History of first-person RPGs? How does King's Field fit in?

[Bad Sector]

There were earlier free roaming first person games, e.g. The Colony from 1987:



...but TBH i'm not sure how influential some obscure Mac game (or Japanese games, for that matter) would have been :-P.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Also the Freescape games from the 8bit era.

Driller (1987)

 

[JarlFrank]

The Freescape engine is particularly fascinating because it did a thing most 3D engines of the 90s didn't manage to do, and which didn't become mainstream until Quake: having fully 3D, walkable and interactable spaces above and below each other. True three-dimensional verticality. Something neither the Doom engine nor the Build engine, the most prolific FPS engines of the early to mid 90s, managed to do.

Sure, those games had awkward controls and weren't half as smooth as those later FPS games without full 3D verticality, but the sheer feat of engineering that was full 3D in the late 80s is fascinating as fuck.

 

[Bad Sector]

The Freescape engine is particularly fascinating because it did a thing most 3D engines of the 90s didn't manage to do, and which didn't become mainstream until Quake: having fully 3D, walkable and interactable spaces above and below each other. True three-dimensional verticality. Something neither the Doom engine nor the Build engine, the most prolific FPS engines of the early to mid 90s, managed to do.

Sure, those games had awkward controls and weren't half as smooth as those later FPS games without full 3D verticality, but the sheer feat of engineering that was full 3D in the late 80s is fascinating as fuck.

Keep in mind that the smoothness of Wolf3D, Doom, etc was the important part of their engine - the knowledge and techniques for polygonal worlds were already old news in computer graphics even in the 80s (in fact even up to early 2000s, most algorithms found even in AAA games were already known back in the 80s and early 90s, it wasn't until the proliferation of fast programmable GPUs that helped a lot of game graphics programmers to come up with new algorithms). But when Wolf3D/Doom/etc came out, for the gameplay they wanted, the computers were simply not powerful enough to do that (at least not with texture mapped polygons).

This is why Freescape games, even in their fastest iterations, are mainly about exploration and light puzzle solving. It isn't like people didn't want to make a fast paced 3D action game (wireframe shooters like Atari's Star Wars Arcade game from 1983 shows otherwise), it is that the technology for doing that wasn't there yet.

FWIW there were several full polygonal 3D engines in the 90s, like e.g. the engine used in Alpha Waves from 1990:



There was also another engine that was distributed for free via BBSs/Internet around 1992-1993 that was able to do flat colored polygonal worlds and had a rudimentary editor (essentially it was something like 3D Construction Kit, but for DOS+VGA). Though sadly i cannot find it because it had some very generic name, like VGA3D or something like that.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Speaking of polygonal 3D stuff, same coder who programmed Star Cruiser did this in 1983:

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Speaking of which, this on a ZX Spectrum...

Starstrike 2 (1986)

 

[kaisergeddon]

As someone who grew up with Kings Field, Shadow Tower, Ultima Underworld, and loved Arx Fatalis and System Shock, this thread interests me. Good posts all around. I'm really looking forward to Monomyth, btw!

 

[Van-d-all]

I have a real question I don't have the answer to: Why don't we have more FPS-RPG even though there is an RPG mode and the FPS is pretty mainstream.

Beside you forget : grimoire, The outer world, Vermintide.

Industry wise, RPGs are perceived as audience limiting complexity that's why AAA are only willing to add some progression based elements like skill trees and unlockables (eg. Far Cry) while sales oriented developers like Bethesda drop RPG elements on behalf of pure FPS gameplay.

Speaking of which, this on a ZX Spectrum

Both Spectrum and C64 had their share of 3d games like Carrier Command or Gunship.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

You have mixed views like Ultima 1-5, Questron 1-2, Realms of Darkness, legacy of the ancients, legend of blacksilver, etc. (almost looks line i'm and ssi slut).

So many games i never heard about particularly Kings field, ancients, shadow tower.

Interesting... i could've gotten into this.






No wonder i never heard if them. I didnt have the hardware.
Release timeline
1994 King's Field
1995 King's Field II
1996 King's Field III
1997
1998
1999
2000 Sword of Moonlight: King's Field Making Tool
2001 King's Field IV
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006 King's Field: Additional I
King's Field: Additional II