First ever true 3D game?

Anyone remember a game called Castle Master, it's sequel Dungeon Crypt (or something like that), and the editor used to make it, 3D Construction kit? It had true 3D, slopes, and even an extremely powerful scripting language. Pretty amazing considering it originally came out sometime in the mid 80s :)

The editor was extremely simple to use. You had a flat landscape, upon which you simply created objects (rectangles, triangles, *agons, lines, etc), changed their colours (no textures baby! Version 1 had 16 colours, version 2 had 256) and resized and moved them around.

Also, there was no limit to the amount of enemies and items you could have, as you designed all the enemies, items, etc in the level editor itself as part of the level ;)

I believe version 2 (version 1 was on several platforms as well as the PC, including the ZX spectrum, version 2 I _think_ was only on the PC) even supported ADLIB music =p

The company who made it were Domark (who were pretty famous in their day), and most importantly, it was English :)

Wonder if there's a way to import the DooM graphics into Castle Master. It'll be like Edge, ZDooM, etc. rolled into one ("true 3D, slopes, and even an extremely powerful scripting language"). Also, I wonder how powerful the editor is. I've gotten so used to WadAuthor I'd be reluctant to switch unless the new editor is easy and powerful.

When you say "and most importantly, it was English" I assume you mean the company was from Merry Old (and not that the game was in English). Indeed, most of the big FPS titles have been from American companies, but many of the key developers (programmmers, etc.) have been European. So whattaya waitin' for, mister? Get cracking on starting your own FPS outfit!

One fact not mentioned there was the fact that castle master was unbelievably slow, had very few colours and was, in fact, crap.
The first came the use 3d polygons came out in 1983 and was called "I Robot" and was a very strange space/robot/big eye type thing.
Of course Battlezone was the first first-person shooter, you kids know nothing about old games, I remember when these games weren't old, "more than 16 colours? wow!"

Actually, I did mention it not having many colours :) But you're right about how slow it was.

ReX said:

Wonder if there's a way to import the DooM graphics into Castle Master. It'll be like Edge, ZDooM, etc. rolled into one ("true 3D, slopes, and even an extremely powerful scripting language"). Also, I wonder how powerful the editor is. I've gotten so used to WadAuthor I'd be reluctant to switch unless the new editor is easy and powerful.

When you say "and most importantly, it was English" I assume you mean the company was from Merry Old (and not that the game was in English). Indeed, most of the big FPS titles have been from American companies, but many of the key developers (programmmers, etc.) have been European. So whattaya waitin' for, mister? Get cracking on starting your own FPS outfit!

Heh, it doesn't actually use graphics, so no there isn't :)

I think I played Castle Master on a 286. I found it pretty scary. Is the company that made it still existing? If not, it would be legal to download it somewhere. (I still got the original box and the manual, but the disk is lost.)

I dunno about you, but I am sick of everybody saying "True 3D" or "Doom is not true 3D" or "Wolfenstein is not true 3D." If it looks like 3D, feels like 3D, and quacks like 3D, it's 3D. If you make the argument that Doom is not "true 3D," you must also say the same thing for Quake, because really the only thing non-3D about it is the fact that it does not pop out of the monitor. Until that happens, there is no "true 3D." With the possible exceptiong of EDGE, which allows 3D glasses support. I have yet to see a Quake port do that (not that I've played many Quake ports) which leads me to believe that Doom can be MORE 3D than "true 3D" games. I'm sick of that phrase. As a programmer who has done 3D programming, I can tell you that even the Windows "starfield simulator" screensaver is technically "true 3D" if it is in correct perspective.

Quake was the first badass to break the 3d gaming technology :P

NiGHTMARE said:

Actually, I did mention it not having many colours :) But you're right about how slow it was.

of course, there was no such thing as a "3d card" in the mid 80s

TheProphet said:

I think I played Castle Master on a 286. I found it pretty scary. Is the company that made it still existing? If not, it would be legal to download it somewhere. (I still got the original box and the manual, but the disk is lost.)

hehe........i found it..........but.........i cant tell where i found it.....i dont wanna my accout to be deleted............hehe

ChriS said:

of course, there was no such thing as a "3d card" in the mid 80s

Also, there was no badguys, except for these big floating slabs, no sprites, no sound worth talking about and one weapon (a stone) woo-hoo, I don't remember there being any specific editor for castle master, however the 3d construction kit was made by the same people and produced pretty similar results

ChriS said:

Quake was the first badass to break the 3d gaming technology :P

The first true 3D FPS to do that must have been Descent.

spacedog said:

One fact not mentioned there was the fact that castle master was unbelievably slow, had very few colours and was, in fact, crap.
The first came the use 3d polygons came out in 1983 and was called "I Robot" and was a very strange space/robot/big eye type thing.
Of course Battlezone was the first first-person shooter, you kids know nothing about old games, I remember when these games weren't old, "more than 16 colours? wow!"

i have battlezone for the atari vcs (2600) and i was playign it a half a friigin hour ago and im only 14, hat do you mean us kids know nothing about old games¿ i have about 40+ games for my atari i still play it and i even have a dreamcast

There was a game on the amstrad cpc 464 called driller that was made with the 3d construction kit. It was a 64k computer and I think the game was released around about 1985.