nCraft (3D minecraft-like game for the nspire)

[Chockosta]

Hello,

Since I like 3D, I wanted to try it with ndless.
After a couple experiments, I got spinning cubes... Yeah

At first, I wanted to try a minecraft-like game, but it's waaay too slow.
I'll try to do some optimizations, but I don't hope too much. Sorry.

The source is attached with a screenie.

[adriweb]

That looks really nice !

Trying on nspire_emu

[Chockosta]

I just modified main.c, because I realised that I changed some values for testing purposes.
(I updated the first post)
If you downloaded it, you should do it again...

[Jonius7]

Wow, looks nice.
I haven't downloaded Ndless 3.1 yet (what was I doing?), I just have 2.1, so I'll try it now.

[Chockosta]

Oh, you might want the executable file...

The attached one should give you 100 cubes (like in the screenshot). You can turn them with the arrow keys.

WARNING : This has never been ran on a real calculator. I am not responsible if it causes any damages to your Nspire.
This executable only works with grayscale Nspires (It won't cause anything bad on a CX, but it will display random pixels...)

[Jonius7]

Ah thanks. I was just about to say if I would have to compile it lol.
Now those cubes look very s**y...
EDIT: If you rotate it right you can get them to look like minecraft blocks perspectively, which is what you're aiming for, I guess.

[Stefan Bauwens]

Looks nice. Although this may be slow I'm pretty much convinced that something like minecraft should be possible on an nspire.

[calc84maniac]

Wouldn't a call to lcd_ingray() be enough for Nspire CX compatibility?

[Chockosta]

@calc84maniac :
Sure, I will do that if I manage to create a game.
This program is just a proof of concept.


I just made some tests...
It starts to be too slow if I draw more than 500 cubes.
A minecraft might be possible if I managed to determine which cubes have to be drawn and which ones are hidden.
But I really don't know how to do that.

[Jim Bauwens]

Nice work

[DJ Omnimaga]

Looks nice. How fast does it run approximately? It's hard to tell on a grayscale calc because the LCD is so blurry. X.x

EDIT: Seems to run at good speed considering the large amount of cubes displayed. I guess maybe with too much stuff it might be a bit too slow but a bunch of games like Star Fox would most likely be doable.

[Jonius7]

The cubes do rotate a bit slowly, but that could be speeded up somehow I guess.
Potentially good enough for great games to be ported.
Minecraft could work, but only in a partial form, because it even freezes on my computer (with the Minecraft logo changing to a Java logo), sometime regularly.

[Jim Bauwens]

You can't call rewriting a program really porting.
And normally if you do this you can optimize it how you want.

One of the problems of Minecraft is that it's written in Java, and Java is full of problems itself (no offense Java programmers).

[Jonius7]

Minecraft being written in Java cannot escape the fact that it cannot be independent of it. And therefore sometimes, the minecraft logo in the taskbar disappears and gets replaced with a Java icon (when it is frustratingly not responding), which IMHO, seems to 'cheapen' or make it look less polished as a game. But it's not like it's a big game release from a big company either.

[Hayleia]

A minecraft might be possible if I managed to determine which cubes have to be drawn and which ones are hidden.
But I really don't know how to do that.

I guess (I said "I guess", not "I know") it would be like raycasting. You must determine which cubes are hidden by others (not to draw) and which cubes are too far (not to draw) with imaginary rays you project everywhere, then you draw the remaining cubes, only the ones the character can see.