Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6. Where to Go from Here
We've finally reached the end of our journey for now, but there is far more to learn
about game programming. Along the way, we learned how to begin building a game
development framework to build on in the future, handle user input with DirectInput
and XInput, render 2D graphics and tile-based worlds with Direct2D, add sound and
music to our game worlds with DirectSound and XAudio2, and lastly, how to do basic
3D graphics rendering with Direct3D. So, in this chapter, we will take a look at where
to go from here in expanding your game development knowledge as well as a handful
of important topics that we covered briefly in this topic and some that we didn't cover.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
• Clipping
• Collision detection
• Artificial Intelligence
• Physics
• Multithreaded programming
• Game design
• Further reading
Culling and clipping
We talked briefly about this concept in the previous chapter while working on our
Cube
demo.
Culling
in 2D terms means removing or skipping objects that are not
within the bounds of the screen rather than wasting time drawing things that aren't
visible anyway. In 3D terms, the meaning is much the same, but it's obviously a bit
more complicated since you have that third dimension to deal with.
Clipping
is the removal of the portions of individual triangles of our game objects that
are not seen fully on the screen. The part of the triangle that is off screen is removed.
Direct3D handles clipping for us in its graphics pipeline, but the culling is left to us.
Culling is the removal or skipping of entire objects in the scene that do not need to
be drawn, since they are not currently visible. Direct3D can do backface culling for us
though. This is the removal of the back face of a triangle that is facing away from the
camera. We can't see it, so we don't need to draw it.
