Today's scene

[Shockwave]

Shockwave: Make that at least 5. It is obviously true that using a graphics api is easier than writing everything yourself, I don't see anyone saying otherwise. Doing the same stuff is thus of course easier. The point is that people are not just doing the same tired old things. They are moving on and spending their time on more challenging techniques. It can be more advanced rendering, texture generation, realtime synthesizers, content creation tools, whatever.

I honestly don't believe that 3d coding is easier today, considering that the bar has been raised more than enough to compensate for not having to do vertex operations and rasterizisation of triangles yourself. This is of course assuming that you want to create stuff that is on par, if you are satisfied just rotating a cube, then things are of course way easier.

It's a sore point here. I had a lot of fun making texture mapping routines and developing a software rendering engine.. Everyone told me to change to a hardware API, members of my group, my friends and even my missus.

It's hard for me to admit they were right...

Though I think it's largely irrelevant nowadays, most of my time is taken up at work or on this forum

I can't disagree with anything you wrote there so I won't, have some good Karma instead

Indeed, dont get me wrong I have a lot of respect for people doing the old school too.  I guess the point I was trying to make not very successfuly is that the modern scene hasn't seen a reduction in skill required, just that different skills are required.  That of course is as long as your trying to push the boundaries anyway, but those boundaries have changed too.  The hardware is now less of a limiting factor and instead you're coming up against the boundaries of knowledge.  Anyway I dont want this to sound like I'm making myself out to be some kind of guru or anything, I'm nowhere near pushing any boundaries, I'm still trying to churn out the stuff that's been done a hundred times before.  But then that's why I'm here, because I'm trying to learn rendering techniques.

Understood, my bad I guess... It comes out of being 30 something and hankering after the old days... Nostalgia aint what it used to be.

Stormbringer...

www.retro-remakes.net We just got a new host so that your remakes can be displayed in all thier glory..

There are so many people here now making so many different kinds of things that it makes for some rivetting discussions.

Personally I am humbled and happy that you are all here

[rain_storm]

I have to admit Im more a procedural guy so my opinion is always going to favour the guys that do their own dirty work so to speak. But an interesting point was the time being better spent elsewhere. Yeah cool things can be done with cubes and spheres in mass ammounts like c0d1g0 by rbz (http://dbfinteractive.com/index.php?topic=1003.0) Before it may have been enough to display a single cube with some scrolling texts. The new hardware has opened up so many more avenues. we dont have to spend 100% cpu time on drawing a single primitive so things like c0d1g0 become a reality. that many cubes was only a dream to people from the 80's-90's. If the same effect were even attempted in those years the exe would be much bigger in file size and take minutes to render

Anyone who has had a look at the articals over at in4k and hugi knows that the scene today has even more magic tricks up its sleave then it ever had. The thing is that in the past they didnt have as many magic tricks yet things like CDI's 3D World Tennis were still being made. (http://retro-remakes.net/viewproduction.php?prod=cc471affc6b2722f2c8976065f22e7d09e7406b1)

edit - found that link to the remake link added (I am sure there is a thread on this forum with it though) the original had to be programmed without such useful opcodes as mul reg8,imm8. not bad at all I think