Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing. Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why. You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Prioritizing tasks


When a task is added to the task manager, it may be given an optional priority. We've actually seen these priorities already; remember the sort column of the print(taskMgr) output? That column shows the priorities assigned to the tasks in the task manager. Tasks with a lower priority are executed before tasks with a higher priority. That may seem a little backwards, but that's the way it is.

The default priority of a new task is 0. To assign a different priority, just add a priority number to the end of the add or doMethodLater call.

taskMgr.add(self.myTask, "My Task Name", 5)
taskMgr.doMethodLater(10, self.myTask, "My Task Name", 129)

Tasks with the same priority number are executed in no particular order, and that order may change from frame to frame. However, if two tasks have priority 1 and two tasks have priority 5, both of the tasks with priority 1 will execute before either task with priority 5.

Prioritizing tasks this way can be helpful, but generally it isn't needed...