 |
 |
Comparing the 3D engines of Wolfenstein 3D, Pie in the Sky, and DOOM |
|
|
|
It is important to keep in mind, that you could never license
the DOOM or the Wolfenstein engine for even thousands and thousands of
dollars. You get the full rights to use the Pie 3D engine, along with layout
editor, paint program, and manual for $69.95.
Wolfenstein 3D Was created several years
ago and was the first 3D texture mapped game that was a huge success. The
graphics were blisteringly fast, and a good animation frame rate (FPS)
was possible EVEN ON A 12 MHz 286 computer! Id Software deserves all the
credit for starting the whole 3D action game genre.
**The following observations are not meant as a criticism of Id's Wolfenstein
engine. They are only meant to illustrate the difference in features between
the game engines.
Wolfenstein has a block layout maze made of cubes only.
The Pie 3D engine can have wall sections at non-90 degree angles, short
walls, and tall walls.
DOOM, Like the Pie 3D engine, can have non-90 degree walls and so on.
Wolfenstein has solid walls that go from floor to ceiling. No windows.
All walls are the same resolution.
The Pie 3D engine can have solid, windowed or shaped walls, archways,
fences, file cabinets. Anything you want to build out of vertical wall
sections, tall or small, will work beautifully. You can use any practical
resolution for your artwork, you aren't stuck with using 64x64 pixel images.
DOOM also can have walls with cutouts or windows. The wall resolution
appears to be fixed at 64x64 however.
Wolfenstein has a solid color (non-textured) floor and ceiling.
Pie's 3D engine has textured floors and ceilings, and can do fancy things with
floor textures like having seems of different patterns and lighting.
DOOM has textured floors and ceilings, and can do fancy things with
floor textures like having seems of different patterns and lighting.
Wolfenstein has no fading system, everything is uniformly bright.
The Pie 3D engine has a flexible lighting system which allows walls
and objects to darken with distance. We also allow individual walls to
pulsate or flicker, or stay bright with distance. In addition, you can
choose which color to fade to; For example you might want to fade to gray
for a fog type effect. You can creat colored fog effects. Custom directional
or area lighting.
DOOM has a lighting system too, that pulsates, flickers, and so on.
There does not seem to be another color to fade to besides black.
Wolfenstein has only moving enemies, everything else is static.
The Pie 3D engine has an elaborate system for animated objects. These
objects can respond to player's actions, can communicate with other animated
objects, make decisions and carry out actions. These actions include warping
the player to a different spot in the level or another level, damaging
the player, putting a message on the screen, etc. This is a great way for
making friendly characters or traps or secret entrances.
DOOM appears to have some animated capability. There are some quivering
bloody things, and moving walls, and some switches.
The Pie 3D engine can do all of these, and much more.
Wolfenstein has no outdoor capability.
The Pie 3D engine can do a great job on outdoor scenarios. Buildings,
telephone poles, bushes and trees are all easily done. The Pie 3D engine
also allows jumping, so you can make obstacles for the player to jump over, and
has the capability to put up a huge bit map as a background, which
can improve the appearance of outdoor scenarios.
Also, the DOOM can do outdoor stuff too.
Wolfenstein allows one-way passage between one level to the next.
The Pie 3D engine allows passages between any point in your game to
any other position on any level. These passages can be two-way, meaning
you can come back to a level that you have already been to, and history
will be preserved. You can set up your game as a HUGE mega building with
a layout that includes 10 or 20 'levels. Since the level switches take
place quietly and automatically the user will see it as one cohesive area
instead of 'levels'. If you have played Ultima Underworld, that is the
kind of thing we are trying to describe.
DOOM allows one-way moving from level to level like Wolfenstein. Like
the Pie 3D engine, they do have the capability for teleporting the player
within a level, too.
Wolfenstein has Sound BLaster and Adlib sound. The sound quality isn't
very good, and the sounds must interrupt each other.
The Pie 3D system includes a digital mixing sound system for Sound Blaster.
The sound effects are just .WAV files recorded at 17khz for premium quality
sound. Multiple sounds can occur at once because of the digital mixing. You
can also have midi background music during game play or music off of a CD for background music.
DOOM has an excellent system for sound also.
Wolfenstein has a knife, pistol, machine gun, and chain gun.
The Pie 3D engine comes with the ninja kick, shotgun, hand grenades,
goo gun, and rocket launcher. You can add your own custom weapons if you want
to go to the trouble of designing them. Our instructions tell you how. You can
create and use MD2 weapons.
DOOM has fist/chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, chain gun, rocket launcher,
plasma gun, and the BFG. All excellent weapons as well.
Wolfenstein has an incredible frame rate, even on slow machines. The
simpler cube layout shows it's advantages here. Id deserves a lot of credit
for starting the whole genre with Wolfenstein 3D.
The Pie 3D engine has an excellent frame rate, unlike many so-called
3D game engines available for programmers. With texture mapped floor/ceiling,
shading effects, and other things, we still are about as fast as DOOM.
DOOM has a good frame rate also. It can get slow on a 33mhz 486 in complicated
areas, but ours slows down in super-complex areas to. I think our frame
rate is very similar.
The basic conclusion is that the Pie 3D engine is somewhere between
Wolfenstein and
DOOM in appearance and in features.
Save up to $22 when you purchse the GCS!
More Info!
| 
