Okay so, last night I asked myself "What if I created a dynamic 3D Cube on contruct using no 3D plugin/effect/behavior? That might be cool.".
So I spent the next 7 hours (from 11pm to 5am <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy">) making this. I made it so everyting is modulable via instance and global variables, but most of all having a code that would be as simple as possible.
I ran into a problem quite fast: I can't render 3D looking sprites with no effect on. So I just used the skend effect by somebody (i think. Can't remember his name). Even though I realised a few hours later that I should have used the 3D manipulation effect, but:
1-The effect is buggy, and hard to manipulate
2-It would have broken my first wish to use no 3D effect
3-It was 3am and I really didn't want to remake all of my code for possibly nothing
Anyways, I finally succeeded in making the 3D effect. So the next step was to make everything dependent on instance and global vars, which was pretty easy.
And then, I realised that my effect looked not only awesome when you controled the cube, but also absolutely amazing when you controled the vanishing point.
So I spent the next 2h making a GTA-like kind of looking game, and yesterday, at 5am, I succeded in making this: https://twitter.com/skymen75/status/751591238672023552
Then I got pretty hyped honestly, I tried adding more to this. The engine managed a var named "TopHeight" that defined how "tall" the cube should look. So I added a var named "Bot Height" that defines the "distance between the cube and the floor".
The result is neat HOWEVER I ran into a problem.
When I drew my cubes, I made it so it drew the furthest from the vanishing point first. But, this is no longer valid, as, if I have "Height" there are some cubes that should be drawn after but are drawn before. Which creates some weird perspective glitches.
So I tried my best to make it so it works fine, but I got bored pretty fast. So I'm leaving this here in case anyone is interested in using this. (In case the 2.5D platformer effect or Q3D or 3D whatever effects are too hard to use)
https://mega.nz/#!FgMxjQYB!DNMpGEld-L9y ... sUEDKfi6fE
If anyone fixes the glitches, makes the engine better or even make a game using this, I WANT to see it. Just know that everything works just fine if you just let that "BotHeight" to 0.
EDIT: Here is a live demo so you can see the thing happening
http://airtailstudios.comxa.com/Fake3DGTA/
Basically, the car is controled using arrow keys
In Cubejump, the three cubes are controled using ZQSD, arrow keys, and 8426(numpad)