ASCII3D is a project that I’m starting on to realize Squidi’s idea for a roguetype world, made out of ASCII characters, that manages to extend into the third dimension. Right now, I’m just coding a game engine (which for the moment is just a graphical engine), but hopefully it will extend into a pretty cool game (or group of games). It’s a complex project idea though, and it will probably take me ages to complete.
To put things into perspective, a roguetype game is one where you’re a little dude (often portrayed as an @ sign) running through a dungeon (delineated by a group of different ASCII characters) trying to find some special trinket way down at the bottom of the dungeon and returning to the surface. Along the way, you pick up potions, weapons, scrolls, and all sorts of items that will aid you in defeating the hordes of “A”s and “q”s that will try to kill you before you reach the bottom. If you really want to know what’s going on here, try Wikipedia.
So here’s a view from what could be a typical roguetype (copied off Squidi’s page and hosted here to not use his/her bandwith):
Standard roguetype map
If this was 3D-ified in the way that Squidi suggests, we would end up with something more like this:
3D-ified roguetype map
So what I’m trying to do is write a whole lot of complex graphics code to make this effect. The issue is that it needs to be created dynamically – the 3D-ness and perspective has to be created and updated as the player moves around, as the camera will stay centered on the player (to make it easier for the player to see where he is without the walls getting in the way). I’ve got a very basic version working, where it loads a simple map from a file and draws it to the screen with a yet-to-be-tweaked 3D effect. I have faulty code implemented for moving the camera around – that needs to be fixed. Badly. I’ll post more here as significant updates roll in.
And just for good measure, here’s a picture of my engine (still in this very basic state) rendering the same map that Squidi uses to create his pictures (in Photoshop):
A first look at my engine 3D-ifying a roguetype map
Post comments if you’ve got questions as to how I’m implementing this or if you have any suggestions or just think this is really cool and want to voice your support.
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