🚀 go-pugleaf

> If you really think you've achieved in two weeks what Mike Roberts
> has spent 5 years on, make your system available.  We'd love to see it.
> I'm sure we'll have plenty of constructive criticism for you.

I didn't think the interest in text adventure compilers was still there,
so I didn't release it in the first place.

FYI, the language is based on the ADVSYS game compiler (I think I 
mentioned this earlier).  I did this because there were a great many
adventures written in this language at the time, and I couldn't find
source code to the ADVSYS compiler (does it even exist in the PD?).
It includes a great many more features.  Trust me, compilers aren't
that hard to right...especially interpreted ones.  Maybe I'll make the
system available, maybe I won't.  I'd have to dig it out of my archives.

>>Who needs an algorithm?  I did it with a modified Bresenham line drawing
>>routine.  As fast as it could possibly go...unless there is a method
>>to zap it there instantly.
> 
> Trivializing things that are well-known to be difficult isn't going to
> impress people as much as make them simply not believe you,
> particularly in a forum like this where people who write games and
> related software for a living hang out.  Real-time texture mapping is
> NOT easy and certainly does require some underlying theory to
> understand; but I suppose now you're going to trivialize Ultima
> Underworld and claim you could bang that out in a week or two?  Come on.

Think about it!  When you texture map something, you are just laying it
down on a surface in a different manner.  If you were to draw the borders
of an object...just as a putimage would put it down, you would get this:

                       -----
                       |   |
                       |   |
                       -----

To perspective map it, you would have something that looked like this:

  |\
  | \
  | /
  |/

Right?  Good.  Now that you understand that point, we'll get on with it.
I'm not going to take into account the extra planes in UW and assume that
the wall is always standing straight up.

Go into your favorite drawing program and straight vertical line (fairly
long...about 64 pixels).  Now, draw a line starting from the top point
(like in the drawing above) on a 45 degree angle...not very long...maybe
about 20 pixels from the origin.  Good.  Now do the same thing for the
bottom.

A good perspective mapper must scale as it goes.  Bresenham can be used
to create a scaling routine too that is super fast.  The entire perspective
mapper is based on the Bresenham line drawing routine...the perspective
is drawn by a pseudo-line drawer, and the scaling is done by the routine.

More in the next message...