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• Clipping polygons in XNA with stencil (not using spritebatch)

  - by Blau

  The problem... i'm drawing polygons, in this case boxes, and i want clip children polygons with its parent's client area. // Class Region public void Render(GraphicsDevice Device, Camera Camera) { int StencilLevel = 0; Device.Clear( ClearOptions.Stencil, Vector4.Zero, 0, StencilLevel ); Render( Device, Camera, StencilLevel ); } private void Render(GraphicsDevice Device, Camera Camera, int StencilLevel) { Device.SamplerStates[0] = this.SamplerState; Device.Textures[0] = this.Texture; Device.RasterizerState = RasterizerState.CullNone; Device.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; Device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; Effect.Prepare(this, Camera ); Device.DepthStencilState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.IncMask; Device.ReferenceStencil = StencilLevel; foreach ( EffectPass pass in Effect.Techniques[Technique].Passes ) { pass.Apply( ); Device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColorTexture>( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, VertexData, 0, VertexData.Length, IndexData, 0, PrimitiveCount ); } foreach ( Region child in ChildrenRegions ) { child.Render( Device, Camera, StencilLevel + 1 ); } Effect.Prepare( this, Camera ); // This does not works Device.BlendState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.NoWriteColor; Device.DepthStencilState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.DecMask; Device.ReferenceStencil = StencilLevel; // This should be +1, but in that case the last drrawed is blue and overlap all foreach ( EffectPass pass in Effect.Techniques[Technique].Passes ) { pass.Apply( ); Device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColorTexture>( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, VertexData, 0, VertexData.Length, IndexData, 0, PrimitiveCount ); } } public static class GraphicsStates { public static BlendState NoWriteColor = new BlendState( ) { ColorSourceBlend = Blend.One, AlphaSourceBlend = Blend.One, ColorDestinationBlend = Blend.InverseSourceAlpha, AlphaDestinationBlend = Blend.InverseSourceAlpha, ColorWriteChannels1 = ColorWriteChannels.None }; public static DepthStencilState IncMask = new DepthStencilState( ) { StencilEnable = true, StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Equal, StencilPass = StencilOperation.IncrementSaturation, }; public static DepthStencilState DecMask = new DepthStencilState( ) { StencilEnable = true, StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Equal, StencilPass = StencilOperation.DecrementSaturation, }; } How can achieve this? EDIT: I've just relized that the NoWriteColors.ColorWriteChannels1 should be NoWriteColors.ColorWriteChannels. :) Now it's clipping right. Any other approach?

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• Any good C++ Component/Entity frameworks?

  - by Pat

  (Skip to the bold if you want to get straight to my question :) ) I've been dabbling in the different technologies available out there to use. I tried Unity and component based design, managing to get a little guy up and running around a map with basic pathfinding. I really loved how easy it was to program using components, but I wanted a bit more control and something more 2D friendly, so I went with LibGDX. I looked around and found 2 good frameworks for Java, which are Artemis and Apollo. I didn't like Artemis much, so I went with Apollo, which I loved. I managed to integrate it with Box2D and get a little guy running around bouncing balls. Great! But since I want to try out most of the options, there is still C++/SFML that I haven't tried yet. Coming from a Java/C# background, I've always wanted to get my hands dirty with C++. But then, after some looking around, I noticed there aren't any Component-Based frameworks for me to use. There's a somewhat done porting of Artemis, but, aside from not being completely finished, I didn't quite like Artemis even in Java. I found Apollo's approach much more.. logical. So, my question is, are there any good Component/Entity frameworks for C++ that I can use that are similar to Artemis, or preferably, Apollo?

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• Early Z culling - Ogre

  - by teodron

  This question is concerned with how one can enable this "pixel filter" to work within an Ogre based app. Simply put, one can write two passes, the first without writing any colour values to the frame buffer lighting off colour_write off shading flat The second pass is the one that employs heavy pixel shader computations, hence it would be really nice to get rid of those hidden surface patches and not process them pixel-wise. This approach works, except for one thing: objects with alpha, such as billboard trees suffer in a peculiar way - from one side, they seem to capture the sky/background within their alpha region and ignore other trees/houses behind them, while viewed from the other side, they exhibit the desired behavior. To tackle the issue, I thought I could write a custom vertex shader in the first pass and offset the projected Z component of the vertex a little further away from its actual position, so that in the second pass there is a need to recompute correctly the pixels of the objects closest to the camera. This doesn't work at all, all surfaces are processed in the pixel shader and there is no performance gain. So, if anyone has done a similar trick with Ogre and alpha objects, kindly please help.

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• What web technology could I use which would support a decision tree?

  - by Rami Alhamad

  I am a big game development fan but I haven't done any commercial work in the past. I have been asked by a non-profit to look at developing a game similar to the award-winning www.playspent.org They want the following features: support 5 scenarios mobile isn't important but compatibility with older browsers would be a big bonus they want it to be visual and audible bonus is to have it easily modifiable support 4 languages I don't have much knowledge of Flash and would rather avoid using it as a solution. I started breaking down the problem into segments that I will need to examine, they are as follows: ability to read the game flow from a file that they can produce (xml, etc.) db design to store decision tree language challenge browser compatibility I am leaning towards an Google app engine/GWT solution but I am not sure what technology is best for this. I am really hoping to get your opinion/recommendation on my approach and on what technology is best. A special thanks (and beer if you live in Toronto) will be awarded to anyone who can help give me a ballpark estimate on how much such a game should go for. I know it's tough to estimate but any rough figure will help (how much would you charge for building something like playspent.org?) Thanks in advance

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• How to bind std::map to Lua with LuaBind

  - by MahanGM

  Is this possible in lua to achieve? player.scripts["movement"].properties["stat"] = "stand" print (player.scripts["movement"].properties["stat"]) I've done getter method in c++ with this approach: luabind::object FakeScript::getProp() { luabind::object obj = luabind::newtable(L); for(auto i = this->properties.begin(); i != this->properties.end(); i++) { obj[i->first] = i->second; } return obj; } But I'm stuck with setter. The first line in lua code which I'm trying to set value "stand" for key "stat" is not going to work and it keep redirecting me to the getter method. Setter method only works when I drop ["stat"] from properties. I can do something like this for setter in my script: player.scripts["movement"].properties = {stat = "stand"} But this isn't what I want because I have to go through my real keys in c++ to determine which key is placed in setter argument table value. This is my map in class: std::map<std::string, std::string> properties;

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• How can I generate a view or projection matrix for OpenGL 3.+

  - by Ken

  I'm transitioning from OpenGL 2 to OpenGL 3.+ and to GLSL 1.5. I'm trying to avoid using the deprecated features. My question how do we now generate the view or projection matrix. I was using the matrix stack to calculate the projection matrix for me; GLfloat ptr[16]; gluPerspective(...); glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, ptr); //then pass ptr via a uniform to the shader But obviously the matrix stack is deprecated. So this approach is not the best an option going forward. I have the 'Red Book', 7th ed, which covers 3.0 & 3.1 and it still uses the deprecated matrix functions in it's examples. I could write some utility-code myself to generate the matrices. But I don't want to re-invent this particular wheel, especially when this functionality is required for every 3D graphics program. What is the accepted way to generate world,view & projection matrices for OpenGL? Is there an emerging 'standard' library for this? Or is there some other hidden (to me) functionality in OpenGL/GLSL which I have overlooked?

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• New way of integrating Openfeint in Cocos2d-x 0.12.0

  - by Ef Es

  I am trying to implement OpenFeint for Android in my cocos2d-x project. My approach so far has been creating a button that calls a static java method in class Bridge using jnihelper functions (jnihelper only accepts statics). Bridge has one singleton attribute of type OFAndroid, that is the class dynamically calling the Openfeint Api methods, and every method in the bridge just forwards it to the OFAndroid object. What I am trying to do now is to initialize the openfeint libraries in the main java class that is the one calling the static C++ libraries. My problem right now is that the initializing function void com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(Context ctx, OpenFeintSettings settings, OpenFeintDelegate delegate) is not accepting the context parameter that I am giving him, which is a "this" reference to the main class. Main class extends from Cocos2dxActivity but I don't have any other that extends from Application. Any suggestions on fixing it or how to improve the architecture? EDIT: I am trying a new solution. Make the bridge class into an Application child, is called from Main object, initializes OpenFeint when created and it can call the OpenFeint functions instead of needing an additional class. The problem is I still get the error. 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.content.ContextWrapper.getPackageManager(ContextWrapper.java:85) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.validateManifest(OpenFeintInternal.java:885) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initializeWithoutLoggingIn(OpenFeintInternal.java:829) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initialize(OpenFeintInternal.java:852) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(OpenFeint.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.NuroFeint.onCreate(NuroFeint.java:23) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.FastFish.onCreate(FastFish.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1069) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2751)

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• How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

  - by Songo

  I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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• How can I perform 2D side-scroller collision checks in a tile-based map?

  - by bill

  I am trying to create a game where you have a player that can move horizontally and jump. It's kind of like Mario but it isn't a side scroller. I'm using a 2D array to implement a tile map. My problem is that I don't understand how to check for collisions using this implementation. After spending about two weeks thinking about it, I've got two possible solutions, but both of them have some problems. Let's say that my map is defined by the following tiles: 0 = sky 1 = player 2 = ground The data for the map itself might look like: 00000 10002 22022 For solution 1, I'd move the player (the 1) a complete tile and update the map directly. This make the collision easy because you can check if the player is touching the ground simply by looking at the tile directly below the player: // x and y are the tile coordinates of the player. The tile origin is the upper-left. if (grid[x][y+1] == 2){ // The player is standing on top of a ground tile. } The problem with this approach is that the player moves in discrete tile steps, so the animation isn't smooth. For solution 2, I thought about moving the player via pixel coordinates and not updating the tile map. This will make the animation much smoother because I have a smaller movement unit per frame. However, this means I can't really accurately store the player in the tile map because sometimes he would logically be between two tiles. But the bigger problem here is that I think the only way to check for collision is to use Java's intersection method, which means the player would need to be at least a single pixel "into" the ground to register collision, and that won't look good. How can I solve this problem?

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• Capitalizing on JavaScript's prototypal inheritance

  - by keithjgrant

  JavaScript has a class-free object system in which objects inherit properties directly from other objects. This is really powerful, but it is unfamiliar to classically trained programmers. If you attempt to apply classical design patterns directly to JavaScript, you will be frustrated. But if you learn to work with JavaScript's prototypal nature, your efforts will be rewarded. ... It is Lisp in C's clothing. -Douglas Crockford What does this mean for a game developer working with canvas and HTML5? I've been looking over this question on useful design patterns in gaming, but prototypal inheritance is very different than classical inheritance, and there are surely differences in the best way to apply some of these common patterns. For example, classical inheritance allows us to create a moveableEntity class, and extend that with any classes that move in our game world (player, monster, bullet, etc.). Sure, you can strongarm JavaScript to work that way, but in doing so, you are kind of fighting against its nature. Is there a better approach to this sort of problem when we have prototypal inheritance at our fingertips?

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• Z Order in 2D with orthographic projection and texture atlas

  - by Carbon Crystal

  I am working with a 2D game in OpenGL ES and have a question about z-order together with a texture atlas. I am using an orthographic projection because I want pixel-perfect rendering of 2D sprites, however from what I can determine the draw order is really the only thing that will determine which textures (sprites) appear above or below their neighbors. That is, the "z-index" is a function of the order in which the textures are drawn as opposed to the z coordinate on the vertex array being drawn. So.. I have a texture atlas to save binding multiple textures for each draw call but this immediately creates a problem if there is more than one atlas in play. If I need to draw textures from more than one atlas (typically the case if I have too many sprites to fit in a single atlas of a reasonable size), then I can't maintain a "draw order" across atlases unless I want to bind/unbind the atlas textures more than once.. which kinda defeats the purpose. Does anyone have any clues as to what the best approach is here? Currently I'm running under an assumption that I will have to declare different fixed "depths" (e.g foreground, background etc) in my 2D scene and assume that the z-order for sprites at a given depth is the same. Then I can have as many atlases as I need at each depth and simply draw the depths in order (along with their associated atlases) I'd love to hear what other people are doing.

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• How do I use depth testing and texture transparency together in my 2.5D world?

  - by nbolton

  Note: I've already found an answer (which I will post after this question) - I was just wondering if I was doing it right, or if there is a better way. I'm making a "2.5D" isometric game using OpenGL ES (JOGL). By "2.5D", I mean that the world is 3D, but it is rendered using 2D isometric tiles. The original problem I had to solve was that my textures had to be rendered in order (from back to front), so that the tiles overlapped properly to create the proper effect. After some reading, I quickly realised that this is the "old hat" 2D approach. This became difficult to do efficiently, since the 3D world can be modified by the player (so stuff can appear anywhere in 3D space) - so it seemed logical that I take advantage of the depth buffer. This meant that I didn't have to worry about rendering stuff in the correct order. However, I faced a problem. If you use GL_DEPTH_TEST and GL_BLEND together, it creates an effect where objects are blended with the background before they are "sorted" by z order (meaning that you get a weird kind of overlap where the transparency should be). Here's some pseudo code that should illustrate the problem (incidentally, I'm using libgdx for Android). create() { // ... // some other code here // ... Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); } render() { Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); // ... // bind texture and create vertices // ... } So the question is: How do I solve the transparency overlap problem?

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• Common way of animating 'motion' for walk cycle animations

  - by Ben Hymers

  I've just posted this at the Blender artists' forums before realising I would probably get a better response from a more game development-specific audience, so apologies for cross-posting! It's for the right reasons :) I'm a programmer trying to animate a character walking for a game project, using Ogre. I've made a very simple walk cycle in Blender and exported it to Ogre, and it plays just fine. By fine, I mean it works, but there's terrible foot sliding. This is because I just animated the walk in-place (at the origin) in Blender, and of course I don't know what "speed of walk" that corresponds to, so when I move the character in-game the motion doesn't necessarily match up with the movement of the feet in the animation. So my question is: what's the normal approach for this kind of thing? At work we use Maya, and the animators either animate a special 'moveTrans' node that represents the "position" of the character (or have the exporter generate it for them from the movement of the root node), then the game can read this to know how fast the animation moves the character. So in the Maya file, the character will walk forward for one cycle and this extra node will follow along with them by their feet. I've not seen anything like this in open-source land, and there's certainly no provision for that in the Ogre Exporter script. What do you chaps normally do for this?

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• Space-efficient data structures for broad-phase collision detection

  - by Marian Ivanov

  As far as I know, these are three types of data structures that can be used for collision detection broadphase: Unsorted arrays: Check every object againist every object - O(n^2) time; O(log n) space. It's so slow, it's useless if n isn't really small. for (i=1;i<objects;i++){ for(j=0;j<i;j++) narrowPhase(i,j); }; Sorted arrays: Sort the objects, so that you get O(n^(2-1/k)) for k dimensions O(n^1.5) for 2d and O(n^1.67) for 3d and O(n) space. Assuming the space is 2D and sortedArray is sorted so that if the object begins in sortedArray[i] and another object ends at sortedArray[i-1]; they don't collide Heaps of stacks: Divide the objects between a heap of stacks, so that you only have to check the bucket, its children and its parents - O(n log n) time, but O(n^2) space. This is probably the most frequently used approach. Is there a way of having O(n log n) time with less space? When is it more efficient to use sorted arrays over heaps and vice versa?

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• How to simulate pressure with particles?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  I'm trying to simulate pressure with a collection of spherical particles in a Unity game I'm building. A couple notes about the problem: The goal is to fill a constantly changing 2d space/void with small, frictionless spheres. The game is trying to simulate the ever-growing pressure of more objects being shoved into this space. The level itself is constantly scrolling from left to right, meaning if the space's dimensions are not changed by the user it will automatically get smaller (the leftmost part of the space will continually scroll off-screen). I'm wondering what some approaches are that I can take to tackling these problems... Knowing when to detect when there is space to fill and then add spheres to the space. Removing spheres from the space when it is shrinking. Strategies to simulate pressure on the spheres such that they "explode outwards" when more space is created. The current approach I am contemplating is using a constantly moving wall, that is off screen and moves with the screen, as this image illustrates: . This moving wall will push and trap the spheres into the space. As for adding new spheres, I was going to have either (1) spheres replicate themselves upon detecting free space, OR (2) spawn them at the left side of the space (where the wall is) - pushing the rest of the spheres to fill the space. I foresee problems with idea #1 because this likely wouldn't really create/simulate pressure; idea #2 seems more promising, but raises the question of how to provide a location for these new sphere particles to spawn (and the ramifications of spawning them when there IS no space). Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom!

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• Sending changes to a terrain heightmap over UDP

  - by Floomi

  This is a more conceptual, thinking-out-loud question than a technical one. I have a 3D heightmapped terrain as part of a multiplayer RTS that I would like to terraform over a network. The terraforming will be done by units within the gameworld; the player will paint a "target heightmap" that they'd like the current terrain to resemble and units will deform towards that on their own (a la Perimeter). Given my terrain is 257x257 vertices, the naive approach of sending heights when they change will flood the bandwidth very quickly - updating a quarter of the terrain every second will hit ~66kB/s. This is clearly way too much. My next thought was to move to a brush-based system, where you send e.g. the centre of a circle, its radius, and some function defining the influence of the brush from the centre going outwards. But even with reliable UDP the "start" and "stop" messages could still be delayed. I guess I could compare timestamps and compensate for this, although it'd likely mean that clients would deform verts too much on their local simulations and then have to smooth them back to the correct heights. I could also send absolute vert heights in the "start" and "stop" messages to guarantee correct data on the clients. Alternatively I could treat brushes in a similar way to units, and do the standard position + velocity + client-side prediction jazz on them, with the added stipulation that they deform terrain within a certain radius around them. The server could then intermittently do a pass and send (a subset of) recently updated verts to clients as and when there's bandwidth to spare. Any other suggestions, or indications that I'm on the right (or wrong!) track with any of these ideas would be greatly appreciated.

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• geomipmapping using displacement mapping (and glVertexAttribDivisor)

  - by Will

  I wake up with a clear vision, but sadly my laptop card doesn't do displacement mapping nor glVertexAttribDivisor so I can't test it out; I'm left sharing here: With geomipmapping, the grid at any factor is transposable - if you pass in an offset - say as a uniform - you can reuse the same vertex and index array again and again. If you also pass in the offset into the heightmap as a uniform, the vertex shader can do displacement mapping. If the displacement map is mipmapped, you get the advantages of trilinear filtering for distant maps. And, if the scenery is closer, rather than exposing that the you have a world made out of quads, you can use your transposable grid vertex array and indices to do vertex-shader interpolation (fancy splines) to do super-smooth infinite zoom? So I have some questions: does it work? In theory, in practice? does anyone do it? Does this technique have a name? Papers, demos, anything I can look at? does glVertexAttribDivisor mean that you can have a single glMultiDrawElementsEXT or similar approach to draw all your terrain tiles in one call rather than setting up the uniforms and emitting each tile? Would this offer any noticeable gains? does a heightmap that is GL_LUMINANCE take just one byte per pixel(=vertex)? (On mainstream cards, obviously. Does storage vary in practice?) Does going to the effort of reusing the same vertices and indices mean that you can basically fill the GPU RAM with heightmap and not a lot else, giving you either bigger landscapes or more detailed landscapes/meshes for the same bang? is mipmapping the displacement map going to work? On future cards? Is it going to introduce unsurmountable inaccuracies if it is enabled?

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• Should I make the Cells in a Tiledmap as null when my player hits it

  - by Vishal Kumar

  I am making a Tile Based game using Libgdx. I took the idea from SuperKoalio platformer demo by Mario Zencher. When I wanted to implement Collectables in my game , I simply draw the coins using Tiled Map Editor. When my player hits that, I use to set that cell as null. Someday on this site suggested me not to do so... never use null. I agreed. What can be any other way. If I am using layer.setCell(x,y) to set the cell to any other cell... even if an transparent one .. my player seems to be stopped by an invisible object/hurdle. This is my code: for (Rectangle tile : tiles) { if (koalaRect.overlaps(tile)) { TiledMapTileLayer layer = (TiledMapTileLayer) map.getLayers().get(1); try{ type = layer.getCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType").toString(); } catch(Exception e){ System.out.print("Exception in Tiles Property"+e); type="nonbreakable"; } //Let us destroy this cell if(("award".equals(type))){ layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, null); listener.coin(); score+=100; test = ""+layer.getCell(0, 0).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType"); } //DOING THIS GIVES A BAD EFFECT if(("killer".equals(type))){ //player.health--; //layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, layer.getCell(20,0)); } // we actually reset the player y-position here // so it is just below/above the tile we collided with // this removes bouncing :) if (player.velocity.y > 0) { player.position.y = (tile.y - Player.height); } Is this a right approach? OR I should create separate Sprite Class called Coin.

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• Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

  - by Rob Hays

  I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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• Collision Detection for a 2D RPG

  - by PHMitrious

  First of all, I have done some research on this topic before asking, and I'm asking this question as a mean to get some opinions on this topic, so I don't make a decision only on my own, but taking into account other people's experience as well. I'm starting a 2D online RPG project. I am using SFML for graphics and input and I'm creating a basic game structure and all for the game, creating modules for each part of the game. Well, let me get to the point I just wanted to give you guys some context. I want to decide on how I'm going to work with collision detection. Well I'm kinda going to work on maps with a tile map divided in layers (as usual) and add an extra 2 layers - not exactly in the map - for objects. So I'll have collisions between objects and agents (players - npcs - monsters - spells etc) and agents and tiles. The seconds one can be easily solved the first one need a little bit of work. I considered both creating a basic collision test engine using polygons and a quadtree to diminish tests since I'm going to be working with big maps with lots of objects - creating both a physical and graphical world representation. And I also considered using a physics engine like Box2D for collision tests. I think the first approach would take more work on my part but the second one would have the overhead of using a whole physics engine for just collision detection and no physics. What do you guys think ?

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• How to proceed on the waypoint path?

  - by Alpha Carinae

  I'm using Dijkstra algorithm to find shortest path and I'm drawing this path on the screen. As the character object moves on, path updates itself(shortens as the object approaches the target and gets longer as the object moves away from it.) I tried to visualize my problem. This is the beginning state. 'A' node is the target, path is the blue and the object is the green one. I draw this path, from object to the closest node. In this case my problem occurs. Because 'D' node is more closer to the object than 'C' node, something like this happens: So, how can i decide that the object passed the 'D' node? Path should be look like this: One thing comes to my mind is that I use some distance variables between the two closest nodes in the route path. (In this example these are 'C' and 'D' nodes.) As the object approaches 'C' and moves away from the 'D' node at the same time, this means character passed the 'D'. However, I think there are some standardized and easy ways to solve this. What approach should I take?

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• 360 snake movement

  - by Darius Janavicius

  I'm trying to do 360 degree snake game in actionscript 3. Here is my movement code: //head movement head.x += snake_speed*Math.cos((head.rotation) * (Math.PI /180)); head.y += snake_speed*Math.sin((head.rotation) * (Math.PI /180)); if (dir == "left") head.rotation -= snake_speed*2; if (dir == "right") head.rotation +=snake_speed*2; //Body part movement for(var i:int = body_parts.length-1; i>0; i--) { var angle = (body_parts[i-1].rotation)*(Math.PI/180); body_parts[i].y = body_parts[i-1].y - (25 * Math.sin(angle)); body_parts[i].x = body_parts[i-1].x - (25 * Math.cos(angle)); body_parts[i].rotation = body_parts[i-1].rotation; } With this code head moves just like I want it to move, but body parts have the same angle as head and it looks wrong. What I want to achieve is to make body parts to move like in game "Ultimate snake". Here is a link to that game: http://armorgames.com/play/387/ultimate-snake P.S. I saw similar question here "How to approach 360 degree snake" but didnt understand the answer :/

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• (Abstract) Game engine design

  - by lukeluke

  I am writing a simple 2D game (for mobile platforms) for the first time. From an abstract point of view, i have the main player controlled by the human, the enemies, elments that will interact with the main player, other living elements that will be controlled by a simple AI (both enemies and non-enemies). The human player will be totally controlled by the player, the other actors will be controlled by AI. So i have a class CActor and a class CActorLogic to start with. I would define a CActor subclass CHero (the main player controlled with some input device). This class will probably implement some type of listener, in order to capture input events. The other players controlled by the AI will be probably a specific subclass of CActor (a subclass per-type, obviously). This seems to be reasonable. The CActor class should have a reference to a method of CActorLogic, that we will call something like CActorLogic::Advance() or similar. Actors should have a visual representation. I would introduce a CActorRepresentation class, with a method like Render() that will draw the actor (that is, the right frame of the right animation). Where to change the animation? Well, the actor logic method Advance() should take care of checking collisions and other things. I would like to discuss the design of a game engine (actors, entities, objects, messages, input handling, visualization of object states (that is, rendering, sound output and so on)) but not from a low level point of view, but from an high level point of view, like i have described above. My question is: is there any book/on line resource that will help me organize things (using an object oriented approach)? Thanks

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• vector rotations for branches of a 3d tree

  - by freefallr

  I'm attempting to create a 3d tree procedurally. I'm hoping that someone can check my vector rotation maths, as I'm a bit confused. I'm using an l-system (a recursive algorithm for generating branches). The trunk of the tree is the root node. It's orientation is aligned to the y axis. In the next iteration of the tree (e.g. the first branches), I might create a branch that is oriented say by +10 degrees in the X axis and a similar amount in the Z axis, relative to the trunk. I know that I should keep a rotation matrix at each branch, so that it can be applied to child branches, along with any modifications to the child branch. My questions then: for the trunk, the rotation matrix - is that just the identity matrix * initial orientation vector ? for the first branch (and subsequent branches) - I'll "inherit" the rotation matrix of the parent branch, and apply x and z rotations to that also. e.g. using glm::normalize; using glm::rotateX; using glm::vec4; using glm::mat4; using glm::rotate; vec4 vYAxis = vec4(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); vec4 vInitial = normalize( rotateX( vYAxis, 10.0f ) ); mat4 mRotation = mat4(1.0); // trunk rotation matrix = identity * initial orientation vector mRotation *= vInitial; // first branch = parent rotation matrix * this branches rotations mRotation *= rotate( 10.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f ); // x rotation mRotation *= rotate( 10.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f ); // z rotation Are my maths and approach correct, or am I completely wrong? Finally, I'm using the glm library with OpenGL / C++ for this. Is the order of x rotation and z rotation important?

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• Obstacle Avoidance steering behavior: how can an entity avoid an obstacle while other forces are acting on the entity?

  - by Prog

  I'm trying to implement the Obstacle Avoidance steering behavior in my 2D game. Currently my approach is to apply a force on the entity, in the direction of the normal of the heading, scaled by a number that gets bigger the closer we are to the obstacle. This is supposed to push the entity to the side and avoid the obstacle that blocks it's way. However, in the same time that my entity tries to avoid an obstacle, it Seeks to a point more or less behind the obstacle (which is the reason it needs to avoid the obstacle in the first place). The Seek algorithm constantly applies a force on the entity that pushes it (more or less) in the direction of the obstacle, while the Obstacle Avoidance algorithm constantly applies a force that pushes the entity away (more accurately, to the side) of the obstacle. The result is that sometimes the entity succesfully avoids the obstacle, and sometimes it collides with it, depending on the strength of the avoidance force I'm applying. How can I make sure that a force will succeed in steering the entity in some direction, while other forces are currently acting on the entity? (And while still looking natural). I can't allow entities to collide with obstacles when realistically they should be able to easily avoid them, doesn't matter what they're currently doing. Also, the Obstacle Avoidance algorithm is made exactly for the case where another force is acting on the entity. Otherwise it wouldn't be moving and there would be no need to avoid anything. So maybe I'm missing something. Thanks

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