Wing Commander-inspired Pixi engine
I think I could learn a lot from making a "classic", sprite-based "3D" engine based on the ideas of the original Wing Commander I/II, but really targeting the Wing Commander: Privateer era engine.
It could be a lot of fun to stick with some of the original sprite based constraints but add some new features into the mix like fragment shaders and dynamic lighting, which would have been difficult/impossible to achieve on 1993-era unaccelerated hardware. I am thinking about using PixiJS for the rendering engine; I've worked with it in the past for 2D visualization and game-dev and found it to be a pleasure to work with.
Needs & Questions
- Need to figure out what to build the ship 3D models in. I haven't done any 3D work in a really long time. Blender? 3dsmax?
- It is really feisable to think about doing dynamic vertex-shader lighting? It seems like it would be possible… Need to think about it more.