Game Engine Architecture

39 Some examples of full-screen post eff ects include z high dynamic range (HDR) lighting and bloom ; z full-screen anti-aliasin ...

40 1. Introduction earlier (either rendered with the game’s rendering engine or using another rendering package). A related syst ...

1.6. Runtime Engine Architecture 41 z tools that allow debug print statements to be peppered throughout the code, along with an ...

42 1. Introduction SDK is now owned and distributed by NVIDIA, and the company is adapting PhysX to run on its latest GPUs. Open ...

43 You’ll notice in Figure 1.11 that Skeletal Mesh Rendering is a component that bridges the gap between the renderer and the an ...

44 1. Introduction 1.6.13. Audio Audio is just as important as graphics in any game engine. Unfortunately, audio oft en gets les ...

45 sistent, online virtual world hosted by a powerful batt ery of central servers. The multiplayer networking layer is shown in ...

46 1. Introduction that I’ll call the gameplay foundations layer (for lack of a standardized name). Shown in Figure 1.29, this l ...

47 z How will objects be uniquely identifi ed? By address in memory only? By name? By a global unique identifi er (GUID)? z How ...

48 1. Introduction z a network of path nodes or roaming volumes, that defi nes areas or paths where AI characters are free to mo ...

1.7. Tools and the Asset Pipeline 49 the list goes on. If a clear line could be drawn between the engine and the game, it would ...

50 1. Introduction Digital Content Creation (DCC) Tools Game World Game Object Mesh Skeletal Hierarchy Exporter Skel. Hierarchy ...

51 game engine typically only needs a tiny fraction of this information in order to render the model in-game. The DCC applicati ...

52 1. Introduction tices. (A mesh might also be constructed from quads or higher-order subdivi- sion surfaces. But on today’s gr ...

53 The mesh and skeleton are oft en exported from the DCC application as a sin- gle data fi le. However, if multiple meshes are ...

54 1. Introduction z Some variant of the Radiant game editor is used by most game engines based on Quake technology; z The Half- ...

55 avoids a common problem of having to have two representations of every data structure – one for the runtime engine and one fo ...

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57 2 Tools of the Trade B efore we embark on our journey across the fascinating landscape of game engine architecture, it is imp ...

58 2. Tools of the Trade can be tracked and reverted if necessary. It permits multiple users to modify fi les—even the same fi l ...