                             M O O N B A S E

                            3D Landscape Demo

Hello!  This is one of my works-in-progress.  Trouble is, since I'm in college,
I don't know when I'll get a chance to make any more progress on it.  So I've
thrown it onto the Internet in the hopes that you will be able to learn from
it.

The code is a bit of a mess (some of it dates back five years or more to my
high school days), so I have to apologize for it.  When I write code for money
it looks a lot better than this.  (Yeah, yeah....)

Since the drawing algorithm has some interesting artifacts, my next step
(eventually) will be to change over to Gouraud-shaded triangles instead of the
"cardboard cutout" method it currently uses.  I'm expecting the speed to drop
considerably when I do that, but I won't know until I try.  Also, I would like
to have it display detail adaptively; that is, use larger triangles to
represent the distant landscape.

This code was inspired by looking at Tim Clark's (?) Mars demo; hence the name
"Moonbase".  (Moonbase is also the name of our student-run Linux server.)
I believe the Mars demo is still available on x2ftp.oulu.fi.  You are free
to use my code, my ideas, whatever.  I have benefited enormously from the free
information on the Internet, and I would like to keep that process going.

Erosion is next up on the landscape-generation front; if you know any fast
ways of doing this, drop me a line.  Until I develop erosion, I'm pretty much
stuck out in space with my landscapes!

Enjoy,

James McNeill
mcneja@wwc.edu
