Book Image

Going the Distance with Babylon.js

By : Josh Elster
Book Image

Going the Distance with Babylon.js

By: Josh Elster

Overview of this book

Babylon.js allows anyone to effortlessly create and render 3D content in a web browser using the power of WebGL and JavaScript. 3D games and apps accessible via the web open numerous opportunities for both entertainment and profit. Developers working with Babylon.js will be able to put their knowledge to work with this guide to building a fully featured 3D game. The book provides a hands-on approach to implementation and associated methodologies that will have you up and running, and productive in no time. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and links to fully working self-contained code snippets, you’ll start by learning about Babylon.js and the finished Space-Truckers game. You’ll also explore the development workflows involved in making the game. Focusing on a wide range of features in Babylon.js, you’ll iteratively add pieces of functionality and assets to the application being built. Once you’ve built out the basic game mechanics, you’ll learn how to bring the Space-Truckers environment to life with cut scenes, particle systems, animations, shadows, PBR materials, and more. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to structure your code, organize your workflow processes, and continuously deploy to a static website/PWA a game limited only by bandwidth and your imagination.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1: Building the Application
7
Part 2: Constructing the Game
13
Part 3: Going the Distance

Extended Topics

As always, there’s more to learn and explore in the topics we’ve looked at in this chapter. The following are ways you can engage further and practice the knowledge you’ve gained in the chapter. Don’t forget to post your questions and share your accomplishments on the Babylon.js forums or in the Space-Truckers discussion boards at https://forum.babylonjs.com and https://github.com/jelster/space-truckers/discussions:

  • Perform a more comprehensive quantitative analysis of the asteroid belt data to extract the precise relationship between the FPS and asteroid count. What is the specific FPS to asteroid ratio? Having the CSV file is handy here because spreadsheet tools such as Excel, Sheets, and Google Sheets are the best way to compare and calculate these figures.
  • Are there ways to rewrite the AsteroidBelt.update method to reduce the CPU inter-frame time? Maybe it isn’t necessary to loop through every asteroid individually...