From: "John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: "Are Allegro's routines fast enough to write Quake-like games?" - No. HUH?
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 20:23:26 +0000
Organization: Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt
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Martynas Kunigelis wrote:
> 
> > 100% wrong.  Descent is a true 3D engine (mines are built from cubes
> > with shaded texture mapping), and the robots and ships are made up of
> > texture-mapped polygon models.  You're probably referring to the
> > powerups and hostages, which are 1D and 2D bitmaps, respectively.  Some
> > weapon shots are also 1D objects.  Gee whiz.  Descent is the most
> > completely 3D game out there in terms of game play.
> 
> I wander what do you mean by 1D bitmaps? It stands for one-dimensional
> I assume, and one dimensional is... a single pixel?

When I refer to dimensions, I'm not referring to the bitmaps themselves,
I mean that the bitmaps look identical no matter what direction you view
them from.  For example, many of the bitmaps used by Doom (dying/dead
enemies, objects in the landscape, etc.) are one-dimensional.

In Descent, powerups and some shots (plasma for example) are
one-dimensional.  Hostages are two-dimensional (fly over them to see
this), and just about everything else is three-dimensional.

> Nope... the major difference between Descent and Quake is that in
> Descent you can rotate around the Z axis (i.e. turn upside down or left
> side up or whatever) while in Quake you can not. Different 3D engines
> I guess...

That's just a limitation of the programming for the Quake world.  I
imagine one could easily write an engine in QuakeC that lets you rotate
vertically.

-- 
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|      John M. Aldrich       | "Always listen to experts.  They'll  |
|       aka Fighteer I       | tell you what can't be done, and why.|
|   mailto:fighteer AT cs DOT com   | Then do it."                         |
| http://www.cs.com/fighteer |                - Lazarus Long        |
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