Saturn Z-Treme Engine

[Ivan Guber]

Follow up to my video of 2 weeks ago. It's a real hardware test using my USB dev cart to transfer data (which is why you can still hear the cd music while it loads) and a USB capture card (which causes interlacing for some stupid reasons I can't understand). I am testing bullets here and overall collision detection. It's not 100% perfect and I am not sure if I will be keeping the current version of the engine (BSP based). The BSP based engine is causing me a TON of frustrations/problems (like the BSP ray tracing failing like you shoot at an invisible wall), so I am starting to look at already available map editors (Tomb Raider maybe) and fully change the engine...again. Something like the Tomb Raider format sounds nice on paper (so did BSP...), with heightmaps, rooms and portals. It's VERY frustrating : I felt close to start working on gameplay and 3d models! BSP is nice since it's easy to find your current position using it, have portals autogenerated (and then just use a PVS to cull out geometry) you can do raytracing and many useful things. But it requires many divisions and other things the Saturn isn't that good with, so it's not optimal. It seems that the divisions cause rounding errors too and make the BSP fail. Anyway, with portals I can cull out even more polygons, so it's not all bad. Unless someone can give me a hand with BSP based collision (and again it's not optimal, a portal based engine would be better), I'll just change the technique...some 4-5 months down the drain...again! Oh, and before you ask : No, Vasectomy Software is not a real thing

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[kazade]

That's amazing! So smooth!

 

[SuperH]

Wow fantastic lighting

 

[jollyroger]

I wish I had time to help him to work on the code...
Beyond some good conversations I have with him about techniques and algorithms, that is...

 

[8bitplus]

Looks great. I wish more FPS engines on the Saturn were this good back in the days.

 

[Wombat]

Impressive stuff, nice to see that the Saturn is also getting some indie/homebrew love!

 

[Anthony817]

Damn, every time I see what he has done with this engine it is all the more impressive. I think it is time to maybe start looking into getting another Saturn haha. But I just got too many consoles as it is, all 3 Xbox generations, PS3 and Dreamcast, as well as Gaming PC, not tons of room for much more lol. 6 systems for me is the sweet spot, but damn super tempted to get another Saturn. Almost feel bad I had to end up selling my last one.

 

[XL2]

Here is an update.
I still have lots of things to do, but I am slowly getting there.
I will focus on the multiplayer part for now since it's the easiest part.

 

[XL2]

AI, some animations and some basic gameplay.
I think for the gameplay it will be more like the terrorist hunt mode in Rainbow Six, where you must just kill everybody to move on.
It should make a decent coop multiplayer game as well.

 

[Anthony817]

Very cool update!

 

[Yakumo]

That's is one mighty impressive game engine. Seems to be mostly locked at 30fps too. Great work. I hope this engine will be used in a game at some point.

 

[Cooljerk]

This engine is mightily impressive, amazing work!!

 

[corrigo]

Pretty neat.

 

[Solotaire]

This looks GORGEOUS! Is there a game to be ported, or a homebrew FPS that this engine is targeting to be used with?

 

[XL2]

This looks GORGEOUS! Is there a game to be ported, or a homebrew FPS that this engine is targeting to be used with?

I am making a game with it, I just haven't come up with a name yet, but I know that I will start with a rather "easy" to make concept where you just need to kill all the enemies to finish a map.
It's more realistic than aiming at a game like Powerslave right from the start.
For the next few weeks I will be focusing on pickups, particle effects (blood, dust), adding 1 or 2 other weapons and maybe traps and doors.
And the biggest thing that I've been pushing back is to integrate a new map format.
In other words I still have lot of work to do, but it's starting to look like a game.

 

[Awbacon]

Super impressive. The framerate looks super solid

 

[XL2]

I tested Saturn Quake's E1l1 with AI and pickups to see if it could hold up.
My transformation code still isn't optimized and that map isn't optimal for my engine (lots of overlapping geometry whichs can break the bsp tree), but it runs at 20-30, even with 6 enemies on screen.

 

[Greg2600]

Out of curiosity, so is the Sonix Extreme homebrew game no longer being developed?

 

[XL2]

Out of curiosity, so is the Sonix Extreme homebrew game no longer being developed?

I stopped working on it last year.

 

[JackalSpat]

I stopped working on it last year.

Prepare for this to be a mantra for the rest of your life.