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• Audio Panning using RtAudio

  - by user1801724

  I use Rtaudio library. I would like to implement an audio program where I can control the panning (e.g. shifting the sound from the left channel to the right channel). In my specific case, I use a duplex mode (you can find an example here: duplex mode). It means that I link the microphone input to the speaker output. I seek on the web, but I did not find anything useful. Should I apply a filter on the output buffer? What kind of filter? Can anyone help me? Thanks

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• how to link a c++ object to a local variable in Lua

  - by MahanGM

  I'm completing my scripting interface with Lua, but recently I've stuck at some point. I have several functions for my Entitiy events like Update(). I have a function called create_entitiy() which instantiate a new entity from a given entity index: function Update() local bullet = create_entity(0, 0, "obj_bullet") end create_entity returns a table which is the properties of the created entity. Now how can I make a connection between bullet variable and my newly created object? Right now for previously added objects to the scene, I simply set a global table for each of them and then after every call to Update(), I go through registered names to find object tables and perform new changes. Like the one below: function Update() if keyboard_key_press(vk_right) then obj_player.x += 3 end I can get obj_player table because I know its name from C++, plus I can get it as a global table and simply reach for the first instance named obj_player. Is there any solution for me to make bullet variable act like this? I was thinking to get all local variables in Update() function and check for every one to see if is it table and it has an unique field attached to it like id, this way I can determine that this is an object table and do the rest of the process. By the way, is this interface going to work easier with luaBind if I implement it? Bottom line: How can I make a local variable in Lua that receives a table from create_entity function and track that local variable to capture it from C++. e. g. function Update() local bullet = create_entity(0, 0, "obj_bullet") bullet.x = 10 <== Commit a change in table end Now I want to get variable bullet from C++. And it's not just this variable, there might be a ton of these local variables with different names.

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• Client side latency when using prediction

  - by Tips48

  I've implemented Client-Side prediction into my game, where when input is received by the client, it first sends it to the server and then acts upon it just as the server will, to reduce the appearance of lag. The problem is, the server is authoritative, so when the server sends back the position of the Entity to the client, it undo's the effect of the interpolation and creates a rubber-banding effect. For example: Client sends input to server - Client reacts on input - Server receives and reacts on input - Server sends back response - Client reaction is undone due to latency between server and client To solve this, I've decided to store the game state and input every tick in the client, and then when I receive a packet from the server, get the game state from when the packet was sent and simulate the game up to the current point. My questions: Won't this cause lag? If I'm receiving 20/30 EntityPositionPackets a second, that means I have to run 20-30 simulations of the game state. How do I sync the client and server tick? Currently, I'm sending the milli-second the packet was sent by the server, but I think it's adding too much complexity instead of just sending the tick. The problem with converting it to sending the tick is that I have no guarantee that the client and server are ticking at the same rate, for example if the client is an old-end PC.

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• What tools should I consider if my aim is to make a game available to as many platforms as possible?

  - by Kenji Kina

  We're planning on developing a 2D, grid-based puzzle game, and although it's still very early in the planning stages, we'd like to make our decisions well from the beginning. Our strategy will be to make the game available to as many platforms as possible, for example PCs (Windows, Mac and/or Linux), mobile phones (iPhone and/or Android based phones), game consoles (XBLA and/or PSN) PC will have an emphasis, but I believe that's the most flexible platform so that shouldn't be a problem. So, what programming language, game engine, frameworks and all around tools would be best suited for our goal? P.S.: I'm betting a set of tools won't cover ALL of them, and that there will still be some kind of "translating" effort for some platforms, but we'd like to know what the most far reaching are.

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• Loading Wavefront Data into VAO and Render It

  - by Jordan LaPrise

  I have successfully loaded a triangulated wavefront(.obj) into 6 vectors, the first 3 vectors contain the locations for vertices, uv coords, and normals. The last three have the indices stored for each of the faces. I have been looking into using VAO's and VBO's to render, and I'm not quite sure how to load and render the data. One of my biggest concerns is the fact that indexed rendering only allows you to have one array of indices, meaning I somehow have to make all of the first three vectors the same size, the only way I thought of doing this, is to make 3 new vertex's of equal size, and load in the data for each face, but that would completely defeat the purpose of indexing. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jordan

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• Calculating the "power" of a player in a "Defend Your Castle" type game

  - by Jesse Emond

  I'm a making a "Defend Your Castle" type game, where each player has a castle and must send units to destroy the opponent's castle. It looks like this (and yeah, this is the actual game, not a quick paint drawing..): Now, I'm trying to implement the AI of the opponent, and I'd like to create 4 different AI levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardcore. I've never made any "serious" AI before and I'd like to create a quite complete one this time. My idea is to calculate a player's "power" score, based on the current health of its castle and the individual "power" score of its units. Then, the AI would just try to keep a score close to the player's one(Easy would stay below it, Normal would stay near it and Hard would try to get above it). But I just don't know how to calculate a player's power score. There are just too many variables to take into account and I don't know how to properly use them to create one significant number(the power level). Could anyone help me out on this one? Here are the variables that should influence a player's power score: Current castle health, the unit's total health, damage, speed and attack range. Also, the player can have increased Income(the money bag), damage(the + Damage) and speed(the + speed)... How could I include them in the score? I'm really stuck here... Or is there an other way that I could implement AI for this type of game? Thanks for your precious time.

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• What is the benefit of triple buffering?

  - by user782220

  I read everything written in a previous question. From what I understand in double buffering the program must wait until the finished drawing is copied or swapped before starting the next drawing. In triple buffering the program has two back buffers and can immediately start drawing in the one that is not involved in such copying. But with triple buffering if you're in a situation where you can take advantage of the third buffer doesn't that suggest that you are drawing frames faster than the monitor can refresh. So then you don't actually get a higher frame rate. So what is the benefit of triple buffering then?

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• How to fetch only the sprites in the player's range of motion for collision testing? (2D, axis aligned sprites)

  - by Twodordan

  I am working on a 2D sprite game for educational purposes. (In case you want to know, it uses WebGl and Javascript) I've implemented movement using the Euler method (and delta time) to keep things simple. Now I'm trying to tackle collisions. The way I wrote things, my game only has rectangular sprites (axis aligned, never rotated) of various/variable sizes. So I need to figure out what I hit and which side of the target sprite I hit (and I'm probably going to use these intersection tests). The old fashioned method seems to be to use tile based grids, to target only a few tiles at a time, but that sounds silly and impractical for my game. (Splitting the whole level into blocks, having each sprite's bounding box fit multiple blocks I might abide. But if the sprites change size and move around, you have to keep changing which tiles they belong to, every frame, it doesn't sound right.) In Flash you can test collision under one point, but it's not efficient to iterate through all the elements on stage each frame. (hence why people use the tile method). Bottom line is, I'm trying to figure out how to test only the elements within the player's range of motion. (I know how to get the range of motion, I have a good idea of how to write a collisionCheck(playerSprite, targetSprite) function. But how do I know which sprites are currently in the player's vicinity to fetch only them?) Please discuss. Cheers!

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• My grid based collision detection is slow

  - by Fibericon

  Something about my implementation of a basic 2x4 grid for collision detection is slow - so slow in fact, that it's actually faster to simply check every bullet from every enemy to see if the BoundingSphere intersects with that of my ship. It becomes noticeably slow when I have approximately 1000 bullets on the screen (36 enemies shooting 3 bullets every .5 seconds). By commenting it out bit by bit, I've determined that the code used to add them to the grid is what's slowest. Here's how I add them to the grid: for (int i = 0; i < enemy[x].gun.NumBullets; i++) { if (enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].isActive) { enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].Update(timeDelta); int bulletPosition = 0; if (enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.Y < 0) { bulletPosition = (int)Math.Floor((enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.X + 900) / 450); } else { bulletPosition = (int)Math.Floor((enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.X + 900) / 450) + 4; } GridItem bulletItem = new GridItem(); bulletItem.index = i; bulletItem.type = 5; bulletItem.parentIndex = x; if (bulletPosition > -1 && bulletPosition < 8) { if (!grid[bulletPosition].Contains(bulletItem)) { for (int j = 0; j < grid.Length; j++) { grid[j].Remove(bulletItem); } grid[bulletPosition].Add(bulletItem); } } } } And here's how I check if it collides with the ship: if (ship.isActive && !ship.invincible) { BoundingSphere shipSphere = new BoundingSphere( ship.Position, ship.Model.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere.Radius * 9.0f); for (int i = 0; i < grid.Length; i++) { if (grid[i].Contains(shipItem)) { for (int j = 0; j < grid[i].Count; j++) { //Other collision types omitted else if (grid[i][j].type == 5) { if (enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].isActive) { BoundingSphere bulletSphere = new BoundingSphere(enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].position, enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletModel.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere.Radius); if (shipSphere.Intersects(bulletSphere)) { ship.health -= enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.damage; enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].isActive = false; grid[i].RemoveAt(j); break; //no need to check other bullets } } else { grid[i].RemoveAt(j); } } What am I doing wrong here? I thought a grid implementation would be faster than checking each one.

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• Dynamic obstacles avoidance in navigation mesh system

  - by Variable

  I've built my path finding system with unreal engine, somehow the path finding part works just fine while i can't find a proper way to solve dynamic obstacles avoidance problem. My characters are walking allover the map and collide with each other while they moving. I try to steering them when collision occurs, but this doesn't work well. For example, two characters block on the road while the third one's path is right in the middle of them and he'll get stuck. Can someone tell me the most popular way of doing dynamic avoidance? Thanks a lot.

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• Group arrival steering

  - by ltjax

  I've got group movement implemented pretty much like this: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/CrowdPath.html Basically, that's combining path following and separation. It works nicely as long as units are in transit, but arrival does not work very well at all. Right now, units just cease to use the path following component once the "exit" the path, i.e. when their closest point on the path is on or past the end. This leads to those units bumping into each other and also overshooting the point the player clicked. Ideally, I'd have the units arrive scattered around the finish point (and reasonable close to each other), not all clumped up past the finish line. I'd imagine that some kind of arrival steering might work here, but based on other units and a "fuzzy" classification of the end of the path. Is there any proven way to do this?

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• Dealing with 2D pixel shaders and SpriteBatches in XNA 4.0 component-object game engine?

  - by DaveStance

  I've got a bit of experience with shaders in general, having implemented a couple, very simple, 3D fragment and vertex shaders in OpenGL/WebGL in the past. Currently, I'm working on a 2D game engine in XNA 4.0 and I'm struggling with the process of integrating per-object and full-scene shaders in my current architecture. I'm using a component-entity design, wherein my "Entities" are merely collections of components that are acted upon by discreet system managers (SpatialProvider, SceneProvider, etc). In the context of this question, my draw call looks something like this: SceneProvider::Draw(GameTime) calls... ComponentManager::Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) which calls (on each drawable component) DrawnComponent::Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) The SpriteBatch is set up, with the default SpriteBatch shader, in the SceneProvider class just before it tells the ComponentManager to start rendering the scene. From my understanding, if a component needs to use a special shader to draw itself, it must do the following when it's Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) method is invoked: public void Draw(GameTime gameTime, SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.End(); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null, EffectShader, ViewMatrix); // Draw things here that are shaded by the "EffectShader." spriteBatch.End(); spriteBatch.Begin(/* same settings that were set by SceneProvider to ensure the rest of the scene is rendered normally */); } My question is, having been told that numerous calls to SpriteBatch.Begin() and SpriteBatch.End() within a single frame was terrible for performance, is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to instruct the currently running SpriteBatch to simply change the Effect shader it is using for this particular draw call and then switch it back before the function ends?

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• Unity GUI not in build, but works fine in editor

  - by Darren

  I have: GUITexture attached to an object A script that has GUIStyles created for the Textfield and Buttons that are created in OnGUI(). This script is attached to the same object in number 1 3 GUIText objects each separate from the above. A script that enables the GUITexture and the script in number 1 and 2 respectively This is how it is supposed to work: When I cross the finish line, number 4 script enables number 1 GUITexture component and number 2 script component. The script component uses one of number 3's GUIText objects to show you your best lap time, and also makes a GUI.Textfield for name entry and 2 GUI.Buttons for "Submit" and "Skip". If you hit "Submit" the script will submit the time. No matter which button you press, The remaining 2 GUIText objects from number 3 will show you the top 10 best times. For some reason, when I run it in editor, everything works 100%, but when I'm in different kinds of builds, the results vary. When I am in a webplayer, The GUITexture and the textfield and buttons appear, but the textfield and buttons are plain and have no evidence of GUIStyles. When I click one of the buttons, the score gets submitted but I do not get the fastest times showing. When I am in a standalone build, the GUITexture shows up, but nothing else does. If I remove the GUIStyle parameter of the GUI.Textfield and GUI.Button, they show up. Why am I getting these variations and how can I fix it? Code below: void Start () { Names.text = ""; Times.text = ""; YourBestTime.text = "Your Best Lap: " + bestTime + "\nEnter your name:"; //StartCoroutine(GetTimes("Test")); } void Update() { if (!ShowButtons && !GettingTimes) { StartCoroutine(GetTimes()); GettingTimes = true; } } IEnumerator GetTimes () { Debug.Log("Getting times"); YourBestTime.text = "Loading Best Lap Times"; WWW times_get = new WWW(GetTimesUrl); yield return times_get; WWW names_get = new WWW(GetNamesUrl); yield return names_get; if(times_get.error != null || names_get.error != null) { print("There was an error retrieiving the data: " + names_get.error + times_get.error); } else { Times.text = times_get.text; Names.text = names_get.text; YourBestTime.text = "Your Best Lap: " + bestTime; } } IEnumerator PostLapTime (string Name, string LapTime) { string hash= MD5.Md5Sum(Name + LapTime + secretKey); string bestTime_url = SubmitTimeUrl + "&Name=" + WWW.EscapeURL(Name) + "&LapTime=" + LapTime + "&hash=" + hash; Debug.Log (bestTime_url); // Post the URL to the site and create a download object to get the result. WWW hs_post = new WWW(bestTime_url); //label = "Submitting..."; yield return hs_post; // Wait until the download is done if (hs_post.error != null) { print("There was an error posting the lap time: " + hs_post.error); //label = "Error: " + hs_post.error; //show = false; } else { Debug.Log("Posted: " + hs_post.text); ShowButtons = false; PostingTime = false; } } void OnGUI() { if (ShowButtons) { //makes text box nameString = GUI.TextField( new Rect((Screen.width/2)-111, (Screen.height/2)-130, 222, 25), nameString, 20, TextboxStyle); if (GUI.Button( new Rect( (Screen.width/2-74.0f), (Screen.height/2)- 90, 64, 32), "Submit", ButtonStyle)) { //SUBMIT TIME if (nameString == "") { nameString = "Player"; } if (!PostingTime) { StartCoroutine(PostLapTime(nameString, bestTime)); PostingTime = true; } } else if (GUI.Button( new Rect( (Screen.width/2+10.0f), (Screen.height/2)- 90, 64, 32), "Skip", ButtonStyle)) { ShowButtons = false; } } } }

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• Unity Particle System collision detection problem

  - by Krav

  I'm using Unity 3.5.5f3 wich has the Shuriken particle system. I've made a blood particle system based on Unity's demos. (Exploding paint [Blood]) The blood is flowing and when it collides with a Plane Transform wich I've created a small pool of blood spawns as a Collision Sub Emitter. My main problem is that when I want to add another object to collide it just doesn't want to work. When I create a cube, and set it as a collision plane the collision will only occur at the half of the cube. I want this to happen: When it reaches the cube's surface the sub emmiter activates, and when the surface is horizontal it appears horizontally, and if it's vertical then vertically. Now it just appears horizontally everytime like in the picture. How could I solve it?

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• Displaying text letter by letter

  - by Evi

  I am planing to Write a Text adventure and I don't know how to make the text draw letter by letter in any other way than changing the variable from h to he to hel to hell to hello That would be a terrible amount of work since there are tons of dialogue. Here is the source code so far { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Texture2D sampleBG; Texture2D TextBG; SpriteFont defaultfont; KeyboardState keyboardstate; public bool spacepress = false; public bool mspress = false; public int textheight = 425; public int rowspace = 40; public string namebox = "(null)"; public string Row1 = "(null)"; public string Row2 = "(null)"; public string Row3 = "(null)"; public string Row4 = "(null)"; public int Dialogue = 0; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 600; graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 800; IsMouseVisible = true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here sampleBG = Content.Load <Texture2D>("SampleBG"); defaultfont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("SpriteFont1"); TextBG = Content.Load<Texture2D>("textbg"); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState keyboardstate = Keyboard.GetState(); MouseState mousestate = Mouse.GetState(); // Changes Dialgue by pressing Left Mouse Button or Space #region Dialogue changer if (mousestate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && mspress == false) { mspress = true; Dialogue = Dialogue + 1; } if (mousestate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && mspress == true) { mspress = false; } if (keyboardstate.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && spacepress == false) { spacepress = true; Dialogue = Dialogue + 1; } if (keyboardstate.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space) && spacepress == true) { spacepress = false; } #endregion // ------------------------------------------------------ // Dialgue Content #region Dialgue if (Dialogue == 1) { Row1 = "Input Text 1 Here."; Row2 = "Input Text 2 Here."; Row3 = "Input Text 3 Here."; Row4 = "Input Text 4 Here."; } if (Dialogue == 2) { Row1 = "Text 1"; Row2 = "Text 2"; Row3 = "Text 3"; Row4 = "Text 4"; } #endregion // ------------------------------------------------------ base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // TODO: Add your drawing code here spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(sampleBG, new Rectangle(0, 0, 800, 600), Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(TextBG, new Rectangle(0, 400, 800, 200), Color.White); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row1, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 0))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row2, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 1))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row3, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 2))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row4, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 3))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } }

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• JMonkey Engine (JME) load Blender scene with textures?

  - by leigero

  I am having the hardest time trying to accomplish the simplest task. I have created a floor and 4 walls (not that complicated) in Blender. I added a basic material and cloud texture so they have something to look at other than gray. When I import them into JMonkey they show up as solid white objects with no shading or depth. White silhouettes. I thought this may be a lighting issue, but I have ambient light added to the scene. I can remove that light or adjust its intensity and it has no affect on the scene. I exported all Blender files into OgreXML format, then converted them to .j3o format in JMonkey. I renamed the textures to match their corresponding mesh and this didn't do anything. Does anybody know how to create a flat object and put it into JMonkey with a texture? This sounds simple and there is absolutely no information on this. This should be step 1!

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• Good book or tutorial for learning how to apply integration methods

  - by Cumatru

  I'm looking to animate a graph layout using edges as springs and nodes as weights ( a node with more links will have a bigger weight ). I'm not capable of wrapping my head around the usage of mathematical and physics relations in my application. As far as i read, Runge Kutta 4 ( preferably ) or Verlet will be a good choice, but i have problems with understanding how they really work, and what physics equations should i apply. If i can't understand them, i can't use them. I'm looking for a book or a tutorial which describe the things that i need.

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• Illumination and Shading for computer graphics class

  - by Sam I Am

  I am preparing for my test tomorrow and this is one of the practice questions. I solved it partially but I am confused with the rest. Here is the problem: Consider a gray world with no ambient and specular lighting ( only diffuse lighting). The screen coordinates of a triangle P1,P2,P3, are P1=(100,100), P2= (300,150), P3 = (200, 200). The gray values at P!,P2,P3 are 1/2, 3/4, and 1/4 respectively. The light is at infinity and its direction and gray color are (1,1,1) and 1.0 respectively. The coefficients of diffused reflection is 1/2. The normals of P1,P2,P3 are N1= (0,0,1), N2 = (1,0,0), and N3 = (0,1,0) respectively. Consider the coordinates of three points P1,P2,P3 to be 0. Do not normalize the normals. I have computed that the illumination at the 3 vertices P1,P2,P3 is (1/4,3/8,1/8). Also I computed that interpolation coefficients of a point P inside the triangle whose coordinates are (220, 160) are given by (1/5,2/5,2/5). Now I have 4 more questions regarding this problem. 1) The illumination at P using Gouraud Shading is: i) 1/2 The answer is 1/2, but I have no idea how to compute it.. 2) The interpolated normal at P is given by i) (2/5, 2/5,1/5) ii) (1/2, 1/4, 1/4) iii) (3/5, 1/5, 1/5) 3) The interpolated color at P is given by: i) 1/2 Again, I know the correct answer but no idea how to solve it 4) The illumination at P using Phong Shading is i) 1/4 ii) 9/40 iii) 1/2

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• Transparency in XNA-4 primitives

  - by Shashwat

  I'm using XNA 4 with Visual Studio 2010. I'm trying to create a simple 3D world with walls and doors in which the user to free to roam around. A wall is just a rectangle which is currently being rendered with four vertices using triangle strips. But to create a door, I'd have to split it into three rectangles as shown in the figure. Four quadrilaterals if I want to have the following door-style It will become more complex to have multiple doors on the same wall or if I have windows. Is there any shorter way to handle this? I am looking for something that will just make the wall transparent wherever I want. I found a solution but facing a problem here

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• Best way to store a large amount of game objects and update the ones onscreen

  - by user3002473

  Good afternoon guys! I'm a young beginner game developer working on my first large scale game project and I've run into a situation where I'm not quite sure what the best solution may be (if there is a lone solution). The question may be vague (if anyone can think of a better title after having read the question, please edit it) or broad but I'm not quite sure what to do and I thought it would help just to discuss the problem with people more educated in the field. Before we get started, here are some of the questions I've looked at for help in the past: Best way to keep track of game objects Elegant way to simulate large amounts of entities within a game world What is the most efficient container to store dynamic game objects in? I've also read articles about different data structures commonly used in games to store game objects such as this one about slot maps, but none of them are really what I'm looking for. Also, if it helps at all I'm using Python 3 to design the game. It has to be Python 3, if I could I would use C++ or Unityscript or something else, but I'm restricted to having to use Python 3. My game will be a form of side scroller shooter game. In said game the player will traverse large rooms with large amounts of enemies and other game objects to update (think some of the larger areas in Cave Story or Iji). The player obviously can't see the entire room all at once, so there is a viewport that follows the player around and renders only a selection of the room and the game objects that it contains. This is not a foreign concept. The part that's getting me confused has to do with how certain game objects are updated. Some of them are to be updated constantly, regardless of whether or not they can be seen. Other objects however are only to be updated when they are onscreen (for example, an enemy would only be updated to react to the player when it is onscreen or when it is in a certain range of the screen). Another problem is that game objects have to be easily referable by other game objects; something that happens in the player's update() method may affect another object in the world. Collision detection in games is always a serious problem. I need a way of containing the game objects such that it minimizes the number of cases when testing for collisions against one another. The final problem is that of creating and destroying game objects. I think this problem is pretty self explanatory. To store the game objects then I've considered a number of different methods. The original method I had was to simply store all the objects in a hash table by an id. This method was simple, and decently fast as it allows all the objects to be looked up in O(1) complexity, and also allows them to be deleted fairly easily. Hash collisions would not be a major problem; I wasn't originally planning on using computer generated ids to store the game objects I was going to rely on them all using ids given to them by the game designer (such names would be strings like 'Player' or 'EnemyWeapon4'), and even if I did use computer generated ids, if I used a decent hashing algorithm then the chances of collisions would be around 1 in 4 billion. The problem with using a hash table however is that it is inefficient in checking to see what objects are in range of the viewport. Considering the fact that certain game objects move (as well as the viewport itself), the only solution I could think of in order to only update objects that are in the viewport would be to iterate through every object in the hash table and check if it is in the viewport or not, updating only the ones that are in the valid area. This would be incredibly slow in scenarios where the amount of game objects exceeds 500, or even 200. The second solution was to store everything in a 2-d list. The world is partitioned up into cells (a tilemap essentially), where each cell or tile is the same size and is square. Each cell would contain a list of the game objects that are currently occupying it (each game object would be inserted into a cell depending on the center of the object's collision mask). A 2-d list would allow me to take the top-left and bottom-right corners of the viewport and easily grab a rectangular area of the grid containing only the cells containing entities that are in valid range to be updated. This method also solves the problem of collision detection; when I take an entity I can find the cell that it is currently in, then check only against entities in it's cell and the 8 cells around it. One problem with this system however is that it prohibits easy lookup of game objects. One solution I had would be to simultaneously keep a hash table that would contain all the positions of the objects in the 2-d list indexed by the id of said object. The major problem with a 2-d list is that it would need to be rebuilt every single game frame (along with the hash table of object positions), which may be a serious detriment to game speed. Both systems have ups and downs and seem to solve some of each other's problems, however using them both together doesn't seem like the best solution either. If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments, opinions or solutions on new data structures or better implementations of the existing data structures I have in mind, please post, any and all criticism and help is welcome. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Please don't close the question because it has a bad title, I'm just bad with names!

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• Examples of 2D side-scrollers that achieve open non-linear feel?

  - by Milosz Falinski

  I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys/puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario/Braid/Pid/Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include: One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game-system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non-linear, offers multiple choices and side-stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top-down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note: I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios/Zeldas/Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.

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• Execute code at specific intervals, only once?

  - by Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen

  I am having an issue with XNA, where I want to execute some code in my Update method, but only at a given interval, and only once. I would like to avoid booleans to check if I've already called it once, if possible. My code is here: if ((gameTime.TotalGameTime.TotalMilliseconds % 500) == 0) { Caret.Visible = !Caret.Visible; } As you may have guessed, it's for a TextBox control, to animate the caret between invisible and visible states. I just have reason to believe that it is called twice or maybe even 3 times in a single update-call, which is bad, and makes it look unstable and jumpy.

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• Shader optimization - cg/hlsl pseudo and via multiplication

  - by teodron

  Since HLSL/Cg do not allow texture fetching inside conditional blocks, I am first checking a variable and performing some computations, afterwards setting a float flag to 0.0 or 1.0, depending on the computations. I'd like to trigger a texture fetch only if the flag is 1.0 or not null, for that matter of fact. I kind of hoped this would do the trick: float4 TU0_atlas_colour = pseudoBool * tex2Dlod(TU0_texture, float4(tileCoord, 0, mipLevel)); That is, if pseudoBool is 0, will the texture fetch function still be called and produce overhead? I was hoping to prevent it from getting executed via this trick that usually works in plain C/C++.

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• Map building - Tower Defense

  - by Dan K

  Before diving too deep into my question, let it be known that I am learning as far as java script goes and figured a simple Tower Defense game would be an excellent way to learn things. So I have found a simple background image with a path drawn on it and my question is how would I go about building a path so that I can animate my objects. Would I have to take the image and overlay a grid system, or can I store the path in some sort of array and have my objects move across it? Here is the background image:

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• GameState management hierarchical FSM vs stack based FSM

  - by user8363

  I'm reading a bit on Finite State Machines to handle game states (or screens). I would like to build a rather decent FSM that can handle multiple screens. e.g. while the game is running I want to be able to pop-up an ingame menu and when that happens the main screen must stop updating (the game is paused) but must still be visible in the background. However when I open an inventory pop-up the main screen must be visible and continue updating etc. I'm a bit confused about the difference in implementation and functionality between hierarchical FSM's and FSM's that handle a stack of states instead. Are they basically the same? Or are there important differences?

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