Xref: utzoo comp.graphics:5548 rec.games.programmer:857
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rocksanne!bozo!kirby
From: kirby@bozo.wbst128.xerox.com (Mike Kirby (co-op))
Newsgroups: comp.graphics,rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: 2D Maze in 3D
Message-ID: <747@rocksanne.UUCP>
Date: 5 May 89 16:46:18 GMT
References: <21795@santra.UUCP>
Sender: news@rocksanne.UUCP
Reply-To: kirby@bozo.UUCP (Mike Kirby (co-op))
Organization: WRC, XEROX
Lines: 31

>I'd like to write a game where the player can wander in a maze and
>see the movement in 3D perspective. The player has to be able to
>rotate around the vertical axis and it should be possible to move
>the viewpoint to any point in the maze. The maze does not change, but
>it might contain moving objects. All the maze walls are at 90 degree
>angles.

>I've thought of some algorithms, but someone must have come up with
>an absolutely amazing solution... I need a really fast algorithm.

In most of these "dungeon" type games, the maze is divided into
squares, where each square is represented by a move.  What you
could do, is create a database of "sqaures" each representing a possible
"room", and then move about, displaying these predefined rooms.  In order
to get things like perspective, you might want to look into various 
methods for doing perspective transformations.  One good article that
I would recommend would be "Nested Transformations and the Blobby Man",
by Jim Blinn. (IEEE CG & A, october 87).  He talks about basic methods for
doing 3-d perspective transformations.

The animation is a little tougher.  What kind of system are you planning on
writing this on?  Will you have some hardware, or software support from
whatever langauge you are using? (ie. core, etc?).  Many graphics
libraries contain animation primatives all built into them.  If you 
have to write all this from scratch, then I suggest you look at some
of the more basic texts for computer graphics.

Michael Kirby
mpk9172@ritvax.bitnet           (works...)
mpk9172%ritcv@cs.rit.edu        (sometimes...With a good tailwind)
rochester!rocksanne!spot!kirby  (I haven't decided if this works or not...)