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

Implementing the Game Mechanics

The focus of the previous chapters was solidly on building an application foundation for Space-Truckers. Now, it’s time to shift gears (as it were) and look at the way we want to implement the game for its first phase: Route Planning. As we usually want to do when faced with a single, daunting, complex problem, we break down this part of the game into two principal facets: simulation and game elements. Throughout this chapter, we’ll start by looking at the simulation part of the game before layering the game mechanics on top of the simulation in a way that gives us the freedom to iterate.

It’s a common tactic of reality shows and gameshows where the host will give a wind-up speech that seems to indicate that they’re about to get to the big reveal, but then instead the show cuts to a commercial. This is relevant because we’re going to perform a similar headfake – instead of diving directly into the exciting...