Game Development Tool Essentials

  • 3h 5m
  • Alessandro Ardolino, et al.
  • Apress
  • 2014

Game Development Tool Essentials provides must-have tips and tricks from industry professionals for strengthening and streamlining your game tools pipeline. Everyone knows the game tools pipeline is important, but in the current environment of shrinking budgets and increased time pressure, developers often have to settle for inefficient, ad hoc, messy pipelines.

This unique book will break you out of that cycle. The practical, expert insights contained within will enable you to work faster and more efficiently, so you can spend more time making cool things. Game Development Tool Essentials pools the knowledge and experience of working developers over four critical aspects of the game tools pipeline: asset and data management, geometry and models, Web tools, and programming. Within those sections, you will learn cutting-edge techniques on essential subjects such as COLLADA rendering, exporting and workflow; asset management and compiler architecture; and moving tools to the cloud. If you’re a game developer, you need Game Development Tool Essentials.

  • Covers readily available tools and tools developers can build themselves.
  • Presents 96 code samples, 81 illustrations, and end-of-chapter references.
  • Special chapter on moving tools to the cloud.

What you’ll learn

  • Set up and code a plug-in-based asset compiler that can help convert a variety of asset types.
  • Create a complex polygon pattern (Voronoi diagram) using MAXScript.
  • Learn how to use the Khronos COLLADA CTS to build a rock solid 3D content pipeline.
  • Discover powerful tricks for using OS X Scene Kit to render COLLADA assets.
  • Build full-featured online game development tools easily with Django.
  • Move companion tools out of the game engine and into Web applications.

About the Author

Paula Berinstein is the author of numerous how-to books and articles and former producer/host of The Writing Show podcast. She wrote the COLLADA CTS for the Khronos Group and is a former member of the Khronos COLLADA work group.

In this Book

  • Plug-in–based Asset Compiler Architecture
  • GFX Asset Data Management
  • Geometry and Models: 3D Format Conversion (FBX, COLLADA)
  • Building Procedural Geometry Using MAXScript (Voronoi Polygons)
  • A Uniform Geometry Workflow for Cutscenes and Animated Feature Films
  • Building a Rock-Solid Content Pipeline with the COLLADA Conformance Test Suite
  • Rendering COLLADA Assets on Mac OS X with Scene Kit
  • COLLADA Exporter for Unity Developers in the Unity Asset Store
  • Introduction to Utilizing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to Create Rich Debugging Information
  • Moving Tools to the Cloud: Control, Configure, Monitor, and View Your Game with WebSocket
  • Programming: Decoupling Game Tool GUIs from Core Editing Operations
  • Building a Game Prototyping Tool for Android Mobile Devices
  • Engineering Domain-Specific Languages for Games
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