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  • Tangent basis calculation problem

    - by Kirill Daybov
    I have the problem with seams with calculating a tangent basis in my application. I'm using a seems to be right algorithm, but it gives wrong result on the seams. What am I doing wrong? Is there a problem with an algorithm, or with the model? The designer says that our models with our normal maps are rendered correctly in Xoliul Shader Plugin in 3Ds Max, so there should be a way to calculate correct tangent basis programmatically. Here's an example of the problem I'm talking about. Steps, I've already taken: - Tried different algorithm (from Gamasutra, I can't post the link because I don't have enough reputation yet). I got wrong, much worse, results; - Tried to average basis vectors for vertexes are used in multiple faces; - Tried to average basis vectors for vertexes that have same world coordinates (this would be obviously wrong solution, but I've tried it anyway).

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  • Controlling a GameObject from another GameObject's script component

    - by OhMrBigshot
    I'm creating a game where when starting the game, a Cube is duplicated GridSize * GridSize times when the game starts. Now, after the cubes are duplicated I want to attach a variable to them, say "Flag" which is a bool, from another script component (let's say I have a Prefab that generates the cloned cubes). In short, I have something like this: CreateTiles.cs : Attached to Prefab void Start() { createMyTiles(); // a function that clones the tiles flagRandomTiles(); // a function that (what I'm trying to do) "Flags" 10 random cubes } CubeBehavior.cs : Attached to each Cube public bool hasFlag; // other stuff Now, I want flagRandomTiles() to set a Cube's hasFlag property via code, assuming I have access to them via a GameObject[] array. Here's what I've tried: Cubes[x].hasFlag = true; - No access. Making a function such as Cubes[x].setHasFlag(true) - still no access. Initializing Cubes as a CubeBehavior object array, then doing the above - GameObjects can't be converted to CubeBehaviors - I get this error when I try to assign the Cubes into the array. How do I do this?

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  • Collision detection in 3D space

    - by dreta
    I've got to write, what can be summed up as, a compelte 3D game from scratch this semester. Up untill now i have only programmed 2D games in my spare time, the transition doesn't seem tough, the game's simple. The only issue i have is collision detection. The only thing i could find was AABB, bounding spheres or recommendations of various physics engines. I have to program a submarine that's going to be moving freely inside of a cave system, AFAIK i can't use physics libraries, so none of the above solves my problem. Up untill now i was using SAT for my collision detection. Are there any similar, great algorithms, but crafted for 3D collision? I'm not talking about octrees, or other optimalizations, i'm talking about direct collision detection of one set of 3D polygons with annother set of 3D polygons. I thought about using SAT twice, project the mesh from the top and the side, but then it seems so hard to even divide 3D space into convex shapes. Also that seems like far too much computation even with octrees. How do proffessionals do it? Could somebody shed some light.

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  • Most efficient AABB - Ray intersection algorithm for input/output distance calculation

    - by Tobbey
    Thanks to the following thread : most efficient AABB vs Ray collision algorithms I have seen very fast algorithm for ray/AABB intersection point computation. Unfortunately, most of the recent algorithm are accelerated by omitting the "output" intersection point of the box. In my application, I would interested in getting both the the distance from source ray to input: t0 and source ray to output of bounding box: t1. I have seen for instance Eisemann designed a very fast version regarding plucker, smits, ... , but it does not compare the case when both input/output distance should be computed see: http://www.cg.cs.tu-bs.de/publications/Eisemann07FRA/ Does someone know where I can find more information on algorithm performances for the specific input/output problem ? Thank you in advance

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  • Creating practically solvable 15 puzzle inputs

    - by Ashwin
    I am now developing a 15 puzzle game. I know the method to detect unsolvable puzzles. But unlike 8-puzzle, solution for 15-puzzle takes quite long time for some input states and can be solved within 5 seconds some other set of input states. Now the problem is that I cannot give the user(the player), a problem for which the solution takes more than 10 seconds(if he/she chooses to see the solution). So what I want is that when I initially shuffle the puzzle, I want to only present those puzzles which can be solved within 10 seconds. There must be some way to determine the hardness of the puzzle. I tried searching the net but could not find it. Does anyone know a way of determining the hardness of a puzzle? NOTE : I am using A* algorithm to find out the solution on a computer with 3GB RAM and 2.27GHZ processor.

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  • What's wrong with this turn to face algorithm?

    - by Chan
    I implement a torpedo object that chases a rotating planet. Specifically, it will turn toward the planet each update. Initially my implement was: void move() { vector3<float> to_target = target - get_position(); to_target.normalize(); position += (to_target * speed); } which works perfectly for torpedo that is a solid sphere. Now my torpedo is actually a model, which has a forward vector, so using this method looks odd because it doesn't actually turn toward but jump toward. So I revised it a bit to get, double get_rotation_angle(vector3<float> u, vector3<float> v) const { u.normalize(); v.normalize(); double cosine_theta = u.dot(v); // domain of arccosine is [-1, 1] if (cosine_theta > 1) { cosine_theta = 1; } if (cosine_theta < -1) { cosine_theta = -1; } return math3d::to_degree(acos(cosine_theta)); } vector3<float> get_rotation_axis(vector3<float> u, vector3<float> v) const { u.normalize(); v.normalize(); // fix linear case if (u == v || u == -v) { v[0] += 0.05; v[1] += 0.0; v[2] += 0.05; v.normalize(); } vector3<float> axis = u.cross(v); return axis.normal(); } void turn_to_face() { vector3<float> to_target = (target - position); vector3<float> axis = get_rotation_axis(get_forward(), to_target); double angle = get_rotation_angle(get_forward(), to_target); double distance = math3d::distance(position, target); gl_matrix_mode(GL_MODELVIEW); gl_push_matrix(); { gl_load_identity(); gl_translate_f(position.get_x(), position.get_y(), position.get_z()); gl_rotate_f(angle, axis.get_x(), axis.get_y(), axis.get_z()); gl_get_float_v(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, OM); } gl_pop_matrix(); move(); } void move() { vector3<float> to_target = target - get_position(); to_target.normalize(); position += (get_forward() * speed); } The logic is simple, I find the rotation axis by cross product, the angle to rotate by dot product, then turn toward the target position each update. Unfortunately, it looks extremely odds since the rotation happens too fast that it always turns back and forth. The forward vector for torpedo is from the ModelView matrix, the third column A: MODELVIEW MATRIX -------------------------------------------------- R U A T -------------------------------------------------- 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 -------------------------------------------------- Any suggestion or idea would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Good resources for JavaScript 2D game programming?

    - by DJCouchyCouch
    As an exercise, I've decided to look into JavaScript for game programming. While it's far from being the best language for that, I do like the idea that it's cross-platform and it's always available as a web page. So I thought I'd see what I could do with it. Specifically, I'd like to make a 2D tile-based game of some kind. Where can I find resources to do that? I'm sure this question's come up before, but I can't find any reference to it.

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  • Mapping a 3D texture to a standard hollow-hull 3D model

    - by John
    I have 3D models which are typical hollow hulls. If such a model also had a 3D volumetric/voxel texture map then given a point P inside such a model, I'd like to be able to find its uvw coordinates within the 3D texture. Is this possible by simply setting 3D texcoords on my existing mesh or does it have to be broken up into polyhedra? Is there a way to map a 3D texture onto a mesh without doing this?

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  • Detect collision from a particular side

    - by Fabián
    I'm making a platform sidescrolling game. All I want to do is to detect if my character is on the floor: function OnCollisionStay (col : Collision){ if(col.gameObject.tag == "Floor"){ onFloor = true; } else {onFloor = false;} } function OnCollisionExit (col : Collision){ onFloor = false; } But I know this isn't the accurate way. If I hit a cube with a "floor" tag, in the air (no matter if with the character's feet or head) I would be able to jump. Is there a way to use the same box collision to detect if I'm touching something from a specific side?

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  • Ensuring that saved data has not been edited in a game with both offline and online components

    - by Omar Kooheji
    I'm in the pre-planning phase of coming up with a game design and I was wondering if there was a sensible way to stop people from editing saves in a game with offline and online components. The offline component would allow the player to play through the game and the online component would allow them to play against other players, so I would need to make sure that people hadn't edited the source code/save files while offline to gain an advantage while online. Game likely to be developed in either .Net or Java, both of which are unfortunately easy to decompile.

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  • Making a Background Scrolling in Stacking Game

    - by David Dimalanta
    Hmmm...Is it a good idea to use a LibGDX parallax background for making a stacking game (i.e. PAPA STACKer Lite)? For example, I'm starting to use the blocks to drag-n-drop it. Next, when the next piece reaches the top of the screen, it automatically scrolls to the next one where the available space left. Aside from that, is it also involved with the camera code (Orthographic Camera) that the screen size appeared like 720x1280 but actually it's 1440x2560 for example? And another thing, does the background scrolling have the option to scroll from start to finish and infinite?

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  • What is the easiest and shortest way to draw a 2d line in c/c++?

    - by Mike
    I am fairly new to c/c++ but I do have experiance with directx and opengl with java and c#. My goal is to create a 2d game in c with under 2 pages of code. Most of what I have seen requires 3 pages of code to just get a window running. I would like to know the shortest code to get a window running where I can draw lines. I believe this can be done in less lines with opengl versus directx. Is there maybe an api or framework i can use to shorten it more? Also, it would be nice if the solution were cross platform compatible.

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  • Tool to convert Textures to power of two?

    - by 3nixios
    I'm currently porting a game to a new platform, the problem being that the old platform accepted non power of two textures and this new platform doesn't. To add to the headache, the new platform has much less memory so we want to use the tools provided by the vendor to compress them; which of course only takes power of two textures. The current workflow is to convert the non power of tho textures to dds with 'texconv', then use the vendors compression tools in a batch. So, does anyone know of a tool to convert textures to their nearest 'power of two' counterparts? Thanks

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  • How to draw texture to screen in Unity?

    - by user1306322
    I'm looking for a way to draw textures to screen in Unity in a similar fashion to XNA's SpriteBatch.Draw method. Ideally, I'd like to write a few helper methods to make all my XNA code work in Unity. This is the first issue I've faced on this seemingly long journey. I guess I could just use quads, but I'm not so sure it's the least expensive way performance-wise. I could do that stuff in XNA anyway, but they made SpriteBatch not without a reason, I believe.

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  • Stencil buffer appears to not be decrementing values correctly

    - by Alex Ames
    I'm attempting to use the stencil buffer as a clipper for my UI system, but I'm having trouble debugging a problem I'm running in to. This is what I'm doing: A widget can pass a rectangle to the the stencil clipper functions, which will increment the stencil buffer values that it covers. Then it will draw its children, which will only get drawn in the stencilled area (so that if they extend outside they'll be clipped). After a widget is done drawing its children, it pops that rectangle from the stack and in the process decrements the values in the stencil buffer that it has previously incremented. The slightly simplified code is below: static void drawStencil(Rect& rect, unsigned int ref) { // Save previous values of the color and depth masks GLboolean colorMask[4]; GLboolean depthMask; glGetBooleanv(GL_COLOR_WRITEMASK, colorMask); glGetBooleanv(GL_DEPTH_WRITEMASK, &depthMask); // Turn off drawing glColorMask(0, 0, 0, 0); glDepthMask(0); // Draw vertices here ... // Turn everything back on glColorMask(colorMask[0], colorMask[1], colorMask[2], colorMask[3]); glDepthMask(depthMask); // Only render pixels in areas where the stencil buffer value == ref glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, ref, 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP); } void pushScissor(Rect rect) { // increment things only at the current stencil stack level glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, s_scissorStack.size(), 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_INCR, GL_INCR); s_scissorStack.push_back(rect); drawStencil(rect, states, s_ScissorStack.size()); } void popScissor() { // undo what was done in the previous push, // decrement things only at the current stencil stack level glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, s_scissorStack.size(), 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_DECR, GL_DECR); Rect rect = s_scissorStack.back(); s_scissorStack.pop_back(); drawStencil(rect, states, s_scissorStack.size()); } And this is how it's being used by the Widgets if (m_clip) pushScissor(m_rect); drawInternal(target, states); for (auto child : m_children) target.draw(*child, states); if (m_clip) popScissor(); This is the result of the above code: There are two things on the screen, a giant test button, and a window with some buttons and text areas on it. The text area scroll box is set to clip its children (so that the text doesn't extend outside the scroll box). The button is drawn after the window and should be on top of it completely. However, for some reason the text area is appearing on top of the button. The only reason I can think of that this would happen is if the stencil values were not getting decremented in the pop, and when it comes time to render the button, since those pixels don't have the right stencil value it doesn't draw over. But I can't figure out whats wrong with my code that would cause that to happen.

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  • What are the pro/cons of Unity3D as a choice to make games ?

    - by jokoon
    We are doing our school project with Unity3d, since they were using Shiva the previous year (which seems horrible to me), and I wanted to know your point of view for this tool. Pros: multi platform, I even heard Google is going to implement it in Chrome everything you need is here scripting languages makes it a good choice for people who are not programming gurus Cons: multiplayer ? proprietary, you are totally dependent of unity and its limit and can't extend it it's less "making a game from scratch" C++ would have been a cool thing I really think this kind of tool is interesting, but is it worth it to use at school for a project that involves more than 3 programming persons ? What do we really learn in term of programming from using this kind of tool (I'm ok with python and js, but I hate C#) ? We could have use Ogre instead, even if we were learning direct x starting january...

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  • How can I attach a model to the bone of another model?

    - by kaykayman
    I am trying to attach one animated model to one of the bones of another animated model in an XNA game. I've found a few questions/forum posts/articles online which explain how to attach a weapon model to the bone of another model (which is analogous to what I'm trying to achieve), but they don't seem to work for me. So as an example: I want to attach Model A to a specific bone in Model B. Question 1. As I understand it, I need to calculate the transforms which are applied to the bone on Model B and apply these same transforms to every bone in Model A. Is this right? Question 2. This is my code for calculating the Transforms on a specific bone. private Matrix GetTransformPaths(ModelBone bone) { Matrix result = Matrix.Identity; while (bone != null) { result = result * bone.Transform; bone = bone.Parent; } return result; } The maths of Matrices is almost entirely lost on me, but my understanding is that the above will work its way up the bone structure to the root bone and my end result will be the transform of the original bone relative to the model. Is this right? Question 3. Assuming that this is correct I then expect that I should either apply this to each bone in Model A, or in my Draw() method: private void DrawModel(SceneModel model, GameTime gametime) { foreach (var component in model.Components) { Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[component.Model.Bones.Count]; component.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix parenttransform = Matrix.Identity; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(component.ParentBone)) parenttransform = GetTransformPaths(model.GetBone(component.ParentBone)); component.Player.Update(gametime.ElapsedGameTime, true, Matrix.Identity); Matrix[] bones = component.Player.GetSkinTransforms(); foreach (SkinnedEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.SetBoneTransforms(bones); effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(model.Angle)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(model.Position) * parenttransform; effect.View = getView(); effect.Projection = getProjection(); effect.Alpha = model.Opacity; } } mesh.Draw(); } I feel as though I have tried every conceivable way of incorporating the parenttransform value into the draw method. The above is my most recent attempt. Is what I'm trying to do correct? And if so, is there a reason it doesn't work? The above Draw method seems to transpose the models x/z position - but even at these wrong positions, they do not account for the animation of Model B at all. Note: As will be evident from the code my "model" is comprised of a list of "components". It is these "components" that correspond to a single "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Model"

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  • 2D platformers: why make the physics dependent on the framerate?

    - by Archagon
    "Super Meat Boy" is a difficult platformer that recently came out for PC, requiring exceptional control and pixel-perfect jumping. The physics code in the game is dependent on the framerate, which is locked to 60fps; this means that if your computer can't run the game at full speed, the physics will go insane, causing (among other things) your character to run slower and fall through the ground. Furthermore, if vsync is off, the game runs extremely fast. Could those experienced with 2D game programming help explain why the game was coded this way? Wouldn't a physics loop running at a constant rate be a better solution? (Actually, I think a physics loop is used for parts of the game, since some of the entities continue to move normally regardless of the framerate. Your character, on the other hand, runs exactly [fps/60] as fast.) What bothers me about this implementation is the loss of abstraction between the game engine and the graphics rendering, which depends on system-specific things like the monitor, graphics card, and CPU. If, for whatever reason, your computer can't handle vsync, or can't run the game at exactly 60fps, it'll break spectacularly. Why should the rendering step in any way influence the physics calculations? (Most games nowadays would either slow down the game or skip frames.) On the other hand, I understand that old-school platformers on the NES and SNES depended on a fixed framerate for much of their control and physics. Why is this, and would it be possible to create a patformer in that vein without having the framerate dependency? Is there necessarily a loss of precision if you separate the graphics rendering from the rest of the engine? Thank you, and sorry if the question was confusing.

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  • Static "LoD" hack opinions

    - by David Lively
    I've been playing with implementing dynamic level of detail for rendering a very large mesh in XNA. It occurred to me that (duh) the whole point of this is to generate small triangles close to the camera, and larger ones far away. Given that, rather than constantly modifying or swapping index buffers based on a feature's rendered size or distance from the camera, it would be a lot easier (and potentially quite a bit faster), to render a single "fan" or flat wedge/frustum-shaped planar mesh that is tessellated into small triangles close to the near or small end of the frustum and larger ones at the far end, sort of like this (overhead view) (Pardon the gap in the middle - I drew one side and mirrored it) The triangle sizes are chosen so that all are approximately the same size when projected. Then, that mesh would be transformed to track the camera so that the Z axis (center vertical in this image) is always aligned with the view direction projected into the XZ plane. The vertex shader would then read terrain heights from a height texture and adjust the Y coordinate of the mesh to match a height field that defines the terrain. This eliminates the need for culling (since the mesh is generated to match the viewport dimensions) and the need to modify the index and/or vertex buffers when drawing the terrain. Obviously this doesn't address terrain with overhangs, etc, but that could be handled to a certain extent by including a second mesh that defines a sort of "ceiling" via a different texture. The other LoD schemes I've seen aren't particularly difficult to implement and, in some cases, are a lot more flexible, but this seemed like a decent quick-and-dirty way to handle height map-based terrain without getting into geometry manipulation. Has anyone tried this? Opinions?

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  • How can I make the camera return to the beginning of the terrain when it reaches the end?

    - by wbaccari
    How can I make the camera return to the beginning of the terrain when it reaches the end? I tried using the ICameraSceneNode*-setPosition(). if (camera->getPosition().X>1200.f) camera->setPosition(vector3df(1.f,1550.f,camera->getPosition().Z)); if (camera->getPosition().X<0.f) camera->setPosition(vector3df(1199.f,1550.f,camera->getPosition().Z)); if (camera->getPosition().Z>1200.f) camera->setPosition(vector3df(camera->getPosition().X,1550.f,1.f)); if (camera->getPosition().Z<0.f) camera->setPosition(vector3df(camera->getPosition().X,1550.f,1199.f)); It seems to work fine with a flat terrain (one shade of grey in heightmap) but it starts to produce a strange behavior as soon as i try to add some hills. Edit: The setPosition() call seems to perform a translation of the camera toward the new position, therefore the camera stops at the first obstacle it encounters on its way.

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  • How can I convert an image from raw data in Android without any munging?

    - by stephelton
    I have raw image data (may be png, jpg, ...) and I want it converted in Android without changing its pixel depth (bpp). In particular, when I load a grayscale (8 bpp) image that I want to use as alpha (glTexImage() with GL_ALPHA), it converts it to 16 bpp (presumably 5_6_5). While I do have a plan b (actually, I'm probably on plan 'e' by now, this is really becoming annoying) I would really like to discover an easy way to do this using what is readily available in the api. So far, I'm using BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(). While I'm at it. I'm doing this from a native environment via jni (passing the buffer in from C, and a new buffer back to C from Java). Any portable solution in C/C++ would be preferable, but I don't want to introduce anything that might break in future versions of Android, etc.

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  • Do Apple and Google ask for a share if custom payment is done in a free app?

    - by user1590354
    I have a multiplatform game (web/iOS/Android) in the making. In the free version the core game is still fully playable but people who choose to pay will get more social features (and no ads, of course). I was thinking that rather than having a free and a paid version for all the platforms I may release the apps just for free and if the users want more, they have to register and pay a one-time fee (through a payment gateway or PayPal). The extra content would then be available in all the clients they have access to. Theoretically, this means a better value for the players and less maintenance and headache for me (obviously I have to handle all the payment troubles myself). Does it fit into the business model of Apple/Google? Or will they still claim their share of the registration fee?

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  • From simple physics with a ball, to a more complicated shape

    - by Maximus
    Hello fellow game devs and stack overflowers... I recently made a transition from OpenGL ES 1.1 to 2.0 (on Android via NDK) and things are going well so far. I'm working on doing a dice rolling application (gaming dice up to 20 sided, not just regular 6 sided die) as a way to learn more about how physics is implemented in a gaming environment. I've explored implementing existing engine options (such as Bullet) and I don't think I need to implement something quite so sophisticated. I've found several tutorials that handle a lot of the general physics involved with initial trajectory, velocity, angle of contact and reflection angle, etc. I'm confident that I'd be able to implement ball-like behavior without much trouble. My question lies in when I attempt to make the interaction of the die shape with another surface more "realistic," for example... the die strikes the floor surface at such an angle where only one corner makes contact with the floor. In my mind, the center of gravity of the object would play a part in determining how the die bounces away, possibly even spinning it it faster, etc... but I am not sure what the actual math involved is. Are there any recommended resources for getting into this level of detail? Initial searches haven't turned up much... Thanks to everyone in the community, -Jeremiah

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  • how to make HLSL effect just for lighning without texture mapping?

    - by naprox
    I'm new to XNA, i created an effect and just want to use lightning but in default effect that XNA create we should do texture mapping or the model appears 'RED', because of this lines of code in the effect file: float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float4 output = float4(1,0,0,1); return output; } and if i want to see my model (appear like when i use basiceffect) must do texture mapping by UV coordinates. but my model does not have UV coordinates assigned or its UV coordinates is not exported. and if i do texture mapping i got error. (i do texture mapping by this line of code in vertexshaderfunction and other necessary codes) output.UV= input.UV i have many of this models and want to work with them.(my models are in .FBX format) when i use Bassiceffect i have no problem and model appears correctly. how can i use "just" lightnings in my custom effects? and don't do texture mapping (because i have no UV coordinates in my models) and my model be look like when i use BasicEffect? if you need my complete code Here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/?4jexhd4ulm2icm2 here is inside of my Model Using BasicEffect http://i.imgur.com/ygP2h.jpg?1 and this is my code for drawing with or without BasicEffect inside of my draw() method: Matrix baseWorld = Matrix.CreateScale(Scale) * Matrix.CreateFromYawPitchRoll(Rotation.Y, Rotation.X, Rotation.Z) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); foreach(ModelMesh mesh in Model.Meshes) { Matrix localWorld = ModelTransforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * baseWorld; foreach(ModelMeshPart part in mesh.MeshParts) { Effect effect = part.Effect; if (effect is BasicEffect) { ((BasicEffect)effect).World = localWorld; ((BasicEffect)effect).View = View; ((BasicEffect)effect).Projection = Projection; ((BasicEffect)effect).EnableDefaultLighting(); } else { setEffectParameter(effect, "World", localWorld); setEffectParameter(effect, "View", View); setEffectParameter(effect, "Projection", Projection); setEffectParameter(effect, "CameraPosition", CameraPosition); } } mesh.Draw(); } setEffectParameter is another method that sets effect parameter if i use my custom effect.

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  • State / Screen management in Entity Component Systems

    - by David Lively
    My entity/component system is happily humming along and, despite some performance concerns I initially had, everything is working fine. However, I've realized that I missed a crucial point when starting this thing: how do you handle different screens? At the moment, I have a GameManager class which owns a component manager and entity manager. When I create an entity, the entity manager assigns it an ID and makes sure it's tracked. When I modify the components that are assigned to an entity. an UpdateEntity method is called, which alerts each of the systems that they may need to add or remove the entity from their respective entity lists. A problem with this is that the collection of entities operated on by each system is determined solely by the individual Systems, typically based on a "required component" filter. (An entity has to have a Renderable component to be rendered, for instance.) In this situation, I can't just keep collections of entities per screen and only Update/Draw those collections. They'd have to either be added and removed depending on their applicability to the current screen, which would cause their associated components to be removed, or enable/disable entities in a group per screen to hide what's not supposed to be visible. These approaches seem like really, really crappy kludges. What's a good way to handle this? A pretty straightforward way that comes to mind is to create a separate GameManager (which in my implementation owns all of the systems, entities, etc.) per screen, which means that everything outside of the device context would be duplicated. That's bothersome because some things are always visible, or I might want to continue to display the game under a translucent menu window. Another option would be to add a "layer" key to the GameManager class, which could be checked against a displayable layer stack held by the game manager. *System.Draw() would be called for each active layer, in the required order as determined by the stack. When the systems request an iterator for their respective entity collections, it would be pre-filtered to a (cached) set of those entities that participate in the active layer. Those collections could be updated from the same UpdateEntity event that's already used to maintain each system's entity collections. Still, kinda feels like a hack. If I've coded myself into a corner, feel free to throw tomatoes as long as they're labeled with a helpful suggestion. Hooray for learning curves.

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