Ray-Casting Tutorial For Game Development And Other Purposes

by F. Permadi

PREFACE

This document explores the fundamental theory behind ray-casting, a pseudo 3-dimensional rendering technique that are very popular in game development arena in the 90s. In general, this document does not bother with implementation and coding detail. The discussion will be mainly about concepts, the implementation is up to the reader.  For a casual reader, the knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem and knowledge of high-school level math are assumed.  

Please note that this document was written in the year of 1996, and although ray-casting has been supplanted by newer and more powerful techniques (and hardware!), the reader can hopefully still benefit from the technique.  

Please be sure to read the disclaimer before proceeding.

CONTENTS

• Introduction
• A Brief History
• What is Ray-Casting
• Ray-Casting vs Ray-Tracing For Game Development
• Limitations of Ray-Casting
• Creating a World
• Defining Projection Attributes
• Finding Walls
• Finding Distance to Walls
• Drawing Walls
• Texture Mapped Walls
• Drawing Floors
• Drawing Ceilings
• Walls with Variable Height
• Horizontal Motion
• Looking Up and Down
• Flying and Crouching
• Combined Effects
• Shading
• Bibliography, References and Notes
• Example in Java (with source code)

Copyright 1996-2010 F. Permadi
permadi@permadi.com

This document may be printed for personal/non-commercial/educational use, it may not be reproduced and/or distributed without permission.

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