The ancient origins

Users sometimes ask how much time I have spent in the development of the APOCALYX 3D engine, but I don't know which is the correct answer. In fact, I have developed most of the engine in intensive short periods, then for long weeks or months I couldn't write a line. They also ask about the name: where does that "APOCALYX" come from? The current logo has nothing to do with the origin of the name. It is a recent acquisition, suggested by a reader of the blog, so it appeared long after the name.

To answer, I must tell when precisely the engine began its first steps. In the far 2000, after a few years of experience in Java programming and the initial success of my online game JROBOTS, I planned to create a similar game implemented in a shiny 3D graphics, that became in 2002 the first GUN-TACTYX. My early attempts were DirectX based (at the time still version 6 and then 7), but I wasn't very satisfied because I ignored the basic techniques on which 3D engine were based.

In 2001, the owner of the famous NeHe site (who has published for years tutorials about OpenGL programming) organized a mythic contest known as the 2001 NeHe Apocalypse Contest. Among the entries there was one of an italian programmer, good enough to win the third prize of the contest. The author included in his demo the complete sources, based on OpenGL and written for my beloved Borland compiler. That sources were a revelation and the author kindly gave his permission to use them in my first demos and, as time passed, a more complete and powerful engine has grown up. Some lines of the original code are still there at the base of a more complex structure, now completely based on Lua scripts.

In conclusion, I must thank Matteo "Fuzz" Perenzoni and his "Apocalypse demo" written for the "NeHe's Apocalypse Contest", that's where the engine and the APOCALYX name, modified in the final characters to become unique in Google searches, come from.