GM doesn't really have any "convenience" 3D functions, though given access to shaders + vertex buffers and an (almost) raw Direct 3D 9 pipeline, you can technically achieve a lot! Theoretically, if you had the assets, you could make a game as good as one in Unity, though it would require quite a bit more work as you would have to implement both physics and a rendering pipeline by yourself.
! I did it because I find it fun to work on things, though the lack of any real assets to use does annoy me :S! I reckon, you could make something more graphically impressive than Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, if you had access to the assets !
Is that true AO or some "shortcut"?
It's SSAO (Screen-space Ambient occlusion) which I guess by definition is a "cheat", though it works arbitrarily on any object, and so long as you have a depth, normal and diffuse buffer, you can use it. (For this reason, it also works on dynamic objects).
(Though Baked AO can look pretty sick!)GM doesn't really have any "convenience" 3D functions, though given access to shaders + vertex buffers and an (almost) raw Direct 3D 9 pipeline, you can technically achieve a lot! Theoretically, if you had the assets, you could make a game as good as one in Unity, though it would require quite a bit more work as you would have to implement both physics and a rendering pipeline by yourself.
I took interest in this a few months ago and me, Orange451 and Jared produced a collection of 3D mini projects in GM:
(Credits to Xygthop for the normal mapping + cube maps)
I'm not going to lie, it's difficult and time consuming
Some other guy made this using my first shadow shader (which wasn't a great shader):
A number of other users have also made a bunch of really cool 3D stuff! You should check out Xygthop3, Xor, theSnidr, GMEngineer, Lonewollf, Blue Burn (to name a few).
Z-fighting is a product of how 3D rendering is done when two triangles occupy the same space, or are in very close proximity of each other. GM uses DX9, just like many other games & engines. You just have to be smart about your depth range of your camera as that ultimately equates to how precise the depth buffer is. Bear in mind, this is a HARDWARE depth buffer, no engine can decide what it's precision is unless it implements a custom system. (This is no longer true for DX10 +, but i'm talking about game engines that at some point used DirectX 9).
