In techniques for computer games, fixed 3D is a three-dimensional (3D) representation of the game world with game characters rendered in real time against a prerendered environment.
Blade Runner (Westwood Studios) - apparently the backgrounds are rendered in real time, using millions of polygons, although this is difficult to tell
Ecstatica and Ecstatica 2 (Andrew Spencer/Psygnosis) - unusual in that the backgrounds and characters are rendered with ellipsoids, leading to a very natural looking set of creatures. Like Blade Runner, it again is rendered entirely in real time, although it is difficult to tell at first sight
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo) - dropped for complete 3D in its successor, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, 2D is used for many of the building interiors and for an entire town.
Admittedly, there seems little to separate fixed 3D from its precursor, the graphic adventure game (Monkey Island, Sam and Max etc.), but whereas the latter overlays 2D characters over a 2D background, fixed 3D is at least 3D overlaid on 2D, and often onto 3D.
In this article I will discuss fixed point mathematics, in preparation of the third and fourth article, which will describe a 3D engine that I am developing for Overloaded, which will be used for a 3D race game currently under development.
For mobile devices, you can't just grab some free 3D engine source code and adjust it for the smaller screen, because the ARM processor does not have a floating point unit.
I'll be converting from and to 16:16 fixed point; to convert to 16:16 fixed point I'll need to multiply by 65536, to get back to regular ints (32:0), I'll need to do a binary shift right by 16 bits.
In techniques for computer games, fixed3D is a three-dimensional (3D) representation of the game world with game characters rendered in real time against a prerendered environment.
Admittedly, there seems little to separate fixed3D from its precursor, the graphic adventure game (Monkey Island, Sam and Max etc.), but whereas the latter overlays 2D characters over a 2D background, fixed3D is at least 3D overlaid on 2D, and often onto 3D.