I remember reading a two page ad for the Domark 3D construction kit in some magazine back in the late 80's but I never bought it or have ever done any work with it. But, reading through this post I would like to know more. Downloaded the manual and reading it, but I also would like to own the original software. I remember the picture of the package, with the VHS casette and everything.

But I found this on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3D-C...619wt_1304 and just to be sure; this post here is referring to the Domark version, right? What is the ebay item I have located?
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Thank you for the information. Yes, a visit to http://www.3dconstructionkit.co.uk (nice site) told me it was developed by Icentive and published by Domark. Was the OCP Art Studio the only graphic editor you could use for import? If you can recall at all. . .
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Hey, the last post was my 100th post...

Wooo
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So Borough Medley, did you win the auction...?

The original release of 3DCK was in an enormous black box which contained the video VHS cassette guide.
Later on, they rereleased the 3DCK in this blue box, without the video cassette. The software itself will be identical.

Like Retroid said, the 3DCK requires the border graphic to be in Advanced OCP Art Studio format, and any screen can be saved in this format using the Action Replay cartridge.

The 3DCK tape/disk itself comes with two such example border files.
One is called KITSCR and is the border graphic that is used for the KitGame. The other is called DRILLSCR and is based on the Driller border.

Here are screenshots that I made of these two sample border files that come with 3DCK:



Bear in mind that if you wish to load either of these two files into the Advanced OCT Art Studio, then they would need to be renamed to the OCP file format of 123456789012MPIC, e.g. KITSCR------MPIC

Flanimal wrote:

Quote:

So Borough Medley, did you win the auction...?

No, actually I "forgot" to bid.. I was rather, well, computer free for the weekend. . But I have another possibillity once I get my hands on some more cash. .
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NUMBERS; Blood's clones. There are 5 of them: Number 1, Number 2, Number 3, Number 4 and that son of a bitch Number 5...

So. . reading around on the internet and old Zzap! reviews I came across a game by Ocean called Battle Command. I was impressed with the review, the not too sophisticated POLYGON graphic and the talk of glorious solid 3D graphics. What engine was used for this? Was it the result of the Freescape engine, together with some reu from the cartridge? Anyone know something about this?

This is a 128k game, sacrificing some levels (there is just eight of them) for speed (the review states it's FAST) and making me think what couldn't be done with the SuperCPU together with some REU.
And then there is this quote:

Quote:

On May-16-12 at 17:48:39 PDT, seller added the following information: NOTE: This is the only bare SuperCPU circuit board that I will be selling. I have some more but need to save them for building complete units.

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NUMBERS; Blood's clones. There are 5 of them: Number 1, Number 2, Number 3, Number 4 and that son of a bitch Number 5...

I had Battle Command. It definitely wasn't freescape. I had the cartridge version, and I believed they used a trick of storing precalculated trigernomatry in the accessible cartridge memory, so that the 3D was really fast. The 3D was impressively fast, faster than Freescape. The game itself was good, and very polished, but it was a bit lacking of substance, and it was frustratingly difficult. I don't know if the disk version had the fast 3D speed of the cartridge version.

And so it begins!

Recently I've been reacquainting myself with the 3DCK as I've wanted for some time now to create a new game, using my actual C64 rather than an emulator or any other tech. I'm going to be keeping things quite close to my chest for now but thought I'd let you see the first drawing I did in my designs, as I don't think it gives anything away.

This is just the initial drawing for what will be an "overworld", as much of the game will take place in underground caverns. It's been refined somewhat since for both scale (the hedges on either side are wwaayy too big here) and to take into consideration the need to simplify some parts for it to run smoothly on the 64.



flanimal, our resident expert in all things 3DCK, has been on hand too offering expert tips and I'd like to thank him now for his advice and emails

In addition to this, thanks to sparx my data files for my 90s 3DCK game, The Time Crystal, are on their way to me as I'd like to go back and redo it partly too.

Excited about getting stuck in again!

This is a bit off topic but its still about Domarks Freescape engine. I have two sealed copies of the rare 2nd release for PC. Anyone interested? I even may have an old version of 3dsmax somewhere which may be able to import export models from it. Freescape chugs a bit on the commodore but is still a remarkable feat of programing.

I have some 3DConstKit work, I'd like to donate. Back in 2010/2011 I was thinking about playing around with the 3D Construction Kit, to try and write some epic adventure called "Escape from Zaphod". It was to feature a title picture with an atmospheric tune by Senoverde. Unfortunately this game never got finished, and is still festering on the hard drive. The environment has been built. It's just the conditions I will need to work out.


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Hi Richard,
If I had more time and wasn't moving house then I'd be jumping at the opportunity to flesh out your creation using the condition editor! But alas, it is not possible at the moment. Perhaps in the future...
I would be very interested in wandering around your creation though. The best place to send your files to is Stuart's 3dconstuctionkit.co.uk website, (which seems to be down at the moment). Anyway, the site email address for contributions to Stuart is stuart@stu-wilson.com. I would recommend that you send your datafile and any other files to him via that email address, and your creations will be available on his website for all to view and enjoy.

Did you ever think about modifying the standalone program to play music? I always imagined it would be possible - I imagine the interrupt vector could be pointed to a small interrupt driven small music program, and at the end it could jmp back to the original 3DCK interrupt address. I never tried it myself and I'm not a C64 programming guru like yourself, but the idea is feasible, do you think?

It would have been nice to add music to a 3D construction Kit game, but a lot of memory seems to be used for other things. If anyone can tell me where the music can be put into the code, and where I can put an IRQ music player / link music to the IRQ. Then I might as well give that a try.
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I'm sure we've discussed an IRQ routine in 3DCK before, it may also have been in one of the Club newsletters...
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I've refined my search of 100% unused, usable memory in all standalone C64 3DCK games to the following address ranges:

2f9a-3474 (=1.2K)
3828-49ff (=4.5K)
d030-dfff (=4K)

Is enough for a bit of IRQ driven music?
Can anyone help me try this out? I am familiar with the Action Replay monitor so I envisage loading some (relocatable?) music code and data into, say the 4.5K slot, and then fiddle the IRQ vector to wedge it in? I would then use the Action Replay to save the flash of the memory to make a runnable disk for a 3DCK game.
Any type of music would do. Can anyone provide advice?

4K is enough for a decent sized sid. Lots of sids in the HVSC that would fit in that space.

I would take a look at the goattracker example tunes, if one of them fits into one of the free memory areas. In goattracker you can export the tune then to a suitable memory location.

3828-49ff (=4.5K)

That area should be fine for me to add music. Most tunes I do or use are less than 4.5K. Will try this out later on today

I have tried adding music on A Chance in Hell and successfully added some music into the game. Here's how I did it.

Load the music using a m/c monitor in the Action Replay cartridge

At $06BB, you normally get a stored raster command (STA $D012) in this area. Change that to JSR $4600.

At $4600 enter

Code:

. 4600 lda $45ff . 4603 cmp #$00 ;Alter this if the speed of your tune is too fast . 4605 beq $460b . 4607 inc $45ff . 460a rts . 460b lda #$00 . 460d sta $45ff . 4610 jsr $3903 ;Relocated DMC tune play . 4613 rts ;Initialize music then restart game . 4614 lda #$00 . 4616 jsr $3900 . 4619 jmp $0400

Saving the code is a challenge, but possible with use of an Action Replay / Retro Replay cartridge + MC/Monitor.

First save data from $0800-$fffa using

S "main2",8,0800,fffa

Then transfer the data from $0400 - $0800 to $4000 using

T 0400 0800 4000

and save

S "main1",8,4000,4400

then extract both files into Exomizer and enter:

exomizer sfx $4614 main1.prg,$0400 main2.prg,$0800 -o savename.prg -n

The result's here:

http://tnd64.unikat.sk/temp/chance.zip
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The New Dimension

I love C64 tape loaders and try to come up with new fun things using them.

Thanks guys for all your suggestions.

And many thanks to you Richard for achieving my long awaited holy grail of music in 3DCK games! You have even selected a very appropriate atmospheric piece of music. Did you create this music? I should check with you that it's ok to use this music for 3DCK games.
The music has no visible impact on the frame rate, which is so cool.

Thanks for posting the instructions. The CMP instruction for controlling the speed of the music is genius as I can also apply the music to the Xtreme version which I made for 2000% CPU emulation (or SuperCPU).

Now that you have done all the hard work once, I performed a quick bodge job to get the same music working with The Time Crystal. My bodge job technique involved loading TTC and running the following Action Replay Monitor commands to save the game data an the border data:

S"DATA",8,4A00,6000
S"BORD",8,E000,FFFF

I then loaded up the musical ACIH that you created, and ran the following Action Replay Monitor commands to load up the TTC data:

L “DATA”,8,4A00
L “BORD”,8,E000

I then used the AR BACKUP to save the lot to disk, and that gave a working version of The Time Crystal with music
My bodge job isn't quite up to the standards of Richard's work: The bitmap copy didn't capture the colour attributes of the screen, so the colours a bit messed up, and the music begins mid way through, plus you have to type run to start.

One other thing that I will begin investigating is the amount of zero page memory that is not used - it already looks to be al least 120 bytes.
Then I'll see if I can find the most iterated sequence of code, which if I ported to zero page, should hopefully give a small performance improvement...

If you use ICU64 you can quickly see what parts of the ZP are used.

http://icu64.blogspot.com/

The program is buggy as hell, but very useful. Read last comment of latest blog post if you use 64bit windows.
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