Gambas Projection Engine

Gambas Projection Engine is a 2.5D game engine project by Graham Lawrence Wilson that provides simulated three dimensional spaces ala games like Dungeon Master, as well as more experimental pesdo-3D effects.

2 Step
2 Step is a fake 3D first person projection engine first envisioned by Graham Wilson in the summer of 2005. At this time Piga Software had yet to acquire the full version of Game Maker 6.1 and he was frustrated by the fact that the pseudo-3D abilities of Game Maker were not allowed to be used in the shareware version. Based on this he decided to try and create a program, however limited, to fudge it. The result was a Game Maker engine that draws a cramp room in which the player can step forward, step backward, jump, crouch, and interact with any object within in the cramped corridor.

This was done by drawing four backgrounds in a first person perspective that simulated the player's two steps and jumping and crouching, and then switching the background when the player pressed the relevant key. He had trouble doing this with the background settings of a Game Maker room, but then after a coder epiphany he figured that he would just create an object to the draw the world. After this he made a short open ended game called Revenge which featured use of this engine, depicting an enraged space bounty hunter (ala Bobba Fett) charging his way through the corridors of an alien ship to avenge the death of his father. The artificial intelligence had aliens with both paced and rapid fire weapons, and it was vital once each room opened to do unto them before they killed the player. There were also light switches, various collectibles, and other items.

Several versions of this engine were played around with, including ones for Game Maker 5, QBasic 4.5, and Gambas.