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• Efficiency concerning thread granularity

  - by MaelmDev

  Lately, I've been thinking of ways to use multithreading to improve the speed of different parts of a game engine. What confuses me is the appropriate granularity of threads, especially when dealing with single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) tasks. Let's use line-of-sight detection as an example. Each AI actor must be able to detect objects of interest around them and mark them. There are three basic ways to go about this with multithreading: Don't use threading at all. Create a thread for each actor. Create a thread for each actor-object combination. Option 1 is obviously going to be the least efficient method. However, choosing between the next two options is more difficult. Only using one thread per actor is still running through every object in series instead of in parallel. However, are CPU's able to create and join threads in the granularity posed in Option 3 efficiently? It seems like that many calls to the OS could be really slow, and varying enormously between different hardware.

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• How to teach game programming at school ?

  - by jokoon

  I'm in this private school right now, and apart from my progressive stoppage of anti-depressants, I'm having an hard time focusing on what the school wants me to do. The school has a professional contract for a game we have to do with Unity. I don't really learn anything new while using unity, so I don't like using it. We recently learned how to use DirectX, and we have to do some sort of Gradius-precursor clone (Parsec) with directX, in 3D: this annoys me, and I'm currently learning to use Ogre3D by myself by making some game. The teacher is an engineer, and all of us won't be engineers. How would you teach game programming ?

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• Comparing angles and working out the difference

  - by Thomas O

  I want to compare angles and get an idea of the distance between them. For this application, I'm working in degrees, but it would also work for radians and grads. The problem with angles is that they depend on modular arithmetic, i.e. 0-360 degrees. Say one angle is at 15 degrees and one is at 45. The difference is 30 degrees, and the 45 degree angle is greater than the 15 degree one. But, this breaks down when you have, say, 345 degrees and 30 degrees. Although they compare properly, the difference between them is 315 degrees instead of the correct 45 degrees. How can I solve this? I could write algorithmic code: if(angle1 > angle2) delta_theta = 360 - angle2 - angle1; else delta_theta = angle2 - angle1; But I'd prefer a solution that avoids compares/branches, and relies entirely on arithmetic.

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• why is glVertexAttribDivisor crashing?

  - by 2am

  I am trying to render some trees with instancing. This is rather weird, but before sleeping yesterday night, I checked the code, and it was in a running state, when I got up this morning, it is crashing when I am calling glVertexAttribDivisor I haven't changed any code since yesterday. Here is how I am sending data to GPU for instancing. glGenBuffers(1, &iVBO); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, iVBO); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, (ml_instance->i_positions.size()*sizeof(glm::vec4)) , NULL, GL_STATIC_DRAW); glBufferSubData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0, (ml_instance->i_positions.size()*sizeof(glm::vec4)), &ml_instance->i_positions[0]); And then in vertex specification-- glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, iVBO); glVertexAttribPointer(i_positions, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); glEnableVertexAttribArray(i_positions); glVertexAttribDivisor(i_positions,1); // **THIS IS WHERE THE PROGRAM CRASHES** glDrawElementsInstanced(GL_TRIANGLES, indices.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, 0,TREES_INSTANCE_COUNT); I have checked ml_instance->i_positions, it has all the data that needs to render. I have checked the value of i_positions in vertex shader, it is the same as whatever I have defined there. I am little out of ideas here, everything looks pretty much fine. What am I missing?

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• Understanding Box2d Restitution & Bouncing

  - by layzrr

  I'm currently trying to implement basketball bouncing into my game using Box2d (jBox2d technically), but I'm a bit confused about restitution. While trying to create the ball in the testbed first, I've run into infinite bouncing, as described in this question, however obviously not using my own implementation. The Box2d manual describes restitution as follows: Restitution is used to make objects bounce. The restitution value is usually set to be between 0 and 1. Consider dropping a ball on a table. A value of zero means the ball won't bounce. This is called an inelastic collision. A value of one means the ball's velocity will be exactly reflected. This is called a perfectly elastic collision. My confusion lies in that I am still getting infinite bouncing with restitution values at 0.75/0.8. The same behavior can be seen in the testbed under Collision Watching - Varying Restitution, on the 6th and 7th balls. I believe the last one has restitution of 1, which makes sense, but I don't understand why the second to last ball bounces infinitely (as is happening with my working basketball I've created). I am looking to understand the restitution concept more fully, as well as look for a solution to infinite bouncing with the Box2d framework. My instinct was to sleep objects that appeared to be moving in very small increments, but this seems like a misuse of the engine. Should I just work with lower restitution values altogether?

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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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• Get Specific depth values in Kinect (XNA)

  - by N0xus

  I'm currently trying to make a hand / finger tracking with a kinect in XNA. For this, I need to be able to specify the depth range I want my program to render. I've looked about, and I cannot see how this is done. As far as I can tell, kinect's depth values only work with pre-set ranged found in the depthStream. What I would like to do is make it modular so that I can change the depth range my kinect renders. I know this has been down before but I can't find anything online that can show me how to do this. Could someone please help me out? I have made it possible to render the standard depth view with the kinect, and the method that I have made for converting the depth frame is as follows (I've a feeling its something in here I need to set) private byte[] ConvertDepthFrame(short[] depthFrame, DepthImageStream depthStream, int depthFrame32Length) { int tooNearDepth = depthStream.TooNearDepth; int tooFarDepth = depthStream.TooFarDepth; int unknownDepth = depthStream.UnknownDepth; byte[] depthFrame32 = new byte[depthFrame32Length]; for (int i16 = 0, i32 = 0; i16 < depthFrame.Length && i32 < depthFrame32.Length; i16++, i32 += 4) { int player = depthFrame[i16] & DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmask; int realDepth = depthFrame[i16] >> DepthImageFrame.PlayerIndexBitmaskWidth; // transform 13-bit depth information into an 8-bit intensity appropriate // for display (we disregard information in most significant bit) byte intensity = (byte)(~(realDepth >> 8)); if (player == 0 && realDepth == 00) { // white depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex] = 255; depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex] = 255; depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex] = 255; } // omitted other if statements. Simple changed the color of the pixels if they went out of the pre=set depth values else { // tint the intensity by dividing by per-player values depthFrame32[i32 + RedIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerR[player]); depthFrame32[i32 + GreenIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerG[player]); depthFrame32[i32 + BlueIndex] = (byte)(intensity >> IntensityShiftByPlayerB[player]); } } return depthFrame32; } I have a strong hunch it's something I need to change in the int player and int realDepth values, but i can't be sure.

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• Impact of variable-length loops on GPU shaders

  - by Will

  Its popular to render procedural content inside the GPU e.g. in the demoscene (drawing a single quad to fill the screen and letting the GPU compute the pixels). Ray marching is popular: This means the GPU is executing some unknown number of loop iterations per pixel (although you can have an upper bound like maxIterations). How does having a variable-length loop affect shader performance? Imagine the simple ray-marching psuedocode: t = 0.f; while(t < maxDist) { p = rayStart + rayDir * t; d = DistanceFunc(p); t += d; if(d < epsilon) { ... emit p return; } } How are the various mainstream GPU families (Nvidia, ATI, PowerVR, Mali, Intel, etc) affected? Vertex shaders, but particularly fragment shaders? How can it be optimised?

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• Kinect Hand tracking in xna

  - by N0xus

  I'm trying to create an application using the Kinect to simulate the following project: Kinect Hand Tracking I want my project to have similar usability with the Kinect tracking hand and finger positions for use in a menu system, or to navigate another system. What I would like to know is; is it possible for the exact same to be accomplished in XNA using Kinect? I know that it can be done in Winform / C#, but I know XNA / C# a lot better and would (ideally) prefer to use that.

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• Easiest turn-base games you can think of?

  - by Edgar Miranda

  I'm planning to get into the process of programming multiplayer turn-base games. I would like to start off by making some of the simplest (yet fun) multiplayer turn-base games out there. What are some that you can provide? For example... Tic-Tac-Toe Rock-Paper-Scissors Checkers Some not so easy games... 4 in a row chess poker In terms of "ease" of implementation I'm mainly looking at logic. For example, Rock-Paper-Scissors has very simple logic, while chess has logic that is more complicated. So far I have the following: Hexagon Heroes of Might and Magic Nine Men's Morris Connect 4 21 (card game) Pen the Pig (The Dot game) Memory Match

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• Having troubles with LibNoise.XNA and generating tileable maps

  - by Jon

  Following up on my previous post, I found a wonderful port of LibNoise for XNA. I've been working with it for about 8 hours straight and I'm tearing my hair out - I just can not get maps to tile, I can't figure out how to do this. Here's my attempt: Perlin perlin = new Perlin(1.2, 1.95, 0.56, 12, 2353, QualityMode.Medium); RiggedMultifractal rigged = new RiggedMultifractal(); Add add = new Add(perlin, rigged); // Initialize the noise map int mapSize = 64; this.m_noiseMap = new Noise2D(mapSize, perlin); //this.m_noiseMap.GeneratePlanar(0, 1, -1, 1); // Generate the textures this.m_noiseMap.GeneratePlanar(-1,1,-1,1); this.m_textures[0] = this.m_noiseMap.GetTexture(this.graphics.GraphicsDevice, Gradient.Grayscale); this.m_noiseMap.GeneratePlanar(mapSize, mapSize * 2, mapSize, mapSize * 2); this.m_textures[1] = this.m_noiseMap.GetTexture(this.graphics.GraphicsDevice, Gradient.Grayscale); this.m_noiseMap.GeneratePlanar(-1, 1, -1, 1); this.m_textures[2] = this.m_noiseMap.GetTexture(this.graphics.GraphicsDevice, Gradient.Grayscale); The first and third ones generate fine, they create a perlin noise map - however the middle one, which I wanted to be a continuation of the first (As per my original post), is just a bunch of static. How exactly do I get this to generate maps that connect to each other, by entering in the mapsize * tile, using the same seed, settings, etc.?

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• How to create a thread in XNA for pathfinding?

  - by Dan

  I am trying to create a separate thread for my enemy's A* pathfinder which will give me a list of points to get to the player. I have placed the thread in the update method of my enemy. However this seems to cause jittering in the game every-time the thread is called. I have tried calling just the method and this works fine. Is there any way I can sort this out so that I can have the pathfinder on its own thread? Do I need to remove the thread start from the update and start it in the constructor? Is there any way this can work? Here is the code at the moment: bool running = false; bool threadstarted; System.Threading.Thread thread; public void update() { if (running == false && threadstarted == false) { thread = new System.Threading.Thread(PathThread); //thread.Priority = System.Threading.ThreadPriority.Lowest; thread.IsBackground = true; thread.Start(startandendobj); //PathThread(startandendobj); threadstarted = true; } } public void PathThread(object Startandend) { object[] Startandendarray = (object[])Startandend; Point startpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[0]; Point endpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[1]; bool runnable = true; // Path find from 255, 255 to 0,0 on the map foreach(Tile tile in Map) { if(tile.Color == Color.Red) { if (tile.Position.Contains(endpoint)) { runnable = false; } } } if(runnable == true) { running = true; Pathfinder p = new Pathfinder(Map); pathway = p.FindPath(startpoint, endpoint); running = false; threadstarted = false; } }

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• How should I plan the inheritance structure for my game?

  - by Eric Thoma

  I am trying to write a platform shooter in C++ with a really good class structure for robustness. The game itself is secondary; it is the learning process of writing it that is primary. I am implementing an inheritance tree for all of the objects in my game, but I find myself unsure on some decisions. One specific issue that it bugging me is this: I have an Actor that is simply defined as anything in the game world. Under Actor is Character. Both of these classes are abstract. Under Character is the Philosopher, who is the main character that the user commands. Also under Character is NPC, which uses an AI module with stock routines for friendly, enemy and (maybe) neutral alignments. So under NPC I want to have three subclasses: FriendlyNPC, EnemyNPC and NeutralNPC. These classes are not abstract, and will often be subclassed in order to make different types of NPC's, like Engineer, Scientist and the most evil Programmer. Still, if I want to implement a generic NPC named Kevin, it would nice to be able to put him in without making a new class for him. I could just instantiate a FriendlyNPC and pass some values for the AI machine and for the dialogue; that would be ideal. But what if Kevin is the one benevolent Programmer in the whole world? Now we must make a class for him (but what should it be called?). Now we have a character that should inherit from Programmer (as Kevin has all the same abilities but just uses the friendly AI functions) but also should inherit from FriendlyNPC. Programmer and FriendlyNPC branched away from each other on the inheritance tree, so inheriting from both of them would have conflicts, because some of the same functions have been implemented in different ways on the two of them. 1) Is there a better way to order these classes to avoid these conflicts? Having three subclasses; Friendly, Enemy and Neutral; from each type of NPC; Engineer, Scientist, and Programmer; would amount to a huge number of classes. I would share specific implementation details, but I am writing the game slowly, piece by piece, and so I haven't implemented past Character yet. 2) Is there a place where I can learn these programming paradigms? I am already trying to take advantage of some good design patterns, like MVC architecture and Mediator objects. The whole point of this project is to write something in good style. It is difficult to tell what should become a subclass and what should become a state (i.e. Friendly boolean v. Friendly class). Having many states slows down code with if statements and makes classes long and unwieldy. On the other hand, having a class for everything isn't practical. 3) Are there good rules of thumb or resources to learn more about this? 4) Finally, where does templating come in to this? How should I coordinate templates into my class structure? I have never actually taken advantage of templating honestly, but I hear that it increases modularity, which means good code.

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• How can I improve my Animation

  - by sharethis

  The first approaches in animation for my game relied mostly on sine and cosine functions with the time as parameter. Here is an example of a very basic jump I implemented. if(jumping) { height = sin(time); if(height < 0) jumping = false; // player landed player.position.z = height; } if(keydown(SPACE) && !jumping) { jumping = true; time = now(); // store the starting time } So my player jumped in a perfect sine function. That seems quite natural, because he slows down when he reached the top position, and in the fall he speeds up again. But patching every animation out of sine and cosine is stretched to its limits soon. So can I improve my animation and provide a more abstract layer?

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• Problem with DirectX scene-graph

  - by Alex

  I'm trying to implement a basic scene graph in DirectX using C++. I am using a left child-right sibling binary tree to do this. I'm having trouble updating each node's world transformation relative to its parent (and its parent's parent etc.). I'm struggling to get it to work recursively, though I can get it to work like this: for(int i = 0; i < NUM_OBJECTS; i++) { // Initialize to identity matrix. D3DXMatrixIdentity(&mObject[i].toWorldXForm); int k = i; while( k != -1 ) { mObject[i].toWorldXForm *= mObject[k].toParentXForm; k = mObject[k].parent; } } toWorldXForm is the object's world transform and toParentXForm is the object's transform relative to the parent. I want to do this using a method within my object class (the code above is in my main class). This is what I've tried but it doesn't work (only works with nodes 1 generation away from the root) if (this->sibling != NULL) this->sibling->update(toParentXForm); D3DXMatrixIdentity(&toWorldXForm); this->toWorldXForm *= this->toParentXForm; this->toWorldXForm *= toParentXForm; toParentXForm *= this->toParentXForm; if (this->child != NULL) this->child->update(toParentXForm); Sorry if I've not been clear, please tell me if there's anything else you need to know. I've no doubt it's merely a silly mistake on my part, hopefully an outside view will be able to spot the problem.

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• Can SpriteBatch be used to fill a polygon with a texture?

  - by can poyrazoglu

  I basically need to fill a texture into a polygon using the SpriteBatch. I've done some research but couldn't find anything useful except polygon triangulation method, which works well only with convex polygons (without diving into super math which is definitely not something I'm pretty good at). Are there any solutions for filling in a polygon in a basic way? I of course need something dynamic (I'll have a map editor that you can define polygons, and the game will render them (and collision detection will also use them but that's off topic), basically I can't accept solutions like "pre-calculated" bitmaps or anything like that. I need to draw a polygon with the segments provided, to the screen, using the SpriteBatch.

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• Trying to figure out SDL pixel manipulation?

  - by NoobScratcher

  Hello so I've found code that plots a pixel in an SDL Screen Surface : void putpixels(int x, int y, int color) { unsigned int *ptr = (unsigned int*)Screen->pixels; int lineoffset = y * (Screen->pitch / 4 ); ptr[lineoffset + x ] = color; } But I have no idea what its actually doing here this is my thoughts. You make an unsigned integer to hold the unsigned int version of pixels then you make another integer to hold the line offset and it equals to multiply by pitch which is then divided by 4 ... Now why am I dividing it by 4 and what is the pitch and why do I multiply it?? Why must I change the lineoffset and add it to the x value then equal it to colors? I'm soo confused.. ;/ I found this function here - http://sol.gfxile.net/gp/ch02.html

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• Move projectile in direction the gun is facing

  - by Manderin87

  I am attempting to have a projectile follow the direction a gun is facing. When using the following code I am unable to make the projectile go in the right direction. float speed = .5f; float dX = (float) -Math.cos(Math.toRadians(degree)) * speed; float dY = (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(degree)) * speed; Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? The degree is the direction the gun is facing in degree's.

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• Is it safe StringToHash() to use in Unity?

  - by Sebastian Krysmanski

  I'm currently browsing through the Unity tutorials and saw that they're recommending to use Animator.StringToHash("some string") to created unique ids for animation properties (see here). Since I'm a programmer, to me the word "hash" doesn't represents something unique. Like the Java documentation for hashValue() states: It is not required that if two objects are unequal [...], then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results. So, according to this (and my definition of "hash"), two strings may have the same hash value. (You can also argue that there are an infinite number of possible strings but only 2^32 possible int values.) So, is there a possibility that StringToHash() will give me an id that actually belongs to another property (than the one I requested the hash for)?

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• Interacting with scene from controller/app delegate cocos2d

  - by cjroebuck

  I'm attempting to make my first cocos2d (for iphone) multiplayer game and having difficulty understanding how to interact with a scene once it is running. The game is a simple turn-based one and so I have a GameController class which co-ordinates the rounds. I also have a GameScene class which is the actual scene that is displayed during a round of the game. The basic interaction I need is for the GameController to be able to pass messages to the GameScene class.. such as StartRound/StopRound etc. The thing that complicates this is that I am loading the GameScene with a LoadingScene class which simply initialises the scene and replaces the current scene with this one, so there is no reference from GameController to GameScene, so passing messages is quite tricky. Does anyone have any ways to get around this, ideally I would still like to use a Loading class as it smooths out the memory hit when replacing scenes.

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• What calls trigger a new batch?

  - by sebf

  I am finding my project is starting to show performance degradation and I need to optimize it. The answer to my previous question and this presentation from NVidia have helped greatly in understanding the performance characteristics of code using the GPU but there are a couple of things that aren't clear that I need to know to optimize my drawing. Specifically, what calls make the distinction between batches. I know that any state changes cause a new batch, so that includes: Render State Changes Buffer Changes Shader Changes Render Target Changes Correct? What else counts as a 'state change'? Does each Draw**Primitive() call constitute a new batch? Even if I were to issue the same call twice, with no state changes, or call it once on on part of the buffer, then again on another? If I were to update a buffer, but not change the bindings, would that be a new batch? That presentation and a DX9 page suggest using all of the texture slots available, which I take to mean loading multiple objects in 'parallel' by mapping their buffers/shaders/textures to slots 1-16. But I am not sure how this works - surely to do this you would need to change the buffer binding and that would count as a state change? (or is it a case of you do but it saves 16 calls so its OK?)

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• Explicit resource loading in Ogre (Mogre)

  - by sebf

  I am just starting to learn Mogre and what I would like to do is to be able to load resources 'explicitly' (i.e. I just provide an absolute path instead of using a resource group tied to a directory). This is very different to manually loading resources, which I believe in Ogre has a very specific meaning, to build up the object using Ogres methods. I want to use Ogres resource management system/resource loading code, but to have finer control over which files are loaded and in what groups they are. I remember reading how to do this but cannot find the page again; I think its possible to do something like: Declare a resource group Declare the resource(s) (this is when the actual resource file name is provided) Initialise the resource group to actually load the resource(s) Is this the correct procedure? If so, is there any example code showing how to do this?

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• Automatically zoom out the camera to show all players (XNA)

  - 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 persepective 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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• How to use the float value from Noise function in voxel terrain?

  - by therealjohn

  Im using Unity, although this question is not really specific to that engine. Im also using an asset from the store called Coherent Noise. It has some neat noise functionality built it. I am using those functions to produce some noise values. I am getting a value between 0 and 1 (floats). I have an array of blocks (for minecraft like voxel terrain) and I am confused on how to use this float value for terrain? Do I do something like <= 0 == Solid block etc etc? I am confused on how to use the floating values that the noise functions produce to use for height values of an array of say a height of 16. Thanks for any guidance.

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• How to effectively gather info about how players play my HTML5 game?

  - by Bane

  I'm finishing another HTML5 game, and this time I'd like to do some spying business on the players... Mostly just basic stuff: when they are playing, for how long, what upgrades they are buying the most and so on. Now, my first idea was just to collect this information during the gameplay, and then have a Javascript function fire when they close the tab/browser, and said function would send it to my server via Socket.io. This, of course, wouldn't work, because anyone who takes a look at the code would realize it and could start sending a tonne of false info which would mess up my statistics. Questions: Is there a way to effectively do this? If yes, what kind of info should I be looking for, aside from stuff I already mentioned?

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