(02-19-2026, 02:06 PM)bplus Wrote: Wow what an effort over 3K LOC and it looks all mostly applicable to the app at hand with AI doing allot of heavy lifting, I assume. NOT your usual eclectic collectables library of useful tools.
On the contrary, once I figure out how it's working and clean up the routines, it should provide a reusable set of functions for making 3d vector or isometric games & animation. That's the idea, anyway.
(02-19-2026, 02:06 PM)bplus Wrote: I liked the stereoscopic red/blue wireframe city in rotating view more than isometric thing even though it looked pretty advanced codewise the moving objects looked tiny and flat, and were they all letters?
Yeah, I just wanted to start with something super basic, like what if we try rotating the system font in 3 dimensions? It started out as a heads-up display for the 1st person wireframe demo. First there was a 2d radar scope showing your position and blips of other objects around you, but then I thought why not make the radar scope show an isometric view, so you can visualize the larger 3d space, just as a tool to help work out how the player is moving? So that's why the objects are letters - it was just a simple way to label objects to know what you're looking at, ie "A", "B", etc. And then I thought what if I spun that off into an isometric engine to give the option to view the game in 3rd person isometric perspective? I just got inspired to start making a little 3d artillery duel / airplane dogfight minigame. So that's where that came from.
I haven't tried drawing solid objects yet but if we can rotate flat 2d objects in 3 dimensions then we can put them together as "slices" of a solid object that rotates as a whole. You don't even have to rotate them in realtime if you render them ahead of time and just save a sprite sheet. Maybe they don't need full 360° of freedom - pointing in 16 directions could help cut down on the # of sprites to render & store.
Really though for now just playing with flat letters rotating and moving in 3d is just so much fun that I want to add 2 or more players and enable them to face off in combat!
(02-19-2026, 02:06 PM)bplus Wrote: Still you might be on the way to something HUGE with the isomorphic stuff.
For me just finally competing a simple game that is fun to play would be huge! :-)
(02-19-2026, 02:06 PM)bplus Wrote: The red/blue is kind of messed up colorwise to spend allot more time with it IMHO.
It looks a lot better in "monochrome" mode - ie just red & blue w/o trying to show full color. Did you try it with the red/blue glasses, in full screen mode on a big TV in a dark room?? It looks FANTASTIC!! I am totally stoked to make a game with it like Tempest or a simple space simulation. Many of those old vector games were black & white but they were still fun as hell. The 3d aspect of it just captures my imagination. Maybe I'll make a 3d pong or soccer type game (remember Ballblazer?) or a Lunar Lander. Now that I have some code to do 3d vector stuff and can point the camera, I can try the idea of having 3 or more displays to show the side views, rear view, maybe even a sunroof. That can come later if I care to - would need to play with QB64PE talking to a 2nd QB64PE program via local TCP/IP and running fullscreen in a 2nd display, etc.
For now I just want to make that artillery duel / dogfight game and have it let you change your view of the game between 1st person wireframe and isometric.
First thing to fix is the rotation is wonky in the wireframe. The right/left cursor keys rotate you fine but pressing up/down should move you forward/backward in the direction you're facing, but it seems to be moving you laterally. Apparently the yaw rotation is using degrees instead of radians or some such issue, so I need to work that out. The isometric movement works so I probably just need to copy that math to the wireframe version.
Gotta go, lunch is almost over. Stay tuned!