Raycasters are truly where the world of 3D games began. Well-known early 90's games like Wolfenstein 3D or Rise of the Triad both utilized raycasting -- a technique that uses 2D world data to create the illusion of a true 3D world -- to present a new and fascinating viewstyle to gamers.

Game maps are composed of a MxN matrix of 3D cubes of uniform size. The raycaster works, in many ways, like my Voxel Renderer. For each vertical strip of pixels on the viewer's screen, cast out a ray that jumps from block to block until it strikes an impassible block. The perpendicular distance to the block from the camera is calculated, and transformed into view space so it can be drawn properly.

Windows
Download 2.5D Raycaster (.zip) [300 KB]