It's great to see something similar on the effects used in driving games, which I always imagined to be akin to raycasting's vertical slices drawn horizontally.
This page is such a gem. I stumbled upon it many years ago, when making a classic pseudo-3D racing game for a hacked (and very underpowered) graphing calculator. Never ended up finishing it though. Turns out without debugging, floating point calculations or any real knowledge of C you struggle.
I love the ingenuity, I also love youtube documentaries on this topic, but... as a child (in the 90s), I did not like these pseudo 3D racing games at all!
Mode 7 on the SNES was usually fine. I don't know how accurately it rendered a single flat surface in 3D, but it felt real enough and responsive enough. Except for the very rare cases where they simulated non-flat surfaces (Speed Racer, Super Off-Road), even though that was technically much more impressive.
The effect just didn't work for me - it didn't feel like turning, it just felt like what it was: The game displaying a "left turn" animation and telling you that your car will now start drifting to the right if you don't press left. And that felt more like playing a Game&Watch toy.
IMO it greatly depends on the game. Very advanced games that used this technique, like OutRun in the arcade, really almost feel like you're driving on a road with real turns. Lotus Turbo Challenge on the Amiga also does a pretty good job giving you the illusion that you're actually approaching turns, i.e. that there is a turn ahead of you and it is coming towards you.
But most games that implemented this technique were much more primitive, and just amounted to "bending" the road to indicate turns, which never feels like there's actually a turn coming towards you. It just feels like the road is suddenly changing its shape. But that's not an inherent fault of the technique, it's just a poor implementation.
I do agree that Mode7 games, which effectively display an almost correctly rendered 3D plane, are generally a much better experience.
I agree. Even at the time, many of the games that look like this felt like you were being dragged around the track, and just finessing it a bit with the controller input.
It's not a good feeling as a player when a game mostly plays itself and gives you some token involvement.
Lotus III on the Amiga did the mountain tracks almost af if they had some height and so due to the bending effect from the guard rails and being able to see the actual cliffs at the sides. OTOH, curves were better than the average 16 bit racer, as you could step a bit offroad from the curve, but not so much. But it gave the game some believability.
Also, the patched Road Rash 1-2-3 ROMs for the Mega Drive run much better with far more frames, and neither any overclocking is required at all, nor any extra hardware. That make them very good on simulating pseudo-3D races.
As far as old-school 3D effects go, I like this tutorial on ray casting: https://permadi.com/1996/05/ray-casting-tutorial-1/
It's great to see something similar on the effects used in driving games, which I always imagined to be akin to raycasting's vertical slices drawn horizontally.
This page is such a gem. I stumbled upon it many years ago, when making a classic pseudo-3D racing game for a hacked (and very underpowered) graphing calculator. Never ended up finishing it though. Turns out without debugging, floating point calculations or any real knowledge of C you struggle.
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2016 (115 points, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14017574
2015 (148 points, 26 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8847063
I implemented this in Adventure Game Studio following that page seven years ago.
I remember Vroom killing the game on Atari ST : https://youtu.be/Z-RELFjDu_8?si=giyiDpRqUPNSNEK9 Insane depth of view with fluidity for the time
There's a new racing game that just came out for the ST that achieved 50FPS: https://retroracing.itch.io/faster-atari-ste
Excellent.
Prepare to qualify...
I love the ingenuity, I also love youtube documentaries on this topic, but... as a child (in the 90s), I did not like these pseudo 3D racing games at all!
Mode 7 on the SNES was usually fine. I don't know how accurately it rendered a single flat surface in 3D, but it felt real enough and responsive enough. Except for the very rare cases where they simulated non-flat surfaces (Speed Racer, Super Off-Road), even though that was technically much more impressive.
The effect just didn't work for me - it didn't feel like turning, it just felt like what it was: The game displaying a "left turn" animation and telling you that your car will now start drifting to the right if you don't press left. And that felt more like playing a Game&Watch toy.
IMO it greatly depends on the game. Very advanced games that used this technique, like OutRun in the arcade, really almost feel like you're driving on a road with real turns. Lotus Turbo Challenge on the Amiga also does a pretty good job giving you the illusion that you're actually approaching turns, i.e. that there is a turn ahead of you and it is coming towards you.
But most games that implemented this technique were much more primitive, and just amounted to "bending" the road to indicate turns, which never feels like there's actually a turn coming towards you. It just feels like the road is suddenly changing its shape. But that's not an inherent fault of the technique, it's just a poor implementation.
I do agree that Mode7 games, which effectively display an almost correctly rendered 3D plane, are generally a much better experience.
Pit Stop II on the C64 felt like you had force feedback on a digital joystick, no less!
I agree. Even at the time, many of the games that look like this felt like you were being dragged around the track, and just finessing it a bit with the controller input.
It's not a good feeling as a player when a game mostly plays itself and gives you some token involvement.
Lotus III on the Amiga did the mountain tracks almost af if they had some height and so due to the bending effect from the guard rails and being able to see the actual cliffs at the sides. OTOH, curves were better than the average 16 bit racer, as you could step a bit offroad from the curve, but not so much. But it gave the game some believability.
Also, the patched Road Rash 1-2-3 ROMs for the Mega Drive run much better with far more frames, and neither any overclocking is required at all, nor any extra hardware. That make them very good on simulating pseudo-3D races.