The origin story for one of the most iconic PC screensavers.
  • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgEnglish
    20·
    5 months ago

    Why does the title focus on 3D pipes specifically?

    The developer kicked off a screen saver contest among the Windows OpenGL team, with 3D Pipes being one of the entries alongside 3D Maze, 3D Text, and 3D Flying Objects. The team was supposed to vote for a single winner to be included with Windows NT 3.5, but when a person on Microsoft’s marketing team saw them, he said, “You can call off the vote. We’re adding all of them to the product!”

    I feel like I hear about 3D Maze way more when people are reminiscing about old screensavers. Just sorta weird titling

    • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
      8·
      5 months ago

      The Maze was based on previous work by id Software and others. IIRC, it was kinda janky when held up against Doom or even Wolfenstien or Heritic/Hexen. Hell, Descent was out by then as well.

      Pipes? Pipes was something else. None of those games I mentioned bothered to make something look round in any believable capacity. Pipes did that, seemingly with shading 🫨

  • Doombot1@lemmy.one
    6·
    5 months ago

    I’ve got 3D pipes running on my spare Win10 machine :) fills me with nostalgia every time I see it, even still