Next release: Real 3D floors?

Vren Lyet · Post by **Vren Lyet** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:07 am

I wonder whether real 3D floor support is subject to be included in one of the next ZDoom releases...

Compared to EDGE's real 3D floors those sprite based ones in ZDoom really look pathetic...

ZDoom has so many really cool features (slopes, scripting, etc.) - real 3D floors just like in EDGE shouldn't be that hard to implement, but would open totally new possibilties in level editing...

It's a feature I'd extremely like to see in ZDoom!

Any plans for that?

Nmn · Post by **Nmn** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:09 am

AFAIR, the rendering code makes real 3d's impossible to implement, however, several discussions were made on faking 3d stuff with portals-think Eternity.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:33 am

It's definitely not impossible to implement. But yeah it'll be hard to just throw into the current engine in this state. I imagine there would be some performance penalties as well.

The Ultimate DooMer · Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:43 am

Vren Lyet wrote:I wonder whether real 3D floor support is subject to be included in one of the next ZDoom releases...

Compared to EDGE's real 3D floors those sprite based ones in ZDoom really look pathetic...

ZDoom has so many really cool features (slopes, scripting, etc.) - real 3D floors just like in EDGE shouldn't be that hard to implement, but would open totally new possibilties in level editing...

It's a feature I'd extremely like to see in ZDoom!

Any plans for that?

You can do 3D floors to an extent, through invisible bridge things together with either crossbeams or the deep water effect. Their use is limited, howver.

Post by **TheDarkArchon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 10:44 am

@- Geedougg Judging by at EDGE's current condition, your probabally right. There would be a performance hit.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 11:04 am

Actually I would've said the same thing only replace EDGE with Legacy. I HAVE actually experienced heavy performance hits and bottle-necks wth Legacy but none of them were anywhere near sector-over-sector areas. In fact most of EDGE's performance issues are because of the highly-inefficient dithering and smoothing effects that can kill frame-rate in some areas and especially in large places where the amount of crap being rendered in the vis_plane in combination with dynamic lights really chokes the game. I don't know if Legacy has any performance issues with 3D floors but I wouldn't be surprised if part of the choppy frame-rate is because of that. I hope when ZDoom does 3D floors it'll do a very good job of it and that it won't kill the current smooth-as-butter playability.

Post by **TheDarkArchon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 11:44 am

It won't be added till .65 at the earliest, anyway so we better just stick to our "crappy sprite" bridges for the time being.

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 2:02 pm

Given how easy slopes are to implement, it's amazing no one's thought of this before.

Post by **TheDarkArchon** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 2:34 pm

The thing is, it HAS been thought of before. It was said to be "too difficult to impliment ATM".

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:16 pm

Yeah, which makes you wonder why iD didn't implement it into Vanilla Doom....

It's funny how a feature can be hard to implement for one developer and easier for another. Those of you who played Rise Of The Triad may remember a very stupid limitation in that engine's architectural capabilities: "The fact that the engine couldn't do anything other than 90° walls." (Or, i.e.: The angle between 2 non-parallel walls couldn't be lower than - or exceed - 90°.). This was not the case though in other 3D shooters from around the same time. Similarly, Duke Nukem 3D had slopes (and some features that only ZDooM has added to Vanilla DooM) and yet iD couldn't pull them off (or didn't want to).

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:10 pm

ROTT was a weak attempt to morph the Wolf 3D engine into something it should never have been because Apogee were too inept to come up with their own engine. Next to Doom's technological capabilities, it was pathetic.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:57 pm

Yeah, that was more-or-less the case. Not to mention that the Wolf 3D engine was 16-Bit to begin with, which in a way meant that the entire friggin' thing was one big limitation.

David Ferstat · Post by **David Ferstat** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:09 pm

HotWax wrote:Given how easy slopes are to implement, it's amazing no one's thought of this before.

Very poker-faced, Hotwax, indeed.

Let's put them out of their misery, however.

Randy has observed before that the current Zdoom rendering engine is just like the original Doom rendering engine, and effectively incompatible with 3D floors.

Any attempt to introduce genuine 3D floors will, essentially, require throwing out the existing renderer, and writing a new one form scratch. This is way down Randy's list of priorities.

Post by **Bio Hazard** » Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:58 am

oh god can you even imagine how long .64 would take if randy started rewriting the engine now??? most of us would be 6-feet under before .64 would come out!

BlueStar · Post by **BlueStar** » Sun Aug 29, 2004 7:00 am

HotWax wrote:ROTT was a weak attempt to morph the Wolf 3D engine into something it should never have been because Apogee were too inept to come up with their own engine. Next to Doom's technological capabilities, it was pathetic.

It could have several floors on top of eachothers though. And it had jump pads, those were fun. Inspiration for Quake 3 maybe?

Next release: Real 3D floors?

Next release: Real 3D floors?

Re: Next release: Real 3D floors?