Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
to impress Disney with their approach on 3D graphics animation. They simply
showed dynamic shadows using venetian blinds falling on an environment across a
scene, a job which could not be done by traditional animation. That demonstration
was worth a thousand words. You do not need shadow tricks to impress the audi-
ence; a character that can be seen from different angles dynamically in real time is
already a good start. In Astronaut is Gone, a rock rotating in three-dimensions and
demonstrating all elements of its geometry looks much better than a sprite rotating
only clockwise or counter-clockwise.
The technology rewards you with more flexibility and freedom, thus letting you con-
trol any scene more boldly. In some cases, it also makes the process of porting the
game to another platform, such as computers, more comfortable. 3D graphics are
vector-based; so, they can be easily scaled by solving the problems about different
screen size, aspect ratios, and so on. There would be some issues with textures and
the number of polygons, but they can be managed.
Of course, on the other hand, 3D engines may require some additional knowledge.
Most importantly, the assets for them are more complex. They need special efforts
on modeling, animation, texture creation, and so on. You must be ready for such a
challenge. It is also a question of appropriate optimization. Modern mobile devices
are pretty powerful, and nevertheless, they are not as talented as desktop computers
or gaming consoles yet. You can prove it yourself by looking at compatible tables of
GPU tests on special sites such as GFXBench (
http://gfxbench.com
)
, which shows
that the average desktop video cards have better results by several digits than video
chips of popular smartphones. So, the visual complexity can be an issue (keep in
mind that a game should be oriented on the average models of mobile devices that
the majority of consumers have now rather than on fresh, new devices that are more
powerful but not common yet). Usually, it is not a problem of a single object made up
of a large number of polygons. But the situation is more complex; materials, textures
with alpha-channels, post-processing operations, and the overall number of objects
in the scene may overload the GPU, thus decreasing the FPS dramatically.
Additional calculations such as AI or other complex game logics can take their por-
tion of resources. So, it is always about appropriate equilibrium, and usually, the situ-
ation is different for each project because the conditions and number of variables
can be different in each particular case. It also depends on the gaming context. So-
metimes, it is a task to find out the right harmony. For example, most of your scenes
are calm. There are few objects on the screen. The high frame rate tempts you to
think about extra tris for the models, but then, there is a battle. Suddenly, a big com-
