Contact

[tomysshadow]

Where can I contact you? (kluete) I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place, but your website doesn't provide anything such as Facebook where I could contact you.

[kluete]

Hi T,

you can contact me right here via email.

Cheers,

-- p

Where can I contact you? (kluete) I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place, but your website doesn't provide anything such as Facebook where I could contact you.

[tomysshadow]

Hi kluete,

Okay, I didn't want to hijack this repo with my message, but since you would prefer that I contact you here, I will send it to you.

In an effort to archive internet history and allow people to play games from their childhood, I recently have been trying to collect and restore old 3D Groove games, which it is my understanding you were involved with. Many of these games have become lost, as the websites that hosted them have since removed them. There is even an LMW article about the topic, where some of the found games are also available: http://lostmediawiki.com/3D_Groove_Games_%28partially_found_online_games;_1998-2009%29

While many 3D Groove games have been found, either thanks to the Wayback Machine or via other means, it is notable that Toonami: Trapped in Hyperspace and Jimmy Neutron: Gotta Blast! Rocket Race are lost and a lot of people seem to remember playing them and want to be able to again.

Jules Urbach responded on Twitter saying he would be willing to give these out, but seemed to be unable to find them himself, saying that they may still exist in an archive somewhere. I was hoping that maybe there is a slim chance you still have access to these lost 3D Groove games.

Again, I apologize if this is in the wrong place, and thank you very much for your time.

[kluete]

Hi again,

posting in my LuaDebianInstaller thread is fine.

I'm sorry to say I no longer have any Groove games; I used to work on the 3D engine only and end-user projects/games were more Jules' area. Also I only use Windows sporadically, the rest of the time I'm on Linux, so wouldn't have any way to run a native Xtra.

Feel free to get in touch again if I can be of assistance.

Good luck & Cheers,

-- Peter

Hi kluete,

Okay, I didn't want to hijack this repo with my message, but since you would prefer that I contact you here, I will send it to you.

In an effort to archive internet history and allow people to play games from their childhood, I recently have been trying to collect and restore old 3D Groove games, which it is my understanding you were involved with. Many of these games have become lost, as the websites that hosted them have since removed them. There is even an LMW article about the topic, where some of the found games are also available: http://lostmediawiki.com/3D_Groove_Games_%28partially_found_online_games;_1998-2009%29

While many 3D Groove games have been found, either thanks to the Wayback Machine or via other means, it is notable that Toonami: Trapped in Hyperspace and Jimmy Neutron: Gotta Blast! Rocket Race are lost and a lot of people seem to remember playing them and want to be able to again.

Jules Urbach responded on Twitter saying he would be willing to give these out, but seemed to be unable to find them himself, saying that they may still exist in an archive somewhere. I was hoping that maybe there is a slim chance you still have access to these lost 3D Groove games.

Again, I apologize if this is in the wrong place, and thank you very much for your time.

[Bizarrus]

Hello!

I'm also looking for your contact - it's hard to find anything here.

I'm currently looking into old game engines and would like to find out more about 3DGM. Are there any resources on this?

For a research on earlier game engines, I would like to analyze the methods of that time and maybe even create examples to publish a scientific content on Wikipedia. The reason for this is that there is still hardly any information about information that has already been lost. I would like to offer an opportunity to provide information for posterity.

Best regards,

Adrian

[tomysshadow]

In the time since I wrote my original post I've been able to get my hands on the SDK, unfortunately I am not allowed to share it. I think I am safe to share a couple screenshots though.

The SDK comes with an application called 3DGM Factory which allows converting 3D models from various formats (in screenshot below) to 3DGM (short for 3D Game Machine, which is the C++ framework 3D Groove was built on.)

The only format that it can export is to 3DGM. 3DGM Model Files have a 3GM file extension (offzip incorrectly guesses the type as "3DG" but this is only the result of guessing the extension based on the FourCC at the start, real files would've never had this extension.) 3DGM Model Files have support for polygons with more than three vertices, such as quads, pentagons, and so on. They also support basic Position/Scale/Rotation animation.

Below is one of the models included with 3DGM Factory as a sample. I don't know which game it's from, if any.

Aside from 3DGM Factory and a few Word documents constituting documentation on the scripting language, GrooveScript, the SDK feels pretty barebones. It includes a few small helpful things like a template HTML document to use for embeds, the Distributable EXE Player, and an OGG Vorbis encoder (3D Groove supported Vorbis for audio, though its proprietary Groove Media Audio format was often used instead.)

The IDE itself isn't much different from stock 3D Groove aside from the addition of a console. It's no Director, that's for sure. You're expected to use the scripting language to get stuff done instead of a Director-like GUI.

You can find the Groove Authoring Xtra for Groove SX linked in the folder at the LMW article above - this is fine to share, because it was accidentally included in the download version of the game SkyRacer: Impulse, which is how I got it. You can load it into Director, though it'll softlock if your computer's clock is set to a date after 2003 (the Playback Xtra also has a date after which it'll no longer work, but it's in 2300, so not a concern for some time.) As with any Xtra, you can run put(interface(xtra("Groove"))) in the Message Window and it'll output a list of handlers. It's not really a substitute for the documentation but you can gain some interesting insights into the inner workings.

[Bizarrus]

According to my research, 3DGM was used for the game Clusterball, developed and published by Daydream Software in 2000/2001. Clusterball is also available up today, distributed by an german company. As far as I know, this company only owns the distribution rights and does not own any (re-)sources from 3DGM. It only distributes the end product "Clusterball".

I would generally be interested in the structure of the engine, especially the techniques used.

[tomysshadow]

Have you taken a look at the PC game Real Pool? It includes (what I assume to be) an early version of the Xtra called Acme3D, with one large difference being that the model format is text based (in similar fashion to Wavefront OBJ.) But it's still clear when comparing with the binary model format used in later games that it represents the same data but in text form. It's pretty interesting. At least if you're the kind of weirdo I am that finds that kind of thing interesting

[Bizarrus]

It would be helpful if you used references. "Real Pool" is a common name for hundreds of pool games.

[tomysshadow]

The one published by WizardWorks in 1995 for the Mac and 1997 for Windows, created by Pepe Moreno. The PlayStation game is an entirely different game that doesn't use 3DGM.