PocketMatrix

Why dont we see more games that have the amazing graphics like "Racing Days", "Chopper Alley", and
"Christmas Rush"??? The 3D programming must be there, so why arent we seeing more 3d intence games like these???

There are also other GREAT graphical games like "Snails" and "Rayman Ultimate", but im talking more about the games with large 3d type worlds/levels.

First of all, have you tried Interstellar Flames or Tomb Raider?

Also, there are a bunch in development:
- Gang Warfare (FPS)
- Speedway Jam (Racing)
- Need for Speed (Racing)
- Varium (Action/Shooter)

To name a few that I can think of off the top of my head. There are more, though.

And it also takes up a lot of time to develop these engines with ARM asm and everything, and because most developers are small teams or single people they can't afford to license currently available engines.

Its also hard to create a vast 3D game in the storage space of a standard PPC game (4-10 megs)

Actually, thats not neccessarily true. A 3d world can easily be much larger than a 2d world, while still consuming much less storage space. Relatively complex 3d scenes can be stored in as little as a few kb, though textures can add a few megs. Generally though, 3d is more efficient than 2d, space-wise.

However, the rendering of such vast 3d worlds at a fast framerate often additionally requires the use of complex visibility and scene management algorithms in the engine (unless using an isometric/overhead viewpoint, etc). Given the issues that a developer already faces when creating a PPC 3d engine (no fpu, hardware division, etc), its probably not too surprising that larger 3d worlds are even less common on PPC.

Yep - never assume that a large play area means tons of storage space.

the Midwinter series (on the ST, Amiga and PC) , for example, had a massive (although slightly barren) fractally generated play area that was hundreds of kilometers wide, with a cast of hundreds of characters and a complex plot. There was weeks of gameplay in Midwinter II - all stored on three 720k floppies - just over 2 meg for the mathematically challenged

(Intelligently) computer generated worlds are possibly the way we're going to have to go in the future anyway - there's no way games can continue increasing in complexity at the speed they are now if the industry is to remain profitable.

That's the one.
Just think how different things would be in the game development business without 'commercial pressure'.

I think the loading time was due to the extreme levels of compression going on - we're talking 64k remember! And yes, the scenes were abstract and meaningless.

But there's no reason why similar principles of maths can't be applied to generate a landscape, city streets, network of caverns, racetrack (perhaps this is pushing it a bit far ), and so on. Especially if you follow the theory that the world around us is based around fractals and chaos theory (don't ask me to explain either of these things ).

Probably the best approach would be something like that used by the aforementioned Midwinter games - taking a mathematically generated world and allowing the level designers to manually place the gameplay elements within it. This ensures that the world retains a large scale while not appearing too sterile/computer generated, and also keeps the data storage size down.

NWN? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious but I've just done 40 minutes in the swimming pool and i feel wasted