The Underearth Necropolis
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   -Info
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1024x768x16, IE 4.0+

Info


The Engine's history

The Asphyxiating Phobia, TAsPh for short, is the name of my engine. The name does not mean fear of being suffocated or killed from lack of oxygen, but instead a it means a fear that drains the essence from it's victim, and oxygen is essential to life. I originally came up with the concept..... a very long time ago. I was originally going to write the engine for DOS before it was ever named TAsPh. After making a lame wireframe engine that displayed a pyramid, I decided that games of the future wouldn't pass as even 'ok' in the near future, so I resorted to 3D API's, and my first choice was OpenGL. After writing a ton of small programs (from terrain based, to model loaders, to particle systems) I decided to take the next logical step, writing a playable engine.

Inspired by my idol, John Carmack (CEO Id Software), through the Quake series I began my research. I bought two 1500 paged books. One on C++ and the other titled 'Michael Abrashs GRAPHICS PROGRAMMING Black Book'. Alot of what's in there is for mode 13h graphics engines but the major optimization techniques (vis, qbsp, etc) can be applied to OpenGL applications. When I first started writing the OpenGL engine, I needed a map format. I was planning on using the BSP trees compiled by qbsp in Worldcraft but I thought it would be way too much work for my first engine. So I decided to learn the cryptic numbers that make up a .map file (for quake). My reasoning? Because the map files are simple and very flexible.

Technology

TAsPh's technology at the moment is the simplest (besides raycasting, not to be confused with raytracing) I have seen in a 3d game. The brushes are defined as two points in 3d space. One that represents the upper-nearest-lefthand corner and the lower-furthest-righthand corner. Using just these two points, a rectangular prism shape can be created. This information is stored in a node which is attached to a bunch of other nodes in a linked list. Each node describes a brush. It's size, texture, everything.

Now for a few polygons in the screenshots, you may be thinking that TAsPh is slow, only 40 FPS at 640x480x16bit? Well, first off, the engine has no real optimization tricks except backface-culling and most of it is my computer.

When I took those shots, photoshop, winamp, worldcraft, and IE were running. My system specs are:

  • K6-266Mhz
  • 64 megs RAM
  • TNT w/16 megs.

    Basically, the lowest low-end system you can imagine. So plz don't mess your pants imagining it's speed on your compy, ok?

    • Current Features

    Here is a list of TAsPh's features, I will update it regularly:

    8-23-00

  • Collision detection
  • Skybox rendered sky
  • loads .map files (the Quake format)
  • Full mouse + keyboard control
  • Backface culling
  • Onscreen HUD text system
  • Realistic physics (friction, gravity, etc)
  • Fully functional outdoor environments
  • Blazing speed
  • Stair stepping

    In the works:

  • Configurable controls
  • Console system
  • Main menu
     

    • © 2000 Charlie 'Chazz' Van Noland. All rights reserved.