i know its a little to early for that but let me dream! I made a simple concept image to show what i mean for a game like DM on Natami. 800x600 or 640x480 res 3D engine, 2D sprites for enemies and 16 audio. @Gunnar are 512x512 textures to big for natami?

EXTERNAL LINK

I would use 256x256 textures to be compatible with high end Amiga's using the Voodoo 3 which has a max texture size of 256x256. Either that or have 2 sets of textures like 256x256 and 1024x1024. That wouldn't be much more trouble if you were going to edit your own mipmaps to look better anyway. It would also be nice to make the resolution customizable. It should be possible for users with a 68040+ on a Cybervision64/3D to play such a game at lower resolution. I would use Warp3D to start developing now. The Natami should get a W3D driver or compatible replacement for their 3D engine. I would skip the 2D sprites for the enemy as they are too limiting and might not work well on true color images. It's more work for no gain. Just render to the bitmap and use double or triple buffering. I bet that's what DM did anyway. W3D has support for everything 3D you should need. The newest developer SDK is on Aminet. If you don't have a 3D gfx board, then you can develop using Wazp3D (also on Aminet) but would probably need UAE or a 68060 for speed. If you have any questions or problems using W3D then ask on EXTERNAL LINK where there is a group (including me) that is trying to further develop 3D on the Amiga. Your concept picture looks good. I always wondered why someone didn't do a DM clone in 3D as it's really easy to do even today on the Amiga.

 
Its a matter of taste obviously.
But I would like to make use of the amout of GFX memory and of its super speed.

If you write a game that has to run also on Voodoo then you stuck with 16 MB and a memory bus to it - 100 times slower than the NATAMI.
This means 90% of the effects that the ANTAMI could do could not be implemented in such a game.

The gfx bus speed isn't that much of a factor. The textures can be uploaded to the card before a level starts and have little impact on the game speed. The one exception is if there is not enough gfx memory and the textures have to be swapped during game play. The total gfx memory is limiting in this respect. This doesn't seem to happen in glQuake with Voodoo 3 though. It could make the CyberVision 64/3D with only 4M of gfx memory unplayable on a similar game.

This means 90% of the effects that the NATAMI could do could not be implemented in such a game.

I was saying to make the game scale up or down depending on the performance of the machine. The low end Amiga's would of course not be able to do all the effects or very high resolution. It's not that much harder to make a fps engine scale. Quake does this just fine for example. The game play doesn't deteriorate that much at lower resolutions with some of the effects turned off. Game play is much more important on a role playing game anyway. The big question is whether maximizing the hardware usage is more important or having a much bigger audience is more important.

Ultimately, we've all seen what a 16MB VooDoo can do, and it's not very impressive by today's standards.  The 3D Core should be comparable to the Dreamcast or PS2 (I hear) but I think it's true strength (by having CPU and 3D Core that share memory)) will be that it permits the kind of trickery that software only 3D engines use to great effect in the most modern demos, but with the higher quality models and textures of 3D accelerated engines.

Damn Freudian slips slipping in...  I meant I wished that more games companies had required and fully used expanded Amigas, that they wouldn't have wasted it lazily.  But I can imagine a company coming along, deciding they needed an '040 with 16MB of RAM and a gfx card and then serving up a sloppy port of a DOS game. 

And the Amiga 1000 owners would all have looked at it and said, I've seen better games run in 256k and we'd be back where we started...

Not a problem for Voodoo cards. Voodoo 3 already has linear, mipmapping and linear mipmapping blur. The Voodoo 4/5 add motion blur and depth of field (focal) blur. Most do not require much gfx bus use. Text, score or HUD are also no problem. FressSpace has a hud and text that is quickly toggled on and off. glQuake has no problem putting text on the screen.

Ultimately, we've all seen what a 16MB VooDoo can do, and it's not very impressive by today's standards.  The 3D Core should be comparable to the Dreamcast or PS2 (I hear) but I think it's true strength (by having CPU and 3D Core that share memory)) will be that it permits the kind of trickery that software only 3D engines use to great effect in the most modern demos, but with the higher quality models and textures of 3D accelerated engines.

You are correct that the Voodoo 3-5 are not so impressive compared to todays standard. They are not that far from the 3D capabilities of the Dreamcast or PS2 though. You have NOT seen what the Voodoo 3-5 is capable of on the Amiga. These cards work through a very slow gfx card bus. They have 68k software drivers that have horrible 68k optimization problems. I have a working version of the Warp3D.library that I have optimized from 67k to 46k and it's still NOT "highly optimized". Warp3D does not currently use any special features of the Voodoo 4 and 5 except another 16M of gfx memory. I will try to at least get the 2k x 2k max texture size going. In the end, I doubt the Natami will have a 3D engine that has as many features as the Voodoo 4-5. The Natami should have some advantages though. It will need some kind of API or banging the hardware will be the only way to go. An API like Warp3D is way easier to program, especially for someone that is not an expert with 3D and banging the hardware. The Voodoo 3-5 can be programmed by banging the card directly on the Amiga but how many people have done that?

The Dungeon Master from FTL(Faster Than Light) was my favorite game and I had finished it when I was 11 years old ! I was mad with it ...now I would like to have one new Dungeon Master with the Natami , perhaps 3D version (I don't  care much) but I wish to have  mystery , riddles ,tricks  like other games such the Moonstone , EOB , Cadaver , Hired Guns all these games and many more, were the ticket that travel us out of this World ...in a lovely place called AMiGA GAME AREA !!! :-)

Wasn't there another game in that vein called "Wytchcraft"?  Similar but with a very small first-person window.  Whatever it was I finally got into it and rather enjoyed it.

Not to drift too far but did anyone ever get to play "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin" for Mattel Electronics' Intellivision?  The first time I got deep enough into the mountain to open a door with a giant behind it I shrieked like a little girl.  Sure, it was just a big and blocky yellow man shape (you'd even think it was a touch on the minimal side if you saw it on a restroom door), but he was so freaskin' tall you couldn't see his head through the doorway!

J Grant wrote:

If memory serves me correctly, the game was called   Bloodwych!!

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I really like the idea of this game.
I loved Dungeon Master.

Why do you plan to use 2D sprites for the enemies?
Wouldn't using 3D Enemies look better and smoother animated?