Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Glossary
Additive Color:
a color mixing system for light, in which red, green and blue light will combine to create
white light.
Affordance:
a term popularized by Donald Norman in 1988, which referred to the actual and perceived
qualities of an object or its design that implied to the observer how it could be used. For instance,
the affordance of a doorknob and its inherent usage is implied by its shape and position on a door.
Ambient Light:
in 3D computer graphics, ambient lighting is represented by a widespread distribution of soft
light of one color over the objects of an entire scene. This effect is created with rendering settings on
the textures of 3D objects, as well as by the addition of diffuse sources of light into the scene.
Ambient Occlusion:
a realtime lighting effect applied when the Advanced Lighting is selected in the
Firestorm viewer (Avatar/Preferences/Graphics/). This creates the effect of soft shadows and shades
of gray in areas that are occluded or blocked from the source of global illumination. This effect also
found in 3D modelers like 3DS Max and Blender, and used for creating additional lighting detail
in a scene.
Anechoic chamber:
an echoless soundproof room used for audio testing.
API (Application Program Interface):
is a system or group of programming directions, instructions or stan-
dards that allows the user of one program to access speciic parts of the program or data from others,
or to ask one piece of software to perform services for another program.
Atmospheric perspective:
the creation of a sense of perspective within a landscape by increasing color fade
and blurriness of background elements as they retreat in distance from the viewpoint.
Avat a r:
a 3D igure, sometimes human, and sometimes another species that represents a person, or an
artiicial intelligence program inside a virtual world. An avatar communicates and interacts with
the other people or their avatars.
“Baking” Lighting:
creating special textures for objects in a 3D scene that have the highlights and shadows
rendered (baked) onto their surfaces, in addition to the colors and patterns inherent to the texture
itself. This approach to creating content adds the effect of lighting to a scene without the need for
any real time shadow rendering by the graphics card.
Binaural:
hearing sound from two microphones, two channels, or two ears. This is how people with normal
hearing perceive the world. Comparison by the brain of the two signals tells us where the sound is
located and if it is moving.
COLLADA (.dae) ile:
a Digital Asset Exchange ile format (.dae) used to exchange 3D content between
3D modeling programs and to upload those mesh models into virtual worlds and gaming engines.
Composition:
arrangement of items in a 3D design to create a balanced image from all visible sides. This
includes lighting, sound, and the elements of Line, Space, Shape, Form, Color, and Texture.
Design for all:
see Universal Design
Diegesis:
to tell a story with the use of a spoken narrative, as opposed to Mimesis, which is telling a story
by visually acting it out.
Doppler Effect:
this effect, also known as Doppler pitch shifting is the pitch shifting effect heard by a
listener as a sound emitter moves by quickly. The relative velocities of the emitter and listener are
compared and the resultant calculation used to change the pitch of the emitter's sound.
First person camera:
a point of view provided by a game or avatar's camera that does not allow the person
playing to see themselves, but only the view as they would see it from their eye position, similar
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