02-18-2026, 08:25 AM (This post was last modified: 02-18-2026, 08:27 AM by madscijr.)
Two demos - see attached source code.
#1 is old school 3-D like in the 1950s. Holy cow it works! You'll need the red/blue 3d glasses* - looks lame without them.
#2 is 1980s style isometric graphics, no glasses needed.
*Search Amazon or your favorite store for "3D Paper Glasses for Movies and TV - Blue and Red Anaglyph Cardboard Glasses for Films" - 5 pairs for $3.99!
(02-18-2026, 08:25 AM)madscijr Wrote: Two demos - see attached source code.
#1 is old school 3-D like in the 1950s. Holy cow it works! You'll need the red/blue 3d glasses* - looks lame without them.
#2 is 1980s style isometric graphics, no glasses needed.
*Search Amazon or your favorite store for "3D Paper Glasses for Movies and TV - Blue and Red Anaglyph Cardboard Glasses for Films" - 5 pairs for $3.99!
Waka waka!
Speaking of red/blue stage glasses (anaglyph) 3d-rotating sphere, try this out:
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.
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? Still you might be on the way to something HUGE with the isomorphic stuff. The red/blue is kind of messed up colorwise to spend allot more time with it IMHO.
02-19-2026, 05:19 PM (This post was last modified: 02-19-2026, 07:04 PM by madscijr.)
(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.
Excellent, I'll give it a look when I'm back at the 'puter - thanks!
I tried it, it's a good idea! I don't really understand the first one, unfortunately I couldn't try it, I don't have glasses, but the second one is fun!
(02-19-2026, 08:54 PM)MasterGy Wrote: I tried it, it's a good idea! I don't really understand the first one, unfortunately I couldn't try it, I don't have glasses,
I would strongly urge you all to just spend the $4 on Amazon and order the red/blue glasses, if only to try it, it's a very cool effect!
(02-19-2026, 08:54 PM)MasterGy Wrote: but the second one is fun!
Glad you enjoyed that, I'll try to add another player soon! :-)
Instead of red & blue, you can also try stereographic 3D: display the two viewpoints as separate images, side by side with left eye view on the right and vice versa. Then you go cross-eyed to look at it, and the 3D image pops out.
02-21-2026, 05:40 PM (This post was last modified: 02-21-2026, 05:41 PM by madscijr.)
I remember those! When you see it, it looks amazing. For my purpose though (a casual multiplayer game) the 3d should be easy for multiple people to see, and the stereograms take a little too much effort (for me at least).
I think an alternative could be shutter glasses, timed to what's shown on the display (like the Vectrex used), but it would be blinky and for >1 person to see it, you would need more glasses that can do that, which would work how? Either talking to the PC with bluetooth or wired - expensive & hard to design/build and uncomfortable.
Maybe if people made their own stereogram glasses using their smartphones, like the Google VR where you print out their template onto cardstock and fold it into a headset to hold your phone oragami style. But then you would need the PC to send the images to multiple people's phones, probably via bluetooth or wifi? That means not just handling that in the game but writing a display program for your phone, which isn't trivial if you're on iPhone.
I went with the red/blue glasses because they're cheap and easy!
But it shouldn't be hard to modify the code to do the stereogram, knock yourself out & let us know if it works!
