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

Things are just getting some momentum, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to explore and extend what we’ve got already! Here are some ideas for things that you might look at, explore, or build into this chapter’s code:

  • Create or extend the regular Babylon.js Animation type’s capabilities to include 2D GUI controls – or – implement a class that mimics the behavior of the Animation object with GUI controls.
  • Can you spot the defect in the SpaceTruckerLoadingScreen.js code? It’s a bit subtle if you’re reading through it in your head, but there’s definitely a logical defect in the code. Running it won’t cause any errors to be thrown but it does have effects that are visible at runtime under the right conditions.
  • Instead of using a single, full-screen AdvancedDynamicTexture, use one or more mesh-attached textures that are painted onto the meshes in the scene, which can then be...