hi, i wanna start with a role-playing-game in the style of the "wizardry"-series, where you see the world through your players eyes. well, i don´t want scrolling 3d graphics, i just need that step-by-step thing. there won´t be an outdoor-level, just dungeons. so i would put the whole dungeon into an 2-dimensional array like that: level1[10][10]; .. .. 3 0 1 0 0 2 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 2 3... every "0" would be "wall" and every "1" the dungeon. Now, on every position, i will have 4 sights: N, E, S, W. for every sight, i would have to paint an picture (or should i render that?), so there are thousands of pictures, and hundreds that are different. is this the totally wrong way? how can i solve that problem, are there programmers with rpg-experiences? i just don´t want to invent the wheel again. :-) thanx in advance greetings daniel mannheim, germany

Try and have a look at some of the classics, Wizardry, Eye of the Beholder and the likes.

There aren´t that many screens to be done because you don´t need to do *every* possible view from scratch.

Start out with the basics like this:

000 0-- --0
-X- 0X- -X0

(X being the viewpoint always facing north, 0 your wall-tile and - a blank space).

then for doing these you just take parts (left part of screen etc.) of those from above and mash ´em together to form these:

000 000 000 0-0
-X0 0X- 0X0 0X0

so basically all you need to start piecing your wall tiles together are three sections of tileable wall (left, right and straight) which you then just rescale and put together in different combinations.
Alternatively you can start abstracting at this point and start piecing together you screens from several components (left/middle/right +-wall (ns/ew) positions).

If you limit the view range to say three paces then the number of possible segments is not that huge, low enough to be done by hand. If you´re using a 3d program then it´s even easier, as you´ll just have to rearrange the wall and camera positions.

If you look at the old RPGs you´ll see that the levels weren´t that huge, so some combinations can be ruled out. Of course you´ll have to rework most of the images to give each spot its "unique" feel, but nobody said games weren´t a lot of work.

viel spass

ok, i did it.
i coded a method, that counts the distance to the next wal when you look north. then i find out (for all the steps forward), wheter its a "only left", "only right", "both", "none"-field is an build up codes like LKKR.
those identify the correct pic, thats next. then i made four methods for the movement in every direction. i had to check, which was the direction before, because when i´m looking straight to south and press "west" i´m looking "east.
i needed 600 lines, but no i can move more than five moves before an exception is winking ;-)

greetings
dan