Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

C H A P T E R 3
It’s important to remember that, when you’re building games, you really are innovating
along the way. Having confidence in your cornerstone elements is the first step
toward jumping into the fray.
The Moonlight Forest Example
Now it’s time to go for it! Choose an environmental editor from your favorite game
(for example, Unreal 2 or Jedi Knights 2) or download a free one from
www.wildtangent.com (visit the Developer Central section and download
WTStudio and the WTStudio Sample Project, so that you have some assets to work
with). Try to construct a simple scene using the assets provided. I built a very simple
forest under moonlight with a tree smoking in the background from a lightning-bolt
hit. The following are the areas to focus on:
� Understanding basic lighting concepts
� Applying, shifting, and scaling textures
� Creating a basic particle emitter
� Adding a sound
� Loading an actor into a scene
Figure 3-14 is a quick example of how to get started learning more about each of
the areas we’ve discussed in this chapter. The following are the steps that I used to put
together this example using WildTangent Studio:
1. Start with a default room and resize it to make it a little bigger.
2. Put a space texture on the surrounding horizon walls.
3. Put a grass texture on the ground.
4. Create two cylinders. Scale one down as a cut, and sink the smaller one
into the floor and put a water texture on the surface and stone textures
on the sides.
5. Load some “tree” actors and size and scale them into position.
6. Create an emitter and assign it a sprite smoke bitmap.
7. Create two point lights and a spotlight. The first point light is the ambient
global light and is positioned in the upper right of the scene in the position
of the moon. The second point light is on the surface of the fountain to
simulate a reflection from the water. The spotlight is targeted on the
fountain from the moon’s position.
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Lighting, Texturing, Particles, Effects, and Audio