I'm not sure I like the being on Earth thing but this is just cosmetic...
Agree, but as you say, it's cosmetic...
Seeing as we're using 3D stuff now how about actually having a planet as a sphere and spinning it to the various locations?!
Nice idea. I guess the map.png becomes the texture to wrap round the globe and the x,y just operate from wherever the seam is on globe. I've never really used 3d before, so I'll let someone else pick that up.
Enigma, that was one of the things I suggested after I created the door open function, the problem is knowing where the middle of the door is as the door open function works for any door of any size, on top of this the collision would be tricky to say the least.
I think we need this animation at some point, if only to make closing doors work. For example I really want to be able to close doors behind the player. While we can live with disappearing doors, magically appearing doors won't work. So we need animated closure, the first step towards which has to be animated opening.
I had wondered if this could work along the following lines:
On opening the door, grab the image of the door, and split it in half and store each half in an animation type. This animation type would be the same as the ones I keep thinking about for spinning fans etc. The animation type then controls having the image roll back at a given speed, and you stop drawing the door object on the map, just draw the animation type. It will have to know to kill itself off when it's size reaches zero.
Closing doors will then work in the opposite direction, drawing the final door image in memory, chopping it in half, and showing it gradually on screen as an animation, and at the end you stamp the door object on the map.
The problem comes with the collision layer. You can stamp the map with the collision info as the door closes, but this could be tricky.
I think animated tiles will be my next project...