This may seem like a trivial question, but are there any games that use GPS coordinates like what we have here on Earth? What I am thinking about doing is a game with two planets in close proximity that are warring, but using GPS points to attack. I can see this being coded into the game the old fashioned way, but are there any small libraries that already have something useful coded in them? I have tried google searching and looking here briefly, I may have overlooked something but interested to see if anyone has any feedback… I am also interested in finding some people somewhat close-by the panhandle of Florida who might be looking to form a group of programmers/game artists.
I’m not sure if there are any existing libraries that would suit your purpose, at least gaming wise. There could possibly be some GIS/mapping libraries that may help out, such as GeoTools (www.geotools.org), but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they may be more complex & over-the-top than what you need.
It’s not clear from your original post exactly how you want to implement this. If you just want to use global/spherical coords (lat/long), then you could easily implement this yourself, providing you have a solid understanding of geometry.
If on the other hand you want to use a custom map grid (for example, to produce 6 figure grid references), then you’ll probably need to jump into the world of mapping projections, and the joys of making spherical objects appear flat and square, which in itself can become quite complex.
Cheers,
nerb.
EDIT: Re-reading your original post, I was probably teaching you to suck eggs with the last part of my post. Sounds like you already you already have an idea how you’ll implement it yourself if you don’t find a library. Sorry about that!
Hi,
There are some big communities in the geo-location field. I receive email from the JTS (java topology suite) mailing list and they have lots of smart people who do stuff with maps and lat-long coords. Try googling around and you’ll find some API’s and communities who are interested in this.
Cheers,
Keith
Thanks for the info guys… I realized last night that instead of searching, searching, searching, reading docs, downloading libraries that I might only use a fraction of, I might as well just code something up myself. I don’t know why even for the smallest details I try to look for existing code when it’s so much fun reinventing wheels in java. Thanks again.