Learning ShiVa3D Game Development

167 Pages·2012·4.034 MB·English

by  Wade Tracy

Learning ShiVa3D Game
Development
Get a grip on ShiVa3D mobile game development
with this step-by-step, hands-on tutorial
Wade Tracy
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Learning ShiVa3D Game Development
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: November 2012
Production Reference: 1161112
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-350-9
www.packtpub.com
Credits
Author Technical Editor
Wade Tracy Dominic Pereira
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Zachary Burke Shraddha Bagadia
Marc Schaerer
Proofreader
Maria Gould
Acquisition Editor
Kartikey Pandey
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Commissioning Editors
Shreerang Deshpande
Maria D'souza Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'sa
Yogesh Dalvi
Ameya Sawant
Cover Work
Priyanka Shah
Melwyn D'sa
Cover Image
Conidon Miranda
About the Author
Wade Tracy is the founder of Subspace Games, which was created with the intent
of inviting the Internet audience to learn game development and design alongside
him. He has experience of developing mobile applications for Blackberry devices
and currently develops enterprise applications using the .NET framework. More
than anything he enjoys spending time with his family.
I'd like to thank Amy, Abby, Liam, Matthew, and Justin for their
constant support. In this family we have the best of everything—
each other. Special thanks also go to Bryan "The Idea Man" Guzman.
"Inspiration and genius—one and the same." – Victor Hugo
About the Reviewer
Zachary Burke has a formal education in electrical engineering and has been
trying to make video games since he was seven years old. He has been a dedicated
ShiVa user since early 2011, and you'll find him on the forums as error454.
As well as having a successful career in the mobile industry, he moonlights
as a game designer and developer for his own company, Hypercane Studios.
Marc Schaerer is a thirty-one-year old interactive media software engineer
working as a freelance developer and consultant.
After years of self-tutoring in various game development related fields, he
immatriculated at ETH Zurich, a major global institution in research and training
new engineers, where he studied Computer Science and Computational Science
and Engineering.
Armed with the indepth background gained at ETH and forced by the lack of
presence of interactive and gaming industry in Switzerland, he funded Gayasoft to
work as a remote freelance game software engineer and technical consultant for a
variety of smaller and bigger global customers, including Solstar Games where he
took over the lead developer position for their MMO technology suite Realm Crafter,
before leaving to move to ShiVa 3D and the Unity interactive engine technologies in
2008, which since then became his main tools to create immersive, interactive 2D and
3D experiences for the Web and mobile.
With the technological change in the society initially started by the growing usage of
the new generations of smart phones, his interest broadened to cover games in their
complete form including interactive trainings, interactive tutoring, serious games,
and gamification. This interest lead him to Living Artz in 2010–2011, where he filled
the role as a programmer on a major 3D online virtual community project featuring
an immersive learning environment, followed later in 2011 by a lead developer
position on Popper (http://www.popper.org), an interactive 3D behavioral research
platform powered by Unity and ExitGames Photon, but this interest also raised
his interest in helping others to create immersive experiences for users, be it for
entertainment, learning, or serious games.
I would like to thank Shraddha Bagadia and Ameya Sawant from
Packt for their support, my family for supporting me, and the author
for the work invested in this book.
www.PacktPub.com
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started 9
System requirements 9
Downloading ShiVa3D 10
Installing ShiVa3D 10
The ShiVa editor 11
Creating a project 12
Creating a game 13
Making a scene 13
Importing models 14
Editing the scene 18
Adding intelligence 20
Variables 21
Handlers 22
Summary 25
Chapter 2: Editor Fundamentals 27
The ShiVa3D editor 27
Program menu 28
The Modules 30
The AI Debugger module 31
AI Model Editor 31
Ambience Editor 32
Attributes Editor 32
Data Explorer 32
Game Editor 32
HUD Editor 32
Log Reporter 33
PolyTrail Editor 33