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• Do I need to create my own or use a commercial server for the features and matchmaking options I want my game to support?

  - by baptzmoffire

  So I'm developing an indie turn-based game for iOS and, in coding up a Game Center matchmaking class, I'm starting to question whether Game Center is even the best choice for what I want this game to do. I need to figure out whether I need to create my own server, invest in a preexisting client or server service, or if I even need to use a server at all. If I do need to use a ready-made service other than Game Center, which server would accomodate my game's needs best? I have limited resources and funds. Here is the list of features I want my game to support, ideally: Turn-based gameplay (a la "with Friends" and "with Buddies" games) Smart matchmaking (matching users up with other players of comparable skill/achievements) Random matchmaking Facebook matchmaking Specific username matchmaking Contact list matchmaking A way to select what "type" of match you want to challenge an opponent to. (In random, smart, and Facebook matchmaking, there will be different "wagers" the player can make. [e.g. "I wanna play a random opponent for 1000 points. Now, I wanna play my Facebook buddy for 1,000,000 points."] There will be a predetermined range of amounts you can play for. It won't be customizable.) Buddies list capability (Game-buddies, as opposed to contacts and Facebook) A higher concurrent game cap than Game Center offers (which I still can't really find a straight answer on) Scalability (it should support 2 or 20,000,000 players) Objective-C compatibility Flexibility (for all the stuff I haven't thought of yet) Am I dreaming, here? Is there even a service that can handle all of these features? Do I need to invest months in learning a networking language to build my own? If so, how much would I need to spend on hardware? I've been looking around all morning and, so far, the only seemingly viable option is SmartFox. Under "Everything and the kitchen sink" section here, it says they support "virtual world with Zones, Rooms and RoomGroups, create complex game challenges, send invitations, manage buddy lists, create custom permission profiles, oversee the security aspects and tons more." http://www.smartfoxserver.com/overview/platform Is there an option that Im just overlooking? Thanks for any help anyone can provide. Sorry for the long poast. One last question: Does anyone know which server Dice with Buddies uses? I was experimenting with how many concurrent games I could get going and my ADHD kicked in at about 80 games. 80 concurrent games would be great for my game, but again, I need the other features I mentioned too. Thanks again.

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• How do I stop stretching during window re-size in XNA?

  - by Bradley Uffner

  In my windowed mode XNA game when the user resizes the window the game stops updating the window and the last frame drawn is stretched and distorted until the user releases the mouse and the resize completes. Is there any way to have the game continue to run "normally", updating frames and redrawing the screen, during the resize event? I realize that keeping the render loop going while resizing may not be possible or recommended due do hardware managed resources getting continually created and destroyed, but is there any way to stop the ugly stretching? Ideally by leaving the existing frame unscaled in the top left, or with a black screen if that isn't possible.

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• XNA CustomModelAnimationSample problem

  - by Mentoliptus

  I downloaded the official tutorial from:CustomModelAnimationSample It works fine but when I try to replicate it in my project, it fails to load the Tag property in my model. Is found that the probelm is in the line: skinnedModel = Content.Load<Model>("DudeWalk"); This line loads the model from the DudeWalk.fbx file and with the custom SkinnedModelProcessor. It loads the animations data in the model. After the line the Tag property is full. I stepped into the method and it went to the custom ModelData class. I copied everything from the projects CustomModelAnimationWindows and CustomModelAnimationPipeline to my solution and set all the references. I tried the same line of code and couldn't step in the method. It called the default method or model constructor and after the line the model's Tag propetry was null. I have to load the model through my custom SkinnedModelProcessor class, but how I tell the game to use this class? In the tutroail CustomModelClass the line is changed to: model = Content.Load<CustomModel>("tank"); So I assumed that I have to set the generic type to a custom model class, but the first example works without it. If anyone has some useful advice or some other helpful link, I'll be happy to try it.

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• How do I dynamically reload content files?

  - by Kikaimaru

  Is there a relatively simple way to dynamically reload content files, such as effect files? I know I can do the following: Detect change of file Run content pipeline to rebuild that specific file Unload ALL content that was loaded Load all content And use double references to reference content files. The problem is with step 3 (and step 2 isn't that nice either). I need to unload everything because if I have model Hero.x which references Model.fx effect, and I change the Model.fx file, I need to reload the Hero.x file which will then call LoadExternalReference on Model.fx. Has someone managed to make this work without rewriting the whole ContentManager (and every ContentReader) and tracking calls to LoadExternalReference?

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• OpenGL sprites and point size limitation

  - by Srdan

  I'm developing a simple particle system that should be able to perform on mobile devices (iOS, Andorid). My plan was to use GL_POINT_SPRITE/GL_PROGRAM_POINT_SIZE method because of it's efficiency (GL_POINTS are enough), but after some experimenting, I found myself in a trouble. Sprite size is limited (to usually 64 pixels). I'm calculating size using this formula gl_PointSize = in_point_size * some_factor / distance_to_camera to make particle sizes proportional to distance to camera. But at some point, when camera is close enough, problem with size limitation emerges and whole system starts looking unrealistic. Is there a way to avoid this problem? If no, what's alternative? I was thinking of manually generating billboard quad for each particle. Now, I have some questions about that approach. I guess minimum geometry data would be four vertices per particle and index array to make quads from these vertices (with GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP). Additionally, for each vertex I need a color and texture coordinate. I would put all that in an interleaved vertex array. But as you can see, there is much redundancy. All vertices of same particle share same color value, and four texture coordinates are same for all particles. Because of how glDrawArrays/Elements works, I see no way to optimise this. Do you know of a better approach on how to organise per-particle data? Should I use buffers or vertex arrays, or there is no difference because each time I have to update all particles' data. About particles simulation... Where to do it? On CPU or on a vertex processors? Something tells me that mobile's CPU would do it faster than it's vertex unit (at least today in 2012 :). So, any advice on how to make a simple and efficient particle system without particle size limitation, for mobile device, would be appreciated. (animation of camera passing through particles should be realistic)

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• How to monetize and protect a engine's and its framework's copyrights and patents?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  I created a game engine that handles: Rendering levels with 2d textured curved surfaces Collisions with curved surfaces Animationn paths on and navigation in 2d-sapce I have also made a framework for: Procedural organic level generation with round surfaces Level editing Light weight sprite design The engine and framework are written in AS3 and I am in the process of translating the code into HaXe to better support other platforms. I am also interested in adding Animated curved platforms More advanced level editing features Currently, I have a part time job and any time I spend on this engine is either taken out of my limited free time (I'm a student working to support myself through school) or out my time working at my job. I really believe this engine can make life much easier for people designing Tower Defence games, Shooters and and Platformers while also possibly improving their results. It could also support RTS, RPGs and racing games very well. It continains original algorithms that could be used for procedural generation of organic round and smooth levels. The algorithms I used are new and are not available in any other level editor I've seen. In order to constantly improve the Engine and have it tested thoroughly I think the best route is releasing it to the public. What are the best ways to benefit myself and others with my new framework? I want to have some lisence, allowing me to share the framework and still benefit from it. Any advice would be appreciated. This issue has been on my mind a lot this year. I am hoping to find a solution that will bring me some relief. I am thinking of designing three sample games, releasing them and starting a kickstarter, any advice and thoughts on the matter would be valuable. My goal is like Markus von Broady suggested, to get people involved in developing the engine and let people use it for games for either a symbolic fee or for free and charge for support. That or use some form of croud sourcing. Do I need to hire a lawyer to get some sort of legal document to protect my work?

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• Saving an interface instance into a Bundle

  - by user22241

  All I've have an interface that allows me to switch between different scenes in my Android game. When the home key is pressed, I am saving all of my states (score, sprite positions etc) into a Bundle. When re-launching, I am restoring all my states and all is OK - however, I can't figure out how to save my 'Scene', thus when I return, it always starts at the default screen which is the 'Main Menu'. How would I go about saving my 'Scene' (into a Bundle)? Code import android.view.MotionEvent; public interface Scene{ void render(); void updateLogic(); boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event); } I assume the interface is the relevant piece of code which is why I've posted that snippet. I set my scene like so: ('options' is an object of my Options class which extends MainMenu (Another custom class) which, in turn implements the interface 'Scene') SceneManager.getInstance().setCurrentScene(options); //Current scene is optionscreen

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• error trying to display semi transparent rectangle

  - by scott lafoy

  I am trying to draw a semi transparent rectangle and I keep getting an error when setting the textures data. The size of the data passed in is too large or too small for this resource. dummyRectangle = new Rectangle(0, 0, 8, 8); Byte transparency_amount = 100; //0 transparent; 255 opaque dummyTexture = new Texture2D(ScreenManager.GraphicsDevice, 8, 8); Color[] c = new Color[1]; c[0] = Color.FromNonPremultiplied(255, 255, 255, transparency_amount); dummyTexture.SetData<Color>(0, dummyRectangle, c, 0, 1); the error is on the SetData line: "The size of the data passed in is too large or too small for this resource." Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

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• How do I render only part of a texture to a point sprite in OpenGL ES for Android?

  - by nbolton

  Using the libgdx framework, I've figured out how to render a texture to a point sprite. The problem is, it renders the entire texture to the point sprite, where I only want a small part of it (since it's an isometric tile image). Here's a snippet from some demo code I wrote... create() { renderer = new ImmediateModeRenderer(); tiles = Gdx.graphics.newTexture( Gdx.files.internal("data/tiles2.png"), TextureFilter.MipMap, TextureFilter.Linear, TextureWrap.ClampToEdge, TextureWrap.ClampToEdge); Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0.6f, 0.7f, 0.9f, 1); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL11.GL_POINT_SPRITE_OES); Gdx.gl11.glTexEnvi( GL11.GL_POINT_SPRITE_OES, GL11.GL_COORD_REPLACE_OES, GL11.GL_TRUE); Gdx.gl10.glPointSize(s); tiles.bind(); } render() { Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); renderer.begin(GL10.GL_POINTS); // render 3 point sprites at various 3d points renderer.vertex(-.1f, 0, -.1f); renderer.vertex(0, 0, 0); renderer.vertex(.1f, 0, .1f); // ... more vertices here if needed (one for each sprite) ... renderer.end(); }

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• OpenGL vs DirectX?

  - by Harold

  I saw the articles that were going on about OpenGL being better than DirectX and that Microsoft are really just trying to get everyone to use DirectX even though it's inferior so that gaming is almost exclusively for Windows and XBox, but since the article was written in 2006 is it still relevant today? Also I know plenty of games are written in DirectX but does anyone have any examples of popular games written in OpenGL? Thanks

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• Is good practice to optimize FPS even when it's above the lower limit to give illusion of movement?

  - by rraallvv

  I started over 50 FPS on the iPhone, but now I'm bellow 30 PFS, I've seen most iPhone games clamped to either 60 or 30 FPS, even when 24 or less would give the illusion of movement. I've concidered my limit to be a little bit over 15 FPS, in fact my physics simulation is updated at that rate (15.84 steps/s) as that is the lowest that still give fluid movement, a bit lower gives jerky motion. Is there a practical reason why to clamp FPS way above the lower limit? Update: The following image could help to clarify I can independently set the physic simulation step, frame rate, and simulation interval update. My concern is why should I clamp any of those to values greater than the minimum? For instance to conserve battery life I could just to choose the lower limits, but it seems that 60 or 30 FPS are the most used values.

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• How do I create a third Person View using DXUTCamera in DX10?

  - by David

  I am creating a 3d flying game and using DXUTCamera for my view. I can get the camera to take on the characters position, But I would like to view my character in the 3rd person. Here is my code for first person view: //Put the camera on the object. D3DXVECTOR3 viewerPos; D3DXVECTOR3 lookAtThis; D3DXVECTOR3 up ( 5.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f ); D3DXVECTOR3 newUp; D3DXMATRIX matView; //Set the viewer's position to the position of the thing. viewerPos.x = character->x; viewerPos.y = character->y; viewerPos.z = character->z; // Create a new vector for the direction for the viewer to look character->setUpWorldMatrix(); D3DXVECTOR3 newDir, lookAtPoint; D3DXVec3TransformCoord(&newDir, &character->initVecDir, &character->matAllRotations); // set lookatpoint D3DXVec3Normalize(&lookAtPoint, &newDir); lookAtPoint.x += viewerPos.x; lookAtPoint.y += viewerPos.y; lookAtPoint.z += viewerPos.z; g_Camera.SetViewParams(&viewerPos, &lookAtPoint); So does anyone have an ideas how I can move the camera to the third person view? preferably timed so there is a smooth action in the camera movement. (I'm hoping I can just edit this code instead of bringing in another camera class)

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• Why are textures always square powers of two? What if they aren't?

  - by Keavon

  Why are the resolution of textures in games always a power of two (128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, etc.)? Wouldn't it be smart to save on the game's file size and make the texture exactly fit the UV unwrapped model? What would happen if there was a texture that was not a power of two? Would it be incorrect to have a texture be something like 256x512, or 512x1024? Or would this cause the problems that non-power-of-two textures may cause?

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• What is the best way to render a 2d game map?

  - by Deukalion

  I know efficiency is key in game programming and I've had some experiences with rendering a "map" earlier but probably not in the best of ways. For a 2D TopDown game: (simply render the textures/tiles of the world, nothing else) Say, you have a map of 1000x1000 (tiles or whatever). If the tile isn't in the view of the camera, it shouldn't be rendered - it's that simple. No need to render a tile that won't be seen. But since you have 1000x1000 objects in your map, or perhaps less you probably don't want to loop through all 1000*1000 tiles just to see if they're suppose to be rendered or not. Question: What is the best way to implement this efficiency? So that it "quickly/quicker" can determine what tiles are suppose to be rendered? Also, I'm not building my game around tiles rendered with a SpriteBatch so there's no rectangles, the shapes can be different sizes and have multiple points, say a curved object of 10 points and a texture inside that shape; Question: How do you determine if this kind of objects is "inside" the View of the camera? It's easy with a 48x48 rectangle, just see if it X+Width or Y+Height is in the view of the camera. Different with multiple points. Simply put, how to manage the code and the data efficiently to not having to run through/loop through a million of objects at the same time.

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• Game state management (Game, Menu, Titlescreen, etc)

  - by munchor

  Basically, in every single game I've made so far, I always have a variable like "current_state", which can be "game", "titlescreen", "gameoverscreen", etc. And then on my Update function I have a huge: if current_state == "game" game stuf ... else if current_state == "titlescreen" ... However, I don't feel like this is a professional/clean way of handling states. Any ideas on how to do this in a better way? Or is this the standard way?

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• Stop a rotating object at a specified angle?

  - by Krummelz

  I'm working in JavaScript with HTML5 and the canvas. I have an object which is rotating at a certain speed, and I need the object's rotation to slow down gradually and the front of the object to stop at a specified angle. (I'm using radians, not degrees.) I have a variable to keep track of the angle which the object is facing, as it rotates. How would I go about getting the object to come to rest, facing the direction I want it to?

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• How to do Cross Platform in own Engine? [on hold]

  - by Mineorbit

  At the Moment I finished the first game with my game engine(if I wanna call it like that) which is based in LWJGL. Now i'm worring if I could do crossplattforming in my engine. I build me a tool tool with a batch file to compile my project dir into an .exe . At first i'm looking to do it on Android with an comparable batch file. An link for an tutorial would be awesome! At next place there would be an renderer and audiosystem. If read that theres an OpenGL ES renderer, and I allready played a bit around with the Android SDK. But I use the Texture and Audio class in slick-util. So I thought about creating OOP classes that carry around the data and load it in an platform specific Buffer. A Link for an equaly easy-to-use Texture or Audio class would be awesome! Thats all for now! Answers would be awesome! Thanks, Mineorbit!

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• D3D9 Alpha Blending on the surfaces

  - by Indeera

  I have a surface (OffScreenPlain or RenderTarget with D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8) which I copy pixels (ARGB) to, from a third party function. Before pixel copying, Bits are accessed by LockRect. This surface is then StretchRect to the Backbuffer which is (D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8). Surface and Backbuffer are different dimensions. Filtering is set to D3DTEXF_NONE. Just after creating the d3d device I've set following RenderState settings D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE -> TRUE D3DRS_BLENDOP -> D3DBLENDOP_ADD D3DRS_SRCBLEND -> D3DBLEND_SRCALPHA D3DRS_DESTBLEND -> D3DBLEND_INVSRCALPHA But I see no alpha blending happening. I've verified that alpha is specified in pixels. I've done a simple test by creating a vertex buffer and drawing a triangle (DrawPrimitive) which displays with alpha blending. In this test surface was StretchRect first and then DrawPrimitive, and the surface content displays without alpha blending and the triangle displays with alpha blending. What am I missing here? Thanks

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• Proper way to use a RenderTarget2D to draw multiple textures?

  - by TheBroodian

  In the process of trying to resolve a split screen issue, I've been trying to use a RenderTarget2D to draw a portion of my scene to a Texture2D, and then again to another Texture2D, but the end result of both Texture2D's is coming out the same. Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong? Texture2D camera1Render; Texture2D camera2Render; GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(RenderTarget); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); map.Draw(mapDisplayDevice, Camera1, new Location(0, 0), false); camera1Render = RenderTarget; GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); map.Draw(mapDisplayDevice, Camera2, new Location(0, 0), false); camera2Render = RenderTarget; SetRenderTarget(null);

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• What can make a peaceful game successful?

  - by Miro

  Today, the most successful games are action games like FPS, RPG, MMORPG... I'd like to make peaceful game, but I don't know how to attract people. I can make good graphics, but that's not the main thing that makes people like game more that couple of minutes. The content is important. In game styles mentioned in beginning are main content fight, kill others, make from yourself predator/the most powerful creature/player in the game. But what content can attract people in peaceful game?

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• Confusion with Libgdx UI

  - by BrotherJack

  I've started with Libgdx and am currently stumbling about trying to understand how to set up the interface. I have generated the base projects in Eclipse ( < proj-name ,< proj-name -android, < proj-name -desktop, < proj-name -html), and can get the program to display a simple background, play a looping sound file, and draw a tank. I have been having some problems implementing the UI though. I want to make a collapsible interface bar at the bottom of the screen that would contain buttons for movement, and selecting weapons. I'm confused since there appears to be several ways of doing this and the documentation (or tutorials explaining it) tend to be obsolete. How would one go about this? Use a stage for the bar and actors for the widgets? I'm a little lost on this.

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• Server side random selection of players

  - by Ron

  Assuming I have a simple client-server game, where the server picks random players on a very frequent base, I was wondering what is the best way to select a random player (According to the following constraints): Solution must be high performance and highly scalable Random spread should be relatively even (meaning if I have 3 players and pick 99 times, they will all be picked 33 times more or less) Should only pick players who were active in the past X days (optional, but a big bonus) The actual DB or data model used to store players isn't an issue here, as we'll select the technology in accordance to our needs. However, high performance and scalability is (at the moment we have over 60,000 unique daily active players, and we plan on growing even more). Thanks!

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• XNA, how to draw two cubes standing in line parallelly?

  - by user3535716

  I just got a problem with drawing two 3D cubes standing in line. In my code, I made a cube class, and in the game1 class, I built two cubes, A on the right side, B on the left side. I also setup an FPS camera in the 3D world. The problem is if I draw cube B first(Blue), and move the camera to the left side to cube B, A(Red) is still standing in front of B, which is apparently wrong. I guess some pics can make much sense. Then, I move the camera to the other side, the situation is like: This is wrong.... From this view, the red cube, A should be behind the blue one, B.... Could somebody give me help please? This is the draw in the Cube class Matrix center = Matrix.CreateTranslation( new Vector3(-0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f)); Matrix scale = Matrix.CreateScale(0.5f); Matrix translate = Matrix.CreateTranslation(location); effect.World = center * scale * translate; effect.View = camera.View; effect.Projection = camera.Projection; foreach (EffectPass pass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); device.SetVertexBuffer(cubeBuffer); RasterizerState rs = new RasterizerState(); rs.CullMode = CullMode.None; rs.FillMode = FillMode.Solid; device.RasterizerState = rs; device.DrawPrimitives( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, cubeBuffer.VertexCount / 3); } This is the Draw method in game1 A.Draw(camera, effect); B.Draw(camera, effect); **

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• Drawing order in XNA

  - by marc wellman

  When manually setting the drawing order of game components by setting int DrawableGameComponent.DrawOrder can one use any integer numbers as long an order is defined like component1 = drawing order: 2 component2 = drawing order: 5 component3 = drawing order: 10 component4 = drawing order: 323 or do these integers have to be consecutive and starting with zero like component1 = drawing order: 0 component2 = drawing order: 1 component3 = drawing order: 2 component4 = drawing order: 3 ?

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• Best way to prevent UIPanGestureRecognizer from firing when moving sprites in cocos2d

  - by cjroebuck

  Im using UIPanGestureRecognizer in my cocos2d game to do drag and drop of sprites. I have a row of sprites and when I drag a sprite on top of another one, the sprite underneath it and any other sprites between should shift left or right out of the way to allow space to drop the currently selected sprite. This is working ok, however, if I am too quick at dragging the sprite around the screen, this triggers another round of the UIPanGestureRecognizer's callback method, and screws up the logic, as the sprites are in-between shifting. I need a way to freeze the callback from firing, whilst the other sprites are shifting, then once they have finished moving, re-enable the callback to fire. Whats the best way to do this?

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