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  • How do I check on non-transparent pixels in a bitmapdata?

    - by Opoe
    I'm still working on my window cleaning game from one of my previous questions I marked a contribution as my answer, but after all this time I can't get it to work and I have to many questions about this so I decided to ask some more about it. As a sequel on my mentioned previous question, my question to you is: How can I check whether or not a bitmapData contains non transparent pixels? Subquestion: Is this possible when the masked image is a movieclip? Shouldn't I use graphics instead? Information I have: A dirtywindow movieclip on the bottom layer and a clean window movieclip on layer 2(mc1) on the layer above. To hide the top layer(the dirty window) I assign a mask to it. Code // this creates a mask that hides the movieclip on top var mask_mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); addChild(mask_mc) //assign the mask to the movieclip it should 'cover' mc1.mask = mask_mc; With a brush(cursor) the player wipes of the dirt ( actualy setting the fill from the mask to transparent so the clean window appears) //add event listeners for the 'brush' brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,brushDown); brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,brushUp); //function to drag the brush over the mask function brushDown(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.startDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase) ; mask_mc.graphics.moveTo(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y); } //function to stop dragging the brush over the mask function brushUp(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.stopDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase); } //fill the mask with transparant pixels so the movieclip turns visible function erase(e:Event):void{ with(mask_mc.graphics){ beginFill(0x000000); drawRect(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y,brush_mc.width,brush_mc.height); endFill(); } }

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  • Split vector vs matrix notation for transformation

    - by seahorse
    Some rendering engines like Ogre prefer to use a individual vector based notation for transformations like the following Split vector notation: Net Transformation is represented by Scale vector = sx, sy, sz Transformation vector = tx, ty, tz Rotation Quaternion Vector = w,x,y,z Matrix notation: There are other engines which simply use a net combined transformation matrix. What are the advantages of the first notation over the second? Also for animation interpolation does it work in the first notation that we interpolate across the individual components and use the interpolated parts to get the net transformation? Is this another advantage?

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  • Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

    - by Etan
    In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

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  • Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?

    - by Rob Hays
    I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: namely, 3D programming. I've already done some research regarding the choice between DirectX and OpenGL, and the general sentiment that came out of that was that whether you choose OpenGL or DirectX as your training-wheels platform, a lot of the knowledge is transferrable to the other platform. Therefore, since OpenGL is supported by more systems (probably a silly reason to choose what to learn), I decided that I'm going to learn OpenGL first. After I made this decision to learn OpenGL, I did some more research and found out about a dichotomy that I was somewhere unaware of all this time: fixed-function OpenGL vs. modern programmable shader-based OpenGL. At first, I thought it was an obvious choice that I should choose to learn shader-based OpenGL since that's what's most commonly used in the industry today. However, I then stumbled upon the very popular Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming by Jason L. McKesson, located here: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ I read through the introductory bits, and in the "About This Book" section, the author states: "First, much of what is learned with this approach must be inevitably abandoned when the user encounters a graphics problem that must be solved with programmability. Programmability wipes out almost all of the fixed function pipeline, so the knowledge does not easily transfer." yet at the same time also makes the case that fixed-functionality provides an easier, more immediate learning curve for beginners by stating: "It is generally considered easiest to teach neophyte graphics programmers using the fixed function pipeline." Naturally, you can see why I might be conflicted about which paradigm to learn: Do I spend a lot of time learning (and then later unlearning) the ways of fixed-functionality, or do I choose to start out with shaders? My primary concern is that modern programmable shaders somehow require the programmer to already understand the fixed-function pipeline, but I doubt that's the case. TL;DR == As an aspiring game graphics programmer, is it in my best interest to learn 3D programming through fixed-functionality or modern shader-based programming?

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  • In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

    - by John Daniels
    After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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  • Pygame: Save a list of objects/classes/surfaces

    - by Sam Tubb
    I am working on a game, in which you can create mazes. You place blocks on a 16x16 grid, while choosing from a variety of block to make the level with. Whenever you create a block, it adds this class: class Block(object): def __init__(self,x,y,spr): self.x=x self.y=y self.sprite=spr self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) to a list called instances. I tried shelving it to a .bin file, but it returns some error dealing with surfaces. How can I go about saving and loading levels? Any help is appreciated! :) Here is the whole code for reference: import pygame from pygame.locals import * #initstuff pygame.init() screen=pygame.display.set_mode((640,480)) pygame.display.set_caption('PiMaze') instances=[] #loadsprites menuspr=pygame.image.load('images/menu.png').convert() b1spr=pygame.image.load('images/b1.png').convert() b2spr=pygame.image.load('images/b2.png').convert() currentbspr=b1spr curspr=pygame.image.load('images/curs.png').convert() curspr.set_colorkey((0,255,0)) #menu menuspr.set_alpha(185) menurect=menuspr.get_rect(x=-260,y=4) class MenuItem(object): def __init__(self,pos,spr): self.x=pos[0] self.y=pos[1] self.sprite=spr self.pos=(self.x,self.y) self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) class Block(object): def __init__(self,x,y,spr): self.x=x self.y=y self.sprite=spr self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) while True: #menu items b1menu=b1spr.get_rect(x=menurect.left+32,y=48) b2menu=b2spr.get_rect(x=menurect.left+64,y=48) menuitems=[MenuItem(b1menu,b1spr),MenuItem(b2menu,b2spr)] screen.fill((20,30,85)) mse=pygame.mouse.get_pos() key=pygame.key.get_pressed() placepos=((mse[0]/16)*16,(mse[1]/16)*16) if key[K_q]: if mse[0]<260: if menurect.right<255: menurect.right+=1 else: if menurect.left>-260: menurect.left-=1 else: if menurect.left>-260: menurect.left-=1 for e in pygame.event.get(): if e.type==QUIT: exit() if menurect.right<100: if e.type==MOUSEBUTTONUP: if e.button==1: to_remove = [i for i in instances if i.rect.collidepoint(placepos)] for i in to_remove: instances.remove(i) if not to_remove: instances.append(Block(placepos[0],placepos[1],currentbspr)) for i in instances: screen.blit(i.sprite,i.rect) if not key[K_q]: screen.blit(curspr,placepos) screen.blit(menuspr,menurect) for item in menuitems: screen.blit(item.sprite,item.pos) if item.rect.collidepoint(mse): if pygame.mouse.get_pressed()==(1,0,0): currentbspr=item.sprite pygame.draw.rect(screen, ((255,0,0)), item, 1) pygame.display.flip()

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  • Unreal 3 Editor (Unreal Tournament 3) Why does the X Y Z translations now rotate along with my static meshes?

    - by Gareth Jones
    So I was making a map for UT3, using the Unreal 3 Editor provided, and all was going well. However I was doing some work with InterpActors and Vehicle Spawners, when I must have hit a key by mistake (or other wise somehow changed something) by mistake. Now the X Y Z translations that are used to move objects around in the editor will rotate along with the object (Ive put images down below to help show what I mean) - This is very annoying because it also changes the direction the arrow keys move a rotated object, in the example below, the Down arrow key will now move the object to the right. How can I fix this? (Note both images are taken from the same viewpoint) Before Rotation: After Rotation: P.S. If someone could please provide me with the correct / better name for the X Y Z "things" it would be much appreciated, thanks!

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  • Trouble exporting Maya models to Panda3D?

    - by Aerovistae
    Having issues here. I added the Panda3D exporter script thing to Maya. 2 things: When I go to export to a .egg, no .egg is formed. Instead a fileToBeExported_temp.mb appears next to the original fileToBeExported.ma. My models use curving meshes with many subdivisions, easily in the thousands, like on the smoothed tentacles of an octopus. Will Panda be able to handle this in the first place? I can't find out on my own since it won't export.

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  • Embed Unity3D and load multiple games from a single app

    - by Rafael Steil
    Is is possible to export an entire unity3d project/game as an AssetBundle and load it on iOS/Android/Windows on an app that doesn't know anything about such game beforehand? What I have in mind is something like the web plugin does - it loads a series of .unity3d files over http, and render inline in the browser window. Is it even possible to do something closer for iOS/Android? I have read a lot of docs so far, but still can't be sure: http://floored.com/blog/2013/integrating-unity3d-within-ios-native-application.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LoadingResourcesatRuntime.html http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AssetBundlesIntro.html The code from the post at http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/112703-Override-Unity-Data-folder-path?p=749108&viewfull=1#post749108 works for Android, but how about iOS and other platforms?

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  • SDL 1.2 reports wrong screen size

    - by Aaron Digulla
    I have a multi-monitor setup with two displays, both 1920x1200. In games, I can only select resolutions 1920x1200 (like 2560x1200) which makes games unusable. Full screen doesn't work either because it switches one display to 800x600 which means I can't reach the close button... I have to kill the game and then, I have to restore my desktop because all windows are moved/resized. How can I force SDL to use any resolution that I want?

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  • In a 2D platform game, how to ensure the player moves smoothly over sloping ground?

    - by Kovsa
    See image: http://i41.tinypic.com/huis13.jpg I'm developing a physics engine for a 2D platform game. I'm using the separating axis theorem for collision detection. The ground surface is constructed from oriented bounding boxes, with the player as an axis aligned bounding box. (Specifically, I'm using the algorithm from the book "Realtime Collision Detection" which performs swept collision detection for OBBs using SAT). I'm using a fairly small (close to zero) restitution coefficient in the collision response, to ensure that the dynamic objects don't penetrate the environment. The engine mostly works fine, it's just that I'm concerned about some edge cases that could possibly occur. For example, in the diagram, A, B and C are the ground surface. The player is heading left along B towards A. It seems to me that due to inaccuracy, the player box could be slightly below the box B as it continues up and left. When it reaches A, therefore, the bottom left corner of the player might then collide with the right side of A, which would be undesirable (as the intention is for the player to move smoothly over the top of A). It seems like a similar problem could happen when the player is on top of box C, moving left towards B - the most extreme point of B could collide with the left side of the player, instead of the player's bottom left corner sliding up and left above B. Box2D seems to handle this problem by storing connectivity information for its edge shapes, but I'm not really sure how it uses this information to solve the problem, and after looking at the code I don't really grasp what it's doing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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  • C# and Unity - Learning to Develop a game by developing the game I want to develop

    - by 97s
    So I am pretty new to C#, I have some python and javascript experience, but nothing substantial. I have read a lot about C# and Unity and I know they are the tools I want to use. My question is: Should I be reading books about C# or should I just start hacking in unity and piecing the game together part by part? Right now I am going through the book, HeadFirst C#, and it is very good, but I taught myself web design and javascript by just creating and hacking until I got the results I wanted then looked at other code to see ways they did it and improved my code. The issue is that with the browser I got immediate results and it was all under one roof, where developing games is a completely different monster. I am just wondering if my time would be better spent buying a book that uses C# to teach you unity, and doing that instead, or if the time spent in HeadFirst book is going to be valuable. Thanks a ton, I am having difficulties using my time, and I just want to maximize it as I don't have a lot of free time. Edit: Hopefully this isn't to broad? If it is, I will delete and go elsewhere just let me know. Thanks.

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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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  • How do I implement smooth movement in a Box2D platform game?

    - by Romeo
    I have implemented a character in JBox2D which moves with the help of a wheel rotating at the bottom of it. The movement is the best result I've had 'till now but it's a little glitchy when the character stands on the edge. So I am thinking should I use five smaller wheels instead of a big wheel. The wheel/wheels will not be visible in the finished product, now they are drawn for debugging. Here is a video. Is there a better way to do this using JBox2D?

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  • Drag Gestures - fractional delta values

    - by Den
    I have an issue with objects moving roughly twice as far as expected when dragging them. I am comparing my application to the standard TouchGestureSample sample from MSDN. For some reason in my application gesture samples have fractional positions and deltas. Both are using same Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.Touch.dll, v4.0.30319. I am running both apps using standard Windows Phone Emulator. I am setting my break point immediately after this line of code in a simple Update method: GestureSample gesture = TouchPanel.ReadGesture(); Typical values in my app: Delta = {X:-13.56522 Y:4.166667} Position = {X:184.6956 Y:417.7083} Typical values in sample app: Delta = {X:7 Y:16} Position = {X:497 Y:244} Have anyone seen this issue? Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank you.

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  • Turn-based JRPG battle system architecture resources

    - by BenoitRen
    The past months I've been busy programming a 2D JRPG (Japanese-style RPG) in C++ using the SDL library. The exploration mode is more or less done. Now I'm tackling the battle mode. I have been unable to find any resources about how a classic turn-based JRPG battle system is structured. All I find are discussions about damage formula. I've tried googling, searching gamedev.net's message board, and crawling through C++-related questions here on Stack Exchange. I've also tried reading source code of existing open source RPGs, but without a guide of some sort it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I'm not looking for a set of rules like D&D or anything similar. I'm talking purely about code and object structure design. A battle system asks the player for input using menus. Next the battle turn is executed as the heroes and the enemies execute their actions. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

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  • Is using multiple canvas objects a good practice?

    - by user1818924
    We're developing a jump and run game with HTML5 and JavaScript and have to build an own game framework for this. Here we have some difficulties and would like to ask you for some advice: We have a "Stage" object, which represents the root of our game and is a global div-wrapper. The stage can contain multiple "Scenes", which are also div-elements. We would implement a Scene for the playing task, for pause, etc. and switch between them. Each scene can therefore contain multiple "Layers", representing a canvas. These Layer contain "ObjectEntities", which represent images or other shapes like rectangles, etc. Each Objectentity has its own temporaryCanvas, to be able to draw images for one entity, whereas another contains a rectangle. We set an activeScene in our Stage, so when the game is played, just the active scene is drawn. Calling activeScene.draw(), calls all sublayers to draw, which draw their entities (calling drawImage(entity.canvas)). But is this some kind of good practice? Having multiple canvas to draw? Each game loop every layer-context is cleared and drawn again. E.g. we just have a still Background-Layer, … wouldn't it be more useful to draw this once and not to clear it every time and redraw it? Or should we use a global canvas for example in the Stage and just use this canvas to draw? But we thought this would be to expensive...

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  • Frames per Second and Updates per Second [on hold]

    - by matt murray
    So this is more a general resources question, as I am seeking knowledge on how best to conserve resources in a game (I am writing in Java, and please this is not a thread on what language I should write it in, I have already chosen Java) so that the updates and frames per second could be the highest they could be. In general I am just searching for any articles you may have, any personal experience, anything what so ever that could be of use to a pretty new Java game developer on the subject! Thanks in advance!

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  • Understanding how OpenGL blending works

    - by yuumei
    I am attempting to understand how OpenGL (ES) blending works. I am finding it difficult to understand the documentation and how the results of glBlendFunc and glBlendEquation effect the final pixel that is written. Do the source and destination out of glBlendFunc get added together with GL_FUNC_ADD by default? This seems wrong because "basic" blending of GL_ONE, GL_ONE would output 2,2,2,2 then (Source giving 1,1,1,1 and dest giving 1,1,1,1). I have written the following pseudo-code, what have I got wrong? struct colour { float r, g, b, a; }; colour blend_factor( GLenum factor, colour source, colour destination, colour blend_colour ) { colour colour_factor; float i = min( source.a, 1 - destination.a ); // From http://www.khronos.org/opengles/sdk/docs/man/xhtml/glBlendFunc.xml switch( factor ) { case GL_ZERO: colour_factor = { 0, 0, 0, 0 }; break; case GL_ONE: colour_factor = { 1, 1, 1, 1 }; break; case GL_SRC_COLOR: colour_factor = source; break; case GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR: colour_factor = { 1 - source.r, 1 - source.g, 1 - source.b, 1 - source.a }; break; // ... } return colour_factor; } colour blend( colour & source, colour destination, GLenum source_factor, // from glBlendFunc GLenum destination_factor, // from glBlendFunc colour blend_colour, // from glBlendColor GLenum blend_equation // from glBlendEquation ) { colour source_colour = blend_factor( source_factor, source, destination, blend_colour ); colour destination_colour = blend_factor( destination_factor, source, destination, blend_colour ); colour output; // From http://www.khronos.org/opengles/sdk/docs/man/xhtml/glBlendEquation.xml switch( blend_equation ) { case GL_FUNC_ADD: output = add( source_colour, destination_colour ); case GL_FUNC_SUBTRACT: output = sub( source_colour, destination_colour ); case GL_FUNC_REVERSE_SUBTRACT: output = sub( destination_colour, source_colour ); } return output; } void do_pixel() { colour final_colour; // Blending if( enable_blending ) { final_colour = blend( current_colour_output, framebuffer[ pixel ], ... ); } else { final_colour = current_colour_output; } } Thanks!

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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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  • Using Google App Engine to Perform World Updates vs an Authoritative Server

    - by Error 454
    I am considering different game server architectures that use GAE. The types of games I am considering are turn-based where the world status would need to be updated about once per minute. I am looking for an answer that persuades me to either perform the world update on the google servers OR an authoritative server that syncs with the datastore. The main goal here would be to minimize GAE daily quotas. For some rough numbers, I am assuming 10,000 entities requiring updates. Each entity update would require: Reading 5 private entity variables (fetched from datastore) Fetching as many as 20 static variables (from datastore or persisted in server memory) Writing 5 entity variables Clients of the game would authenticate and set state directly against GAE as well as pull the latest world state from GAE. Running the update on GAE would consist of a cron job launched every minute. This would update all of the entities and save the results to the datastore. This would be more CPU intensive for GAE. Running the update on an authoritative server would consist of fetching entity data from the GAE datastore, calculating the new entity states and pushing the new state variables back to the datastore. This would be more bandwidth intensive for the datastore.

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  • Permanent death in a MUD (think command line MMORPG)

    - by Luke Laupheimer
    I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

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  • Improving Click and Drag with C++

    - by Josh
    I'm currently using SFML 2.0 to develop a game in C++. I have a game sprite class that has a click and drag method. The method works, but there is a slight problem. If the mouse moves too fast, the object the user selected can't keep up and is left behind in the spot where the mouse left its bounds. I will share the class definition and the given function implementation. Definition: class codePeg { protected: FloatRect bounds; CircleShape circle; int xPos, yPos, xDiff, yDiff, once; int xBase, yBase; Vector2i mousePos; Vector2f circlePos; public: void init(RenderWindow& Window); void draw(RenderWindow& Window); void drag(RenderWindow& Window); void setPegPosition(int x, int y); void setPegColor(Color pegColor); void mouseOver(RenderWindow& Window); friend int isPegSelected(void); }; Implementation of the "drag" function: void codePeg::drag(RenderWindow& Window) { mousePos = Mouse::getPosition(Window); circlePos = circle.getPosition(); if(Mouse::isButtonPressed(Mouse::Left)) { if(mousePos.x > xPos && mousePos.y > yPos && mousePos.x - bounds.width < xPos && mousePos.y - bounds.height < yPos) { if(once) { xDiff = mousePos.x - circlePos.x; yDiff = mousePos.y - circlePos.y; once = 0; } xPos = mousePos.x - xDiff; yPos = mousePos.y - yDiff; circle.setPosition(xPos, yPos); } } else { once = 1; xPos = xBase; yPos = yBase; xDiff = 0; yDiff = 0; circle.setPosition(xBase, yBase); } Window.draw(circle); } Like I said, the function works, but to me, the code is very ugly and I think it could be improved and could be more efficient. The only thing I can think of as to why the object cannot keep up with the mouse is that there are too many function calls and/or checks. The user does not really have to mouse the mouse "fast" for it to happen, I would say at an average pace the object is left behind. How can I improve the code so that the object remains with the mouse when it is selected? Any help improving this code or giving advice is greatly appreciated.

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  • Power Distribution amongst connected nodes

    - by Perky
    In my game the map is represented by connected nodes, each node has a number of connected nodes. The nodes represent a system in which players can build structures and move units about. If you're familiar with Sins of a Solar Empire the game map is very similar. I want each node to be able to produce power and share it with all connected nodes. For example if A, B, C & D are all connected and produce 100 power units, then each system should have 400 power units available. If node B builds a structure that consumes 100 power units then A, B, C & D should then have 300 power units available. I've been working on this system all day and haven't been able to get it working quite the way I want. My current implementation is to first recurse through each nodes's connected node adding up the power, I keep a list of closed nodes so it doesn't loop, it's quite similar to A* actually. Pseudo code: All nodes start with the properties node.power = 0 node.basePower = 100 // could be different for each node. node.initialPower = node.basePower - function propagatePower( node, initialPower, closedNodes ) node.power += initialPower add( closedNodes, node ) connectedNodes = connected_nodes_except_from( closedNodes ) foreach node in connectedNodes do propagatePower( node, initialPower, closedNodes ) end end After this I iterate through all power consumers. foreach consumer in consumers do node = consumer.parentNode if node.power >= consumer.powerConsumption then consumer.powerConsumed += consumer.powerConsumption node.producedPower -= consumer.powerConsumption end end Then I adjust the initial power for the next propagation cycle. foreach node in nodes do node.initialPower = node.basePower - node.producedPower node.displayPower = node.power // for rendering the power. node.power = 0 end This seemed to work at first but then I came into a problem. Say two nodes A & B produce 100Pu each, it's shared so both A & B have 200Pu. I then make two structures that consume 80Pu each on A (160Pu). Then the nodes power is adjusted to basePower - producedPower (100-160 = -60). Nodes are propagated, both nodes now have 40Pu (A: -60 + B: 100 = 40). Which is correct because they started with 200Pu - 160Pu = 40Pu. However now node.power >= consumer.powerConsumption is false. Whats worse is it's false for any structure that uses more that 40Pu, so the whole system goes down. I could deduct from consumer.powerConsumption but what do I do if power is reduced elsewhere? I don't have the correct data to perform the necessary checks. It's late so I'm probably not thinking straight but I thought to ask on here to see if anyone has any other implementations, better or worse I'd be interested to know.

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  • How do I properly use multithreading with Nvidia PhysX?

    - by xcrypt
    I'm having a multithreading problem with Nvidia PhysX. the SDK requires that you call Simulate() (starts computing new physics positions within a new thread) and FetchResults() (waits 'till the physics computations are done). Inbetween Simulate() and FetchResults() you may not "compute new physics". It is proposed (in a sample) that we create a game loop as such: Logic (you may calculate physics here and other stuff) Render + Simulate() at start of Render call and FetchResults at end of Render() call However, this has given me various little errors that stack up: since you actually render the scene that was computed in the previous iteration in the game loop. Does anyone have a solution to this?

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