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• “Play Now” via website vs. download & install

  - by Inside

  I've spent some time looking over the various threads here on GDSE and also on the regular Stackoverflow site, and while I saw a lot of posts and threads regarding various engines that could be used in game development, I haven't seen very much discussion regarding the various platforms that they can be used on. In particular, I'm talking about browser games vs. desktop games. I want to develop a simple 3D networked multiplayer game - roughly on the graphics level of Paper Mario and gameplay with roughly the same level of interaction as a hack & slash action/adventure game - and I'm having a hard time deciding what platform I want to target with it. I have some experience with using C++/Ogre3D and Python/Panda3D (and also some synchronized/networked programming), but I'm wondering if it's worth it to spend the extra time to learn another language and another engine/toolkit just so that the game can be played in a browser window (I'm looking at jMonkeyEngine right now). Is it worth it to go with engines that are less-mature, have less documentation, have fewer features, and smaller communities* just so that a (possibly?) larger audience can be reached? Does it make sense to even go with a web-environment for the kind of game that I want to make? Does anyone have any experiences with decisions like this? (* With the exception of Flash-based engines it seems like most of the other approaches have downsides when compared to what is available for desktop-based environments. I'd go with Flash, but I'm worried that Flash's 3D capabilities aren't mature enough right now to do what I want easily. There's also Unity3D, but I'm not sure how I feel about that at all. It seems highly polished, but requires a plugin to be downloaded for the game to be played -- at that rate I might as well have players download my game.) For simple & short games the Newgrounds approach (go to the site, click "play now", instant gratification) seems to work well. What about for more complex games? Is there a point where the complexity of a game is enough for people to say "OK, I'm going to download and play that"?

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• Scene Graph as Object Container?

  - by Bunkai.Satori

  Scene graph contains game nodes representing game objects. At a first glance, it might seem practical to use Scene Graph as physical container for in game objects, instead of std::vector< for example. My question is, is it practical to use Scene Graph to contain the game objects, or should it be used only to define scene objects/nodes linkages, while keepig the objects stored in separate container, such as std::vector<?

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• This code is of chess game. What is represented by 'DISTANCE' in code? [closed]

  - by rajeshverma423

  package chess; public class Evaluate { public static final int PIECE_KING = 0; public static final int PIECE_QUEEN = 1; public static final int PIECE_ROOK = 2; public static final int PIECE_BISHOP = 3; public static final int PIECE_KNIGHT = 4; public static final int PIECE_PAWN = 5; public static final int FULL_BIT_RANK = 4080; public static final int LAZY_MARGIN = 100; public static final int ISOLATED_PENALTY = 10; public static final int DOUBLE_PENALTY = 4; public static final int[] PIECE_VALUE = { 0, 9, 5, 3, 3, 1 }; public static final int[] PASS_PAWN = { 0, 35, 30, 20, 10, 5 }; public static final byte[] DISTANCE = { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7, 6, 7, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 7 };

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• Will polishing my current project be a better learning experience than starting a new one?

  - by Alejandro Cámara

  I started programming many years ago. Now I'm trying to make games. I have read many recommendations to start cloning some well known games like galaga, tetris, arkanoid, etc. I have also read that I should go for the whole game (including menus, sound, score, etc.). Yesterday I finished the first complete version of my arkanoid clone. But it is far from over. I can still work on it for months (I program as a hobby in my free time) implementing a screen resolution switcher, remap of the control keys, power-ups falling from broken bricks, and a huge etc. But I do not want to be forever learning how to clone ONE game. I have the urge to get to the next clone in order to apply some design ideas I have come upon while developing this arkanoid clone (at the same time I am reading the GoF book and much source code from Ludum Dare 21 game contest). So the question is: Should I keep improving the arkanoid clone until it has all the features the original game had? or should I move to the next clone (there are almost infinite games to clone) and start mending the things I did wrong with the previous clone? This can be a very subjective question, so please restrain the answers to the most effective way to learn how to make my own games (not cloning someone ideas). Thank you! CLARIFICATION In order to clarify what I have implemented I make this list: Features implemented: Bouncing capabilities (the ball bounces on walls, on bricks, and on the bar). Sounds when bouncing on bricks and the bar, and when the player wins or loses. Basic title menu (new game and exit only). Also in-game menu and win/lose menus. Only three levels, but the map system is so easy I do not think it will teach me much (am I wrong?). Features not-implemented: Power-ups when breaking the bricks. Complex bricks (with more than one "hit point" and invincible). Better graphics (I am not really good at it). Programming polishing (use more intensively the design patterns). Here's a link to its (minimal) webpage: http://blog.acamara.es/piperine/ I kind of feel ashamed to show it, so please do not hit me too hard :-) My question was related to the not-implemented features. I wondered what was the fastest (optimal) path to learn. 1) implement the not-implemented features in this project which is getting big, or 2) make a new game which probably will teach me those lessons and new ones. ANSWER I choose @ashes999 answer because, in my case, I think I should polish more and try to "ship" the game. I think all the other answers are also important to bear in mind, so if you came here having the same question, before taking a rush decision read all the discussion. Thank you all!

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• Acceptable GC frequency for a SlimDX/Windows/.NET game?

  - by Rei Miyasaka

  I understand that the Windows GC is much better than the Xbox/WP7 GC, being that it's generational and multithreaded -- so I don't need to worry quite as much about avoiding memory allocation. SlimDX even has some unavoidable functions that generate some amount of garbage (specifically, MapSubresource creates DataBoxes), yet people don't seem to be too upset about it. I'd like to use some functional paradigms to write my code too, which also means creating objects like closures and monads. I know premature optimization isn't a good thing, but are there rules of thumb or metrics that I can follow to know whether I need to cut down on allocations? Is, say, one gen 0 GC per frame too much? One thing that has me stumped is object promotions. Gen 0 GCs will supposedly finish within a millisecond or two, but if I'm understanding correctly, it's the gen 1 and 2 promotions that start to hurt. I'm not too sure how I can predict/prevent these.

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• Where can I find Cinema4D for game development tutorials ?

  - by George Profenza

  Hi, I started to learn Cinema 4D. I've noticed it's really easy to use for motion graphics, but I want to use it for modeling for games/realtime 3d engines. Before I used 3dsmax and it was easy to estimate how a model would look/behave in a 3d engine. The two main things I did was displaying Polygon triangles and displaying the Polygon Count. I've found the Total Polygons tick in HUD settings in Cinema 4D, but I can't find any display mode that will show triangles. Is there there a way to display triangle faces/not quads in Cinema4D ? If so how ? There is a Triangulate function, but I'd rather not Triangulate/Untriangulate all the time, especially since it's converting back and forth between the two doesn't always produce the same result. I imagine I'm asking for old school techniques, but I plan to use these to make low poly models for web(canvas/webGL) and mobile.

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• How do I implement smooth movement in a Box2D platform game?

  - by Romeo

  I have implemented a character in JBox2D which moves with the help of a wheel rotating at the bottom of it. The movement is the best result I've had 'till now but it's a little glitchy when the character stands on the edge. So I am thinking should I use five smaller wheels instead of a big wheel. The wheel/wheels will not be visible in the finished product, now they are drawn for debugging. Here is a video. Is there a better way to do this using JBox2D?

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• How do I cap rendering of tiles in a 2D game with SDL?

  - by farmdve

  I have some boilerplate code working, I basically have a tile based map composed of just 3 colors, and some walls and render with SDL. The tiles are in a bmp file, but each tile inside it corresponds to an internal number of the type of tile(color, or wall). I have pretty basic collision detection and it works, I can also detetc continuous presses, which allows me to move pretty much anywhere I want. I also have a moving camera, which follows the object. The problem is that, the tile based map is bigger than the resolution, thus not all of the map can be displayed on the screen, but it's still rendered. I would like to cap it, but since this is new to me, I pretty much have no idea. Although I cannot post all the code, as even though I am a newbie and the code pretty basic, it's already quite a few lines, I can post what I tried to do void set_camera() { //Center the camera over the dot camera.x = ( player.box.x + DOT_WIDTH / 2 ) - SCREEN_WIDTH / 2; camera.y = ( player.box.y + DOT_HEIGHT / 2 ) - SCREEN_HEIGHT / 2; //Keep the camera in bounds. if(camera.x < 0 ) { camera.x = 0; } if(camera.y < 0 ) { camera.y = 0; } if(camera.x > LEVEL_WIDTH - camera.w ) { camera.x = LEVEL_WIDTH - camera.w; } if(camera.y > LEVEL_HEIGHT - camera.h ) { camera.y = LEVEL_HEIGHT - camera.h; } } set_camera() is the function which calculates the camera position based on the player's positions. I won't pretend I know much about it. Rectangle box = {0,0,0,0}; for(int t = 0; t < TOTAL_TILES; t++) { if(box.x < (camera.x - TILE_WIDTH) || box.y > (camera.y - TILE_HEIGHT)) apply_surface(box.x - camera.x, box.y - camera.y, surface, screen, &clips[tiles[t]]); box.x += TILE_WIDTH; //If we've gone too far if(box.x >= LEVEL_WIDTH) { //Move back box.x = 0; //Move to the next row box.y += TILE_HEIGHT; } } This is basically my render code. The for loop loops over 192 tiles stored in an int array, each with their own unique value describing the tile type(wall or one of three possible colored tiles). box is an SDL_Rect containing the current position of the tile, which is calculated on render. TILE_HEIGHT and TILE_WIDTH are of value 80. So the cap is determined by if(box.x < (camera.x - TILE_WIDTH) || box.y > (camera.y - TILE_HEIGHT)) However, this is just me playing with the values and see what doesn't break it. I pretty much have no idea how to calculate it. My screen resolution is 1024/768, and the tile map is of size 1280/960.

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• What frameworks are available for cross device 2d game development?

  - by kim3er

  Hi, I'm about to embark on a 2D gaming project. Initially, I'll be targeting iPhone and Facebook, but would like to expand the rollout to include Android (and possibly Windows Phone) in a future phase. Flash and Unity seem to be the most likely suspects, but is one better than the other? Are there pros/cons that may not be obvious at first glance? Are there frameworks that I have not considered? I am primarily a .NET developer, so the Unity C# integration is appealling. But I also have experience with AS3, JavaScript and Objective-C. Rich

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• How can I show a texture in a separate window in an XNA game?

  - by John

  I'm playing around with random map generation and what I want to do is: Input a command to generate a random map. A texture will be created resembling the generation, each pixel resembling each tile. A new window will pop-up, without removing the original one, that will contain the texture. I know how to do this except for the last part. Would someone please tell me how to create a new window and draw a texture to this window?

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• Slick & NiftyGUI. Nifty initialize exception

  - by Romeo

  I found my self into trouble when trying to run a Slick game with a Nifty Game State. This is the code: @Override protected void initGameAndGUI(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game) throws SlickException { initNifty(container, game); } If i run this i get: java.lang.IllegalStateException: The NiftyGUI was already initialized. Its illegal to do so twice. If i delete the call to initNifty() i get another exception:java.lang.IllegalStateException: NiftyGUI was not initialized.

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• Making a Camera look at a target Vector

  - by Peteyslatts

  I have a camera that works as long as its stationary. Now I'm trying to create a child class of that camera class that will look at its target. The new addition to the class is a method called SetTarget(). The method takes in a Vector3 target. The camera wont move but I need it to rotate to look at the target. If I just set the target, and then call CreateLookAt() (which takes in position, target, and up), when the object gets far enough away and underneath the camera, it suddenly flips right side up. So I need to transform the up vector, which currently always stays at Vector3.Up. I feel like this has something to do with taking the angle between the old direction vector and the new one (which I know can be expressed by target - position). I feel like this is all really vague, so here's the code for my base camera class: public class BasicCamera : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameComponent { public Matrix view { get; protected set; } public Matrix projection { get; protected set; } public Vector3 position { get; protected set; } public Vector3 direction { get; protected set; } public Vector3 up { get; protected set; } public Vector3 side { get { return Vector3.Cross(up, direction); } protected set { } } public BasicCamera(Game game, Vector3 position, Vector3 target, Vector3 up) : base(game) { this.position = position; this.direction = target - position; this.up = up; CreateLookAt(); projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.PiOver4, (float)Game.Window.ClientBounds.Width / (float)Game.Window.ClientBounds.Height, 1, 500); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // TODO: Add your update code here CreateLookAt(); base.Update(gameTime); } } And this is the code for the class that extends the above class to look at its target. class TargetedCamera : BasicCamera { public Vector3 target { get; protected set; } public TargetedCamera(Game game, Vector3 position, Vector3 target, Vector3 up) : base(game, position, target, up) { this.target = target; } public void SetTarget(Vector3 target) { direction = target - position; } protected override void CreateLookAt() { view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(position, target, up); } }

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• Any way to set up a grid for a board game in cocos 2d?

  - by Scott

  My first idea was to create a 2d array for my columns and rows, but it seems like there should be a better, or possibly cleaner, way to achieve this. Each square on the grid is going to have a background image, probably a .png although I might just draw the images with a draw method. Basically, I want to be able to drag and drop images onto the individual grid squares. I've been searching for a solution and the closest thing I can find is the tiled map solution. That just seems like a little overkill for what I'm trying to accomplish. Also, I don't know if this helps but i need my grid to be 12 by 12 and take up the entire width of the iphone screen.

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• Complete Math Library for use in OpenGL ES 2.0 Game?

  - by Bunkai.Satori

  Are you aware of a complete (or almost complete) cross platform math library for use in OpenGL ES 2.0 games? The library should contain: Matrix2x2, Matrix 3x3, Matrix4x4 classes Quaternions Vector2, Vector3, Vector4 Classes Euler Angle Class Operations amongh the above mentioned classes, conversions, etc.. Standardly used math operations in 3D graphics (Dot Product, Cross Product, SLERP, etc...) Is there such Math API available either standalone or as a part of any package? Programming Language: Visual C++ but planned to be ported to OS X and Android OS.

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• How to mimic the same fixed-size horizon as in this racing game?

  - by Aybe

  I am trying to replicate the same horizon (buildings and sky) as in the image below: As you can see, the player has advanced in a straight line, yet the horizon has still the same size: This is my attempt using 3D, while it's okay when the player is on the start line: It's not so great when the player advanced as much as in the image no. 2: This is an overview of where the horizon buildings and sky are located: Obviously this won't achieve such effect when one is close to it, so I've tried to scale up the horizon on all axes but the problem is that the buildings are too small depending where you look at them from. How can one mimic such rendering ?

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• How can I use WebGL to create a tile-based multi-layer scrolling platform game?

  - by Nicholas Hill

  I've found WebGL (based on OpenGL) to be a fiendish and unforgiving framework for those learning to write HTML5-based games. Despite the presence of many examples on how to get started, I'm really struggling to understand how I could simply load a bunch of images and render them to a canvas quickly using WebGL. My specific scenario involves trying to render a map using a bespoke but simple multi-layered tile engine, where each value in a three dimensional array points to the image to use for that location in the rendered image. Think "Sonic the Hedgehog" via tilesets, tiles, maps, layers, sprites etc. Can anyone enlighten me: 1) How can I load an image that I can use as a texture in WebGL? 2) How can I dynamically select an image at run time and draw it at any co-ordinate, that I also select at run time?

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• Can I use copyrighted images and music in my game? [duplicate]

  - by Aman Grover

  This question already has an answer here: Using modified copyrighted music in non-commercial games 3 answers I am working on my first ever project , and I have used some copyrighted images(images taken from some other well recognized games). Is it even possible that I edit the images a little bit and then use them as royalty free images? If not, then can anyone tell me some web links from where I can get royalty free images?

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• Is there an alternative to SDL 1.3 for a C++ game that should run on iOS and Android?

  - by futlib

  I've used SDL for many desktop games, always as the cross-platform glue for: Creating a window Processing input Rendering images Rendering fonts Playing sounds/music It has never disappointed me at those tasks. But when it comes to graphics, I prefer to work with the OpenGL API directly, even though all of our games are 2D. In the project I'm currently working on, I've made sure to only use the API subset supported by both OpenGL 1.3 and OpenGL 1.0, so making the thing run on Android should be easy, I thought. Turns out there is no official Android or iOS port of SDL yet. However, there's one in SDL 1.3, which is still in development. SDL 1.3 doesn't seem very appealing to me for three reasons: It's been in development for at least 4 years, and I have no idea when it will be done, not to mention stable. It's not ported to as many platforms as SDL 1.2. From what I've seen, it uses OpenGL for drawing, so I suppose the community will move away from directly using OpenGL. So I'm wondering if I should use a different library for our current project - it doesn't matter much if I need to port my existing code from SDL 1.2 to SDL 1.3 or to some other library. We're planning to release on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS and Android, so good support for these platforms is essential. Is there anything stable that does what I want?

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• Libgdx 2D Game, Random generated World of random size, how to get mouse coordinates?

  - by Solom

  I'm a noob and English is not my mothertongue, so please bear with me! I'm generating a map for a Sidescroller out of a 2D-array. That is, the array holds different values and I create blocks based on that value. Now, my problem is to match mouse coordinates on screen with the actual block the mouse is pointing at. public class GameScreen implements Screen { private static final int WIDTH = 100; private static final int HEIGHT = 70; private OrthographicCamera camera; private Rectangle glViewport; private Spritebatch spriteBatch; private Map map; private Block block; ... @Override public void show() { camera = new OrthographicCamera(WIDTH, HEIGHT); camera.position.set(WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2, 0); glViewport = new Rectangle(0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT); map = new Map(16384, 256); map.printTileMap(); // Debugging only spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(); } @Override public void render(float delta) { // Clear previous frame Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 1 ); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); GL30 gl = Gdx.graphics.getGL30(); // gl.glViewport((int) glViewport.x, (int) glViewport.y, (int) glViewport.width, (int) glViewport.height); spriteBatch.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); camera.update(); spriteBatch.begin(); // Draw Map this.drawMap(); // spriteBatch.flush(); spriteBatch.end(); } private void drawMap() { for(int a = 0; a < map.getHeight(); a++) { // Bounds check (y) if(camera.position.y + camera.viewportHeight < a)// || camera.position.y - camera.viewportHeight > a) break; for(int b = 0; b < map.getWidth(); b++) { // Bounds check (x) if(camera.position.x + camera.viewportWidth < b)// || camera.position.x > b) break; // Dynamic rendering via BlockManager int id = map.getTileMap()[a][b]; Block block = BlockManager.map.get(id); if(block != null) // Check if Air { block.setPosition(b, a); spriteBatch.draw(block.getTexture(), b, a, 1 ,1); } } } } As you can see, I don't use the viewport anywhere. Not sure if I need it somewhere down the road. So, the map is 16384 blocks wide. One block is 16 pixels in size. One of my naive approaches was this: if(Gdx.input.isButtonPressed(Input.Buttons.LEFT)) { Vector3 mousePos = new Vector3(); mousePos.set(Gdx.input.getX(), Gdx.input.getY(), 0); camera.unproject(mousePos); System.out.println(Math.round(mousePos.x)); // *16); // Debugging // TODO: round // map.getTileMap()[mousePos.x][mousePos.y] = 2; // Draw at mouse position } I confused myself somewhere down the road I fear. What I want to do is, update the "block" (or rather the information in the Map/2D-Array) so that in the next render() there is another block. Basically drawing on the spriteBatch g So if anyone could point me in the right direction this would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

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• What is an acceptable GC frequency for a SlimDX/Windows/.NET game?

  - by Rei Miyasaka

  I understand that the Windows GC is much better than the Xbox/WP7 GC, being that it's generational and multithreaded -- so I don't need to worry quite as much about avoiding memory allocation. SlimDX even has some unavoidable functions that generate some amount of garbage (specifically, MapSubresource creates DataBoxes), yet people don't seem to be too upset about it. I'd like to use some functional paradigms to write my code too, which also means creating objects like closures and monads. I know premature optimization isn't a good thing, but are there rules of thumb or metrics that I can follow to know whether I need to cut down on allocations? Is, say, one gen 0 GC per frame too much? One thing that has me stumped is object promotions. Gen 0 GCs will supposedly finish within a millisecond or two, but if I'm understanding correctly, it's the gen 1 and 2 promotions that start to hurt. I'm not too sure how I can predict/prevent these.

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• How do you get the total asset size (or total resource size) in an Android game?

  - by tom_mai78101

  In an Android Java project, there are two folders, asset and res. To me, I usually put some stuffs, like PNG files, sound files, etc. in either one of the two folder. When resources are increasingly becoming more and more in those folders, the time it takes to load them will increase. Therefore, a loading screen is a must in these situation. The total size is to be used in a loading screen, so that I can guess the average time it takes to load each resources, from 0 bytes to its individual resource file size. I only know that by adding all individual sizes in a respective order, I will then obtain the total asset or res folder size, simply by adding them up. So, when it comes to getting the total file size from either folder, how do you obtain their individual resource/object sizes, respectively? Thanks in advance.

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• How to apply effects that occur (or change) over time to characters in a game?

  - by Joshua Harris

  So assume that I have a system that applies Effects to Characters like so: public class Character { private Collection<Effect> _effects; public void AddEffect (Effect e) { e.ApplyTo(this); _effects.Add(e); } public void RemoveEffect (Effect e) { e.RemoveFrom(this); _effects.Remove(e); } } public interface Effect { public void ApplyTo (Character character); public void RemoveFrom (Character character); } Example Effect: Armor Buff for 5 seconds. void someFunction() { // Do Stuff ... Timer armorTimer = new Timer(5 seconds); ArmorBuff armorbuff = new ArmorBuff(); character.AddEffect(armorBuff); armorTimer.Start(); // Do more stuff ... } // Some where else in code public void ArmorTimer_Complete() { character.RemoveEffect(armorBuff); } public class ArmorBuff implements Effect { public void applyTo(Character character) { character.changeArmor(20); } public void removeFrom(Character character) { character.changeArmor(-20); } } Ok, so this example would buff the Characters armor for 5 seconds. Easy to get working. But what about effects that change over the duration of the effect being applied. Two examples come to mind: Damage Over Time: 200 damage every second for 3 seconds. I could mimic this by applying an Effect that lasts for 1 second and has a counter set to 3, then when it is removed it could deal 200 damage, clone itself, decrement the counter of the clone, and apply the clone to the character. If it repeats this until the counter is 0, then you got a damage over time ability. I'm not a huge fan of this approach, but it does describe the behavior exactly. Degenerating Speed Boost: Gain a speed boost that degrades over 3 seconds until you return to your normal speed. This is a bit harder. I can basically do the same thing as above except having timers set to some portion of a second, such that they occur fast enough to give the appearance of degenerating smoothly over time (even though they are really just stepping down incrementally). I feel like you could get away with only 12 steps over a second (maybe less, I would have to test it and see), but this doesn't seem very elegant to me. The only other way to implement this effect would be to change the system so that the Character checks the _effects collection for effects that alter any of the properties any time that they are being used. I could handle this in functions like getCurrentSpeed() and getCurrentArmor(), but you can imagine how much of a hassle it would be to have that kind of overhead every time you want to do a calculation with movement speed (which would be every time you move your character). Is there a better way to deal with these kinds of effects or events?

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• What common interface would be appropriate for these game object classes?

  - by Jefffrey

  Question A component based system's goal is to solve the problems that derives from inheritance: for example the fact that some parts of the code (that are called components) are reused by very different classes that, hypothetically, would lie in a very different branch of the inheritance tree. That's a very nice concept, but I've found out that CBS is often hard to accomplish without using ugly hacks. Implementations of this system are often far from clean. But I don't want to discuss this any further. My question is: how can I solve the same problems a CBS try to solve with a very clean interface? (possibly with examples, there are a lot of abstract talks about the "perfect" design already). Context Here's an example I was going for before realizing I was just reinventing inheritance again: class Human { public: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other human specific components }; class Zombie { Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; // other zombie specific components }; After writing that I realized I needed an interface, otherwise I would have needed N containers for N different types of objects (or to use boost::variant to gather them all together). So I've thought of polymorphism (move what systems do in a CBS design into class specific functions): class Entity { public: virtual void on_event(Event) {} // not pure virtual on purpose virtual void on_update(World) {} virtual void on_draw(Window) {} }; class Human : public Entity { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; class Zombie : public Entity { private: Position position; Movement movement; Sprite sprite; public: virtual void on_event(Event) { ... } virtual void on_update(World) { ... } virtual void on_draw(Window) { ... } }; Which was nice, except for the fact that now the outside world would not even be able to know where a Human is positioned (it does not have access to its position member). That would be useful to track the player position for collision detection or if on_update the Zombie would want to track down its nearest human to move towards him. So I added const Position& get_position() const; to both the Zombie and Human classes. And then I realized that both functionality were shared, so it should have gone to the common base class: Entity. Do you notice anything? Yes, with that methodology I would have a god Entity class full of common functionality (which is the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place). Meaning of "hacks" in the implementation I'm referring to I'm talking about the implementations that defines Entities as simple IDs to which components are dynamically attached. Their implementation can vary from C-stylish: int last_id; Position* positions[MAX_ENTITIES]; Movement* movements[MAX_ENTITIES]; Where positions[i], movements[i], component[i], ... make up the entity. Or to more C++-style: int last_id; std::map<int, Position> positions; std::map<int, Movement> movements; From which systems can detect if an entity/id can have attached components.

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• Why do we use the Pythagorean theorem in game physics?

  - by Starkers

  I've recently learned that we use Pythagorean theorem a lot in our physics calculations and I'm afraid I don't really get the point. Here's an example from a book to make sure an object doesn't travel faster than a MAXIMUM_VELOCITY constant in the horizontal plane: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = <any number>; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = MAXIMUM_VELOCITY * MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; function animate(){ var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; } } Let's try this with some numbers: An object is attempting to move 5 units in x and 5 units in z. It should only be able to move 5 units horizontally in total! MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5 * 5; SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 25; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = (x_velocity * x_velocity) + (z_velocity * z_velocity); var squared_horizontal_velocity = 5 * 5 + 5 * 5; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 25 + 25; var squared_horizontal_velocity = 50; // if( squared_horizontal_velocity <= SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 50 <= 25 ){ scalar = squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 50 / 25; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Now this works well, but we can do the same thing without Pythagoras: MAXIMUM_VELOCITY = 5; function animate(){ var x_velocity = 5; var z_velocity = 5; var horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity; var horizontal_velocity = 5 + 5; var horizontal_velocity = 10; // if( horizontal_velocity >= MAXIMUM_VELOCITY ){ if( 10 >= 5 ){ scalar = horizontal_velocity / MAXIMUM_VELOCITY; scalar = 10 / 5; scalar = 2.0; x_velocity = x_velocity / scalar; x_velocity = 5 / 2.0; x_velocity = 2.5; z_velocity = z_velocity / scalar; z_velocity = 5 / 2.0; z_velocity = 2.5; // new_horizontal_velocity = x_velocity + z_velocity // new_horizontal_velocity = 2.5 + 2.5 // new_horizontal_velocity = 5 } } Benefits of doing it without Pythagoras: Less lines Within those lines, it's easier to read what's going on ...and it takes less time to compute, as there are less multiplications Seems to me like computers and humans get a better deal without Pythagorean theorem! However, I'm sure I'm wrong as I've seen Pythagoras' theorem in a number of reputable places, so I'd like someone to explain me the benefit of using Pythagorean theorem to a maths newbie. Does this have anything to do with unit vectors? To me a unit vector is when we normalize a vector and turn it into a fraction. We do this by dividing the vector by a larger constant. I'm not sure what constant it is. The total size of the graph? Anyway, because it's a fraction, I take it, a unit vector is basically a graph that can fit inside a 3D grid with the x-axis running from -1 to 1, z-axis running from -1 to 1, and the y-axis running from -1 to 1. That's literally everything I know about unit vectors... not much :P And I fail to see their usefulness. Also, we're not really creating a unit vector in the above examples. Should I be determining the scalar like this: // a mathematical work-around of my own invention. There may be a cleverer way to do this! I've also made up my own terms such as 'divisive_scalar' so don't bother googling var divisive_scalar = (squared_horizontal_velocity / SQUARED_MAXIMUM_VELOCITY); var divisive_scalar = ( 50 / 25 ); var divisive_scalar = 2; var multiplicative_scalar = (divisive_scalar / (2*divisive_scalar)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / (2*2)); var multiplicative_scalar = (2 / 4); var multiplicative_scalar = 0.5; x_velocity = x_velocity * multiplicative_scalar x_velocity = 5 * 0.5 x_velocity = 2.5 Again, I can't see why this is better, but it's more "unit-vector-y" because the multiplicative_scalar is a unit_vector? As you can see, I use words such as "unit-vector-y" so I'm really not a maths whiz! Also aware that unit vectors might have nothing to do with Pythagorean theorem so ignore all of this if I'm barking up the wrong tree. I'm a very visual person (3D modeller and concept artist by trade!) and I find diagrams and graphs really, really helpful so as many as humanely possible please!

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• Can WebGL be used to create a tile-based multi-layer scrolling platform game?

  - by Nicholas Hill

  I've found WebGL (based on OpenGL) to be a fiendish and unforgiving framework for those learning to write HTML5-based games. Despite the presence of many examples on how to get started, I'm really struggling to understand how I could simply load a bunch of images and render them to a canvas quickly using WebGL. My specific scenario involves trying to render a map using a bespoke but simple multi-layered tile engine, where each value in a three dimensional array points to the image to use for that location in the rendered image. Think "Sonic the Hedgehog" via tilesets, tiles, maps, layers, sprites etc. Can anyone enlighten me: 1) How can I load an image that I can use as a texture in WebGL? 2) How can I dynamically select an image at run time and draw it at any co-ordinate, that I also select at run time?

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