3 ms·

>technically superior. Curious what makes you say that. While it was full 3D, it ran so much slower than DooM that, to me, "technically superior" is very subje

>technically superior. Curious what makes you say that. While it was full 3D, it ran so much slower than DooM that, to me, "technically superior" is very subjective. >Ultima Underworld was released the year before and had an engine better than Wolf3D This one is definitely true but with a caveat - Wolf3D could be played fullscreen while Ultima's first person window was only a small part of the fullscreen window. The rest was an inventory and other things that allowed it to run faster since the actual rendered area was significantly smaller.

meheleventyone 5y ago
Hey, just noticed this reply, HN doesn't notify people so you're lucky I skimmed down the first page of my own comments! :D I agree technically superior is a subjective notion, particularly as it relates to games and how good a game is. I do think broadly that a full 3D engine is more complex than a 2.5D engine like Doom. There were quite a few new challenges in terms of making Quake for example. System Shock and Doom are also very different games in terms of their complexity. So I'd justify my opinion based on the game and the technology underpinning it being more complex. For Ultima that becomes more of a production choice. Do they optimize the renderer for fullscreen resolution or build the game. Again a significantly more complex game than Wolf3D so I can understand doing the latter. None of this takes away from the achievements of the respective teams but we do well to remember what actually happened rather than just lionizing one man.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  >we do well to remember what actually happened rather than just lionizing one man This statement alone was worth the price of admission. As a fan of game engine history (highly recommend Fabian's books: https://fabiensanglard.net/ https://fabiensanglard.net/), I have to remember that all of these things were built on the shoulders of giants. It wasn't just one person that contributed, even if it may be only their code that lives on.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    Yup I have his books and am old enough to have been around for all these games back in the day although I didn’t start modding games until Duke3D and Quake. I was actually poking around in the source of Doom the other day to see how it handled vector normalization in fixed point (answer convert the vector to direction vector then to angles then back to a length one vector by virtue of the conversion). It’s very fun to go back and pootle through.
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      It seems we have something in common! Cheers!

meheleventyone 5y ago

Hey, just noticed this reply, HN doesn't notify people so you're lucky I skimmed down the first page of my own comments! :D I agree technically superior is a subjective notion, particularly as it relates to games and how good a game is. I do think broadly that a full 3D engine is more complex than a 2.5D engine like Doom. There were quite a few new challenges in terms of making Quake for example. System Shock and Doom are also very different games in terms of their complexity. So I'd justify my opinion based on the game and the technology underpinning it being more complex. For Ultima that becomes more of a production choice. Do they optimize the renderer for fullscreen resolution or build the game. Again a significantly more complex game than Wolf3D so I can understand doing the latter. None of this takes away from the achievements of the respective teams but we do well to remember what actually happened rather than just lionizing one man.

dkonofalski 5y ago
>we do well to remember what actually happened rather than just lionizing one man This statement alone was worth the price of admission. As a fan of game engine history (highly recommend Fabian's books: https://fabiensanglard.net/ https://fabiensanglard.net/), I have to remember that all of these things were built on the shoulders of giants. It wasn't just one person that contributed, even if it may be only their code that lives on.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Yup I have his books and am old enough to have been around for all these games back in the day although I didn’t start modding games until Duke3D and Quake. I was actually poking around in the source of Doom the other day to see how it handled vector normalization in fixed point (answer convert the vector to direction vector then to angles then back to a length one vector by virtue of the conversion). It’s very fun to go back and pootle through.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    It seems we have something in common! Cheers!