Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Design Strategies
As mentioned in Chapter 2, one of the goals to designing a game environment is to be able to hide,
or
occlusion cull
, objects that are covered up or occluded by other objects, preferably on a large-
scale basis. It's not by chance that the garden walls are high and the gates fully block the entryway.
Once the layout of the modular pieces of the garden is finished, you will have a fully self-contained
section of the scene. When the character is inside it, you will safely be able to deactivate other
garden modules. For the topic's project, you will start the game in a staging area where the player
can get used to controlling the Gnomatic Garden defender before the game play begins in earnest.
Besides the concept of occlusion culling, there is another issue that comes with a third-person point
of view, and that is camera management. If the game was set in a large open area with nothing
higher than a corn stalk, there would be nothing that the camera could collide with. In the walled
area, every time the character gets near a wall and turns around, the camera will go through the wall.
Besides the visual interruption of the game's “suspension of disbelief,” it could put the view in a
position to see places that are fully empty of environment.
To avoid the camera issue for most of the garden, the GGD (Gnomatic Garden Defender) is constrained
to the walkways. Paths that do not lead to other garden modules can use the Planter Tower that
blocks the character from getting too close to the wall, or they could use some other device, such as
a wheelbarrow or stack of potting-soil bags, as a logical barrier. While it is easy to drop in an invisible
collider for a barrier, the player is likely to resent having the character's movement blocked for no
logical reason. Unless, of course, it is part of the game play, in which case there would probably be
some sort of audio or visual effect to go with the character colliding with the barrier.
1.
Open the GardenSetUp scene from the previous chapter.
2.
Save the scene as
GardenLevel1
.
Although there is no naming convention used particularly for scenes, keeping the names clear of
spaces will allow you to use the name itself as a value available from a drop-down list later on.
With three scenes cluttering the Project view, now would be a good time to create a folder for them.
3.
Create a new folder, and name it
Scenes
.
4.
Move the three scenes into it.
Creating the Environment
You already have almost everything you will require to build your game environment. In this section,
you will start bringing the pieces together and learn how to manage them for more efficiency. To
begin, you will be using the prefabs you have created in the earlier chapters to quickly fabricate your
game environment. Because an environment must be tested for flow before it can truly be called a
game
environment, you will have to finish more of the Gnomatic Garden Defender's functionality so
you can move through the scene as a player. Once the character is mobile in the scene, you will be
able to improve the efficiency of the environment with some basic occlusion culling.
