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

Technical Requirements

This is the first time that we’re going to be expanding the technical requirements, but it should hardly be a surprise to anyone that to work with a particular type of input device – be it a mouse and keyboard, Xbox™ controller, Sony PlayStation™ controller, or even a VR joystick – it is necessary to either have one of such devices handy or (worst case) download and install a suitable emulator/simulation app. That said, Space-Truckers should be playable with the following input types:

  • Keyboard and mouse
  • Virtual joysticks/touch screen
  • Xbox™ controller
  • Sony PlayStation™ controller
  • Generic gamepads

An appropriate audio output device will be needed to play music and sounds.

This chapter will follow a similar pattern as previous chapters, where we will build out one or more PlayGround snippets before integrating them into the application’s code base. The code we’ll be...