Matthew Hopwood of AGB Games, took some time out from the continued development of their hand-held gaming technologies, to answer a few questions related to their most interesting creation, the WFR engine. The engine’s already brought true-3D (polygonal) environments to life on the Game Boy Advance; and now their showing us how Quake might look on a hand-held! It really is quite impressive...

Firstly, how many polygons can the engine push on the GBA, and how closely can it replicate the visuals of the original?

Mat: Bantering around polygon figures don't actually mean much from a GBA developers point of view because we could easily push 100,000+ polygons a second, but they would only be only a few pixels in size each. Realistically in terms of useful game polygons that are texture mapped we can probably push around 10,000 per second, this figure does drop slightly when real-time smooth shading and perspective correction are added, to more like 7,000 per second. We also allow the tiling and transparent textures. We don't mind losing a few thousands polygons per second for the sake of added environment complexity / variation and special effects that can be created using this type of polygon renderer.

How well-suited is the GBA to true-3D visuals, and what compromises / opportunities has this resulted in the development of the WFR engine?

Mat: The GBA is at heart a 2D machine, but fortunately Nintendo added a half-decent CPU and 256 and 32,768 colour display modes, which are all you need really to create 3D games. Any type of 3D on such a limited device is going to be difficult, its just a case of making the best of every single polygon that you have.

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  1. SPiTT Unregistered 6 years ago

    IF QUAKE WOULD BE ON THE GBA! I would Acually consider Buying A GBA. Now Why did them waste time making Wolf3d, when they could have put that great time and money into a GOD of all games. Although the controlls would kinda disorianting, LR straf? a shoot, b jump? No looking up and down.

  2. incendomaster Unregistered 6 years ago

    as the GBA uses cartridges, you could add extra hardware to the cartridge (simple 3d cards), the same way as in many snes games (think of doom)<br>That way, making 3d games for the gba, could be easier than only using software<br>by the way, this way it also looks quite cool.<br>

  3. robot_geezer Unregistered 6 years ago

    OK... We all new this was coming... We all new that the GBA was capable... But WOW! All I can say now is GIMME GIMME GIMME! I hope there isn't a long wait for a good 3D game. I just hope that this tech is used not only for FPS games, but for others too... how about Frontier: Elite 2?! (It worked on an Atari ST, so I'm SURE it could work on the GBA!)

  4. Valtteri Unregistered 5 years ago

    Hard to believe. but then I see it in stores, I believe....maybe;)

  5. Valtteri Unregistered 5 years ago

    That´s amazing! Can the be multi-player mode via linkcable (2-4) for example?

  6. bozo Unregistered 5 years ago

    screen too small for first person games