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

Crafting a PG Snippet

Before we can use our PG code in our application, we’re going to need to do some light refactoring. A little bit of preparation can save a lot of time later! The things we’re going to change are select pieces of code that could vary between the PG and local environments, such as texture paths and URLs, along with some minor structural modifications. For your convenience, here’s a link to the refactored snippet. If you are just joining us here in the journey, use the link below. If you’ve been following along, substitute your own snippet URL for the following one. Start by opening your favorite browser and navigating to either your own snippet or to https://playground.babylonjs.com/#0UYAPE#42.

Cleaning up the BABYLON Namespace Prefix

One of the things that you may have found annoying about coding in the PG is how in the PG it’s necessary to always prefix BJS types with the BABYLON namespace. This is not ideal, but we can...