Search Results

Search found 33291 results on 1332 pages for 'development environment'.

Page 479/1332 | < Previous Page | 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486  | Next Page >

• Permanent death in a MUD (think command line MMORPG)

  - by Luke Laupheimer

  I have considered writing a MUD for years, and I have a lot of ideas my friends think are really cool (and that's how I'd hope to get anywhere -- word of mouth). Thing is, there's one thing I have always wanted, that my friends and strangers hated: permanent death. Now, the emotional response I get to this is visceral revulsion, every time. I'm pretty sure I am the only person that wants this, or if I'm not, I'm a tiny minority. Now, the reason I want it is because I want the actions of the players to matter. Unlike a lot of other MUDs, which have a set of static city-states and social institutions etc, I want the things my players do, should I get any, to actually change the situation. And that includes killing people. If you kill someone, you didn't send them to time out, you killed them. What happens when you kill people? They go away. They don't come back in half an hour to smack talk you some more. They're gone. Forever. By making death non-permanent, you make death not matter. It would be similar if a climax to a character's arc is getting a speeding ticket. It cheapens it. Non-permanent death cheapens death. How can I: 1) Convince my players (and random people!) that this is actually a good idea?, or 2) Find some other way to make death and violence matter as much as it does in real life (except within the game, of course) sans character deletion? What alternatives are there out there?

  Read the article

• MMORPG design for time-limited players

  - by Philipp

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

  Read the article

• How to spawn a character at certain point and walk to a set point

  - by Robert H.

  I am making a game where I have a background image of a neighborhood. Each location has a different number of customers that are generated to walk on sidewalks. They all walk to a specific location (like a stand or cart that sells stuff), after they get to location I want them to interact with the cart. However, if another customer is already in a sale interaction then the others get in line in order of arrival. After the transaction the customers walk off screen. Any information on how I can do this and what game engine would be needed? Any one have any idea where I should go for this. I already have my game done up through Eclipse/Java without any game engine.

  Read the article

• Isometric projection bad coordonate

  - by Christophe Debove

  I have a 2D map, for each element I apply this isometric projection to place my Sprite //Element e; float[] f= projection(e.getX(), e.getY() ,z); // x and y represent Sprite Coordonate (tile_width and height depend of my // camera size and the number of elements in x and in y float x = f[0]*tile_width; float y = f[1]*tile_height; public float[] projection(float x, float y, float z) { return new float[]{ (( x )-(y) ) , ((x/2) + (y/2) - z )}; } the sprite for one element : The result of my projection : The problem is I need to add an offset of tile_height/2 to the y and tile_width/2 to the x to have something like this (in the red rectangle I drawed with paint what I want) : Where did I make wrong? (I found the projection method in How should I sort images in an isometric game so that they appear in the correct order? )

  Read the article

• Pygame: Save a list of objects/classes/surfaces

  - by Sam Tubb

  I am working on a game, in which you can create mazes. You place blocks on a 16x16 grid, while choosing from a variety of block to make the level with. Whenever you create a block, it adds this class: class Block(object): def __init__(self,x,y,spr): self.x=x self.y=y self.sprite=spr self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) to a list called instances. I tried shelving it to a .bin file, but it returns some error dealing with surfaces. How can I go about saving and loading levels? Any help is appreciated! :) Here is the whole code for reference: import pygame from pygame.locals import * #initstuff pygame.init() screen=pygame.display.set_mode((640,480)) pygame.display.set_caption('PiMaze') instances=[] #loadsprites menuspr=pygame.image.load('images/menu.png').convert() b1spr=pygame.image.load('images/b1.png').convert() b2spr=pygame.image.load('images/b2.png').convert() currentbspr=b1spr curspr=pygame.image.load('images/curs.png').convert() curspr.set_colorkey((0,255,0)) #menu menuspr.set_alpha(185) menurect=menuspr.get_rect(x=-260,y=4) class MenuItem(object): def __init__(self,pos,spr): self.x=pos[0] self.y=pos[1] self.sprite=spr self.pos=(self.x,self.y) self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) class Block(object): def __init__(self,x,y,spr): self.x=x self.y=y self.sprite=spr self.rect=self.sprite.get_rect(x=self.x,y=self.y) while True: #menu items b1menu=b1spr.get_rect(x=menurect.left+32,y=48) b2menu=b2spr.get_rect(x=menurect.left+64,y=48) menuitems=[MenuItem(b1menu,b1spr),MenuItem(b2menu,b2spr)] screen.fill((20,30,85)) mse=pygame.mouse.get_pos() key=pygame.key.get_pressed() placepos=((mse[0]/16)*16,(mse[1]/16)*16) if key[K_q]: if mse[0]<260: if menurect.right<255: menurect.right+=1 else: if menurect.left>-260: menurect.left-=1 else: if menurect.left>-260: menurect.left-=1 for e in pygame.event.get(): if e.type==QUIT: exit() if menurect.right<100: if e.type==MOUSEBUTTONUP: if e.button==1: to_remove = [i for i in instances if i.rect.collidepoint(placepos)] for i in to_remove: instances.remove(i) if not to_remove: instances.append(Block(placepos[0],placepos[1],currentbspr)) for i in instances: screen.blit(i.sprite,i.rect) if not key[K_q]: screen.blit(curspr,placepos) screen.blit(menuspr,menurect) for item in menuitems: screen.blit(item.sprite,item.pos) if item.rect.collidepoint(mse): if pygame.mouse.get_pressed()==(1,0,0): currentbspr=item.sprite pygame.draw.rect(screen, ((255,0,0)), item, 1) pygame.display.flip()

  Read the article

• Spherical harmonics lighting - what does it accomplish?

  - by TravisG

  From my understanding, spherical harmonics are sometimes used to approximate certain aspects of lighting (depending on the application). For example, it seems like you can approximate the diffuse lighting cause by a directional light source on a surface point, or parts of it, by calculating the SH coefficients for all bands you're using (for whatever accuracy you desire) in the direction of the surface normal and scaling it with whatever you need to scale it with (e.g. light colored intensity, dot(n,l),etc.). What I don't understand yet is what this is supposed to accomplish. What are the actual advantages of doing it this way as opposed to evaluating the diffuse BRDF the normal way. Do you save calculations somewhere? Is there some additional information contained in the SH representation that you can't get out of the scalar results of the normal evaluation?

  Read the article

• Any 3D, Isometric, RPG oriented engines?

  - by Don Quixote

  I was wondering if there are any game engines out there that are oriented towards isometric, 3D RPGs such as Diablo 3, Torchlight, Magika, etc.. Most engines I found so far are either oriented towards FPS, such as Cry Engine and UDK, or are far too generic, such as the Irrlicht engine, which will add what I think is unnecessary work on the engine instead of the game. Any chance there are any engines out there that are crafted to be more suitable for RPGs? I would prefer they be in Java, since it's more my forte, but beggars can't be choosers, so C++ is great as well! Thank you.

  Read the article

• Not getting desired results with SSAO implementation

  - by user1294203

  After having implemented deferred rendering, I tried my luck with a SSAO implementation using this Tutorial. Unfortunately, I'm not getting anything that looks like SSAO, you can see my result below. You can see there is some weird pattern forming and there is no occlusion shading where there needs to be (i.e. in between the objects and on the ground). The shaders I implemented follow: #VS #version 330 core uniform mat4 invProjMatrix; layout(location = 0) in vec3 in_Position; layout(location = 2) in vec2 in_TexCoord; noperspective out vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth out vec3 viewRay; void main(void){ pass_TexCoord = in_TexCoord; viewRay = (invProjMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0)).xyz; gl_Position = vec4(in_Position, 1.0); } #FS #version 330 core uniform sampler2D DepthMap; uniform sampler2D NormalMap; uniform sampler2D noise; uniform vec2 projAB; uniform ivec3 noiseScale_kernelSize; uniform vec3 kernel[16]; uniform float RADIUS; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; noperspective in vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth in vec3 viewRay; layout(location = 0) out float out_AO; vec3 CalcPosition(void){ float depth = texture(DepthMap, pass_TexCoord).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); vec3 ray = normalize(viewRay); ray = ray / ray.z; return linearDepth * ray; } mat3 CalcRMatrix(vec3 normal, vec2 texcoord){ ivec2 noiseScale = noiseScale_kernelSize.xy; vec3 rvec = texture(noise, texcoord * noiseScale).xyz; vec3 tangent = normalize(rvec - normal * dot(rvec, normal)); vec3 bitangent = cross(normal, tangent); return mat3(tangent, bitangent, normal); } void main(void){ vec2 TexCoord = pass_TexCoord; vec3 Position = CalcPosition(); vec3 Normal = normalize(texture(NormalMap, TexCoord).xyz); mat3 RotationMatrix = CalcRMatrix(Normal, TexCoord); int kernelSize = noiseScale_kernelSize.z; float occlusion = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < kernelSize; i++){ // Get sample position vec3 sample = RotationMatrix * kernel[i]; sample = sample * RADIUS + Position; // Project and bias sample position to get its texture coordinates vec4 offset = projectionMatrix * vec4(sample, 1.0); offset.xy /= offset.w; offset.xy = offset.xy * 0.5 + 0.5; // Get sample depth float sample_depth = texture(DepthMap, offset.xy).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (sample_depth - projAB.x); if(abs(Position.z - linearDepth ) < RADIUS){ occlusion += (linearDepth <= sample.z) ? 1.0 : 0.0; } } out_AO = 1.0 - (occlusion / kernelSize); } I draw a full screen quad and pass Depth and Normal textures. Normals are in RGBA16F with the alpha channel reserved for the AO factor in the blur pass. I store depth in a non linear Depth buffer (32F) and recover the linear depth using: float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); where projAB.y is calculated as: and projAB.x as: These are derived from the glm::perspective(gluperspective) matrix. z_n and z_f are the near and far clip distance. As described in the link I posted on the top, the method creates samples in a hemisphere with higher distribution close to the center. It then uses random vectors from a texture to rotate the hemisphere randomly around the Z direction and finally orients it along the normal at the given pixel. Since the result is noisy, a blur pass follows the SSAO pass. Anyway, my position reconstruction doesn't seem to be wrong since I also tried doing the same but with the position passed from a texture instead of being reconstructed. I also tried playing with the Radius, noise texture size and number of samples and with different kinds of texture formats, with no luck. For some reason when changing the Radius, nothing changes. Does anyone have any suggestions? What could be going wrong?

  Read the article

• Implmenting RLE into a tilemap or how to create a large 3D array?

  - by Smallbro

  Currently I've been using a 3D array for my tiles in a 2D world but the 3D side comes in when moving down into caves and whatnot. Now this is not memory efficient and I switched over to a 2D array and can now have much larger maps. The only issue I'm having now is that it seems that my tiles cannot occupy the same space as a tile on the same z level. My current structure means that each block has its own z variable. This is what it used to look like: map.blockData[x][y][z] = new Block(); however now it works like this map.blockData[x][y] = new Block(z); I'm not sure why but if I decide to use the same space on say the floor below it wont allow me to. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can add a z-axis to my 2D array? I'm using java but I reckon the concept carries across different languages. Edit: As Will posted, RLE sounds like the best method for achieving a fast 3D array. However I'm struggling to understand how I would even start to implement it? Would I create a 4D array the 4th being something which controls how many to skip? Or would the x-axis simply change altogether and have large gaps in between - for example [5][y][z] would skip 5 tiles? Is there something really obvious here which I am missing? The number of z levels I'm trying to have is around 66, it would be preferably that I can have up to or more than 1000 in x and y.

  Read the article

• Why don't Normal maps in tangent space have a single blue color?

  - by seahorse

  Normal maps are predominantly blue in color because the z component maps to Blue and since normals point out of the surface in the z direction we see Blue as the predominant component. If the above is true then why are normal maps just of one color i.e. blue and they should not be having any other shades(not even shades of blue) Since by definition tangent space is perpendicular to normal at any point we should have the normal always pointing in the Z (Blue direction) with no X(Red component) and Y(Green component). Thus the normal map(since it is a "normal map") should have had color of normals which is just the Blue(Z =Blue compoennt = 1, R=0, G=0) and the normal map should have been of only Blue color with no shades in between. But even then normal maps are not so, and they have gradients of shades in them, why is this so?

  Read the article

• How to manage my model

  - by Christophe Debove

  I have in my model, a list of Classes : Player, NonPlayerCharacter, Monster, Item, NonMovableItem etc With AndEngine I've a list of sprite for each piece of my model, How can I manage the relashionship between my model's classes and the graphical elements, what is the degree of abstaction recommended for my problem? One sprite for one Model or one Model for one Sprite or n for n for exemple If I do drag&drop have I to make abstraction of the Sprite Class, another exemple a map is a List of sprite or a list of element of my model?

  Read the article

• Good 2D Platformer Physics

  - by Joe Wreschnig

  I have a basic character controller set up for a 2D platformer with Box2D, and I'm starting to tweak it to try to make it feel good. Physics engines have a lot of knobs to tweak, and it's not clear to me, writing with a physics engine for the first time, which ones I should use. Should jumping apply a force for several ticks? An impulse? Directly set velocity? How do I stop the avatar from sticking to walls without taking away all its friction (or do I take away all the friction, but only in the air)? Should I model the character as a capsule? A box with rounded corners? A box with two wheels? Just one big wheel? I feel like someone must have done this before! There seem to be very few resources available on the web that are not "baby's first physics", which all cut off where I'm hoping someone has already solved the issues. Most examples of physics engines for platformers have floaty-feeling controls, or in-air jumps, or easily exploitable behavior when temporary penetration is too high, etc. Some examples of what I mean: A short tap of jump jumps a short distance; a long tap jumps higher. Short skidding when stopping or reversing directions at high velocity. Standing stably on inclines (but maybe sliding down them when ducking). Analog speed when using an analog controller. All the other things that separate good platformers from bad platformers. Dare I suggest, stable moving platforms? I'm not really looking for "hey, do this." Obviously, the right thing to do is dependent on what I want in the game. But I'm hoping someone somewhere has gone through the possibilities and said "well technique A does feature X well, technique B does Y well, but that doesn't work with C", or has some worked examples beyond "if (key == space) character.impulse(0, 1)"

  Read the article

• Game Institute Math Courses

  - by W3Geek

  I'm 21 years old and I suck at math, I mean really bad. I don't have the necessary logic to apply it towards programming. I would like to learn the math and logic of applying it. I found Game Institute (http://www.gameinstitute.com) awhile back and heard a lot of praise about them. Are there Math courses any good? Thank you. Edit: My high school was terrible and did not prepare me for any math. I am fairly decent at programming, I just don't have the logic to apply any mathematics to programming, as an example I don't understand the algorithm of finding the size of a user's screen. Yes I have heard of KhanAcademy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) and I have completed a lot of maths on his website but I still don't have the logic to apply any of it to programming.

  Read the article

• Is there any advantage in using DX10/11 for a 2D game?

  - by David Gouveia

  I'm not entirely familiar with the feature set introduced by DX10/11 class hardware. I'm vaguely familiar with the new stages added to the programmable graphics pipeline, such as the geometry shader, the compute shader, and the new tesselation stages. I don't see how any of these make much of a difference for a 2D game though. Is there any compelling reason to make the switch to DX10/11 (or the OpenGL equivalents) for a 2D game, or would it be wiser to stick with DX9 considering that that a significant share of the market still runs on older technologies (e.g. the February 2012 Steam surveys lists around 17% of users as still using Windows XP)?

  Read the article

• Map and fill texture using PBO (OpenGL 3.3)

  - by NtscCobalt

  I'm learning OpenGL 3.3 trying to do the following (as it is done in D3D)... Create Texture of Width, Height, Pixel Format Map texture memory Loop write pixels Unmap texture memory Set Texture Render Right now though it renders as if the entire texture is black. I can't find a reliable source for information on how to do this though. Almost every tutorial I've found just uses glTexSubImage2D and passes a pointer to memory. Here is basically what my code does... (In this case it is generating an 1-byte Alpha Only texture but it is rendering it as the red channel for debugging) GLuint pixelBufferID; glGenBuffers(1, &pixelBufferID); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, pixelBufferID); glBufferData(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 512 * 512 * 1, nullptr, GL_STREAM_DRAW); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 0); GLuint textureID; glGenTextures(1, &textureID); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_R8, 512, 512, 0, GL_RED, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, nullptr); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, pixelBufferID); void *Memory = glMapBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, GL_WRITE_ONLY); // Memory copied here, I know this is valid because it is the same loop as in my working D3D version glUnmapBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 0); And then here is the render loop. // This chunk left in for completeness glUseProgram(glProgramId); glBindVertexArray(glVertexArrayId); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, glVertexBufferId); glEnableVertexAttribArray(0); glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 20, 0); glVertexAttribPointer(0, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 20, 12); GLuint transformLocationID = glGetUniformLocation(3, 'transform'); glUniformMatrix4fv(transformLocationID , 1, true, somematrix) // Not sure if this is all I need to do glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, pTex->glTextureId); GLuint textureLocationID = glGetUniformLocation(glProgramId, "texture"); glUniform1i(textureLocationID, 0); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, Offset*3, Triangles*3); Vertex Shader #version 330 core in vec3 Position; in vec2 TexCoords; out vec2 TexOut; uniform mat4 transform; void main() { TexOut = TexCoords; gl_Position = vec4(Position, 1.0) * transform; } Pixel Shader #version 330 core uniform sampler2D texture; in vec2 TexCoords; out vec4 fragColor; void main() { // Output color fragColor.r = texture2D(texture, TexCoords).r; fragColor.g = 0.0f; fragColor.b = 0.0f; fragColor.a = 1.0; }

  Read the article

• How to highlight non-rectangular hotspots?

  - by HuseyinUslu

  So my question is highly related to Creating non-rectangular hotspots and detecting clicks. Yet again, I've irregular hot-spots (think the game Risk). So basically, we can detect clicks on these hot-spots easily using color key mapping as discussed in above question which I don't have any problems implementing (which is also covered here in details). The problem is about highlighting these irreguar hotspots. So let me explain the question a bit more - the above color key mapping guide uses this as a world map: Then the author color-maps the imaginary countries: Now we can now detect the country the pointer is over. In the same article author mentions outlining countries on mouse-over. Though to get the effect, he creates unique border assets for each country - like: For the game I'm working on I'm using the same color-key mapping idea to detect hot-spots, but I didn't like the way of highlighting hot-spots. Coloring all the hot-spots is already a time-consuming job for me - as I have 25+ hot-spots for each map. Further, the need to have 25 unique border/highlight asset per hot-spot doesn't sound right. Anyone have a better idea/suggestion on highlighting these hot-spots?

  Read the article

• OpenGL fovx question

  - by Nick

  To boil my question down to the simplest form, I fear I am oversimplifying how mat4 perspective works. I am using mat4.perspective(45, 2, 0.1, 1000.0) (the binding is WebGL fwiw). With a fovy of 45, and an aspect ratio of 2, I expect to have a fovx of 90. Thus, if I position my camera at (0, 0, 50), looking towards the origin, I expect to see a cube positioned at (50, 0, 0) (45 degrees) right at the very periphery of my screen, half on, half off,. Instead, a cube at (50, 0, 0) is totally off screen, and my actually periphery occurs at about (41.1, 0, 0). What am I missing here? Thanks, nick

  Read the article

• How do I draw a single Triangle with XNA and fill it with a Texture?

  - by Deukalion

  I'm trying to wrap my head around: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb196409.aspx I'm trying to create a method in XNA that renders a single Triangle, then later make a method that takes a list of Triangles and renders them also. But it isn't working. I'm not understanding what all the things does and there's not enough information. My methods: // Triangle is a struct with A, B, C (didn't include) A, B, C = Vector3 public static void Render(GraphicsDevice device, List<Triangle> triangles, Texture2D texture) { foreach (Triangle triangle in triangles) { Render(device, triangle, texture); } } public static void Render(GraphicsDevice device, Triangle triangle, Texture2D texture) { BasicEffect _effect = new BasicEffect(device); _effect.Texture = texture; _effect.VertexColorEnabled = true; VertexPositionColor[] _vertices = new VertexPositionColor[3]; _vertices[0].Position = triangle.A; _vertices[1].Position = triangle.B; _vertices[2].Position = triangle.B; foreach (var pass in _effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes) { pass.Apply(); device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColor> ( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, _vertices, 0, _vertices.Length, new int[] { 0, 1, 2 }, // example has something similiar, no idea what this is 0, 3 // 3 = gives me an error, 1 = works but no results ); } }

  Read the article

• How can I downsample a texture using FBOs?

  - by snape

  I am rendering a scene to FBO as my render target whose size is 8 times the size of the orignal screen in OpenGL. Now i wan to downsample the texture generated by FBO to the size of the screen so as to achieve spatial anti aliasing. How do i achieve the down sampling ? Please provide implementation details. Note : If there is a better way of doing anti aliasing in FBOs please mention that too. I am trying to remove the aliasing in the image attached below.

  Read the article

• How to find the window size in XNA

  - by Nick Van Hoogenstyn

  I just wanted to know if there was a way to find out the size of the window in XNA. I don't want to set it to a specific size; I would like to know what dimensions it currently displays as automatically. Is there a way to find this information out? I realize I probably should have found this information out (or set it myself manually) before working on the game, but I'm a novice and am now hoping to work within the dimensions I have already become invested in. Thanks!

  Read the article

• How do I properly use multithreading with Nvidia PhysX?

  - by xcrypt

  I'm having a multithreading problem with Nvidia PhysX. the SDK requires that you call Simulate() (starts computing new physics positions within a new thread) and FetchResults() (waits 'till the physics computations are done). Inbetween Simulate() and FetchResults() you may not "compute new physics". It is proposed (in a sample) that we create a game loop as such: Logic (you may calculate physics here and other stuff) Render + Simulate() at start of Render call and FetchResults at end of Render() call However, this has given me various little errors that stack up: since you actually render the scene that was computed in the previous iteration in the game loop. Does anyone have a solution to this?

  Read the article

• How to update entity states and animations in a component-based game

  - by mivic

  I'm trying to design a component-based entity system for learning purposes (and later use on some games) and I'm having some troubles when it comes to updating entity states. I don't want to have an update() method inside the Component to prevent dependencies between Components. What I currently have in mind is that components hold data and systems update components. So, if I have a simple 2D game with some entities (e.g. player, enemy1, enemy 2) that have Transform, Movement, State, Animation and Rendering components I think I should have: A MovementSystem that moves all the Movement components and updates the State components And a RenderSystem that updates the Animation components (the animation component should have one animation (i.e. a set of frames/textures) for each state and updating it means selecting the animation corresponding to the current state (e.g. jumping, moving_left, etc), and updating the frame index). Then, the RenderSystem updates the Render components with the texture corresponding to the current frame of each entity's Animation and renders everything on screen. I've seen some implementations like Artemis framework, but I don't know how to solve this situation: Let's say that my game has the following entities. Each entity have a set of states and one animation for each state: player: "idle", "moving_right", "jumping" enemy1: "moving_up", "moving_down" enemy2: "moving_left", "moving_right" What are the most accepted approaches in order to update the current state of each entity? The only thing that I can think of is having separate systems for each group of entities and separate State and Animation components so I would have PlayerState, PlayerAnimation, Enemy1State, Enemy1Animation... PlayerMovementSystem, PlayerRenderingSystem... but I think this is a bad solution and breaks the purpose of having a component-based system. As you can see, I'm quite lost here, so I'd very much appreciate any help.

  Read the article

• How to play many sounds at once in OpenAL

  - by Krom

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

  Read the article

• Unity Occlusion Portals: What and How?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  (Here I eat my words on Meta about posting Unity questions on Unity Answers... since that site is less responsive than this one.) Unity provides cell-based Occlusion Culling (via Umbra, I believe). However, a newer feature that it supports is Occlusion Portals. The question is, if BSP-based occlusion culling is already a feature of Unity, what do portals add, and how? PS. This question is not "What are portals?" -- I'm aware of the original Quake BSP-style portals -- which is partly why I find the explicit portal concept in Unity odd, since it uses BSP anyway.

  Read the article

• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

  In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486  | Next Page >