🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 18 Jan 2004 19:40:07 GMT, "Doug Cook" <dcook@concentric.net>
wrote:

>Thanks for the information - I'm now in the process of tweaking.  Just for
>grins, I installed Duke3D to see how that would work and it works better
>than Descent!  The detail levels and screen resolutions are the same.  Since
>the DOS requirements are about the same for both games, I'm wondering why
>one is more fluid than the other.

Duke3D, even though it looks like a 3D game, is really simpler than it
looks. It is really a 2D game projected in a manner to look 3D,
involving various optimizations to speed up processing.  

There are technical documents that describe some information about
this process, such as secitons 4-6 through 4-9 in the Unoffical Doom
Specs (http://cres1.lancs.ac.uk/~esasb1/doom/dmspec16.zip).  This
describes how Doom places its focus on rendering walls (and rendering
a strip that appears to be a textured floor or ceiling), giving an
illusion of 3D space.  This illusion isn't perfect, as it tends to
give distortion when you look up or down.  

Descent, on the other hand, requires full 3D rendering, as floors and
walls can be in any orientation.  While some optimizations can apply,
not all of them are possible.  In addition, the opponents are actual
3D models as opposed to 2D Sprites, thus requiring more processing
power compared to Duke3D. In addition, it also has to keep a depth
buffer in system memory (not counted as memory required on your video
card), which also slows down processing as well.

Technical information about Descent style rendering is beyond the
scope of a simple newsgroup posting - the only way to see how it works
is by downloading the source code.