Revisit
This morning for some odd reason I decided to work on this again. Now JOGL is dead. So switched over to LWJGL and began a rewrite.
I figure most people would rather avoid 3D rotations if they could help it. So I am considering a redesign that does away with almost all the rotations. Meaning you can move in any direction. There would be no forward or backward.
Would that be more interesting?
In general, I think anything that simplifies the 3Dness is a good idea. I feel like even the trig required for Robocode-like games is a barrier to entry for many folks, and 3D makes that even tougher.
I was actually just thinking about this re: Roboflight the other day. For instance, Quake brought "true 3D", but the gameplay was not dominated by it. Something like Descent was totally 3D, which was pretty cool, but also a bit jarring.
Glad to hear it. It actually simplifies the engine a bit too. Of course I still had to muck about in rotations for the camera. But I see no reason why I should force quaternions on anyone else.
Here is a small sample I did using the current (revised) api. It is basically the RF version of walls. What is more, not a 3d rotation in sight.
