Use height from the heightmap figures and

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FIGURE 2.8.5 Two multifractal landscapes. Note how there are valleys, plains, hills, and tall mountains all in the same landscape.

Steve Rabin, Nintendo of America

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The alternative is to employ event-driven techniques whenever possible. For example, in a baseball game when the ball is initially hit, the ball could simply tell the fielders that it was hit. This is extremely more efficient than each fielder polling the situation to detect when the batter has hit the ball. Granted, this is an obvious use of event-driven behavior, but it still shows the magnitude of processing that can be saved by using an event-driven strategy.

Another example would be of an arrow flying through a battlefield. Normally, the arrow would be checking for collisions with characters. If the arrow strikes a character, it would then notify the character of the collision as well as the location. The charac-ter could then react appropriately, responding to where the arrow pierced him. While this is starting to be event driven, nothing too spectacular has happened yet.