A Step towards Evolution..

In my previous i wrote about the games such as HoverTank3D and Flight Simulation which were the one of the building blocks towards the evolution in the gaming world.

Wolfenstein 3D was released in 1992. It really was a step towards the evolution of the gaming world. It was developed using the concepts of HoverTank3D. This game was inspired by the games of 1980's (Castle Wolfenstein && Beyond Castle Wolfenstein). This game was a big success. It helped in popularizing the genre on the PC and having established the basic run ad gun archetype for many subsequent FPS games.

This is cover of the game:

In the Game, The player assumes the role of a World War II Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz, who is trying to escape from Castle Wolfenstein, a Nazi German prison. After the initial escape episode, Blazkowicz carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis.

People found this game very interesting. It had 9 levels and the level of difficulty raised as the player progressed in the game. There were more powerful enemies and bosses in higher levels.

Here are some images from the game play.

Technology:

The game uses ray casting to render the walls in pseudo-3D. This method emits one ray for each column of pixels, checks to see whether it intersects a wall and draws textures on the screen accordingly, creating a one-dimensional depth buffer against which to clip the scaled sprites that represent enemies, power-ups and props. 

The Wolfenstein engine lacks many features present in the Underworld engine, it ran well on relatively weak PC hardware. The engine uses a vertical scan line scaling algorithm. It calculates the texture coordinate for the pixel at runtime.

After Wolfenstein3D many games of this concept were developed, one of them is DOOM which became a huge success and is played even today by some of the gamers. I'll be posting about DOOM in the next post. So be ready!!!

First Person Shooting Games-90's

In the last post i had given a brief intro about what "FPS" games are and how they were introduced.

Now i would like to mention some of the very early First Person Shooting games. The Gaming Industry in the 90's was going very strong. Consoles were being made , different gaming platforms were introduced. So as a result the number of games produced also increased.

One of the most early FPS game is Hovertank3D. As it contained a word "3D" in its name so obviously it was the introduction of 3D games to the people at that time. Before the game was released , gamers were imagining that "HOW" game would be. They were really excited to play the 3D game.

The story line of game was as follows :
"Hovertank 3D is set during a nuclear war. In Hovertank 3D, the player controls Brick Sledge, a  mercinary hired by an unknown organizationto rescue people from cities under the threat of nuclear attack . The cities are also full of mutated humans, strange creatures, armed guards, and enemy hover tanks.

Some of the screen shots of the games are .

In the competition to this game there was a game named "FLIGHT SIMULATORS"  which had better graphics as compared to HoverTank3D but that game was slow. The developers of HoverTank3D had used the concept of "Armageddon" to develop the game and it was very successful indeed at that time.

In 90's-Intro to FPS Games.

The 90s saw the transition from 2D's low quality  graphics to 3D, bringing along a new range of genres including FPS and MMO. Handled gaming also increased in popularity thanks to the release of the Game Boy (1989). During this decade, home console gaming dramatically increased in popularity as the gaming industry matured into a mainstream form of entertainment.

Previously i described about the evolution in 70's and 80'. Gaming really progressed in the World. Thousands of games were made during these two decades and there were many famous games which are played even now. Although they had no high quality graphics as i showed in my previous posts but yet people find it very interesting and still find them interesting.

Now the questions in your mind is What are FPS Games. FPS means First Person Shooting . This was the concept which was introduced in the 90's. Games with a first-person perspective are usually avatar-based, where in the game displays what the player's avatar would see with the avatar's own eyes. Thus, players typically cannot see the avatar's body, though they may be able to see the avatar's weapons or hands. This viewpoint is also frequently used to represent the perspective of a driver within a vehicle, as in flight and racing simulators; and it is common to make use of positional audio, where the volume of ambient sounds varies depending on their position with respect to the player's avatar.

In the next blog i will be going into details about these FPS games of 90's . So stick to the blog. Cheers!!

In 80's

EIGW blog is back .... And today i am going to post about the games which were made in 80's and will also tell you about the new technologies which were introduced in these games.

The microprocessor made it possible. It was a decade full of new  gadgets for both adults and a new generation of kids who were going into a new dimension in which they could never live without these gadgets. 

Pitfall was a game which was played till 90's but was released in 1982. It was released by Activision. It is the second best-selling game made for Atari , with over 4 million copies sold.
A programmer name David Crane had developed a game in which he was able  to display a realistic running man.On this base many games were developed. Pitfall was the first game based like this.

One of the most famous games in the history of gaming world was launched in this decade which was "MARIO BROS". This game brought revolution in the gaming world. It was basically a 2D game.Its game play was very eye catching as it had 16-Bit graphics. It had animations in which the player and enemies were moving around. People find it so interesting that even today its original version of 80's is played now.

The concept of pitfall was very broad and exciting. This concept of "RUNNING MAN" extended to many games and many years and even now we can see thousands of games being developed on this concept and many games are still built for mobile platforms like series of Temple run,Subway Surfer etc.

Stay tune to the blog as in next posts we will be moving to the games of 90's in which the World of Technology took a flight and so does the World of Gaming World....