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• How to cover the widest range of computers when publishing?

  - by DevilWithin

  When you plan a game, or even when you already made a game, and its time to publish, you wonder how much of your audience is covered by the game technology demands. I'm directing this essentialy to casual games, as I constantly see people having old laptops and being unable to replace them. Laptops with integrated cards whose OpenGL version doesn't even support textures larger than 1024x1024. These people may be avid gamers as well, and a reasonable share of the audience to consider giving them the chance to play casual games, once they cannot play any blockbusters. As I've seen happening, a very "noticeable" example is Angry Birds. It's gameplay is merely casual (I think nobody disagrees here) and still, it uses so high resolution textures that at least OpenGL 2.0 or around is needed, which blocks away a lot of people. So, the actual question is: what is a good tradeoff for this issue? Would it be better to just sacrifice the texture resolution for everyone, but have more supported hardware? Would it be better to keep the high quality and just slice the textures into smaller ones, sacrificing the performance a little bit? What else? Any ideas about this topic are welcome for discussion.

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• XNA hlsl tex2D() only reads 3 channels from normal maps and specular maps

  - by cubrman

  Our engine uses deferred rendering and at the main draw phase gathers plenty of data from the objects it draws. In order to save on tex2D calls, we packed our objects' specular maps with all sorts of data, so three out of four channels are already taken. To make it clear: I am talking about the assets that come with the models and are stored in their material's Specular Level channel, not about the RenderTarget. So now I need another information to be stored in the alpha channel, but I cannot make the shader to read it properly! Nomatter what I write into alpha it ends up being 1 (255)! I tried: saving the textures in PNG/TGA formats. turning off pre-computed alpha in model's properties. Out of every texture available to me (we use Diffuse map, Normal Map and Specular Map) I was only able to read alpha successfully from the Diffuse Map! Here is how I add specular and normal maps to my model's material in the content processor: if (geometry.Material.Textures.ContainsKey(normalMapKey)) { ExternalReference<TextureContent> texRef = geometry.Material.Textures[normalMapKey]; geometry.Material.Textures.Remove("NormalMap"); geometry.Material.Textures.Add("NormalMap", texRef); } ... foreach (KeyValuePair<String, ExternalReference<TextureContent>> texture in material.Textures) { if ((texture.Key == "Texture") || (texture.Key == "NormalMap") || (texture.Key == "SpecularMap")) mat.Textures.Add(texture.Key, texture.Value); } In the shader I obviously use: float4 data = tex2D(specularMapSampler, TexCoords); so data.a is always 1 in my case, could you suggest a reason?

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• How should I handle "real time" events in an online strategy game?

  - by Hojat Taheri

  Some online strategy games have real time events. For example when you send troops to attack somewhere, the attack happens at the right time in the future. Checking the database again and again to get the list of attacks happening each second would cause heavy load. Is there any technique to achieve this goal? Another example: You want to attack a village 3 hours away, you send troops and the attack occurs 3 hours later. Should there be an script to check the database at each second to run the query at the specified time?

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• How can I achieve a 3D-like effect with spritebatch's rotation and scale parameters

  - by Alic44

  I'm working on a 2d game with a top-down perspective similar to Secret of Mana and the 2D Final Fantasy games, with one big difference being that it's an action rpg using a 3-dimensional physics engine. I'm trying to draw an aimer graphic (basically an arrow) at my characters' feet when they're aiming a ranged weapon. At first I just converted the character's aim vector to radians and passed that into spritebatch, but there was a problem. The position of every object in my world is scaled for perspective when it's drawn to the screen. So if the physics engine coordinates are (1, 0, 1), the screen coords are actually (1, .707) -- the Y and Z axis are scaled by a perspective factor of .707 and then added together to get the screen coordinates. This meant that the direction the aimer graphic pointed (thanks to its rotation value passed into spritebatch) didn't match up with the direction the projectile actually traveled over time. Things looked fine when the characters fired left, right, up, or down, but if you fired on a diagonal the perspective of the physics engine didn't match with the simplistic way I was converting the character's aim direction to a screen rotation. Ok, fast forward to now: I've got the aimer's rotation matched up with the path the projectile will actually take, which I'm doing by decomposing a transform matrix which I build from two rotation matrices (one to represent the aimer's rotation, and one to represent the camera's 45 degree rotation on the x axis). My question is, is there a way to get not just rotation from a series of matrix transformations, but to also get a Vector2 scale which would give the aimer the appearance of being a 3d object, being warped by perspective? Orthographic perspective is what I'm going for, I think. So, the aimer arrow would get longer when facing sideways, and shorter when facing north and south because of the perspective. At the same time, it would get wider when facing north and south, and less wide when facing right or left. I'd like to avoid actually drawing the aimer texture in 3d because I'm still using spritebatch's layerdepth parameter at this point in my project, and I don't want to have to figure out how to draw a 3d object within the depth sorting system I already have. I can provide code and more details if this is too vague as a question... This is my first post on stack exchange. Thanks a lot for reading! Note: (I think) I realize it can't be a technically correct 3D perspective, because the spritebatch's vector2 scaling argument doesn't allow for an object to be skewed the way it actually should be. What I'm really interested in is, is there a good way to fake the effect, or should I just drop it and not scale at all? Edit to clarify without the help of a picture (apparently I can't post them yet): I want the aimer arrow to look like it has been painted on the ground at the character's feet, so it should appear to be drawn on the ground plane (in my case the XZ plane) which should be tilted at a 45 degree angle (around the X axis) from the viewing perspective. Alex

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• MMORPG game balancing

  - by Gary Paluk

  I've seen a couple of examples of some game balancing techniques in books yet they are not comprehensive and not particularly aimed at MMORPGs but I'm looking for practical examples of game balancing techniques for MMORPGs. I am interested to know if anyone has documented the techniques used in popular games with proven success in this area. Ideally, any resource would cover most common types of stats and include layman mathematical models or techniques used to balance game mechanics found in advanced MMORPGs (I know it's a cliché, but WoW style) Any help would be great!

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• Where to implement storable items

  - by James Hay

  I'm creating a multiplayer online trading game. The things that are traded range from raw items to complex products. For example Steel is a raw item. Mechanical Assembly is a more complex item that requires 2x Steel and maybe 1x Rubber. Then Hydraulics is an item that contains 2x Mechanical Assemblies and 1x Electronics (which is another complex item). So and so forth. These items will be created by me, players can't create their own items, so it doesn't need to be able to handle arbitrary layers of complexity for items. If my example isn't clear, think Minecraft. You have wooden planks, which can be made into sticks. From there the sticks - combined with metals - can be made into tools. My game is nothing to do with minecraft or any sandbox building game, but it uses a similar progressive complexity to creating items that I want to have in my game. My question is basically, how do you store something like this assuming that I will want to add more items in the future? Do you store it in a database or in a seperate library that the game uses? EDIT None of the items actually "do" anything, they are simply there to either sell, purchase, or combine with other items to make a more complex item, which can then be sold, purchased or combined... you get the idea. The items themselves would not have any properties, but the instances of the items would. For example an item that one player has would have a certain "quality" and if they were selling it a certain "price". An instance of that same item that a different player had would need to have a different "quality" and "price" if they were selling it. I think the price part will not be required on an individual item because instead I would have a "sale" object which was for a price and contained certain items.

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• HLSL: An array of textures and sampler states

  - by nate142

  The shader must switch between multiple textures depending on the Alpha value of the original texture for each pixel. Now this would word fine if I didn't have to worry about SamplerStates. I have created my array of textures and can select a texture based on the Alpha value of the pixel. But how do I create an Array of SamplerStates and link it to my array of textures? I attempted to treat the SamplerState as a function by adding the (int i) but that didn't work. Also I can't use Texture.Sample since this is shader model 2.0. //shader model 2.0 (DX9) texture subTextures[255]; SamplerState MeshTextureSampler(int i) { Texture = (subTextures[i]); }; float4 SampleCompoundTexture(float2 texCoord, float4 diffuse) { float4 SelectedColor = SAMPLE_TEXTURE(Texture, texCoord); int i = SelectedColor.a; texture SelectedTx = subTextures[i]; return tex2D(MeshTextureSampler(i), texCoord) * diffuse; }

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• backface culling error

  - by acrilige

  I write simple software renderer. In my pipeline i have stage of backface culling. But looks like it has some error (see picture). I perform culling right after world transformation. (i can't insert picture in post coz i don't have enough points, so i just upload it (cube model): http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/705/bcerror.png/) Vector3F view_dir(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); std::vector<Triangle> to_remove; for (Triangle &t : m_triangles) { Vector4F e1 = t.v2 - t.v1; Vector4F e2 = t.v3 - t.v1; Vector3F normal( e1.y * e2.z - e1.z * e2.y, e1.z * e2.x - e1.x * e2.z, e1.x * e2.y - e1.y * e2.x ); normal.Normalize(); float dot = Dot(view_dir, normal); if (dot <= 0) to_remove.push_back(t); } for (Triangle& t : to_remove) m_triangles.erase(std::remove(m_triangles.begin(), m_triangles.end(), t), m_triangles.end()); Camera sits in origin and points in screen (RH). What is the reason?

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• Map format for 3d open world

  - by Pacha

  I am making an open world 3d platformer in Ogre3D, and I have no idea on what kind of 3d map file format I should use for it. I want to make low-polygon blocky-style objects. Probably rectangles and other geometrical figures that don't have circular edges. Some of those blocks will have properties, like climbable or they might move. I was wondering what would be the best thing to do to make the map (just one level, as it is open).

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• Calculate velocity of a bullet ricocheting on a circle

  - by SteveL

  I made a picture to demostrate what I need,basecaly I have a bullet with velocity and I want it to bounce with the correct angle after it hits a circle Solved(look the accepted answer for explain): Vector.vector.set(bullet.vel); //->v Vector.vector2.setDirection(pos, bullet.pos); //->n normal from center of circle to bullet float dot=Vector.vector.dot(Vector.vector2); //->dot product Vector.vector2.mul(dot).mul(2); Vector.vector.sub(Vector.vector2); Vector.vector.y=-Vector.vector.y; //->for some reason i had to invert the y bullet.vel.set(Vector.vector);

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• How do I find the closest points(thereby forming a polygon) enclosing a particular point?(see image)

  - by nilspin

  I am working with a game engine, and my task is to add code for simulating fracture of rigid meshes. Right now I'm only working on breaking a cube. I am using Voronoi's algorithm to make a (realistic)fractured shard and I am using the half-plane method to generate a voronoi cell. Now the way I do this is for every seed point, I make planes that are perpendicular bisector planes(the straight black lines in the image) with rest of the seed points and I calculate the intersections of all these planes to give me distinct points(all the orange dots). I've gotten this far. Out of all these calculated intersection points, I only need the ones that are closest and enclosing the seed point(the points encircled in red) and I need to discard all the rest. Information that I have : 1) Plane equations of all planes(defined by normalized normal vectors and their distance from origin) 2) Points of intersection(that I've calculated) Can anybody help me find out how I can find the points encircled in red? Thanks.

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• How do I manipulate the Url of my Silverlight testpage.aspx?

  - by Daniel

  I am making an XNA game using Silverlight over the web. My testpage.aspx is linked to from a previous page where the client selects certain elements. The testpage.aspx URL changes depending on what I have sent to it. Now in my mainpage.cs file I would like to call certain functions depending on what was passed, but I am unsure how to manipulate or even access the URL. Is there a specific class in the Silverlight library I can use? Thank you for your time.

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• Cannot pull newly-added top-level directory into sparsely-checked out SVN repository

  - by Tim Keating

  Our SVN repository is quite large, and pulling the whole thing takes some time. When checking out at home, I was pleased to discover the sparse checkout feature; I checked out the whole repository to a depth of 1, then pulled each top-level directory (directly under the trunk) that I needed to a depth of infinity. Until now this has been brilliant. Recently I added a new directory under trunk. When I do a svn up, I get nothing. The TLD I added will not sync. I normally use Tortoise SVN, so I tried doing this from command line. I tried explicitly specifying the name of the directory, adding --depth infinity, adding --force. None of these tricks has worked. What am I missing?

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• Isometric algorithm [fixed]

  - by David

  so i've been toying with isometric and i just cant get the tiles to be in the right order. im probably missing something obvious and i just cant see it... but even at the risk of looking stupid, heres my code. for (int i = 0; i < Tile.MapSize; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < Tile.MapSize; j++) { spriteBatch.Draw( Tile.TileSetTexture, new Rectangle( (-j * Tile.TileWidth / 2) + (i * Tile.TileWidth / 2), (i * (Tile.TileHeight - 9) / 2) - (-j * (Tile.TileHeight - 9) / 2), Tile.TileWidth, Tile.TileHeight), Tile.GetSourceRectangle(tileID), Color.White, 0.0f, new Vector2(-350, -60), SpriteEffects.None, 1.0f); } } and heres what i end up with delicious messed up map yep, bit of an issue. so if anyone could help, i'd appreciate it. edit* works now <_<

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• How to utilize miniMax algorrithm in Checkers game

  - by engineer

  I am sorry...as there are too many articles about it.But I can't simple get this. I am confused in the implementation of AI. I have generated all possible moves of computer's type pieces. Now I can't decide the flow. Whether I need to start a loop for the possible moves of each piece and assign score to it.... or something else is to be done. Kindly tell me the proper flow/algorithm for this. Thanks

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• How to attach an object to a rotating circle?

  - by armands

  I am trying to make an object get attached on a collision point to a circle that is rotating, but the player needs to get attached with a constant point on the player. For example the player is moving back and forth and when the user touches the screen and the player jumps up but what I need is that when the player collides with the circle it attaches it's legs to it and continues rotating with the circle. So I wanted to know how to make this kind of collision joint in Cocos2d Box2d?

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• QuadTree: store only points, or regions?

  - by alekop

  I am developing a quadtree to keep track of moving objects for collision detection. Each object has a bounding shape, let's say they are all circles. (It's a 2D top-down game) I am unsure whether to store only the position of each object, or the whole bounding shape. If working with points, insertion and subdivision is easy, because objects will never span multiple nodes. On the other hand, a proximity query for an object may miss collisions, because it won't take the objects' dimensions into account. How to calculate the query region when you only have points? If working with regions, how to handle an object that spans multiple nodes? Should it be inserted in the nearest parent node that completely contains it, even if this exceeds the node's capacity? Thanks.

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• Moving while doing loop animation in RPGMaker

  - by AzDesign

  I made a custom class to display character portrait in RPGMaker XP Here is the class : class Poser attr_accessor :images def initialize @images = Sprite.new @images.bitmap = RPG::Cache.picture('Character.png') #100x300 @images.x = 540 #place it on the bottom right corner of the screen @images.y = 180 end end Create an event on the map to create an instance as global variable, tada! image popped out. Ok nice. But Im not satisfied, Now I want it to have bobbing-head animation-like (just like when we breathe, sometimes bob our head up and down) so I added another method : def move(x,y) @images.x += x @images.y += y end def animate(x,y,step,delay) forward = true 2.times { step.times { wait(delay) if forward move(x/step,y/step) else move(-x/step,-y/step) end } wait(delay*3) forward = false } end def wait(time) while time > 0 time -= 1 Graphics.update end end I called the method to run the animation and it works, so far so good, but the problem is, WHILE the portrait goes up and down, I cannot move my character until the animation is finished. So that's it, I'm stuck in the loop block, what I want is to watch the portrait moving up and down while I walk around village, talk to npc, etc. Anyone can solve my problem ? Or better solution ? Thanks in advance

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• One Step-Ahead A-Star

  - by Jonathan Dickinson

  I am attempting to create a server-centric RTS (as opposed to usual parallel synchronised simulation route of most RTS games today) - however I am still leveraging the discreet N-turns-ahead paradigm discussed by one of the AOE developers on Gamasutra. I have [possibly questionably?] decided that the path finding should only ever find the next cell the entity needs to move to, and was wondering if anyone has any clever ideas on how to optimize the algorithm for this specific scenario - or any other ideas on how to keep the pathfinding as lean as possible on the server. I have investigated a few possible algorithms but could only come up with one appropriation: Tiered A-Star - Relatively large T1 tiles, work out (and cache) each cell as you enter it. Other than that: doing the full A-Star pass and caching the entire path, which might use too much memory if a large amount of units are present. I know about the existence of naive progressive pathfinding algorithms (if you hit a block, turn in the direction closer to your target etc.) but they suffer from infinite feedback loops - and very poor pathing even if visited blocks are memorised. Not an option. Many thanks.

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• Triangulating a partially triangulated mesh (2D)

  - by teodron

  Referring to the above exhibits, this is the scenario I am working with: starting with a planar graph (in my case, a 2D mesh) with a given triangulation, based on a certain criterion, the graph nodes are labeled as RED and BLACK. (A) a subgraph containing all the RED nodes (with edges between only the directly connected neighbours) is formed (note: although this figure shows a tree forming, it may well happen that the subgraph contain loops) (B) Problem: I need to quickly build a triangulation around the subgraph (e.g. as shown in figure C), but under the constraint that I have to keep the already present edges in the final result. Question: Is there a fast way of achieving this given a partially triangulated mesh? Ideally, the complexity should be in the O(n) class. Some side-remarks: it would be nice for the triangulation algorithm to take into account a certain vertex priority when adding edges (e.g. it should always try to build a "1-ring" structure around the most important nodes first - I can implement iteratively such a routine, but it's O(n^2) ). it would also be nice to reflect somehow the "hop distance" when adding edges: add edges first between the nodes that were "closer" to each other given the start topology. Nevertheless, disregarding the remarks, is there an already known scenario similar to this one where a triangulation is built upon a partially given set of triangles/edges?

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• Sending state diffs (deltas) and unreliable connections

  - by spaceOwl

  We're building a realtime multiplayer game, in which each player is responsible for reporting its state on every iteration of the game loop. The state updates are broadcasted using unreliable UDP. To minimize state data sending, we've come up with a system that will send only deltas (whatever state data that was changed). This method however is flawed, since a lost packet will mean that other players will not receive the delta, making the game behave in an unexpected way. For example: Assume that state is comprised of: { positionX, positionY, health } Frame 1 - positionX changed --> send a packet with positionX only. Frame 2 - health changed // lost ! Frame 3 - positionY changed --> send a packet with positionY only. // Other players don't know about health change. How can one overcome this issue then? sending the entire data is not always feasible.

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• How was collision detection handled in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past?

  - by Restart

  I would like to know how the collision detection was done in The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past. The game is 16x16 tile based, so how did they do the tiles where only a quarter or half of the tile is occupied? Did they use a smaller grid for collision detection like 8x8 tiles, so four of them make one 16x16 tile of the texture grid? But then, they also have true half tiles which are diagonally cut and the corners of the tiles seem to be round or something. If Link walks into tiles corner he can keep on walking and automatically moves around it's corner. How is that done? I hope someone can help me out here.

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• Need help drawings planets in Java.

  - by d33j

  I am looking for help/links/notes/agorithms/URLs/examples on drawing/rendering spheres in pure Java (so that I can hopefully, one day, generate/render planets with various surfaces & atmospheres) So for the moment, i'd be pretty happy to be able to start off with just drawing a wireframed sphere(s). ps: I don't want to use external libraries like Java3D, JOGL or aftermarket engines like JMonkeyEngine, Would rather keep it as straight Java.

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• SDL mouse wheel not picking up

  - by Chris

  Running Ubuntu 11.04, SDL 1.2 trying to pickup mouse wheel up/down movement with this (stripped down) code: int main( int argc, char **argv ) { SDL_MouseButtonEvent *mousebutton = NULL; while ( !done ) { if(mousebutton != NULL && mousebutton->button == SDL_BUTTON_LEFT) yrot += 0.75f; else if(mousebutton != NULL && mousebutton->button == SDL_BUTTON_RIGHT) yrot -= 0.75f; else if(mousebutton != NULL && mousebutton->button == SDL_BUTTON_WHEELUP){ xrot += 0.75f; }else if(mousebutton != NULL && mousebutton->button == SDL_BUTTON_WHEELDOWN){ xrot -= 0.75f; } while ( SDL_PollEvent( &event ) ) { switch( event.type ) { case SDL_MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: mousebutton = &event.button; break; case SDL_MOUSEBUTTONUP: mousebutton = NULL; break; default: break; } } } return 0; } strange thing is, scrolling with the mouse button does nothing, but if I hold down a mouse button or two and then move the mouse it hits the SDL_BUTTON_WHEEL code occasionally. This honestly reeks of a pointer issue, which would make sense since I've been spoiled with C# for the past couple years, but I am just not seeing it. How do i correctly find mouse scroll events in SDL?

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• Whats a good setup/toolchain for a project?

  - by acidzombie24

  I was thinking, what is needed for a good setup and what are good (free) tools to use? Some of what i came up with are Bug tracking Some good (distributed:P) source control (which means no svn fellas) automated nightly builds or a continuous integration (or anything that automates builds and possibly sends emails when there are build errors) wiki to document decisions, road map or milestones. Something to backup assets (art, sound, etc) What else? and do you have suggestions for any of the above? i pretty much clueless of all of these except for source control

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