Nearly a decade later...

Yes, we are going back in time.

This post is about two great 3D game projects that I did way back. When I say way back, I mean wayyy back. To be precise, 2012. The projects were called "Command Attack 3" (2012) and "Test Arena" (2017). The source code for these have been long lost and archived somewhere in a dusty old desktop. But the good news is: I somehow managed to recover the files, compile the code and got them up and running. I will guide take you through a journey of how I made these games, the motivation for it and at the end of the day we'll somehow get it to run in your device as well.

Chapter 0: TrueVision3D and Delicate DirectX 8

You might be wondering what the heck is TrueVision3D? Let me tell you, that's what I was thinking at first when I came across it too. Since I was fluent in Visual Basic 6.0 at the time, I was searching the internet for ways to build a 3D game using it. In the process, I found one of the projects hosted on this website called yazanmarkabi.webs.com. It was started by two brothers, the "Markabi" brothers; Zaid and Yazan. What these guys did was, they used VB6 with these old libraries, TrueVision3D and DirectX8. Pretty dated, if you ask me. But the thing is, it got the job done. At a very basic level. Given the desktop I had at the time, this was the only "game engine" (if you could ever call it one, it's merely some little library that started off as a side-project in 1999) that could run in my system.

Just four library files that does all the magic

Nevertheless lets start by installing an old library in your system. Download this file from Mega. Extract it. Here's the important bit: run SETUP.bat as an admin. Hopefully things will workout fine. If you are of unsure what this bat file does to your system, feel free to view it through notepad to see what it does. In a gist, it copies all these files into your system directory and registers them as valid libraries.

Some interesting links:
My profile on Yazan's site as of 2010

One of my testimonials as a kid < My profile name is 'Android'

Chapter 1: Command Attack 3

The ultimate project of them all.

Command Attack 3 changed my entire approach into programming, which made me realize the passion for it. The Command Attack series was on a slow phase of development where I would take my sweet time to add/remove things, but honestly, it got nowhere. 

The original Command Attack game was a 2D click-shooter. This was actually my first game and possibly one my very first Visual Basic projects. It had its own sounds, a small story line, and hand-drawn graphics from MS Paint. It's laughable, but was quite an achievement at the time being a 11 year old kid who just learned programming entirely on his own. Sadly, I couldn't find the project files anywhere for this masterpiece. So it is basically long forgotten but in the memories of me and my friends who played it. 

Now Command Attack 2 was a project that I was developing based on the first one but for some reason it never took off. So I left it at that.

The real deal came in when our school was going to have a big exhibition and our ICT society called in for projects to showcase there. I was excited. I started designing the next installment of CA for this exhibition. For this I had a deadline of 2 weeks. You have to keep in mind that upto this point all my games have been 2D, click-to-play sort of a thing. Going 3D and making a project in 2 weeks is an absolutely crazy idea. Even so, 2 weeks and many sleepless nights of coding (I am still a kid by the way) later, I completed Command Attack 3 with 2 levels. Seems like the bare minimum but hear me out. It had cool splash screens, menus, credits, opening and closing cutscenes.

How about we stop talking about it for now and experience the game with your own eyes? 

Download the game from Mega. 

Extract it. 

Now there are a few steps you need to follow in order to get it to run. 

First thing is you should have installed TrueVision3D from Chapter 0 of this article. 

Once you got that sorted out, open the folder of the game and run FileWriter.exe. 

This small setup application will ensure that the program is properly aware of the location that it was extracted to. 

After that is done simply run CA3.exe. 

Come back to this article after playing and enjoying it.

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Welcome back!, I hope you had fun playing my little game. Let's talk about something interesting.

In the game, you would have quite certainly observed one key thing; CA3 runs way too fast! 

This is because I designed this on a really slow computer, and as a beginner I did not take into account how the framerate could differ on different devices. So I have designed it to look best on 30-60 fps. Wish I had known that I need to look into that aspect too. Then we would have been able to experience this properly. However I was thinking of fixing these issues before publishing it, but then I thought this is the original game in all its glory, why change it? (Although, I might re-release an improved version some time later, if I have the time). 

Trust me on this though, it looked pretty awesome on my old desktop.

Chapter 2: Test Arena

The next best project from my VB6+DX8+TV3D era of programming.

Test Arena was an experimental project, in an attempt to see the boundaries of Visual Basic 6.0 game programming. This was started after my advanced level examinations, and overall took about a whole week of full-time work to complete as I can remember. Initial goal of doing this was to improve the game mechanics that was made for Command Attack 3, hence the name "Test Arena"-because it was meant to be a testing arena where I try to build something from scratch. 

But what happened was as the mechanics started getting good, I realized that this could be turned into a spin-off of its own. So I created a story around it, grabbed some assets from games like "Counter Strike" and "Quake" and made it a stand-alone game. You could say it's an 80% finished game because there were plans to add muzzle-flash, fonts and some other cool effects. But I didn't have the time because I started an internship shortly after. So here it is, the download link.

Extract it as usual.

Run the game through "Launcher.exe".

Now, enjoy shooting down zombies! (Originally was supposed to be zombies, so these creatures are internally referred to as zombies, but hey this is test arena so consider the naming scheme as a glitch, mocking its own existence.)

Below is a demo of the game played in n00b difficulty.

The Ending: Where are we going with this?

The idea was always to create something that was different from whatever that existed at the time. The motivation was to be unique and that is what primarily fueled the desire for these projects. With what was available at the time, I think I achieved it upto a good extent. Meaning that, despite the problems with lack of proper knowledge, hardware, or software, I managed to piece together something incredible at the end of the day. That in my book, was something extraordinary. Looking back, maybe this was the hope that I needed to see whether I am capable of something greater than myself. 

Nevertheless the real question is not the past, but the present.

Will I be working on a project that would introduce a unique/fresh background? Or am I already working on something of that sort? That, only time will tell. Until then, be on the lookout.