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

Using BitMasks to organize collisions


Collision detection can very easily become a severe drain on the computer's resources. The best way to prevent this is by limiting what objects are checked for collision with which other objects. One way to do this is by controlling which segments of the scene graph collision checks are performed on, but this can be impractical because there are so many other things that scene graph organization can be used to accomplish.

Fortunately, we have another solution to this problem. We can use BitMasks to limit which CollisionNodes can interact. A BitMask is a series of 32 bits that can be either 0 or 1. Here is an example of a BitMask:

0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0010 0000 1000

The BitMask works by limiting only those CollisionNodes that have one of the same bits set to 1 to interact. That means if you set bit number 4 to 1 on two CollisionNodes, they'll be able to collide. If that bit is set to 1 for one of them and 0 for the other, they won't be checked for collision...