Hi every this is my very 1st topic, i joined the forums because I'm a computer science student and i got an idea for a small game.

For the past 2 days i read all information i could from the "For beginners" section, went trough some other topics but couldn't find what I'm looking for. So into the topic now:

I want to create a map of my city/district, with the possibility to set some objects on it and to separate it by regions with frontiers that i can "freely" sketch. Users would be able to click each area and it would open some management panel for things to do in that region.

Things that would be done in region don't have to be represented on the 3D map, they would be stored and maybe shown on some part of that management panel.

The map should have an identical layout as this "Rome: Total War" print screens:

From my simple calculations this map its like in a 1: 3333333, (3...) scale and i want to make one that would zoom in (like in Google earth) to a max of 1:20000 scale.

Like i sad i want to be able to set objects into the map, and (like in this print) when the user hovers those objects he sees a description. If he clicks on it an info or management panel will show up depending if its and object, region...

Finally to give a better 3D experience while keeping it simple i thought about giving it the possibility to rotate the map lets say 100º left/right (or any other value over 90º). So in the screen above user could see the other side of the mountain.

I don't have any "3D programming" knowledge. All i learn so far was C style languages (c, c++, java) in a win32 (and some forms for GUI) context.

So any ideas, guidelines, sites, books you my refer to me some tuts on the subject.

I would appreciate any and all of information sources on the subject that you can refer to me.

Thx in advance!!

You said you don't have much/any 3d experience, so there might be a work around if you arn't looking to learn 3d. If this is some sort of menu and not the actual game, and you were willing to abandon the 3d for the menu, you could do something tricky and take a screenshot of the map you make in a 3d modeling program as the background. You could also get screenshots of the 3d objects (like towns, mountains etc) and use them as objects, setting them to do what you want when the mouse goes over them. This way the map would still appear 3d but really it would just be a 2d screenshot of a 3d model. Of course this would mean you would have to give up the ability to zoom properly or rotate to look at the other side of stuff. In regards to keeping the 3d effect, I guess you'd have to find an engine that supports the 3d map effect.

Good luck with it

You said you don't have much/any 3d experience, so there might be a work around if you arn't looking to learn 3d...

Thx for your reply!

Its true that i don't have 3D experience (yet). But i DO want to learn

I really want to make the map in 3D, without the 3D experience i see the map just useless.

I posted the topic to gather some ideas and also some source of information from who does work in 3D.

If you can tell me some websites, books, tutorials... anything on the subject to get me started i would appreciate it.

At this time I'm starting to work with blender... if that's any good