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• “Play Now” via website vs. download & install

  - by Inside

  I've spent some time looking over the various threads here on GDSE and also on the regular Stackoverflow site, and while I saw a lot of posts and threads regarding various engines that could be used in game development, I haven't seen very much discussion regarding the various platforms that they can be used on. In particular, I'm talking about browser games vs. desktop games. I want to develop a simple 3D networked multiplayer game - roughly on the graphics level of Paper Mario and gameplay with roughly the same level of interaction as a hack & slash action/adventure game - and I'm having a hard time deciding what platform I want to target with it. I have some experience with using C++/Ogre3D and Python/Panda3D (and also some synchronized/networked programming), but I'm wondering if it's worth it to spend the extra time to learn another language and another engine/toolkit just so that the game can be played in a browser window (I'm looking at jMonkeyEngine right now). Is it worth it to go with engines that are less-mature, have less documentation, have fewer features, and smaller communities* just so that a (possibly?) larger audience can be reached? Does it make sense to even go with a web-environment for the kind of game that I want to make? Does anyone have any experiences with decisions like this? (* With the exception of Flash-based engines it seems like most of the other approaches have downsides when compared to what is available for desktop-based environments. I'd go with Flash, but I'm worried that Flash's 3D capabilities aren't mature enough right now to do what I want easily. There's also Unity3D, but I'm not sure how I feel about that at all. It seems highly polished, but requires a plugin to be downloaded for the game to be played -- at that rate I might as well have players download my game.) For simple & short games the Newgrounds approach (go to the site, click "play now", instant gratification) seems to work well. What about for more complex games? Is there a point where the complexity of a game is enough for people to say "OK, I'm going to download and play that"?

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• Infinite detail inside Perlin noise procedural mapping

  - by Dave Jellison

  I am very new to game development but I was able to scour the internet to figure out Perlin noise enough to implement a very simple 2D tile infinite procedural world. Here's the question and it's more conceptual than code-based in answer, I think. I understand the concept of "I plug in (x, y) and get back from Perlin noise p" (I'll call it p). P will always be the same value for the same (x, y) (as long as the Perlin algorithm parameters haven't changed, like altering number of octaves, et cetera). What I want to do is be able to zoom into a square and be able to generate smaller squares inside of the already generated overhead tile of terrain. Let's say I have a jungle tile for overhead terrain but I want to zoom in and maybe see a small river tile that would only be a creek and not large enough to be a full "big tile" of water in the overhead. Of course, I want the same net effect as a Perlin equation inside a Perlin equation if that makes sense? (aka. I want two people playing the game with the same settings to get the same terrain and details every time). I can conceptually wrap my head around the large tile being based on an "zoomed out" coordinate leaving enough room to drill into but this approach doesn't make sense in my head (maybe I'm wrong). I'm guessing with this approach my overhead terrain would lose all of the cohesiveness delivered by the Perlin. Imagine I calculate (0, 0) as overhead tile 1 and then to the east of that I plug in (50, 0). OK, great, I now have 49 pixels of detail I could then "drill down" into. The issue I have in my head with this approach (without attempting it) is that there's no guarantee from my Perlin noise that (0,0) would be a good neighbor to (50,0) as they could have wildly different "elevations" or p/resultant values returning from the Perlin equation when I generate the overhead map. I think I can conceive of using the Perlin noise for the overhead tile to then reuse the p value as a seed for the "detail" level of noise once I zoom in. That would ensure my detail Perlin is always the same configuration for (0,0), (1,0), etc. ad nauseam but I'm not sure if there are better approaches out there or if this is a sound approach at all.

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• Best Platform/Engine for turn based Client/Server Android game

  - by Paradine

  I'm currently designing a turn based game for tablets. Initially for Android with porting to iOS later considered in design. I'm having trouble narrowing down the available technologies to even know where to spend my research time. I am hoping that if I explain what I am trying to achieve someone may be able to suggest a platform and/or engine. I've looked into some of the open source Engines ( http://www.cuteandroid.com/ten-open-source-android-2d-or-3d-game-engine-for-android-developers ) and some appear to handle much of what I might require - although with a higher focus on graphics than i need. Mages looks interesting although development appears to have ceased. If I could somehow leverage GoogleApps that would be excellent. Here is what I am trying to achieve: PvP turn based strategy game over internet - minimal animation and bandwidth required Players match up online using MetaGame system MatchID created on Resolution Server and Game starts Clients have 30 second countdown to select MoveString Clients sends small secure timestamped and MatchIDed MoveString to Resolution server Resolution server looks up Move String for each player, Resolves and Updates Players status in MatchID on Server Resolution server updates Client Views Repeat until victory conditions met - MatchID Closed, Rewards earned in MetaGame There will also need to be a full social and account system and metagame backend - but this could be running on separate system(s) Tablet in Offline mode would be catalog browsing and perhaps single player AI - bum I'm focusing on the Resolution Server at this point I'm not even certain if I would be looking at an Android App or a WebApp at this stage! I want a custom GUI so I guess an app - but maybe as I have little animation a WebApp might also work. Probably some combination of both. There will be very small overhead in data between client server - essentially a small text string every 30 seconds sent to the Resolution server which looks up the Effect and applies it to the Opponents string and determines some results to apply to the match. The client view is updated minimally with the results (only 5 in game Integers tracked) - perhaps triggering small animations/popups on the client to show the end result. e.g Explosion. If you have suggestions for a good technology or platform to best achieving the Resolution Server I'd love to hear. Also if you have experience with open source Engines - and could narrow down which (if any ) might be most suitable that would be a big help. Thanks in advance

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• Game timings and formats

  - by topright

  There are more or less standardized TV-show/movie formats and recommended timings: 1. By the early 1960s, television companies commonly presented half-hour long "comedy" series, or one hour long "dramas." Half-hour series were mostly restricted to situation comedy or family comedy, and were usually aired with either a live or artificial laugh track. One hour dramas included genre series such as police and detective series, westerns, science fiction, and, later, serialized prime time soap operas. Programs today still overwhelmingly conform to these half-hour and one hour guidelines. Source 2. In the United States, most medical dramas are one hour long. Source 3. Traditionally serials were broadcast as fifteen minute installments each weekday in daytime slots. In 1956 As the World Turns debuted as the first half-hour soap opera. All soap operas broadcast half-hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. With increased popularity in the 1970s most soap operas expanded to an hour (Another World even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials had expanded to one hour episodes by 1980. As of 2010, six of the seven US serials air one hour episodes each weekday. Source Interesting. Are there any standards of timing in game development? Well, 5-20 minutes casual games, of course. There is even a "5-minutes-game" site. And 1-hour-gamer site. Are there 1-week, 1-year, 1-eternity game formats? Chess and Go - deep games that you can study all your life; but they are played in hour or several days (pro games). Addictive long-term online role-playing games (without win-condition) are played in monthes and, possibly, years. Replayability is an important factor to consider. It's good when game design document contains a line: "A game is designed for solving in X hours". How can it be measured before there is any prototype or demo? When you know your game format, you know your audience (and vice versa). It is practical question. Are there psychological researches about dynamic of gaming interest and involvement? And is there a correlation between game format and game genre?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 15, 2012Popular ReleasesYAXLib: Yet Another XML Serialization Library for the .NET Framework: YAXLib 2.11: XML entity names now accept W3C standards. * Nullable types are not serialized with a `yaxlib:realtype` attribute any more. * Fixed some namespace related bugs. * Fixed an issue with deserializing date-time values that expose date time kind of UTC during serialization. * Classes can accept YAXDictionary and [YAXCollection] attributes. The value to these attributes can then be overridden by members instantiating them. * Unit tests all migrated to NUnit. ...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.2 For detailed release notes check the release notes. Revitalized IndexedDB providerNow you c...SQL Server Compact Toolbox: Release 3.1.1 Visual Studio add-in: Download the Visual Studio add-in for SQL Server Compact 3.5 and 4.0 from here SQL Server Compact Toolbox 3.1–Visual Guide of new features New features: - Added ability to generate Windows Phone 8 DataContext classes - Improved sqlmetal detection for VS 2012 only installationsVFPX: FoxcodePlus: FoxcodePlus - Visual Studio like extensions to Visual FoxPro IntelliSense.TFS 2012 Server/service Setup for Demo: TfsDemo_1.0.0.1: The console application today sets up Create a new Team Set the team as the default team Configure team settings Set Backlog Iteration path Set Team Iterations and start & finish dates Set Team Area path Add Team Members Add Product Backlog Items & linked Tasks. This has been tested against Tfs Server/Service using Scrum 2.1 Process TemplateZXMAK2: Version 2.6.4.0: - added RZX playback - fix Reset behaviorDroid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.8 Beta: fixed the icon for packages on the desktop fixed the install dialog closing right when it starts removed the link to "set up the sdk for me" as this is no longer supported. fixed bug where the device selection dialog would show, even if there was only one device connected. fixed toolbar from having "gap" between other toolbar removed main menu items that do not have any menus Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.3.0）: Iveely Search Engine?????????????，0.3.0????????，????????：??????。 ????????????"????“？???????,????????????。??0.3.0??????????？0.3.0????????，????。 ?????，????????????????，??????300????，?????????300?????????????????，?????????????????。????，??????????，???????，???????。???????IveelySE.Resource，???????????，???????????????????????，???????????。 ????????Iveely.config，??????IveelySE.Run.Task.exe，?????????http://127.0.0.1:8088/query=yourkeyword，??????。 ????，??? ??http://www.cnblogs.com/liufanping...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.0: Prva verzija ovog projekta, još je uvijek oznacena kao BETA - ovo znaci da su naša testiranja prošla uspješno :) No, kako mi ne proizvodimo neki software za blagajne, tako sve ovo nije niti isprobano u "realnim" uvjetima - svaka je sugestija, primjedba ili prijava bug-a je dobrodošla. Za sve ovo koristite, molimo, Discussions ili Issue Tracker. U ovom trenutku runtime binary je raspoloživ kao Any CPU za .NET verzije 2.0. Javite ukoliko trebaju i verzije buildane za 32-bit/64-bit kao i za .N...Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.2 (Development): This release is mainly for enabling extensibility and interoperability with other platforms. Support for plugins Support for extensions Communication layer and protocol is platform independent (ZeroMQ, ProtocolBuffers) Bug fixes New /invite command Edit the sent message Disable update check NOTE: This is development release and not recommended for production use.AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.2: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.8: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated. Note changes to the PDF Writer: tcPDF is no longer bundled with PHPExcel, but should be installed separately if you wish to use that 3rd-Party library with PHPExcel. Alternatively, you can choose to use mPDF or DomPDF as PDF Rendering libraries instead: PHPExcel now provides a configurable wrapper allowing you a choice of PDF renderer. See the documentation, or the PDF s...DirectX Tool Kit: October 12, 2012: October 12, 2012 Added PrimitiveBatch for drawing user primitives Debug object names for all D3D resources (for PIX and debug layer leak reporting)mojoPortal: 2.3.9.3: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2393-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.4: Fixed a bug where the server ip was not logged properly in the stats file.Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.2: v 2.1.2: Fixed problem with serialization. Made all classes from a namespace Jetbrains.Annotaions as the internal. Added autocomplete attribute and autocorrect attribute for captcha input element. Minor changes. Updated: I'm added an example for this question. v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial ...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue where the module printing function was only visible to administrators Fixed issue where pane level skinning was being assigned to a default container for any content pane Fixed issue when using password aging and FB / Google authentication Fixed issue that was causing the DateEditControl to not load the assigned value Fixed issue that stopped additional profile properties to be displayed in the member directory after modifying the template Fixed er...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.3: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE:...VidCoder: 1.4.4 Beta: Fixed inability to create new presets with "Save As".MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.2: Changelog for 2.3.2 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for generating XBMC XML NFO files for files in the conversion queue (store it along with the source video with source video name.nfo). Right click on the file in queue and select generate XML 2. UI bugifx, start and end trim box locations interchanged 3. Added support for removing commercials from non DVRMS/WTV files (MP4, AVI etc) 4. Now checking for Firewall port status before enabling (might help with some firewall problems) 5. User In...New ProjectsAssertion.NUnit: NUnit test helper class. Traditionally NUnit stops test on the first check failure. But sometimes subsequent rules check may helps with bug location. BlobCache: BlobCache is a graphical way of modify the BlobCache setting in the Web Application web.config.C# Disassembler: Disassembler written in C#. In progress at this momentCakeThatIBaked: Web Scripting and content Creation Project FileCamelot SharePoint SQL Commander Web Part: The Camelot SharePoint SQL Commander Web Part is a simple yet powerful sql-query browser for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and 2013.DB Shell: XAML dialect for describing database operations. Working both with database data and structure. Written for .NET 4.0. DffPlugin: DFF Importer/DFF exporter Description: 3ds max import & export plugins for GTA III era 3d models Supported games: GTA III, GTA VC, GTA SA Author: SeggaemanDirectory2Rss: Directory2Rss scans a list of files under a given set of directories and writes the output to a Rss feed which can be published on the web. When it is run again it checks for new files and writes the addition to the Rss feed. Great for monitoring directories for additions.Dynamics CRM 2011 Type interface for TypeScript: This project provides a type inteface for the CRM object model crm.d.ts. Including this file in your TypeScript project will add Intellisense support for the CREmail Organizer: Outlook 2010 add-in that shows a breakdown of what's taking up space in your inbox. Forismatic. Quotes and expressions. Windows Phone app.: The Windows Phone app for reading the forismatic.comGeekRule Open Source Software: GeekRule provides open source projects for the .NET development communityGestorht: Proyecto para la gestion ht del proyecto completoihashPwd: hashPwd provides hashing algorithms within a classical windows form. Current Version: 1.0bHuber Race: Huber Race is a modern open source race timing and scoring software program designed to time running races on the Windows stack. isanywhere: A command line utility to see if one or more files (given a filemask) are to be found anywhere inside a specific directory, or elsewhere inside one of its subdirectories. A sort of poor man's synchronisation utility, very simple but maybe quite handy.Läx-o-matic: A program for handling submitted answers to tasks, sent in by students.Lixo Eletrônico - Projeto Integrador 2: Não sei o que escrever aqui...só que isso precisa ser feito.Music Note Shuffle - Encouraging Games (SLXNA Game): 0 people following this project (follow) Music Note Shuffle - Encouraging Games VB.Net Silverlight and XNA Game How did this project come about? One of the thmysocket??: ??????，???????myupload: myuploadndalexiswalkingweb2: This is a summary of the codeplex area. To be updated later.OpenMVCRM: This is a free CRM Application which anybody can download and use. Our intention is to make it easy for every small organizations to have a CRM to manage their business. This software is being developed in the wonderful so called ASP.NET MVC and all those wonderful things ASP.NET MVC team is throwing out. We owe to everyonePOV-Ray in Visual Studio: Born out of my own frustrations with the POV-Ray text editor, I decided to embark on this project. Currently it is in the very early stages. QRCode App for SharePoint 2013: The QRCode App is an app part to generate dynamically QRCode in your SharePoint's pages. RazorSourceGenerator: ??????Razor Engine??????，????Razor?????????????????Schema????SQL?????????。RomEditor: Editing CWM-Based Roms made easy !Some Unit-Testing Utilities: Testing for thrown exceptions in the default MS unit-testing framework is not optimal for a variety of reasons. Here are some utility methods that do it betterTMX Map Loader XNA for Windows Phone 7/8: TMXMapLoaderXNA is a full XNA content pipeline library that allows you to import TMX map files.Uzi.Packaging: OPC abstraction library used in Ikosa Framework and Guildsmanship: Battle-Scapes.wtother: wtotherXML File Editor: Egy alkalmazás, amellyel XML fájlokat tudunk kontrolláltan szerkeszteni. A program feladata, hogy egy (konzol) felületen keresztül, menüvezérelten tudjunk szabvYasminuroban: Yasminuroban is an open source "Sokoban" (aka "Warehouse Keeper" or "Boxes") alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses keyboard. Includes level editor. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, *BSD, Windows and others.

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• PASS: The Budget Process

  - by Bill Graziano

  Every fiscal year PASS creates a detailed budget.  This helps us set priorities and communicate to our members what we’re going to do in the upcoming year.  You can review the current budget on the PASS Governance page.  That page currently requires you to login but I’m talking with HQ to see if there are any legal issues with opening that up. The Accounting Team The PASS accounting team is two people.  The Executive Vice-President of Finance (“EVP”) and the PASS Accounting Manager.  Sandy Cherry is the accounting manager and works at PASS HQ.  Sandy has been with PASS since we switched management companies in 2007.  Throughout this document when I talk about any actual work related to the budget that’s all Sandy :)  She’s the glue that gets us through this process.  Last year we went through 32 iterations of the budget before the Board approved so it’s a pretty busy time for her us – well, mostly her. Fiscal Year The PASS fiscal year runs from July 1st through June 30th the following year.  Right now we’re in fiscal year 2011.  Our 2010 Summit actually occurred in FY2011.  We switched to this schedule from a calendar year in 2006.  Our goal was to have the Summit occur early in our fiscal year.  That gives us the rest of the year to handle any significant financial impact from the Summit.  If registrations are down we can reduce spending.  If registrations are up we can decide how much to increase our reserves and how much to spend.  Keep in mind that the Summit is budgeted to generate 82% of our revenue this year.  How it performs has a significant impact on our financials.  The other benefit of this fiscal year is that it matches the Microsoft fiscal year.  We sign an annual sponsorship agreement with Microsoft and it’s very helpful that our fiscal years match. This year our budget process will probably start in earnest in March or April.  I’d like to be done in early June so we can publish before July 1st.  I was late publishing it this year and I’m trying not to repeat that. Our Budget Our actual budget is an Excel spreadsheet with 36 sheets.  We remove some of those when we publish it since they include salary information.  The budget is broken up into various portfolios or departments.  We have 20 portfolios.  They include chapters, marketing, virtual chapters, marketing, etc.  Ideally each portfolio is assigned to a Board member.  Each portfolio also typically has a staff person assigned to it.  Portfolios that aren’t assigned to a Board member are monitored by HQ and the ExecVP-Finance (me).  These are typically smaller portfolios such as deferred membership or Summit futures.  (More on those in a later post.)  All portfolios are reviewed by all Board members during the budget approval process, when interim financials are released internally and at year-end. The Process Our first step is to budget revenues.  The Board determines a target attendee number.  We have formulas based on historical performance that convert that to an overall attendee revenue number.  Other revenue projections (such as vendor sponsorships) come from different parts of the organization.  I hope to have another post with more details on how we project revenues. The next step is to budget expenses.  Board members fill out a sample spreadsheet with their budget for the year.  They can add line items and notes describing what the amounts are for.  Each Board portfolio typically has from 10 to 30 line items.  Any new initiatives they want to pursue needs to be budgeted.  The Summit operations budget is managed by HQ.  It includes the cost for food, electrical, internet, etc.  Most of these come from our estimate of attendees and our contract with the convention center.  During this process the Board can ask for more or less to be spent on various line items.  For example, if we weren’t happy with the Internet at the last Summit we can ask them to look into different options and/or increasing the budget.  HQ will also make adjustments to these numbers based on what they see at the events and the feedback we receive on the surveys. After we have all the initial estimates we start reviewing the entire budget.  It is sent out to the Board and we can see what each portfolio requested and what the overall profit and loss number is.  We usually start with too much in expenses and need to cut.  In years past the Board started haggling over these numbers as a group.  This past year they decided I should take a first cut and present them with a reasonable budget and a list of what I changed.  That worked well and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future. We go through a number of iterations on the budget.  If I remember correctly, we went through 32 iterations before we passed the budget.  At each iteration various revenue and expense numbers can change.  Keep in mind that the PASS budget has 200+ line items spread over 20 portfolios.  Many of these depend on other numbers.  For example, if we decide increase the projected attendees that cascades through our budget.  At each iteration we list what changed and the impact.  Ideally these discussions will take place at a face-to-face Board meeting.  Many of them also take place over the phone.  Board members explain any increase they are asking for while performing due diligence on other budget requests.  Eventually a budget emerges and is passed. Publishing After the budget is passed we create a version without the formulas and salaries for posting on the web site.  Sandy also creates some charts to help our members understand the budget.  The EVP writes a nice little letter describing some of the changes from last year’s budget.  You can see my letter and our budget on the PASS Governance page. And then, eight months later, we start all over again.

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• Another question about handling game states

  - by Eva

  I'm making a game designed with the entity-component paradigm that uses systems to communicate between components as explained here. I've reached the point in my development that I need to add game states (such as paused, playing, level start, round start, game over, etc.), but I'm not sure how to do it with my framework. I've looked at this code example on game states which everyone seems to reference, but I don't think it fits with my framework. It seems to have each state handling its own drawing and updating. My framework has a SystemManager that handles all the updating using systems. For example, here's my RenderingSystem class: public class RenderingSystem extends GameSystem { private GameView gameView_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new RenderingSystem. * @param gameManager The game manager. Used to get the game components. */ public RenderingSystem(GameManager gameManager) { super(gameManager); } /** * Method: registerGameView * Registers gameView into the RenderingSystem. * @param gameView The game view registered. */ public void registerGameView(GameView gameView) { gameView_ = gameView; } /** * Method: triggerRender * Adds a repaint call to the event queue for the dirty rectangle. */ public void triggerRender() { Rectangle dirtyRect = new Rectangle(); for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); dirtyRect.add(graphicsComponent.getDirtyRect()); } gameView_.repaint(dirtyRect); } /** * Method: renderGameView * Renders the game objects onto the game view. * @param g The graphics object that draws the game objects. */ public void renderGameView(Graphics g) { for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); if (!graphicsComponent.isVisible()) continue; GraphicsComponent.Shape shape = graphicsComponent.getShape(); BoundsComponent boundsComponent = object.getComponent(BoundsComponent.class); Rectangle bounds = boundsComponent.getBounds(); g.setColor(graphicsComponent.getColor()); if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.RECTANGULAR) { g.fill3DRect(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height, true); } else if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.CIRCULAR) { g.fillOval(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height); } } } /** * Method: getRenderableObjects * @return The renderable game objects. */ private HashSet<GameObject> getRenderableObjects() { return gameManager.getGameObjectManager().getRelevantObjects( getClass()); } } Also all the updating in my game is event-driven. I don't have a loop like theirs that simply updates everything at the same time. I like my framework because it makes it easy to add new GameObjects, but doesn't have the problems some component-based designs encounter when communicating between components. I would hate to chuck it just to get pause to work. Is there a way I can add game states to my game without removing the entity-component design? Does the game state example actually fit my framework, and I'm just missing something?

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows: --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 --volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then --c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) --c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I'll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows, --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 -- volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then -- c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) -- c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I ll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• 2D game - Missile shooting problem on Android

  - by Niksa

  Hello, I have to make a tank that sits still but moves his turret and shoots missiles. As this is my first Android application ever and I haven't done any game development either, I've come across a few problems... Now, I did the tank and the moving turret once I read the Android tutorial for the LunarLander sample code. So this code is based on the LunarLander code. But I'm having trouble doing the missile firing then SPACE button is being pressed. private void doDraw(Canvas canvas) { canvas.drawBitmap(backgroundImage, 0, 0, null); // draws the tank canvas.drawBitmap(tank, x_tank, y_tank, new Paint()); // draws and rotates the tank turret canvas.rotate((float) mHeading, (float) x_turret + mTurretWidth, y_turret); canvas.drawBitmap(turret, x_turret, y_turret, new Paint()); // draws the grenade that is a regular circle from ShapeDrawable class bullet.setBounds(x_bullet, y_bullet, x_bullet + width, y_bullet + height); bullet.draw(canvas); } UPDATE GAME method private void updateGame() throws InterruptedException { long now = System.currentTimeMillis(); if (mLastTime > now) return; double elapsed = (now - mLastTime) / 1000.0; mLastTime = now; // dUP and dDown, rotates the turret from 0 to 75 degrees. if (dUp) mHeading += 1 * (PHYS_SLEW_SEC * elapsed); if (mHeading >= 75) mHeading = 75; if (dDown) mHeading += (-1) * (PHYS_SLEW_SEC * elapsed); if (mHeading < 0) mHeading = 0; if (dSpace){ // missile Logic, a straight trajectorie for now x_bullet -= 1; y_bullet -= 1; //doesn't work, has to be updated every pixel or what? } boolean doKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent msg) { boolean handled = false; synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) { if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SPACE){ dSpace = true; handled = true; } if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_UP){ dUp = true; handled = true; } if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN){ dDown = true; handled = true; } return handled; } } } a method run that runs the game... public void run() { while (mRun) { Canvas c = null; try { c = mSurfaceHolder.lockCanvas(null); synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) { if (mMode == STATE_RUNNING) updateGame(); doDraw(c); } } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } finally { // do this in a finally so that if an exception is thrown // during the above, we don't leave the Surface in an // inconsistent state if (c != null) { mSurfaceHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(c); } } } } So the question would be, how do I make that the bullet is fired on a single SPACE key press from the turret to the end of the screen? Could you help me out here, I seem to be in the dark here... Thanks, Niksa

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• How Do I Do Alpha Transparency Properly In XNA 4.0?

  - by Soshimo

  Okay, I've read several articles, tutorials, and questions regarding this. Most point to the same technique which doesn't solve my problem. I need the ability to create semi-transparent sprites (texture2D's really) and have them overlay another sprite. I can achieve that somewhat with the code samples I've found but I'm not satisfied with the results and I know there is a way to do this. In mobile programming (BREW) we did it old school and actually checked each pixel for transparency before rendering. In this case it seems to render the sprite below it blended with the alpha above it. This may be an artifact of how I'm rendering the texture but, as I said before, all examples point to this one technique. Before I go any further I'll go ahead and paste my example code. public void Draw(SpriteBatch batch, Camera camera, float alpha) { int tileMapWidth = Width; int tileMapHeight = Height; batch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointWrap, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone, null, camera.TransformMatrix); for (int x = 0; x < tileMapWidth; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < tileMapHeight; y++) { int tileIndex = _map[y, x]; if (tileIndex != -1) { Texture2D texture = _tileTextures[tileIndex]; batch.Draw( texture, new Rectangle( (x * Engine.TileWidth), (y * Engine.TileHeight), Engine.TileWidth, Engine.TileHeight), new Color(new Vector4(1f, 1f, 1f, alpha ))); } } } batch.End(); } As you can see, in this code I'm using the overloaded SpriteBatch.Begin method which takes, among other things, a blend state. I'm almost positive that's my problem. I don't want to BLEND the sprites, I want them to be transparent when alpha is 0. In this example I can set alpha to 0 but it still renders both tiles, with the lower z ordered sprite showing through, discolored because of the blending. This is not a desired effect, I want the higher z-ordered sprite to fade out and not effect the color beneath it in such a manner. I might be way off here as I'm fairly new to XNA development so feel free to steer me in the correct direction in the event I'm going down the wrong rabbit hole. TIA

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

  - by Cardin

  I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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• Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

  - by Paul Renton

  One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

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• How to implement a component based system for items in a web game.

  - by Landstander

  Reading several other questions and answers on using a component based system to define items I want to use one for the items and spells in a web game written in PHP. I'm just stuck on the implementation. I'm going to use a DB schema suggested in this series (part 5 describes the schema); http://t-machine.org/index.php/2007/09/03/entity-systems-are-the-future-of-mmog-development-part-1/ This means I'll have an items table with generic item properties, a table listing all of the components for an item and finally records in each component table used to make up the item. Assuming I can select the first two together in a single query, I'm still going to do N queries for each component type. I'm kind of fine with this because I can cache the data into memcache and check there first before doing any queries. I'll need to build up the items on every request they are used in so the implementation needs to be on the lean side even if they're pulled from memcache. But right there is where I feel confident about implementing a component system for my items ends. I figure I'd need to bring attributes and behaviors into the container from each component it uses. I'm just not sure how to do that effectively and not end up writing a lot of specialized code to deal with each component. For example an AttackComponent might need to know how to filter targets inside of a battle context and also maybe provide an attack behavior. That same item might also have a UsableComponent which allows the item to be used and apply some effect onto a different set of targets filtered differently from the same battle context. Then not every part of an item is an active part, an AttributeBonusComponent might need to only kick in when the item is in an equipped state or when displaying the item details page. Ultimately, how should I bring all of the components together into the container so when I use an item as a weapon I get the correct list of targets? Know when a weapon can also be used as an item? Or to apply the bonuses the item provides to a character object? I feel like I've gone too far down the rabbit hole and I can't grasp onto the simple solution in front of me. (If that makes any sense at all.) Likewise if I were to implement the best answer from here I feel like I'd have a lot of the same questions. How to model multiple "uses" (e.g. weapon) for usable-inventory/object/items (e.g. katana) within a relational database.

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• what would be a good way to implement/render a 2d tiled map for a browser game?

  - by jj_

  I've made this little rpg ruby game I did while learning and now I'd like to make it into a browser game. I've already set up Sinatra framework to serve it, so what I am looking for, before everything else, is a way to represent the game map in browser (location attributes are stored in db). A new map is randomly generated by code for each new game at each game start. For now forget db, and let's say a map (say 100x100 "squares") is stored as a tridimensional array. (x,y, ...) Last "dimension" of array stores who & what is at that map cell: a player, a building, whatever. So all I have to do is render those "squares" or array cells to a 2d tiled map in the browser. The map does not need to refresh or be dynamically fetched as you scroll it, (at least at this stage of development) but, a technology which would allow me to do so in future would be a good reason for choosing it. Things that I thought of: html tables, html5 canvas, some js framework which is designed exactly with this purpose (which I do not know of = please advice). Yes I know about gamequery-js framework, but I've never used it, and I don't know if it's going to slow down everything down to inusability as I'm adding new features (scrolling, ajax). I really don't know of any other alternatives.. maybe there are lighter approaches? Easier or more minimalistic ways ? More targeted js framework which is the right tool for the job? Maybe just some html canvas code, or even simple image maps, or images with absolute positioning will be enough? The thing is I'd like to start simple, and then gradually make it better, so, as I said before, I'd prefer something that will give me room for improvement or is headed toward new web tendencies but which will also give me a bit of gratification in the beginning :) So.. advices are needed! And appreciated! :) Thanks p.s. Flash is excluded because I don't like it.

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• How to do proper Alpha in XNA?

  - by Soshimo

  Okay, I've read several articles, tutorials, and questions regarding this. Most point to the same technique which doesn't solve my problem. I need the ability to create semi-transparent sprites (texture2D's really) and have them overlay another sprite. I can achieve that somewhat with the code samples I've found but I'm not satisfied with the results and I know there is a way to do this. In mobile programming (BREW) we did it old school and actually checked each pixel for transparency before rendering. In this case it seems to render the sprite below it blended with the alpha above it. This may be an artifact of how I'm rendering the texture but, as I said before, all examples point to this one technique. Before I go any further I'll go ahead and paste my example code. public void Draw(SpriteBatch batch, Camera camera, float alpha) { int tileMapWidth = Width; int tileMapHeight = Height; batch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointWrap, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone, null, camera.TransformMatrix); for (int x = 0; x < tileMapWidth; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < tileMapHeight; y++) { int tileIndex = _map[y, x]; if (tileIndex != -1) { Texture2D texture = _tileTextures[tileIndex]; batch.Draw( texture, new Rectangle( (x * Engine.TileWidth), (y * Engine.TileHeight), Engine.TileWidth, Engine.TileHeight), new Color(new Vector4(1f, 1f, 1f, alpha ))); } } } batch.End(); } As you can see, in this code I'm using the overloaded SpriteBatch.Begin method which takes, among other things, a blend state. I'm almost positive that's my problem. I don't want to BLEND the sprites, I want them to be transparent when alpha is 0. In this example I can set alpha to 0 but it still renders both tiles, with the lower z ordered sprite showing through, discolored because of the blending. This is not a desired effect, I want the higher z-ordered sprite to fade out and not effect the color beneath it in such a manner. I might be way off here as I'm fairly new to XNA development so feel free to steer me in the correct direction in the event I'm going down the wrong rabbit hole. TIA

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• How do I keep user input and rendering independent of the implementation environment?

  - by alex

  I'm writing a Tetris clone in JavaScript. I have a fair amount of experience in programming in general, but am rather new to game development. I want to separate the core game code from the code that would tie it to one environment, such as the browser. My quick thoughts led me to having the rendering and input functions external to my main game object. I could pass the current game state to the rendering method, which could render using canvas, elements, text, etc. I could also map input to certain game input events, such as move piece left, rotate piece clockwise, etc. I am having trouble designing how this should be implemented in my object. Should I pass references to functions that the main object will use to render and process user input? For example... var TetrisClone = function(renderer, inputUpdate) { this.renderer = renderer || function() {}; this.inputUpdate = input || function() {}; this.state = {}; }; TetrisClone.prototype = { update: function() { // Get user input via function passed to constructor. var inputEvents = this.inputUpdate(); // Update game state. // Render the current game state via function passed to constructor. this.renderer(this.state); } }; var renderer = function(state) { // Render blocks to browser page. } var inputEvents = {}; var charCodesToEvents = { 37: "move-piece-left" /* ... */ }; document.addEventListener("keypress", function(event) { inputEvents[event.which] = true; }); var inputUpdate = function() { var translatedEvents = [], event, translatedEvent; for (event in inputEvents) { if (inputEvents.hasOwnProperty(event)) { translatedEvent = charCodesToEvents[event]; translatedEvents.push(translatedEvent); } } inputEvents = {}; return translatedEvents; } var game = new TetrisClone(renderer, inputUpdate); Is this a good game design? How would you modify this to suit best practice in regard to making a game as platform/input independent as possible?

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• How to chain actions/animations together and delay their execution?

  - by codinghands

  I'm trying to build a simple game with a number of screens - 'TitleScreen', 'LoadingScreen', 'PlayScreen', 'HighScoreScreen' - each of which has it's own draw & update logic methods, sprites, other useful fields, etc. This works well for me as a game dev beginner, and it runs. However, on my 'PlayScreen' I want to run some animations before the player gets control - dropping in some artwork, playing some sound effects, generally prettifying things a little. However, I'm not sure what the best way to chain animations / sound effects / other timed general events is. I could make an intermediary screen, 'PrePlayScreen', which simply has all of this hardcoded like so: Update(){ Animation anim1 = new Animation(.....); Animation anim2 = new Animation(.....); anim1.Run(); if(anim1.State == AnimationState.Complete) anim2.Run(); if(anim2.State == AnimationState.Complete) // Load 'PlayScreen' screen } But this doesn't seem so great - surely their must be a better way? I then thought, 'Hey - an AnimationManager! That'd be awesome!'. But then that creeping OOP panic set in as I thought about it some more. If I create the Animation in my Screen, then add it to the AnimationManager (which may or may not be a GameComponent hooked up to Update/Draw), how can I get 'back' to it? To signal commands like start / end / repeat? I'd still need to keep a reference to the object in my Screen so that I could still communicate with it once it's buried in the bosom of a List in my AnimationManager. This seems bad. I've also tried using events - call 'Update' on all the animations in the PlayScreen update loop, but crucially all of the animations have a bool flag ('Active') which determines whether they should begin. The first animation has this set to 'true', all others 'false'. On completion the first animation raises an event, which sets animation 2's bool flag to true (and so it then runs). Once animation 2 is complete another 'anim complete' event is raised, and the screen state changes. Considering the game I'm making is basically as simple as it gets I know I'm overthinking this... it's just the paradigm shift from web - game development is making me break out in a serious case of the stupids.

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• April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

  - by ScottGu

  Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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• permission denied: /etc/apt/sources.list

  - by Eli

  I'm trying to install java jre, i usually do it like this sudo echo 'deb http://www.duinsoft.nl/pkg debs all' >> /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 5CB26B26 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install update-sun-jre exit but when i do sudo echo 'deb http://www.duinsoft.nl/pkg debs all' >> /etc/apt/sources.list i see permission denied: /etc/apt/sources.list When i do ls -l /etc/apt/sources.list i see -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3360 Aug 26 01:45 /etc/apt/sources.list When i do sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.old sudo cat /etc/apt/sources.list.old | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list i see #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ dists/precise/main/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ dists/precise/restricted/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ precise main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise universe deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise universe deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise multiverse deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise multiverse deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates multiverse deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates multiverse ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://lb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main and the issue is not solved, i still see that permission error, I'm on a 64 bit laptop

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• Unable to apt-get upgrade in ubuntu 11.10

  - by blackhole

  These are the errors shows by different client Update Manager: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 968, in simulate trans.unauthenticated = self._simulate_helper(trans) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1092, in _simulate_helper return depends, self._cache.required_download, \ File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 235, in required_download pm.get_archives(fetcher, self._list, self._records) SystemError: E:Method has died unexpectedly!, E:Sub-process returned an error code (100), E:Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly Synaptic package Manager E: Method has died unexpectedly! E: Sub-process returned an error code (100) E: Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly E: Unable to lock the download directory Command: sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be upgraded: libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev 2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Failed to exec method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ E: Method has died unexpectedly! E: Sub-process returned an error code (100) E: Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly Can anyone one tell me how to resolve these issues ? I have no volatile packages or anything so i am even posting the preview of my sources.list file. # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.10 _Maverick Meerkat_ - Release i386 (20101007)]/ maverick main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. # deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports main restricted universe multiverse # deb-src http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports main restricted universe multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security main restricted deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security universe deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security multiverse # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner Here is the preview of my sources.list file

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• What Did You Do? is a Bad Question

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions.  One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions.  Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce.  And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past.  I’ll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian’s presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it. For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers.  And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not.  One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, “What did you do?”  This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future.  I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper.  However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, “Nothing!”  For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I’m in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true.  They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself.  But no, they always stuck with “Nothing”.  At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into.  After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Now, after hearing Brian’s talk, I understand what the problem was.  Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, “What did YOU do?” have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad.  Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it. So, if “What did you do” is a bad question, what would have been better?  Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” or “what was happening on the computer right before this came up?”  It’s subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view.  With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them.  They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions.  And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions.  So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions.  Excellent topic Brian!  Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning! (Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)

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• Attend Onsite Product Usability Testing or Tour Oracle HQ Usability Labs during Oracle OpenWorld 2014

  - by gaamoth-Oracle

   By Gozel Aamoth, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle OpenWorld  is the world’s largest business and technology event, featuring thousands of sessions, including keynotes, technical sessions, demos, and hands-on labs. Hundreds of exhibitors will be sharing what they’re bringing to Oracle technology at this year’s conference, held in downtown  San Francisco from Sept. 29-Oct. 2. If you are an Oracle customer or partner planning to attend this  annual event, there are several ways to  meet face-to-face with members of the Oracle Applications  User Experience (UX) team. We’d like  to invite you to sign up for a usability feedback session, or  hop on one of our special chartered buses  to tour Oracle HQ’s usability labs. Here’s more  information about these exclusive events. Onsite product usability testing: Give us your feedback! Product usability testing is in progress at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. The Oracle Applications User Experience team will host an onsite usability lab, where Oracle customers and partners can participate in a usability feedback session, at Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Usability experts, product managers, and user interface designers have teamed up to provide Oracle customers and partners with the opportunity to contribute to and influence application design and direction while test-driving Oracle’s next-generation applications. Your feedback will affect the existing and future usability of Oracle applications, and help us develop applications that are intuitive and easy to use. What will we test? Participants will get a preview of proposed Oracle product designs for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Fusion applications for Procurement and Supply Chain, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft applications, Social Relationship Management, BI applications, Fusion Middleware, and more. Who can participate*? Regardless of your current job title, we have a session that might interest you. These one-on-one feedback sessions are popular, and space is very limited, so contact us  today to learn more. Dates: Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2014  Location: InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco, CA  Time: Advance sign-up is required for this event. RSVP now. If you have questions about this event, please contact Angela Johnston.  Take a tour of the Oracle HQ Usability Lab during OpenWorld 2014Members of Applications UX team lead Oracle OpenWorld lab tour attendeesto the usability labs at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, CA. The Applications User Experience team will be offering a limited number of usability lab tours  at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., during Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Come take a look behind the scenes of Oracle’s research and development work on Thursday, Oct. 2, or Friday, Oct. 3. Receive an exclusive look into how Oracle tests applications designs, and see the direction that Oracle’s enterprise applications are heading, including demos of designs for devices such as the tablet and smartphone. Round-trip transportation will be provided. Pick-up and drop-off is at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, next to Moscone West. Spots are limited, so sign up today! How to reserve your spot To RSVP, sign up here. For additional questions, send an e-mail to Jeannette Chadwick. To learn more about our team’s presence at Oracle OpenWorld this year, please visit our website, UsableApps. *Participation requires that your company or organization has a Customer Participation Confidentiality Agreement (CPCA) on file. If your company or organization does not have a CPCA on file, we will start this process.

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