How to create a 3d game on a 2d plane?

Question

Game development

How to create a 3D game without third-party libraries when there is only a 2D canvas (as in html)
What to read? (preferably not books)
Where to start?
Thanks

Answer 1

To create 3d using 2d, you need to figure out how to do it. This was done in the last century, when the power of 3D cards was low, none. At that time, there were many self-made 3D engines made on the knee. Everyone sculpted, who is into what much.
One of the original examples is the Settlers 2 toy. It is fully 2D, but the backgrounds and offset grid coordinates are made to feel 3D.

screenshot

Also, any isometry is essentially 2d. True, because of the feeling of 3d-ness, it is sometimes called 2.5d, that is, as it were, between 2d and 3d.

screenshot from jagged alliance 2

screenshot from project zombie

In the general case, you just need to come up with what the 3D highlight of your game will be. And write your own little 3D engine for this, using only 2D capabilities. This can be done in very different ways. One eccentric even managed to make a 3D game on formulas in Excel .
However, I do not advise you to reinvent the wheel. It's easier to take Unity or Unreal Engine as a basis - and make a normal full-fledged 3D game, without any restrictions of 2D-ness.
It is better to focus on making the game interesting . After all, this is what makes the game cool and attractive. Here's an example ( steam) a simple and cheap game that, although it looks miserable, is such a retro style. It is fully 3d. And its passage is a very pleasant and interesting adventure for the evening. There is no complicated camera control, as is usually the case in 3D games, that is, the camera is fully automatic. Management - arrows, as if it's a platformer. It would be cool to make something similar, but it's still better to come up with your own original idea , which no one else has done, and implement it. There are no ready-made recipes for this, alas.

Answer 2

Look towards WebGL. It is natively built into browsers.