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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• Huge or minimal performance hit running game servers on a Virtual Machine? [closed]

  - by Damainman

  I have a two dedicated servers to choose from depending on which one would do a better job. I plan on updating the Hard Drive space and RAM at a later date depending on how I move forward. Server 1: 500GB Hard Drive 8GB RAM 2x 64bit Intel Xeon L5420(Quad Core) @ 2.50Ghz Server2: 500GB Hard Drive 8GB RAM 2x 64bit Intel Xeon E5420(Quad Core) @ 2.50GHz I want to run a virtual machine that will host about 10 game servers, with about 16 active slots per server. It will be a mix and match from: Minecraft Counter Strike( 1.6, Source, Global Offensive) Battlefield Team Fortress I know the general consensus is virtualization is a horrible idea if you plan on running virtual servers on them. The issue is, the discussions I read do not really clearly state whether they are speaking about a virtual server running inside an OS(ie: VMware Player running on Windows with the game server in a VM) or a Hypervisor such as Xen Cloud Platform. I am trying to get a definite answer on how feasible the above would be and how much of a performance hit it might be if the VM running the game servers is on a hypervisor such as Xen Cloud Platform. My initial research lead me to believe that there wouldn't be a performance hit since the virtualization is different than running it via inside of a OS.

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• C# trying to capture the KeyDown event on a form

  - by Patrick

  Hello! I am creating a small game, the game is printed onto a panel on a windows form. Now i want to capture the keydown event to see if its the arrow keys that has been pressed, the problem however is that i can't seem to capture it. Let me explain, on the form i have 4 buttons and various other controls and if the user for instance press one of the buttons (to trigger a game event) then the button has focus and i can't capture the movements with the arrow keys. I tried something like private void KeyDown(KeyEventArgs e) { if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Left) { game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.E); game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics()); } else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Right) { game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.W); game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics()); } else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Up) { game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.N); game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics()); } else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Down) { game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.S); game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics()); } } and then when the form key down event was pressed, i used this private void MainForm_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e) { KeyDown(e); } I also added keydown for the buttons and the various other controls on the windows form, but i am not getting any response back. I have setup a breakpoint inside the function to see if it's being called, but that breakpoint never triggers? Any ideas? The most optimal was to have a general KeyDown event that triggers (regardless of what control that currently has focus) and then calls the KeyDown method.

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• Double Buffering for Game objects, what's a nice clean generic C++ way?

  - by Gary

  This is in C++. So, I'm starting from scratch writing a game engine for fun and learning from the ground up. One of the ideas I want to implement is to have game object state (a struct) be double-buffered. For instance, I can have subsystems updating the new game object data while a render thread is rendering from the old data by guaranteeing there is a consistent state stored within the game object (the data from last time). After rendering of old and updating of new is finished, I can swap buffers and do it again. Question is, what's a good forward-looking and generic OOP way to expose this to my classes while trying to hide implementation details as much as possible? Would like to know your thoughts and considerations. I was thinking operator overloading could be used, but how do I overload assign for a templated class's member within my buffer class? for instance, I think this is an example of what I want: doublebuffer<Vector3> data; data.x=5; //would write to the member x within the new buffer int a=data.x; //would read from the old buffer's x member data.x+=1; //I guess this shouldn't be allowed If this is possible, I could choose to enable or disable double-buffering structs without changing much code. This is what I was considering: template <class T> class doublebuffer{ T T1; T T2; T * current=T1; T * old=T2; public: doublebuffer(); ~doublebuffer(); void swap(); operator=()?... }; and a game object would be like this: struct MyObjectData{ int x; float afloat; } class MyObject: public Node { doublebuffer<MyObjectData> data; functions... } What I have right now is functions that return pointers to the old and new buffer, and I guess any classes that use them have to be aware of this. Is there a better way?

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• Why is my custom view not appearing?

  - by user351469

  When I comment out setContentView(boardView); in my Game.java my custom view in BoardView works fine and displays everything nicely... but onSizeChanged never gets called in BoardView.java... so I can't read the device width and height at runtime. If I leave setContentView uncommented onSizeChanged works... but the screen is blank! I want to be able to read the screen width and height at runtime and set the sizes of my ImageViews at creation so they are the optimal size. public class Game extends Activity implements OnClickListener{ private BoardView boardView; /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); boardView = new BoardView(this); setContentView(boardView); // when this line disabled, it looks ok boardView.requestFocus(); } public class BoardView extends View { private final Game game; private float width; // width of one unit private float height; // height of one unit public BoardView(Context context){ super(context); this.game = (Game)context; setFocusable(true); setFocusableInTouchMode(true); LinearLayout maincontainer = new LinearLayout(game); maincontainer.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT,LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT)); maincontainer.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER); maincontainer.setOrientation(LinearLayout.VERTICAL); maincontainer.setBackgroundColor(Color.BLACK); LinearLayout innercontainer = new LinearLayout(game); innercontainer.setLayoutParams(new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT)); innercontainer.setGravity(Gravity.CENTER); innercontainer.setOrientation(LinearLayout.HORIZONTAL); // declare a new table TableLayout layout = new TableLayout(game); layout.setLayoutParams(new TableLayout.LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT)); // build a grid of ImageViews in a TableLayout for (int f=1; f<=7; f++) { TableRow tr = new TableRow(game); for (int c=1; c<=7; c++) { ImageView b = new ImageView(game); b.setImageResource(R.drawable.neworb); b.setOnClickListener(game); tr.addView(b, 30,30); // I'd like to not use fixed values here } // for layout.addView(tr); } // for innercontainer.addView(layout); maincontainer.addView(innercontainer); game.setContentView(maincontainer); } @Override protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh){ width = w/9f; height = width; super.onSizeChanged(w, h, oldw, oldh); } }

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• How to black out second monitor when playing a full screen game?

  - by Gary

  I've got two monitors. When I play a full screen game in my primary monitor, the second monitor still shows the Windows desktop. How can I black out the second monitor so that it doesn't show anything at all? My graphics card is from ATI. I'm running Windows 7 in Boot Camp on an iMac. I don't know if this makes a difference, however, as any solution to my question will do, really. For instance, is there a tiny app that I could run to disable the second monitor for a while? I'd rather not have to open Windows display settings every time I run a game and disable the monitor that way, though.

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• Wii game bought in US, will it work on a PAL console in Europe?

  - by Stijn Sanders

  I can't seem to find a European online outlet that offers this Wii game I'm looking for. If I would buy it from a web-shop in the US, could I end up with a game that doesn't work well with my console? I'm worried because all games I have for the Wii so far have a prominent mention of "PAL" on the cover. I didn't notice "NTSC" on the photo's of the cover online, but I'm worried none the less. (And thought I'd ask it here first...) Also, does anyone happen to know if Belgian customs would add tax to shipments like this coming in from the US?

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• Does a Radeon 2100 support the Assassin Creed game? [closed]

  - by karanvir

  does ATI RADON 2100,support assissin creed game and how to update shadermodel to 3.0 ver and does my graphic card support it.reply soon waiting for ur reply

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• How can I run a game server on a computer behind a NAT, if I have another computer not behind a NAT?

  - by Macha

  My home connection is part of a large NAT, outside my control. Inside my home, my router has a NAT, under my control. I control a public facing Linux VPS with one IP address, outside my home network. Ideally, what I'd like to do is set something up so that I connect my home computer to my VPS, and after that port X on my VPS leads to port Y on my home computer, for the purposes of running a game server of a game that does not run under Linux. Is this possible?

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• I missed allowing ".NET Runtime Optimization Service" while installing a game — could there be any problems?

  - by MDLss

  I'm using ESET Smart Security 4 on Windows 7. I selected Interactive Mode so it asks me when something needs to connect to my PC. So when I was installing a game named League of Legends, I was away from my computer. When I came back, I saw that the download was finished but ESET was asking whether to allow .NET Runtime Optimization Service to connect my computer using port 80 TCP. So I selected Allow but It was too late because the download was already finished. I can play the game, but could it be bugged or broken or something?

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• Looking for design/architecture suggestions for a simple HTML game.

  - by z-boss

  Imagine that HTML page is a game surface (see picture). User can have n number of boards (blue divs) on his page. Each board can be moved, re-sized, relabeled, created new and removed. Inside each board there are m number of figures (purple divs). Each of these user can move inside the board or to another board, re-size, change color and label, delete, add new. The goal of the game is not important, but let's say it is to rearrange figures in a certain way so that they disappear. But the goal of the programmer is to save the whole game surface in the database for every user of the site, and to load it later when he returns. So, how do I go about data exchange between client and the database? I'll give my idea in one of the answers.

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• GameplayScreen does not contain a definition for GraphicsDevice

  - by Dave Voyles

  Long story short: I'm trying to intergrate my game with Microsoft's Game State Management. In doing so I've run into some errors, and the latest one is in the title. I'm not able to display my HUD for the reasons listed above. Previously, I had much of my code in my Game.cs class, but the GSM has a bit of it in Game1, and most of what you have drawn for the main screen in your GameplayScreen class, and that is what is causing confusion on my part. I've created an instance of the GameplayScreen class to be used in the HUD class (as you can see below). Before integrating with the GSM however, I created an instance of my Game class, and all worked fine. It seems that I need to define my graphics device somewhere, but I am not sure of where exactly. I've left some code below to help you understand. public class GameStateManagementGame : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { #region Fields GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; ScreenManager screenManager; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static Game Instance; // By preloading any assets used by UI rendering, we avoid framerate glitches // when they suddenly need to be loaded in the middle of a menu transition. static readonly string[] preloadAssets = { "gradient", }; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// The main game constructor. /// </summary> public GameStateManagementGame() { Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1280; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 720; graphics.IsFullScreen = false; graphics.ApplyChanges(); // Create the screen manager component. screenManager = new ScreenManager(this); Components.Add(screenManager); // Activate the first screens. screenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); //screenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); screenManager.AddScreen(new PressStartScreen(), null); } namespace Pong { public class HUD { public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Used in the Draw method titleSafeRectangle = new Rectangle (GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.X, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Y, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Width, GameplayScreen.Instance.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.TitleSafeArea.Height); } } } class GameplayScreen : GameScreen { #region Fields ContentManager content; public static GameStates gamestate; private GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; public int screenWidth; public int screenHeight; private Texture2D backgroundTexture; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private Menu menu; private SpriteFont arial; private HUD hud; Animation player; // Creates a new intance, which is used in the HUD class public static GameplayScreen Instance; public GameplayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } protected void Initialize() { lastScored = false; menu = new Menu(); resetTimer = 0; resetTimerInUse = true; ball = new Ball(content, new Vector2(screenWidth, screenHeight)); SetUpMulti(); input = new Input(); hud = new HUD(); // Places the powerup animation inside of the surrounding box // Needs to be cleaned up, instead of using hard pixel values player = new Animation(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/powerupSpriteSheet"), new Vector2(103, 44), 64, 64, 4, 5); // Used by for the Powerups random = new Random(); vec = new Vector2(100, 50); vec2 = new Vector2(100, 100); promptVec = new Vector2(50, 25); timer = 10000.0f; // Starting value for the cooldown for the powerup timer timerVector = new Vector2(10, 10); //JEP - one time creation of powerup objects playerOnePowerup = new Powerup(); playerOnePowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerOnePowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; playerTwoPowerup = new Powerup(); playerTwoPowerup.Activated += PowerupActivated; playerTwoPowerup.Deactivated += PowerupDeactivated; //JEP - moved from events since these only need set once activatedVec = new Vector2(100, 125); deactivatedVec = new Vector2(100, 150); powerupReady = false; }

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• Which containers / graphics components to use in a simple Java Swing game?

  - by rize

  I'm creating a simple labyrinth game with Java + Swing. The game draws a randomized labyrinth on the screen, places a figure in the middle, and the player is then supposed to find the way out by moving the figure with arrow-keys. As for now, I'm using a plain background and drawing the walls of the labyrinth with Graphics.drawLine(). I have a custom picture of the figure in a .gif file, which I load as a BufferedImage object. However, I want the player to see only part of the labyrinth at a time, and the screen should follow the figure in the game, as the player moves around. I'm planning to do this by creating an Image object of the whole labyrinth when it is created, and then "cutting" a square around the current position of the figure and displaying this with Graphics.drawImage(). I'm new with Swing though, and I can't figure out how to draw the figure at different positions "above" the labyrinth without redrawing the whole thing. Which container/component should I use for the labyrinth and then for the figure to achieve this?

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• Easiest, most fun way to program 2D games? Flash? XNA? Some other engine?

  - by Maxi

  Hi, this is a post detailing my search for the most enjoyable way for a hobbyist game programmer to sweeten his free time with making a game. My requirements: I looked at Flash first, I made a couple of small games but I'm doubtful of the performance. I would like to make a fairly large strategy game, with several hundred units fighting simultaneously, explosions and animations included. Also zoomable maps. I saw that Adobe has a new 3D API for Flash, but I don't know if that improves 2D performance aswell, I couldn't find anything related to that question on their MAX10 sessions. Would you say that Flash is a good technology for making large 2D games easily? I really like Actionscript, and I love how easy everything is in Flash. There are several engines available which make it even easier. I just do this for fun, and it would be even better if there were proper animation/particle editors available and if the engine I were to use, would be available for multiple platforms. (so more people can play my game once finished). I'd like to have it available on many mobile platforms aswell. (because I love touch input for some reason) I do know the XNA framework pretty well, but there are no good engines available for it, and it will only run on Windows, which is a huge turn off. Even bigger is, that you need to install the XNA redistributable each time you want to give the game to someone. If I use XNA, I would have to make all the tools myself, and I'd probably have to make them with WPF. (I'd love to make tools with Adobe AIR, but unfortunately the API's for image manipulation etc. are far worse in Flash, than they are in XNA/WPF.) Now, I'm aware that I could make my own engine that supports each of those platforms, but quite frankly, that would be too much work plowing through APIs. After all, I want to make a game, not an engine. So the question becomes: Is there maybe a cross platform (free or free to develop?) engine available that I could use for 2D development? I prefer: C#, Actionscript. I don't mind using c++ if the toolset is above average, but I highly doubt that there is something out there like that. Please prove me wrong :) So summary: I'd like to use Flash, but I don't know if it scales well enough. I'm not a scripter, I want some real APIs that I can work with inside a proper IDE. Just for information, I looked at several alternatives, I'm actually looking for a long time already. You'd help me a lot to make a decision finally. Feature-wise the Flatredball engine would be ideal. But I tried their tools, and quite frankly, they are horrible. Absolutely unusable, I'd need to make my own for sure. I didn't look at their API, but if their tools are so bad, I'm not inclined to look further. Unity3D. This one is quite nice, but I really don't need 3D, and it is quite ...a lot of work to learn. I also don't like that it is so expensive to use for different platforms and that I can only code for it through scripting. You have to buy each platform separately. The editor usability is average, the product overall is good enough for most purposes, but learning it myself would be overkill. Shiva 3D. It looks good enough, but again: I don't really need 3D. The editor usability is a little worse than Unity3D in my opinion and it wasn't clear to me how to start programming. I think it requires C++ for coding, so that's a negative too. I want to have fun, and c# is fun ;) SDL. Quite frankly, I'd still need to port to all those different SDL implementations. And I don't like OpenGL style programming, it's just plain ugly. And it needs c++, I know that there might be some wrappers available, but I don't like to use wrappers, because... Irrlicht. A lot of features, but support seems to be low and it is aimed at enthusiasts. C# bindings get dropped repeatedly. I'm not an engine enthusiast, I just want to make a game. I don't see this happening with Irrlicht. Ogre3D. Way too much work, it's just a graphics engine. Also no multiple platform support and c++. Torque2D. Costs something to use, and I didn't hear a lot of good things about support and documentation. Also costs extra for each platform.

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• How many BasicEffects do you have in a Game? What is the best way to render multiple objects/shapes at once?

  - by Deukalion

  I'm trying to understand 3D rendering and it seems that everytime you render a new object (A 3D Cube or something) you need to have a new BasicEffect for each Box you render unless you want the exact same texture? ...so if I have over a hundred boxes with each different textures, I need at least as many BasicEffects? Will that not be "too much" for the CPU/GPU in the end or result in lagging? Is there any good way to render multiple objects (cubes or other shapes) at the same time? I've tried changing the BasicEffect.Texture with each cube drawn, but it resulting in changing the first Cube's texture too. Any suggestions would be really appreciated, I'm really new to 3D in XNA so I'm trying to wrap my head around the best methods for example render a Map with objects (of shapes).

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• How should I structure my iPhone OpenGL ES 1.1 game?

  - by Ryan

  I am building an iPhone OpenGL ES 1.1 game. I am using the OpenGL ES template provided by xcode. I am only using the ES1Renderer. I've coded some basic touch actions the user can take, and I've begun to think about the overall structure of the code. All I'm really doing is using C in the ES1Renderer.m for my entire game state. I have an array of bullet structs, an array on enemy structs, etc.. Besides using this structure, where my entire game state is in ES1Renderer.m as C arrays and structs, what other ways are there to structure the code? Should I be using C++ or Objective-C classes to represent the enemies so they are more modular? The main reason I ask this is because I don't normally code in C, C++ and Objective-C..so I am a little fuzzy on coming up with a good architecture here.

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• Is Android (read typical devices) fast enough for a game that requires plotting pixel by pixel rather than blitting

  - by mP

  i have an idea for an Android game which is a little different from the typical game that usually moves sprites(bitmaps) around the screen. Id want to plot lots of little pixels to create my visuals. PROS no bitmaps required pixel plotting of stuff like "fire" can react to wind. no need to scale bitmaps, works w/ any screen res (lets pretend device can handle more drawing because its got a bigger screen). CONS slower to plot pixels than blit bitmaps need lot of animation frames. WISHES id like to update my game in real time, more is better 30fps is good but not essential, 15fps is enough. PERFORMANCE Q... Is the typical Android device fast enough to plot say half a screenful of pixels w/ a default background ? if full screen is not practical what window size should be able to handle such refreshes

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• Is this too much to ask for a game programming and developing enthusiast? Am I doing this wrong?

  - by I_Question_Things_Deeply

  I have been a computer-fanatic for almost a decade now. I've always loved and wondered how computers work, even from the purest, lowest hardware level to the very smallest pixel on the screen, and all the software around that. That seems to be my problem though ... as I try to write code (I'm pretty fluent at C++) I always sit there enormous amounts of time in front of a text-editor wondering how every line, statement, datum, function, etc. will correspond to every Assembly and machine instruction performed to do absolutely everything necessary for the kernel to allocate memory to run my compiled program, and all of the other hardware being used as well. For example ... I would write cout << "Before memory changed" << endl; and run the debugger to get the Assembly for this, and then try and reverse disassemble the Assembly to machine code based on my ISA, and then research every .dll, library file, linked library, linking process, linker source code of the program, the make file, the kernel I'm using's steps of processing this compilation, the hardware's part aside from the processor (e.g. video card, sound card, chipset, cache latency, byte-sized registers, calling convention use, DDR3 RAM and disk drive, filesystem functioning and so many other things). Am I going about programming wrong? I mean I feel I should know everything that goes on underneath English syntax on a computer program. But the problem is that the more I research every little thing the less I actually accomplish at all. I can never finish anything because of this mentality, yet I feel compelled to know everything... what should I do?

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• XNA 4 Deferred Rendering deforms the model

  - by Tomáš Bezouška

  I have a problem when rendering a model of my World - when rendered using BasicEffect, it looks just peachy. Problem is when I render it using deferred rendering. See for yourselves: what it looks like: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/690/survival.png/ what it should look like: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/521/survival2.png/ (Please ignora the cars, they shouldn't be there. Nothing changes when they are removed) Im using Deferred renderer from www.catalinzima.com/tutorials/deferred-rendering-in-xna/introduction-2/ except very simplified, without the custom content processor. Here's the code for the GBuffer shader: float4x4 World; float4x4 View; float4x4 Projection; float specularIntensity = 0.001f; float specularPower = 3; texture Texture; sampler diffuseSampler = sampler_state { Texture = (Texture); MAGFILTER = LINEAR; MINFILTER = LINEAR; MIPFILTER = LINEAR; AddressU = Wrap; AddressV = Wrap; }; struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float3 Normal : NORMAL0; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 TexCoord : TEXCOORD0; float3 Normal : TEXCOORD1; float2 Depth : TEXCOORD2; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; float4 worldPosition = mul(input.Position, World); float4 viewPosition = mul(worldPosition, View); output.Position = mul(viewPosition, Projection); output.TexCoord = input.TexCoord; //pass the texture coordinates further output.Normal = mul(input.Normal,World); //get normal into world space output.Depth.x = output.Position.z; output.Depth.y = output.Position.w; return output; } struct PixelShaderOutput { half4 Color : COLOR0; half4 Normal : COLOR1; half4 Depth : COLOR2; }; PixelShaderOutput PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) { PixelShaderOutput output; output.Color = tex2D(diffuseSampler, input.TexCoord); //output Color output.Color.a = specularIntensity; //output SpecularIntensity output.Normal.rgb = 0.5f * (normalize(input.Normal) + 1.0f); //transform normal domain output.Normal.a = specularPower; //output SpecularPower output.Depth = input.Depth.x / input.Depth.y; //output Depth return output; } technique Technique1 { pass Pass1 { VertexShader = compile vs_2_0 VertexShaderFunction(); PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 PixelShaderFunction(); } } And here are the rendering parts in XNA: public void RednerModel(Model model, Matrix world) { Matrix[] boneTransforms = new Matrix[model.Bones.Count]; model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(boneTransforms); Game.GraphicsDevice.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; Game.GraphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; Game.GraphicsDevice.RasterizerState = RasterizerState.CullCounterClockwise; foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) { foreach (ModelMeshPart meshPart in mesh.MeshParts) { GBufferEffect.Parameters["View"].SetValue(Camera.Instance.ViewMatrix); GBufferEffect.Parameters["Projection"].SetValue(Camera.Instance.ProjectionMatrix); GBufferEffect.Parameters["World"].SetValue(boneTransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * world); GBufferEffect.Parameters["Texture"].SetValue(meshPart.Effect.Parameters["Texture"].GetValueTexture2D()); GBufferEffect.Techniques[0].Passes[0].Apply(); RenderMeshpart(mesh, meshPart); } } } private void RenderMeshpart(ModelMesh mesh, ModelMeshPart part) { Game.GraphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffer(part.VertexBuffer); Game.GraphicsDevice.Indices = part.IndexBuffer; Game.GraphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, part.NumVertices, part.StartIndex, part.PrimitiveCount); } I import the model using the built in content processor for FBX. The FBX is created in 3DS Max. I don't know the exact details of that export, but if you think it might be relevant, I will get them from my collegue who does them. What confuses me though is why the BasicEffect approach works... seems the FBX shouldnt be a problem. Any thoughts? They will be greatly appreciated :)

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• Node.js Lockstep Multiplayer Architecture

  - by Wakaka

  Background I'm using the lockstep model for a multiplayer Node.js/Socket.IO game in a client-server architecture. User input (mouse or keypress) is parsed into commands like 'attack' and 'move' on the client, which are sent to the server and scheduled to be executed on a certain tick. This is in contrast to sending state data to clients, which I don't wish to use due to bandwidth issues. Each tick, the server will send the list of commands on that tick (possibly empty) to each client. The server and all clients will then process the commands and simulate that tick in exactly the same way. With Node.js this is actually quite simple due to possibility of code sharing between server and client. I'll just put the deterministic simulator in the /shared folder which can be run by both server and client. The server simulation is required so that there is an authoritative version of the simulation which clients cannot alter. Problem Now, the game has many entity classes, like Unit, Item, Tree etc. Entities are created in the simulator. However, for each class, it has some methods that are shared and some that are client-specific. For instance, the Unit class has addHp method which is shared. It also has methods like getSprite (gets the image of the entity), isVisible (checks if unit can be seen by the client), onDeathInClient (does a bunch of stuff when it dies only on the client like adding announcements) and isMyUnit (quick function to check if the client owns the unit). Up till now, I have been piling all the client functions into the shared Unit class, and adding a this.game.isServer() check when necessary. For instance, when the unit dies, it will call if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.onDeathInClient(); }. This approach has worked pretty fine so far, in terms of functionality. But as the codebase grew bigger, this style of coding seems a little strange. Firstly, the client code is clearly not shared, and yet is placed under the /shared folder. Secondly, client-specific variables for each entity are also instantiated on the server entity (like unit.sprite) and can run into problems when the server cannot instantiate the variable (it doesn't have Image class like on browsers). So my question is, is there a better way to organize the client code, or is this a common way of doing things for lockstep multiplayer games? I can think of a possible workaround, but it does have its own problems. Possible workaround (with problems) I could use Javascript mixins that are only added when in a browser. Thus, in the /shared/unit.js file in the /shared folder, I would have this code at the end: if (typeof exports !== 'undefined') module.exports = Unit; else mixin(Unit, LocalUnit); Then I would have /client/localunit.js store an object LocalUnit of client-side methods for Unit. Now, I already have a publish-subscribe system in place for events in the simulator. To remove the this.game.isServer() checks, I could publish entity-specific events whenever I want the client to do something. For instance, I would do this.publish('Death') in /shared/unit.js and do this.subscribe('Death', this.onDeathInClient) in /client/localunit.js. But this would make the simulator's event listeners list on the server and the client different. Now if I want to clear all subscribed events only from the shared simulator, I can't. Of course, it is possible to create two event subscription systems - one client-specific and one shared - but now the publish() method would have to do if (!this.game.isServer()) { this.publishOnClient(event); }. All in all, the workaround off the top of my head seems pretty complicated for something as simple as separating the client and shared code. Thus, I wonder if there is an established and simpler method for better code organization, hopefully specific to Node.js games.

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• Grid pathfinding with a lot of entities

  - by Vee

  I'd like to explain this problem with a screenshot from a released game, DROD: Gunthro's Epic Blunder, by Caravel Games. The game is turn-based and tile-based. I'm trying to create something very similar (a clone of the game), and I've got most of the fundamentals done, but I'm having trouble implementing pathfinding. Look at the screenshot. The guys in yellow are friendly, and want to kill the roaches. Every turn, every guy in yellow pathfinds to the closest roach, and every roach pathfinds to the closest guy in yellow. By closest I mean the target with the shortest path, not a simple distance calculation. All of this without any kind of slowdown when loading the level or when passing turns. And all of the entities change position every turn. Also (not shown in screenshot), there can be doors that open and close and change the level's layout. Impressive. I've tried implementing pathfinding in my clone. First attempt was making every roach find a path to a yellow guy every turn, using a breadth-first search algorithm. Obviously incredibly slow with more than a single roach, and would get exponentially slower with more than a single yellow guy. Second attempt was mas making every yellow guy generate a pathmap (still breadth-first search) every time he moved. Worked perfectly with multiple roaches and a single yellow guy, but adding more yellow guys made the game slow and unplayable. Last attempt was implementing JPS (jump point search). Every entity would individually calculate a path to its target. Fast, but with a limited number of entities. Having less than half the entities in the screenshot would make the game slow. And also, I had to get the "closest" enemy by calculating distance, not shortest path. I've asked on the DROD forums how they did it, and a user replied that it was breadth-first search. The game is open source, and I took a look at the source code, but it's C++ (I'm using C#) and I found it confusing. I don't know how to do it. Every approach I tried isn't good enough. And I believe that DROD generates global pathmaps, somehow, but I can't understand how every entity find the best individual path to other entities that move every turn. What's the trick? This is a reply I just got on the DROD forums: Without having looked at the code I'd wager it's two (or so) pathmaps for the whole room: One to the nearest enemy, and one to the nearest friendly for every tile. There's no need to make a separate pathmap for every entity when the overall goal is "move towards nearest enemy/friendly"... just mark every tile with the number of moves it takes to the nearest target and have the entity chose the move that takes it to the tile with the lowest number. To be honest, I don't understand it that well.

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• Problem with boundary collision

  - by James Century

  The problem: When the player hits the left boundary he stops (this is exactly what I want), when he hits the right boundary. He continues until his rectangle's left boundary meets with the right boundary. Outcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuJfIWZ_LL0&feature=youtu.be My Code public class Player extends GameObject{ BufferedImageLoader loader; Texture tex = Game.getInstance(); BufferedImage image; Animation playerWalkLeft; private HealthBarManager healthBar; private String username; private int width; private ManaBarManager manaBar; public Player(float x, float y, ObjectID ID) { super(x, y, ID, null); loader = new BufferedImageLoader(); playerWalkLeft = new Animation(5,tex.player[10],tex.player[11],tex.player[12],tex.player[13],tex.player[14],tex.player[15],tex.player[17],tex.player[18]); } public void tick(LinkedList<GameObject> object) { setX(getX()+velX); setY(getY()+velY); playerWalkLeft.runAnimation(); } public void render(Graphics g) { g.setColor(Color.BLACK); FontMetrics fm = g.getFontMetrics(g.getFont()); if(username != null) width = fm.stringWidth(username); if(username != null){ g.drawString(username,(int) x-width/2+15,(int) y); } if(velX != 0){ playerWalkLeft.drawAnimation(g, (int)x, (int)y); }else{ g.drawImage(tex.player[16], (int)x, (int)y, null); } g.setColor(Color.PINK); g.drawRect((int)x,(int)y,33,48); g.drawRect(0,0,(int)Game.getWalkableBounds().getWidth(), (int)Game.getWalkableBounds().getHeight()); } @SuppressWarnings("unused") private Image getCurrentImage() { return image; } public float getX() { return x; } public float getY() { return y; } public void setX(float x) { Rectangle gameBoundry = Game.getWalkableBounds(); if(x >= gameBoundry.getMinX() && x <= gameBoundry.getMaxX()){ this.x = x; } } public void setY(float y) { //IGNORE THE SetY please. this.y = y; } public float getVelX() { return velX; } public void setHealthBar(HealthBarManager healthBar){ this.healthBar = healthBar; } public HealthBarManager getHealthBar(){ return healthBar; } public float getVelY() { return velY; } public void setVelX(float velX) { this.velX = velX; } public void setVelY(float velY) { this.velY = velY; } public ObjectID getID() { return ID; } public void setUsername(String playerName) { this.username = playerName; } public String getUsername(){ return this.username; } public void setManaBar(ManaBarManager manaBar) { this.manaBar = manaBar; } public ManaBarManager getManaBar(){ return manaBar; } public int getLevel(){ return 1; } public boolean isPlayerInsideBoundry(float x, float y){ Rectangle boundry = Game.getWalkableBounds(); if(boundry.contains(x,y)){ return true; } return false; } } What I've tried: - Using a method that checks if the game boundary contains player boundary rectangle. This gave me the same result as what the check statement in my setX did.

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• Switching from Onboard intel to Nvidia Dedicated GPU

  - by Anarkie

  How can I switch from Intel onboard grpahics to Nvidia Dedicated GPU? When I go to windows screen resolution I see intel. I cant change it. I go to Device Manager, I see both Adapters are there and Nvidia is known.I disabled intel, I didnt see any option to set one as primary so I disabled intel, black screen!Reboot and re-enable intel. I right click on the desktop, choose "Nvidia Control Panel" and on 3D options I chose the desired game I want to play, High performance Nvidia, but it didnt switch when I started the game. Then I made preferred GPU in the global settings High performance Nvidia for everything it still didnt change.I understand to save the battery etc. there is a switch option between these two but I dont see this switch when it is necessary, I cant also switch manually?Is there a manual switch FN key?I looked but couldnt find. Why I want to do this? 1) Better game peformance. 2) I want to play an old game from 2002(Diablo 2 LOD), when I start the game there are black bars on the sides, so screen becomes just smaller which I dislike!I heard this is intel's specification to center the display.But instead I would like to scale or expand it to fit widescreen(fullscreen).Which should be possible with Nvidia. My Notebook Specs: Fujitsu Lifebook AH531, Win7 , 64 bit, i5, intel HD graphics onboard, Nvidia GT 525. I didnt install Nvidia later, it was always installed and ready from the moment I turned on the computer first time. How I determined that the cards werent switched when I am playing the game: with the windows key I exited from the game, then looked at screen resolutions menu, still saw intel, also the game was still with black bars.I know intel GPU should enough for Diablo 2 but I am interested in this answer for further games, I dont always play Diablo, what if I install an up to date game for example?Then Intel will not be sufficient.I would like to learn the switch option.

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• The new direction of the gaming industry

  - by raccoon_tim

  Just recently I read a great blog post by David Darling, the founder of Codemasters: http://www.develop-online.net/blog/347/Jurassic-consoles-could-become-extinct. In the blog post he talks about how traditional retail games are experiencing a downfall thanks to the increasing popularity of digital distribution. I personally think of retail games as being relics of the past. It does not really make much sense to still keep distributing boxed games when the same game can be elegantly downloaded and updated over the air through a digital distribution channel. The world is not all rainbows, however. One big issue with mixing digital distribution with boxed retail games is that resellers will not condone you selling your game for 10€ digitally while their selling the same game for 70€. The only way to get around this issue is to move to full digital distribution. This has the added benefit of minimizing piracy as the game can be tightly bound to the service you downloaded the game from. Many players are, however, complaining about not being able to play the games offline. Having games tightly bound to the internet is a problem when games are bought from a retailer as we tend to expect that once we have the product we can use it anywhere because we physically own it. The truth is that we don’t actually own the product. Instead, the typical EULA actually states that we only have a license to use the product. We’re not, for instance, allowed to disassemble the product, which the owner is indeed permitted to do. Digital distribution allows us to provide games as services, instead of selling them as standalone products. This means that for a service to work you have to be connected to the internet but you still have the same rights to use the product. It’s really straightforward; if you downloaded a client from the internet you are expected to have an internet connection so you’re able to connect to the server. A game distributed digitally that is built using a client-server architecture has the added benefit of allowing you to play anywhere as long as you have the client installed and you are able to log in with your user information. Your save games can be backed up and your game can continue anywhere. Another development we’re seeing in the gaming industry is the increasing popularity of free-to-play games. These are games that let you play for free but allow you to boost your gaming experience with real world money. The nature of these games is that players are constantly rewarded with new content and the game can evolve according to their way of playing and their wishes can be incorporated into the product. Free-to-play games can quickly gain a large player basis and monetization is done by providing players valuable things to buy making their gaming experience more fun. I am personally very excited about free-to-play games as it’s possible to start building the game together with your players and there is no need to work on the game for 5 years from start to finish and only then see if it’s actually something the players like. This is a typical problem with big movie-like retail games and recent news about Radical Entertainment practically closing its doors paints a clear picture of what can happen when the risk does not pay off: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/25874/Prototype-Developer-Radical-Entertainment-Closes/.

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• XNA running slow when making a texture

  - by Anthony

  I'm using XNA to test an image analysis algorithm for a robot. I made a simple 3D world that has a grass, a robot, and white lines (that are represent the course). The image analysis algorithm is a modification of the Hough line detection algorithm. I have the game render 2 camera views to a render target in memory. One camera is a top down view of the robot going around the course, and the second camera is the view from the robot's perspective as it moves along. I take the rendertarget of the robot camera and convert it to a Color[,] so that I can do image analysis on it. private Color[,] TextureTo2DArray(Texture2D texture, Color[] colors1D, Color[,] colors2D) { texture.GetData(colors1D); for (int x = 0; x < texture.Width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < texture.Height; y++) { colors2D[x, y] = colors1D[x + (y * texture.Width)]; } } return colors2D; } I want to overlay the results of the image analysis on the robot camera view. The first part of the image analysis is finding the white pixels. When I find the white pixels I create a bool[,] array showing which pixels were white and which were black. Then I want to convert it back into a texture so that I can overlay on the robot view. When I try to create the new texture showing which ones pixels were white, then the game goes super slow (around 10 hz). Can you give me some pointers as to what to do to make the game go faster. If I comment out this algorithm, then it goes back up to 60 hz. private Texture2D GenerateTexturesFromBoolArray(bool[,] boolArray,Color[] colorMap, Texture2D textureToModify) { for(int i =0;i < screenWidth;i++) { for(int j =0;j<screenHeight;j++) { if (boolArray[i, j] == true) { colorMap[i+(j*screenWidth)] = Color.Red; } else { colorMap[i + (j * screenWidth)] = Color.Transparent; } } } textureToModify.SetData<Color>(colorMap); return textureToModify; } Each Time I run draw, I must set the texture to null, so that I can modify it. public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { Vector2 topRightVector = ((SimulationMain)Game).spriteRectangleManager.topRightVector; Vector2 scaleFactor = ((SimulationMain)Game).config.scaleFactorScreenSizeToWindow; this.spriteBatch.Begin(); // Start the 2D drawing this.spriteBatch.Draw(this.textureFindWhite, topRightVector, null, Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, scaleFactor, SpriteEffects.None, 0); this.spriteBatch.End(); // Stop drawing. GraphicsDevice.Textures[0] = null; } Thanks for the help, Anthony G.

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