Spectrum Computing

Obviously I'm talking about BITD and not in the modern era, but since we had quite a few 3D fast arcade games such as Starstrike, surely it wouldn't have been too much of a leap to transpose the action to a corridor? And the antagonists needn't have been anthropomorphic sprites, just some cuboid robots would have sufficed. Did it just never occur to designer as the time?

The techniques to perform Wolfenstein 3D style scaling at speed, even on fast PCs, hadn't been invented. The idea was there in some guises like Xybots, the second level of Gryzor or in things like Aliens and Space Gun.

If you go with what was state of the art at the time, you'd have something like Castle Master, which is a great game but not really fast enough for FPS like gameplay.

FPS games in practice started with Wolfenstein in 1992. Wolfenstein uses a technique which wasn't known in the 80s - raycasting. Raycasting is in many ways more limited that standard 3D vector graphics but is much faster. It made Wolfenstein possible. If it was to be made with vectors, it would be too slow.

It was unfortunately at the very end of Spectrum commercial life. So you didn't get any British games using it. Yet, you will find some such games made later in Russia, unfortunately quite often existing only as demo versions:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1 ... stein_2004
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... re-release
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/9 ... um/Citadel

What about Micronaut One? It's not very far from Descent.

Oloturia wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 12:50 pm What about Micronaut One? It's not very far from Descent.

That's a good shout. Slow it down, change the controls from "driving" controls,add shooting (I can't remember if it already had this) and you've got an FPS!

I think 3D Seiddab Attack from Hewson is quite interesting (at least for 1984).

One of the earliest FPS was probably 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81

dvduk wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 7:43 pm One of the earliest FPS was probably 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81

Not really, there is no shooting.

They tried with Aliens I guess.

Turbo Esprit was in first person and there was shooting.

Lee P wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 9:37 am Turbo Esprit was in first person and there was shooting.

Not sure about that one, you can see your car on the screen/in the road.



Possibly not an official definition but in my mind when someone says FPS I'd expect to:

- see a 3D environment through the eyes of the protagonist
- not see the protagonist themself (3rd person)
- see a weapon/gun at the bottom of the screen, possibly including the protagonist's hand(s)
- aim by moving the protagonist using movement controls (e.g. if there's an aiming cursor it appears in the middle of the screen, rather than the screen not moving and you moving the cursor)

Not sure what early games fit that description though.

The second stage/load of Platoon is fair close. A sort of proto FPS, IMHO

Morkin wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 9:47 am Not sure about that one, you can see your car on the screen/in the road.

Possibly not an official definition but in my mind when someone says FPS I'd expect to:

- see a 3D environment through the eyes of the protagonist
- not see the protagonist themself (3rd person)
- see a weapon/gun at the bottom of the screen, possibly including the protagonist's hand(s)
- aim by moving the protagonist using movement controls (e.g. if there's an aiming cursor it appears in the middle of the screen, rather than the screen not moving and you moving the cursor)

Not sure what early games fit that description though.

I mean, considering 3D Monster Maze is in 16K it shouldn't be too hard to modify it slightly (he says, with no coding skills whatsoever)

Spawn of Evil?

Lee P wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 9:37 am Turbo Esprit was in first person and there was shooting.

Just like Chase HQ, I don't think it qualifies as FPS.

Catch 23, The Eidolon.
You could say anything like Battlezone was an open-world FPS. The underground sections of Mercenary were probably the closest thing, although there was nothing to shoot at.
The limitation was rendering the 3D environment. Aliens was a really good alternative to 90° movement. Gyron had smoother movement but still 90° turns. The ST and Amiga got more detailed square-movement mazes like Dungeon Master, and flat-shaded FPS like Corporation and Midi Maze.

What really made Wolfenstein 3D, besides the ray-casting way of rendering, was the PC graphics card with a byte-per-pixel screen mode. That made scaling textures much, much easier than modes where the bits for four separate pixels are packed into the same word, or spread across multiple words.

As remarkable as something like Starstrike 2 is, it's just about possible because it's in space, there are no backgrounds. As has been said above, as soon as you want to have backgrounds and fast moving foreground sprites, all done in software, you are going to end up running under 10 frames per second.

A good example of an early FPS, probably the first, was Phantom Slayer on the Dragon 32. It's not a true FPS in the sense that your view is fixed to the four cardinal directions as you move through the maze, but it was brilliant and scary at the time. At some point I'd like to recreate it for the Spectrum but it's a good way down my list.

I should mention that Blaster, one of the earliest pre-Wolfenstein shooters, was originally gonna be a computer game before it was shipped to arcades instead, which does make me wonder if anyone will make a Speccy port of it. :3

I think it's rather important to define an "fps" as having a smooth 360 degrees freedom of movement in some sort of corridor-based environment. Otherwise the list of games which clearly don't qualify (various dungeon crawlers, sims, or even Op Wolf-likes) will be endless.

On the ZX, I guess Castle Master could qualify as a proto-fps, with insistence on "proto" (I'm not sure if other Freescape games have some shooting?).

Amiga's Corporation would be the first one I could say I really felt to be an FPS, even though the "gun" was still mouse driven, like in Aliens.

akeley wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 12:51 pm
On the ZX, I guess Castle Master could qualify as a proto-fps, with insistence on "proto" (I'm not sure if other Freescape games have some shooting?).

Almost all have the "shooting" function ( if not all, not sure). I played a lot BITD Driller and to me it's a proto-FPS all the way.

- aim by moving the protagonist using movement controls (e.g. if there's an aiming cursor it appears in the middle of the screen, rather than the screen not moving and you moving the cursor)

This is a quite strict part of definition but I checked Wikipedia and you're right, it's there. So games using a cursor like Operation Wolf, Zzoom (great early game by the way) or even Star Wars (full vector 3D but cursor present) don't count.

Or maybe distinction becomes a bit blurred here. In Star Wars or Zzoom you move a cursor but by moving a cursor you move also yourself and change your perspective.

It needs a bit of beard stroking about what an FPS is....

Theres no shooting in 3D Monster Maze, but what about Zigzag from 1984? Plus it had a great death animation when you catch up with the baddies.



And I like this game because you can see the sprite disappearing into the distance. On other contenders for a true FPS, like Catch 23 or the second part of Platoon, the baddy sprites suddenly appear (Literally pop up in both games).

bluespikey wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 2:15 pm Theres no shooting in 3D Monster Maze, but what about Zigzag from 1984? Plus it had a great death animation when you catch up with the baddies.

Agree. Some 3D labyrinths with foes qualify as proto-FPS.

Stefan wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 8:50 pm Not really, there is no shooting.

Zig Zag?

I wasn't familiar with Zig Zag, so just loaded it up on my Spectrum and yep, I'd say that qualifies