Introduction - The Basics of 3D Tile-Based Programming

 

 

Welcome to the 'Basics of 3D Tile-Based Programming'!  My name is Sean Patrick Hannifin; on the 3DGS forum my username is 'wizard1218'.  I love programming, but I also love playing those 'Sim' games, as well as the 'Tycoon' games.  About a year ago, I designed and began creating a game called 'School Tycoon'.  A few months later, 'School Tycoon' hit the stores.  Of course, it wasn't my game that hit the stores, but a game made by professional developers who had realized my idea before me.  But instead of throwing my work out the window, I decided to take what I had learned about 3D tile-based programming to create a tutorial to help other programmers begin the task of creating a 'tycoon' or 'Sim' type game with 3DGS.  These games can be called 'isometric' or, more appropiately, 'tile-based'.  Tile-based programming is quite unlike other types of programming, especially when you are using a 3D engine!  This tutorial is meant to help you get started with the basics (and, in my opinion, the hardest and most important aspects) of this kind of programming.  I hope you learn as much as I did!

 

In addition to this HTML tutorial are four demos, which you can find in the Demo folder.  Also, code produced in this tutorial can be found in the Code folder.  iso_systems.wdl is a customizable script you can inlcude in your own works.

 

Ready to get started?  So am I!

 

Part I - Setup