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MrFlibble · 10-08-2012, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hunvagy

ROTT is built on the first version of the Build engine.

No it's not, it's a very updated version of the Wolfenstein 3-D engine with some code from the Doom engine thrown in:

Quote:

Rise of the Triad contains code taken from Wolfenstein 3D, as well as early versions of the Zone memory and WAD file systems from the Doom source code. It also makes use of an early version of Doom's patch_t image format which is close to that used in the press release beta version, indicating that Hall's team was given access to an early transitional source base, perhaps related closely to other contemporary games such as Shadowcaster.

(source)

In his article about ROTT Kevin Bowen quotes Mark Dochtermann on the tech sided of the engine:

Quote:

The Engine

The story behind ROTT's Engine is quite interesting. While doing research for this article, it seemed to me that the ROTT Engine was built from scratch. However, Ritual's Mark Dochtermann gave me the full story (warning: slightly techie):

Quote:

The ROTT engine initially started out as the Wolf3D engine. The Wolf3D engine was a REAL mode engine rather than a PROTECTED mode engine like Doom. My first task was to rewrite the engine so that it was a PROTECTED mode engine. Once this was done, ROTT could take advantage of linear memory and access to high memory without using EMS or XMS (remember those?) Wolf3D also generated all the code necessary in memory to scale a 64 high textured line from 1 pixel to the maximum scaled size which was about 300-400. This took up a bit of memory, and while it was an amazing innovation for 286's (it allowed WOLF3D to be as fast as it was) it didn't make a lot of sense for the 486. I took that stuff out and then had to convert the renderer from 286 assembly to protected mode assembly. John Carmack gave me a little piece of code which turned out to be the assembly inner loop for Doom. ROTT, it turns out uses the same scaling routines as found in Doom (who would have thought). Apogee also signed a deal with id that would allow us to put floor and ceiling code in ROTT. Once this was done the game really took on a whole new look.

The conversion from REAL mode to PROTECTED mode required a complete rewrite of almost every subsystem in Wolf3D which in the end made the ROTT engine VERY different from the Wolf3D engine. One of the subsystems which had to be re-written was the sound system. That is where Jim Dose came in. He wrote an amazing sound system outside of Apogee/3D Realms that would later be used in all of Apogee's products. Once he was near completion he was brought on to the ROTT team and helped finish up the game (he created RANDROTT among other things).

After the initial hard stuff was completed the ROTT engine turned more and more into a bastard child as features were added like room over room and transparency which were clearly never intended for an engine like ROTT's. The finished product is by no means an engineering marvel but had a certain charm to it.

Here are some of the things that are in the ROTT engine:
Multi level orthogonally based levels.
Room over room (sort of).
Transparency.
Textured Floors and Ceilings.
Dynamic Lighting.
FLIC support (although we never had any in the game).
CINEMATIC engine (also never used. The ending sequence is scripted but doesn't utilize the cool shit developed before hand).
11 player network support.
Masked Walls (Textures with holes in them).
Moving Walls.
Stairs (sort of).

ROTT had many features later picked up by the BUILD engine: Bullet hole marks in walls, destroyable objects (Tables, lights, you know stuff like that), breakable glass, thumbnail pictures in the saved games, and adjustable, password-protected violence settings. It was the first "clone" that a had look up \ look down ability.

The engine could handle pretty big levels too: up to sixteen stories high and an area of one million sq. feet.

ROTT also had things the BUILD games didn't have like parallaxing skies, fog, boulders, real lights that illuminate walls (that you can shoot to make the room get darker), ricocheting bullets, touchplates, and gas grates. They were nasty little buggers that pumped a room full of gas (almost as bad as being in Taco Bell on your lunch hour). If you didn't have a gas mask, you were toast. It also had a 180 turn key (great for keyboarders).

ROTT was the first game that let you fall off ledges and die. If you weren't careful jumping around you could fly off the edge of a cliff. And of course, there where the famous jumpads. They where like mini-trampolines that hurtled you 5 stories in the air. Once in the air you could maneuver yourself around and do all sorts of weird stuff. Aerial battles often got pretty crazy. Jump pads were used to jump over obstacles, walls, other players, to get weapons and items… they're all over (and yes, enemies could use them).

On the other hand, a game that can be said to use a "very early" version of the Build engine is Ken's Labyrinth.