Thread: FPS programming

  1. #1
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    Exclamation FPS programming

    Does anyone know any programs/web sites that i could use to make a First Person Shooter or a Book that talks about programming them? i have made past games that were 2 demensional but i would at least like to know how to make a basic one like Wolfenstien 3d even though i isnt 3d
    Last edited by ChadWent; 12-09-2002 at 04:28 PM.

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    http://www.stefanzerbst.de/

    there is a tutorial there (although not in English) that goes step by step through making a "Quake" clone in DirectX.

    also, if you don't care which graphics API you're going to use, there are many tutorials here using OpenGL:

    http://www.gametutorials.com

    that should at least give you a good start.

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    thanks for your help

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    Visionary Philosopher Sayeh's Avatar
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    The basic things you want to address first in an FPS are--

    how to display terrain & sky
    how to display walls, creatures, and objects, and
    how to correct for fisheye and perspective

    you can worry about sound, and game logic, object interraction, and interface issues after getting this far.

    ---

    I would highly recommend learning raycasting (not ray tracing) first to get a handle on perspective, fisheye, and learning to draw walls creatures and objects in 'slices'. You can learn about transparent slices here, as well (doors with windows you can see through, etc.).

    Once you understand the basic mechanics of drawing slices and accounting for perspective, and distortion, then you want to get all the material you can find about BSP (Binary Space Partition) trees.

    a game is essentially a database. The engine, among other things, primarily retrieves data from that database and displays it in frames on the screen.

    So, understanding that, means that it is critical to understand effecient ways of storing/retrieving that data in your "database". There is a lot of data, and it must all be accessible at about the same rate so things aren't "sluggish".

    BSP trees give a relatively effecient algorithm for chopping your room space up into chunks of walls that don't overlap.

    If you master all that, then you can start learning about stereo sound and better engines (portal engine, for example).
    It is not the spoon that bends, it is you who bends around the spoon.

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    well right now i am just tring to get a basic one such as wolfenstien 3d or quake but eventually ill be getting more advanced up to adding things like trees windows and other things like that, and those sites you game me i cant navigate through that german one so do you have a diret link for the fps tutorial
    Last edited by ChadWent; 12-10-2002 at 03:28 PM.

  6. #6
    Rambling Man
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    basic one such as wolfenstien 3d or quake
    Those games aren't very basic at all. Don't under-estimate the difficulty of creating those games.

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    but what i ment by basic is that its not like Return to Castle Wlfenstien or Quake 3

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    Rambling Man
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    Regardless those games are still extremely complex, especially for a person with little experience in 3D games.

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    still i have made some past games i will figure it out soon enough and if not soon then in a long time as soon as i find a tutorial

  10. #10
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    still i have made some past games
    Have you ever made any 3d games? From reading your first post I'm assuming you haven't.

    i will figure it out soon enough and if not soon then in a long time as soon as i find a tutorial
    It would be a far less painful experience if you started off smaller with 3d then worked your way up from there. I'm not sure if any tutorial is really going to be able to help you out enough so that you are able to easily (or even non-painfully) create an elaborate FPS like a Quake or a Wolfenstein.

    Personally if I were you, I would start off programming some simpler 3d games. Either way, good luck to you.

    And just out of curiousity what are the games that you have created perviously?

  11. #11
    S Sang-drax's Avatar
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    Hehe, it took many of the best developers in the world many, many man-years to create Quake 1.

    It would be a bit easier to create Quake today, with Direct3D or OpenGL, but still many months of full-time work.
    Last edited by Sang-drax : Tomorrow at 02:21 AM. Reason: Time travelling

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    my past games humm... pong with like 20 levels and a space shooter

  13. #13
    Registered User fry's Avatar
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    Well, as a piece of advice, dont go from pong and space shooters to 3D FPS! You just wont do it*. As people have said, start of simple, get some really basic 3D stuff happening. Create plain shapes, then get them to move, and use camera movement and angles, then try textures and lighting effects on the shapes. It may seem boring or tiresome.

    You wont get very far if you start at the end


    *Subject to length of your lifetime.
    IDE: Dev C++ 5
    Lib: Allegro
    OS: Windows 2000

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  15. #15
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    well you never know till you try and unless im actually doin stuff i dont know im bored, like pong i can falla asleep tring to maek it now

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