3D Games For The Arduino With Raycasting

For all the Arduino-based video game builds we’ve seen, we’re really only left with a bunch of 2D platformers and other sprite-based games. [Reimecker] wasn’t satisfied with this level of computational complexity, so he ported the 3D game engine made famous by Duke Nukem 3D to the Arduino (German, Google translation).

[Reimecker]’s project is based on the very popular Build Engine written by [Ken Silverman] and used in games such as Duke Nukem 3D,  Shadow Warrior,  Blood, and TekWar. The Build Engine can be used to make a first person shooter, but more on the level of Wolfenstein 3D instead of Half-Life.

The hardware [Reimecker] used is a regular ‘ol 8-bit Arduino with an attached LCD touch screen displaying 320×240 pixels of a ray cast environment. From the videos of the build (available after the break), [Reimecker] has a fairly decent game engine capable of displaying a 2.5D environment. The frame rate might not be very high, but it’s still an amazing build considering the hardware [Reimecker] is working with.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxW5ZtcXx0E&w=470]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJi85lr5Ofo&w=470]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M32PF1IVQg&w=470]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE8F2E5CnCI&w=470]

18 thoughts on “3D Games For The Arduino With Raycasting

  1. I’m surprised he went with Arduino for this…not that I have anything against it. Just that for a project like this, something like the MSP430 seems like a more natural choice (faster clock, 16 bit CPU).

    Kudos on a really neat project though.

  2. That is one slow raycaster.

    PS Raycasters aren’t really “3D” engines, in that they don’t allow 3D movement, and can therefore cheat on a lot of the math. Depending on whether you allow variable-height walls, you can cheat on even more (wolfenstein vs. Doom)

  3. I Found a RAM extansion for the Arduino with 1 MB of Workram directly addressable.But my problem at the time is i can’t wrote a hole Buffer to the Display because it has a bad controller.Have everyone a got alternate for a display in full color with this resolution but connected 8 Bit direct ?? Sorry Guy for my Bad english i hop everyone understand this here :-) Thanks before !!

  4. Oh come on, the reference to the Build-Engine is pretty unessecary. Raycasting has been done by many games, and Ken Silverman’s Build engine has alot of advance features compared to plain raycasting.

    Eventho it is nicely done, it makes little to no sense to compare it the Build engine.

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