Early 3D engines

[NCC-73515]

I finally got the full versions of Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem 3D, after having only played the shareware versions some 15-20 years ago, and love the look of these early 3D engines.
Does anyone know if other FPS of that time all used those engines, or if there were additional ones that were created for these other games? I'm thinking of Nitemare 3D, which looks like Wolfenstein 3D, or Alien Trilogy, which looks like Doom, or Star Trek Generations, which might use the Build engine. If they have new engines, what are they called, and were they used elsewhere as well?

 

[Rincewiend]

Heretic and Hexen come to mind...
Use this to run those games:

http://dengine.net/

 

[NCC-73515]

They had the Doom engine

 

[Kelthaz]

Interestingly enough, the Build engine is still being used today. It was used to created 2019's Ion Fury.

 

[John Clark]

XnGine comes to mind (Terminator Future Shock) as another engine. The Unreal one also seems to feature in a few games.

Just hit wiki and I'd forgotten the Lithtech engine for Blood 2/Shogo. (I may have played too many FPS games back in the 90s/early 00s)

 

[NCC-73515]

The Unreal engine was great in KHG, and the Quake 3 Engine was nice in EF1 and 2. Lithtech was pretty good in NOLF1 and 2 (damn I wanna play those again!)
But I really liked Generations and Alien Trilogy as well, and I can't figure out what their engines were...

 

[Owain Taggart]

I've often admired the early engines for what they've been able to accomplish. The build engine is amazing considering it was originally developed by a teen (Ken Silverman) for his own purposes, and ended up being one of the most widely used engines in its day.

I also really like what some devs tried to do with some of those early engines, often pushing them to their limits. I don't know how many people played Strife, but it could possibly be the first fps that introduced rpg elements that are so popular to add to everything these days, and it used the Doom Engine (aka idTech 1).

 

[John Clark]

I also really like what some devs tried to do with some of those early engines, often pushing them to their limits. I don't know how many people played Strife, but it could possibly be the first fps that introduced rpg elements that are so popular to add to everything these days, and it used the Doom Engine (aka idTech 1).

Yep, I remember enjoying Strife

 

[NCC-73515]

I played the shareware demo of Strife a long time ago, and preferred Doom, Generations, and Alien Trilogy

 

[John Clark]

I think one of the first FPS ones I played was possibly one of the Robocop games (Amiga), though Doom shareware (I played Wolfenstein 3d after) was the first on PC.
Think I played Amiga Space Hulk before Doom too.

Generations I got in a pack (With one of the Worms games & Starship Titanic if I recall). Preferred Honor Guard and Elite Force but it had it's moments.

Got and liked most of the Alien series of FPS games.

Mortyr is one I haven't heard much of, but I picked that up at a store ages and ages ago. I preferred the Return to Castle Wolfenstein over that one.
(Mortyr spawned a sequel, but I didn't see that one)

 

[NCC-73515]

KHG and EF were much better of course, but Generations had some pretty nice missions.

 

[Rincewiend]

Redneck Rampage?

 

[Santaman]

The first real 3D FPS engine was appearantly used for the game "Descent"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)

I remember playing that on a Athlon XP 2200+ with 512Mb RAM two 80Gb Maxtor drives (which are still working btw) and a Aopen Geforce MX 440

 

[NCC-73515]

I played the demo back then

 

[John Clark]

The first real 3D FPS engine was appearantly used for the game "Descent"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)

I remember playing that on a Athlon XP 2200+ with 512Mb RAM two 80Gb Maxtor drives (which are still working btw) and a Aopen Geforce MX 440

Liked that too, but I think I first played it on something rather slower.
(I can't remember if I had the Pentium 83mhz overdrive at that point or was still on the 486 DX2-66. The MX graphics card was definitely later.

I might still have had a trident one meg card at that time too (and that card has been a life saver as it's consistently worked after other cards have died). It's no longer any use for more modern motherboards but it's still working in one of my old Dos machines and by this point it's probably twenty seven years old.

 

[F. King Daniel]

On a little tangent, someone ported areas of Hexen and Quake to SteamVR, and to stand inside the game worlds of my youth is one hell of an experience.

 

[Santaman]

Liked that too, but I think I first played it on something rather slower.
(I can't remember if I had the Pentium 83mhz overdrive at that point or was still on the 486 DX2-66. The MX graphics card was definitely later.

I might still have had a trident one meg card at that time too (and that card has been a life saver as it's consistently worked after other cards have died). It's no longer any use for more modern motherboards but it's still working in one of my old Dos machines and by this point it's probably twenty seven years old.

I still have a complete and working 80486 DX2 66Mhz machine, it has a Trident 9400 (I think) VESA graphics card, I also have 8088/86, 286, 386, Pentium 1,2,3,4 machines, a lonely Athlon XP and several more modern machines, although even a Phenom II 955BE is probably considered "vintage" by now.

One of the games that I really love is Mechwarrior 4, it came out in 2000, ye gads that's almost 21 years old now as well, back then it was incredible.
No idea what engine it used though.

 

[John Clark]

Still have a 386 (laptop) and the DX2-66 is wrapped up in storage.

I can't remember which Trident card I have. The very first died and had 512k of memeory if I recall, and the engineer who came to fix it only had the 1mb card with him so just stuck that in.

As for 3d engines, one bit that was new to me was that they were still releasing build engine games a couple of years ago.

I only played the demo of Mech4 but I liked it.

 

[Rincewiend]

Still have a 386 (laptop) and the DX2-66 is wrapped up in storage.

I can't remember which Trident card I have. The very first died and had 512k of memeory if I recall, and the engineer who came to fix it only had the 1mb card with him so just stuck that in.

As for 3d engines, one bit that was new to me was that they were still releasing build engine games a couple of years ago.

I only played the demo of Mech4 but I liked it.

Ion Fury is a very recent commercial game using the Duke3D engine...

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[NCC-73515]

I found the ready room in DN3D