Hello,
I have a vision of making a simple top view 2D game, with characters that appear to be 3D. Is this a hard accomplishment?
Any tips of tutorials? LWJGL?
Thanks!
Just render 3D models to 2D images then use those images in your game. There are limitations to the approach, but that’s how it’s generally done.
It’s not hard at all. Perhaps it’s best to think of OpenGL as only rendering in 3D. The ground would be 3D too, except it’s just a flat polygon and is directly facing the camera, giving it a 2D appearance. You then draw your 3D model on top of this.
There are other ways you can go about this type of situation too. @CodeHead has mentioned one way, and may or may not be better for your particular game.
You could also draw everything in 2D, and use lighting effects to fake the appearance of 3D. For backgrounds you could use parallax scrolling.
In the end, your game and target visual appearance determines what approach you take.
Store 3d models
Process into 2d through a frame buffer and store these
Draw it ontop of the displayed frame buffer after everything else or at the desired layer