Week 7 lab 6
Objective: Reverse engineering of the tutorial games on Blender’s tool kit
Method: Identifying the controller system and actuators in an already existing game.
This is a good way to do it:
Look at each layer
Identify which objects are on each layer and why
Often something that looks complicated may have only a few active objects, each one has its own logic editor.
Open the Logic Editor
See which objects are active, dynamic and static as well as the other physics.
Go into the logic editors for specific objects.
Examine the flow of the sensors, controllers, and actuators.
Examine which properties have been added. One example is the Kill By Accident object. It has a function added which controlled the amount of time it took for the ball in the game to “die”.
Note – Keep as many objects as dumb as possible. This keeps the processing requirement less taxing and makes programing easier.
Figure out how each object is activated or gets its triggering input. Then follow it through. Then look at how that object interacts with the other objects, i.e. what are its properties as well?
Asset management is huge problem when developing big projects. Therefore teams in different locations often work on different parts of the game all over the world. One team in England might do sound while another in New York is working on characters and yet another in California is working on background settings.
Then when the time comes to render it, you need a very powerful computer array. Pixar pictures can take hundreds of hours even with dozens of computers.
Result: I now understand how to deconstruct something I have conceptualized into manageable parts and then start to build it from the ground up.
