Ansari Game Development Tools

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4398-6772-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 688 Seiten

This book brings the insights of game professionals, DCC creators, hardware vendors, and current researchers together into a collection that focuses on the most underrepresented and critical part of game production: tools development. The first gems-type book dedicated to game tools, this volume focuses on practical, implementable tools for game development professionals. Topics range from asset tracking to improving remote version control performance to robust and efficient IO. Technical artists, as well as game play, audio, and graphics programmers will find new tools to improve work flow and help build games faster.

Zielgruppe

Game designers/developers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ansari, Marwan

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Professionelle Anwendung Computersimulation & Modelle, 3-D Graphik
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Programmierung | Softwareentwicklung Spiele-Programmierung, Rendering, Animation
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Professionelle Anwendung Interaktionsdesign für Computerspiele

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY

Taming the Beast: Managing Complexity in Game Build Pipelines, Fernando Navarro
Introduction

The Asset Build Pipeline

Dependencies

How to Determine Dependencies

How to Use Dependencies to Your Benefit

Advanced Techniques

Minimizing the Impact of Build Failures

Conclusions

Bibliography

Game Streaming: A Planned Approach, Jeffrey Aydelotte and Amir Ebrahimi
Introduction

Integrating Streaming from Day One

Passive Requests: The Art of Asset Streaming

Bluer Skies

Conclusion

Bibliography

Workflow Improvement via Automatic Asset Tracking, Matt Greene and William Smith
Introduction

Historical Drawbacks of Manual Asset Tracking

Automatically Building an Asset Database Using the Xbox 360
Rapid Development of the MATT Tool Using Python

Automating In-Game Search with the BugViewer

Lessons Learned

Continuous Integration for Games, Steven Ramirez
Introduction

Build Pipelines: How Do They Work?

Using CCNet and More!

Conclusion

Bibliography

Persistence Management of Asset Metadata and Tags, Jaewon Jung
Introduction

Usual Metadata

Tags

Other Considerations

Conclusion

Bibliography

Real-Time Tool Communication, Alan Kimball
Introduction

Integrated Editors

Real-Time Communication

Properties

Robust Data

Null Checking

Copying Data

Complicated Assets

Conclusion

Robust File I/O, Alan Kimball
Introduction

Existing Technologies

Object Databases

Disk Image

Conclusions

BUILDABLE TOOLS
Real-Time Constructive Solid Geometry, Sander van Rossen and Matthew Baranowski
Introduction

The CSG Algorithm

Mesh Optimization

Conclusions

Bibliography

A COLLADA Toolbox, Remi Arnaud
Introduction

Conformance Test

Schema Validation

Editing a COLLADA Document

Coherency Test

Patching XML Notepad

Unique ID, Name versus ID

XPath

Absolute versus Relative Paths

Refinery

XSLT
Conclusion

Bibliography

Shape-Preserving Terrain Decimation and Associated Tools, David Eberly
Introduction

The Decimation Algorithm
Processing the Lofted Roads

Variations in the Content Pipeline

An Example

Bibliography

In-Game Audio Debugging Tools, Simon Franco
Introduction

Tools to Debug Sound Systems

Conclusion

Pragmatic XML Use in Tools, Amir Ebrahimi
Introduction

XML Specification

Parsing XML

Enter Stage: XML Serialization

Minimaxima: A Case Study

Conclusion

Bibliography

Low Coupling Command System, Gustavo A. Carrazoni
Introduction

The Most Basic Command

Low Coupling

Improvements to the Command System

Bibliography

Object-Oriented Data, Alan Kimball
Introduction

Data Inheritance

Constants

Conclusion

Improving Remote Perforce Usage, Mike O’Connor
Introduction

Remote Reality

Productive by Proxy

Here Comes a New Challenger

A Parallel Approach

Putting It All Together

Conclusion

THIRD-PARTY TOOLS
Vector Displacement in the Sculpting Workflow, Craig Barr
Introduction

Overview: Vector Displacement
Creating Vector Displacement Maps: A Workflow Example in Mudbox

Vector Displacement and the Art Pipeline: Further Applications and Considerations

Conclusion

Bibliography

Optimizing a Task-Based Game Engine, Yannis Minadakis
Introduction

From Threads to Tasks

Profiling a Task-Based Game Engine

Task, Task, Task

Efficient Texture Creation with Genetica, Ichiro Lambe and Atlas Roufas
Introduction

Genetica’s Workflow and Philosophy

Principles for Efficient Asset Creation
Conclusion

Reducing Video Game Creation Effort with Eberos GML2D, Frank E. Hernandez and Francisco R. Ortega
Introduction

Reducing Effort

Conclusion

Bibliography

YAML for C++: Applied Data-Driven Design, Sebastien Noury and Samuel Boivin
Introduction

YAML Ain’t Markup Language

Seamless C++ Integration

Applying DDD to Real-World Scenarios

Conclusion

Bibliography

GPU Debugging and Profiling with NVIDIA Parallel Nsight, Kumar Iyer and Jeffrey Kiel
Introduction

Debugging a Full Direct3D Frame with the Graphics Inspector

Debugging an HLSL Shader
Profiling a Direct3D Frame using GPU Hardware Counters

Tracing Activity across Your CPU and GPU

Conclusion

FBX Games Development Tools, Trevor Adams and Mark Davies
Introduction

Exporting and Importing Game Assets

Extracting the Information from the.fbx File

FBX for QuickTime as a Game Development Tool

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Marwan Ansari is a software engineer for a Chicago-based games company. He has a B.S. in computer science and mathematics from DePaul University and an M.S. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has 15 years of experience in console games development, video drivers and demos, military simulators, and application and tools development. He specializes in 3D computer graphics and has been published in ShaderX^2 and Game Programming Gems 4.