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  • How do you properly organize a commercial game?

    - by Reactorcore
    For the past months I've been studying programming and I've finally learned how to code, but one thing that is confusing me is how to properly organize the design of a game project - code wise. The game I'm building is a pretty standard commercial game. It has the basic components of a normal game: A world, characters and items interacting with each other and all of this is run by game manager. Basically you play as a hero in a world and do stuff. Fight, explore and interact. Think of your standard adventure game that starts off with an intro, goes to the menu system, then gets into the game and back to the menu. Pretty much like 99% of any commercial game or otherwise serious game projects. Thats what I'm aiming at. The problem is: How do you properly code a commercial game architecture? How do you organize it? How do you make it not become unmaintainable spaghetti code? What specific things to keep in mind when building this, codewise? How you can help me: a) Please tell how do you code your own game projects. What is your thought-process when designing the architecture? b) Recommend books, blogs, tutorials, videos or anything else on how to organize a commercial video game. c) Give hints and tips on do's/don'ts when building a game, codewise. Please help!

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  • View matrix question (rotate by 180 degrees)

    - by King Snail
    I am using a third party rendering API on top of OpenGL code and I cannot get my matrices correct. The API states this: We're right handed by default, and we treat y as up by convention. Since IwGx's coordinate system has (0,0) as the top left, you typically need a 180 degree rotation around Z in your view matrix. I think the viewer does this by default. In my OpenGL app I have access to the view and projection matrices separately. How can I convert them to fit the criteria used by my third party rendering API? I don't understand what they mean to rotate 180 degrees around Z, is that in the view matrix itself or something in the camera before making the view matrix. Any code would be helpful, thanks.

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  • Split a 2D scene in layers or have a z coordinate

    - by Bane
    I am in the process of writing a 2D game engine, and a dilemma emerged. Let me explain the situation... I have a Scene class, to which various objects can be added (Drawable, ParticleEmitter, Light2D, etc), and as this is a 2D scene, things will obviously be drawn over each other. My first thought was that I could have basic add and remove methods, but I soon realized that then there would be no way for the programmer to control the order in which things were drawn. So I can up with two options, each with its pros and cons. A) Would be to split the scene in layers. By that I mean instead of having the scene be a container of objects, have it be a container of layers, which are in turn the containers of objects. B) Would require to have some kind of z-coordinate, and then have the scene sorted so objects with lower z get drawn first. Option A is pretty solid, but the problem is with the lights. In what layer do I add it? Does it work cross-layer? On all bottom layers? And I still need the Z coordinate to calculate the shadow! Option B would require me to change all my code from having Vector2D positions, to some kind of class that inherits from Vector2D and adds a z coordinate to it (I don't want it to be a Vector3D because I still need all the same methods the 2D kind has, just with .z clamped on). Am I missing something? Is there an alternative to these methods? I'm working in Javascript, if that makes a difference.

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  • Mac mini 2012 graphic upgrade for UE4 Unity3D Blender

    - by DaCrAn
    I have a mac mini (late 2012) i7, 16gb ram Vengeance graphic card intel HD4000. I buy recently a thunderbolt expansion PCIE whit support a graphic card PCIE 2.0 16x whit space for Full leght card. I have dubts about what graphic card gona give me the best results for using the Unreal Engine 4 UE4 or Unity3D, and Blender. My badget cover a Nvidia Quadro K4000 3gb or ATI Firepro W7000 4gb. Any recomendation? What professional graphic card can be better for design games in 3D? Thanks. DaCrAn

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  • Deformation of Sphere using Transformations

    - by Mert Toka
    I have a graphic related question. I need to have a transformation matrix that I have no idea about what it is. The problem is to create right image from the right sphere. I created those images in Maya, but I need some matrices for the graphics course. Here is the image: Our professor told us to use some sine and cosine in our transformations, but I have no idea what he meant. I thought of intersecting a plane from the grid(that is xz plane) and sphere, and then scaling down the resulting circle. Would that work? I also checked this paper, however it looks like a bit advanced for me. Another thing is I guess that paper is not about the same type of information I was looking for. It would be great if you could help me.

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  • Circular motion on low powered hardware

    - by Akroy
    I was thinking about platforms and enemies moving in circles in old 2D games, and I was wondering how that was done. I understand parametric equations, and it's trivial to use sin and cos to do it, but could an NES or SNES make real time trig calls? I admit heavy ignorance, but I thought those were expensive operations. Is there some clever way to calculate that motion more cheaply? I've been working on deriving an algorithm from trig sum identities that would only use precalculated trig, but that seems convoluted.

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  • Bouncing off a circular Boundary with multiple balls?

    - by Anarkie
    I am making a game like this : Yellow Smiley has to escape from red smileys, when yellow smiley hits the boundary game is over, when red smileys hit the boundary they should bounce back with the same angle they came, like shown below: Every 10 seconds a new red smiley comes in the big circle, when red smiley hits yellow, game is over, speed and starting angle of red smileys should be random. I control the yellow smiley with arrow keys. The biggest problem I have reflecting the red smileys from the boundary with the angle they came. I don't know how I can give a starting angle to a red smiley and bouncing it with the angle it came. I would be glad for any tips! My js source code : var canvas = document.getElementById("mycanvas"); var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"); // Object containing some global Smiley properties. var SmileyApp = { radius: 15, xspeed: 0, yspeed: 0, xpos:200, // x-position of smiley ypos: 200 // y-position of smiley }; var SmileyRed = { radius: 15, xspeed: 0, yspeed: 0, xpos:350, // x-position of smiley ypos: 65 // y-position of smiley }; var SmileyReds = new Array(); for (var i=0; i<5; i++){ SmileyReds[i] = { radius: 15, xspeed: 0, yspeed: 0, xpos:350, // x-position of smiley ypos: 67 // y-position of smiley }; SmileyReds[i].xspeed = Math.floor((Math.random()*50)+1); SmileyReds[i].yspeed = Math.floor((Math.random()*50)+1); } function drawBigCircle() { var centerX = canvas.width / 2; var centerY = canvas.height / 2; var radiusBig = 300; ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(centerX, centerY, radiusBig, 0, 2 * Math.PI, false); // context.fillStyle = 'green'; // context.fill(); ctx.lineWidth = 5; // context.strokeStyle = '#003300'; // green ctx.stroke(); } function lineDistance( positionx, positiony ) { var xs = 0; var ys = 0; xs = positionx - 350; xs = xs * xs; ys = positiony - 350; ys = ys * ys; return Math.sqrt( xs + ys ); } function drawSmiley(x,y,r) { // outer border ctx.lineWidth = 3; ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(x,y,r, 0, 2*Math.PI); //red ctx.fillStyle="rgba(255,0,0, 0.5)"; ctx.fillStyle="rgba(255,255,0, 0.5)"; ctx.fill(); ctx.stroke(); // mouth ctx.beginPath(); ctx.moveTo(x+0.7*r, y); ctx.arc(x,y,0.7*r, 0, Math.PI, false); // eyes var reye = r/10; var f = 0.4; ctx.moveTo(x+f*r, y-f*r); ctx.arc(x+f*r-reye, y-f*r, reye, 0, 2*Math.PI); ctx.moveTo(x-f*r, y-f*r); ctx.arc(x-f*r+reye, y-f*r, reye, -Math.PI, Math.PI); // nose ctx.moveTo(x,y); ctx.lineTo(x, y-r/2); ctx.lineWidth = 1; ctx.stroke(); } function drawSmileyRed(x,y,r) { // outer border ctx.lineWidth = 3; ctx.beginPath(); ctx.arc(x,y,r, 0, 2*Math.PI); //red ctx.fillStyle="rgba(255,0,0, 0.5)"; //yellow ctx.fillStyle="rgba(255,255,0, 0.5)"; ctx.fill(); ctx.stroke(); // mouth ctx.beginPath(); ctx.moveTo(x+0.4*r, y+10); ctx.arc(x,y+10,0.4*r, 0, Math.PI, true); // eyes var reye = r/10; var f = 0.4; ctx.moveTo(x+f*r, y-f*r); ctx.arc(x+f*r-reye, y-f*r, reye, 0, 2*Math.PI); ctx.moveTo(x-f*r, y-f*r); ctx.arc(x-f*r+reye, y-f*r, reye, -Math.PI, Math.PI); // nose ctx.moveTo(x,y); ctx.lineTo(x, y-r/2); ctx.lineWidth = 1; ctx.stroke(); } // --- Animation of smiley moving with constant speed and bounce back at edges of canvas --- var tprev = 0; // this is used to calculate the time step between two successive calls of run function run(t) { requestAnimationFrame(run); if (t === undefined) { t=0; } var h = t - tprev; // time step tprev = t; SmileyApp.xpos += SmileyApp.xspeed * h/1000; // update position according to constant speed SmileyApp.ypos += SmileyApp.yspeed * h/1000; // update position according to constant speed for (var i=0; i<SmileyReds.length; i++){ SmileyReds[i].xpos += SmileyReds[i].xspeed * h/1000; // update position according to constant speed SmileyReds[i].ypos += SmileyReds[i].yspeed * h/1000; // update position according to constant speed } // change speed direction if smiley hits canvas edges if (lineDistance(SmileyApp.xpos, SmileyApp.ypos) + SmileyApp.radius > 300) { alert("Game Over"); } // redraw smiley at new position ctx.clearRect(0,0,canvas.height, canvas.width); drawBigCircle(); drawSmiley(SmileyApp.xpos, SmileyApp.ypos, SmileyApp.radius); for (var i=0; i<SmileyReds.length; i++){ drawSmileyRed(SmileyReds[i].xpos, SmileyReds[i].ypos, SmileyReds[i].radius); } } // uncomment these two lines to get every going // SmileyApp.speed = 100; run(); // --- Control smiley motion with left/right arrow keys function arrowkeyCB(event) { event.preventDefault(); if (event.keyCode === 37) { // left arrow SmileyApp.xspeed = -100; SmileyApp.yspeed = 0; } else if (event.keyCode === 39) { // right arrow SmileyApp.xspeed = 100; SmileyApp.yspeed = 0; } else if (event.keyCode === 38) { // up arrow SmileyApp.yspeed = -100; SmileyApp.xspeed = 0; } else if (event.keyCode === 40) { // right arrow SmileyApp.yspeed = 100; SmileyApp.xspeed = 0; } } document.addEventListener('keydown', arrowkeyCB, true); JSFiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/gj4Q7/

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  • building a game for different resoulution phones

    - by Jason
    Hi, I am starting some tests for building a game on the android program. So far everything is working and seems nice. However I do not understand how to make sure my game looks correct on all phones as the all will have slightly different screen ratios (and even very different on some odd phones) What I am doing right now is making a view frustrum ( could also be ortho ) which I set to go from -ratio to +ratio ( as I have seen on many examples) however this causes my test shape to be stretched and sometimes cut off by the edge of the screen. I am tilting my phone to landscape to do my tests ( a bit extreame) but it should still render correctly if I have dome things right. Should I be scaling by some ratio before drawing or something? An example would be greatly apriciated PS I am doing a 2d game

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  • How do I draw a single Triangle with XNA and fill it with a Texture?

    - by Deukalion
    I'm trying to wrap my head around: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb196409.aspx I'm trying to create a method in XNA that renders a single Triangle, then later make a method that takes a list of Triangles and renders them also. But it isn't working. I'm not understanding what all the things does and there's not enough information. My methods: // Triangle is a struct with A, B, C (didn't include) A, B, C = Vector3 public static void Render(GraphicsDevice device, List<Triangle> triangles, Texture2D texture) { foreach (Triangle triangle in triangles) { Render(device, triangle, texture); } } public static void Render(GraphicsDevice device, Triangle triangle, Texture2D texture) { BasicEffect _effect = new BasicEffect(device); _effect.Texture = texture; _effect.VertexColorEnabled = true; VertexPositionColor[] _vertices = new VertexPositionColor[3]; _vertices[0].Position = triangle.A; _vertices[1].Position = triangle.B; _vertices[2].Position = triangle.B; foreach (var pass in _effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColor> ( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, _vertices, 0, _vertices.Length, new int[] { 0, 1, 2 }, // example has something similiar, no idea what this is 0, 3 // 3 = gives me an error, 1 = works but no results ); } }

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  • Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

    - by The Communist Duck
    I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D

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  • Dynamic Dijkstra

    - by Dani
    I need dynamic dijkstra algorithm that can update itself when edge's cost is changed without a full recalculation. Full recalculation is not an option. I've tryed to "brew" my own implemantion with no success. I've also tryed to find on the Internet but found nothing. A link to an article explaining the algorithm or even it's name will be good. Edit: Thanks everyone for answering. I managed to make algorithm of my own that runs in O(V+E) time, if anyone wishes to know the algorithm just say so and I will post it.

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  • Achieving certain rendering styles

    - by milesmeow
    I'm trying to assess the difficulty of creating a rendering style that is more like the game Okami and the Quake mods (as shown on this page...search for 'okami','quake npr'). Here's a better page describing the Quake rendering mod. Can a game engine such as Unity be used and programmed to achieve these kind of rendering styles? I'm doing research and am totally new to this so any insight into this would help tremendously.

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  • Android Swipe In Unity 3D World with AR

    - by Christian
    I am working on an AR application using Unity3D and the Vuforia SDK for Android. The way the application works is a when the designated image(a frame marker in our case) is recognized by the camera, a 3D island is rendered at that spot. Currently I am able to detect when/which objects are touched on the model by raycasting. I also am able to successfully detect a swipe using this code: if (Input.touchCount > 0) { Touch touch = Input.touches[0]; switch (touch.phase) { case TouchPhase.Began: couldBeSwipe = true; startPos = touch.position; startTime = Time.time; break; case TouchPhase.Moved: if (Mathf.Abs(touch.position.y - startPos.y) > comfortZoneY) { couldBeSwipe = false; } //track points here for raycast if it is swipe break; case TouchPhase.Stationary: couldBeSwipe = false; break; case TouchPhase.Ended: float swipeTime = Time.time - startTime; float swipeDist = (touch.position - startPos).magnitude; if (couldBeSwipe && (swipeTime < maxSwipeTime) && (swipeDist > minSwipeDist)) { // It's a swiiiiiiiiiiiipe! float swipeDirection = Mathf.Sign(touch.position.y - startPos.y); // Do something here in reaction to the swipe. swipeCounter.IncrementCounter(); } break; } touchInfo.SetTouchInfo (Time.time-startTime,(touch.position-startPos).magnitude,Mathf.Abs (touch.position.y-startPos.y)); } Thanks to andeeeee for the logic. But I want to have some interaction in the 3D world based on the swipe on the screen. I.E. If the user swipes over unoccluded enemies, they die. My first thought was to track all the points in the moved TouchPhase, and then if it is a swipe raycast into all those points and kill any enemy that is hit. Is there a better way to do this? What is the best approach? Thanks for the help!

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  • How to proceed on the waypoint path?

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

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  • Customize Colors for Sprites in Web Game

    - by NateDSaint
    So I'm working on an html5/javascript/css3-based game. Without going into too much detail, I'm thinking of having the characters be simple 8 or 16-bit style sprites, but I'd like to allow the user to customize the colors of their character. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about : http://jsfiddle.net/simurai/CGmCe/light/ http://www.splashnology.com/article/sprite-animation-in-css3/1485/ So the problem I'm having is two-fold: 1) Should I use something other than a sprite map for my characters, like actually draw them as shapes and animate them in a canvas element? That way I can fill the sprite with colors of the user's choosing? My fear there is that this would be inefficient as far as resources and also waste a lot of time hand-drawing everything, but could allow other customization (like height/width etc). 2) Are there potentially some web apis that would allow you to alter colors inside of a sprite? I suppose I could do it on the back-end with GD, but I'm trying to make it entirely in-browser (including local storage). It's not a definitive one-answer only question, but I'm hoping someone can suggest something they've seen that approaches the same problem from another angle or gives us a way to customize the sprites or manipulate them in some manner. Or avoid them altogether, and use a different method.

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  • Prevent oversteering catastrophe in racing games

    - by jdm
    When playing GTA III on Android I noticed something that has been annoying me in almost every racing game I've played (maybe except Mario Kart): Driving straight ahead is easy, but curves are really hard. When I switch lanes or pass somebody, the car starts swiveling back and forth, and any attempt to correct it makes it only worse. The only thing I can do is to hit the brakes. I think this is some kind of oversteering. What makes it so irritating is that it never happens to me in real life (thank god :-)), so 90% of the games with vehicles inside feel unreal to me (despite probably having really good physics engines). I've talked to a couple of people about this, and it seems either you 'get' racing games, or you don't. With a lot of practice, I did manage to get semi-good at some games (e.g. from the Need for Speed series), by driving very cautiously, braking a lot (and usually getting a cramp in my fingers). What can you do as a game developer to prevent the oversteering resonance catastrophe, and make driving feel right? (For a casual racing game, that doesn't strive for 100% realistic physics) I also wonder what games like Super Mario Kart exactly do differently so that they don't have so much oversteering? I guess one problem is that if you play with a keyboard or a touchscreen (but not wheels and pedals), you only have digital input: gas pressed or not, steering left/right or not, and it's much harder to steer appropriately for a given speed. The other thing is that you probably don't have a good sense of speed, and drive much faster than you would (safely) in reality. From the top of my head, one solution might be to vary the steering response with speed.

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  • Dynamic audio score/music

    - by Joel Martinez
    I'm interested in developing a game who's background music changes with the mood and scenario of the game's action. Of course many existing games do this (halo for example), but I was interested in any resources/papers/articles talking about the techniques to develop a system like this. I have some ideas, and I understand that this will be equally challenging to implement at the code level as it will be to come up or acquire music that fits this model. Any links or, answers with ideas in them would he appreciated. Edit: this is the kind of info I'm looking for :) http://halo.bungie.org/misc/gdc.2002.music/

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  • Using copyrighted sprites

    - by Zertalx
    I was thinking about making a pacman clone, I know there is a similar question here Using Copyrighted Images , but I know i can't use the original art from the game because it belongs to Namco, so if I design a character that has the shape of the slice circle it will look exactly like pacman, maybe if I use green instead of yellow? Also if the game plays like the original pacman, it is wrong? I just want to make the game as a personal project and and publish it in my site without getting in trouble

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  • Repeat a part of spritesheet as background

    - by Moiblpadde
    So I'm trying to repeat a part of my spritesheet as a background (js, canvas). My code so far: var canvas = $("#board")[0], ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"), sprite = new Image(); sprite.src = "spritesheet.png"; sprite.onload = function(){ ctx.fillStyle = ctx.createPattern(spriteBg, "repeat"); ctx.fillRect(0, 25, 500, 500); } This is fine, but as you can see, it repeat the whole sprite, not just a part of it, and I just can't figure out how to do it D:

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  • Automatically zoom out the camera to show all players

    - by user36159
    I am building a game in XNA that takes place in a rectangular arena. The game is multiplayer and each player may go where they like within the arena. The camera is a perspective camera that looks directly downwards. The camera should be automatically repositioned based on the game state. Currently, the xy position is a weighted sum of the xy positions of important entities. I would like the camera's z position to be calculated from the xy coordinates so that it zooms out to the point where all important entities are visible. My current approach is to: hw = the greatest x distance from the camera to an important entity hh = the greatest y distance from the camera to an important entity Calculate z = max(hw / tan(FoVx), hh / tan(FoVy)) My code seems to almost work as it should, but the resulting z values are always too low by a factor of about 4. Any ideas?

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  • Music Rhythm Game Difficulty Question

    - by David Dimalanta
    I have curious question about music rhythm based genre while I'm making a code for the game. Is it really better if I set a random pattern encountered on every music played or there is a specific pattern depending on the music and the difficulty? I have observed the Guitar Hero 3 game for the game console where the difficulty is set on the number of strings used and possible number of combo (e.g. two-string combo). Compared to the Tap Tap Revenge for the Android and iPhone, the difficulty based on the number of BPM (Beat per Minute), meaning, number of targets spawn and must be hit.

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  • How can I implement an Iris Wipe effect?

    - by Vandell
    For those who doesn't know: An iris wipe is a wipe that takes the shape of a growing or shrinking circle. It has been frequently used in animated short subjects, such as those in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series, to signify the end of a story. When used in this manner, the iris wipe may be centered around a certain focal point and may be used as a device for a "parting shot" joke, a fourth wall-breaching wink by a character, or other purposes. Example from flasheff.com Your answer may or may not include a coding sample, a language agnostic explanation is considered enough.

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  • How to handle multiple effect files in XNA

    - by Adam 'Pi' Burch
    So I'm using ModelMesh and it's built in Effects parameter to draw a mesh with some shaders I'm playing with. I have a simple GUI that lets me change these parameters to my heart's desire. My question is, how do I handle shaders that have unique parameters? For example, I want a 'shiny' parameter that affects shaders with Phong-type specular components, but for an environment mapping shader such a parameter doesn't make a lot of sense. How I have it right now is that every time I call the ModelMesh's Draw() function, I set all the Effect parameters as so foreach (ModelMesh m in model.Meshes) { if (isDrawBunny == true)//Slightly change the way the world matrix is calculated if using the bunny object, since it is not quite centered in object space { world = boneTransforms[m.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * rotation * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position + bunnyPositionTransform); } else //If not rendering the bunny, draw normally { world = boneTransforms[m.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * rotation * Matrix.CreateTranslation(position); } foreach (Effect e in m.Effects) { Matrix ViewProjection = camera.ViewMatrix * camera.ProjectionMatrix; e.Parameters["ViewProjection"].SetValue(ViewProjection); e.Parameters["World"].SetValue(world); e.Parameters["diffuseLightPosition"].SetValue(lightPositionW); e.Parameters["CameraPosition"].SetValue(camera.Position); e.Parameters["LightColor"].SetValue(lightColor); e.Parameters["MaterialColor"].SetValue(materialColor); e.Parameters["shininess"].SetValue(shininess); //e.Parameters //e.Parameters["normal"] } m.Draw(); Note the prescience of the example! The solutions I've thought of involve preloading all the shaders, and updating the unique parameters as needed. So my question is, is there a best practice I'm missing here? Is there a way to pull the parameters a given Effect needs from that Effect? Thank you all for your time!

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  • database design help for game / user levels / progress

    - by sprugman
    Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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  • Game engines and monetization of indie games

    - by Extrakun
    Does the game engine you use affect monetization of indie games? Of course, targeting difficult platforms is one of the issues. Besides that, how would the game engine used impact monetization of games, assuming cases where the developers is going through a portal and handling the online distribution themselves? As an example, if I make a game in DarkBASIC, will it be harder to sell it than one made with Popcaps Framework or ClanLib etc.?

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