Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

FIGURE 3-9
Omni particles emitted
C H A P T E R 3
visually interesting results. Gravity is an example of a field you can play with. You
can create attraction and repulsion factors for your fields.
In Figure 3-10, I’ve simply added a turbulence field to start to shape the particles
toward something resembling smoke or steam behavior in my animation sequence as
particles begin to billow away from a source point.
After you begin to learn how field forces affect particles, you can build up more sophisticated
behaviors. Maybe you want to create bee swarms, or create ice chips
blasting and streaking off an ice skater’s blade. There are endless possibilities, each
with certain visual impact. Very cool stuff.
Now for a little game development reality check. How a specific game engine or engine
toolset handles particle system data and particle assets depends entirely on which
game engine or toolset it is. Each has unique hand-off or asset import/export challenges.
Exporting Particles and Dynamics Information
Game developers have several choices to make when working with and utilizing particle
systems and dynamics. There are a couple of common pathways:
� Build complete particle systems and manipulation tools into your own editors.
� Import particle system data from Maya or 3ds max and then re-create it
within the game engine.
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Lighting, Texturing, Particles, Effects, and Audio