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• Android development in Unreal with an existing project

  - by user1238929

  I am currently using an Unreal 3 project that has been targeted for multiple devices. Originally, it was targeted for iOS and now I want to try and build it for Android. The project is capable of doing it and I am in the process of testing it. I think I have everything I need in order to build it and launch it for an android device that I have set up and connected to my PC and is recognized by the Android SDK ABD. I am currently trying to build and launch the game through the Unreal Frontend but when I try, I am getting stuck at getting the Unreal Frontend to find my Android device as a platform to debug, like it would with a PC, Xbox360, or PS3. Right now, I am just trying to launch the game to see if I can get it to simply run on an Android device, I'm going to worry about the packaging later. So I have two questions: Am I on the right track in looking at the Unreal Frontend to cook and launch the project on Android or should I look somewhere else? How do I get Unreal to recognize my Android device as a platform to launch on? I would even settle for recognizing an emulator, but that seems even harder.

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• Entity System with C++

  - by Dono

  I'm working on a game engine using the Entity System and I have some questions. How I see Entity System : Components : A class with attributs, set and get. Sprite Physicbody SpaceShip ... System : A class with a list of components. (Component logic) EntityManager Renderer Input Camera ... Entity : Just a empty class with a list of components. What I've done : Currently, I've got a program who allow me to do that : // Create a new entity/ Entity* entity = game.createEntity(); // Add some components. entity->addComponent( new TransformableComponent() ) ->setPosition( 15, 50 ) ->setRotation( 90 ) ->addComponent( new PhysicComponent() ) ->setMass( 70 ) ->addComponent( new SpriteComponent() ) ->setTexture( "name.png" ) ->addToSystem( new RendererSystem() ); My questions Did the system stock a list of components or a list of entities ? In the case where I stock a list of entities, I need to get the component of this entities on each frame, that's probably heavy isn't it ? Did the system stock a list of components or a list of entities ? In the case where I stock a list of entities, I need to get the component of this entities on each frame, that's probably heavy isn't it ?

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• Polygons vs sprites rendering performance in Unity for windows phone 8

  - by Géry Arduino

  I'm currently building a windows phone 8 game with unity, having 111 (no more no less) sprites being updated each frames. I have a strong overhead in the profiler (70% to 90% minimum) I tried the following to get higher frame rate, I'm running it with minimum quality settings, I tried disabling and enabling V-Sync Finally I managedto get 60Fps, but I still have large overhead. I believe I should have more than 60Fps for such few amount. Moreover, I still have to implement the game logic over this so I'd like some room in my FPS to be able to work. I was wondering if it would be better in terms of performance to use polygons instead of sprites? As sprites are quite new in Unity, (that would give me around 222 triangles). Did someone tried to check the performance differences between sprites and actual mesh renderes in Unity when it comes to phones? If so what could be the best option in that case? FYI : I'm using the Windows Phone 8 emulator on Visual studio, I have a compliant computer for that so it should normally reflect the behavior of a real phone (expecting some differences but still...) EDIT : To clarify my question i wonder what is the most efficient in windows phone 8 : Sprites or Mesh renderers?

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• Tips on combining the right Art Assets with a 2D Skeleton and making it flexible

  - by DevilWithin

  I am on my first attempt to build a skeletal animation system for 2D side-scrollers, so I don't really have experience of what may appear in later stages. So i ask advice from anyone that been there and done that! My approach: I built a Tree structure, the root node is like the center-of-mass of the skeleton, allowing to apply global transformations to the skeleton. Then, i make the hierarchy of the bones, so when moving a leg, the foot also moves. (I also make a Joint, which connects two bones, for utility). I load animations to it from a simple key frame lerp, so it does smooth movement. I map the animation hierarchy to the skeleton, or a part of it, to see if the structure is alike, otherwise the animation doesnt start. I think this is pretty much a standard implementation for such a thing, even if i want to convert it to a Rag Doll on the fly.. Now to my question: Imagine a game like prototype, there is a skeleton animation of the main character, which can animate all meshes in the game that are rigged the same way.. That way the character can transform into anything without any extra code. That is pretty much what i want to do for a side-scroller, in theory it sounds easy, but I want to know if that will work well. If the different people will be decently animated when using the same skeleton-animation pair. I can see this working well with a Stickman, but what about actual humans? Will the perspective look right, or i will need to dynamically change the sprites attached to bones? What do you recommend for such a system?

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• SharpDx: using maximized RenderForm

  - by ceiling cat

  I'm trying to learn DirectX via SharpDX, very new to this. What I want to do is be able to draw 2D shapes for a game I'm trying to make. So I started with the demo "MiniRect" that came with SharpDX. Since I want my game to be full-screen, I changed the RenderForm to be maximized (using WindowState) and set the FromBorderStyle to None. I noticed that even if the form is set to maximized, it's size is always 800 by 600. In my renderloop, if I specify the location for the rectangle has 400 by 300, it is drawn in the middle of the screen. If I try to set the location via mouse-click (using the RenderForm's MouseClick event, there is always an offset present between where the mouse was clicked and where the drawing shows up. My system DPI is set to the standard (96) so there shouldn't be any scaling. But it looks like there is a scaling factor of about 2.4 If it's not the DPI settings, does anyone have any idea what this be related to? The problem doesnt happen if the RenderForm is not maximized. Is there another way to be drawing full-screen using SharpDX? Thanks

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• How to Best Optimize up Model Transforms, Import 3DS Animations Into XNA 4.0?

  - by Jason R. Mick

  Relative beginner to XNA, but trying to build a multi-purpose (3D) game frameworking in XNA 4. Been using the Reed (O'Reilly) and Cawood/McGee (McGraw Hill) guides. My question is multi-faceted and involves how to most efficiently handle models. I'm using 3DS Max 2010 with kw-Xport to ship out my models as .X files. Solved an early problem by using my depth stencil state. My models are now loading properly (yay!) and I have basic bounding working, I just want to optimize transforming models and get animations working as a next step. My questions on models are: 1. Do you have any suggestions for good resources on exporting 3DS animations to XNA? I've seen some resources on how to handle animations in XNA, but most skimp on basic topics of how to convert multi-animation 3DS files. For example how do I take one big long string of keyframed animations (say running, frame 5-20, climbing frames 25-45, etc.) and turned them into named XNA animations. To my understanding every XNA animation has to have a name, but I haven't seen any tutorials on creating a new named animation from a subset of frames. 2. Is it faster to load a model once and animate/transform that base model on the fly @ draw time, or to load multiple models? My game will have multiple enemies, and I've already seen some lagginess in XNA, so II want to make my code efficient... 3. I've heard people on app hub talking about making custom content processors for models-- what is the benefit of this? Does it speed up transforming or animating the models? If so, can you point me towards any good (model-centric) tutorials? (I've built a custom height map content processor to generate terrain, following Cawood's examples, I'm just a bit confused as to how a model content processor would be implemented.)

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• Design pattern for procedural terrain assets

  - by Alex

  I'm developing a procedural terrain class at the moment and am stuck on the correct design pattern. The terrain is 2D and is constructed from a series of (x,y) points. I currently have a method that just randomly adds points to an array of points to generate a random spread of points. However I need a more elaborate system for generating the terrain. The terrain will be built form a series of re-accuring terrain structures eg. a pit, jump, hill etc. Each structure will have some randomness assigned to it, each height of hill will be random, pit size will be random etc. Each terrain structure will have: A property detailing the number of points making up that structure A method for generating the points (not absolutely necessary) My current thinking is to have a class for each terrain structure, create a fixed amount of terrain elements ahead of the player, loop over these and add the corresponding points to the game. What is the best way to create these procedural terrain structures when they are ultimately just a set of functions for generating terrain elements? Is a class for each terrain element excessive? I'm developing the game for iphone so any objective-c related answers would be welcome.

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• SDL & Windows 8 Metro WinRT

  - by Adrian

  I am just beginning to dip my tow into game programming and have been reading up on SDL, SFML, OpenGL, XNA, MonoGame and of course DirectX. (Needless to say there are a lot of choices out there) As much as I like SFMLs syntax I have chosen to read up and start with SDL as it is pretty ubiquitous and available on every platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) and also available on portable devices (Android, iOS) with the current exception of WinPhone 7 After that pre-amble here is my question. I notice that the docs say that for the windows platform the SDL API calls through to DirectX for higher perf. ( http://www.libsdl.org/intro.en/whatplatforms.html ) Microsoft have said that for Metro Game Apps you can only use DirectX (which means no XNA, no OpenGL, no SFML, etc, etc) My question is: If SDL just wraps DirectX calls will I (we) be able to use SDL to bring games to the new Metro WinRT environment and Windows 8 marketplace? This would be great if possible. Additionally as WinPhone 8 is supposedly built on Win8 then this could mean SDL would be available on the win phone in the future too. Thanks for your time in responding to this question and I look forward to hearing your response. EDIT: Based on DeadMG's answer I have installed Visual Studio 11 (beta) in Windows 8 Consumer Preview (CP) and went file-New to check project types. The project types: "Blank Application", "Direct2D Application" and "Direct3D Application" look of interest. I have selected "Direct2D App" but SDL generates its own window when you call: SDL_INIT Is it possible to link/setup the SDL window to point to the Direct2D surface in the this project?

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• IOS OpenGl transparency performance issue

  - by user346443

  I have built a game in Unity that uses OpenGL ES 1.1 for IOS. I have a nice constant frame rate of 30 until i place a semi transparent texture over the top on my entire scene. I expect the drop in frames is due to the blending overhead with sorting the frame buffer. On 4s and 3gs the frames stay at 30 but on the iPhone 4 the frame rate drops to 15-20. Probably due to the extra pixels in the retina compared to the 3gs and smaller cpu/gpu compared to the 4s. I would like to know if there is anything i can do to try and increase the frame rate when a transparent texture is rendered on top of the entire scene. Please not the the transparent texture overlay is a core part of the game and i can't disable anything else in the scene to speed things up. If its guaranteed to make a difference I guess I can switch to OpenGl ES 2.0 and write the shaders but i would prefer not to as i need to target older devices. I should add that the depth buffer is disabled and I'm blending using SrcAlpha One. Any advice would be highly appreciated. Cheers

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• Is HTML5/WebGL performance bad on low-end Android tablets and phones?

  - by Boris van Schooten

  I've developed a couple of WebGL games, and am trying them out on Android. I found that they run very slowly on my tablet, however. For example, a game with 10 sprites or so runs as 5fps. I tried Chrome and CocoonJS, but they are comparably slow. I also tried other games, and even games with only 5 or so moving sprites are this slow. This seems inconsistent with reports from others, such as this benchmark. Typically, when people talk about HTML5 game performance, they mention well-known and higher-end phones and tables. While my 7" tablet is cheap (I believe it's a relabeled Allwinner tablet, apparently with the Mali 400 GPU), I found it generally has a good gaming performance. All the games I tried run smoothly. I also developed an OpenGL ES 2 demo with 200 shaded 3D objects, and it ran at 50fps. My suspicion is that many low-end and white-label devices may have unacceptable HTML5/WebGL support, which means there may be a large section of gamers you will not reach when you choose this as your platform. I've heard rumors about inconsistent performance of HTML5 and WebGL on different devices, but no clear picture emerges. I would like to hear if any of you have had similar experiences with HTML5 or WebGL, or whether I can find information about the percentage of devices I can expect to have decent performance.

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• XNA extending the existing Content type

  - by Maarten

  We are doing a game in XNA that reacts to music. We need to do some offline processing of the music data and therefore we need a custom type containing the Song and some additional data: // Project AudioGameLibrary namespace AudioGameLibrary { public class GameTrack { public Song Song; public string Extra; } } We've added a Content Pipeline extension: // Project GameTrackProcessor namespace GameTrackProcessor { [ContentSerializerRuntimeType("AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack, AudioGameLibrary")] public class GameTrackContent { public SongContent SongContent; public string Extra; } [ContentProcessor(DisplayName = "GameTrack Processor")] public class GameTrackProcessor : ContentProcessor<AudioContent, GameTrackContent> { public GameTrackProcessor(){} public override GameTrackContent Process(AudioContent input, ContentProcessorContext context) { return new GameTrackContent() { SongContent = new SongProcessor().Process(input, context), Extra = "Some extra data" // Here we can do our processing on 'input' }; } } } Both the Library and the Pipeline extension are added to the Game Solution and references are also added. When trying to use this extension to load "gametrack.mp3" we run into problems however: // Project AudioGame protected override void LoadContent() { AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack gameTrack = Content.Load<AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack>("gametrack"); MediaPlayer.Play(gameTrack.Song); } The error message: Error loading "gametrack". File contains Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media.Song but trying to load as AudioGameLibrary.GameTrack. AudioGame contains references to both AudioGameLibrary and GameTrackProcessor. Are we maybe missing other references?

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• Which data structure should I use for dynamically generated platforms?

  - by Joey Green

  I'm creating a platform type of game with various types of platforms. Platforms that move, shake, rotate, etc. Multiple types and multiple of each type can be on the screen at once. The platforms will be procedural generated. I'm trying to figure out which of the following would be a better platform system: Pre-allocate all platforms when the scene loads, storing each platform type into different platform type arrays( i.e. regPlatformArray ), and just getting one when I need one. The other option is to allocate and load what I need when my code needs it. The problem with 1 is keeping up with the indices that are in use on screen and which aren't. The problem with 2 is I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how I would store these platforms so that I can call the update/draw methods on them and managing that data structure that holds them. The data structure would constantly be growing and shrinking. It seems there could be too much complexity. I'm using the cocos2d iPhone game engine. Anyways, which option would be best or is there a better option?

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• Which algorithm used in Advance Wars type turn based games

  - by Jan de Lange

  Has anyone tried to develop, or know of an algorithm such as used in a typical turn based game like Advance Wars, where the number of objects and the number of moves per object may be too large to search through up to a reasonable depth like one would do in a game with a smaller search base like chess? There is some path-finding needed to to engage into combat, harvest, or move to an object, so that in the next move such actions are possible. With this you can build a search tree for each item, resulting in a large tree for all items. With a cost function one can determine the best moves. Then the board flips over to the player role (min/max) and the computer searches the best player move, and flips back etc. upto a number of cycles deep. Finally it has found the best move and now it's the players turn. But he may be asleep by now... So how is this done in practice? I have found several good sources on A*, DFS, BFS, evaluation / cost functions etc. But as of yet I do not see how I can put it all together.

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• Debugging/Logging Techniques for End Users

  - by James Burgess

  I searched a bit, but didn't find anything particularly pertinent to my problem - so please do excuse me if I missed something! A few months back I inherited the source to a fairly-popular indie game project and have been working, along with another developer, on the code-base. We recently made our first release since taking over the development but we're a little stuck. A few users are experiencing slowdowns/lagging in the current version, as compared to the previous version, and we are not able to reproduce these issues in any of our various development environments (debug, release, different OSes, different machines, etc.). What I'd like to know is how can we go about implementing some form of logging/debugging mechanism into the game, that users can enable and send the reports to us for examination? We're not able to distribute debug binaries using the MSVS 2010 runtimes, due to the licensing - and wouldn't want to, for a variety of reasons. We'd really like to get to the bottom of this issue, even if just to find out it's nothing to do with our code base but everything to do with their system configuration. At the moment, we just have no leads - and the community isn't a very technically-savvy one, so we're unable to rely on 'expert' bug reports or investigations. I've seen the debug logging mechanism used in other applications and games for everything from logging simple errors to crash dumps. We're really at a loss at this stage as to how to address these issues, having been over every commit to the repository from the previous to the current version and not finding any real issues.

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• Per-vertex animation with VBOs: VBO per character or VBO per animation?

  - by charstar

  Goal To leverage the richness of well vetted animation tools such as Blender to do the heavy lifting for a small but rich set of animations. I am aware of additive pose blending like that from Naughty Dog and similar techniques but I would prefer to expend a little RAM/VRAM to avoid implementing a thesis-ready pose solver. I would also like to avoid implementing a key-frame + interpolation curve solver (reinventing Blender vertex groups and IPOs), if possible. Scenario Meshes are animated using either skeletons (skinned animation) or some form of morph targets (i.e. per-vertex key frames). However, in either case, the animations are known in full at load-time, that is, there is no physics, IK solving, or any other form of in-game pose solving. The number of character actions (animations) will be limited but rich (hand-animated). There may be multiple characters using a each mesh and its animations simultaneously in-game (they will likely be at different frames of the same animation at the same time). Assume color and texture coordinate buffers are static. Current Considerations Much like a non-shader-powered pose solver, create a VBO for each character and copy vertex and normal data to each VBO on each frame (VBO in STREAMING). Create one VBO for each animation where each frame (interleaved vertex and normal data) is concatenated onto the VBO. Then each character simply has a buffer pointer offset based on its current animation frame (e.g. pointer offset = (numVertices+numNormals)*frameNumber). (VBO in STATIC) Known Trade-Offs In 1 above: Each VBO would be small but there would be many VBOs and therefore lots of buffer binding and vertex copying each frame. Both client and pipeline intensive. In 2 above: There would be few VBOs therefore insignificant buffer binding and no vertex data getting jammed down the pipe each frame, but each VBO would be quite large. Are there any pitfalls to number 2 (aside from finite memory)? I've found a lot of information on what you can do, but no real best practices. Are there other considerations or methods that I am missing?

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• How do I create a 2.5d parallax effect?

  - by Nikolay Dyankov

  I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play. My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective. For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example. Any suggestions? How did Blizzard make the parallax effect in Diablo 2? See this screenshot: http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/10629/images/act2tombs.jpg

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• How can I move along an angled collision at a constant speed?

  - by Raven Dreamer

  I have, for all intents and purposes, a Triangle class that objects in my scene can collide with (In actuality, the right side of a parallelogram). My collision detection and resolution code works fine for the purposes of preventing a gameobject from entering into the space of the Triangle, instead directing the movement along the edge. The trouble is, the maximum speed along the x and y axis is not equivalent in my game, and moving along the Y axis (up or down) should take twice as long as an equivalent distance along the X axis (left or right). Unfortunately, these speeds apply to the collision resolution too, and movement along the blue path above progresses twice as fast. What can I do in my collision resolution to make sure that the speedlimit for Y axis movement is obeyed in the latter case? Collision Resolution for this case below (vecInput and velocity are the position and velocity vectors of the game object): // y = mx+c lowY = 2*vecInput.x + parag.rightYIntercept ; ... else { // y = mx+c // vecInput.y = 2(x) + RightYIntercept // (vecInput.y - RightYIntercept) / 2 = x; //if velocity.Y (positive) greater than velocity.X (negative) //pushing from bottom, so push right. if(velocity.y > -1*velocity.x) { vecInput = new Vector2((vecInput.y - parag.rightYIntercept)/2, vecInput.y); Debug.Log("adjusted rightwards"); } else { vecInput = new Vector2( vecInput.x, lowY); Debug.Log("adjusted downwards"); } }

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• Is it better to hard code data or find an algorithm?

  - by OghmaOsiris

  I've been working on a boardgame that has a hex grid as the board (the upper right grid in the image below) Since the board will never change and the spaces on the board will always be linked to the same other spaces around it, should I just hard code every space with the values that I need? Or should I use various algorithms to calculate links and traversals? To be more specific, my board game is a 4 player game where each player has a 5x5x5x5x5x5 hex grid (again, the upper right grid in th eimage above). The object is to get from the bottom of the grid to the top, with various obstacles in the way, and each players being able to attack eachother from the edge of their grid onto other players based on a range multiplier. Since the players grid will never change and the distance of any arbitrary space from the edge of the grid will always be the same, should I just hard code this number into each of the spaces, or should I still use a breadth first search algorithm when players are attacking? The only con I can think of for hard coding everything is that I'm going to code 9+ 2(5+6+7+8) = 61 individual cells. Is there anything else that I'm missing that I should consider using more complex algorithms?

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• Octree implementation for fustrum culling

  - by Manvis

  I'm learning modern (=3.1) OpenGL by coding a 3D turn based strategy game, using C++. The maps are composed of 100x90 3D hexagon tiles that range from 50 to 600 tris (20 different types) + any player units on those tiles. My current rendering technique involves sorting meshes by shaders they use (minimizing state changes) and then calling glDrawElementsInstanced() for drawing. Still get solid 16.6 ms/frame on my GTX 560Ti machine but the game struggles (45.45 ms/frame) on an old 8600GT card. I'm certain that using an octree and fustrum culling will help me here, but I have a few questions before I start implementing it: Is it OK for an octree node to have multiple meshes in it (e.g. can a soldier and the hex tile he's standing on end up in the same octree node)? How is one supposed to treat changes in object postion (e.g. several units are moving 3 hexes down)? I can't seem to find good a explanation on how to do it. As I've noticed, soting meshes by shaders is a really good way to save GPU. If I put node contents into, let's say, std::list and sort it before rendering, do you think I would gain any performance, or would it just create overhead on CPU's end? I know that this sounds like early optimization and implementing + testing would be the best way to find out, but perhaps someone knows from experience?

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• Correct level of abstraction for a 3d rendering component?

  - by JohnB

  I've seen lots of questions around this area but not this exact question so apologies if this is a duplicate. I'm making a small 3d game. Well to be honest, it's just a little hobby project and likely won't turn out to be an actual game, I'll be happy to make a nice graphics demo and learn about 3d rendering and c++ design. My intent is to use direct3d9 for rendering as I have some little experience of it, and it seems to meet my requirements. However if I've learned one thing as a programmer it's to ask "is there any conceivable reason that this component might be replaced by a different implmentation" and if the answer is yes then I need to design a proper abstraction and interface to that component. So even though I intend to implment d3d9 I need to design a 3d interface that could be implemented for d3d11, opengl... My question then is what level is it best to do this at? I'm thinking that an interface capable of creating and later drawing Vertex buffers and index buffers Textures Vertex and Pixel "shaders" Some representation of drawing state (blending modes etc...) In other words a fairly low level interface where my code to draw for example an animated model would use the interface to obtain abstract vertex buffers etc. I worry though that it's too low level to abstract out all the functionallity I need efficiently. The alternative is to do this at a higher level where the interface can draw objects, animations, landscapes etc, and implement them for each system. This seems like more work, but it more flexible I guess. So that's my question really, when abstracting out the drawing system, what level of interface works best?

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• Project collision shapes to plane for 2.5D collision detection

  - by Jkh2

  I am working on a top down 2.5D game. In the game anything that overlaps on the screen should be 'colliding' with each other regardless of whether they are on the same plane in the 3D world. This is illustrated below from a side-ways view: The orange and green circles are spheres floating in the 3D world. They are projected onto a plane parallel to the viewport plane (y = 0 in the image) and if they overlap there is a collision event between them. These spheres are attached to other meshes to represent the sphere bounding boxes for collisions. The way I plan to implement this at the moment is the following: Get the 3D world position at the center of the sphere. Use Camera.WorldToViewportPoint to project the point to the viewport plane. Move a Sphere Collider with the radius of the sphere to that point. Test for collisions using unity colliders. My question is how to extend this to work for rotated cuboids. For instance if I have two rotated cuboids, if I follow the logic above it would not work as intended as the cuboids may not collide but they could still be intersected on the view plane. An example is below: Is there a way to project a cuboid that would be aligned with the plane? Would it be a valid cuboid for all rotations if I did this?

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• 2D graphics - why use spritesheets?

  - by Columbo

  I have seen many examples of how to render sprites from a spritesheet but I havent grasped why it is the most common way of dealing with sprites in 2d games. I have started out with 2d sprite rendering in the few demo applications I've made by dealing with each animation frame for any given sprite type as its own texture - and this collection of textures is stored in a dictionary. This seems to work for me, and suits my workflow pretty well, as I tend to make my animations as gif/mng files and then extract the frames to individual pngs. Is there a noticeable performance advantage to rendering from a single sheet rather than from individual textures? With modern hardware that is capable of drawing millions of polygons to the screen a hundred times a second, does it even matter for my 2d games which just deal with a few dozen 50x100px rectangles? The implementation details of loading a texture into graphics memory and displaying it in XNA seems pretty abstracted. All I know is that textures are bound to the graphics device when they are loaded, then during the game loop, the textures get rendered in batches. So it's not clear to me whether my choice affects performance. I suspect that there are some very good reasons most 2d game developers seem to be using them, I just don't understand why.

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• How does a segment based rendering engine work?

  - by Calmarius

  As far as I know Descent was one of the first games that featured a fully 3D environment, and it used a segment based rendering engine. Its levels are built from cubic segments (these cubes may be deformed as long as it remains convex and sides remain roughly flat). These cubes are connected by their sides. The connected sides are traversable (maybe doors or grids can be placed on these sides), while the unconnected sides are not traversable walls. So the game is played inside of this complex. Descent was software rendered and it had to be very fast, to be playable on those 10-100MHz processors of that age. Some latter levels of the game are huge and contain thousands of segments, but these levels are still rendered reasonably fast. So I think they tried to minimize the amount of cubes rendered somehow. How to choose which cubes to render for a given location? As far as I know they used a kind of portal rendering, but I couldn't find what was the technique used in this particular kind of engine. I think the fact that the levels are built from convex quadrilateral hexahedrons can be exploited.

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• XNA C# Platformer - physics engine or tile based?

  - by Hugh

  I would like to get some opinions on whether i should develop my game using a physics engine (farseer physics seems to be the best option) or follow the traditional tile-based method. Quick background: - its a college project, my first game, but have 4 years academic programming experience - Just want a basic platformer with a few levels, nothing fancy - want a shooting mechanic, run and gun, just like contra or metal slug for example - possibly some simple puzzles I have made a basic prototype with farseer, the level is hardcoded with collisions and not really tiled, more like big full-screen sized tiles, with collision bodies drawn manually along the ground and walls etc. My main problem is i want a simple retro feel to the jumping and physics but because its a physics simulation engine its going to be realistic, whereas typical in air controllable physics for platformers arent realistic. I have to make a box with wheel body fixture under it to have this effect and its glitchy and doesnt feel right. I chose to use a physics engine because i tried the tile method initially and found it very hard to understand, the engine took care of alot things to save me time, mainly being able to do slopes easily was nice and the freedom to draw collision bounds wherever i liked, rather then restricted to a grid, which gave me more freedom for art design also. In conclusion i don't know which method to pick, i want to use a method which will be the most straight forward way to implement and wont give me a headache later on, preferably a method which has an abundance of tutorials and resources so i dont get "stuck" doing something which has been done a million times before! Let me know i haven't provided enough information for you to help me! Thanks in advance, Hugh.

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• C#/XNA get hardware mouse position

  - by Sunder

  I'm using C# and trying to get hardware mouse position. First thing I tryed was simple XNA functionality that is simple to use Vector2 position = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); After that i do the drawing of mouse as well, and comparing to windows hardware mouse, this new mouse with xna provided coordinates is "slacking off". By that i mean, that it is behind by few frames. For example if game is runing at 600 fps, of curse it will be responsive, but at 60 fps software mouse delay is no longer acceptable. Therefore I tried using what I thought was a hardware mouse, [DllImport("user32.dll")] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)] public static extern bool GetCursorPos(out POINT lpPoint); but the result was exactly the same. I also tried geting Windows form cursor, and that was a dead end as well - worked, but with the same delay. Messing around with xna functionality: GraphicsDeviceManager.SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace = true/false Game.IsFixedTimeStep = true/fale did change the delay time for somewhat obvious reasons, but the bottom line is that regardless it still was behind default Windows mouse. I'v seen in some games, that they provide option for hardware acelerated mouse, and in others(I think) it is already by default. Can anyone give some lead on how to achieve that.

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