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

Creating the Application

The Space-Truckers application needs to be capable of maintaining and transitioning between a set of discrete states that correspond with different screens, such as a Menu screen and a Game screen. Transitions between application states typically occur as a result of user interaction (e.g., the user selects a menu item) or as part of something such as an application launch or exit. Here, we derive our basic application flow, which we then use to build a basic framework for presenting and transitioning between arbitrary screens.

In the first chapter, we saw the complete Space-Truckers game in all its glory and beauty. We then immediately went on to create the loading screen’s animation in the Playground before slowing down a bit to build out the supporting application infrastructure that the game will need. It may feel seem to be a bit of a let-down that we’ve been focusing so much on things that aren’t part of the game’s design...