6. GUI with Nifty GUI | JMonkeyEngine 3.0 Cookbook

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Table Of Contents

JMonkeyEngine 3.0 Cookbook

By : Rickard Eden

4 (7)

JMonkeyEngine 3.0 Cookbook

4 (7)

By: Rickard Eden

Overview of this book

If you are a jMonkey developer or a Java developer who is interested to delve further into the game making process to expand your skillset and create more technical games, then this book is perfect for you.

Preface

Preface

Common development concepts in jMonkeyEngine

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. SDK Game Development Hub

1. SDK Game Development Hub

Introduction

Setting up a project

Importing a model

Using Scene Composer

Modifying heightmaps with Terrain Editor

Adding a sky box and lighting

Adding water using a filter

Adding some ambient audio

Creating bitmap fonts with Font Creator

Retrieving an attachment node

Using ParticleEmitter – Soaring Birds

An advanced ParticleEmitter class

2. Cameras and Game Controls

2. Cameras and Game Controls

Introduction

Creating a reusable character control

Attaching an input AppState object

Firing in FPS

Firing non-instant bullets

Creating an RTS camera AppState object

Selecting units in RTS

Making the camera follow units

Following a character with ChaseCamera

Adding a game controller or joystick input

Leaning around corners

Detecting cover automatically in a third-person game

3. World Building

3. World Building

Introduction

Using noise to generate a terrain

Lighting your world and providing it with dynamic lights

Deforming a terrain in real time

Automating trees' distribution

Endless worlds and infinite space

Flowing water with cellular automata

The essentials of a cube-based world

4. Mastering Character Animations

4. Mastering Character Animations

Introduction

Previewing animations in SDK

Creating an animation manager control

Extending the animation control

Handling jump animations

Creating a custom animation - leaning

Creating a subanimation

Lip syncing and facial expressions

Eye movement

Location-dependent animation – edge check

Aligning feet with ground – inverse kinematics

5. Artificial Intelligence

5. Artificial Intelligence

Introduction

Creating a reusable AI control class

Sensing – vision

Sensing – hearing

Decision making – Finite State Machine

Creating the AI using cover

Generating NavMesh in SDK

Pathfinding – using NavMesh

Controlling groups of AI

Pathfinding – our own A* pathfinder

6. GUI with Nifty GUI

6. GUI with Nifty GUI

Introduction

Initializing Nifty and managing an options menu

Loading the screen

Creating an RPG dialog screen

Implementing a game console

Handling a game message queue

Creating an inventory screen

Customizing the input and settings page

Using offscreen rendering for a minimap

7. Networking with SpiderMonkey

7. Networking with SpiderMonkey

Introduction

Setting up a server and client

Handling basic messaging

Making a networked game – Battleships

Implementing a network code for FPS

Loading a level

Interpolating between player positions

Firing over a network

Optimizing the bandwidth and avoiding cheating

8. Physics with Bullet

8. Physics with Bullet

Introduction

Creating a pushable door

Building a rocket engine

Ballistic projectiles and arrows

Handling multiple gravity sources

Self-balancing using RotationalLimitMotors

The principles of a bridge-building game

Networked physics

9. Taking Our Game to the Next Level

9. Taking Our Game to the Next Level

Introduction

Creating a muzzle flash using ParticleEmitter

Creating a trigger system

Creating a timer trigger

Adding an interaction trigger

Controlling AI with triggers

Creating a dynamic skybox with a moving sun

Improving a scene with postprocessing filters

Performing complex movements with MotionPaths

Cutscenes using cinematics

Using a positional audio and environmental effects

A. Information Fragments

Introduction

Downloading the plugins

Enabling nightly builds

Adding Bullet physics to the application

Jaime animation frames for phonemes

The AnimationEvent patch

The ImageGenerator class

The CellUtil class

Index

Index

Creating an inventory screen

In this recipe, we'll create an inventory screen, which is very common, mostly in RPGs. To do this, we'll use the Droppable and Draggable components in Nifty and create an InventoryItem class to help us differentiate different the types of items (and hence, where they can be attached). This time, we'll use both XML to create the static components and the Java Builder interface to build the inventory (or backpack) slots. The reason is that in many games, the amount of inventory a character has varies.

How to do it...

We begin by creating the controls, which are the key components of this method. This can be done by performing the following four steps:

First, we create a new controls file, inventoryControls.xml, with the <nifty-controls> tag.

Inside this, we first define <controlDefinition name="itemSlot"> with the following content:

<control name="droppable" backgroundColor="#fff5" width="64px" height="64px" margin="1px" childLayout="center"/>

Then...

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