No, not Mode7 lol. Specifically not mode7 lol.
I'll try to give a clearer picture... ( I should prolly just mock up a screenshot lol )
- I want to take a heightmap and send it to a 2D array
- then each array element gives me 3D world coords XYZ ( based on the elements XY in the array, and Z being the values stored at the XY )
- I want to send those coords into the webgl matrix calculations so that I now have my screen space coords for all of my array XYZ values that fall within the "camera" frustum ( clip space )
- Finally, I want to represent those array elements/points onscreen using scaled sprites ( which would act as billboard sprites by always facing camera )
Not sure if that helps paint a clearer picture or not... but its literally just the accelerated matrix math that I want. I have a couple leads I'll be trying and will follow up here with any successes/failures/noteworthy discoveries.
I've always disliked the look of polygons ( though I AM definitely growing a fondness for low-poly! Mega Man Legends 1 and 2 are gorgeous!!) and Mode7 has always been too flat for me... its really only useful if you add billboard sprites to it to give it some verticality, but even then, is still unbearably flat... So this is my attempt to imagine games of the early polygon era, as if polygons were never invented and Sega's Super Scaler arcade tech was the direction things went, so more sprites, larger sprites, more animation frames for rotations, etc.
This game will, ideally, be entirely handmade pixel art, using 3D Point math to modify sprite scale/z-soting/depth effects to create a pseudo3D world, no 3D physics, just display rendering