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• How to port animation from one skeleton to another?

  - by shawn

  While I need to do this in a Blender3D modeler script, the math should be similar for other modelers or realtime engines. Blender3D specific terminology: Armature = skeleton EditBone = rest pose bone (stores the rest pose matrix) PoseBone = can store a different pose (animation matrix) for each frame of your animation I need to share animations (Blender Actions) between Armatures which have EditBones with same names and which have the same positions, but can have different (rest pose) angles and scales. Plus the Armatures might have different bone hierarchy (bone parenting/ no bone parenting). Why I need this: I've made an importer/exporter for a 3d format for a game. The format doesn't store enough info to connect/parent the bones, which makes posing/animating character models in a 3d modeller nearly impossible (original model files for the 3d modeler don't exist, this is for modding). As there are only 2 character skeleton types in the game, I decided to optionally allow to generate the bone from a hardcoded data in the model importer and undo that in the exporter. This allows to easily pose the model for checking weights, easily create weights, makes it easier for Blender to generate automatic weights and of course makes animating possible. This worked perfectly: the importer optionally generated the Armature itself and the exporter removed those changes, so the exported model works with existing animations in the game. But now I'm writing an importer and exporter for the game's animation format and here come the problems of: Trying to make original animations work in Blender with my "custom" (modified) Armature Trying to make animations created by using the "custom" (modified) Armature work with the original models in the game (and Blender). Constraints or bone snapping inside Blender won't work as they don't care that the bones have different angles in the rest pose, they will still face the same direction. It seems I just need to get the "difference" between the EditBone matrices of all EditBones for the two Armatures somehow and apply that difference to PoseBone matrices of all PoseBones, for all frames of my animation. I need to know how to get that difference and how to apply it. BTW, PoseBone matrices are relative to rest pose, they are by default [1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 0]) [0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 1]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 2]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000](matrix [row 3]) So the question is: How to get the difference between two bone (EditBone) matrices to apply that difference to the animation matrices (PoseBone matrices)? Please be easy on the matrix math.

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• Custom Music in Skyrim's Creation Kit?

  - by CptSupermrkt

  Can you bring in external music such as mp3s? If so, how? I didn't see anything about this in the wiki Bethesda released. Also how does this work with regards to the Steam Workshop? Don't imagine they would appreciate uploading copyrighted content. I don't particularly care about making a public mod, I just want to screw around privately and create dungeons/towns using music from some of my favorite games. Thanks.

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• Difference between the terms Material & Effect

  - by codey

  I'm making an effect system right now (I think, because it may be a material system... or both!). The effects system follows the common (e.g. COLLADA, DirectX) effect framework abstraction of Effects have Techniques, Techniques have Passes, Passes have States & Shader Programs. An effect, according to COLLADA, defines the equations necessary for the visual appearance of geometry and screen-space image processing. Keeping with the abstraction, effects contain techniques. Each effect can contain one or many techniques (i.e. ways to generate the effect), each of which describes a different method for rendering that effect. The technique could be relate to quality (e.g. high precision, high LOD, etc.), or in-game-situation (e.g. night/day, power-up-mode, etc.). Techniques hold a description of the textures, samplers, shaders, parameters, & passes necessary for rendering this effect using one method. Some algorithms require several passes to render the effect. Pipeline descriptions are broken into an ordered collection of Pass objects. A pass provides a static declaration of all the render states, shaders, & settings for "one rendering pipeline" (i.e. one pass). Meshes usually contain a series of materials that define the model. According to the COLLADA spec (again), a material instantiates an effect, fills its parameters with values, & selects a technique. But I see material defined differently in other places, such as just the Lambert, Blinn, Phong "material types/shaded surfaces", or as Metal, Plastic, Wood, etc. In game dev forums, people often talk about implementing a "material/effect system". Is the material not an instance of an effect? Ergo, if I had effect objects, stored in a collection, & each effect instance object with there own parameter setting, then there is no need for the concept of a material... Or am I interpreting it wrong? Please help by contributing your interpretations as I want to be clear on a distinction (if any), & don't want to miss out on the concept of a material if it should be implemented to follow the abstraction of the DirectX FX framework & COLLADA definitions closely.

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• Trying to implement fling events on an object

  - by Adam Short

  I have a game object, well a bitmap, which I'd like to "fling". I'm struggling to get it to fling ontouchlistener due to it being a bitmap and not sure how to proceed and I'm struggling to find the resources to help. Here's my code so far: https://github.com/addrum/Shapes GameActivity class: package com.main.shapes; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.Context; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.graphics.Canvas; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.GestureDetector; import android.view.MotionEvent; import android.view.SurfaceHolder; import android.view.SurfaceView; import android.view.View.OnTouchListener; import android.view.Window; public class GameActivity extends Activity { private GestureDetector gestureDetector; View view; Bitmap ball; float x, y; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); //Remove title bar this.requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); view = new View(this); ball = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.ball); gestureDetector = new GestureDetector(this, new GestureListener()); x = 0; y = 0; setContentView(view); ball.setOnTouchListener(new OnTouchListener() { @Override public boolean onTouch(android.view.View v, MotionEvent event) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return false; } }); } @Override protected void onPause() { super.onPause(); view.pause(); } @Override protected void onResume() { super.onResume(); view.resume(); } public class View extends SurfaceView implements Runnable { Thread thread = null; SurfaceHolder holder; boolean canRun = false; public View(Context context) { super(context); holder = getHolder(); } public void run() { while (canRun) { if (!holder.getSurface().isValid()) { continue; } Canvas c = holder.lockCanvas(); c.drawARGB(255, 255, 255, 255); c.drawBitmap(ball, x - (ball.getWidth() / 2), y - (ball.getHeight() / 2), null); holder.unlockCanvasAndPost(c); } } public void pause() { canRun = false; while (true) { try { thread.join(); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } break; } thread = null; } public void resume() { canRun = true; thread = new Thread(this); thread.start(); } } } GestureListener class: package com.main.shapes; import android.view.GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener; import android.view.MotionEvent; public class GestureListener extends SimpleOnGestureListener { private static final int SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE = 120; private static final int SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY = 200; @Override public boolean onFling(MotionEvent e1, MotionEvent e2, float velocityX, float velocityY) { if (e1.getX() - e2.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) { //From Right to Left return true; } else if (e2.getX() - e1.getX() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) { //From Left to Right return true; } if (e1.getY() - e2.getY() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityY) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) { //From Bottom to Top return true; } else if (e2.getY() - e1.getY() > SWIPE_MIN_DISTANCE && Math.abs(velocityY) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD_VELOCITY) { //From Top to Bottom return true; } return false; } @Override public boolean onDown(MotionEvent e) { //always return true since all gestures always begin with onDown and<br> //if this returns false, the framework won't try to pick up onFling for example. return true; } }

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• What light attenuation function does UDK use?

  - by ananamas

  I'm a big fan of the light attenuation in UDK. Traditionally I've always used the constant-linear-quadratic falloff function to control how "soft" the falloff is, which gives three values to play with. In UDK you can get similar results, but you only need to tweak one value: FalloffExponent. I'm interested in what the actual mathematical function here is. The UDK lighting reference describes it as follows: FalloffExponent: This allows you to modify the falloff of a light. The default falloff is 2. The smaller the number, the sharper the falloff and the more the brightness is maintained until the radius is reached. Does anyone know what it's doing behind the scenes?

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• How to fetch only the sprites in the player's range of motion for collision testing? (2D, axis aligned sprites)

  - by Twodordan

  I am working on a 2D sprite game for educational purposes. (In case you want to know, it uses WebGl and Javascript) I've implemented movement using the Euler method (and delta time) to keep things simple. Now I'm trying to tackle collisions. The way I wrote things, my game only has rectangular sprites (axis aligned, never rotated) of various/variable sizes. So I need to figure out what I hit and which side of the target sprite I hit (and I'm probably going to use these intersection tests). The old fashioned method seems to be to use tile based grids, to target only a few tiles at a time, but that sounds silly and impractical for my game. (Splitting the whole level into blocks, having each sprite's bounding box fit multiple blocks I might abide. But if the sprites change size and move around, you have to keep changing which tiles they belong to, every frame, it doesn't sound right.) In Flash you can test collision under one point, but it's not efficient to iterate through all the elements on stage each frame. (hence why people use the tile method). Bottom line is, I'm trying to figure out how to test only the elements within the player's range of motion. (I know how to get the range of motion, I have a good idea of how to write a collisionCheck(playerSprite, targetSprite) function. But how do I know which sprites are currently in the player's vicinity to fetch only them?) Please discuss. Cheers!

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• Making organic 2D tilemaps for tile based games...

  - by Codejoy

  So I have always wondered how one makes a nice (not so squarish) 2d tile map, is it possible? all games now days I think use textured polygons...but my game engine (and engine) doesn't support that to my knowledge. But it does support nice TMX files generated by mapeditor.org's Tiled Map Editor. Though in my game I want nice twisting and turning caverns to traverse ... I was wondering some ideas on such a process... is it in the art style? The type of tile engine? both? So what are some common techniques?

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• How to store character moves (sprite animations)?

  - by Saad

  So I'm thinking about making a small rpg, mainly to test out different design patterns I've been learning about. But the one question that I'm not too sure on how to approach is how to store an array of character moves in the best way possible. So let's say I have arrays of different sprites. This is how I'm thinking about implementing it: array attack = new array (10); array attack2 = new array(5); (loop) //blit some image attack.push(imageInstance); (end loop) Now every time I want the animation I call on attack or attack2; is there a better structure? The problem with this is let's say there are 100 different attacks, and a player can have up to 10 attacks equipped. So how do I tell which attack the user has; should I use a hash map?

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• Help comparing Cocos2d and Unity3d for this project.....

  - by Omega

  I will not go into details, but I would like to hear your opinions about this: Essentially, my project will be a 2d game, with lots of complex levels, where some might be simple and others might be a bit more deep, with physics, etc. We want to implement our very own online structure: logging in, leaderboards, achievements, friends etc with our own servers. This means no OpenFeint nor GameCenter at all. We expect this game to be very large in both graphics and audio. We wish to use in-app purchases. Now, we considered two options. Cocos2d and Unity3d. We need help deciding using the factors I mentioned before (networking, good performance even for a large game in terms of graphics and audio like this, in-app purchases, etc) which option would fit better this? Technically, both options can create 2d games. I'd like to hear your opinion.

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• My grid based collision detection is slow

  - by Fibericon

  Something about my implementation of a basic 2x4 grid for collision detection is slow - so slow in fact, that it's actually faster to simply check every bullet from every enemy to see if the BoundingSphere intersects with that of my ship. It becomes noticeably slow when I have approximately 1000 bullets on the screen (36 enemies shooting 3 bullets every .5 seconds). By commenting it out bit by bit, I've determined that the code used to add them to the grid is what's slowest. Here's how I add them to the grid: for (int i = 0; i < enemy[x].gun.NumBullets; i++) { if (enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].isActive) { enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].Update(timeDelta); int bulletPosition = 0; if (enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.Y < 0) { bulletPosition = (int)Math.Floor((enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.X + 900) / 450); } else { bulletPosition = (int)Math.Floor((enemy[x].gun.bulletList[i].position.X + 900) / 450) + 4; } GridItem bulletItem = new GridItem(); bulletItem.index = i; bulletItem.type = 5; bulletItem.parentIndex = x; if (bulletPosition > -1 && bulletPosition < 8) { if (!grid[bulletPosition].Contains(bulletItem)) { for (int j = 0; j < grid.Length; j++) { grid[j].Remove(bulletItem); } grid[bulletPosition].Add(bulletItem); } } } } And here's how I check if it collides with the ship: if (ship.isActive && !ship.invincible) { BoundingSphere shipSphere = new BoundingSphere( ship.Position, ship.Model.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere.Radius * 9.0f); for (int i = 0; i < grid.Length; i++) { if (grid[i].Contains(shipItem)) { for (int j = 0; j < grid[i].Count; j++) { //Other collision types omitted else if (grid[i][j].type == 5) { if (enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].isActive) { BoundingSphere bulletSphere = new BoundingSphere(enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].position, enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletModel.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere.Radius); if (shipSphere.Intersects(bulletSphere)) { ship.health -= enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.damage; enemy[grid[i][j].parentIndex].gun.bulletList[grid[i][j].index].isActive = false; grid[i].RemoveAt(j); break; //no need to check other bullets } } else { grid[i].RemoveAt(j); } } What am I doing wrong here? I thought a grid implementation would be faster than checking each one.

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• Best practices for implementing collectible virtual item "packs"?

  - by Glenn Barnett

  I'm in the process of building a game in which virtual items can be obtained either by in-game play (defeating enemies, gaining levels), or by purchasing "packs" via microtransactions. Looking at an existing example like Duels.com's item packs, it looks like a lot of thought went into their implementation, including: Setting clear player expectations as to what can be obtained in the pack Limiting pack supply to increase demand and control inflation Are there other considerations that should be taken into account? For example, should the contents of the packs be pre-generated to guarantee the advertised drop rates, or is each drop rate just a random chance, and you could end up with higher or lower supply?

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• GUI device for throwing a ball

  - by Fredrik Johansson

  The hero has a ball, which shall be thrown with accuracy in a court on iPhone/iPad. The player is seen from above, in a 2D view. In game play, the player reach is between 1/15 and 1/6 of the height of the iPhone screen. The player will run, and try to outmaneuver his opponent, and then throw the ball at a specific location, which is guarded by the opponent (which is also shown on the screen). The player is controlled by a joystick, and that works ok, but how shall I control the stick? Maybe someone can propose a third control method? I've tried the following two approaches: Joystick: Hero has a reach of 1 meter, and this reach is marked with a semi-opaque circle around the player. The ball can be moved by a joystick. When the joystick is moved south, the ball is moved south within the reach circle. There is a direct coupling with the joystick and the position of the ball. I.e. when the joystick is moved max south, the ball is max south within the player reach. At each touch update the speed is calculated, and the Box2d ball position and ball speed are updated. NB, the ball will never be moved outside the reach as long as the player push the joystick. The ball is thrown by swiping the joystick to make the ball move, and then releasing the joystick. At release, the ball will get a smoothed speed of the joystick. Joystick Problem: The throwing accuracy gets bad, because the joystick can not be that big, and a small movement results in quite a large movement of the ball. If the user does not release before the end of the joystick maximum end point, the ball will stop, and when the user releases the joystick the speed of the ball will be zero. Bad... Touch pad A force is applied to the ball by a sweep on a touchpad. The ball is released when the sweep is ended, or when the ball is moved outside the player reach. As there is no one to one mapping between the swipe and the ball position, the precision can be improved. A large swipe can result in a small ball movement. Touch Pad Problem A touchpad is less intuitive. Users do not seem to know what to do with the touch pad. Some tap the touchpad, and then the ball just falls to the ground. As there is no one-to-one mapping, the ball can be moved outside the reach, and then it will just fall to the ground. It's a bit hard to control the ball, especially if the player also moves.

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• The best way to structure/design game code

  - by Edward

  My question is quite broad and related to the 2D game code design/architecture/structure. Usually the main game consists of the main loop where you update & render your world states. However, it's recommended for many purposes to separate rendering from the game-logic and so on. I am kinda confused about the whole situation. Many game engines/libs/sdks don't follow separation schema. They propagate a way where you define some scenes/stages and they contain some objects and the scene/stage controls the user input and so on. For example, in cocos2d(-x) and libgdx (stage2d) the games are usually done the way that the update logic happens at the same time/place as rendering. Also, the propagated way is to have a structure where an object knows how to draw itself - which is not a separation of updating & rendering. The same with Flash based games, they are usually done the way when an object (class) contains a swf or a texture and some data and holds some update logic itself, or updated from main Scene. And again this object already knows how to draw itself via "addChild". Also, some people recommend to use MVC pattern, which will require to completely obey the structure of those engines/libs/sdks. Maybe I am overthinking everything, but I am totally confused. I would be grateful if somebody could point me to a correct direction with the game code structures. What is your way of doing things in libgdx/cocos2d/flash?

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• How can I view an R32G32B32 texture?

  - by bobobobo

  I have a texture with R32G32B32 floats. I create this texture in-program on D3D11, using DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32_FLOAT. Now I need to see the texture data for debug purposes, but it will not save to anything but dds, showing the error in debug output, "Can't find matching WIC format, please save this file to a DDS". So, I write it to DDS but I can't open it now! The DirectX texture tool says "An error occurred trying to open that file". I know the texture is working because I can read it in the GPU and the colors seem correct. How can I view an R32G32B32 texture in an image viewer?

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• Make Pong on android using OpenGL-ES

  - by brainydexter

  I am trying to make a simple pong game using opengl-es. I have checked out some of the tutorials/samples, but most of them are pre-dated to 2009. I am familiar with game programming, and consider pong to be the hello-world! Right now, I intend to make it using their supplied SDK (2.3), but eventually I want to make it in NDK, so I can port my other work to android. Would anyone have a good reference for a starting point ? Thanks

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• Basic tutorial/introduction for 3d matrices, idealy in c++, without openGl or directX

  - by René Nyffenegger

  I am wondering if there is a simple tutorial that covers the basics of how to initialize rotation, translation and projection matrices, and how to multiply them, and how to get the screen coordinates afterwards for a 3d point. Idealy, the tutorial comes with compilable code and is not dependent on any 3rd party library. Searching the internet, I found lots of tutorials, so this is not the problem. Yet, it seemed all of these either covered openGl or directX, or they were theoretical in nature.

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• runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference

  - by Klink

  I want to learn OpenGL 3.0 with golang. But when i try to compile some code, i get many errors. package main import ( "os" //"errors" "fmt" //gl "github.com/chsc/gogl/gl33" //"github.com/jteeuwen/glfw" "github.com/go-gl/gl" "github.com/go-gl/glfw" "runtime" "time" ) var ( width int = 640 height int = 480 ) var ( points = []float32{0.0, 0.8, -0.8, -0.8, 0.8, -0.8} ) func initScene() { gl.Init() gl.ClearColor(0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.0) gl.Enable(gl.CULL_FACE) gl.Viewport(0, 0, 800, 600) } func glfwInitWindowContext() { if err := glfw.Init(); err != nil { fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "glfw_Init: %s\n", err) glfw.Terminate() } glfw.OpenWindowHint(glfw.FsaaSamples, 1) glfw.OpenWindowHint(glfw.WindowNoResize, 1) if err := glfw.OpenWindow(width, height, 0, 0, 0, 0, 32, 0, glfw.Windowed); err != nil { fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "glfw_Window: %s\n", err) glfw.CloseWindow() } glfw.SetSwapInterval(1) glfw.SetWindowTitle("Title") } func drawScene() { for glfw.WindowParam(glfw.Opened) == 1 { gl.Clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT) vertexShaderSrc := `#version 120 attribute vec2 coord2d; void main(void) { gl_Position = vec4(coord2d, 0.0, 1.0); }` vertexShader := gl.CreateShader(gl.VERTEX_SHADER) vertexShader.Source(vertexShaderSrc) vertexShader.Compile() fragmentShaderSrc := `#version 120 void main(void) { gl_FragColor[0] = 0.0; gl_FragColor[1] = 0.0; gl_FragColor[2] = 1.0; }` fragmentShader := gl.CreateShader(gl.FRAGMENT_SHADER) fragmentShader.Source(fragmentShaderSrc) fragmentShader.Compile() program := gl.CreateProgram() program.AttachShader(vertexShader) program.AttachShader(fragmentShader) program.Link() attribute_coord2d := program.GetAttribLocation("coord2d") program.Use() //attribute_coord2d.AttribPointer(size, typ, normalized, stride, pointer) attribute_coord2d.EnableArray() attribute_coord2d.AttribPointer(0, 3, false, 0, &(points[0])) //gl.DrawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, len(points)) gl.DrawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 3) glfw.SwapBuffers() inputHandler() time.Sleep(100 * time.Millisecond) } } func inputHandler() { glfw.Enable(glfw.StickyKeys) if glfw.Key(glfw.KeyEsc) == glfw.KeyPress { //gl.DeleteBuffers(2, &uiVBO[0]) glfw.Terminate() } if glfw.Key(glfw.KeyF2) == glfw.KeyPress { glfw.SetWindowTitle("Title2") fmt.Println("Changed to 'Title2'") fmt.Println(len(points)) } if glfw.Key(glfw.KeyF1) == glfw.KeyPress { glfw.SetWindowTitle("Title1") fmt.Println("Changed to 'Title1'") } } func main() { runtime.LockOSThread() glfwInitWindowContext() initScene() drawScene() } And after that: panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [signal 0xb code=0x1 addr=0x0 pc=0x41bc6f74] goroutine 1 [syscall]: github.com/go-gl/gl._Cfunc_glDrawArrays(0x4, 0x7f8500000003) /tmp/go-build463568685/github.com/go-gl/gl/_obj/_cgo_defun.c:610 +0x2f github.com/go-gl/gl.DrawArrays(0x4, 0x3, 0x0, 0x45bd70) /tmp/go-build463568685/github.com/go-gl/gl/_obj/gl.cgo1.go:1922 +0x33 main.drawScene() /home/klink/Dev/Go/gogl/gopher/exper.go:85 +0x1e6 main.main() /home/klink/Dev/Go/gogl/gopher/exper.go:116 +0x27 goroutine 2 [syscall]: created by runtime.main /build/buildd/golang-1/src/pkg/runtime/proc.c:221 exit status 2

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• What is the format of DXGI_FORMAT_D24_UNORM_S8_UINT?

  - by bobobobo

  I'm trying to read the values in a depth texture of type DXGI_FORMAT_D24_UNORM_S8_UINT. I know this means "24 bits for depth, 8 bits for stencil" "A 32-bit z-buffer format that supports 24 bits for depth and 8 bits for stencil.", but how do you interpret those 24 bits? It's clearly not going to be a 32-bit int, and it's not going to be a 32-bit float. If it is an integer value, how "far away" is a value of "1" in the depth texture?

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• What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

  - by Michael

  What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

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• Gap in parallaxing background loop

  - by CinetiK

  The bug here is that my background kind of offset a bit itself from where it should draw and so I have this line. I have some troubles understanding why I get this bug when I set a speed that is different then 1,2,4,8,16,... In main class I set the speed depending on the player speed bgSpeed = -(int)playerMoveSpeed.X / 10; and here's my background class class ParallaxingBackground { Texture2D texture; Vector2[] positions; public int Speed { get; set;} public void Initialize(ContentManager content, String texturePath, int screenWidth, int speed) { texture = content.Load<Texture2D>(texturePath); this.Speed = speed; positions = new Vector2[screenWidth / texture.Width + 2]; for (int i = 0; i < positions.Length; i++) { positions[i] = new Vector2(i * texture.Width, 0); } } public void Update() { for (int i = 0; i < positions.Length; i++) { positions[i].X += Speed; if (Speed <= 0) { if (positions[i].X <= -texture.Width) { positions[i].X = texture.Width * (positions.Length - 1); } } else { if (positions[i].X >= texture.Width*(positions.Length - 1)) { positions[i].X = -texture.Width; } } } } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { for (int i = 0; i < positions.Length; i++) { spriteBatch.Draw(texture, positions[i], Color.White); } } }

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• Does DirectX implement Triple Buffering?

  - by Asik

  As AnandTech put it best in this 2009 article: In render ahead, frames cannot be dropped. This means that when the queue is full, what is displayed can have a lot more lag. Microsoft doesn't implement triple buffering in DirectX, they implement render ahead (from 0 to 8 frames with 3 being the default). The major difference in the technique we've described here is the ability to drop frames when they are outdated. Render ahead forces older frames to be displayed. Queues can help smoothness and stuttering as a few really quick frames followed by a slow frame end up being evened out and spread over more frames. But the price you pay is in lag (the more frames in the queue, the longer it takes to empty the queue and the older the frames are that are displayed). As I understand it, DirectX "Swap Chain" is merely a render ahead queue, i.e. buffers cannot be dropped; the longer the chain, the greater the input latency. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that the most widely used graphics API would not implement such fundamental functionality correctly. Is there a way to get proper triple buffered vertical synchronisation in DirectX?

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• Skanska Builds Global Workforce Insight with Cloud-Based HCM System

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By David Baum - Originally posted on Profit Peter Bjork grew up building things. He started his work life learning all sorts of trades at his father’s construction company in the northern part of Sweden. So in college, it was natural for him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering—but he broke new ground when he added a master’s degree in finance to his curriculum vitae. Written on a traditional résumé, Bjork’s current title (vice president of information systems strategies) doesn’t reveal the diversity of his experience—that he’s adept with hammer and nails as well as rows and columns. But a big part of his current job is to work with his counterparts in human resources (HR) designing, building, and deploying the systems needed to get a complete view of the skills and potential of Skanska’s 22,000-strong white-collar workforce. And Bjork believes that complete view is essential to Skanska’s success. “Our business is really all about people,” says Bjork, who has worked with Skanska for 16 years. “You can have equipment and financial resources, but to truly succeed in a business like ours you need to have the right people in the right places. That’s what this system is helping us accomplish.” In a global HR environment that suffers from a paradox of high unemployment and a scarcity of skilled labor, managers need to have a complete understanding of workforce capabilities to develop management skills, recruit for open positions, ensure that staff is getting the training they need, and reduce attrition. Skanska’s human capital management (HCM) systems, based on Oracle Talent Management Cloud, play a critical role delivering that understanding. “Skanska’s philosophy of having great people, encouraging their development, and giving them the chance to move across business units has nurtured a culture of collaboration, but managing a diverse workforce spread across the globe is a monumental challenge,” says Annika Lindholm, global human resources system owner in the HR department at Skanska’s headquarters just outside of Stockholm, Sweden. “We depend heavily on Oracle’s cloud technology to support our HCM function.” Construction, Workers For Skanska’s more than 60,000 employees and contractors, managing huge construction projects is an everyday job. Beyond erecting signature buildings, management’s goal is to build a corporate culture where valuable talent can be sought out and developed, bringing in the right mix of people to support and grow the business. “Of all the companies in our space, Skanska is probably one of the strongest ones, with a laser focus on people and people development,” notes Tom Crane, chief HR and communications officer for Skanska in the United States. “Our business looks like equipment and material, but all we really have at the end of the day are people and their intellectual capital. Without them, second only to clients, of course, you really can’t achieve great things in the high-profile environment in which we work.” During the 1990s, Skanska entered an expansive growth phase. A string of successful acquisitions paved the way for the company’s transformation into a global enterprise. “Today the company’s focus is on profitable growth,” continues Crane. “But you can’t really achieve growth unless you are doing a very good job of developing your people and having the right people in the right places and driving a culture of growth.” In the United States alone, Skanska has more than 8,000 employees in four distinct business units: Skanska USA Building, also known as the Construction Manager, builds everything at ground level and above—hospitals, educational facilities, stadiums, airport terminals, and other massive projects. Skanska USA Civil does everything at ground level and below, such as light rail, water treatment facilities, power plants or power industry facilities, highways, and bridges. Skanska Infrastructure Development develops public-private partnerships—projects in which Skanska adds equity and also arranges for outside financing. Skanska Commercial Development acts like a commercial real estate developer, acquiring land and building offices on spec or build-to-suit for its clients. Skanska's international portfolio includes construction of the new Meadowlands Stadium. Getting the various units to operate collaboratatively helps Skanska deliver high value to clients and shareholders. “When we have this collaboration among units, it allows us to enrich each of the business units and, at the same time, develop our future leaders to be more facile in operating across business units—more accepting of a ‘one Skanska’ approach,” explains Crane. Workforce Worldwide But HR needs processes and tools to support managers who face such business dynamics. Oracle Talent Management Cloud is helping Skanska implement world-class recruiting strategies and generate the insights needed to drive quality hiring practices, internal mobility, and a proactive approach to building talent pipelines. With their new cloud system in place, Skanska HR leaders can manage everything from recruiting, compensation, and goal and performance management to employee learning and talent review—all as part of a single, cohesive software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment. Skanska has successfully implemented two modules from Oracle Talent Management Cloud—the recruiting and performance management modules—and is in the process of implementing the learn module. Internally, they call the systems Skanska Recruit, Skanska Talent, and Skanska Learn. The timing is apropos. With high rates of unemployment in recent years, there have been many job candidates on the market. However, talent scarcity continues to frustrate recruiters. Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service, one of the applications in the Oracle Talent Management cloud portfolio, enables Skanska managers to create more-intelligent recruiting strategies, pulling high-performer profile statistics to create new candidate profiles and using multitiered screening and assessments to ensure that only the best-suited candidate applications make it to the recruiter’s desk. Tools such as applicant tracking, interview management, and requisition management help recruiters and hiring managers streamline the hiring process. Oracle’s cloud-based software system automates and streamlines many other HR processes for Skanska’s multinational organization and delivers insight into the success of recruiting and talent-management efforts. “The Oracle system is definitely helping us to construct global HR processes,” adds Bjork. “It is really important that we have a business model that is decentralized, so we can effectively serve our local markets, and interact with our global ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems as well. We would not be able to do this without a really good, well-integrated HCM system that could support these efforts.” A key piece of this effort is something Skanska has developed internally called the Skanska Leadership Profile. Core competencies, on which all employees are measured, are used in performance reviews to determine weak areas but also to discover talent, such as those who will be promoted or need succession plans. This global profiling system brings consistency to the way HR professionals evaluate and review talent across the company, with a consistent set of ratings and a consistent definition of competencies. All salaried employees in Skanska are tied to a talent management process that gives opportunity for midyear and year-end reviews. Using the performance management module, managers can align individual goals with corporate goals; provide clear visibility into how each employee contributes to the success of the organization; and drive a strategic, end-to-end talent management strategy with a single, integrated system for all talent-related activities. This is critical to a company that is highly focused on ensuring that every employee has a development plan linked to his or her succession potential. “Our approach all along has been to deploy software applications that are seamless to end users,” says Crane. “The beauty of a cloud-based system is that much of the functionality takes place behind the scenes so we can focus on making sure users can access the data when they need it. This model greatly improves their efficiency.” The employee profile not only sets a competency baseline for new employees but is also integrated with Skanska’s other back-office Oracle systems to ensure consistency in the way information is used to support other business functions. “Since we have about a dozen different HR systems that are providing us with information, we built a master database that collects all the information,” explains Lindholm. “That data is sent not only to Oracle Talent Management Cloud, but also to other systems that are dependent on this information.” Collaboration to Scale Skanska is poised to launch a new Oracle module to link employee learning plans to the review process and recruitment assessments. According to Crane, connecting these processes allows Skanska managers to see employees’ progress and produce an updated learning program. For example, as employees take classes, supervisors can consult the Oracle Talent Management Cloud portal to monitor progress and align it to each individual’s training and development plan. “That’s a pretty compelling solution for an organization that wants to manage its talent on a real-time basis and see how the training is working,” Crane says. Rolling out Oracle Talent Management Cloud was a joint effort among HR, IT, and a global group that oversaw the worldwide implementation. Skanska deployed the solution quickly across all markets at once. In the United States, for example, more than 35 offices quickly got up to speed on the new system via webinars for employees and face-to-face training for the HR group. “With any migration, there are moments when you hold your breath, but in this case, we had very few problems getting the system up and running,” says Crane. Lindholm adds, “There has been very little resistance to the system as users recognize its potential. Customizations are easy, and a lasting partnership has developed between Skanska and Oracle when help is needed. They listen to us.” Bjork elaborates on the implementation process from an IT perspective. “Deploying a SaaS system removes a lot of the complexity,” he says. “You can downsize the IT part and focus on the business part, which increases the probability of a successful implementation. If you want to scale the system, you make a quick phone call. That’s all it took recently when we added 4,000 users. We didn’t have to think about resizing the servers or hiring more IT people. Oracle does that for us, and they have provided very good support.” As a result, Skanska has been able to implement a single, cost-effective talent management solution across the organization to support its strategy to recruit and develop a world-class staff. Stakeholders are confident that they are providing the most efficient recruitment system possible for competent personnel at all levels within the company—from skilled workers at construction sites to top management at headquarters. And Skanska can retain skilled employees and ensure that they receive the development opportunities they need to grow and advance.

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• Can I use DllImport/PInvoke in libraries loaded as Assets in Unity Free?

  - by sebf

  I am interested in using utilising third-party libraries in Unity Free. I know Unity can use managed libraries as Assets, but only the Pro version supports using native libraries. (DllImport within scripts). This thread however suggests that it is possible to import DLLs in the free version. I would like to utilise native libraries (as a hobbyist I cannot afford Pro), but want to do it the supported way so I don't have to worry about Unity 'fixing' this hole if that is what it is. Is there any supported way to use native libraries with Unity free? (i.e. does that thread suggest a workaround or is it a 'bug'? Is it supported to use DllImport/PInvoke in libraries loaded as assets? (could I create a wrapper myself?)

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• Shader optimization - cg/hlsl pseudo and via multiplication

  - by teodron

  Since HLSL/Cg do not allow texture fetching inside conditional blocks, I am first checking a variable and performing some computations, afterwards setting a float flag to 0.0 or 1.0, depending on the computations. I'd like to trigger a texture fetch only if the flag is 1.0 or not null, for that matter of fact. I kind of hoped this would do the trick: float4 TU0_atlas_colour = pseudoBool * tex2Dlod(TU0_texture, float4(tileCoord, 0, mipLevel)); That is, if pseudoBool is 0, will the texture fetch function still be called and produce overhead? I was hoping to prevent it from getting executed via this trick that usually works in plain C/C++.

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• Client side latency when using prediction

  - by Tips48

  I've implemented Client-Side prediction into my game, where when input is received by the client, it first sends it to the server and then acts upon it just as the server will, to reduce the appearance of lag. The problem is, the server is authoritative, so when the server sends back the position of the Entity to the client, it undo's the effect of the interpolation and creates a rubber-banding effect. For example: Client sends input to server - Client reacts on input - Server receives and reacts on input - Server sends back response - Client reaction is undone due to latency between server and client To solve this, I've decided to store the game state and input every tick in the client, and then when I receive a packet from the server, get the game state from when the packet was sent and simulate the game up to the current point. My questions: Won't this cause lag? If I'm receiving 20/30 EntityPositionPackets a second, that means I have to run 20-30 simulations of the game state. How do I sync the client and server tick? Currently, I'm sending the milli-second the packet was sent by the server, but I think it's adding too much complexity instead of just sending the tick. The problem with converting it to sending the tick is that I have no guarantee that the client and server are ticking at the same rate, for example if the client is an old-end PC.

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