Post by Technopeasant on Apr 9, 2017 21:40:27 GMT -5
My favourite bit of writing I have done for the wiki so far:
"The GCS was used by many independent games and amateur projects as a game creator, largely because it minimized the amount of computer programming knowledge needed to make 3D games in its editing tools. In this sense it competed with modding bigger name commercial first-person shooters such as Doom (1993) or later Duke Nukem 3D (1996) and Quake (1996), but featured the advantage of allowing the production of stand-alone executables without requiring the purchase of the base game and were even allowed to be sold using supplied assets.
It was later competed with and/or supplanted by tools such as FPS Creator/DarkBASIC in 2000, Blitz3D in September 2001, the Retribution Engine in 2003, GameMaker: Studio from Game Maker 6 in 2004 onward, and Platinum Arts Sandbox Free 3D Game Maker in 2007. Engines of similar vintage to Power 3D, such as the Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Build and Quake engines started seeing their source code released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, providing other options for amateur first-person shooter development. Original free and open source engines such as Crystal Space (1997), Genesis3D (1998), OGRE (1999-2000), Blender (2000), Cube (2001), Panda3D (2002), Irrlicht (2003) and jMonkeyEngine (2003) also appeared.
The concept behind the Game Creation System was preceded somewhat by Incentive Software's 3D Construction Kit (1991) and 3D Construction Kit II (1992), both based on their Freespace engine. Arguably the first-person dungeon crawler creators such as The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991) by Interplay Productions based on The Bard's Tale, and Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (1993) by Strategic Simulations based on the Gold Box engine, also bear mentioning. Along with the GCS, these initial visions of easy 3D development have proved quite prescient, with modern engines such as Unity, ShiVa, Godot and even the veteran Unreal Engine increasingly emphasising ease of development over advanced features."
"The GCS was used by many independent games and amateur projects as a game creator, largely because it minimized the amount of computer programming knowledge needed to make 3D games in its editing tools. In this sense it competed with modding bigger name commercial first-person shooters such as Doom (1993) or later Duke Nukem 3D (1996) and Quake (1996), but featured the advantage of allowing the production of stand-alone executables without requiring the purchase of the base game and were even allowed to be sold using supplied assets.
It was later competed with and/or supplanted by tools such as FPS Creator/DarkBASIC in 2000, Blitz3D in September 2001, the Retribution Engine in 2003, GameMaker: Studio from Game Maker 6 in 2004 onward, and Platinum Arts Sandbox Free 3D Game Maker in 2007. Engines of similar vintage to Power 3D, such as the Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Build and Quake engines started seeing their source code released in the late 1990s and early 2000s, providing other options for amateur first-person shooter development. Original free and open source engines such as Crystal Space (1997), Genesis3D (1998), OGRE (1999-2000), Blender (2000), Cube (2001), Panda3D (2002), Irrlicht (2003) and jMonkeyEngine (2003) also appeared.
The concept behind the Game Creation System was preceded somewhat by Incentive Software's 3D Construction Kit (1991) and 3D Construction Kit II (1992), both based on their Freespace engine. Arguably the first-person dungeon crawler creators such as The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991) by Interplay Productions based on The Bard's Tale, and Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (1993) by Strategic Simulations based on the Gold Box engine, also bear mentioning. Along with the GCS, these initial visions of easy 3D development have proved quite prescient, with modern engines such as Unity, ShiVa, Godot and even the veteran Unreal Engine increasingly emphasising ease of development over advanced features."