I finally chalked up a good 3d rendering system, at least in its infantacy.

With a draw distance of 6400 I manged a solid 42 fps for viewing an entire map I put together in my map maker for 'The Crawl'. I had a rather silly system in place before, but junked it and decided it best to make it through predefined models in chunks based on texture types. Currently my test only had 3 textures so I haven't fully stressed it, but the solid frame rate is in a good way, espicially since I was using a lesser system then my home computer.

It works by reading a map file that my editor creates and converts it into chunks of models, and with the extended 3d perspective camera it clips properly too. A few details need to be worked out, like replacing the use of predefined models into actual triangle meshes to have more control over the normals.

I'm sure this is boring to anyone who doesn't understand, so I toss in a cheesy snapshot of the sample level.

http://64digits.com/users/Scott_AW/maptestA.jpg

I know its not much, but I'll have to find time to make a fully detailed one to see how much the engine can handle. Resolution doesn't seem to matter too much, but in this case it was only 640x480. The game itself will be designed to run in 800x600 as it developes further.

Comparing it to my previous attempt at a 3d engine its a big step. Only two objects are used and the room's size has no connection to anything other than the screen size itself. One object is the camera and the other handles all drawing, lights, objects, ect. there for eliminating the horrible slow down in COW rpg caused by way too many objects in a room, and limiting the total rooms in the game to no more then 2. One for 2d title/menu/character creation and the other for the 3d world.