Killer Game Programming in Java

Chapter 25. A 3D Maze

The main contributions of the first-person shooter (FPS) in Chapter 24 were a moving viewpoint (controlled by key presses), the use of a 2D image to simulate a gun hand, and the ability to shoot multiple laser beams at once, generating multiple explosions. Though the user could move about, there wasn’t any scenery (except the robot target).

This chapter continues the FPS theme but concentrates on letting the user navigate through a complex, realistic looking scene (a 3D maze) without walking through walls or getting too lost:

Key-based navigation

I’ll be reusing (with a few changes) the KeyBehavior class from Chapter 24, so the navigation is again controlled from the keyboard. The user can move forward, backward, slide left or right, float up or down but can’t walk through walls or descend through the floor. Rotations are limited to 90-degree turns to the left or right, which simplifies the application’s position calculations.

A realistic scene

The scene is a 3D maze made from textured, colored blocks and cylinders. The floor is tiled with a texture to make it look more detailed. The background is a textured sphere, which means that the sky looks different when viewed from different locations in the scene. The lighting is deliberately gloomy (there’s no ambient light), but a Java 3D Spotlight node is attached to the viewpoint, so the user appears to be carrying a spotlight.

Multiple views to aid navigation

The application offers three views of the maze. The ...