Genesis3D

Genesis3D was a project by Eclipse Entertainment to create a real-time 3D engine for Microsoft Windows. It was released as source code in 1998. The first released version supported hardware acceleration and a software renderer. Genesis3D had RGB lightmaps, fogging, Binary Space Partitioning ( the same visibility algorithm used in Quake 1 and 2), a sprite system, alpha masking and blending, and a map and model editor.

Genesis3D allows the game creators to animate 3D models using now-standard "skeletal animation", allowing for complex smoothed movement (instead of interpolated vertex keyframes used in the Quake games).

Thus Genesis3D was likely the most advanced complete and open-source game engine at the time, which made the engine a superior competitor for the Doom engine, the source code of which was at the time also released only for non-commercial use.

This engine is likely not important for the actual games created with it, but as a game development community which launched careers for many team members who eventually went on to work for large successful commercial game projects.

An early game using the Genesis3D Engine was "G-Sector" by Freeform Interactive and was released as a free game/technology demo in December 1998.

Notable Genesis3D games

*"Barbie Generation Girl Gotta Groove", the number-seven best-selling game for Christmas 1999 developed by Neurobatics Corporation
*"" developed by Ratloop
*"" developed by Dragonstone Software
*"Catechumen", a Christian-themed first-person "shooter", developed by N'Lightening Software
*"Special Force", an anti-Israel game developed by Hezbollah
*"Ethnic Cleansing", an openly racist computer game developed and distributed by Resistance Records

External links

* [http://www.genesis3d.com/ Official Website]
* [http://www.realityfactory.info/ Reality Factory - Gameshell for Genesis3D]
* [http://www.stormthecastle.com/video-game-design/video-game-design-index.htm Tutorials for Genesis3d and Reality Factory]