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• SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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• Creating predefinied camera views - How do I move the camera to make sense while using Controller?

  - by Deukalion

  I'm trying to understand 3D but the one thing I can't seem to understand is the Camera. Right now I'm rendering four 3D Cubes with textures and I set the Project Matrix: public BasicCamera3D(float fieldOfView, float aspectRatio, float clipStart, float clipEnd, Vector3 cameraPosition, Vector3 cameraLookAt) { projection_fieldOfView = MathHelper.ToRadians(fieldOfView); projection_aspectRatio = aspectRatio; projection_clipstart = clipStart; projection_clipend = clipEnd; matrix_projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(projection_fieldOfView, aspectRatio, clipStart, clipEnd); view_cameraposition = cameraPosition; view_cameralookat = cameraLookAt; matrix_view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, cameraLookAt, Vector3.Up); } BasicCamera3D gameCamera = new BasicCamera3D(45f, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, 1.0f, 1000f, new Vector3(0, 0, 8), new Vector3(0, 0, 0)); This creates a sort of "Top-Down" camera, with 8 (still don't get the unit type here - it's not pixels I guess?) But, if I try to position the camera at the side to make "Side-View" or "Reverse Side View" camera, the camera is rotating to much until it's turned around it a couple of times. I render the boxes at: new Vector3(-1, 0, 0) new Vector3(0, 0, 0) new Vector3(1, 0, 0) new Vector3(1, 0, 1) and with the Top-Down camera it shows good, but I don't get how I can make the camera show the side or 45 degrees from top (Like 3rd person action games) because the logic doesn't make sense. Also, since every object you render needs a new BasicEffect with a new projection/view/world - can you still use the "same" camera always so you don't have to create a new View/Matrix and such for each object. It's seems weird. If someone could help me get the camera to navigate around my objects "naturally" so I can be able to set a few predtermined views to choose from it would be really helpful. Are there some sort of algorithm to calculate the view for this and perhaps not simply one value? Examples: Top-Down-View: I have an object at 0, 0, 0 when I turn the right stick on the Xbox 360 Controller it should rotate around that object kind of, not flip and turn upside down, disappear and then magically appear as a tiny dot somewhere I have no clue where it is like it feels like it does now. Side-View: I have an object at 0, 0, 0 when I rotate to sides or up and down, the camera should be able to show a little more of the periphery to each side (depending on which you look at), and the same while moving up or down.

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• Day 3 - XNA: Hacking around with images

  - by dapostolov

  Yay! Today I'm going to get into some code! My mind has been on this all day! I find it amusing how I practice, daily, to be "in the moment" or "present" and the excitement and anticipation of this project seems to snatch it away from me frequently. WELL!!! (Shakes Excitedly) Let's do this =)! Let's code! For these next few days it is my intention to better understand image rendering using XNA; after said prototypes are complete I should (fingers crossed) be able to dive into my game code using the design document I hammered out the other night. On a personal note, I think the toughest thing right now is finding the time to do this project. Each night, after my little ones go to bed I can only really afford a couple hours of work on this project. However, I hope to utilise this time as best as I can because this is the first time in a while I've found a project that I've been passionate about. A friend recently asked me if I intend to go 3D or extend the game design. Yes. For now I'm keeping it simple. Lastly, just as a note, as I was doing some further research into image rendering this morning I came across some other XNA content and lessons learned. I believe this content could have probably been posted in the first couple of posts, however, I will share the new content as I learn it at the end of each day. Maybe I'll take some time later to fix the posts but for now Installation and Deployment - Lessons Learned I had installed the XNA studio  (Day 1) and the site instructions were pretty easy to follow. However, I had a small difficulty with my development environment. You see, I run a virtual desktop development environment. Even though I was able to code and compile all the tutorials the game failed to run...because I lacked a 3D capable card; it was not detected on the virtual box... First Lesson: The XNA runtime needs to "see" the 3D card! No sweat, Il copied the files over to my parent box and executed the program. ERROR. Hmm... Second Lesson (which I should have probably known but I let the excitement get the better of me): you need the XNA runtime on the client PC to run the game, oh, and don't forget the .Net Runtime! Sprite, it ain't just a Soft Drink... With these prototypes I intend to understand and perform the following tasks. learn game development terminology how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen how to layer static images on the screen understand image scaling can we reuse images? understand how framerate is handled in XNA how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques how to detect colliding images or screen edges how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) Well, let's start with this "prototype" task list for now...Today, let's get an image on the screen and maybe I can mark a few of the tasks as completed... C# Prototype1 New Visual Studio Project Select the XNA Game Studio 3.1 Project Type Select the Windows Game 3.1 Template Type Prototype1 in the Name textbox provided Press OK. At this point code has auto-magically been created. Feel free to press the F5 key to run your first XNA program. You should have a blue screen infront of you. Without getting into the nitty gritty right, the code that was generated basically creates some basic code to clear the window content with the lovely CornFlowerBlue color. Something to notice, when you move your mouse into the window...nothing. ooooo spoooky. Let's put an image on that screen! Step A - Get an Image into the solution Under "Content" in your Solution Explorer, right click and add a new folder and name it "Sprites". Copy a small image in there; I copied a "Royalty Free" wizard hat from a quick google search and named it wizards_hat.jpg (rightfully so!) Step B - Add the sprite and position fields Now, open/edit  Game1.cs Locate the following line:  SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Under this line type the following:         SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // the line you are looking for...         Texture2D sprite;         Vector2 position; Step C - Load the image asset Locate the "Load Content" Method and duplicate the following:             protected override void LoadContent()         {             spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);             // your image name goes here...             sprite = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprites\\wizards_hat");             position = new Vector2(200, 100);             base.LoadContent();         } Step D - Draw the image Locate the "Draw" Method and duplicate the following:        protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         }  Step E - Compile and Run Engage! (F5) - Debug! Your image should now display on a cornflowerblue window about 200 pixels from the left and 100 pixels from the top. Awesome! =) Pretty cool how we only coded a few lines to display an image, but believe me, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. However, for now, I'm going to call it a night here. Blogging all this progress certainly takes time... However, tomorrow night I'm going to detail what we just did, plus start checking off points on that list! I'm wondering right now if I should add pictures / code to this post...let me know if you want them =) Best Regards, D.

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• The worst anti-patterns you have came across.

  - by ?????????

  What are the worst anti-patterns you have came across in your career as a programmer? I'm mostly involved in java, although it is probably language-independent. I think the worst of it is what I call the main anti-pattern. It means program consisting of single, extremely big class (sometimes accompanied with a pair of little classes) which contains all logic. Typically with a big loop in which all business logic is contained, sometimes having tens of thousands of lines of code.

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• x axis detection issues platformer starter kit

  - by dbomb101

  I've come across a problem with the collision detection code in the platformer starter kit for xna.It will send up the impassible flag on the x axis despite being nowhere near a wall in either direction on the x axis, could someone could tell me why this happens ? Here is the collision method. /// <summary> /// Detects and resolves all collisions between the player and his neighboring /// tiles. When a collision is detected, the player is pushed away along one /// axis to prevent overlapping. There is some special logic for the Y axis to /// handle platforms which behave differently depending on direction of movement. /// </summary> private void HandleCollisions() { // Get the player's bounding rectangle and find neighboring tiles. Rectangle bounds = BoundingRectangle; int leftTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Left / Tile.Width); int rightTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Right / Tile.Width)) - 1; int topTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)bounds.Top / Tile.Height); int bottomTile = (int)Math.Ceiling(((float)bounds.Bottom / Tile.Height)) - 1; // Reset flag to search for ground collision. isOnGround = false; // For each potentially colliding tile, for (int y = topTile; y <= bottomTile; ++y) { for (int x = leftTile; x <= rightTile; ++x) { // If this tile is collidable, TileCollision collision = Level.GetCollision(x, y); if (collision != TileCollision.Passable) { // Determine collision depth (with direction) and magnitude. Rectangle tileBounds = Level.GetBounds(x, y); Vector2 depth = RectangleExtensions.GetIntersectionDepth(bounds, tileBounds); if (depth != Vector2.Zero) { float absDepthX = Math.Abs(depth.X); float absDepthY = Math.Abs(depth.Y); // Resolve the collision along the shallow axis. if (absDepthY < absDepthX || collision == TileCollision.Platform) { // If we crossed the top of a tile, we are on the ground. if (previousBottom <= tileBounds.Top) isOnGround = true; // Ignore platforms, unless we are on the ground. if (collision == TileCollision.Impassable || IsOnGround) { // Resolve the collision along the Y axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X, Position.Y + depth.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } //This is the section which deals with collision on the x-axis else if (collision == TileCollision.Impassable) // Ignore platforms. { // Resolve the collision along the X axis. Position = new Vector2(Position.X + depth.X, Position.Y); // Perform further collisions with the new bounds. bounds = BoundingRectangle; } } } } } // Save the new bounds bottom. previousBottom = bounds.Bottom; }

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• links for 2010-12-22

  - by Bob Rhubart

  @hajonormann: BPM: Top Seven Architectural Topics in 2010 Oracle ACE Director Hajo Normann offers details on how to design a BPM/SOA solution including: modeling human interaction, improving BPM models, orchestrating composed services, central task management, new approaches for business-IT alignment, solutions for non-deterministic processes, and choreography. (tags: oracle otn soasymposium infoq soa bpm) InfoQ: Simplicity, The Way of the Unusual Architect Dan North talks about the tendency developers-becoming-architects have to create bigger and more complex systems. Without trying to be simplistic, North argues for simplicity, offering strategies to extract the simple essence from complex situations. (tags: ping.fm) Fun with Sun Ray, 3D, Oracle VM x86 and SRIOV (Wim Coekaerts Blog) "One of the things I like about my job is that I get to play around with stuff and make use of the technologies we work on in my teams. Sort of my own little playground." - Wim Coekaerts (tags: oracle otn virtualization oraclevm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0.0 Released! (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) And you were worried about what to get that special someone for Christmas... (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Virtual Developer Day: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE (#OTNVDD) (Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog)) "Virtual Developer Day is back with a vengeance! On Feb. 1, login to learn how Oracle WebLogic Server enables a whole new level of productivity for enterprise developers." Registration is open. (tags: oracle otn events webinar java) New Coherence 3.6 Oracle University Course (Cristóbal Soto's Blog) Cristóbal Soto shares information on the "Oracle Coherence 3.6: Share and Manage Data in Clusters" course now available through Oracle University. (tags: oracle otn grid coherence) The Aquarium: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE developer day "Oracle WebLogic is well on its way to contribute to the general Java EE 6 momentum and the OTN Blog has just announced a Virtual Developer Day for Oracle WebLogic." (tags: oracle otn weblogic java) Enterprise 2.0 Use Cases for Semantic Web (Reiser 2.0) "How can an enterprise improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their Knowledge and Community model leveraging semantic technologies and social networking dynamics?" - Peter Reiser (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 semanticweb) John Gøtze: European Interoperability Framework 2.0 "This week, the European Commission announced an updated interoperability policy in the EU. The Commission has committed itself to adopt a Communication that introduces the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and an update to the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)..." - John Gøtze (tags: entarch Interoperability) Andy Mulholland: Maybe Web 3.0 is quite understandable – and a natural result "The idea of Web 1.0 = content, Web 2.0 = people and Web 3.0 = services has a nice symmetrical feel to it, in fact it feels basically right as such a definition would include the two other major definitions as well. So if we put these things all together what picture do we see?" - Andy Mulholland (tags: web2.0 web3.0) Ken Downs: A Working Definition of Business Logic, with Implications for CRUD Code "The Wikipedia entry on 'Business Logic' has a wonderfully honest opening sentence stating that 'Business logic, or domain logic, is a non-technical term...'"  (tags: businesslogic crud)

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• Android Swipe In Unity 3D World with AR

  - by Christian

  I am working on an AR application using Unity3D and the Vuforia SDK for Android. The way the application works is a when the designated image(a frame marker in our case) is recognized by the camera, a 3D island is rendered at that spot. Currently I am able to detect when/which objects are touched on the model by raycasting. I also am able to successfully detect a swipe using this code: if (Input.touchCount > 0) { Touch touch = Input.touches[0]; switch (touch.phase) { case TouchPhase.Began: couldBeSwipe = true; startPos = touch.position; startTime = Time.time; break; case TouchPhase.Moved: if (Mathf.Abs(touch.position.y - startPos.y) > comfortZoneY) { couldBeSwipe = false; } //track points here for raycast if it is swipe break; case TouchPhase.Stationary: couldBeSwipe = false; break; case TouchPhase.Ended: float swipeTime = Time.time - startTime; float swipeDist = (touch.position - startPos).magnitude; if (couldBeSwipe && (swipeTime < maxSwipeTime) && (swipeDist > minSwipeDist)) { // It's a swiiiiiiiiiiiipe! float swipeDirection = Mathf.Sign(touch.position.y - startPos.y); // Do something here in reaction to the swipe. swipeCounter.IncrementCounter(); } break; } touchInfo.SetTouchInfo (Time.time-startTime,(touch.position-startPos).magnitude,Mathf.Abs (touch.position.y-startPos.y)); } Thanks to andeeeee for the logic. But I want to have some interaction in the 3D world based on the swipe on the screen. I.E. If the user swipes over unoccluded enemies, they die. My first thought was to track all the points in the moved TouchPhase, and then if it is a swipe raycast into all those points and kill any enemy that is hit. Is there a better way to do this? What is the best approach? Thanks for the help!

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• Particle System in XNA - cannot draw particle

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to implement a simple particle system in my XNA project. I'm going by RB Whitaker's tutorial, and it seems simple enough. I'm trying to draw particles within my menu screen. Below I've included the code which I think is applicable. I'm coming up with one error in my build, and it is stating that I need to create a new instance of the EmitterLocation from the particleEngine. When I hover over particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); it states that particleEngine is returning a null value. What could be causing this? /// <summary> /// Base class for screens that contain a menu of options. The user can /// move up and down to select an entry, or cancel to back out of the screen. /// </summary> abstract class MenuScreen : GameScreen ParticleEngine particleEngine; public void LoadContent(ContentManager content) { if (content == null) { content = new ContentManager(ScreenManager.Game.Services, "Content"); } base.LoadContent(); List<Texture2D> textures = new List<Texture2D>(); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/circle")); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/star")); textures.Add(content.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/diamond")); particleEngine = new ParticleEngine(textures, new Vector2(400, 240)); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) { base.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, coveredByOtherScreen); // Update each nested MenuEntry object. for (int i = 0; i < menuEntries.Count; i++) { bool isSelected = IsActive && (i == selectedEntry); menuEntries[i].Update(this, isSelected, gameTime); } particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(Mouse.GetState().X, Mouse.GetState().Y); particleEngine.Update(); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { // make sure our entries are in the right place before we draw them UpdateMenuEntryLocations(); GraphicsDevice graphics = ScreenManager.GraphicsDevice; SpriteBatch spriteBatch = ScreenManager.SpriteBatch; SpriteFont font = ScreenManager.Font; spriteBatch.Begin(); // Draw stuff logic spriteBatch.End(); particleEngine.Draw(spriteBatch); }

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• What is a good design model for my new class?

  - by user66662

  I am a beginning programmer who, after trying to manage over 2000 lines of procedural php code, now has discovered the value of OOP. I have read a few books to get me up to speed on the beginning theory, but would like some advice on practical application. So,for example, let's say there are two types of content objects - an ad and a calendar event. what my application does is scan different websites (a predefined list), and, when it finds an ad or an event, it extracts the data and saves it to a database. All of my objects will share a $title and $description. However, the Ad object will have a $price and the Event object will have $startDate. Should I have two separate classes, one for each object? Should I have a 'superclass' with the $title and $description with two other Ad and Event classes with their own properties? The latter is at least the direction I am on now. My second question about this design is how to handle the logic that extracts the data for $title, $description, $price, and $date. For each website in my predefined list, there is a specific regex that returns the desired value for each property. Currently, I have an extremely large switch statement in my constructor which determines what website I am own, sets the regex variables accordingly, and continues on. Not only that, but now I have to repeat the logic to determine what site I am on in the constructor of each class. This doesn't feel right. Should I create another class Algorithms and store the logic there for each site? Should the functions of to handle that logic be in this class? or specific to the classes whos properties they set? I want to take into account in my design two things: 1) I will add different content objects in the future that share $title and $description, but will have their own properties, so, I want to be able to easily grow these as needed. 2) I will add more websites constantly (each with their own algorithms for data extraction) so I would like to plan efficienty managing and working with these now. I thought about extending the Ad or Event class with 'websiteX' class and store its functions there. But, this didn't feel right either as now I have to manage 100s of little website specific class files. Note, I didn't know if this was the correct site or stackoverflow was the better choice. If so, let me know and I'll post there.

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• How do you make a bullet ricochet off a vertical wall?

  - by Bagofsheep

  First things first. I am using C# with XNA. My game is top-down and the player can shoot bullets. I've managed to get the bullets to ricochet correctly off horizontal walls. Yet, despite using similar methods (e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3203952/mirroring-an-angle) and reading other answered questions about this subject I have not been able to get the bullets to ricochet off a vertical wall correctly. Any method I've tried has failed and sometimes made ricocheting off a horizontal wall buggy. Here is the collision code that calls the ricochet method: //Loop through returned tile rectangles from quad tree to test for wall collision. If a collision occurs perform collision logic. for (int r = 0; r < returnObjects.Count; r++) if (Bullets[i].BoundingRectangle.Intersects(returnObjects[r])) Bullets[i].doCollision(returnObjects[r]); Now here is the code for the doCollision method. public void doCollision(Rectangle surface) { if (Ricochet) doRicochet(surface); else Trash = true; } Finally, here is the code for the doRicochet method. public void doRicochet(Rectangle surface) { if (Position.X > surface.Left && Position.X < surface.Right) { //Mirror the bullet's angle. Rotation = -1 * Rotation; //Moves the bullet in the direction of its rotation by given amount. moveFaceDirection(Sprite.Width * BulletScale.X); } else if (Position.Y > surface.Top && Position.Y < surface.Bottom) { } } Since I am only dealing with vertical and horizontal walls at the moment, the if statements simply determine if the object is colliding from the right or left, or from the top or bottom. If the object's X position is within the boundaries of the tile's X boundaries (left and right sides), it must be colliding from the top, and vice verse. As you can see, the else if statement is empty and is where the correct code needs to go.

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• Accounting for waves when doing planar reflections

  - by CloseReflector

  I've been studying Nvidia's examples from the SDK, in particular the Island11 project and I've found something curious about a piece of HLSL code which corrects the reflections up and down depending on the state of the wave's height. Naturally, after examining the brief paragraph of code: // calculating correction that shifts reflection up/down according to water wave Y position float4 projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,input.positionWS.y,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; projected_waveheight = mul(float4(input.positionWS.x,-0.8,input.positionWS.z,1),g_ModelViewProjectionMatrix); waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; reflection_disturbance.y=max(-0.15,waveheight_correction+reflection_disturbance.y); My first guess was that it compensates for the planar reflection when it is subjected to vertical perturbation (the waves), shifting the reflected geometry to a point where is nothing and the water is just rendered as if there is nothing there or just the sky: Now, that's the sky reflecting where we should see the terrain's green/grey/yellowish reflection lerped with the water's baseline. My problem is now that I cannot really pinpoint what is the logic behind it. Projecting the actual world space position of a point of the wave/water geometry and then multiplying by -.5f, only to take another projection of the same point, this time with its y coordinate changed to -0.8 (why -0.8?). Clues in the code seem to indicate it was derived with trial and error because there is redundancy. For example, the author takes the negative half of the projected y coordinate (after the w divide): float waveheight_correction=-0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; And then does the same for the second point (only positive, to get a difference of some sort, I presume) and combines them: waveheight_correction+=0.5*projected_waveheight.y/projected_waveheight.w; By removing the divide by 2, I see no difference in quality improvement (if someone cares to correct me, please do). The crux of it seems to be the difference in the projected y, why is that? This redundancy and the seemingly arbitrary selection of -.8f and -0.15f lead me to conclude that this might be a combination of heuristics/guess work. Is there a logical underpinning to this or is it just a desperate hack? Here is an exaggeration of the initial problem which the code fragment fixes, observe on the lowest tessellation level. Hopefully, it might spark an idea I'm missing. The -.8f might be a reference height from which to deduce how much to disturb the texture coordinate sampling the planarly reflected geometry render and -.15f might be the lower bound, a security measure.

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• Download LINQExtender

  - by Editor

  LinqExtender is a toolkit for creating custom LINQ providers without knowing anything of how expression is parsed or processed and focusing on only the business logic. You just need to extend its query class , declare the query object and override some methods to put your logic and its done. Getting Started You can [...]

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• Should Item Grouping/Filter be in the ViewModel or View layer?

  - by ronag

  I'm in a situation where I have a list of items that need to be displayed depending on their properties. What I'm unsure of is where is the best place to put the filtering/grouping logic of the viewmodel state? Currently I have it in my view using converters, but I'm unsure whether I should have the logic in the viewmodel? e.g. ViewModel Layer: class ItemViewModel { DateTime LastAccessed { get; set; } bool IsActive { get; set; } } class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<Item> Items {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupActiveItemsByDay}/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupInActiveItemsByDay}/> or should I build it like this? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItemsGroupByDate }/> Or maybe something in between? ViewModel Layer: class ContainerViewModel { ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItems {get; set;} ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItems {get; set;} } View Layer: <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> <TextView Text="Active Items"/> <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/> I guess my question is what is good practice in terms as to what logic to put into the ViewModel and what logic to put into the Binding in the View, as they seem to overlap a bit?

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• Specification

  Generally saying Specification is a predicate that determines if an object does or does not satisfy some criteria. By using Specifications you could easily recombine business logic together using boolean logic.Have you ever thought that bool TryParse(string s, out int result) is pattern?

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• C# XNA Handle mouse events?

  - by user406470

  I'm making a 2D game engine called Clixel over on GitHub. The problem I have relates to two classes, ClxMouse and ClxButton. In it I have a mouse class - the code for that can be viewed here. ClxMouse using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; namespace org.clixel { public class ClxMouse : ClxSprite { private MouseState _curmouse, _lastmouse; public int Sensitivity = 3; public bool Lock = true; public Vector2 Change { get { return new Vector2(_curmouse.X - _lastmouse.X, _curmouse.Y - _lastmouse.Y); } } private int _scrollwheel; public int ScrollWheel { get { return _scrollwheel; } } public bool LeftDown { get { if (_curmouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public bool RightDown { get { if (_curmouse.RightButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public bool MiddleDown { get { if (_curmouse.MiddleButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public bool LeftPressed { get { if (_curmouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && _lastmouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released) return true; else return false; } } public bool RightPressed { get { if (_curmouse.RightButton == ButtonState.Pressed && _lastmouse.RightButton == ButtonState.Released) return true; else return false; } } public bool MiddlePressed { get { if (_curmouse.MiddleButton == ButtonState.Pressed && _lastmouse.MiddleButton == ButtonState.Released) return true; else return false; } } public bool LeftReleased { get { if (_curmouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && _lastmouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public bool RightReleased { get { if (_curmouse.RightButton == ButtonState.Released && _lastmouse.RightButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public bool MiddleReleased { get { if (_curmouse.MiddleButton == ButtonState.Released && _lastmouse.MiddleButton == ButtonState.Pressed) return true; else return false; } } public MouseState CurMouse { get { return _curmouse; } } public MouseState LastMouse { get { return _lastmouse; } } public ClxMouse() : base(ClxG.Textures.Default.Cursor) { _curmouse = Mouse.GetState(); _lastmouse = _curmouse; CollisionBox = new Rectangle(ClxG.Screen.Center.X, ClxG.Screen.Center.Y, Texture.Width, Texture.Height); this.Solid = false; DefaultPosition = new Vector2(CollisionBox.X, CollisionBox.Y); Mouse.SetPosition(CollisionBox.X, CollisionBox.Y); } public ClxMouse(Texture2D _texture) : base(_texture) { _curmouse = Mouse.GetState(); _lastmouse = _curmouse; CollisionBox = new Rectangle(ClxG.Screen.Center.X, ClxG.Screen.Center.Y, Texture.Width, Texture.Height); DefaultPosition = new Vector2(CollisionBox.X, CollisionBox.Y); } public override void Update() { _lastmouse = _curmouse; _curmouse = Mouse.GetState(); if (_curmouse != _lastmouse) { if (ClxG.Game.IsActive) { _scrollwheel = _curmouse.ScrollWheelValue; Velocity = new Vector2(Change.X / Sensitivity, Change.Y / Sensitivity); if (Lock) Mouse.SetPosition(ClxG.Screen.Center.X, ClxG.Screen.Center.Y); _curmouse = Mouse.GetState(); } base.Update(); } } public override void Draw(SpriteBatch _sb) { base.Draw(_sb); } } } ClxButton using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace org.clixel { public class ClxButton : ClxSprite { /// <summary> /// The color when the mouse is over the button /// </summary> public Color HoverColor; /// <summary> /// The color when the color is being clicked /// </summary> public Color ClickColor; /// <summary> /// The color when the button is inactive /// </summary> public Color InactiveColor; /// <summary> /// The color when the button is active /// </summary> public Color ActiveColor; /// <summary> /// The color after the button has been clicked. /// </summary> public Color ClickedColor; /// <summary> /// The text to be displayed on the button, set to "" if no text is needed. /// </summary> public string Text; /// <summary> /// The ClxText object to be displayed. /// </summary> public ClxText TextRender; /// <summary> /// The ClxState that should be ResetAndShow() when the button is clicked. /// </summary> public ClxState ClickState; /// <summary> /// Collision check to make sure onCollide() only runs once per frame, /// since only the mouse needs to be collision checked. /// </summary> private bool _runonce = false; /// <summary> /// Gets a value indicating whether this instance is colliding. /// </summary> /// <value> /// <c>true</c> if this instance is colliding; otherwise, <c>false</c>. /// </value> public bool IsColliding { get { return _runonce; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ClxButton"/> class. /// </summary> public ClxButton() : base(ClxG.Textures.Default.Button) { HoverColor = Color.Red; ClickColor = Color.Blue; InactiveColor = Color.Gray; ActiveColor = Color.White; ClickedColor = Color.Yellow; Text = Name + ID + " Unset!"; TextRender = new ClxText(); TextRender.Text = Text; TextRender.TextPadding = new Vector2(5, 5); ClickState = null; CollideObjects(ClxG.Mouse); } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ClxButton"/> class. /// </summary> /// <param name="_texture">The button texture.</param> public ClxButton(Texture2D _texture) : base(_texture) { HoverColor = Color.Red; ClickColor = Color.Blue; InactiveColor = Color.Gray; ActiveColor = Color.White; ClickedColor = Color.Yellow; Texture = _texture; Text = Name + ID; TextRender = new ClxText(); TextRender.Name = this.Name + ".TextRender"; TextRender.Text = Text; TextRender.TextPadding = new Vector2(5, 5); TextRender.Reset(); ClickState = null; CollideObjects(ClxG.Mouse); } /// <summary> /// Draws the debug information, run from ClxG.DrawDebug unless manual control is assumed. /// </summary> /// <param name="_sb">SpriteBatch used for drawing.</param> public override void DrawDebug(SpriteBatch _sb) { _runonce = false; TextRender.DrawDebug(_sb); _sb.Draw(Texture, ActualRectangle, new Rectangle(0, 0, Texture.Width, Texture.Height), DebugColor, Rotation, Origin, Flip, Layer); _sb.Draw(ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG, new Rectangle(ActualRectangle.X - DebugLineWidth, ActualRectangle.Y - DebugLineWidth, ActualRectangle.Width + DebugLineWidth * 2, ActualRectangle.Height + DebugLineWidth * 2), new Rectangle(0, 0, ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG.Width, ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG.Height), DebugOutline, Rotation, Origin, Flip, Layer - 0.1f); _sb.Draw(ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG, ActualRectangle, new Rectangle(0, 0, ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG.Width, ClxG.Textures.Default.DebugBG.Height), DebugBGColor, Rotation, Origin, Flip, Layer - 0.01f); } /// <summary> /// Draws using the SpriteBatch, run from ClxG.Draw unless manual control is assumed. /// </summary> /// <param name="_sb">SpriteBatch used for drawing.</param> public override void Draw(SpriteBatch _sb) { _runonce = false; TextRender.Draw(_sb); if (Visible) if (Debug) { DrawDebug(_sb); } else _sb.Draw(Texture, ActualRectangle, new Rectangle(0, 0, Texture.Width, Texture.Height), Color, Rotation, Origin, Flip, Layer); } /// <summary> /// Updates this instance. /// </summary> public override void Update() { if (this.Color != ActiveColor) this.Color = ActiveColor; TextRender.Layer = this.Layer + 0.03f; TextRender.Text = Text; TextRender.Scale = .5f; TextRender.Name = this.Name + ".TextRender"; TextRender.Origin = new Vector2(TextRender.CollisionBox.Center.X, TextRender.CollisionBox.Center.Y); TextRender.Center(this); TextRender.Update(); this.CollisionBox.Width = (int)(TextRender.CollisionBox.Width * TextRender.Scale) + (int)(TextRender.TextPadding.X * 2); this.CollisionBox.Height = (int)(TextRender.CollisionBox.Height * TextRender.Scale) + (int)(TextRender.TextPadding.Y * 2); base.Update(); } /// <summary> /// Collide event, takes the colliding object to call it's proper collision code. /// You'd want to use something like if(typeof(collider) == typeof(ClxObject) /// </summary> /// <param name="collider">The colliding object.</param> public override void onCollide(ClxObject collider) { if (!_runonce) { _runonce = true; UpdateEvents(); base.onCollide(collider); } } /// <summary> /// Updates the mouse based events. /// </summary> public void UpdateEvents() { onHover(); if (ClxG.Mouse.LeftReleased) { onLeftReleased(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.RightReleased) { onRightReleased(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.MiddleReleased) { onMiddleReleased(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.LeftPressed) { onLeftClicked(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.RightPressed) { onRightClicked(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.MiddlePressed) { onMiddleClicked(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.LeftDown) { onLeftClick(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.RightDown) { onRightClick(); return; } if (ClxG.Mouse.MiddleDown) { onMiddleClick(); return; } } /// <summary> /// Shows the state of the click. /// </summary> public void ShowClickState() { if (ClickState != null) { ClickState.ResetAndShow(); } } /// <summary> /// Hover event /// </summary> virtual public void onHover() { this.Color = HoverColor; } /// <summary> /// Left click event /// </summary> virtual public void onLeftClick() { this.Color = ClickColor; } /// <summary> /// Right click event /// </summary> virtual public void onRightClick() { } /// <summary> /// Middle click event /// </summary> virtual public void onMiddleClick() { } /// <summary> /// Left click event, called once per click /// </summary> virtual public void onLeftClicked() { ShowClickState(); } /// <summary> /// Right click event, called once per click /// </summary> virtual public void onRightClicked() { this.Reset(); } /// <summary> /// Middle click event, called once per click /// </summary> virtual public void onMiddleClicked() { } /// <summary> /// Ons the left released. /// </summary> virtual public void onLeftReleased() { this.Color = ClickedColor; } virtual public void onRightReleased() { } virtual public void onMiddleReleased() { } } } The issue I have is that I have all these have event styled methods, especially in ClxButton with all the onLeftClick, onRightClick, etc, etc. Is there a better way for me to handle these events to be a lot more easier for a programmer to use? I was looking at normal events on some other sites, (I'd post them but I need more rep.) and didn't really see a good way to implement delegate events into my framework. I'm not really sure how these events work, could someone possibly lay out how these events are processed for me? TL:DR * Is there a better way to handle events like this? * Are events a viable solution to this problem? Thanks in advance for any help.

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• Creating a new instance, C#

  - by Dave Voyles

  This sounds like a very n00b question, but bear with me here: I'm trying to access the position of my bat (paddle) in my pong game and use it in my ball class. I'm doing this because I want a particle effect to go off at the point of contact where the ball hits the bat. Each time the ball hits the bat, I receive an error stating that I haven't created an instance of the bat. I understand that I have to (or can use a static class), but I'm not sure of how to do so in this example. I've included both my Bat and Ball classes. namespace Pong { #region Using Statements using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; #endregion public class Ball { #region Fields private readonly Random rand; private readonly Texture2D texture; private readonly SoundEffect warp; private double direction; private bool isVisible; private float moveSpeed; private Vector2 position; private Vector2 resetPos; private Rectangle size; private float speed; private bool isResetting; private bool collided; private Vector2 oldPos; private ParticleEngine particleEngine; private ContentManager contentManager; private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private bool hasHitBat; private AIBat aiBat; private Bat bat; #endregion #region Constructors and Destructors /// <summary> /// Constructor for the ball /// </summary> public Ball(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 ScreenSize) { moveSpeed = 15f; speed = 0; texture = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/balls/redBall"); direction = 0; size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); resetPos = new Vector2(ScreenSize.X / 2, ScreenSize.Y / 2); position = resetPos; rand = new Random(); isVisible = true; hasHitBat = false; // Everything to do with particles List<Texture2D> textures = new List<Texture2D>(); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/circle")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/star")); textures.Add(contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/particle/diamond")); particleEngine = new ParticleEngine(textures, new Vector2()); } #endregion #region Public Methods and Operators /// <summary> /// Checks for the collision between the bat and the ball. Sends ball in the appropriate /// direction /// </summary> public void BatHit(int block) { if (direction > Math.PI * 1.5f || direction < Math.PI * 0.5f) { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(aiBat.Position.X, aiBat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(200); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(195); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(180); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(165); break; } } else { hasHitBat = true; particleEngine.EmitterLocation = new Vector2(bat.Position.X, bat.Position.Y); switch (block) { case 1: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(310); break; case 2: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(345); break; case 3: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(0); break; case 4: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(15); break; case 5: direction = MathHelper.ToRadians(50); break; } } if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(3)); } AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("hit"); } /// <summary> /// JEP - added method to slow down ball after powerup deactivates /// </summary> public void DecreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed -= 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Draws the ball on the screen /// </summary> public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { if (isVisible) { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(texture, size, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); // Draws sprites for particles when contact is made particleEngine.Draw(spriteBatch); } } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current direction of the ball /// </summary> public double GetDirection() { return direction; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the ball /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current size of the ball (for the powerups) /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Grows the size of the ball when the GrowBall powerup is used. /// </summary> public void GrowBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width * 2, texture.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Was used to increased the speed of the ball after each point is scored. /// No longer used, but am considering implementing again. /// </summary> public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += 0.6f; } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal size after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalBallSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width, texture.Height); } /// <summary> /// Check for the ball to return normal speed after the Powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSpeed() { moveSpeed += 15f; } /// <summary> /// Checks to see if ball went out of bounds, and triggers warp sfx /// </summary> public void OutOfBounds() { // Checks if the player is still alive or not if (isResetting) { AudioManager.Instance.PlaySoundEffect("warp"); { // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = false; AudioManager.Instance.Dispose(); } } } /// <summary> /// Speed for the ball when Speedball powerup is activated /// </summary> public void PowerupSpeed() { moveSpeed += 20.0f; } /// <summary> /// Check for where to reset the ball after each point is scored /// </summary> public void Reset(bool left) { if (left) { direction = 0; } else { direction = Math.PI; } // Used to stop the the issue where the ball hit sfx kept going off when detecting collison isResetting = true; position = resetPos; // Resets the ball to the center of the screen isVisible = true; speed = 15f; // Returns the ball back to the default speed, in case the speedBall was active if (rand.Next(2) == 0) { direction += MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } else { direction -= MathHelper.ToRadians(rand.Next(30)); } } /// <summary> /// Shrinks the ball when the ShrinkBall powerup is activated /// </summary> public void ShrinkBall() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, texture.Width / 2, texture.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Stops the ball each time it is reset. Ex: Between points / rounds /// </summary> public void Stop() { isVisible = true; speed = 0; } /// <summary> /// Updates position of the ball /// </summary> public void UpdatePosition() { size.X = (int)position.X; size.Y = (int)position.Y; oldPos.X = position.X; oldPos.Y = position.Y; position.X += speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y += speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); bool collided = CheckWallHit(); particleEngine.Update(); // Stops the issue where ball was oscillating on the ceiling or floor if (collided) { position.X = oldPos.X + speed * (float)Math.Cos(direction); position.Y = oldPos.Y + speed * (float)Math.Sin(direction); } } #endregion #region Methods /// <summary> /// Checks for collision with the ceiling or floor. 2*Math.pi = 360 degrees /// </summary> private bool CheckWallHit() { while (direction > 2 * Math.PI) { direction -= 2 * Math.PI; return true; } while (direction < 0) { direction += 2 * Math.PI; return true; } if (position.Y <= 0 || (position.Y > resetPos.Y * 2 - size.Height)) { direction = 2 * Math.PI - direction; return true; } return true; } #endregion } } namespace Pong { using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using System; public class Bat { public Vector2 Position; public float moveSpeed; public Rectangle size; private int points; private int yHeight; private Texture2D leftBat; public float turbo; public float recharge; public float interval; public bool isTurbo; /// <summary> /// Constructor for the bat /// </summary> public Bat(ContentManager contentManager, Vector2 screenSize, bool side) { moveSpeed = 7f; turbo = 15f; recharge = 100f; points = 0; interval = 5f; leftBat = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"gfx/bats/batGrey"); size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); // True means left bat, false means right bat. if (side) Position = new Vector2(30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); else Position = new Vector2(screenSize.X - 30, screenSize.Y / 2 - size.Height / 2); yHeight = (int)screenSize.Y; } public void IncreaseSpeed() { moveSpeed += .5f; } /// <summary> /// The speed of the bat when Turbo is activated /// </summary> public void Turbo() { moveSpeed += 8.0f; } /// <summary> /// Returns the speed of the bat back to normal after Turbo is deactivated /// </summary> public void DisableTurbo() { moveSpeed = 7.0f; isTurbo = false; } /// <summary> /// Returns the bat to the nrmal size after the Grow/Shrink powerup has expired /// </summary> public void NormalSize() { size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width, leftBat.Height); } /// <summary> /// Checks for the size of the bat /// </summary> public Rectangle GetSize() { return size; } /// <summary> /// Adds point to the player or the AI after scoring. Currently Disabled. /// </summary> public void IncrementPoints() { points++; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the number of points at the moment /// </summary> public int GetPoints() { return points; } /// <summary> /// Sets thedefault starting position for the bats /// </summary> /// <param name="position"></param> public void SetPosition(Vector2 position) { if (position.Y < 0) { position.Y = 0; } if (position.Y > yHeight - size.Height) { position.Y = yHeight - size.Height; } this.Position = position; } /// <summary> /// Checks for the current position of the bat /// </summary> public Vector2 GetPosition() { return Position; } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving up the screen /// </summary> public void MoveUp() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, -moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving down the screen /// </summary> public void MoveDown() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Updates the position of the AI bat, in order to track the ball /// </summary> /// <param name="ball"></param> public virtual void UpdatePosition(Ball ball) { size.X = (int)Position.X; size.Y = (int)Position.Y; } /// <summary> /// Resets the bat to the center location after a new game starts /// </summary> public void ResetPosition() { SetPosition(new Vector2(GetPosition().X, yHeight / 2 - size.Height)); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Growbat powerup /// </summary> public void GrowBat() { // Doubles the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width * 2, leftBat.Height * 2); } /// <summary> /// Used for the Shrinkbat powerup /// </summary> public void ShrinkBat() { // 1/2 the size of the bat collision size = new Rectangle(0, 0, leftBat.Width / 2, leftBat.Height / 2); } /// <summary> /// Draws the bats /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(leftBat, size, Color.White); } } }

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• Two pass blur shader using libgdx tile map renderer

  - by Alexandre GUIDET

  I am trying to apply the following technique: blur effect using two pass shader to my libgdx game using the OrthogonalTiledMapRenderer. The idea is to blur the background wich is also a tilemap but rendered with another camera with a different zoom applied. Here is a screen capture without effect: Using the OrthogonalTiledMapRenderer sprite batch like this: backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurX); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); I get the following render: Wich is ok for X blur pass. I then try using frame buffer object like in this example. But the effect seems to be too much zoomed: I may be messing up with the camera and the zoom factor. Here is the code: private ShaderProgram shaderBlurX; private ShaderProgram shaderBlurY; private int FBO_SIZE = 800; private FrameBuffer targetA; private FrameBuffer targetB; targetA = new FrameBuffer(Pixmap.Format.RGBA8888, FBO_SIZE, FBO_SIZE, false); targetB = new FrameBuffer(Pixmap.Format.RGBA8888, FBO_SIZE, FBO_SIZE, false); targetA.begin(); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 0); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); targetA.end(); targetB.begin(); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 0); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurX); backgroundMapRenderer.render(layerBackground); targetB.end(); TextureRegion back = new TextureRegion(targetB.getColorBufferTexture()); back.flip(false, true); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch() .setProjectionMatrix(backgroundCamera.combined); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().setShader(shaderBlurY); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().begin(); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().draw(back, 0, 0); backgroundMapRenderer.getSpriteBatch().end(); I know I am making something the wrong way, but I can't find any resources about applying two passes shader using tile map renderer. Does someone know how to achieve this?

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• Unity3D draw call optimization : static batching VS manually draw mesh with MaterialPropertyBlock

  - by Heisenbug

  I've read Unity3D draw call batching documentation. I understood it, and I want to use it (or something similar) in order to optimize my application. My situation is the following: I'm drawing hundreds of 3d buildings. Each building can be represented using a Mesh (or a SubMesh for each building, but I don't thing this will affect performances) Each building can be textured with several combinations of texture patterns(walls, windows,..). Textures are stored into an Atlas for optimizaztion (see Texture2d.PackTextures) Texture mapping and facade pattern generation is done in fragment shader. The shader can be the same (except for few values) for all buildings, so I'd like to use a sharedMaterial in order to optimize parameters passed to the GPU. The main problem is that, even if I use an Atlas, share the material, and declare the objects as static to use static batching, there are few parameters(very fews, it could be just even a float I guess) that should be different for every draw call. I don't know exactly how to manage this situation using Unity3D. I'm trying 2 different solutions, none of them completely implemented. Solution 1 Build a GameObject for each building building (I don't like very much the overhead of a GameObject, anyway..) Prepare each GameObject to be static batched with StaticBatchingUtility.Combine. Pack all texture into an atlas Assign the parent game object of combined batched objects the Material (basically the shader and the atlas) Change some properties in the material before drawing an Object The problem is the point 5. Let's say I have to assign a different id to an object before drawing it, how can I do this? If I use a different material for each object I can't benefit of static batching. If I use a sharedMaterial and I modify a material property, all GameObjects will reference the same modified variable Solution 2 Build a Mesh for every building (sounds better, no GameObject overhead) Pack all textures into an Atlas Draw each mesh manually using Graphics.DrawMesh Customize each DrawMesh call using a MaterialPropertyBlock This would solve the issue related to slightly modify material properties for each draw call, but the documentation isn't clear on the following point: Does several consecutive calls to Graphic.DrawMesh with a different MaterialPropertyBlock would cause a new material to be instanced? Or Unity can understand that I'm modifying just few parameters while using the same material and is able to optimize that (in such a way that the big atlas is passed just once to the GPU)?

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• Pixel Shader, YUV-RGB Conversion failing

  - by TomTom

  I am tasked with playing back a video hthat comes in in a YUV format as an overlay in a larger game. I am not a specialist in Direct3d, so I am struggling. I managed to get a shader working and am rendering 3 textures (Y, V, U). Sadly I am totally unable to get anything like a decent image. Documentation is also failing me. I am currently loading the different data planes (Y,V,U) in three different textures: m_Textures = new Texture[3]; // Y Plane m_Textures[0] = new Texture(m_Device, w, h, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); // V Plane m_Textures[1] = new Texture(m_Device, w2, h2, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); // U Plane m_Textures[2] = new Texture(m_Device, w2, h2, 1, Usage.None, Format.L8, Pool.Managed); When I am rendering them as R, G and B respectively with the following code: float4 Pixel( float2 texCoord: TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float y = tex2D (ytexture, texCoord); float v = tex2D (vtexture, texCoord); float u = tex2D (utexture, texCoord); //R = Y + 1.140 (V -128) //G = Y - 0.395 (U-128) - 0.581 (V-128) //B = Y + 2.028 (U-128) float r = y; //y + 1.140 * v; float g = v; //y - 0.395 * u - 0.581 * v; float b = u; //y + 2.028 * u; float4 result; result.a = 255; result.r = r; //clamp (r, 0, 255); result.g = g; //clamp (g, 0, 255); result.b = b; //clamp (b, 0, 255); return result; } Then the resulting image is - quite funny. I can see the image, but colors are totally distorted, as it should be. The formula I should apply shows up in the comment of the pixel shader, but when I do it, the resulting image is pretty brutally magenta only. This gets me to the question - when I read out an L8 texture into a float, with float y = tex2D (ytexture, texCoord); what is the range of values? The "origin" values are 1 byte, 0 to 255, and the forum I have assumes this. Naturally I am totally off when the values returned are somehow normalized. My Clamp operation at the end also will fail if for example colors in a pixel shader are normalized 0 to 1. Anyone an idea how that works? Please point me also to documentation - I have not found anything in this regard.

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• Play Your Favorite DOS Games in XP, Vista, and Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to take a trip down memory lane with old school DOS games?  D-Fend Reloaded makes it easy for you to play your favorite DOS games directly on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. D-Fend Reloaded is a great frontend for DOSBox, the popular DOS emulator.  It lets you install and run many DOS games and applications directly from its interface without ever touching a DOS prompt.  It works great on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32 & 64-bit versions.   Getting Started Download D-Fend Reloaded (link below), and install with the default settings.  You don’t need to install DOSBox, as D-Fend Reloaded will automatically install all the components you need to run DOS games on Windows. D-Fend Reloaded can also be installed as a portable application, so you can run it from a flash drive on any Windows computer by selecting User defined installation. Then select Portable mode installation. Once D-Fend Reloaded is installed, you can go ahead and open the program. Then simply click “Accept all settings” to apply the default settings.   D-Fend is now ready to run all of your favorite DOS games. Installing DOS Games and Applications: To install a DOS game or application, simply drag-and-drop a zip file of the app into D-Fend Reloaded’s window.  D-Fend Reloaded will automatically extract the program… Then will ask you to name the application and choose where to store it — by default it uses the name of the DOS app. Now you’ll see a new entry for the app you just installed.  Simply double-click to run it.   D-Fend will remind you that you can switch out of fullscreen mode by pressing Alt+Enter, and can also close the DOS application by pressing Ctrl+F9.  Press Ok to run the program. Here we’re running Ms. PacPC, a remake of the classic game Ms. Pac-Man, in full-screen mode.  All features work automatically, including sound, and you never have to setup anything from DOS command line — it just works. Here it’s in windowed mode running on Windows 7. Please note that your color scheme may change to Windows Basic while running DOS applications. You can run DOS application just as easily.  Here’s Word 5.5 running in in DOSBox through D-Fend Reloaded… Game Packs: Want to quickly install many old DOS freeware and trial games?  D-Fend Reloaded offers several game packs that let you install dozens of DOS games with only four clicks…just download and run the game pack installer of your choice (link below). Now you’ve got a selection of DOS games to choose from. Here’s a group of poor lemmings walking around … in Windows 7. Conclusion D-Fend Reloaded gives you a great way to run your favorite DOS games and applications directly from XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  Give it a try, and relive your DOS days from the comfort of your Windows desktop. What were some of your favorite DOS games and applications? Leave a comment and let us know. Links Download D-Fend Reloaded Download DOS game packs for D-Fend Reloaded Download Ms. Pac-PC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanThursday’s Pre-Holiday Lazy Links RoundupFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Holiday Themed Games TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• Play a Complete HTML5 Version of Super Mario Bros. Online for Free

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  If you love playing Super Mario Brothers, but hate the hassle of dealing with or setting up the game console, then you will be pleased to know a new and complete version is now available to play online. Josh Goldberg has worked hard to recreate the classic game in its entirety in HTML5, so sit back, relax, and get ready to enjoy all that Mario goodness via your favorite browser. There are three ‘modes’ of game play available: play through reproductions of the original classic levels, test yourself against randomly generated levels, or use the level editor to create custom levels. Special Note: There are two online versions available…one for playing in Google Chrome and one for playing in all other browsers. For our example we chose to use the non-Chrome version. Play Full Screen Mario [For All Other Browsers] Play Full Screen Mario [Google Chrome Version] [via CNET News]     

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• Understanding MotionEvent to implement a virtual DPad and Buttons on Android (Multitouch)

  - by Fabio Gomes

  I once implemented a DPad in XNA and now I'm trying to port it to android, put, I still don't get how the touch events work in android, the more I read the more confused I get. Here is the code I wrote so far, it works, but guess that it will only handle one touch point. public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) { if (event.getPointerCount() == 0) return true; int touchX = -1; int touchY = -1; pressedDirection = DPadDirection.None; int actionCode = event.getAction() & MotionEvent.ACTION_MASK; if (actionCode == MotionEvent.ACTION_UP) { if (event.getPointerId(0) == idDPad) { pressedDirection = DPadDirection.None; idDPad = -1; } } else if (actionCode == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN || actionCode == MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE) { touchX = (int)event.getX(); touchY = (int)event.getY(); if (rightRect.contains(touchX, touchY)) pressedDirection = DPadDirection.Right; else if (leftRect.contains(touchX, touchY)) pressedDirection = DPadDirection.Left; else if (upRect.contains(touchX, touchY)) pressedDirection = DPadDirection.Up; else if (downRect.contains(touchX, touchY)) pressedDirection = DPadDirection.Down; if (pressedDirection != DPadDirection.None) idDPad = event.getPointerId(0); } return true; } The logic is: Test if there is a "DOWN" or "MOVED" event, then if one of this events collides with one of the 4 rectangles of my DPad, I set the pressedDirectin variable to the side of the touch event, then I read the DPad actual pressed direction in my Update() event on another class. The thing I'm not sure, is how do I get track of the touch points, I store the ID of the touch point which generated the diretion that is being stored (last one), so when this ID is released I set the Direction to None, but I'm really confused about how to handle this in android, here is the code I had in XNA: public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { PressedDirection = DpadDirection.None; foreach (TouchLocation _touchLocation in TouchPanel.GetState()) { if (_touchLocation.State == TouchLocationState.Released) { if (_touchLocation.Id == _idDPad) { PressedDirection = DpadDirection.None; _idDPad = -1; } } else if (_touchLocation.State == TouchLocationState.Pressed || _touchLocation.State == TouchLocationState.Moved) { _intersectRect.X = (int)_touchLocation.Position.X; _intersectRect.Y = (int)_touchLocation.Position.Y; _intersectRect.Width = 1; _intersectRect.Height = 1; if (_intersectRect.Intersects(_rightRect)) PressedDirection = DpadDirection.Right; else if (_intersectRect.Intersects(_leftRect)) PressedDirection = DpadDirection.Left; else if (_intersectRect.Intersects(_upRect)) PressedDirection = DpadDirection.Up; else if (_intersectRect.Intersects(_downRect)) PressedDirection = DpadDirection.Down; if (PressedDirection != DpadDirection.None) { _idDPad = _touchLocation.Id; continue; } } } base.Update(gameTime); } So, first of all: Am I doing this correctly? if not, why? I don't want my DPad to handle multiple directions, but I still didn't get how to handle the multiple touch points, is the event called for every touch point, or all touch points comes in a single call? I still don't get it.

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• How can I respond to mouse events in AS3?

  - by Gabriel Meono

  Background: Trying to make a simple "drop the ball" game. The code is located inside the first frame of the timeline. Nothing more is on the stage. Issue: Using QuickBox2D I made a simple If statement that drops and object acording the Mouse-x position: if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); I imported the MouseEvent library: import flash.events.MouseEvent; Nothing happens if I click, no output errors either. See it in action: http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.swf http://gabrielmeono.com/download/Lucky_Hit_Alpha.fla Full Code: [SWF(width = 350, height = 600, frameRate = 60)] import com.actionsnippet.qbox.*; import flash.events.MouseEvent; var sim:QuickBox2D = new QuickBox2D(this); sim.createStageWalls(); //var ball:sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // // make a heavy circle sim.addCircle({x:3, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:2, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:4, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:5, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.addCircle({x:6, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); // create a few platforms sim.addBox({x:3, y:2, width:4, height:0.2, density:0, angle:0.1}); // make 26 dominoes for (var i:int = 0; i<7; i++){ //End sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:16, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:2 + i * 1.5, y:15, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Mid end sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:14, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:13, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:12, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:11, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:10, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Middle Start sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:09, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:08, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 1.5, y:07, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:06, radius:0.1, density:0}); } if (MouseEvent.CLICK) { sim.addCircle({x:mouseX, y:1, radius:0.25, density:5}); sim.start(); /*sim.mouseDrag();*/ }

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• Setting up OpenGL camera with off-center perspective

  - by user5484

  Hi, I'm using OpenGL ES (in iOS) and am struggling with setting up a viewport with an off-center distance point. Consider a game where you have a character in the left hand side of the screen, and some controls alpha'd over the left-hand side. The "main" part of the screen is on the right, but you still want to show whats in the view on the left. However when the character moves "forward" you want the character to appear to be going "straight", or "up" on the device, and not heading on an angle to the point that is geographically at the mid-x position in the screen. Here's the jist of how i set my viewport up where it is centered in the middle: // setup the camera // glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); const GLfloat zNear = 0.1; const GLfloat zFar = 1000.0; const GLfloat fieldOfView = 90.0; // can definitely adjust this to see more/less of the scene GLfloat size = zNear * tanf(DEGREES_TO_RADIANS(fieldOfView) / 2.0); CGRect rect; rect.origin = CGPointMake(0.0, 0.0); rect.size = CGSizeMake(backingWidth, backingHeight); glFrustumf(-size, size, -size / (rect.size.width / rect.size.height), size / (rect.size.width / rect.size.height), zNear, zFar); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); // rotate the whole scene by the tilt to face down on the dude const float tilt = 0.3f; const float yscale = 0.8f; const float zscale = -4.0f; glTranslatef(0.0, yscale, zscale); const int rotationMinDegree = 0; const int rotationMaxDegree = 180; glRotatef(tilt * (rotationMaxDegree - rotationMinDegree) / 2, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); glTranslatef(0, -yscale, -zscale); static float b = -25; //0; static float c = 0; // rotate by to face in the direction of the dude float a = RADIANS_TO_DEGREES(-atan2f(-gCamera.orientation.x, -gCamera.orientation.z)); glRotatef(a, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0); // and move to where it is glTranslatef(-gCamera.pos.x, -gCamera.pos.y, -gCamera.pos.z); // draw the rest of the scene ... I've tried a variety of things to make it appear as though "the dude" is off to the right: - do a translate after the frustrum to the x direction - do a rotation after the frustrum about the up/y-axis - move the camera with a biased lean to the left of the dude Nothing i do seems to produce good results, the dude will either look like he's stuck on an angle, or the whole scene will appear tilted. I'm no OpenGL expert, so i'm hoping someone can suggest some ideas or tricks on how to "off-center" these model views in OpenGL. Thanks!

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• Problem to match font size to the screen resolution in libgdx

  - by Iñaki Bedoya

  I'm having problems to show text on my game at same size on different screens, and I did a simple test. This test consists to show a text fitting at the screen, I want the text has the same size independently from the screen and from DPI. I've found this and this answer that I think should solve my problem but don't. In desktop the size is ok, but in my phone is too big. This is the result on my Nexus 4: (768x1280, 2.0 density) And this is the result on my MacBook: (480x800, 0.6875 density) I'm using the Open Sans Condensed (link to google fonts) As you can see on desktop looks good, but on the phone is so big. Here the code of my test: public class TextTest extends ApplicationAdapter { private static final String TAG = TextTest.class.getName(); private static final String TEXT = "Tap the screen to start"; private OrthographicCamera camera; private Viewport viewport; private SpriteBatch batch; private BitmapFont font; @Override public void create () { Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Screen size: "+Gdx.graphics.getWidth()+"x"+Gdx.graphics.getHeight()); Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Density: "+Gdx.graphics.getDensity()); camera = new OrthographicCamera(); viewport = new ExtendViewport(Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), camera); batch = new SpriteBatch(); FreeTypeFontGenerator generator = new FreeTypeFontGenerator(Gdx.files.internal("fonts/OpenSans-CondLight.ttf")); font = createFont(generator, 64); generator.dispose(); } private BitmapFont createFont(FreeTypeFontGenerator generator, float dp) { FreeTypeFontGenerator.FreeTypeFontParameter parameter = new FreeTypeFontGenerator.FreeTypeFontParameter(); int fontSize = (int)(dp * Gdx.graphics.getDensity()); parameter.size = fontSize; Gdx.app.log(TAG, "Font size: "+fontSize+"px"); return generator.generateFont(parameter); } @Override public void render () { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); int w = -(int)(font.getBounds(TEXT).width / 2); batch.setProjectionMatrix(camera.combined); batch.begin(); font.setColor(Color.BLACK); font.draw(batch, TEXT, w, 0); batch.end(); } @Override public void resize(int width, int height) { viewport.update(width, height); } @Override public void dispose() { font.dispose(); batch.dispose(); } } I'm trying to find a neat way to fix this. What I'm doing wrong? is the camera? the viewport? UPDATE: What I want is to keep the same margins in proportion, independently of the screen size or resolution. This image illustrates what I mean.

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