Designing the game

Cube Chaser will take place in a randomly generated 3D maze. We will use triangle lists to build the floor and walls of the maze and instruct the graphics card to draw them to the screen.

The maze itself is actually a 2D construction, with the walls being rendered in 3D. The floor of the maze will be laid out along the X-Z plane, with the walls extending upwards along the positive Y axis. The player will be able to move in the X and Z plane, but will be restricted to a single, pre-defined elevation along the Y axis.

3D coordinates

You may have noticed in the previous statement that the player will move along the X-Z plane. If you have spent any time developing 2D games, you will likely be used to working with X-Y coordinates, with X running across the screen from left to right and Y running down the screen from top to bottom.

When we move into 3D, we no longer have a fixed viewing angle on our action. In a 2D game, we typically describe actions in the X-Y plane for a side...