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• If I wanted to make a Pac-Man Game?

  - by SoulBeaver

  I am immediately placing this as a community wiki thing. I don't want to ask for help in programming yet or have even a specific question about programming, but rather the process and the resources needed to make such a game. To put it simply: My college friend and I decided to give ourselves a really big challenge to further our skills in programming. In six months time we want to show ourselves a Pac-Man game. Pac-Man will be AI-controlled like the Ghosts and whichever Pac-Man lives the longest after a set of tries wins. This isn't like anything we've done so far. The goal here, for me, isn't to create a perfect game, but to try and complete it, learn a whole bunch in the process. Even if I don't finish in the time, which is a good possibility, I would want to have at least tried this. So my question is this: How should I start preparing myself? I already have started vector math, matrices, all that fun stuff. My desired platform would be DirectX 9.0c; is that advisable? Keep in mind that this is not a preference just for this project, but I wish to have some kind of future in graphics develepment, so I want to pick a platform that is future-safe. As for the game development in general, what should I take into consideration? I have never done a real game before, so any and all advise to development of mid-scale projects( if this would be a mid-scale project ) is greatly appreciated. My main concerns are the pit-falls and demotivators. Sorry if the question is so vague. If it doesn't belong here, then I will remove it. Otherwise, any and all advise regarding making larger projects is greatly appreciated.

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• What is the best XNA book, which can teach you the 2d & 3d game programming from basic to advance?

  - by Setve

  1- What is the best XNA book, which can teach the 2d & 3d game programming from basic to advance? Is it possible after reading that book create professional looking 3d games??? 2- Any suggestion how can become professional game developer with XNA, and create cool 3d games? 3- Is it XNA industry standard for creating games? 4- Is it any work place can join as XNA game developer?

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• How should I plan the inheritance structure for my game?

  - by Eric Thoma

  I am trying to write a platform shooter in C++ with a really good class structure for robustness. The game itself is secondary; it is the learning process of writing it that is primary. I am implementing an inheritance tree for all of the objects in my game, but I find myself unsure on some decisions. One specific issue that it bugging me is this: I have an Actor that is simply defined as anything in the game world. Under Actor is Character. Both of these classes are abstract. Under Character is the Philosopher, who is the main character that the user commands. Also under Character is NPC, which uses an AI module with stock routines for friendly, enemy and (maybe) neutral alignments. So under NPC I want to have three subclasses: FriendlyNPC, EnemyNPC and NeutralNPC. These classes are not abstract, and will often be subclassed in order to make different types of NPC's, like Engineer, Scientist and the most evil Programmer. Still, if I want to implement a generic NPC named Kevin, it would nice to be able to put him in without making a new class for him. I could just instantiate a FriendlyNPC and pass some values for the AI machine and for the dialogue; that would be ideal. But what if Kevin is the one benevolent Programmer in the whole world? Now we must make a class for him (but what should it be called?). Now we have a character that should inherit from Programmer (as Kevin has all the same abilities but just uses the friendly AI functions) but also should inherit from FriendlyNPC. Programmer and FriendlyNPC branched away from each other on the inheritance tree, so inheriting from both of them would have conflicts, because some of the same functions have been implemented in different ways on the two of them. 1) Is there a better way to order these classes to avoid these conflicts? Having three subclasses; Friendly, Enemy and Neutral; from each type of NPC; Engineer, Scientist, and Programmer; would amount to a huge number of classes. I would share specific implementation details, but I am writing the game slowly, piece by piece, and so I haven't implemented past Character yet. 2) Is there a place where I can learn these programming paradigms? I am already trying to take advantage of some good design patterns, like MVC architecture and Mediator objects. The whole point of this project is to write something in good style. It is difficult to tell what should become a subclass and what should become a state (i.e. Friendly boolean v. Friendly class). Having many states slows down code with if statements and makes classes long and unwieldy. On the other hand, having a class for everything isn't practical. 3) Are there good rules of thumb or resources to learn more about this? 4) Finally, where does templating come in to this? How should I coordinate templates into my class structure? I have never actually taken advantage of templating honestly, but I hear that it increases modularity, which means good code.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress thru the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will just quit playing the game and delete the app since they get frustrated and can't play any other puzzles until the current puzzle is solved. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from that they need to solve before unlocking the next level, it almost seems as tho I'm making them feel like it's work they have to do. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is more motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• Does it make the game more fun when the user is forced to progress through the levels sequentially rather than letting them pick and play?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  Hello. For the first time in my game, I'm stuck with a real design dilemma. I guess that's a good thing ;) I'm building a word puzzle game that has five levels, each with 30 puzzles. Currently, the user has to solve one puzzle at a time before moving to the next. However, I'm finding the user occasionally gets stuck on a puzzle, at which point they can no longer play until they solve it. This is obviously bad because many people will probably just quit playing the game and delete the app. The only elegant solution I can find to helping the player get unstuck is changing the design of the game to allow the users to pick any puzzle to play at any time. This way, if they get stuck, they can come back to it later and at least they have other puzzles to play in the meantime. It's my opinion, however, that this new flow design doesn't make the game as fun as the original flow design where the player has to complete a puzzle before moving to the next. To me, it's like anything else, when you only have one of something, it's more enjoyable, but when you have 30 of something, it's far less enjoyable. In fact, when I present the user with 30 puzzles to choose from, I'm concerned I might be making them feel like it's a lot of work they have to do and that's bad. I even had a tester voluntarily tell me that being forced to complete a puzzle before moving to the next is actually motivating. My questions are... Do you agree/disagree? Do you have any suggestions for how I can help the player get unstuck? Thanks so much in advance for your thoughts! EDIT: I should mention that I've already considered a few other solutions to helping the user get unstuck, but none of them seem like good ideas. They are... Add more hints: Currently, the user gets two hints per puzzle. If I increase the hint count, it only makes the game more easy and still leaves the possibility of the user getting stuck. Add a "Show Solution" button: This seems like a bad idea because it's my opinion this takes the fun out of the game for many people who would probably otherwise solve the puzzle if they didn't have the quick option to see the solution.

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• How to manage own bots at the server?

  - by Nikolay Kuznetsov

  There is a game server and people can play in game rooms of 2, 3 or 4. When a client connects to server he can send a request specifying a number of people or range he wants to play with. One of this value is valid: {2-4, 2-3, 3-4, 2, 3, 4} So the server maintains 3 separate queues for game room with 2, 3 and 4 people. So we can denote queues as #2, #3 and #4. It work the following way. If a client sends request, 3-4, then two separate request are added to queues #3 and #4. If queue #3 now have 3 requests from different people then game room with 3 players is created, and all other requests from those players are removed from all queues. Right now not many people are online simultaneously, so they apply for a game wait for some time and quit because game does not start in a reasonable time. That's a simple bot for beginning has been developed. So there is a need to patch server code to run a bot, if some one requests a game, but humans are not online. Input: request from human {2-4, 2-3, 3-4, 2, 3, 4} Output: number of bots to run and time to wait for each before connecting, depending on queues state. The problem is that I don't know how to manage bots properly at the server? Example: #3 has 1 request and #4 has 1 request Request from user is {3,4} then server can add one bot to play game with 3 people or two bots to play game of 4. Example: #3 has 1 request and #4 has 2 requests Request from user is {3,4} then in each case just one bot is needed so game with 4 players is more preferrable.

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• How can I log key presses in Game Maker?

  - by skeletalmonkey

  I'm trying to create a log of a players actions as they play a game of Spelunky. The easiest I've found to do this is to log what keys are pressed at each frame. What I don't know how to do is how to integrate this with the Game Maker source code of Spelunky. Is there a specific way to create a script that is checked every frame/tick (don't know the right term) and a command to find what buttons are pressed?

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• Advice on how to build html5 basic tile game (multi player, cross device)

  - by Eric

  I just read http://buildnewgames.com/real-time-multiplayer/ which explains the fundamentals and bets practices to build a massive real time multiplayer html5 game. My question is however given the “simplicity” of the game I need to build (simple kind of scratch game where you find or not something behind a tile), do I really need complex tools (canvas or node.js for example) ? The game The gamestakes place with a picture of our office as a background (tilemap). For HR purpose, we wish to create the following game fore employees: each day they can come to the website and click on a certain number of tiles (3 max per day) and find behind it motivation advice and interesting facts about the company. The constraints and rules the screen is divided into isometric 2D square tiles. There are basically an image (photograph of our office) number of tiles on the screen game: about 10,000 to much more (with scroll , see below) the players can scroll in 4 directions there are only 2 types of tiles: already open and closed player can open tiles that have not been yet open by other players there is no path for players : any player can click on any tile on the screen at any moment (if it’s not already done by another player) 2 players can’t be on the same tile at the same moment (or if they can, I’ll have to manage to see which one clicked on it first) only one type of player (all with similar roles), no weapon, no internal score… very simple game. no complex physics (collision only occurs if 2 players are on the same tile) The target I need to achieve: cross device, cross browsers high performance reaction (subsecond reactions) average nb of players per hour: up to 10K players per hour (quite high indeed but it’s because we aim at proving our case for the game to our business unit) So what I would like to know: 2D Tiled map: Do I need tiledmapeditor or can I enable me split the screen like here ? should I use canvas or plain html/css could be sufficient for my need? do I need a game engine/framework such as melon.js or crafty./js ? (even if the game play is extremely basic, I do need mouse and touché device support, mouse emulations on touch devices…) or ca I easily/quickly do it without? for my constraints and targets, should I use CPU acceleration ? for my constraints and targets, should I use web workers ? for the database, for a massively real time game should I avoid to put the current locations of player in MySQL as i feel it might slow me down. What kind of DB should I implement ? Thanks for your help !

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• How to implement Pentago AI algorithm

  - by itsho

  Hi, i'm trying to develop Pentago-game in c#. right now i'm having 2 players mode which working just fine. the problem is, that i want One player mode (against computer), but unfortunately, all implements of minimax / negamax are for one step calculated. butin Pentago, every player need to do two things (place marble, and rotate one of the inner-boards) I didn't figure out how to implement both rotate part & placing the marble, and i would love someone to guide me with this. if you're not familiar with the game, here's a link to the game. if anyone want's, i can upload my code somewhere if that's relevant. thank you very much in advance

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• How to implement smooth flocking

  - by Craig

  I'm working on a simple survival game, avoid the big guy and chase the the small guys to stay alive for as long as possible. I have taken the chase and evade example from MSDN create and drawn 20 mice on the screen. I want the small guys to flock when they arent evading. They are doing this, but it isnt as smooth as I would like it to be. How do i make the movement smoother? Its very jittery.# Below is what I have going at the moment, flocking code is within the IF statement, when it isnt set to evading. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :) namespace ChaseAndEvade { class MouseSprite { public enum MouseAiState { // evading the cat Evading, // the mouse can't see the "cat", and it's wandering around. Wander } // how fast can the mouse move? public float MaxMouseSpeed = 4.5f; // and how fast can it turn? public float MouseTurnSpeed = 0.20f; // MouseEvadeDistance controls the distance at which the mouse will flee from // cat. If the mouse is further than "MouseEvadeDistance" pixels away, he will // consider himself safe. public float MouseEvadeDistance = 100.0f; // this constant is similar to TankHysteresis. The value is larger than the // tank's hysteresis value because the mouse is faster than the tank: with a // higher velocity, small fluctuations are much more visible. public float MouseHysteresis = 60.0f; public Texture2D mouseTexture; public Vector2 mouseTextureCenter; public Vector2 mousePosition; public MouseAiState mouseState = MouseAiState.Wander; public float mouseOrientation; public Vector2 mouseWanderDirection; int separationImpact = 4; int cohesionImpact = 6; int alignmentImpact = 2; int sensorDistance = 50; public void UpdateMouse(Vector2 position, MouseSprite [] mice, int numberMice, int index) { Vector2 catPosition = position; int enemies = numberMice; // first, calculate how far away the mouse is from the cat, and use that // information to decide how to behave. If they are too close, the mouse // will switch to "active" mode - fleeing. if they are far apart, the mouse // will switch to "idle" mode, where it roams around the screen. // we use a hysteresis constant in the decision making process, as described // in the accompanying doc file. float distanceFromCat = Vector2.Distance(mousePosition, catPosition); // the cat is a safe distance away, so the mouse should idle: if (distanceFromCat > MouseEvadeDistance + MouseHysteresis) { mouseState = MouseAiState.Wander; } // the cat is too close; the mouse should run: else if (distanceFromCat < MouseEvadeDistance - MouseHysteresis) { mouseState = MouseAiState.Evading; } // if neither of those if blocks hit, we are in the "hysteresis" range, // and the mouse will continue doing whatever it is doing now. // the mouse will move at a different speed depending on what state it // is in. when idle it won't move at full speed, but when actively evading // it will move as fast as it can. this variable is used to track which // speed the mouse should be moving. float currentMouseSpeed; // the second step of the Update is to change the mouse's orientation based // on its current state. if (mouseState == MouseAiState.Evading) { // If the mouse is "active," it is trying to evade the cat. The evasion // behavior is accomplished by using the TurnToFace function to turn // towards a point on a straight line facing away from the cat. In other // words, if the cat is point A, and the mouse is point B, the "seek // point" is C. // C // B // A Vector2 seekPosition = 2 * mousePosition - catPosition; // Use the TurnToFace function, which we introduced in the AI Series 1: // Aiming sample, to turn the mouse towards the seekPosition. Now when // the mouse moves forward, it'll be trying to move in a straight line // away from the cat. mouseOrientation = ChaseAndEvadeGame.TurnToFace(mousePosition, seekPosition, mouseOrientation, MouseTurnSpeed); // set currentMouseSpeed to MaxMouseSpeed - the mouse should run as fast // as it can. currentMouseSpeed = MaxMouseSpeed; } else { // if the mouse isn't trying to evade the cat, it should just meander // around the screen. we'll use the Wander function, which the mouse and // tank share, to accomplish this. mouseWanderDirection and // mouseOrientation are passed by ref so that the wander function can // modify them. for more information on ref parameters, see // http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/14akc2c7(VS.80).aspx ChaseAndEvadeGame.Wander(mousePosition, ref mouseWanderDirection, ref mouseOrientation, MouseTurnSpeed); // if the mouse is wandering, it should only move at 25% of its maximum // speed. currentMouseSpeed = .25f * MaxMouseSpeed; Vector2 separate = Vector2.Zero; Vector2 moveCloser = Vector2.Zero; Vector2 moveAligned = Vector2.Zero; // What the AI does when it sees other AIs for (int j = 0; j < enemies; j++) { if (index != j) { // Calculate a vector towards another AI Vector2 separation = mice[index].mousePosition - mice[j].mousePosition; // Only react if other AI is within a certain distance if ((separation.Length() < this.sensorDistance) & (separation.Length()> 0) ) { moveAligned += mice[j].mouseWanderDirection; float distance = Math.Abs(separation.Length()); if (distance == 0) distance = 1; moveCloser += mice[j].mousePosition; separation.Normalize(); separate += separation / distance; } } } if (moveAligned.LengthSquared() != 0) { moveAligned.Normalize(); } if (moveCloser.LengthSquared() != 0) { moveCloser.Normalize(); } moveCloser /= enemies; mice[index].mousePosition += (separate * separationImpact) + (moveCloser * cohesionImpact) + (moveAligned * alignmentImpact); } // The final step is to move the mouse forward based on its current // orientation. First, we construct a "heading" vector from the orientation // angle. To do this, we'll use Cosine and Sine to tell us the x and y // components of the heading vector. See the accompanying doc for more // information. Vector2 heading = new Vector2( (float)Math.Cos(mouseOrientation), (float)Math.Sin(mouseOrientation)); // by multiplying the heading and speed, we can get a velocity vector. the // velocity vector is then added to the mouse's current position, moving him // forward. mousePosition += heading * currentMouseSpeed; } } }

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• Game-a-Week One

  - by Matt Christian

  Anyone who chats with me on a semi-regular basis knows I am absolutely horrible at completing something from beginnning to end.  Often times I'll begin something, lose interest at some point, and end up moving onto the next thing.  For example, I have 1/2 a full game created, 1/3 of a novel written, and half of a model set created.  Needless to say, unless I have some sort of pressure to finish something I don't stick to it. Recently however one of my online buddies challenged me to create a simple game.  The start date was last Thursday and the final game needed to be delivered by this next Sunday (giving me just over a week).  However, I am going out of town this Friday so will need to deliver it by Thursday, giving me exactly 1 week to develop a game.  Here is what the game needed to include: The player should be able to shoot Shooting things should score points Sounds very simple, but given a single week to produce all art assets plus the game isn't an easy task.  So far I've developed: An animated Main Menu that loads via script files, allows the user to start a new game or exit the game The game is 3D and the player can move around the play area with an 'over-the-shoulder' camera HUD elements are drawn to display the player's current score When the player presses Esc they are shown a pause menu where they can resume the game by pressing Esc again, or quit the game by pressing Space There are also 2 items implemented that don't work perfectly: JigLibX physics library implementation On the main menu there is an arrow symbol that rotates to always point at your mouse I've got 2 days of development left so hopefully I can get collision working, some of the art cleaned up, and some more of the camera functionality working.  Also, I'll need to take some time to package the game up which hopefully shouldn't take too long.

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• HTML5 game engine for a 2D or 2.5D RPG style "map walk"

  - by stargazer

  please help me to choose a HTML5 game engine or Javascript libraries I want to do the following in the game: when the game starts a part the huge map (full size of the map: about 7 screens) is shown. The map itself is completely designed in the editor mapeditor.org (or in some comparable editor - if you know a good alternative to mapeditor.org - let me know) and loaded at runtime or at design time. The game engine should support loading of isometric maps (well, in worst case only orthogonal maps will be sufficient) both "tile layer" and "object layer" from mapeditor.org should be supported. Scrolling/performance of this map should be fast enough. The map and the game should be either in 2D (orthogonal map) or in 2.5D (isometric map) The game engine should support movement of sprites with animation. Let say I have a sprite for "human" with animation sequences showing "walking" in 8 directions - it should be imported into game engine and should "walk" on the map without writing a lot of Javascript code. Automatic scrolling of the map the "human" nears the screen border. Collision detection, "solid" objects. The mapeditor.org supports properies on tiles. Let say I assign a "solid" property to some tiles in editor. It should be easy to check this "solid" property in the game engine and implement kind of "solid" behavior, so the animanted sprites do not walk through the walls. Collision detection - it should be easy to implement some custom functionality like "when sprite A is close to sprite B - call this function" Showing "dialogs" or popup windows on top of the map - should be easy to implement. Cross-browser audio support - (it is implemented quite well in construct 2 from scirra, so I'm looking for the comparable audio quality) The game itself is a king of RPG but without fighting scenes and without huge "inventory". The main character just walking on the map, discovers some things, there are dialogs and sounds. The functionality of this example from sprite.js http://batiste.dosimple.ch/sprite.js/tests/mapeditor/map_reader.html is very close to what I'm developing. But I'm not a Javascript guru (and a very lazy guy) and would like to write even less Javascript code as in the example...

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• Multiplayer online game engine/pipeline

  - by Slav

  I am implementing online multiplayer game where client must be written in AS3 (Flash) to embed game into browser and server in C++ (abstract part of which is already written and used with other games). Networking models may differ from each other, but currently I'm looking toward game's logic run on both client and server parts but they're written on different languages while it's not the main problem. My previous game (pretty big one - was implemented with efforts of ~5 programmers in 1.5 years) was mainly "written" within electronic tables as structured objects with implemented inheritance: was written standalone tool which generated AS3 and C++ (languages of platforms to which the game was published) using specified electronic tables file (.xls or .ods). That file contained ~50 tables with ~50 rows and ~50 columns each and was mainly written by game designers which do not know any programming languages. But that game was single-player. Having declared problem with my currently implementing MMO, I'm looking toward some vast pipeline, where will be resolved such problems like: game objects descriptions (which starships exist within game, how much HP they have, how fast move, what damage deal...) actions descriptions (what players or NPCs can do: attack each other, collect resources, build structures, move, teleport, cast spells) - actions are transmitted through server between clients influences (what happens when specified action applied on specified object, e.i "Ship A attacked Ship B: field "HP" of Ship B reduced by amount of field "damage" of Ship A" Influences can be much more difficult, yes, e.i. "damage is twice it's size when Ship has =5 allies around him in a 200 units range during night" and so on. If to be able to write such logic within some "design document" it will be easily possible to: let designers to do their job without programmer's intervention or any bug-prone programming validate described logic transfer (transform, convert) to any programming language where it will be executed Did somebody worked on something like that? Is there some tools/engines/pipelines which concernes with it? How to handle all of this problems simultaneously in a best way or do I properly imagine my tasks and problems to myself?

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• Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game

  - by brent777

  I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

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• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks ! EDIT: Just a little more information about the game. It is intended to be a very complex game with several functionalities, making some functionalities a "program" inside the program. It is not an usual game, like FPS or RPG but I intend on having a lot of users using these many different "programs" inside the game. If I wasn't clear enough, I'd really appreciate people that have already developed games with java client/server architecture, how they communicated, any frameworks, apis, messaging systems, etc. It is not a question of lack of knowledge of language, more a question for advice, so I don't end up creating something that works, but in the later stages will have to be rewriten for any kind of limiting reason. PS: sorry if my english is not perfect...

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• Use a SQL Database for a Desktop Game

  - by sharethis

  Developing a Game Engine I am planning a computer game and its engine. There will be a 3 dimensional world with first person view and it will be single player for now. The programming language is C++ and it uses OpenGL. Data Centered Design Decision My design decision is to use a data centered architecture where there is a global event manager and a global data manager. There are many components like physics, input, sound, renderer, ai, ... Each component can trigger and listen to events. Moreover, each component can read, edit, create and remove data. The question is about the data manager. Whether to Use a Relational Database Should I use a SQL Database, e.g. SQLite or MySQL, to store the game data? This contains virtually all game content like items, characters, inventories, ... Except of meshes and textures which are even more performance related, so I will keep them in memory. Is a SQL database fast enough to use it for realtime reading and writing game informations, like the position of a moving character? I also need to care about cross-platform compatibility. Aside from keeping everything in memory, what alternatives do I have? Advantages Would Be The advantages of using a relational database like MySQL would be the data orientated structure which allows fast computation. I would not need objects for representing entities. I could easily query data of objects near the player needed for rendering. And I don't have to take care about data of objects far away. Moreover there would be no need for savegames since the hole game state is saved in the database. Last but not least, expanding the game to an online game would be relative easy because there already is a place where the hole game state is stored.

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• Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game (Android)

  - by brent777

  I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

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• Resources that explain or investigate artificial intelligence (AI) based approaches/strategies to th

  - by tauon

  While Mahjong (the actual game, not Mahjong solitare) is fairly simple in terms of basic rules and gameplay, setting objectives for the AI to transition to aim for certain end game goals seems fairly complex. Is anyone aware of any papers, research, or other materials related to this topic?

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• What is the best way to render a 2d game map?

  - by Deukalion

  I know efficiency is key in game programming and I've had some experiences with rendering a "map" earlier but probably not in the best of ways. For a 2D TopDown game: (simply render the textures/tiles of the world, nothing else) Say, you have a map of 1000x1000 (tiles or whatever). If the tile isn't in the view of the camera, it shouldn't be rendered - it's that simple. No need to render a tile that won't be seen. But since you have 1000x1000 objects in your map, or perhaps less you probably don't want to loop through all 1000*1000 tiles just to see if they're suppose to be rendered or not. Question: What is the best way to implement this efficiency? So that it "quickly/quicker" can determine what tiles are suppose to be rendered? Also, I'm not building my game around tiles rendered with a SpriteBatch so there's no rectangles, the shapes can be different sizes and have multiple points, say a curved object of 10 points and a texture inside that shape; Question: How do you determine if this kind of objects is "inside" the View of the camera? It's easy with a 48x48 rectangle, just see if it X+Width or Y+Height is in the view of the camera. Different with multiple points. Simply put, how to manage the code and the data efficiently to not having to run through/loop through a million of objects at the same time.

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• How to wire finite state machine into component-based architecture?

  - by Pup

  State machines seem to cause harmful dependencies in component-based architectures. How, specifically, is communication handled between a state machine and the components that carry out state-related behavior? Where I'm at: I'm new to component-based architectures. I'm making a fighting game, although I don't think that should matter. I envision my state machine being used to toggle states like "crouching", "dashing", "blocking", etc. I've found this state-management technique to be the most natural system for a component-based architecture, but it conflicts with techniques I've read about: Dynamic Game Object Component System for Mutable Behavior Characters It suggests that all components activate/deactivate themselves by continually checking a condition for activation. I think that actions like "running" or "walking" make sense as states, which is in disagreement with the accepted response here: finite state machine used in mario like platform game I've found this useful, but ambiguous: How to implement behavior in a component-based game architecture? It suggests having a separate component that contains nothing but a state machine. But, this necessitates some kind of coupling between the state machine component and nearly all the other components. I don't understand how this coupling should be handled. These are some guesses: A. Components depend on state machine: Components receive reference to state machine component's getState(), which returns an enumeration constant. Components update themselves regularly and check this as needed. B. State machine depends on components: The state machine component receives references to all the components it's monitoring. It queries their getState() methods to see where they're at. C. Some abstraction between them Use an event hub? Command pattern? D. Separate state objects that reference components State Pattern is used. Separate state objects are created, which activate/deactivate a set of components. State machine switches between state objects. I'm looking at components as implementations of aspects. They do everything that's needed internally to make that aspect happen. It seems like components should function on their own, without relying on other components. I know some dependencies are necessary, but state machines seem to want to control all of my components.

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• "Optimal" game loop for 2D side-scroller

  - by MrDatabase

  Is it possible to describe an "optimal" (in terms of performance) layout for a 2D side-scroller's game loop? In this context the "game loop" takes user input, updates the states of game objects and draws the game objects. For example having a GameObject base class with a deep inheritance hierarchy could be good for maintenance... you can do something like the following: foreach(GameObject g in gameObjects) g.update(); However I think this approach can create performance issues. On the other hand all game objects' data and functions could be global. Which would be a maintenance headache but might be closer to an optimally performing game loop. Any thoughts? I'm interested in practical applications of near optimal game loop structure... even if I get a maintenance headache in exchange for great performance.

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• Turn the Cables from Your Gaming or Electronics Setup into a Wall-Based Work of Art

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to gaming setups or our favorite electronics, there are always lots of cables to deal with. Now you could just bundle those cables up and try to hide them as best you can or you could turn them into a work of art… You can see additional pictures and find out how to set up your own wall-based work of art with those cables by visiting the blog post linked below. Feature Friday: Cords Away [via There I Fixed It] Here’s How to Download Windows 8 Release Preview Right Now HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting How to Convert News Feeds to Ebooks with Calibre

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• MiniMax function throws null pointer exception

  - by Sven

  I'm working on a school project, I have to build a tic tac toe game with the AI based on the MiniMax algorithm. The two player mode works like it should. I followed the code example on http://ethangunderson.com/blog/minimax-algorithm-in-c/. The only thing is that I get a NullPointer Exception when I run the code. And I can't wrap my finger around it. I placed a comment in the code where the exception is thrown. The recursive call is returning a null pointer, what is very strange because it can't.. When I place a breakpoint on the null return with the help of a if statement, then I see that there ARE still 2 to 3 empty places.. I probably overlooking something. Hope someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Here is the MiniMax code (the tic tac toe code is not important): /* * To change this template, choose Tools | Templates * and open the template in the editor. */ package MiniMax; import Game.Block; import Game.Board; import java.util.ArrayList; public class MiniMax { public static Place getBestMove(Board gameBoard, Block.TYPE player) { Place bestPlace = null; ArrayList<Place> emptyPlaces = gameBoard.getEmptyPlaces(); Board newBoard; //loop trough all the empty places for(Place emptyPlace : emptyPlaces) { newBoard = gameBoard.clone(); newBoard.setBlock(emptyPlace.getRow(), emptyPlace.getCell(), player); //no game won and still room to move if(newBoard.getWinner() == Block.TYPE.NONE && newBoard.getEmptyPlaces().size() > 0) { //is an node (has children) Place tempPlace = getBestMove(newBoard, invertPlayer(player)); //ERROR is thrown here! tempPlace is null. emptyPlace.setScore(tempPlace.getScore()); } else { //is an leaf if(newBoard.getWinner() == Block.TYPE.NONE) { emptyPlace.setScore(0); } else if(newBoard.getWinner() == Block.TYPE.X) { emptyPlace.setScore(-1); } else if(newBoard.getWinner() == Block.TYPE.O) { emptyPlace.setScore(1); } //if this move is better then our prev move, take it! if((bestPlace == null) || (player == Block.TYPE.X && emptyPlace.getScore() < bestPlace.getScore()) || (player == Block.TYPE.O && emptyPlace.getScore() > bestPlace.getScore())) { bestPlace = emptyPlace; } } } //This should never be null, but it does.. return bestPlace; } private static Block.TYPE invertPlayer(Block.TYPE player) { if(player == Block.TYPE.X) { return Block.TYPE.O; } return Block.TYPE.X; } }

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• Programming bots in games

  - by Bane

  I'm interested in how bots are usually written. Here's my situation: I plan to make an online 2D mecha game in HTML5, and the server-side will be done with node. It is intended to be multiplayer, but I also want to make bots in case there aren't enough players. How does my game logic see them, as players or as bots? Is there a standard by which I should make them? Also, any general tips and hints will be OK.

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• Managing multiple references of the same game entity in different places using IDs

  - by vargonian

  I've seen great questions on similar topics, but none that addressed this particular method: Given that I have multiple collections of game entities in my [XNA Game Studio] game, with many entities belonging to multiple lists, I'm considering ways I could keep track of whenever an entity is destroyed and remove it from the lists it belongs to. A lot of potential methods seem sloppy/convoluted, but I'm reminded of a way I've seen before in which, instead of having multiple collections of game entities, you have collections of game entity IDs instead. These IDs map to game entities via a central "database" (perhaps just a hash table). So, whenever any bit of code wants to access a game entity's members, it first checks to see if it's even in the database still. If not, it can react accordingly. Is this a sound approach? It seems that it would eliminate many of the risks/hassles of storing multiple lists, with the tradeoff being the cost of the lookup every time you want to access an object.

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