Genesis3D

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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
• FDNY Firefighter: American Hero developed by Ratloop
• Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair 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

• Official Website
• Reality Factory - Gameshell for Genesis3D
• Tutorials for Genesis3d and Reality Factory

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