Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing. Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why. You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

In-game HUD


While playing a game, players expect to have certain pieces of information on their screen, such as their health, or score, or how many lives they have left. These displays can collectively be called the Heads Up Display, or HUD. Our game is no different, and since we're working on GUI elements, we should start building a HUD to report some information to the player.

Creating our HUD is going to require some DirectGUI objects, and also some simple flat polygons with textures on them, just like the ones we gave to our DirectFrames and DirectButtons when we created the menus.

For things such as the shield and speed bars, our best option for controlling the up and down action is texture manipulation. If we used scaling on curved bars, it would distort the shape of the bar, and it would also compress the nice color gradients when the bars get low. Instead, we'll take advantage of something we learned in the last chapter about textures.

When we were talking about texture modes, we mentioned...