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Graphics > 3D graphics on commercial games

#8042 - Stephanj - Tue Jul 01, 2003 5:24 am

there are some good true 3D games for the GBA. 2 are Super Monkey Ball Jr., and Bond's Nightfire. I want to get that 3d FPS engine! Anyone know how I would go about making one of them?

#8055 - Sweex - Tue Jul 01, 2003 10:12 am

That's a bit of a daft question, isn't it?:)

Doing 3D on the GBA is tough, as there is no hardware support for it (except "mode7" which is somewhat 3D, but note that it isn't an actual videomode). If you want to do 3D you will have to write your own engine and know quite some assembler to get it running at a reasonable framerate. I believe HAM has some support for 3D, but not quite sure.

If you want a typical doom kind of game, use the raycasting technique. Searching google should give you loads of webpages about this.

I haven't seen MonkeyBall 2 or JB in action so they might use some hardware tricks to fake 3D that I'm not aware of.

If you have no experience in 3D, then put it out of your mind for a while!:)

#8080 - Archeious - Tue Jul 01, 2003 5:50 pm

Stephanj wrote:
there are some good true 3D games for the GBA. 2 are Super Monkey Ball Jr., and Bond's Nightfire. I want to get that 3d FPS engine! Anyone know how I would go about making one of them?


Put together a team of top notch developers. They have to be experts in asm, matrix and vector maths, and the AGB hardware. Then keep them focus on the project for 12-18 months. :)

#8152 - ebille - Thu Jul 03, 2003 7:32 am

its definiatly possible to write some good 3d apps on the gba. look into the book Micheal Abrash's Graphics Programming blackbook .

if your really interested, get that book

// if you want to know more
ebille@hotmail.com
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#9583 - Derek - Sat Aug 09, 2003 1:46 pm

Try this 3D engine.

http://www.theteahouse.com.au/gba/index.html

If you like it, contact me to get a copy of the latest source code.
Derek Evans

PS: Anyone interested in optimizing some GBA DDA texture mapping code?