Well now I'm a little annoyed. I spent hours and hours trying to make a raycaster for TI-89, and finally succeeded a few months ago, except it was only black & white and had a terrible frame rate... I wanted to be the first to make a raycasting engine but this guy went and beat me to it. Oh well. But, I have to give him credit. Good job, dude. I'd like to use his engine (or at least the algorithm) in a game I'm making.

The race is not over yet... Althogh this engine uses a raycasting type of algorithm, it doesn't allow for complete freedom of motion... And remember... It is not being first that counts, it is being best... ;-)

Well you're right! This is not a true raycaster. Mine at least had full freedom of motion. Looks like I should dig that thing back out & do some heavy optimization, I think I can pull it off. Remember, Maze3D for TI-86 had full freedom of motion (except up/down but who cares about that) and it had 4 LEVEL GRAYSCALE too! And not a bad frame rate. With everything 89 has over the 86, I say with certainty we CAN make a goldeneye-style game for 89, but with much simpler gfx and stuff. Well I'm off to haul out tigcc for another spin...

Don't I remember the same if not a similar engine was released a few years ago for ti86 and never go used?

I'm feeling like I missed something... When playing, I can only perform 90-degree turns. So I don't understand why you call this a "raycaster". I'm not saying that there is nothing good in this program - texture mapping is not an easy thing to do - however I don't understand such an enthusiasm. We have seen much better (true raycasters) on TI92 years ago.

Its not only called raycaster. It IS a raycaster. The demo doesn't show all features like partitional transparent textures and all that stuff and the restriction to 90 degrees angles is NOT a principle engine restriction. Its just a simplification for now until the engine features everything I want.
About "We have seen much better (true raycasters) on TI92 years ago": I have searched a while for an available raycaster for the TI89/92p, but I have found nothing. Maybe there are some around, but then they are "very good hidden". The FAT engine will be much more than a simple raycasting engine. It will come with a full-blown API for everything necessary to make a game. The engine itself will be implemented as NOSTUB-Library in its "production version". Therefore a game which builds up on this engine may use almost the complete 64kB executable size (beside some small bootstrap code) for its own.

No RayCaster on Ti92+ ?
There is GNUHell which is under GPL.
And also WolfD for Ti-92 under GPL
And also Dungeon for Ti-92 with no source code.
(See Ticalc.org Ti-92 / Fargo I and Fargo II).

While the technological achivements of this demo realy isn't that great, the fact that it is Thomas that has realesed it is what counts... With his record of actualy continuing to improve projects, we are allmost sure to see at least one complete game using this techniqe.

If this had come from some other person my thought would have been something like, 'yea... cool maze engine... could have done that myself in a couple of hours, though.' Now instead we can look forward on a good semi-3d rpg, something that I'm very enthusiastic about, (I'll allways carry the fond memorys of playing 'Dungeon Master' on my old Atari ST.)

... or Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Eye of the Beholder ...

I don't believe that there will be 3D RPG's and not many people really want them. Most people I bet, want some sort of deathmatch or shooting game (particulary me). Also, deathmatch or shooter is easier to make than a 3D RPG (and maps will take less space). It's going to be really cool to have multiplayer deathmatch using two calcs (and maybe several bots)! This will revolutionize our 89!

~zkostik

When's the last time defiance has been updated? (for the 82 and seemingly fairly superior to this)

i believe defiance was stopped for lack of interest in finishing the program. It had much optimization to be done to bring the speed to an aceptable level.
The 3d demo for the 89 to me seems choppy. The 82's raycasting engine does seem at this point superior to this engine for the 82's engine is smooth. The only problem with the 82 program is that it is slow. If this were made on an 89, it would most likely be much faster.

Supposively defiance is still being worked on. I tried to get the source from the author about 3 weeks ago and he said he hasn't given up the project yet.

Looks very interesting...By the way, can someone please tell me if there is a program to run ASM programs on the TI-89 with version AMS 2.05?

you need to install hw2patch and UniOS 1.21 which can both be found at ticalc under 89 asm shells.

Or use nostub programs. I stopped using shells when I got ams 2.04 right after it came out, and have had far fewer crashes since.

Do you think you can make somthing like that for the TI-83? I am working on Age of Empires II, the Age of Kings, and we really need good graphics! Maybe you can e-mail me, and discuss it. (Maybe we can make Age of Empires for the TI-92(+) too.
-Matthew

einsteiniq200@hotmail.com

although i think the program is good, i swear that i have seen the exact same thing in a doom or duke3d game before. i'm not sure which calc it was on. and the size of the file: it's already a good size. and if you are going to make it so that turning is not just 90 degrees, wouldn't that make the file even larger? and then to make a very good game with it would take up even more space. i think the game would have to be so great that i would never want to play anything else, because i would not want to use up all of my calc's memory for one game. but i don't play calc games so what am i worrying about? ok, maybe i play solitaire and a little bit o' bombermaze every once in a great while, but still...

my whole checking account
(not much in there)

onefastfiveoh

Check the above link and you will see what kind of graphics the final engine should be able to deliver. I don't know if I can reach this incredible quality (I haven't seen this on a 4 grayscale device before), but I'll try my best ;-)

Wow, that'd be pretty cool. The site says that's with 4-shades of gray, so I don't really see a problem. Let's go show those PalmPilot folks who's boss.

i agree, it would be pretty damn cool if you could make it like those screen shots, but i'm still concerned with the file size. would you be able to compress it so it isn't so large?

onefastfiveoh

Of course, textures which are not used in a level will be kept in their compressed state which reduces the size by at least 50%.

Well, that palm game is impressive, but the fact is that that is using a palm screen, much bigger/sharper than the one found on the 89. Any sort of reliable fast 3d would be very nice, however.
On another note, I'm considering development of an RTS game simmiliar to Warcraft 2, but as I don't feel like reinventing the wheel, does anyone know of a decent RTS that already exists?
Thanks

Thats a prety kool game. I had the demo on my palm for a while but i dont like the way the movement is. The graphics are really good.

jimi

That game is (imho) not using a texture mapping engine. It is (apparanty) using the same method of pseudo 3d as Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder; that is a set of pregenerated (i.e drawn) picture parts of the different items of the dungen; walls doors etc. The pictures are then combined to produce the diferent dungeon views. This allow for much more realistic images, but locks you firmly in stepwise motion and 90 degree turns.

Yeah, I thought the same way. Also, will it be possible to add some complexity, such as multiple floors and staircases to the levels FAT will be able to play? That would be very cool! BTW, answering question in some posts above: I don't think anybody will care about the size of the game -- the main point is for it to be good, not small. Anyone disagree?

~zkostik

Hi,

I don't believe that Jonas Lööf is correct (I could very well be wrong, so feel free to flame if I am). I think the current demo only allows for 90 degree turns because it's in its infant stages, not because it's predrawn. Additionally, a tutorial put out by the author of the FAT engine and the demo (url above) clearly goes through the steps of mapping strips of "wall" on the fly. It is puesdo 3d, but "true" raycasting.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Best Regards,
Bill Zeller

Actually I was not refering to the FAT-engine, but to the palm game that Thomas linked to in the above post. I do not doubt that the FAT is a true raycaster...