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

Defining the Rules – Game Mechanics

Typical business application development focuses on dividing the responsibilities of the application into logical segments that layer on top of one another, with the user on one side and the application’s foundational infrastructure on the other. Data and commands pass sequentially from one layer to another as user-initiated events propagate in concert with system and application events. Ideally, the code has the qualities of both being loosely coupled and tightly cohesive.

This may sound like a paradox or contradiction – how can something be both loose and tight at the same time? The answer is that it can be both because the two qualities tend to be inversely correlated with each other. Loose coupling between components means that making changes to one has little to no effect on the other. A tightly cohesive system is one where functionality is confined to a small number of code or application components; everything needed...