Goa3D Graphics Library

Warp3D was an accelerated 3D library for AmigaOS. It is emulated on the top of MorphOS' own 3D API.
Goa's main features:

• Convert all vertex data formats used by Warp3D.
• Handle misaligned data sent by buggy applications, without relying on the builtin kernel emulation.
• Support for many Warp3D API misusages. Most would only work with a specific graphic chip.
• Support for Warp3D internal structure hacking. This is a requirement because even the Warp3D SDK examples show such behaviour.
• Very accurate emulation. All known Warp3D applications run.
• Extremely fast. On the same hardware, Goa is always faster than the original Warp3D.

Why Goa?

In 1999 or 2000, I bought the Wipeout2097 game for my Amiga computer. It required the Warp3D libraries.
The original Warp3D system had serious issues and was limited to the Virge, the 3DLabs Permedia2 and the 3dfx Voodoo3 chipsets. In the meantime, MorphOS was about to run on ATI Radeon hardware...

The Warp3D authors also stated on a mailing list they would not port it to MorphOS. Some short extracts from the 3D World ML, archives availables on Aminet:

• Thomas Frieden: "You don't have a clue how much effort is needed, as you keep on insisting that you are no programmer. No, we do not make a Warp3D version for MorphOS, is that so hard to get ? Can you for one time listen to what I say ? I don't develop on MorphOS, for reasons that I'm not going to share with you."
• Hans-Joerg Frieden: "It might be possible to port it over if certain things are provided by the OS... Speaking for myself, I don't have any intentions to do this, though..."

In 2001, I decided I would reimplement Warp3D from scratch. I was quickly helped by my friend Mark Olsen who also wrote most of MorphOS 3D drivers. Important parts of the emulation layer were written on my machine and tested on his because it was running the first usable driver (for the lame SiS 6326 chipset).

Today, Wipeout2097 is faster on Goa than on the original Warp3D. This is true, even on a slow system like the BlizzardPPC. The extra processing work performed by the emulation layer was supposed to be a performance killer on such machine, but this is not the case.
I suppose we did a good job :-)

Many people helped this project, be it directly or indirectly.

Goa is now part of MorphOS and was released in august 2003 with MorphOS1.4 and its 3D drivers.
It's available for legacy reason. New software development should better use MorphOS OpenGL compatible library: tinygl.library

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