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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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  • XNA 4.0 SpriteFont not displaying all Characters

    - by Iain Brown
    Am looking for a little help and trying to use SpriteFont in my XNA 4.0 game but the problem is am displaying to string "This is a test" but all that's displayed on the screen is "This is st" so the "a te" are missing from the screen. The space is there for the characters but the letters are not. The code am using is: spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend); spriteBatch.DrawString(font,"this is a test",new Vector2(692,372),Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(texture,new Rectangle(0,0,100,100),Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); Any help with this would be great!

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  • Blender: How to "meshify" an object I made from Bezier curves

    - by capcom
    I made a star shape using Bezier curves, and extruded it (see pic below): What I want to do is give it a rounder look - not just around the edges by using beveling. I want it to kind of look like this (well, that shape anyway): How would I go about doing this? Please keep in mind that I am extremely new to Blender. I thought that I could somehow turn this star into those default shapes that have tonnes of squares which I could pull out, and apply a mirror to it so that the same thing happens on both sides. I really don't know how to do it, and would appreciate your help.

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  • Entity Component System for HUD and GUI

    - by Jason L.
    This is a very rough sketch of how I currently have things designed. It should, at least, give an idea of how my ECS is currently designed. If you notice in that diagram, I have basically split the HUD out of the ECS. They have their own set of things (HudLayer, HudComponent, etc) and are handled differently. This is where I'm struggling, though. There are many different instances in which the HUD will need to know about entities. Not just data changing (I have an event dispatcher for that), but the actual entity and all it encompasses. There are also situations where entities will need to be able to query the HUD for data. Let's take a couple examples: First, my equipment screen. On here I can change the equipment on a character (Entity). In order for this to happen, I need to know about the entity. At least I think I do? How can I handle this? The second scenario involves my Systems needing to query a HudComponent for data. A specific example would be my battle system. Each "team" is given a 3x3 grid they can move around in. See here: Skills target these cells, and not the player, so I would need a way for my systems to determine which cells are occupied and which are not. Basically I need a way for two way communication between Systems and my HUD. I know it's recommended (by some people, anyways) to take your HUD out of the ECS. Is that appropriate in my case?

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  • 3D Paint tool in Maya

    - by Joris
    Hey everyone, could someone help me out on this question? When I am trying to texture objects in maya (for example a barrel) I want to texture it with a brush. When I try to use the 3D painting tool it al gets black even when I have a image file selected. Also the resolution is very very low of the models and textures in maya, though the texture image is very high quality. Can someone please help me? Thanks so much for helping.

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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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  • Space-efficient data structures for broad-phase collision detection

    - by Marian Ivanov
    As far as I know, these are three types of data structures that can be used for collision detection broadphase: Unsorted arrays: Check every object againist every object - O(n^2) time; O(log n) space. It's so slow, it's useless if n isn't really small. for (i=1;i<objects;i++){ for(j=0;j<i;j++) narrowPhase(i,j); }; Sorted arrays: Sort the objects, so that you get O(n^(2-1/k)) for k dimensions O(n^1.5) for 2d and O(n^1.67) for 3d and O(n) space. Assuming the space is 2D and sortedArray is sorted so that if the object begins in sortedArray[i] and another object ends at sortedArray[i-1]; they don't collide Heaps of stacks: Divide the objects between a heap of stacks, so that you only have to check the bucket, its children and its parents - O(n log n) time, but O(n^2) space. This is probably the most frequently used approach. Is there a way of having O(n log n) time with less space? When is it more efficient to use sorted arrays over heaps and vice versa?

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  • Best way to render card images

    - by user1065145
    I have high-quality SVG card images, but they drastically lose their quality when I downsize them. I have tried two ways of rendering cards (using Inkscape and Imagemagics): 1) Render SVG to high-res PNG and resize it then; 2) Render SVG to image of proper size at once. Both approaches generate blurry card images, which looks even worse than old Windows cards. What are the best way to generate smaller card images from SVG sources and not to loose their quality a lot?

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  • Skyrim Creation Kit with Xbox 360

    - by funseiki
    I posted this on stackoverflow but was advised to post here (here is a link to the stackoverflow question). I'm hoping for constructive feedback on its plausibility. Update on progress: It looks like there are ways to stuff files back onto the console (horizon, modio, xplorer360, etc) and they do require some form of signing. As of now, though, I've had no luck. I was hoping I could get away with just placing the ".esp" into the directory containing marketplace downloads for Skyrim, along with the signed ".bsa" file (basically a zipped up file containing any extra content the .esp will need to refer that doesn't exist in the basic game). This doesn't work, at least not in the ways I've tried, so next I'm going to try install the entire game to my flash drive (if possible) and attempt to traverse through the game's directory (this is probably unlikely). If anyone else has suggestions or luck or wants more detail on my failures comment/answer away. Here is the question: I'm thinking about buying the PC version of Skyrim to get the Creation Kit (I already own a copy for the Xbox). I have read the faq and scoured plenty of forums to see if there was some way to mod Skyrim for a console (Xbox 360, in particular), but they are generally coming up negative. I realize the CreationKit is on the PC, but I was wondering if there was a way to set up the '.esp' (hopefully I'm interpreting this correctly) files to be placed on the Xbox 360 file system in a similar manner to how game add-ons are downloaded from the Xbox Live Marketplace. I believe it is possible to transfer saves between the console and the PC (e.g. google: 'skyrim mod xbox360'), but these are referencing items that already exist in the game (e.g. a console command for maximum carry weight does not require reference to new animations or models). It would probably be easier if one could navigate through the xbox's file system to see where the games' files are placed, but with the current setup, the file system is abstracted away. Any help or insight on the matter would be much appreciated. I would love to work on a project that would make it possible to let console gamers experience and enjoy all the great mods available to the PC community.

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  • Character movement on a 2D tile map

    - by Chris Morris
    I'm working at making a HTML5 game. Top down, closest thing I can equate it to is the gameboy zeldas, but open world and no rooms. What I have so far is a procedurally generated map in a multi dimensional array. And a starting position on the map. Along with this I have an array of movable and non movable tile ID's. I also have a class for my player and have him being rendered out in the center of the starting tile. My problem however is getting the movement sorted out for the player. I want to be able to have the character free move around the map (pixel by pixel essentially) ontop of this 2D generated world. Ideally this would allow the user to move around the walk able area of the canvas. this is simple enough for me to do, but I am having problems now moving the world. If the user is 20% from the edge of the screen i want the world to start panning in the direction the player is heading. But I'm rather lacking in ideas of how to do this. I've looked around for some tutorials, but am coming up blank on ideas of how to generate the playable area (zoomed in) and to then move this generated area under the player when they reach near the end of the screen. My current idea was to generate a certain amount of tiles full size to fill the screen and place the player i the middle. Then when the user approaches the edge of the screen start generating the tiles offset by the distance moved and the direction. I can kind of see this working but I really have no idea if this is the best or easiest to code of methods for generating the world. sorry for the lack of code but I'm still just in the theory stages of working this all out.

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  • blender: 3D model from guide images

    - by Stefan
    In a effort to learn the blender interface, which is confusing to say the least, I've chosen to model a model from referrence pictures easily found on the web. Problem is that I can't ( and won't ) get perfect "right", "front" and "top" pictures. Blender only allows you to see the background pictures when in ortographic mode and only from right|front|top, which doesn't help me. How to I proceed to model from non-perfect guide images?

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  • What exactly can shaders be used for?

    - by Bane
    I'm not really a 3D person, and I've only used shaders a little in some Three.js examples, and so far I've got an impression that they are only being used for the graphical part of the equation. Although, the (quite cryptic) Wikipedia article and some other sources lead me to believe that they can be used for more than just graphical effects, ie, to program the GPU (Wikipedia). So, the GPU is still a processor, right? With a larger and a different instruction set for easier and faster vector manipulation, but still a processor. Can I use shaders to make regular programs (provided I've got access to the video memory, which is probable)? Edit: regular programs == "Applications", ie create windows/console programs, or at least have some way of drawing things on the screen, maybe even taking user input.

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  • Software design of a browser-based strategic MMO game

    - by Mehran
    I wonder if there are any known tested software designs for Travian-like browser-based strategic MMO games? I mean how would they implement the server of such games or what is stored in database and what is stored in RAM? Is the state of the world stored in one piece or is it distributed among a number of storage? Does anyone know a resource to study the problems and solutions of creating such games? [UPDATE] Suggested in comments, I'm going to give an example how would I design such a project. Even though I'm not sure if I'm proposing the right one. Having stored the world state in a MongoDB, I would implement an event collection in which all the changes to the world will register. Changes that are meant to happen in the future will come with an action date set to the future and those that are to be carried out immediately will be set to now. Having this datastore as the central point of the system, players will issue their actions as events inserted in datastore. At the other end of the system, I'll have a constant-running software taking out events out of the datastore which are due to be carried out and not done yet. Executing an event means apply some update on the world's state and thus the datastore. As scalable as this design sounds, I'm not sure if it will be worth implementing. For one, it is pointless to cache the datastore as most of updates happen once without any follow ups. For instance if you have the growth of resources in your game, you'll be updating the whole world state periodically in which case, having incorporated a cache, you are keeping the whole world in RAM (which most likely is impossible). So can someone come up with a better design?

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  • How to play many sounds at once in OpenAL

    - by Krom
    Hello, I'm developing an RTS game and I would like to add sounds to it. My choice has landed on OpenAL. I have plenty of units which from time to time make sounds: fSound.Play(sfx_shoot, location). Sounds often repeat, e.g. when squad of archers shoots arrows, but they are not synced with each other. My questions are: What is the common design pattern to play multiple sounds in OpenAL, when some of them are duplicate? What are the hardware limitations on sounds count and tricks to overcome them?

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  • Where can I find free or buy "next-gen" 3D Assets?

    - by Valmond
    Usually I buy 3D Assets from sites like turbosquid.com or similar. My problem is that I have lately implemented glow, normal maps, specular (and specular power) maps and reflection maps and I can't find any models that use those techniques. So where can I find / buy "next gen" assets (at least models/items with a normal map)? I have checked for similar posts but those I found are about either free only or 2D or 'ordinary' 3D so I hope this is not a duplicate.

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  • DrawIndexedPrimitives overdraws data in previous buffer if called in loop

    - by Daniel Excinsky
    I doubled the question from stackoverflow here, and will delete the opposite of a question that gave me the answer. I have the Draw method in one of my renderers, that loops through the dictionary and gets precollected and preinitialized buffers. When dictionary has only one element, everything is just fine. But with more elements what I get on the screen is only the data from the last buffer (I suppose, not sure) My Draw method: public void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { if (!_areStaticEffectsSet) { // blockEffect.Parameters["TextureAtlas"].SetValue(textureAtlas); blockEffect.Parameters["HorizonColor"].SetValue(World.HORIZONCOLOR); blockEffect.Parameters["NightColor"].SetValue(World.NIGHTCOLOR); blockEffect.Parameters["MorningTint"].SetValue(World.MORNINGTINT); blockEffect.Parameters["EveningTint"].SetValue(World.EVENINGTINT); blockEffect.Parameters["SunColor"].SetValue(World.SUNCOLOR); _areStaticEffectsSet = true; } blockEffect.Parameters["World"].SetValue(Matrix.Identity); blockEffect.Parameters["View"].SetValue(_player.CameraView); blockEffect.Parameters["Projection"].SetValue(_player.CameraProjection); blockEffect.Parameters["CameraPosition"].SetValue(_player.CameraPosition); blockEffect.Parameters["timeOfDay"].SetValue(_world.TimeOfDay); var viewFrustum = new BoundingFrustum(_player.CameraView * _player.CameraProjection); _graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; _graphicsDevice.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; foreach (KeyValuePair<int, Texture2D> textureAtlas in textureAtlases) { blockEffect.Parameters["TextureAtlas"].SetValue(textureAtlas.Value); foreach (EffectPass pass in blockEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); //TODO: ?????????? ??????????????? ?? ?????? ?? ??????? ??????? VertexBuffer ? IndexBuffer foreach (Chunk chunk in _world.Chunks.Values) { if (chunk == null || chunk.IsDisposed) { continue; } if (chunk.BoundingBox.Intersects(viewFrustum) && chunk.GetBlockIndexBuffer(textureAtlas.Key) != null) { lock (chunk) { if (chunk.GetBlockIndexBuffer(textureAtlas.Key).IndexCount > 0) { VertexBuffer vertexBuffer = chunk.GetBlockVertexBuffer(textureAtlas.Key); IndexBuffer indexBuffer = chunk.GetBlockIndexBuffer(textureAtlas.Key); //if (chunk.DrawIndex == new Vector3i(0, 0, 0)) //{ //if (textureAtlas.Key == -1) //{ //var varray = new [] //{ //new VertexPositionTextureLight(new Vector3(0,68,0), new Vector2(0,1),1,new Vector3(0,0,0), new Vector3(1,1,1)), //new VertexPositionTextureLight(new Vector3(0,68,1), new Vector2(0,1),1,new Vector3(0,0,0), new Vector3(1,1,1)), //new VertexPositionTextureLight(new Vector3(1,68,0), new Vector2(0,1),1,new Vector3(0,0,0), new Vector3(1,1,1)) //}; //var iarray = new short[] {0, 1, 2}; //vertexBuffer = new VertexBuffer(_graphicsDevice, typeof(VertexPositionTextureLight), varray.Length, BufferUsage.WriteOnly); //indexBuffer = new IndexBuffer(_graphicsDevice, IndexElementSize.SixteenBits, iarray.Length, BufferUsage.WriteOnly); //vertexBuffer.SetData(varray); //indexBuffer.SetData(iarray); } } _graphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffer(vertexBuffer); _graphicsDevice.Indices = indexBuffer; _graphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, vertexBuffer.VertexCount, 0, indexBuffer.IndexCount / 3); } } } } } } } Noteworthy things about the code: XNA version is 4.0. I've commented the debugging code in the loop, but left it for it may bring some insight. I try not only to change vertices/indices in the loop, but textureAtlas also. Code in the shader about textureAtlas: Texture TextureAtlas; sampler TextureAtlasSampler = sampler_state { texture = <TextureAtlas>; magfilter = POINT; minfilter = POINT; mipfilter = POINT; AddressU = WRAP; AddressV = WRAP; }; struct VSInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 TexCoords1 : TEXCOORD0; float SunLight : COLOR0; float3 LocalLight : COLOR1; float3 Normal : NORMAL0; }; VertexPositionTextureLight is my own realization of IVertexType. So, do anybody know about this problem, or see the wrongness in my code (that's far more likely)?

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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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  • MMORPG design for time-limited players

    - by Philipp
    I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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  • How To Smoothly Animate From One Camera Position To Another

    - by www.Sillitoy.com
    The Question is basically self explanatory. I have a scene with many cameras and I'd like to smoothly switch from one to another. I am not looking for a cross fade effect but more to a camera moving and rotating the view in order to reach the next camera point of view and so on. To this end I have tried the following code: firstCamera.transform.position.x = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.position.x, nextCamer.transform.position.x,Time.deltaTime*smooth); firstCamera.transform.position.y = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.position.y, nextCamera.transform.position.y,Time.deltaTime*smooth); firstCamera.transform.position.z = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.position.z, nextCamera.transform.position.z,Time.deltaTime*smooth); firstCamera.transform.rotation.x = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.rotation.x, nextCamera.transform.rotation.x,Time.deltaTime*smooth); firstCamera.transform.rotation.z = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.rotation.z, nextCamera.transform.rotation.z,Time.deltaTime*smooth); firstCamera.transform.rotation.y = Mathf.Lerp(firstCamera.transform.rotation.y, nextCamera.transform.rotation.y,Time.deltaTime*smooth); But the result is actually not that good.

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  • What is UVIndex and how do I use it on OpenGL?

    - by Delta
    I am a noob in OpenGL ES 2.0 (for WebGL) and I'm trying to draw a simple model I've made with a 3D tool and exported to .fbx format. I've been able to draw some models that only have: A vertex buffer, a index buffer for the vertices, a normal buffer and a texture coordinate buffer, but this model now has a "UVIndex" and I'm not sure where am I supposed to put this UVIndex. My code looks like this: GL.bindBuffer(GL.ARRAY_BUFFER, this.Model.House.VertexBuffer); GL.vertexAttribPointer(this.Shader.TextureAndLighting.Attribute["vPosition"],3,GL.FLOAT, false, 0, 0); GL.bindBuffer(GL.ARRAY_BUFFER, this.Model.House.NormalBuffer); GL.vertexAttribPointer(this.Shader.TextureAndLighting.Attribute["vNormal"], 3, GL.FLOAT, false, 0, 0); GL.bindBuffer(GL.ARRAY_BUFFER, this.Model.House.TexCoordBuffer); GL.vertexAttribPointer(this.Shader.TextureAndLighting.Attribute["TexCoord"], 2, GL.FLOAT, false, 0, 0); GL.bindBuffer(GL.ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, this.Model.House.IndexBuffer); GL.bindTexture(GL.TEXTURE_2D, this.Texture.HTex1); GL.activeTexture(GL.TEXTURE0); GL.drawElements(GL.TRIANGLES, this.Model.House.IndexBuffer.Length, GL.UNSIGNED_SHORT, 0); But my model renders totally incorrect and I think it has to do with the fact that I am ignoring this "UVIndex" in the .fbx file, since I've never drawn any model that uses this UVIndex I really have no clue on what to do with it. This is the json file containing the model's data: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=G294TVmz

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  • Group Matchmaking

    - by Simon Kérouack
    Consider different groups(1 or more players) queuing together, we want to make 2 opposing teams containing each the same amount of players while keeping the groups together. At the same time we want to make both teams' average ranking as close as possible. Now also consider we have as a working set the subset of groups currently queuing within a given ranking range. For an example, let's say we have the following groups, ordered by queuing time: Id, playerCount, totalRank, avgRank 0, 3, 126, 42 1, 2, 60, 30 2, 1, 25, 25 3, 2, 80, 40 4, 1, 40, 40 5, 1, 20, 20 6, 3, 150, 50 for this specific subset, the expected output should ideally be: team1: 0, 1 (total: 186) team2: 2, 5, 6 (total: 195) up to now the solution I have been using is to balance out each team by making each team pick the group with highest ranking within the subset turn by turn. The team who picks is the one with the currently lowest average rank unless one is already full. If one team is already full the other team tries to complete itself with groups that would make the rank gap as small as possible. This solution turns out to have issues with frequent edge cases and I'm looking for a better solution, or some fine-tuning that could be made. In most cases, players seems to want teams of 5 people and queue in group of 2. Our average subset when 2 teams of 5 are chosen is made of about 14 players if that may be of any help.

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  • Ray Tracing concers: Efficient Data Structure and Photon Mapping

    - by Grieverheart
    I'm trying to build a simple ray tracer for specific target scenes. An example of such scene can be seen below. I'm concerned as to what accelerating data structure would be most efficient in this case since all objects are touching but on the other hand, the scene is uniform. The objects in my ray tracer are stored as a collection of triangles, thus I also have access to individual triangles. Also, when trying to find the bounding box of the scene, how should infinite planes be handled? Should one instead use the viewing frustum to calculate the bounding box? A few other questions I have are about photon mapping. I've read the original paper by Jensen and many more material. In the compact data structure for the photon they introduce, they store photon power as 4 chars, which from my understanding is 3 chars for color and 1 for flux. But I don't understand how 1 char is enough to store a flux of the order of 1/n, where n is the number of photons (I'm also a bit confused about flux vs power). The other question about photon mapping is, if it would be more efficient in my case to store photons per object (or even per Object's triangle) instead of using a balanced kd-tree. Also, same question about bounding box of the scene but for photon mapping. How should one find a bounding box from the pov of the light when infinite planes are involved?

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  • What is a good way to measure game virality?

    - by Chris Garrett
    I have added some social features to an iPhone game (Lexitect if you're curious), such as email, Twitter, and Facebook integration for sharing high scores. Along with these features, I am measuring how many times users make it to each step. The goal of these features are to make the game more viral, and I am trying to get to a measure of game virality. I would think that a game virality metric would produce a number based on 1.0, where 1.0 = zero viral growth, and 1.01 would represent 1% viral growth over some unit of time. How is virality normally measured, and in what units? How is time capped on the metric? i.e. if I gave each player a year to determine how many recommendations they make, I wouldn't get any real numbers for a year from the time I start tracking it. Are there any standards for tracking virality in a meaningful way?

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  • More Efficient Data Structure for Large Layered Tile Map

    - by Stupac
    It seems like the popular method is to break the map up into regions and load them as needed, my problem is that in my game there are many AI entities other than the player out performing actions in virtually all the regions of the map. Let's just say I have a 5000x5000 map, when I use a 2D array of byte's to render it my game uses around 17 MB of memory, as soon as I change that data structure to a my own defined MapCell class (which only contains a single field: byte terrain) my game's memory consumption rockets up to 400+ MB. I plan on adding layering, so an array of byte's won't cut it and I figure I'd need to add a List of some sort to the MapCell class to provide objects in the layers. I'm only rendering tiles that are on screen, but I need the rest of the map to be represented in memory since it is constantly used in Update. So my question is, how can I reduce the memory consumption of my map while still maintaining the above requirements? Thank you for your time! Here's a few snippets my C# code in XNA4: public static void LoadMapData() { // Test map generations int xSize = 5000; int ySize = 5000; MapCell[,] map = new MapCell[xSize,ySize]; //byte[,] map = new byte[xSize, ySize]; Terrain[] terrains = new Terrain[4]; terrains[0] = grass; terrains[1] = dirt; terrains[2] = rock; terrains[3] = water; Random random = new Random(); for(int x = 0; x < xSize; x++) { for(int y = 0; y < ySize; y++) { //map[x,y] = new MapCell(terrains[random.Next(4)]); map[x,y] = new MapCell((byte)random.Next(4)); //map[x, y] = (byte)random.Next(4); } } testMap = new TileMap(map, xSize, ySize); // End test map setup currentMap = testMap; } public class MapCell { //public TerrainType terrain; public byte terrain; public MapCell(byte itsTerrain) { terrain = itsTerrain; } // the type of terrain this cell is treated as /*public Terrain terrain { get; set; } public MapCell(Terrain itsTerrain) { terrain = itsTerrain; }*/ }

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  • Logging library for (c++) games

    - by Klaim
    I know a lot of logging libraries but didn't test a lot of them. (GoogleLog, Pantheios, the coming boost::log library...) In games, especially in remote multiplayer and multithreaded games, logging is vital to debugging, even if you remove all logs in the end. Let's say I'm making a PC game (not console) that needs logs (multiplayer and multithreaded and/or multiprocess) and I have good reasons for looking for a library for logging (like, I don't have time or I'm not confident in my ability to write one correctly for my case). Assuming that I need : performance ease of use (allow streaming or formating or something like that) reliable (don't leak or crash!) cross-platform (at least Windows, MacOSX, Linux/Ubuntu) Wich logging library would you recommand? Currently, I think that boost::log is the most flexible one (you can even log to remotely!), but have not good performance. Pantheios is often cited but I don't have comparison points on performance and usage. I've used my own lib for a long time but I know it don't manage multithreading so it's a big problem, even if it's fast enough. Google Log seems interesting, I just need to test it but if you already have compared those libs and more, your advice might be of good use. Games are often performance demanding while complex to debug so it would be good to know logging libraries that, in our specific case, have clear advantages.

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