). The various level editors for Doom based games looked like primitive 2D CAD programs. Quake was a whole new paradigm, it was based on a true 3D engine and its maps were generated in three dimensions. You could stand under stairs, under the room above, and underneath lifts.
    - leoc 8y ago
      It's surely both the sprite-based monsters and the "2.5D" world that justify DOOM's "2.5D/fake 3D" label, though indeed more the latter. (System Shock was a transitional example of sprite monsters in an otherwise full-3D world: https://youtu.be/CGKidgwcalM?list=PLqqLcEJ9bUtNedMdW64WioyV9Pgdsxkj9&t=108 https://youtu.be/CGKidgwcalM?list=PLqqLcEJ9bUtNedMdW64WioyV9... )
- anc84 8y ago
  I'd take the benefit of the doubt and consider the poster oblivious to the vast difference between Doom and Quake, they probably just threw them both into the "early 90s 2.5D FPS" bucket.
- dahart 8y ago
  The word fake doesn’t bother me, but maybe “limited 3d” would be a better term for it. The 3d it had was still correct 3d, sure, it was just limited in what kinds of 3d it could render, unlike the full 3d games that came soon after.
- PavlikPaja 8y ago
  It wasn't really 3D, you couldn't look up or down at all in the original doom I think and in the later games you could, but it got all horribly distorted, as the engine couldn't actually show the scene from different perspective.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
_Microft 8y ago
Do you maybe mean "raycasting" as used in Wolfenstein or Doom compared to a proper 3D engine like the Quake games were using?
dexen 8y ago
>Quake and Doom were all about elaborate fake 3d A nitpick: DooM (1 and 2), just as well as Duke Nukem 3D were indeed "2.5D" elaborate fakery of 3D. One of examples of the ruse: a level was basically a (floor, ceiling) height map, and there could be no two overlapping rooms one above the other. On the other hand, Quake (1) was an early pioneer [1] of real, actual 3D, including an OpenGL backend and all that. That's one of the reasons it required significantly beefier hardware: needing a Pentium for smooth gameplay, while DooM would run perfectly fine on a mid-end 486, which is a generation older. [1] cf. Marathon
- taneq 8y ago
  > On the other hand, Quake (1) was an early pioneer [1] of real, actual 3D The Quake rasterizer with its overlapped divide for perspective correction is a thing of beauty and possibly my favourite piece of code ever. If there's anyone out there who loves optimisation and hasn't read Abrash's "black book", it's well worth a read.
- josteink 8y ago
  > A nitpick: DooM (1 and 2), just as well as Duke Nukem 3D were indeed "2.5D" Double nitpick: Duke Nukem could actually have stacked floors and bridges over other playable areas. As such, if it didn’t use “real” 3D, its 2.5D scheme were considerately more elaborate than Doom or Wolfenstein.
  - dexen 8y ago
    Thank you a lot, josteink; I mixed up map format's with renderer's limitation.
  - fb03 8y ago
    Yes, but I remember you still had to use a really contrived way of explaining that 3d 'geometry' on the editor (BUILD.exe). Basically you still drew in 2d but you could overlap rooms with other lines that wouldn't intersect with any already existing lines, and that would configure 'a room above/below the current room'. Then you had to slope the floor until it actually connected with the newer room. It was pretty strange but yeah, some people built insanely detailed things with Duke3D :-)
anc84 8y ago
We had Q3RT 15 years ago: http://www.q3rt.de/ http://www.q3rt.de/

mbel 8y ago

What do you mean "fake 3d"? They are as 3D as any other computer generated images with linear perspective. Quake is even using a rasterizer like nearly all games today.

kkapelon 8y ago
Doom used 2D sprites, so "fake 3d" if you ask me.
- mbel 8y ago
  So does plethora of today's AAA titles for subtle details like particle effects, grass and others.
  - kkapelon 8y ago
    yes. but sprites (i.e. enemies and weapons) are the primary method of interaction with Doom. Grass and particle effects are secondary.... How many FPS AAA titles today use sprites for enemies and weapons?
    - jandrese 8y ago
      Funnily enough the sprite based enemies were a real strength for Doom compared to many of the fully 3D games that came out in the next generation, including Quake. Because rendering full 3D enemies was taxing for the hardware you couldn't put too many of them on the screen at once. In some games more than 2 or 3 would cause it to chug. So you only ever run across one or two enemies at once in the games, unlike Doom that wasn't afraid to throw a swarm of pinkies at you because you just picked up the chainsaw.
      - kkapelon 8y ago
        Agreed. I think "Painkiller" is one of the few games that actually managed (much later) to put a healthy amount of enemies against you just like Doom did..
    - sneakernets 8y ago
      Doesn't matter, to the Doom engine they are tall cubes , albeit with increasingly awful collision detection as the cubes increase in size.
      - kkapelon 8y ago
        So according to your definition Doom is a full 3d game, even though as a player I actually see 2D weapons and 2d enemies?
        sneakernets 8y ago
        Of course it is in the "game" sense. It handles X, Y, and Z axes in game on mobs and the player, although it is selective in which mobs get the "Z treatment". Monsters are infinitely tall, projectiles aren't. It's not a limitation of the engine as much as it was a design choice, as Y-shearing was too ugly in Carmack's opinion, so it was removed in favor of a very forgiving auto-aim. Nothing's stopping someone from adding code to render 3D models or "portals" in the game, and in fact it has already been done, with no 3D acceleration needed.
- morganvachon 8y ago
  The terms "fake 3D" and "2.5D" in reference to Doom and similar games has nothing to do with sprite based mobs, it's about not having a truly 3D map. Doom's maps were drawn in 2D top-down with a height variable for any wall or platform. You couldn't have one room above another, which is why elevators in the game were solid (you couldn't stand under the floor). The various level editors for Doom based games looked like primitive 2D CAD programs. Quake was a whole new paradigm, it was based on a true 3D engine and its maps were generated in three dimensions. You could stand under stairs, under the room above, and underneath lifts.
  - leoc 8y ago
    It's surely both the sprite-based monsters and the "2.5D" world that justify DOOM's "2.5D/fake 3D" label, though indeed more the latter. (System Shock was a transitional example of sprite monsters in an otherwise full-3D world: https://youtu.be/CGKidgwcalM?list=PLqqLcEJ9bUtNedMdW64WioyV9Pgdsxkj9&t=108 https://youtu.be/CGKidgwcalM?list=PLqqLcEJ9bUtNedMdW64WioyV9... )
anc84 8y ago
I'd take the benefit of the doubt and consider the poster oblivious to the vast difference between Doom and Quake, they probably just threw them both into the "early 90s 2.5D FPS" bucket.
dahart 8y ago
The word fake doesn’t bother me, but maybe “limited 3d” would be a better term for it. The 3d it had was still correct 3d, sure, it was just limited in what kinds of 3d it could render, unlike the full 3d games that came soon after.
PavlikPaja 8y ago
It wasn't really 3D, you couldn't look up or down at all in the original doom I think and in the later games you could, but it got all horribly distorted, as the engine couldn't actually show the scene from different perspective.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

_Microft 8y ago

Do you maybe mean "raycasting" as used in Wolfenstein or Doom compared to a proper 3D engine like the Quake games were using?

dexen 8y ago

>Quake and Doom were all about elaborate fake 3d A nitpick: DooM (1 and 2), just as well as Duke Nukem 3D were indeed "2.5D" elaborate fakery of 3D. One of examples of the ruse: a level was basically a (floor, ceiling) height map, and there could be no two overlapping rooms one above the other. On the other hand, Quake (1) was an early pioneer [1] of real, actual 3D, including an OpenGL backend and all that. That's one of the reasons it required significantly beefier hardware: needing a Pentium for smooth gameplay, while DooM would run perfectly fine on a mid-end 486, which is a generation older. [1] cf. Marathon

taneq 8y ago
> On the other hand, Quake (1) was an early pioneer [1] of real, actual 3D The Quake rasterizer with its overlapped divide for perspective correction is a thing of beauty and possibly my favourite piece of code ever. If there's anyone out there who loves optimisation and hasn't read Abrash's "black book", it's well worth a read.
josteink 8y ago
> A nitpick: DooM (1 and 2), just as well as Duke Nukem 3D were indeed "2.5D" Double nitpick: Duke Nukem could actually have stacked floors and bridges over other playable areas. As such, if it didn’t use “real” 3D, its 2.5D scheme were considerately more elaborate than Doom or Wolfenstein.
- dexen 8y ago
  Thank you a lot, josteink; I mixed up map format's with renderer's limitation.
- fb03 8y ago
  Yes, but I remember you still had to use a really contrived way of explaining that 3d 'geometry' on the editor (BUILD.exe). Basically you still drew in 2d but you could overlap rooms with other lines that wouldn't intersect with any already existing lines, and that would configure 'a room above/below the current room'. Then you had to slope the floor until it actually connected with the newer room. It was pretty strange but yeah, some people built insanely detailed things with Duke3D :-)

anc84 8y ago

We had Q3RT 15 years ago: http://www.q3rt.de/ http://www.q3rt.de/