Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Getting More Familiar with the BGE
Environment
The BGE environment is fairly straightforward to use. As is the case with ordinary rendered animations, layers
in the 3D viewport are used to determine what is rendered (in fact, layers have a bit of extra meaning in the
game engine context, which you'll learn more about in the following chapter). Pressing P in Object mode ac-
tivates the game engine and begins game play. Pressing Esc ends the game play and returns to Blender proper.
Many new Blender users unfamiliar with the game engine have given themselves a shock by pressing P and
watching Blender appear to freeze before their eyes. Simple as it is, there are a few things you need to be aware
of in order to set up a game-based environment based on assets created in other files, and a few points about
how things work in the game engine environment are worth being aware of before you go further.
Placing Your Objects in the Game World
The first thing you will want to do is to add the objects you have created for your game into a new Blender
file representing the game itself. This is done by using the Append function. In this example, you'll begin by
appending the skybox and the maze to a new file. Adding the character and armature will be left as an exercise
to do on your own.
To add the skybox and maze to your game environment, follow these steps:
1.
Start a new session of Blender and delete the default cube with the X key. From the File menu,
select Append, as shown in
Figure 14-69
. A file browser window opens. Navigate to the location of the
sky.blend
file you created previously. The Blender file browser treats
.blend
files as filesystems
themselves, so you can navigate into that file as though it were a directory. Drill down into the
Object
directory andselect theobject called Skybox,asshownin
Figure14-70
.
Click LoadLibrary,andthesky-
box appears in your 3D space.
