First impressions

[Jake Monroe]

I don't want to imagine how much longer it would have taken Aaron to give the game 3d movement.

[milo]

Originally posted by Jake Monroe:
I don't want to imagine how much longer it would have taken Aaron to give the game 3d movement.

Well, it's already got a 3D engine. Allowing the ships three degrees of freedom instead of two shouldn't be that big of a deal - perhaps a couple of weeks of coding to let you fly above and below the ecliptic.

Of course, getting the AI to work again might be a little harder.

[Phoenix-D]

It isn't just graphics though. The collision would have to be revamped (currently, you only colide with objects on the plane), controls would have to be -totally- re-done, as the current system simply wouldn't work.

[milo]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
It isn't just graphics though. The collision would have to be revamped (currently, you only colide with objects on the plane), controls would have to be -totally- re-done, as the current system simply wouldn't work.

The current control system can be extended into three dimensions rather easily. You need to add pitch up and down keys for the keyboard side of things, and you need to project the mouse click steering onto a 3D sphere instead of a 2D plane. All of the ships already have orientation in three dimensions; it's required to render them. They would just need velocity and acceleration extended to be 3D as well. Collision detection and resolution should be the same in 2D and 3D, whether you use bounding spheres or OBB trees or whatever. All of that kind of easy stuff can be done in a couple of weeks.

The biggest impact would be on the AI for the NPC ships. They don't know how to fly in three dimensions, and they have no strategies for attacking in three dimensions. All of the weapons would need to support elevation deflection as well as azimuth. Guided missiles would need seeker algorithms that work in 3D. That kind of stuff will take longer than a couple of weeks. How much longer depends on how sophisticated a set of algorithms you want to have.

I don't think it would really add anything significant to the game, though, any more than adding 3D movement would make Chess or Checkers better. Starfury has an elegant and approachable simplicity as it is.