Alien Breed 3D

[JaXanim]

Hmmm...I remember when the 1260s were six hundred quid apiece and AB3D needed one to really crackle.

Apart from Harwood's AB3D freebee with any 1260 purchased, Amiga Format ran a competition to win one (a 1260 that is).

You had about three months to prepare the overview and strategy for a new game. That was really some big prize and I guess a lot of people, like me, submitted a game scenario.

I remember working for at least a month writing the overview and creating water colour images of the characters, weapons, etc. And what happened?

Zilch, as far as I can tell. I bought AF every month and I never saw the results of the compo. It simply vanished.

I often wonder if anyone actually won that 1260, or whether they simply chickened out on the prize. Anybody know the answer?

Cheers,

JaX

[amiga1260]

I played TKG first and after some years later AB3d. It runs nicely on an 030/50 Mhz, but on a Blizzard 1260 very slow. You need to patch the game. There a two versions incuded a 2 MB version and a 4 MB version. If your machine wasn't up to date, you could play the 2 MB version. Okay, it wasn't as fast as Genetic Species or the Gloom series, but it runs nicely.

[Cluke]

Maybe more advanced in some areas, but DOOM had better level design. And DOOM multitasks nicely. No need to shutdown IRC or other stuff to play few rounds.

You're still not comparing like with like. You are pusing modern expectations on a game from the AGA era. AB3D came out when it was generally considered 'impossible' to write a decent Doom like game for the Amiga. The fact that some years later, Doom was open sourced and system friendly Amiga ports were written was due to the fact that the average base configuration had moved on from 020/14Mhz days. Could you imagine Doom running on that? But AB3D did. To expect to be able to Amiga+M between it and WB to do a little IRC is ludicrous.

[Karlos]

Cluke wrote:
Could you imagine Doom running on that? But AB3D did. To expect to be able to Amiga+M between it and WB to do a little IRC is ludicrous.

Quite :-D

[itix]

I was playing DOOM on AGA machine with 030/50MHz and 16MB RAM.

The only Amiga 3D shooter I liked was Death Mask. Can't say it had good gfx but there was some idea. In my opinion AB3D is overrated because it was done by Team 17.

[Hyperspeed]

Yeah, I thoroughly loved Deathmask. The atmosphere and background
sound was fantastic. Do you remember the minigun in that? DeathMask
and Genetic Species have the best miniguns in any game, except maybe
the Turok games! It had a good 1-player mode and fantastic
split-screen mode. The weapons were cunningly laid out too, reminded
me a lot of Alien Vs Predator on Jaguar.

:-D :-D :-D

Still noone remembers the Doom clone on Aminet with some guy killing
hippies with a hedgecutter? It was a 3D fps! Good fun too...

Everyone should try Genetic Species, I think it's Freeware now isn't
it? The weapons in that were truly awesome (miniguns, mines, pick
axes, industrial drills, grenade launcher etc.) and you had the
ability to fire your soul/computer code into other beings and control
their weapon systems like that Shiny Entertainment game with the
Cherub.

I remember at WOA '97 I saw Quake running on an A1200/060/AGA with a
naff PC keyboard and then seeing an A4000t with Picasso IV, '060 and
sub-woofer (and some animatronic alien) and I thought Genetic Species
rocked. I think it even had pseudo-polygon graphics and light sourcing
too. Quake AGA on '060 will get you 8fps max and is pretty unplayable
on most people's machines. Definately one for big box/towered setups.

I never found Doom appealing on Amiga, it was so boring! It came out
years after the PC one and by then Genetic Species was so much more
fun. If Duke Nukem had been ported that would have been a lot more
interesting.

Breathless was excellent on '020 solely due to playability, on '030
50Mhz it was quite addictive! I don't think the '060 liked it much
though.

Gloom likes the extra juice but is a very bland game (except maybe the
ghost levels) and why does Gloom only have 1x weapon - albeit with
varying power levels?

Nemac-IV is very similar to Genetic Species graphically and I hear it
supported the Graffiti plug-in module. It got boring quickly though.

Anyone tried Fears? That was a DeathMask style game then evolved into
an AB3D style shooter.

... as for sending in magazine entries, I remember doing an A1
painting and animated video for a Mario64 competition run in C&VG UK
and nothing ever came of that. A few months later though my ideas
started appearing in a lot of games...

:-( :-( ;-)

[Cluke]

itix wrote:
I was playing DOOM on AGA machine with 030/50MHz and 16MB RAM.

Yeah, but you weren't playing it two years earlier on an unexpanded 1200, were you? And that's kind of my point! ;-)

[Cluke]

Hey, Deathmask! The first released FPS on the Amiga - or so they claimed, if I remember correctly it did not have free movement, you had to turn in 90 degree steps and move a map square at a time, like eye of the beholder.
And then Gloom - I have to say I really liked this, it beat AB3D to the punch as well, although it was a good deal less subtle in gameplay terms, it was free-moving, and pretty action packed. Some nice touches too, like how you could find a Defender arcade machine and actually play it in-game! ;-)

[jimmy_n]

Deathmask was good, until the proper doom style games started to appear.  Good in deathmatch 2 player split screen, if I remember it was kind of like eye of the beholder movement but you moved in half-squares, which made it a bit smoother.

Alien Breed 3D and Gloom were my 2 favourites, AB3D because it was the closest you could get to Doom on the amiga, and had some nice touches you didnt get in Doom, like the grenade launcher you could rain death from the skies with, platforms above platforms, transparant water and 3D polygon enemies (well, one, the robot on level 8 was in 3D i think).  Gloom was good because there was nothing like it on the PC, was pure arcade style fast and furious action, and I don't think there had been a doom clone on any platform which had a split screen 2 player mode when this came out (or had there?).

AB3D 2 was ok, just terribly slow and the enemies were crap (the lanky blue and green stick insect things, what were they all about), as were the weapons (the grenade launcher pitifully rolled grenades out about 2 feet in front of you, nice), oh and had stupid levels in which you had to traverse mainly lava to collect the keys.  Breathless was ok for a while, but pretty repetitive.

Fears was probably the worst doom clone ever, on any platform.  Enemies that homed in directly on the player, walking into walls, constantly firing, with no AI whatsoever.  The most clumsy controls you can imagine.  And a 2 player link up option, with 3 levels (all the same level, but with different wall textures) and a shotgun which takes precisely 99 hits to kill the other player.  But the level editor was ok.

[elendil]

Unlike Doom AB3D (and II) had a lot of atmosphere and story to it, which made me love them both and complete them both, even though TKG was kind of hard, especially considering the low fps rate I got.

Sincerely,

-Kenneth Straarup.

[Karlos]

Hehe, deathmask. I remember that. Never have I seen a more unusual (read simple) 3D engine. It really wasn't more than a texturemapped "3D monstermaze", all movement was restricted to solid steps forward, backward etc. and the rotation was fixed at 90 degree increments.

The monsters reminded me of some sort of surreal Terry Gilliam animation too.

Yet despite all this, it was actually a good laugh to play, especially head to head.

"Fears" never really inspired me much - technically competent as it was. Whilst I also found breathless a bit lacklustre, it was a big step in the right direction however. For me, the biggest downer was that the environments were just too samey, no doubt inflicted by the 'square block' basis of the map. I'm sure this approach allowed fast depth sorting etc. without a BSP, which gave it speed. Combined with the 1x1 pixel display, this was a game you didn't have to squint at and scaled very well with your hardware (unless you had an 060 of course).

Gloom was good fun. It didn't really pretend to be anything more than it was: a gratuitious shoot 'em up, just in 3D. The lack of any real 3rd dimension (that is different height/level rooms, stairs and so on) changed the feel of this into a simple maze game, which coupled with the non stop violence gave it a really bizzare atmosphere.

Genetic species was different again. It had even less 3D complexity than Gloom - in addition to the lack of stairs etc. the walls were also 90 degree (like breathless). However, the designers made sure they used the speed gained from this to create some pretty cool effects and it had atmosphere.

For me personally, the only games which actually deserved the title "Doom Clone" were AB3D1 & 2. Both had, what at the time was considered to be a 'real' 3D environment, with arbitary angled walls, different height walls, floors, lifts, teleports, stairs etc. They also allowed two level rooms and deep water, something Doom didnt have. They had a tense, dark atmosphere, and TKG in particular had effects that really made it stand out. Bumpmapped sprites, what a fantastic idea!

You can tell the game was half finished, of course. The editors allow 8 view directions for monsters but in the game you only see 4 (which was a bit naff). There were also a bunch of features you can modify with the editors that never made it into the game. With levelEd, I discovered some flickering light animations (not the slow pulsating glow effect, but your knackered fluorescent tube), even animated water depths (like a tidal effect), all of which work perfectly but weren't even documented in the original editors...

[bloodline]

I used to play Gloom quite a bit as it had great speed and good graphics, on even the most humble set up.

I bought Fears and found it a good game in all aspects... but I do find it funny to be talking about this now, when I can run Quake at 30fps 320*240 in 16bit colours on my PDA :-D

[The_Power_of_the_Ginger]

Fears had no soul to it, quite simply. Nor did Breathless.

Nobody's mentioned Citadel or Testament yet. Those ones were mildly Ok...

Gloom was terrific fun, althought the penultimate level has its sights firmly on giving me a heart attack, as I'm down to my last life, and I hurtle headlong into the teleporter to take me into an almighty shoot-out room, where the only solution is to dash to the exit. Great, yet tense fun.

I enjoy AB3D on the emulator too.

Don't forget the Amiga-Power-discovered, unintended Doom clone of 'Knights of the sky', an old fighting fligth simulator based in WWI, where you could shoot it out on the ground with a friend if both your engines had gone...

[itix]

Yeah, I thoroughly loved Deathmask. The atmosphere and background sound was fantastic. Do you remember the minigun in that?

Heh, i can still remember that minigun sound. Those were times... Looks like I have to get an UAE and try DeathMask again :-)

[Wibbly]

AB3D: Ok when you didn't have a PC and Doom.

AB3D2: I don't care how amazing technically this game was, even on a Ninja Amiga, it wasn't capable of giving good frame rate. Also, I thought Genetic Species looked cleaner. As for bump mapped sprites etc., like you could really appreciate that on an AGA display :| Doom still looked a hundred times better

Fears: Horrendous. I'd have been disappointed with this on a NES

Gloom: Simple SEU. I liked it. First Amiga game I had that made me think Doom was a possibility. As for the guy who said it was unique as there was nothing like it on the PC....WHAT??? Ok, maybe there wasn't a FPS on PC as simple, but for me Gloom was like Doom's predecessor Wolfenstein.

Doom: Say what you like, and I never played it on Amiga until my Amiga was Ninja (in Amiga terms at least) but when I first played Doom on a friends PC I thought it ruled. When I got it on Playstation, and linked to a friends PS, I thought it ruled. When I played it on my own PC, I decided it was antiquated, I'd just bought a 3dfx card and had been playing Quake 1 for a bit. When I played ADoom on my Amiga, it was nostalgic, reminding me that a game if nothing else, is supposed to be fun. It was also the first time I saw crisp decent FPS on my Amiga.

Genetic Species: Well, for an Amiga, it was ok. I kinda liked it, almost like 3D Paradroid. So the graphics weren't particularly impressive (in fact it looked just as good in AGA 320x250 as it did at 640x480 on Picasso)

Nemac IV and the others I never played or wanted to, because by this time I was pretty much consigned to the fact that my PC was A) considerably more capable than my Amiga B) Considerably cheaper than my Amiga C) Less hassle to upgrade in order to play a recent game release