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• Has "Killer Game Programming in Java" by Andrew Davison been rendered useless? What new tutorial should I follow? [duplicate]

  - by BDillan

  This question already has an answer here: Killer Game Programming [Java 3D] outdated? 5 answers Its pathetic how it was created in 2005 not so long ago when the Java 3D 1.31 API was released. Now after downloading the source code off the books website and implementing it onto my work-space it cant run. (The 3D Shooter Ch. 23) I downloaded Java 3D 1.5 API, installed it- went back to my source code and javax.media ect.., and EVERY imported class within the game simply couldn't be resolved... they are all outdated.. Please do not say how its meant for a positive curvature in your game development skills. No ~ I got the book to understand how to code 3D textures/particle systems/games. Without seeing results how can I learn? If there is still hope for this book please tell me. Otherwise what other books match this one in Game Programming? This one was very well organized, documented and long. I am not looking for a 3D game prog. book on Java. Rather one that has the same reputation as this one but is a bit newer..

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• What needs to be done to port a Windows Flash game to Android?

  - by Russell Yan

  My team has developed a game using Flash (with Lua embeded) that targets Windows. And we want to port that game to Android (also iOS in the future). It's acceptable to rewrite the Flash part of client. And some other team in our company recommended Unity3D to replace the Flash part. Since we have no experience in Android/iOS development, we would need to learn some new tool/language anyway. So we would like that learning still be useful after the porting and when we starting a new game. Any thoughts? Edits: I think it is worth noticing the background of the game : the project is started by a tester and developer, both without knowing much about flex and actionscript. They built the game while learning, so most of the code is hard to maintain. I and other two developers joined the project after a year or so when one has leave (and the other be our manager). The other two developers are just graduates with little experience and little knowledge of flex. I am good at the server part and the c# language. Based on the fact that the code is hard to maintain (and we do need to change a lot of code to make the game easier to playe in a mobile device), and I am good at c# (and learning). I still tend to do the porting with Unity, which could get better performance and possibly save time.

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• PHP Browser Game Question - Pretty General Language Suitability and Approach Question

  - by JimBadger

  I'm developing a browser game, using PHP, but I'm unsure if the way I'm going about doing it is to be encouraged anymore. It's basically one of those MMOs where you level up various buildings and what have you, but, you then commit some abstract fighting entity that the game gives you, to an automated battle with another player (producing a textual, but hopefully amusing and varied combat report). Basically, as soon as two players agree to fight, PHP functions on the "fight.php" page run queries against a huge MySQL database, looking up all sorts of complicated fight moves and outcomes. There are about three hundred thousand combinations of combat stance, attack, move and defensive stances, so obviously this is quite a resource hungry process, and, on the super cheapo hosted server I'm using for development, it rapidly runs out of memory. The PHP script for the fight logic currently has about a thousand lines of code in it, and I'd say it's about half-finished as I try to add a bit of AI into the fight script. Is there a better way to do something this massive than simply having some functions in a PHP file calling the MySQL Database? I taught myself a modicum of PHP a while ago, and most of the stuff I read online (ages ago) about similar games was all PHP-based. but a) am I right to be using PHP at all, and b) am I missing some clever way of doing things that will somehow reduce server resource requirements? I'd consider non PHP alternatives but, if PHP is suitable, I'd rather stick to that, so there's no overhead of learning something new. I think I'd bite that bullet if it's the best option for a better game, though.

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• How to deal with OpenGL and Fullscreen on OS X

  - by Armin Ronacher

  I do most of my development on OS X and for my current game project this is my target environment. However when I play games I play on Windows. As a windows gamer I am used to Alt+Tab switching from within the game to the last application that was open. On OS X I currently can't find either a game that supports that nor can I find a way to make it possible. My current project is based on SDL 1.3 and I can see that cmd+tab is a sequence that is sent directly to my application and not intercepted by the operating system. Now my first attempt was to hide the rendering window on cmd+tab which certainly works, but has the disadvantage that a hidden OpenGL window in SDL cannot be restored when the user tabs back to the application. First of all, there is no event fired for that or I can't find it, secondly the core problem is that when that application window is hidden, my game is still the active application, just that the window disappeared. That is incredible annoying. Any ideas how to approximate the windows / linux behavior for alt+tab?

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• Getting ADB to run

  - by gh0st_h4wk

  I've recently installed ubuntu and I need Android SDK (and subsequently, adb) in order to develop my apps to college. The fact is that, no matter what I do, I can't get adb to work. Exporting its place to the PATH didn't worked. I only get "file or directory not found" error while this are the contents of the PATH variable: renan@RocketQueen:~$ echo $PATH /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/home/renan/adt/sdk/tools:/home/renan/adt/sdk/platform-tools I don't want to install android-tools-adb/fastboot because they're outdate when compared to SDK Manager ones. What do I need to do in order for it to work from anywhere when called from terminal?

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• Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Sometimes it can be difficult to center a picture in a document just by dragging it dragging it around. Today we show you how to center pictures, images, and other objects perfectly in Word and PowerPoint. Note: For this tutorial we’re using Office 2010, but the steps are nearly identical in 2007. Centering a Picture in Word First let’s insert a picture into our document.  Click the Insert tab, and then click Picture. Once you select the picture you want, it will be added to your document.  Usually, pictures are added wherever your curser was in the document, so in a blank document it will be added at the top left. Also notice Picture Tools show up in the Ribbon after inserting an image. Note: The following menu items are available in Picture Tools Format tab which is displayed when you select the object or image you’re working with. How do we align the picture just like we want?  Click Position to get some quick placement options, including centered in the middle of the document or on the top.    However, for more advanced placement, we can use the Align tool.  If Word isn’t maximized, you may only see the icon without the “Align” label. Notice the tools were grayed out in the menu by default.  To be able to change the Alignment, we need to first change the text wrap settings. Click the Wrap Text button, and any option other than “In Line with Text”.  Your choice will depend on the document you’re writing, just choose the option that works best in the document.   Now, select the Align tools again.  You can now position your image precisely with these options. Align Center will position your picture in the center of the page widthwise. Align Middle will put the picture in the middle of the page height-wise. This works the same with textboxes.  Simply click the Align button in the Format tab, and you can center it in the page. And if you’d like to align several objects together, simply select them all, click Group, and then select Group from the menu.   Now, in the align tools, you can center the whole group on your page for a heading, or whatever you want to use the pictures for. These steps also work the same with Office 2007. Center objects in PowerPoint This works similar in PowerPoint, except that pictures are automatically set for square wrapping automatically, so you don’t have to change anything.  Simply insert the picture or other object of your choice, click Align, and choose the option you want. Additionally, if one object is already aligned like you want, drag another object near it and you will see a Smart Guide to help you align or center the second object with the first.  This only works with shapes in PowerPoint 2010 beta, but will work with pictures, textboxes, and media in the final release this summer. Conclusion These are good methods for centering images and objects in Word and PowerPoint.  From designing perfect headers to emphasizing your message in a PowerPoint presentation, this is something we’ve found useful and hope you will too. Since we’re talking about Office here, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft has announced the Technology Guarantee Program for Office 2010. Essentially what this means is, if you purchase a version of Office 2007 between March 5th and September 30th of this year, when Office 2010 is released you’ll be able to upgrade to it for free! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteAdd More Functions To Office 2007 By Installing Add-InsCustomize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaEasily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Add Effects To Your Pictures in Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox)

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• handling various frame layouts in android

  - by vaibhav

  i'm new to game development and am trying create a Contra or the old tmnt game (but a simple one) like game for android. for the game i decided to divide my main screen in three parts - upper for stats,mid for the game and lower for controls. my main.xml is <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/upper_bar" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="1" > </FrameLayout> <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/fl" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="0.5" > </FrameLayout> <FrameLayout android:id="@+id/low_bar" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_weight="0.85" > </FrameLayout> </LinearLayout> so i have created the gameview and gameloopthread classes for the mid surface(which is pretty standard). my problem is that how do i draw in the upper and lower frame layouts? should i make new classes for view and thread for each layout , should i do all this in the gameview class itself or is there any better way to implement this?

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• Other games that employ mechanics like the game "Diplomacy"

  - by Kevin Peno

  I'm doing a little bit of research and I'm hoping you can help me track down any games, other than Diplomacy (online version here), that employ all or some of the mechanics in Diplomacy (rules, short form). Examples I'm looking for: Simultaneous orders given prior to execution of orders In Diplomacy, players "write down" their moves and execute them "at the same time" Support, in terms of supporting an attacker or defender "take" a territory. In Diplomacy, no one unit is stronger than another you need to combine the strength of multiple units to attack other territories. Rules for how move conflicts are resolved Example, 2 units move into a space, but only one is allowed, what happens. I may add to this list later, but these are the primary things I'm looking for. If you need clarification on anything just let me know. Note: I tried asking this on GamingSE, but it was shot down. So, I am unsure where else I could post this. Since I am researching this for game development purposes, I assume this post is on topic. Please let me know if this is not the case. Please also feel free to re-categorize this. Thanks!

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• ORACLE RIGHTNOW DYNAMIC AGENT DESKTOP CLOUD SERVICE - Putting the Dynamite into Dynamic Agent Desktop

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document There’s a mountain of evidence to prove that a great contact centre experience results in happy, profitable and loyal customers. The very best Contact Centres are those with high first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. But how many companies really believe they are the best? And how many believe that they can be? We know that with the right tools, companies can aspire to greatness – and achieve it. Core to this is ensuring their agents have the best tools that give them the right information at the right time, so they can focus on the customer and provide a personalised, professional and efficient service. Today there are multiple channels through which customers can communicate with you; phone, web, chat, social to name a few but regardless of how they communicate, customers expect a seamless, quality experience. Most contact centre agents need to switch between lots of different systems to locate the right information. This hampers their productivity, frustrates both the agent and the customer and increases call handling times. With this in mind, Oracle RightNow has designed and refined a suite of add-ins to optimize the Agent Desktop. Each is designed to simplify and adapt the agent experience for any given situation and unify the customer experience across your media channels. Let’s take a brief look at some of the most useful tools available and see how they make a difference. Contextual Workspaces: The screen where agents do their job. Agents don’t want to be slowed down by busy screens, scrolling through endless tabs or links to find what they’re looking for. They want quick, accurate and easy. Contextual Workspaces are fully configurable and through workspace rules apply if, then, else logic to display only the information the agent needs for the issue at hand . Assigned at the Profile level, different levels of agent, from a novice to the most experienced, get a screen that is relevant to their role and responsibilities and ensures their job is done quickly and efficiently the first time round. Agent Scripting: Sometimes, agents need to deliver difficult or sensitive messages while maximising the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell. After all, contact centres are now increasingly viewed as revenue generators. Containing sophisticated branching logic, scripting helps agents to capture the right level of information and guides the agent step by step, ensuring no mistakes, inconsistencies or missed opportunities. Guided Assistance: This is typically used to solve common troubleshooting issues, displaying a series of question and answer sets in a decision-tree structure. This means agents avoid having to bookmark favourites or rely on written notes. Agents find particular value in these guides - to quickly craft chat and email responses. What’s more, by publishing guides in answers on support pages customers, can resolve issues themselves, without needing to contact your agents. And b ecause it can also accelerate agent ramp-up time, it ensures that even novice agents can solve customer problems like an expert. Desktop Workflow: Take a step back and look at the full customer interaction of your agents. It probably spans multiple systems and multiple tasks. With Desktop Workflows you control the design workflows that span the full customer interaction from start to finish. As sequences of decisions and actions, workflows are unique in that they can create or modify different records and provide automation behind the scenes. This means your agents can save time and provide better quality of service by having the tools they need and the relevant information as required. And doing this boosts satisfaction among your customers, your agents and you – so win, win, win! I have highlighted above some of the tools which can be used to optimise the desktop; however, this is by no means an exhaustive list. In approaching your design, it’s important to understand why and how your customers contact you in the first place. Once you have this list of “whys” and “hows”, you can design effective policies and procedures to handle each category of problem, and then implement the right agent desktop user interface to support them. This will avoid duplication and wasted effort. Five Top Tips to take away: Start by working out “why” and “how” customers are contacting you. Implement a clean and relevant agent desktop to support your agents. If your workspaces are getting complicated consider using Desktop Workflow to streamline the interaction. Enhance your Knowledgebase with Guides. Agents can access them proactively and can be published on your web pages for customers to help themselves. Script any complex, critical or sensitive interactions to ensure consistency and accuracy. Desktop optimization is an ongoing process so continue to monitor and incorporate feedback from your agents and your customers to keep your Contact Centre successful.   Want to learn more? Having attending the 3-day Oracle RightNow Customer Service Administration class your next step is to attend the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal Design and 2-day Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration class. Here you’ll learn not only how to leverage the Agent Desktop tools but also how to optimise your self-service pages to enhance your customers’ web experience.   Useful resources: Review the Best Practice Guide Review the tune-up guide   About the Author: Angela Chandler joined Oracle University as a Senior Instructor through the RightNow Customer Experience Acquisition. Her other areas of expertise include Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management.  She currently delivers the following Oracle RightNow courses in the classroom and as a Live Virtual Class: RightNow Customer Service Administration (3 days) RightNow Customer Portal Design and Dynamic Agent Desktop Administration (2 days) RightNow Analytics (2 days) Rightnow Chat Cloud Service Administration (2 days)

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• Ask the Readers: Favorite Web Clipping Tool?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Bookmarking is great if you want a link to visit later, but what if you want to save the page itself for later perusal? This week we want to hear all about your favorite web clipping tool and how you use it to read what you want, when you want it. Web clipping tools are simple tools (browser extensions, bookmarklets, etc.) that make it easy to clip text and multimedia elements from web pages in order to archive them and/or read them at a later date. Whether you clip to a bursting at the seams web-notebook or you clip to send to your Kindle, we want to hear about your favorite tools and how they fit into your reading workflow. Sound off in the comments and then make sure to check back on Friday for the What You Said roundup where we highlight popular picks and clever tips. HTG Explains: How Hackers Take Over Web Sites with SQL Injection / DDoS Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed How to Run Android Apps on Your Desktop the Easy Way

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• XNA and C# vs the 360's in order processor

  - by Richard Fabian

  Having read this rant, I feel that they're probably right (seeing as the Xenon and the CELL BE are both highly sensitive to branchy and cache ignorant code), but I've heard that people are making games fine with C# too. So, is it true that it's impossible to do anything professional with XNA, or was the poster just missing what makes XNA the killer API for game development? By professional, I don't mean in the sense that you can make money from it, but more in the sense that the more professional games have phsyics models and animation systems that seem outside the reach of a language with such definite barriers to the intrinsics. If I wanted to write a collision system or fluid dynamics engine for my game, I don't feel like C# offers me the chance to do that as the runtime code generator and the lack of intrinsics gets in the way of performance. However, many people seem to be fine working within these constraints, making their successful games but seemingly avoiding any of the problems by omission. I've not noticed any XNA games do anything complex other than what's already provided by the libraries, or handled by shaders. Is this avoidance of the more complex game dynamics because of teh limitations of C#, or just people concentrating on getting it done? In all honesty, I can't believe that AI war can maintain that many units of AI without some data oriented approach, or some dirty C# hacks to make it run better than the standard approach, and I guess that's partly my question too, how have people hacked C# so it's able to do what games coders do naturally with C++?

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• Getting into game/game engine programming

  - by Darkslash

  So I am interested in learning game programming, but I really have an interest in the lower level engineering in games. I have openGL experience, and I am really interested in learning more about implementing AI, Physics, etc. I have a computer science degree, so I really like getting into technical stuff. Many times when I ask about this sort of thing, I get a lot of "Use an engine", "Use Unity3d", "Why waste your time writing code that already exists", etc etc. My idea was to use simpler libraries such as SFML or XNA so that I could learn how to implement the more complex systems. The thing is, although I do want to write games, I want to learn things that using something like Unity simply doesnt teach you. My goal is not to make a current generation quality 3D game to sell, I just want to make some cool smaller games and learn all I can about the programming side of game development. Is this something that people just do not do anymore? It seems like everywhere I turn people are using Unity or UDK or GameMaker. I fully understand why you would use a tool like these, but I cant see how they would suit my purposes. So where does someone like myself turn? Am I trying to learn something that people just do not bother doing anymore? Is the innovation in this area gone and just all about gameplay now? Im sorry if this question seems silly, but I am genuinely interested in knowing more about this and meeting more people who are interested in this sort of thing.

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• Would learning any (linguistic) language in particular further your programming career?

  - by Anonymous

  It seems apparent that English is the dominant international language for programming based on previous P.SE questions (though a highly upvoted comment correctly points out that asking a question like that on a predominantly English site will skew the results). However, is there benefit in learning a foreign language for software development? For example, do the Chinese have completely different software tools, languages, technologies, etc? How about Japanese, Russian, and other non-latin based languages? Is there an entire world of software development languages, tools and so on that only exist in these other languages? Or do people that know these languages use the tools and languages we know and love?

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• Change from Bullet/OgreAnim to Havok?

  - by Brett Powell

  I have been working on a game in Ogre for the last 6 months or so. It started as a learning project, and after a few rewrites it actually turned into a real game project. Physics scared me, and using Bullet with its lack of documentation was a nightmare, but I was able to atleast get some basics added and learned a lot. So as of now I am using Ogre with its default animation system (fairly basic) and Bullet Physics. I had always wanted to use Havok when I started out, but due to lack of integration information on the Ogre forums, and lack of tutorials on the net, I decided against it. Now that I am actually at the point where Bullet is just too much of a headache to proceed with (staring at forum threads praying someone answers) and the Ogre animation system is so basic, I am considering switching to Havok for Physics and Animation. The Physics system looks extremely polished and easy to use. The animation system looks incredible with the retargeting/blending/etc. The documentation is incredibly detailed as well (I guess when you come from Bullet, any documentation looks amazing) So my question is, as I am still somewhat of a 'newbie' to game development, should I just stick with what I am using now or should I make the switch over to Havok? The physics looks like I could get my project back to where it is now with minimal effort, and be able to expand much faster. The animation aspect looks extremely daunting as far as integrating it with Ogre.

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• What You Said: Your Tech Spring Cleaning Routines

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Earlier this week we asked you to share your tech spring cleaning routine; now we’re back to highlight your tips, tricks, and techniques. What tools rule the spring cleaning roost? Compressed air and microfiber cloths are the tools of choice by a wide margin. D^Angelo highlights the software and physicals tools he uses: Backup all the important stuff just to be safe (c:/, my documents, desktop, drivers) Cleaning the dust with some office depot compressed air, avoiding spinning the fans. Use a brush for that small places (fans, memory, capacitors, etc). Use some dielectric spray on the motherboard. If the pc turned on without problems its time to use ccleaner, Check if there is a toolbar installed or another unusual software that I don’t want. Run my antivirus software or malwarebytes; some defraggler maybe. Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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• How do I create a 2.5d parallax effect?

  - by Nikolay Dyankov

  I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play. My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective. For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example. Any suggestions? How did Blizzard make the parallax effect in Diablo 2? See this screenshot: http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/10629/images/act2tombs.jpg

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• 2D map/plane with nodes overlayed that supports panning, scaling and clicking on nodes

  - by garlicman

  I'm trying my hand at Android development and seem to be running into an invisible ceiling in trying to get what I want accomplished. Basically I'm trying to create an app that renders a 2D surface map that I can (pinch) zoom and pan. I'll have to place nodes on the surface of the map that will scale/zoom and pan in relation to the surface. I started out with a 2D ImageView approach and got as far as pinch zoom, pan and laying nodes as relative ImageViews, but all the methods I tried to get X,Y,W,H for the 2D surface were always off for some reason. Additionally, I was never able to scale the node ImageViews correctly, and as a result never got far enough to try and work out their X,Y scaled offset. So I decided to get back to 3D rendering. Conceptually pan/zoom is camera manipulation, so I don't have to mess with how to scale the 2D map or the nodes. But I need a starting point or sample to get me going that's close to what I'm trying to achieve. A sample on a translucent spinning cube isn't helping as much as I need it to. Any tips? Links, insults and sympathy are all welcome!

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• Camera field of view: 3D projections & trigonometry

  - by Thomas O

  Okay, here goes. I have a camera at (Xc, Yc, Zc.) The Xc and Yc coordinates are latitude/longitude, and the Zc coordinate is an altitude in metres. I have a point at (Xp, Yp, Zp) and a field of view on the camera (Th1, Th2) - where Th1 is horizontal FOV and Th2 is vertical FOV. Given this information, I'd like to: test if the point is visible (i.e. in the camera's FOV) project the point as the camera would see it I've figured out already that the camera's horizontal view at any given distance is tan(Th1) * distance, but I don't know how to test if the point is visible. Accuracy is not critical. I would prefer a simple solution over a complicated solution, if it works well enough. The computations will be performed by a small microcontroller, which isn't very fast at things like trig functions. P.S. this is not homework, I'm doing this for some game development. It will be integrated with the real world, hence the latitude/longitude/altitude. It involves flying real RC planes through virtual hoops (or chasing virtual targets), so I have to project the positions of these hoops on a display.

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• Drawing particles as a smooth blob

  - by Nömmik

  I'm new to game/graphics development and I'm playing around with particles (in 2D). I want to draw particles close to each other as a blob, just as liquid/water. I do not want to draw big circles overlapping as the blob won't be smooth (and too big). I don't really know physics but I assume what I want is something looking similar to surface tension. I haven't been able to find anything on stackexchange or on Google (maybe I do not know the correct keywords?). So far I have found two possible solutions, but I am unable to find any concrete information about algorithms. One of them is to calculate the concave hull of particles I consider being a blob. I can calculate the blob by creating an equivalence class (on the relation "close to each other"). Strangely enough I haven't been able to find any algorithm explaining how to calculate the concave hull. Many posts (and among stackexchange) links to libraries or commercial products that do this (I need libraries to work in C#), but never any algorithm. Also this solution might have a problem with a circle of particles, which would not detect the empty space in the middle. While researching concave hull I stumbled upon something called alpha shapes. Which seems to be exactly what I want to do, however just as with concave hull I haven't found any source explaining how they actually work. I have found some presentation materials but not enough to go on. It's like a big secret everyone knows except me :-/ After calculating the concave hull or alpha shape I want to make it a Bézier curve to make it smooth and nice. Although I do find my approach a bit too complex, maybe I am trying to solve this the wrong way? If you can either suggest any other solution to my problem, or explain the pieces I am missing I would be very happy and grateful :-) Thanks.

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• Does concurrency inherently introduce "randomness" into a game?

  - by Jeff

  When a game is implemented with concurrency (as most games are), does this necessarily, by its very nature, introduce an element of randomness into the game that is outside of the players' control? Note that when I use the word "random", I'm not meaning to launch into a philosophical debate about the deterministic nature of the system. I understand that concurrency is deterministic in the sense that the operating system decides which processes to allow time on the CPU and in what order (or the JVM controls which Thread's turn it is to execute, etc). But my understanding of this is that there is no way to control or predict whether one thread's next command will execute before or after another. The reason I'm asking is because this seems like a fundamental difficulty for game development where a game is supposedly designed around a player's skill. Consider a game like League of Legends. Assume that two players are battling it out. It's a very close contest between the two and it's coming down to the wire -- so much so that whoever gets their last attack off will be the one to kill the other and win the game for their team. If the players are implemented using concurrency and the situation really was like this, is it essentially out of the players' hands at this point? Is the outcome of this match all up to whatever system is arbitrarily deciding which player's thread/process will execute next? If not, what am I misunderstanding about concurrency? If so, is there any way around this problem so that a game of skill can always be a game of skill, especially in those most crucial moments?

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• Regarding sprite design and resolution for tablets and phones

  - by Dimitris P.

  I am about to start working on a game for android devices, in my spare time, to get familiar with android development. I'm more interested in using the best practices possible than getting a quick result, and that is why I need some guidance regarding graphics. I think the game is going to be fully sprite based. Everything is going to be in .bmp form, or something similar, and my question is: Should I design the sprites in a small resolution (ie for phone screens) and scale them up to fit into larger screens (tablet screens), should I do it vice-versa or should I consider a completely different approach? Would designing a different set of sprites for each of the most used resolution settings be worth it or are there simpler solutions to the problem with fewer drawbacks than the ones I mentioned above? (If I follow the first approach, for example, the larger the screen the worse the graphics will get, since every pixel of the original drawing will cover several pixels on the screen). Is there a standard approach for dealing with this kind of problems? If you need me to be more detailed or more clear about something I mentioned (or forgot to) please don't hesitate to ask. Also, excuse me for any inaccurate use of the English language. Thank you in advance for your input.

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• Sprite Animation using cocos2dx 2.0.2

  - by Lalit Chattar

  I am new in game development and learning coco2dx framework. I am trying to implement sprite animation using coco2dx. i tried many demo they all are same. But when i tried i got access violation error in my code. CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->addSpriteFramesWithFile("AnimBear.plist"); CCSpriteBatchNode *spreetsheet = CCSpriteBatchNode::create("AnimBear.png"); this->addChild(spreetsheet); CCArray *bearArray = new CCArray(); for(int i = 1; i <= 8; i++) { char name[32] = {0}; sprintf(name, "bear%d.png",i); bearArray->addObject(CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->spriteFrameByName(name)); } CCAnimation *walkAnim = CCAnimation::animationWithSpriteFrames(bearArray, 0.1f); CCSize size = CCDirector::sharedDirector()->getWinSize(); CCSprite *bear = CCSprite::spriteWithSpriteFrameName("bear1.png"); bear->setPosition(ccp(size.width/2, size.height/2)); CCAction *walkAction = CCRepeatForever::actionWithAction(CCAnimate::actionWithAnimation(walkAnim)); bear->runAction(walkAction); spreetsheet->addChild(bear); error is coming in first line while we passing plist refrence. Plese help me. I a using Visual Basic 2010 and put both files in Resource folder (png and plist).

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• Does Unity have existing support for Timelines?

  - by Raven Dreamer

  I am planning the development of a game in Unity3D, and trying to come to terms with what the engine has already provided, and what I must code myself. The game itself is going to be a rhythm game, which means synching audio and graphical events so that they always play when they're supposed to. What I'm looking to avoid is a potential scenario of lag where either the audio or the graphics starts to progress faster than the other. When we discussed this type of coordinating system in my game design class back at university, my professor called this type of design a "Timeline" class. The idea being that you can instantiate one or more of these to progress at different rates, schedule things to happen in the future, and synch up periodic events. However, calling this a "Timeline" class seems to have been limited to my professor himself, as googling for whether a certain API features "Timeline" functionality has been a fruitless endeavor. Is there some more common name for this kind of functionality? Does Unity have any pre-existing methods to coordinate the scheduling of events like this, or is this the kind of thing that needs to be built onto the engine? And if it does, I'd appreciate being pointed towards some tutorials!

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• Help to organize game cycle in Java

  - by ASIO22

  I'm pretty new here (as though to a game development). So here's my question. I'm trying to organize a really simple game cycle in my public static main() as follows: Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in); //Running the game cycle boolean flag=true; while (flag) { int action; System.out.println("Type your action please:"); System.out.println("0: Exit app"); try { action = sc.nextInt(); switch (action) { case 0: flag=false; break; case 1: break; } } catch (InputMismatchException ex) { System.out.println(ex.getClass() + "\n" + "Please type a correct input\n"); //action = sc.nextInt(); continue; } What's wrong with this cycle: I want to catch an exception when user types text instead of number, show a message, warning user, and the continue game cycle, read user input etc. But instead of that, when users types wrong data, it goes into a eternal cycle without even prompting user. What I did wrong?

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• MiniMax function throws null pointer exception

  - by Sven

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

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