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History of 3D Games

3D-Games were considered impossible until the mid 1990s because of the limitations presented by the hardware video game developers used to develop video games. The first major success in 3D video game design was made by the game Wolfenstein 3D, which was created by id software and published by Apogee Software in 1992. After the success of Wolfenstein 3D, id software began to develop another first person shooter 3d game in 1993 called DOOM. DOOM surpassed all of the limitations that were presented during the development of Wolfenstein 3D. DOOM worked in a higher resolution, textures were used also on the roof and the floor and the rooms were no longer flat, but full of steps and rises. Rotation was possible around two axes (left/right and up/down) and all moving objects were rendered using billboards.

Since the conception of Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM by id software, many gaming systems began to enter the world of 3D video game design with new systems in 1994. In 1994 Sega and Sony entered a power struggle for 32-bit console machines. Both the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn opened the possibility for 3D gaming off of the PC. In 1995 NINTENDO releases a VR-like Virtual Boy; however it had a tendency to produce headaches on its users. Also during this time Microsoft released the highly anticipated Window 95 platform for PCs, Playstation was released into the US as well. A notable game of this year was Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, which was released by Origin/Electronic Arts and featured a full motion movie.

Now from 1996-1997 only one new video gaming system was released on the market and this was the ever popular NINTENDO 64 which brought 3D game design to a new level with games such as Super Mario 64. Also during these two years INTEL released the Pentium II processor and another popular first person shooter, Quake II was released. From 1997-2000 many consoles did not come out by any of the major corporations (ie: SEGA, NINTENDO, Sony, Microsoft), however lots of development was happening within these companies. From 2000-2002 Sony released the Playstation 2 console, NINTENDO released the Gamecube and Microsoft enters the home console battle with the Xbox. Each of these new consoles brought bigger and better games to the customer through the perfection of 3D graphics inside home consoles that could be considered self efficient. During this time frame SEGA decided that it would abandon all console attempts and started to focus just on the release of video games.

After these major corporations released their top of the line systems at the time, focus began to head towards hand held video game consoles. NINTENDO released the new and improved Gameboy Advanced which brought the higher resolutions for 3D gaming to a hand held console. Also during this time NOKIA entered the market with its release of the N-Gage game-phone hybrid which brought 3D gaming to cell phones. The last major release for this time period was by Sony which came out with the Playstation 2 Linux Kit, which allowed the Playstation 2 to be used as a personnel computer. It came with a USB keyboard and mouse, a VGA adapter, a PS2 network adapter (Ethernet only), and a 40 GB hard disk drive. This brings us to current gaming systems which were released from 2006-until present day. These systems are the Wii which was released by NINTENDO and had a distinguishing feature its wireless controller, the Wii Remote, which can be used as a hand held pointing device and can detect acceleration in three dimensions. Another is WiiConnect24, which enables it to receive messages and updates over the Internet while in standby mode. Microsoft released the Xbox 360 and came with the integrated Xbox Live service which allows players to compete online and download content such as arcade games, game demos, trailers, TV shows, and movies. The final console to be released was Sony’s Playstation 3; a major feature that distinguishes the PlayStation 3 from its predecessors is its unified online gaming service, the PlayStation Network, which contrasts with Sony's former policy of relying on games developers for online play. Other major features of the console include its robust multimedia capabilities, connectivity with the PlayStation Portable, and its use of a next-gen optical media, Blu-ray Disc, as its primary storage medium.

Why/Why not use 3D Design in Games?

Fully 3d games offer you the freedom to view your world from any angle under any condition and interact with basically everything in the world. Some reasons why 3D game design is not always the best answer are because fully 3d worlds are incredibly complex and difficult to work in, especially as they get more open ended. Much better graphics can be obtained from 3d games and highly detailed 3d worlds are limited in size compared to 2d worlds. That means less of a map can be loaded at one time or the maps have to stay smaller.

3D vs. 2D Interfaces

Since the obtain ability of 3D interfaces, many companies have begun publishing game titles in 3D just for the sake of doing it. Some games simply work better in 2D, which is proven by the game’s view. This view looks just like the old 2D view of the game but with the use of polygons. 3D accelerator cards have given way to game consoles increasing their use of 3D in every title, which has proven to be unwise on certain game titles. An example of these titles can be seen in 3D Tetris and 3D Breakout. Another example can be seen in Sudden Strike and Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy. Starship Troopers uses a polygon based engine where the graphics are considered to be inferior to Sudden Strike which uses a 2D interface.

Collision Detection

Through the development of 3D game design there have been many ways to detect collision of objects in a video game. These techniques are bounding boxes, bounding spheres, and bounding volume trees. Each has its own unique way of detecting a collision with any other objects. Such as a bounding box, this is when an object is surrounded by a rectangular boundary. If any boundary comes in contact with another boundary or overlaps it a collision may have occurred and more tests are required to conclude if there was a collision or not. Another way to use the bounding box collision detection is through the use of Octtrees. Octtrees are cubes represented by three Cartesian points (x,y and z). These cubes can be small enough just to hold one object within them. The only issue with Octtrees is that it is drastically inefficient when it comes to modeling a large world within a cube because every aspect would require a great deal of attention and detail.

Another way to detect a collision in 3D games is through the use of bounding spheres. A bounding sphere allows for an object to have independent orientation as long as it is rotated around the centre of the sphere. The only disadvantage to a bounding sphere is that it may not fit a long and skinny object very well and this can potentially lead to a false collision. The final way to detect a collision is using a bounding volume tree, which is a continuation of the bounding box method. However instead of using one rectangle, multiple rectangles are used to more accurately match the shape of an irregular object. The “sub-bounding boxes” do not necessarily need to be the same shape and size as each other, but in some cases it may simplify the bounding box algorithm.

Issues with 3D Game Design

· Actions may be delayed when a collision happens. Also a collision may not be detected if an object passes through another object between frames.

· The shading and lighting of three-dimensional figures is extremely detailed and hard to cover all angles.

Links to 3D Games

-3D tetris
http://www.3dtris.de/

-3D breakout
http://sigbus.net/breakout/play.html

==References==
1. http://www.euclideanspace.com/threed/solidmodel/spatialdecomposition/octtree/index.htm
2. http://www.euclideanspace.com/threed/animation/collisiondetect/index.htm
3. Andrew Rollings & Ernest Adams on Game Design
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games
5. http://pisa.ucsd.edu/cse125/2006/Papers/Introduction_to_3d_Game_Engines.pdf
6. http://digiplay.info/timeline.php