jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki) (05/05/89)
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. _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ | Juri Munkki jmunkki@hut.fi jmunkki@fingate.bitnet I Want Ne | | Helsinki University of Technology Computing Centre My Own XT | ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
kirby@bozo.wbst128.xerox.com (Mike Kirby (co-op)) (05/05/89)
>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...)
philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason) (05/06/89)
In article <21795@santra.UUCP> jmunkki@kampi.hut.fi (Juri Munkki) writes: >I'd like to write a game where the player can wander in a maze and >see the movement in 3D perspective. >I've thought of some algorithms, but someone must have come up with >an absolutely amazing solution... I need a really fast algorithm. I have a program written by Brad Myers (with Scott Brown) called "GetOut" that very effectively simulates a 3-D display of a run through a 2-D maze. Sorry, it only runs on the PERQ workstation (remember the PERQ?). I do have source; it was written in PASCAL. It is copyrighted so I would not be able to distribute it. The PERQ is a microcoded 170 ns machine with hardware Raster-OP. Display size is 8-1/2 x 11 (portrait) or 14 x 11 (landscape). I do not believe the program used custom microcode. Actually, the program is cleverly written and is not overly complex. The most difficult part (it seems to me) is the generation of a one-exit maze with corridors and not very many loops. You can generate realistic wire frame corridors with good heuristics. Do the hidden line elimination by heuristic methods as well. Don't do brute force calculations if you wish to run the maze in real-time. The PERQ implemetation is great - too bad you can't see it run. -- Kirk : Bones ? | Phil Mason, Astronautics Technology Center Bones : He's dead Jim. | Madison, Wisconsin - "Eat Cheese or Die!" ...seismo-uwvax-astroatc!philm | I would really like to believe that my ...ihnp4-nicmad/ | employer shares all my opinions, but . . .
paul@torch.UUCP (Paul Andrews) (05/22/89)
Check out your local X windows archive. A game was posted to comp.sources.x some time ago called mazewar. It does what you want. - Paul.