Game Development Tool Essentials provides must-have tips and tricks from industry professionals for strengthening and streamlining your game tools pipeline. Everyone knows the game tools pipeline is important, but in the current environment of shrinking budgets and increased time pressure, developers often have to settle for inefficient, ad hoc, messy pipelines. This unique book will break you out of that cycle. The practical, expert insights contained within will enable you to work faster and more efficiently, so you can spend more time making cool things. Game Development Tool Essentials pools the knowledge and experience of working developers over four critical aspects of the game tools pipeline: asset and data management, geometry and models, Web tools, and programming. Within those sections, you will learn cutting-edge techniques on essential subjects such as COLLADA rendering, exporting and workflow; asset management and compiler architecture; and moving tools to the cloud.;Print version:;Part 1. Asset and data management ; Plug-in-based asset compiler architecture -- GFX asset data management -- Part 2. Geometry models ; Geometry and models : 3D format conversion (FBX, COLLADA) -- Building procedural geometry using MAXScript (Voronol polygons) -- A uniform geometry workflow for cutscenes and animated feature films -- Building a rock-solid content pipeline with the COLLADA conformance test suite -- Rendering COLLADA assets on Mac OS X with scene kit -- COLLADA exporter for Unity developers in the Unity asset story -- Part 3. Web tools ; Introduction to utilizing HTML, CSS, and JavaSript to create rich debugging information -- Moving tools to the cloud : control, configure, monitor, and view your game with WebSocket -- Part 4. Programming ; Programming : decoupling game tool GUIs from core editing operations -- Building a game prototyping tool for Andriod mobile devices -- Engineering domain-specific languages for games.