(Copyright © AiGameDev.com, 2015.)
In this course unit #2 we're looking at authoring, data-driven systems, and generative algebra. After that you can try crafting hands-on with procedural terrain à la MINECRAFT.
Remember: You have less than two weeks left to enroll for free! (Until end of 2015.)
Lesson 2.1 – Authoring
Here we unwrap the topic of content creation and authoring. You'll learn about authoring in practice, in particular the topics of modularity and factoring, and making tradeoffs between the two. Digging into how this is implemented in practice, you'll see how data-driven game engines work and the things you need in practice specifically for AI.
Lesson 2.2 – Data-Driven Systems
Dig with us into data-driven engines, how to structure files on disk, important features at runtime, and build pipelines. You'll see some interesting examples from a variety of projects, both commercial and open source, including Alien Arena and a fun case study for you to complete about Warzone 2100.
Lesson 2.3 – Generative Algebra
With this lesson we dive deeper into algebra, functions and their combination, distance fields and noise signals. You'll get the chance to try out different functions in a graphing calculator, figure out how combinations of functions work, then apply them as distance fields to generate procedural geometry in a shader.
Lab #2 – Procedural MINECRAFT
Your task is to generate an Arctic Island for Minecraft! In the process, you'll see how to apply distance fields in a discrete world, then dig in to an open source project for terrain generation and find some bugs, and finally integrate your own ideas to generate a great-looking Fjord-like terrain.
Questions and Last Chance for Free Enrollment
Questions and comments are always welcome in our official sub-Reddit!
If you have not yet enrolled in our course, be quick as you can do so for free only until the end of this year (less than two more weeks!) — after that it's included in our AiGameDev.com memberships.