Hovertank 3D
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Hovertank 3D is a computer game from id Software published by Softdisk in April 1991 that sometimes is claimed to be the first first-person shooter or even the first 3D game for DOS (inaccurately - it was beaten by several years by Elite amongst others, which reached DOS in 1987). The game used the same combination of scaled sprites and drawn walls that would later show up in Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D, but the walls in Hovertank 3D was in solid colour, without any textures.
The unprecedented significance of the graphics engine in Hovertank was a breakthrough in that it was the first program to only render what the player could actually see in his field of vision rather than everything around him or everything in front of him. Instead of wasting processor power on unnecessary rendering, the computer could instead draw much higher resolution and detailed graphics, immersing the player into the game even further.
The credits are John Carmack and John Romero (programming), Tom Hall (game design) and Adrian Carmack (artwork).
External link
- id's look back at Hovertank 3D: http://www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage/hovertank/de:Hovertank 3D