menno gouw - Developer IT

Hardware instancing for voxel engine

- by Menno Gouw

i just did the tutorial on Hardware Instancing from this source: http://www.float4x4.net/index.php/2011/07/hardware-instancing-for-pc-in-xna-4-with-textures/. Somewhere between 900.000 and 1.000.000 draw calls for the cube i get this error "XNA Framework HiDef profile supports a maximum VertexBuffer size of 67108863." while still running smoothly on 900k. That is slightly less then 100x100x100 which are a exactly a million. Now i have seen voxel engines with very "tiny" voxels, you easily get to 1.000.000 cubes in view with rough terrain and a decent far plane. Obviously i can optimize a lot in the geometry buffer method, like rendering only visible faces of a cube or using larger faces covering multiple cubes if the area is flat. But is a vertex buffer of roughly 67mb the max i can work with or can i create multiple?

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Separate collision mesh model?

- by Menno Gouw

I want to have another go at 3D within XNA. What I have seen from some other games that they just have a separate very low poly model "cage" around the environment model. However I can not find any reference to this. I have not that much experience with XNA 3D either. Is it possible to have this cage within each of my environmental models already? Lets just say I call the mesh within the .FBX wall and col_wall. How would I call to these different meshes within XNA? The player would just have a tight collision cube around. To make it a bit more efficient I will be making divide the map up by cubes and only calculate collision if the player is in it. Question two: I can't find anywhere to do cube vs mesh collision. Is there a method for this? Or perhaps it is possible to build my collision cage out of cubes in the 3D app and on loading of the models in XNA replace them directly by cubes? So I could just do box to box collision which should be very cheap and still give the player the ability to move over ledges on the static models.

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UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME error on laptop with no CD Drive

- by Menno

I am getting the UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME error on my Samsung laptop which does not have a CD Rom drive. I tried to merge the C and D partitions to get more space but since then the laptop does not start up anymore. I dont care about the laptop, just about some pictures on there which I did not back up yet. I really hope someone can help me?!! I am a new user, so cant post pictures, but can send a screenshot if needed.

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Converting a DWG/DXF to CSV or Excel

- by Menno Gouw

I'm using ZWcad and i need to get the coordinates of hundreds of blocks into a excel sheet or .CSV file so i can import that into the GPS hardware. I know there are plenty of tools for autocad, i probably can even write one myself but as far as ZWcad goes i seem to be out of options. However ZWcad saves to DWG too, and exports to all the other familiar cad extensions. So i was wondering if i would just save the blocks i need to export to a certain file there might be a tool/program to convert that directly into .CSV.

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Tool for generating flat files from SQL objects dynamically

- by Fabio Gouw

Hello! I'm looking for a tool or component that generates flat files given a SQL Server's query result (from a stored procedure or a SELECT * over a table or view). This will be a batch process which runs every day, and every day a new file is created. I could use SQL Server Integration Services (DTS), but I have a mandatory requirement: the output of the file need to be dynamic. If a new column is added in my query result, the file must have this new column too, without having to modify my SSIS package. If a column is removed, then the flat file no longer will have it. I’ve tried to do this with SSIS, but when I create a new package I need to specify the number of columns. Another requirement is configuring the format of the output, depending on the data type of the column. If it’s a datetime, the format needs to be YYYY-MM-DD. If it’s a float, then I need to use 2 decimal digits, and so on. Does anyone know a tool that does this job? Thanks

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Not compile code blocks when publishing?

- by Menno Gouw

I have many lines i just use for debugging and helpers. Is there a way i can mark these so they do not compile when publishing a project but still can use when running/debugging my program within Eclipse? Even better would be to mark a certain field as debug only and discard everything that has to do with that field completely when publishing. I understand this might get one in trouble when using fields like that and using that in critical parts of the code. But i often find myself initializing a lot of debug fields then comment them out which results in errors down the line if i do not comment those out as well. So is there some way to handle this in a better and more efficient way?

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Can't access variables from dynamically loaded javascript

- by Menno

I'm using a fairly simple system to load javascript dynamically: include = function (url) { var e = document.createElement("script"); e.src = url; e.type="text/javascript"; document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(e); }; Let's say I have a file test.js which has the following contents: var foo = 4; Now, in my original script, I want to use include(test.js); console.log(foo); However, I get a 'foo has not been defined' error on this. I'm guessing it has to do with the dynamic script being included as the last child of the <head> tag. How can I get this to work?

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RSS feed doesnt display items. Only title

- by Quaze

So i just made my first RSS feed, or so i tought, in combination with CI. Now my view DOES display the top of my rss page (Title and Description), But all items are omitted. When i rightclick-view source it DOES contain all the items within the item tags. Can anyone help me? View (rss.php): <?php echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="'.$encoding.'"?>'."\n"; ?> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"> <channel> <title><?php echo $feed_name; ?></title> <link><?php echo $feed_url; ?></link> <description><?php echo $page_description; ?></description> <dc:language><?php echo $page_language; ?></dc:language> <dc:creator><?php echo $creator_email; ?></dc:creator> <dc:rights>Copyright <?php echo gmdate("%Y", time()); ?></dc:rights> <dc:date><?php echo gmdate("%Y-%m-&#xdT;%H:%i:%s%Q", time()); ?></dc:date> <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.codeigniter.com/" /> <?php foreach($items as $entry): ?> <?php $entry_url = base_url().$this->lang->lang().$localized_news[$this->lang->lang()].'/'.print_date(strtotime($entry->published), "{year}/{month2}").'/'.$entry->slug; ?> <item> <title><?php echo xml_convert($entry->title); ?></title> <link><?php echo $entry_url; ?></link> <guid><?php echo $entry_url; ?></guid> <description><?php echo $entry->summary; ?></description> <pubDate><?php echo date('r', $entry->published); ?></pubDate> </item> <?php endforeach; ?> </channel> This is what the output looks like: screenshot and in the source, every item needed to be displayed is there. with <item> <link> <description> <guid> and <pubdate> tags. Ive been looking for the cause for about 1.5 hours now. and i cant find anything. Can someone tell me if i did anything wrong? Appreciate the help! ~Menno

Developer IT