So recently a game challenge popped up on the GMC. If you’ve been on there and checked the challenges recently you’ll have found a 3D challenge. For those of you that don’t already know, GMC is the Gamemaker Community Forums. If you use any of the Gamemaker applications, then you more than likely have been on there at least once. Apparently all the community needed was somebody to say, “Hey! Make a 3D game!”, because the topic is hot and people who never mess with 3D are making stuff no problem, myself included, thanks to a few more advanced users making some tutorials to get everybody started.

I went from making a cube

To working on a top down shooter since I couldn’t figure out the projection…

But then….

I finally got it. I figured out the projection stuff. So it was seriously game on now (pun intended).

I fiddled around some more and decided to work on a FPS engine

I haven’t gotten much farther than this. I’ve added in a camera bobbing effect to make it look more realistic when you’re moving and I’ve added in crouching and jumping. There are no collisions implemented yet.

Before I could start working on my collisions I had to figure out how to make terrain from heightmaps. After several failed attempts…

I was getting annoyed so I went to the GMC for a little advice. And that’s literally all I needed. Somebody pointed out the obvious to me and I figured it out!

Setup the UV coordinates for the model and I was good to go. I still need to figure out how to properly configure the normals so that lighting will work but this is fine for now.

And here is the current state of the project. The only reason I’m under the map is because as I stated before, I have not yet implemented any collisions aside from the fake ground collision so I could have some kind of jumping in there.

All of this in the last 1-2 weeks. I’m excited to finally be getting into the 3D world. 2D was fun for learning but I just personally don’t enjoy 2D games as much as I do 3D games (most of the time). My ultimate goal is to finally get good enough to be able to make my own Skate style game. I was always a huuuge Skate fan and have beaten/bought all of the games multiple times for multiple consoles. But I was always bummed that I couldn’t play it on my rig. I wanted to make a game like it myself but I couldn’t because I had zero idea how to even get started on 3D. Well, I’m not saying I’ll be making my dream Skate clone any time soon but now it’s finally a possibility for me. Even if the next game I make isn’t that, it’ll more than likely be 3D. So keep an eye out. I’ll make sure it’s a good one.

-Hippyman