Freescape

Freescape

Developer(s)	Incentive Software
Initial release	1987 (1987)

Stable release	3D Construction Kit II / 1992 (1992)

Development status	Discontinued
Platform	Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST
Available in	English
Type	Game engine
License	Proprietary software

The Freescape engine was an early 3D game engine used in games such as 1987's Driller. Graphics were composed mostly of solid geometry rendered without shading.

History

Developed in-house by Incentive Software, Freescape is considered to be one of the first proprietary 3D engines to be used in computer games, although the engine was not used commercially outside of Incentive's own titles.^[1] The project was originally thought to be so ambitious that according to Incentive designer Ian Andrew, the company struggled to recruit programmers for the project, with many believing that it could not be achieved.

Paul Gregory (graphics artist for Major Developments, Incentive's in-house design team) mentions ^[2] that Freescape was developed by Chris Andrew starting in September 1986 on an Amstrad CPC, as it was the most suitable development system with 128K memory and had adequate power to run 3D environments. Due to the engine's success, it was later ported to all the dominant systems of the era: the ZX Spectrum, the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.

Freescape development ended in 1992 with the release of 3D Construction Kit II. Its legacy continued in the latter Superscape VRT virtual reality authoring engine, from the same developer and advertised on the 3D Construction Kit II software.

Technology

Geometry

Example of a Freescape generated 3D game environment for the Amiga version of Castle Master

The Freescape engine allowed the generation of complete 3D environments that consist of a floor and as many primitives as memory and processor speed realistically allowed for. These primitives were cuboids, four-sided frustums (called pyramids by Freescape), triangles, rectangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons and line segments. A further primitive, "sensor", was used for gaming purpose to detect the position of the camera relative to the sensor in the game world.

Freescape was designed with limited hardware in mind and as such contains a number of inherent limitations that are necessary to enable the games to run properly on these computers:

Individual regions were restricted to a size of 8192 × 4096 × 8192 units. These units were arbitrary but each region always corresponded to the dimensions.
The engine did not allow for fractional movements. On 16-bit machines each movement — camera or object — must be a multiple of one unit. On 8-bit machines the angles at which the world may be viewed are further restricted to steps of 5 degrees.
The x and z axes were subdivided into only 128 discrete locations, and the y axis is subdivided into only 64 discrete locations. As a result, objects can only be placed at 64 unit intervals, for example, 0,64,128 or 128,64,32.
Objects may not overlap.
All objects possessed a "bounding cube", for which detection rules apply as per a cube, i.e. no overlapping.

Interaction

Games used the Freescape Command Language ('FCL'), an early in-game scripting language, to add interactive elements to Freescape worlds. Scripts may be set to run constantly for the entire world or run constantly for a certain area, or may be attached to individual objects where they will be run once if the object is shot, activated or collided with. Versions of Freescape for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC also supported 'animators', which were FCL programs that use a few extra instructions to create on-screen animations.

Software using the Freescape engine^[3]

Driller (1987)
Dark Side (1988)
Total Eclipse (1988)
Castle Master (1990)
Castle Master II: The Crypt (1990)
Total Eclipse II: The Sphinx Jinx (1991)
3D Construction Kit (1991)
3D Construction Kit II (1992)

References

↑ "Exploring the Freescape". IGN. 2008-10-22. Retrieved 2009-07-04.
↑ Retro Gamer 22, Incentive article, page 26
↑ http://www.uvlist.net/groups/info/freescapeengine

External links

Incentive Software
Games developed	Splat! Confuzion Moon Cresta Dragon's Tooth Karyssia: Queen of Diamonds
Games Published	Millionaire Citadel of Corruption The Graphic Adventure Creator
Freescape games	Driller Dark Side Total Eclipse Castle Master
3D Construction Kit series	3D Construction Kit 3D Construction Kit II

Game engines (list)

Free and
open-source

2D	Adventure Game Studio Beats of Rage Cocos2d Flixel KiriKiri Moai OHRRPGCE OpenFL ORX Pygame Ren'Py Stratagus Thousand Parsec VASSAL Xconq
2.5D	Aleph One Cube Engine
3D	Away3D Blender Game Cafu Crystal Space Cube 2 Engine Delta3D Dim3 GamePlay GLScene Horde3D Irrlicht id Tech (1 2 3 4) JMonkey OGRE Open Wonderland Panda3D Papervision3D Platinum Arts Sandbox Free 3D Game Maker PlayCanvas PLIB Quake (II) Torque 3D
Mix	Allegro Construct Classic Godot libGDX Lightweight Java Game Library Spring Wintermute Engine

Proprietary

2D	Construct 2 Corona Clickteam Fusion GameMaker: Studio GameSalad M.U.G.E.N NScripter RPG Maker Southpaw Stencyl UbiArt Framework Vicious Virtual Theatre V-Play Zillions of Games
3D	4A Amazon Lumberyard Anvil Bork3D C4 Chrome Clausewitz Engine Creation CryEngine Crystal Tools Decima Diesel EAGL EGO Elflight Enforce Enigma Essence Flare3D Fox Frostbite Geo-Mod GoldSrc HeroEngine HydroEngine id Tech (5 6) Ignite IW Jade Kinetica LS3D LithTech Luminous Studio LyN Marmalade Mizuchi MT Framework Outerra Panta Rhei PhyreEngine Plasma Q Real Virtuality REDengine Riot RAGE SAGE Serious Shark 3D ShiVa Silent Storm Snowdrop Source (2) Titan TOSHI Truevision3D Unigine Unity Unreal Vision Visual3D XnGine X-Ray YETI Zero
Mix	Gamebryo Hybrid Graphics Kaneva Game Platform Metismo

Historical

Proprietary
middleware

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