I was wondering if bump/normal/ and alpha maps can be used in real time (BGE). I’m starting to get into all this mapping stuff (still a bit flustered about it), and perhaps I may need a few more tutorials to fully grasp it all. But if you guys could answer this question and perhaps some links to some tutorials, that will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
As of 2.48, Blender now supports realtime glsl materials, which means you can have bump/normal maps in the game engine. Here’s a quick tutorial on normal maps: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=138194
You won’t always need to make a high-poly model, you can apply normal maps directly to a mesh. Alpha maps are also supported, but I reccomend using an image format with an alpha channel.