708 13. Introduction to Gameplay Systems
the entire database of game assets, from animations to audio clips to triangle
meshes to textures to materials and shaders and much more. UnrealEd pro-
vides its user with a unifi ed, real-time, WYSIWYG view into the entire asset
database, making it a powerful enabler of any rapid, effi cient game develop-
ment process. A few screen shots from UnrealEd are shown in Figure 13.7 and
Figure 13.8.13.4.2.1. Data Processing Costs
In Section 6.2.1, we learned that the asset conditioning pipeline (ACP) con-
verts game assets from their various source formats into the formats required
by the game engine. This is typically a two-step process. First, the asset is
exported from the DCC application to a platform-independent intermediate
format that only contains the data that is relevant to the game. Second, the
asset is processed into a format that is optimized for a specifi c platform. On a
project targeting multiple gaming platforms, a single platform-independent
asset gives rise to multiple platform-specifi c assets during this second phase.
One of the key diff erences between tools pipelines is the point at which
this second platform-specifi c optimization step is performed. UnrealEd per-Figure 13.8. UnrealEd also provides a world editor.