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Is Rex3D still available somewhere?

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2018 10:41 am
by MajickTek
https://www.gamedev.net/articles/progra ... ques-r872/

This has a very unique and interesting idea on implementing hight using pure raycasting.

The two website links are rex3d.de, and http://www.phryzer.de/rex3d, which are both dead. The Wayback Machine has the sites but none of the downloads archived.

So I'm just wondering if someone has this somewhere.

p.s. It is not on GitHub AFAIK.

EDIT: the author provided an updated link a long time ago (http://www.acs-home.de/rex3d) but this is also dead.

Re: Is Rex3D still available somewhere?

Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:40 pm
by Brendan
Hi,
MajickTek wrote:https://www.gamedev.net/articles/progra ... ques-r872/

This has a very unique and interesting idea on implementing hight using pure raycasting.

The two website links are rex3d.de, and http://www.phryzer.de/rex3d, which are both dead. The Wayback Machine has the sites but none of the downloads archived.

So I'm just wondering if someone has this somewhere.

p.s. It is not on GitHub AFAIK.

EDIT: the author provided an updated link a long time ago (http://www.acs-home.de/rex3d) but this is also dead.
As far as I can see, the author's idea of "advanced ray casting" is extremely basic (possibly originating from ancient techniques used in games like Catacomb 3D in the early 1990s); and it shouldn't take very much thought to implement your own similar code or take much effort to find old source code somewhere that uses the same technique (including the source code for Catacomb 3D itself).


Cheers,

Brendan

Re: Is Rex3D still available somewhere?

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:11 pm
by GautamS
Not exactly what you're looking for but I found this to be rather comprehensive: https://permadi.com/1996/05/ray-casting ... -contents/ Guaranteed, it's very old, but I doubt raycasting is used as a way to render 3D in the industry today.

The tutorial I linked covers from the basics to things the simulating variable height walls, as well as the simulation of looking up/down in a pure raycasting engine. Like Brendan said, this is relatively easier, once you are thorough with the basic idea.

The wayback machine has a few pages backed up, but unfortunately the source code download link seems to not work: https://web.archive.org/web/20040904052 ... index.html

Besides, id Software open-sourced Doom, why not look there? :)

Heck, I still don't believe the Doom engine was a raycaster after all these years. It's probably what you're looking for if you wish to push raycasting to the limit.

Re: Is Rex3D still available somewhere?

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:54 pm
by MajickTek
GautamS wrote:Not exactly what you're looking for but I found this to be rather comprehensive: https://permadi.com/1996/05/ray-casting ... -contents/ Guaranteed, it's very old, but I doubt raycasting is used as a way to render 3D in the industry today.

The tutorial I linked covers from the basics to things the simulating variable height walls, as well as the simulation of looking up/down in a pure raycasting engine. Like Brendan said, this is relatively easier, once you are thorough with the basic idea.

The wayback machine has a few pages backed up, but unfortunately the source code download link seems to not work: https://web.archive.org/web/20040904052 ... index.html

Besides, id Software open-sourced Doom, why not look there? :)

Heck, I still don't believe the Doom engine was a raycaster after all these years. It's probably what you're looking for if you wish to push raycasting to the limit.
Awesome! and no, DOOM is not a ray caster. It uses a complex form of 2.5D rendering using BSPs that John Carmack invented. It is the basis of most true-3d engines today (doom was the bases of quake, and quake is the basis of literally everything else).

anyways, this is cool!

Re: Is Rex3D still available somewhere?

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:56 pm
by MajickTek
Brendan wrote:Hi,
MajickTek wrote:https://www.gamedev.net/articles/progra ... ques-r872/

This has a very unique and interesting idea on implementing hight using pure raycasting.

The two website links are rex3d.de, and http://www.phryzer.de/rex3d, which are both dead. The Wayback Machine has the sites but none of the downloads archived.

So I'm just wondering if someone has this somewhere.

p.s. It is not on GitHub AFAIK.

EDIT: the author provided an updated link a long time ago (http://www.acs-home.de/rex3d) but this is also dead.
As far as I can see, the author's idea of "advanced ray casting" is extremely basic (possibly originating from ancient techniques used in games like Catacomb 3D in the early 1990s); and it shouldn't take very much thought to implement your own similar code or take much effort to find old source code somewhere that uses the same technique (including the source code for Catacomb 3D itself).


Cheers,

Brendan
Thanks Brendan. That is exactly what I thought. Given the algorithms on the article that I posted, it's enough to integrate into an existing recasting engine without too much effort. (that is, you DO have to sort of rewrite the rendering code, but if you have the basic algorithms it should be easy)