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  • How to implment the database for event conditions and item bonuses for a browser based game

    - by Saifis
    I am currently creating a browser based game, and was wondering what was the standard approach in making diverse conditions and status bonuses database wise. Currently considering two cases. Event Conditions Needs min 1000 gold Needs min Lv 10 Needs certain item. Needs fulfillment of another event Status Bonus Reduces damage by 20% +100 attack points Deflects certain type of attack I wish to be able to continually change these parameters during the process of production and operation, so having them hard-coded isn't the best way. All I could come up with are the following two methods. Method 1 Create a table that contains each conditions with needed attributes Have a model named conditions with all the attributes it would need to set them conditions condition_type (level, money_min, money_max item, event_aquired) condition_amount prerequisite_condition_id prerequisite_item_id Method 2 write it in a DSL form that could be interpreted later in the code Perhaps something like yaml, have a text area in the setting form and have the code interpret it. condition_foo: condition_type :level min_level: 10 condition_type :item item_id: 2 At current Method 2 looks to be more practical and flexible for future changes, trade off being that all the flex must be done on the code side. Not to sure how this is supposed to be done, is it supposed to be hard coded? separate config file? Any help would be appreciated. Added For additional info, it will be implemented with Ruby on Rails

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  • Two graphical entities, smooth blending between them (e.g. asphalt and grass)

    - by Gabriel Conrad
    Supposedly in a scenario there are, among other things, a tarmac strip and a meadow. The tarmac has an asphalt texture and its model is a triangle strip long that might bifurcate at some point into other tinier strips, and suppose that the meadow is covered with grass. What can be done to make the two graphical entities seem less cut out from a photo and just pasted one on top of the other at the edges? To better understand the problem, picture a strip of asphalt and a plane covered with grass. The grass texture should also "enter" the tarmac strip a little bit at the edges (i.e. feathering effect). My ideas involve two approaches: put two textures on the tarmac entity, but that involves a serious restriction in how the strip is modeled and its texture coordinates are mapped or try and apply a post-processing filter that mimics a bloom effect where "grass" is used instead of light. This could be a terrible failure to achieve correct results. So, is there a better or at least a more obvious way that's widely used in the game dev industry?

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  • Turn Based Event Algorithm

    - by GamersIncoming
    I'm currently working on a small roguelike in XNA, which sees the player in a randomly generated series of dungeons fending off creeps, as you might expect. As with most roguelikes, the player makes a move, and then each of the creeps currently active on screen will make a move in turns, until all creeps have updated, and it return's to the player's go. On paper, the simple algorithm is straightforward: Player takes turn Turn Number increments For each active creep, update Position Once all active creeps have updated, allow player to take next turn However, when it comes to actually writing this in more detail, the concept becomes a bit more tricky for me. So my question comes as this: what is the best way to handle events taking turns to trigger, where the completion of each last event triggers the next, when dealing with a large number of creeps (probably stored as an array of an enemy object), and is there an easier way to create some kind of engine that just takes all objects that need updating and chains them together so their updates follow suit? I'm not asking for code, just algorithms and theory in the direction of objects triggering updates one after the other, in a turn based manner. Thanks in advance. Edited: Here's the code I currently have that is horrible :/ if (player.getTurnOver() && updateWait == 0) { if (creep[creepToUpdate].getActive()) { creep[creepToUpdate].moveObject(player, map1); updateWait = 10; } if (creepToUpdate < creep.Length -1) { creepToUpdate++; } else { creepToUpdate = 0; player.setTurnOver(false); } } if (updateWait > 0) { updateWait--; }

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  • How can I design good continuous (seamless) tiles?

    - by Mikalichov
    I have trouble designing tiles so that when assembled, they don't look like tiles, but look like a homogeneous thing. For example, see the image below: Even though the main part of the grass is only one tile, you don't "see" the grid; you know where it is if you look a bit carefully, but it is not obvious. Whereas when I design tiles, you can only see "oh, jeez, 64 times the same tile," like in this image: (I took this from another GDSE question, sorry; not be critical of the game, but it proves my point. And actually has better tile design that what I manage, anyway.) I think the main problem is that I design them so they are independent, there is no junction between two tiles if put closed to each other. I think having the tiles more "continuous" would have a smoother effect, but can't manage to do it, it seems overly complex to me. I think it is probably simpler than I think once you know how to do it, but couldn't find a tutorial on that specific point. Is there a known method to design continuous / homogeneous tiles? (My terminology might be totally wrong, don't hesitate to correct me.)

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  • Bejeweled-like game, managing different gem/powerup behaviors?

    - by Wissam
    I thought I'd ask a question and look forward to some insight from this very compelling community. In a Bejeweled-like (Match 3) game, the standard behavior once a valid swap of two adjacent tiles is made is that the resulting matching tiles are destroyed, any tiles now sitting over empty spaces fall to the position above the next present-tile, and any void created above is filled with new tiles. In richer Match-3 games like Bejeweled, 4 in a row (as opposed to just 3) modifies this behavior such that the tile that was swapped is retained, turned into a "flaming" gem, it falls, and then the empty space above is filled. The next time that "flaming gem" is played it explodes and destroys the 8 perimeter tiles, triggers a different animation sequence (neighbors of those 8 tiles being destroyed look like they've been hit by a shockwave then they fall to their respective positions). Scoring is different, the triggered sounds are different, etc. There are even more elaborate behaviors for Match5, Match-cross-pattern, and many powerups that can be purchased, each which produces a more elaborate sequence of events, sounds, animations, scoring, etc... What is the best approach to developing all these different behaviors that respond to players' "move" and her current "performance" and that deviate from the standard sequence of events, scoring, animation, sounds etc, in such a way that we can always flexibly introduce a new "powerup" ? What we are doing now is hard-coding the events of each one, but the task is long and arduous and seems like the wrong approach especially since the game-designers and testers often offer (later) valuable insight on what works better in-game, which means that the code itself may have to be re-written even for minor changes in behavior (say, destroy only 7 neighboring tiles, instead of all 8 in an explosion). ANY pointers for good practices here would be highly appreciated.

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  • What are the factors that determine the default frequency of a shader call?

    - by user827992
    After i have been played for some days with various vertex and fragments shaders seems clear to me that this programs are called by the GPU at every and each rendering cycle, the problem is that I can't really quantify this frequency and I can't tell if is based on some default values or not because I don't have a big collection of hardware right now to do extensive tests. For what i know the answer could be really trivial like "it's the same of the refresh rate of your monitor", but i would like some good answers on that to be clear on this. For instance looks really odd to me that all the techniques used to control the amount of FPS that i have seen until now uses a call for the OpenGL function glutGet(GLUT_ELAPSED_TIME) to retrieve a value in ms about when the rendering started but I have to relies on the CPU to do the math. Why I can't set an FPS value in OpenGL if OpenGL clearly has a counter and a timer/clock? PS I'm referring to OpenGL 3.0+

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  • Tips for building an AI for a 2D racing game

    - by declique
    I have a school project to build an AI for a 2D racing game in which it will compete with several other AIs (no collision). We are given a black and white bitmap image of the racing track, we are allowed to choose basic stats for our car (handling, acceleration, max speed and brakes) after we receive the map. The AI connects to the game's server and gives to it several times a second numbers for the current acceleration and steering. The language I chose is C++, by the way. The questions are: What is the best strategy or algorithm (since I want to try and win)? I currently have in mind some ideas found on the net and one or two of my own, but I would like before I start to code that my perspective is one of the best. What good books are there on that matter? What sites should I refer to?

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  • Finding the shorter turning direction towards a target

    - by A.B.
    I'm trying to implement a type of movement where the object gradually faces the target. The problem I've run into is figuring out which turning direction is faster. The following code works until the object's orientation crosses the -PI or PI threshold, at which point it will start turning into the opposite direction void moveToPoint(sf::Vector2f destination) { if (destination == position) return; auto distance = distanceBetweenPoints(position, destination); auto direction = angleBetweenPoints(position, destination); /// Decides whether incrementing or decrementing orientation is faster /// the next line is the problem if (atan2(sin(direction - rotation), cos(direction - rotation)) > 0 ) { /// Increment rotation rotation += rotation_speed; } else { /// Decrement rotation rotation -= rotation_speed; } if (distance < movement_speed) { position = destination; } else { position.x = position.x + movement_speed*cos(rotation); position.y = position.y + movement_speed*sin(rotation); } updateGraphics(); } 'rotation' and 'rotation_speed' are implemented as custom data type for radians which cannot have values lower than -PI and greater than PI. Any excess or deficit "wraps around". For example, -3.2 becomes ~3.08.

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  • Why is my arrow texture being drawn in odd places?

    - by tyjkenn
    This is a script I wrote that places an arrow on the screen, pointing to an enemy off-screen, or, if the enemy is on-screen, it places an arrow hovering above the enemy. Everything seems to work, except for some odd reason, I see random arrows floating around, often skewed and resized (which I really don't understand, because I only rotate and place in this script). Even when I only have one enemy in the scene, I still see these random arrows. It should only be drawing one per enemy. Note: when all enemies are removed, no arrows appear. var arrow : Texture; var cam : Camera; var dim : int = 30; function OnGUI() { var objects = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("Enemy"); for(var ob : GameObject in objects) { var pos = cam.WorldToViewportPoint(ob.transform.position); if(gameObject.GetComponent(FollowCamera).target != null){ var tar = gameObject.GetComponent(FollowCamera).target.parent; } if(pos.z>1 && ob.transform != tar){ var xDiff = (pos.x*cam.pixelWidth)-(cam.pixelWidth/2); var yDiff = (pos.y*cam.pixelHeight)-(cam.pixelHeight/2); var angle = Mathf.Rad2Deg*Mathf.Atan(yDiff/xDiff)+180; if(xDiff>0) angle += 180; var dist = Mathf.Sqrt(xDiff*xDiff + yDiff*yDiff); var slope = yDiff/xDiff; var camSlope = cam.pixelHeight/cam.pixelWidth; var theX = -1000.0; var theY = -1000.0; var mult = 0; var temp; if(Mathf.Abs(xDiff)>(cam.pixelWidth/2)||Mathf.Abs(yDiff)>(cam.pixelHeight/2)){ //touching right if(slope<camSlope && slope>-camSlope) { if(xDiff>(cam.pixelWidth/2)) { theX = cam.pixelWidth - (dim/2); mult = -1; }else if(xDiff<-(cam.pixelWidth/2)) { theX = (dim/2); mult = 1; } temp = ((cam.pixelWidth/2)*yDiff)/xDiff; theY =(cam.pixelHeight/2)+(mult*temp); } else{ if(yDiff>(cam.pixelHeight/2)) { theY = (dim/2); mult = 1; }else if(yDiff<-(cam.pixelHeight/2)) { theY = cam.pixelHeight - (dim/2); mult = -1; } temp = ((cam.pixelHeight/2)*xDiff)/yDiff; theX =(cam.pixelWidth/2)+(mult*temp); } } else { angle = -90; theX = (cam.pixelWidth/2)+xDiff; theY = (cam.pixelHeight/2)-yDiff-dim; } GUIUtility.RotateAroundPivot(-angle, Vector2(theX, theY)); Graphics.DrawTexture(Rect(theX-(dim/2),theY-(dim/2),dim,dim),arrow,null); GUIUtility.RotateAroundPivot(angle, Vector2(theX, theY)); } } }

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  • Browser Game Database structure

    - by John Svensson
    users id username password email userlevel characters id userid level strength exp max_exp map id x y This is what I have so far. I want to be able to implement and put different NPC's on my map location. I am thinking of some npc_entities table, would that be a good approach? And then I would have a npc_list table with details as how much damage, level, etc the NPC is. Give me some ideas with the map, map entities, npc how I can structure it?

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  • Periodic updates of an object in Unity

    - by Blue
    I'm trying to make a collider appear every 1 second. But I can't get the code right. I tried enabling the collider in the Update function and putting a yield to make it update every second or so. But it's not working (it gives me an error: Update() cannot be a coroutine.) How would I fix this? Would I need a timer system to toggle the collider? var waitTime : float = 1; var trigger : boolean = false; function Update () { if(!trigger){ collider.enabled = false; yield WaitForSeconds(waitTime); } if(trigger){ collider.enabled = true; yield WaitForSeconds(waitTime); } } }

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  • Problem with a* implementation in pygame

    - by piyush3dxyz
    Yesterday i decide to make RTS game in pygame(pygame is best).I figured out many components of RTS game like unit selecting,health,resources but only 1 thing i still not understand.. which is a* pathfinding in pygame... I also done little bit of research on wiki,articles and papers...but still cant figure out problem.... function A*(start,goal) closedset := the empty set // The set of nodes already evaluated. openset := {start} // The set of tentative nodes to be evaluated, initially containing the start node came_from := the empty map // The map of navigated nodes. g_score[start] := 0 // Cost from start along best known path. // Estimated total cost from start to goal through y. f_score[start] := g_score[start] + heuristic_cost_estimate(start, goal) while openset is not empty current := the node in openset having the lowest f_score[] value if current = goal return reconstruct_path(came_from, goal) remove current from openset add current to closedset for each neighbor in neighbor_nodes(current) if neighbor in closedset continue tentative_g_score := g_score[current] + dist_between(current,neighbor) if neighbor not in openset or tentative_g_score <= g_score[neighbor] came_from[neighbor] := current g_score[neighbor] := tentative_g_score f_score[neighbor] := g_score[neighbor] + heuristic_cost_estimate(neighbor, goal) if neighbor not in openset add neighbor to openset return failure here is the pseudocode for wiki a* implementation......

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  • XNA 4.0 Point Vertex Rendering

    - by luis
    I have a buffer of about 134 million particles and a very powerful computer to render them smoothly but I am getting an error when trying to render them as primitive lines it says I cannot render more than around 1 million. I wonder how can I do this, also if is there a better way to render this other than with lines, I'm comfortable with having 1 pixel points or anything as long as the vertices are shown all the time. I'm basically just plotting the points. thanks.

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  • Is it considered poor programming to do this with xna components?

    - by Rob
    I created my own Menu System that is event driven. In order to have a loading screen and multithreaded loading to work, I devised this sort of implementation: //Let's check if the game is done loading. if (_game != null) { _gameLoaded = _game.DoneLoading; } //This means the game is loading still, //therefore the loading screen should be active. if (!_gameLoaded && _gameActive) { _gameScreenList[2].UpdateMenu(); } //The loading screen was selected. if (_gameScreenList[2].CurrentState == GameScreen.State.Shown && !_gameActive) { Components.Add(_game = new ParadoxGame(this)); _game.Initialize(); //Initializes the Game so that the loading can begin. _gameActive = true; } In the XNA Game Component that contains the actual game, in the LoadContent method I simply created a new Thread that calls another method ThreadLoad that has all the actual loading. I also have a boolean variable called DoneLoading in the XNA Game Component that is set to true at the end of the ThreadLoad. I am wondering if this is a poor implementation.

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  • SFML: Monster following player on a straight line

    - by user3504658
    I've searched for this and found a few topics , usually they used a function normalize and using simple vector subtracting which is ok , but how should I do it in sfml ? Instead of using: Movement = p.position() - m.position(); p is the player and m is the monster I used something like this to move on a straight line: sf::Vector2f Tail(0,0); if((mPlayer.getPosition().y - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().y) >= (mPlayer.getPosition().x - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().x)){ //sf::Vector2f Tail(0,0); Tail.x = mPlayer.getPosition().x - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().x; } else if((mPlayer.getPosition().y - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().y) <= (mPlayer.getPosition().x - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().x)){ //sf::Vector2f Tail(0,0); Tail.y = mPlayer.getPosition().y - mMonster.GetInstance().getPosition().y; } if(!MonsterCollosion()) mMonster.Move(Tail * (TimePerFrame.asSeconds() * 1/2 ) ); It works ok if the the height = the width for the game window, although I think it's not the best looking game when it comes to a moving monster, since it starts fast and then it gets slower so what do you guys advise me to do ?

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  • Unity Problem with colliding instances of same object

    - by Kuba Sienkiewicz
    I want to check if object's instance is overlapping with another instance (any spawned object with another spawned object, not necessary the same object). I'm doing this by detecting collisions between bodies. But I have a problem. Spawned object (instances) are detecting collision with everything but other spawned objects. I've checked collision layers etc. All of spawned objects have rigidbodies and mesh colliders. Also when I attach my script to another body and I touch that body with an instanced object it detects collision. So problem is visible only in collision between spawned objects. And one more information I have script, rigid body and collider attached to child of main object. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class CantPlace : MonoBehaviour { public bool collided = false; // Use this for initialization void Start () { } // Update is called once per frame void Update () { //Debug.Log (collided); } void OnTriggerEnter(Collider collider) { //if (true) { //foreach (Transform child in this.transform) { // if (child.name == "Cylinder") { //collided = true; Color c; c = this.renderer.material.color; c.g = 0f; c.b = 1f; c.r = 0f; this.renderer.material.color = c; Debug.Log (collider.name); //} // } //} //foreach (ContactPoint contact in collision.contacts) { // Debug.DrawRay(contact.point, contact.normal, Color.red,15f); // } } }

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  • Help with converting an XML into a 2D level (Actionscript 3.0)

    - by inzombiak
    I'm making a little platformer and wanted to use Ogmo to create my level. I've gotten everything to work except the level that my code generates is not the same as what I see in Ogmo. I've checked the array and it fits with the level in Ogmo, but when I loop through it with my code I get the wrong thing. I've included my code for creating the level as well as an image of what I get and what I'm supposed to get. EDIT: I tried to add it, but I couldn't get it to display properly Also, if any of you know of better level editors please let me know. xmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, LoadXML); xmlLoader.load(new URLRequest("Level1.oel")); function LoadXML(e:Event):void { levelXML = new XML(e.target.data); xmlFilter = levelXML.* for each (var levelTest:XML in levelXML.*) { crack = levelTest; } levelArray = crack.split(''); trace(levelArray); count = 0; for(i = 0; i <= 23; i++) { for(j = 0; j <= 35; j++) { if(levelArray[i*36+j] == 1) { block = new Platform; s.addChild(block); block.x = j*20; block.y = i*20; count++; trace(i); trace(block.x); trace(j); trace(block.y); } } } trace(count);

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  • Jittery Movement, Uncontrollably Rotating + Front of Sprite?

    - by Vipar
    So I've been looking around to try and figure out how I make my sprite face my mouse. So far the sprite moves to where my mouse is by some vector math. Now I'd like it to rotate and face the mouse as it moves. From what I've found this calculation seems to be what keeps reappearing: Sprite Rotation = Atan2(Direction Vectors Y Position, Direction Vectors X Position) I express it like so: sp.Rotation = (float)Math.Atan2(directionV.Y, directionV.X); If I just go with the above, the sprite seems to jitter left and right ever so slightly but never rotate out of that position. Seeing as Atan2 returns the rotation in radians I found another piece of calculation to add to the above which turns it into degrees: sp.Rotation = (float)Math.Atan2(directionV.Y, directionV.X) * 180 / PI; Now the sprite rotates. Problem is that it spins uncontrollably the closer it comes to the mouse. One of the problems with the above calculation is that it assumes that +y goes up rather than down on the screen. As I recorded in these two videos, the first part is the slightly jittery movement (A lot more visible when not recording) and then with the added rotation: Jittery Movement So my questions are: How do I fix that weird Jittery movement when the sprite stands still? Some have suggested to make some kind of "snap" where I set the position of the sprite directly to the mouse position when it's really close. But no matter what I do the snapping is noticeable. How do I make the sprite stop spinning uncontrollably? Is it possible to simply define the front of the sprite and use that to make it "face" the right way?

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  • 2D management game [on hold]

    - by Simon Bull
    Very newbie question but I have a game idea in mind. It will be 2d and data centric, like football manager. However I am struggling to find a platform that would suit. I am an experienced line of business developer so am happy to write code, but I would like a platform that does some of the leg work for me so was avoiding OpenGL. I would also like to be able deploy to iOS, android, windows and OS X. What are the options? To be more clear, the game is not a normal platform or shooter type game, so game maker is likely to be way too basic and unity seems a little over the top (though I am not sure if the GUI options would fit?). The majority of the game is more like business screens just displaying data and having buttons to click. Are there options for this type of game (May help to look at football manager)?

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  • Bad texture on model with different GPU

    - by Pacha
    I have some kind of distortion on the texture of my 3D model. It works perfectly well on an AMD GPU, but when testing on a integrated Intel HD graphics card it has a weird issue. I don't have a problem with the rest of my entities as they are not scaled. The models with the problems are scaled, as my engine supports different sizes for the platforms. I am using Ogre3D as rendering engine, and GLSL as shader language. Vertex shader: #version 120 varying vec2 UV; void main() { UV = gl_MultiTexCoord0; gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex; } Fragment shader: #version 120 varying vec2 UV; uniform sampler2D diffuseMap; void main(void) { gl_FragColor = texture(diffuseMap, UV); } Screenshot (the error is on the right and left side, the top and bottom part are rendered perfectly well):

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  • GPU based procedual terrain borders?

    - by OnePie
    I'm working on a game that preferibly should feature a combination of designed and procedually generated terrain where the designer specifies in somewhat detailed terms what type of terrain a given area will have (grasslands, forest etc...) and then a precedual algorithm takes care of the rest. I'm not talking about minecraft style biomoes, but rather the game map for a strategy game. Each 'area' will not take up that much of the screen, and thus be more akin to a tile whose texture is procedually generated. While procedually generating terrain textures on the GPU are not that difficult, the hard part is making the borders between them look good. Currently, the 'tiles' are large enough to be visible (due to memory constraints mainly, we are talking planetary sized textures for a game taking place in space and on a continental ground view with seamless transitions between them) and creating good borders between them with an algorithm that is fast enough to be useful has proven difficult. Sampling the n-surrounding pixels and using the combiened result did not yield very good borders and was fairly slow on the GPU to boot (ca 12ms for me, that is without any lighning or shading and with very simple terrain texture shaders). So are there any practical known methods to solve this problem?

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  • Simple rendering produces minor stutter

    - by Ben
    For some reason, this game loop renders the movement of a simple rectangle with no stuttering. double currTime; double prevTime = System.nanoTime() / NANO_TO_SEC; double FPSTIMER = System.nanoTime(); double maxTimeDiff = 100.0 / 1000.0; double delta = 1.0 / 60.0; int processes = 0, frames = 0; while(true){ currTime = System.nanoTime() / NANO_TO_SEC; if(currTime - prevTime > maxTimeDiff) prevTime = currTime; if(currTime >= prevTime){ process(); processes++; prevTime += delta; if(currTime < prevTime){ render(); frames++; } } else{ try{ Thread.sleep((long) (1000 * (prevTime - currTime))); } catch(Exception e){} } if(System.nanoTime() - FPSTIMER > 1000000000.0){ System.out.println("Process: " + (1000 / processes) + "ms FPS: " + (1000 / frames) + "ms"); processes = frames = 0; FPSTIMER += 1000000000.0; } } But for this game loop, I get really minor stuttering where the movement does not look smooth. long prevTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); long prevRenderTime = 0; long currRenderTime = 0; long delta = 0; long msPerTick = 1000 / 60; int frames = 0; int ticks = 0; double FPSTIMER = System.currentTimeMillis(); while (true){ long currTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); delta += (currTime - prevTime) / msPerTick; prevTime = currTime; while (delta >= 1){ ticks++; process(); delta -= 1; } prevRenderTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); render(); frames++; currRenderTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); try{ Thread.sleep((long) ((1000 / FPS) - (currRenderTime - prevRenderTime))); } catch(Exception e){} if(System.currentTimeMillis() - FPSTIMER > 1000.0){ System.out.println("Process: " + (1000.0 / ticks) + "ms FPS: " + (1000.0 / frames) + "ms"); ticks = frames = 0; FPSTIMER += 1000.0; } Is there any critical difference that I'm missing here? The one thing I noticed is that if I uncap the fps for the second game loop, the stuttering goes away. It doesn't make sense to me. Also, the second game loop came from Notch's Minicraft code with just my thread sleeping code added in.

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  • How can I make permanent death in a MUD seem acceptable and fair to players?

    - 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?

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  • Why does my ID3DXSprite appear to be incorrectly scaled?

    - by Bjoern
    I am using D3D9 for rendering some simple things (a movie) as the backmost layer, then on top of that some text messages, and now wanted to add some buttons to that. Before adding the buttons everything seemed to have worked fine, and I was using a ID3DXSprite for the text as well (ID3DXFont), now I am loading some graphics for the buttons, but they seem to be scaled to something like 1.2 times their original size. In my test window I centered the graphic, but it being too big it just doesnt fit well, for example the client area is 640x360, the graphic is 440, so I expect 100 pixel on left and right, left side is fine [I took screenshot and "counted" the pixels in photoshop], but on the right there is only about 20 pixels) My rendering code is very simple (I am omitting error checks, et cetera, for brevity) // initially viewport was set to width/height of client area // clear device m_d3dDevice->Clear( 0, NULL, D3DCLEAR_TARGET|D3DCLEAR_STENCIL|D3DCLEAR_ZBUFFER, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(0,0,0,0), 1.0f, 0 ); // begin scene m_d3dDevice->BeginScene(); // render movie surface (just two triangles to which the movie is rendered) m_d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE,false); m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MAGFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetSamplerState( 0, D3DSAMP_MINFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR ); // bilinear filtering m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG1, D3DTA_TEXTURE ); m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLORARG2, D3DTA_DIFFUSE ); //Ignored m_d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState( 0, D3DTSS_COLOROP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1 ); m_d3dDevice->SetTexture( 0, m_movieTexture ); m_d3dDevice->SetStreamSource(0, m_displayPlaneVertexBuffer, 0, sizeof(Vertex)); m_d3dDevice->SetFVF(Vertex::FVF_Flags); m_d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, 0, 2); // render sprites m_sprite->Begin(D3DXSPRITE_ALPHABLEND | D3DXSPRITE_SORT_TEXTURE | D3DXSPRITE_DO_NOT_ADDREF_TEXTURE); // text drop shadow m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRectDropShadow, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorDropShadow ); // text m_font->DrawText( m_playerSprite, m_currentMessage.c_str(), m_currentMessage.size(), &m_playerFontRect, DT_RIGHT|DT_TOP|DT_NOCLIP, m_playerFontColorMessage ) ); // control object m_sprite->Draw( m_texture, 0, 0, &m_vecPos, 0xFFFFFFFF ); // draws a few objects like this m_sprite->End() // end scene m_d3dDevice->EndScene(); What did I forget to do here? Except for the control objects (play button, pause button etc which are placed on a "panel" which is about 440 pixels wide) everything seems fine, the objects are positioned where I expect them, but just too big. By the way I loaded the images using D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx (resizing wnidow, and reacting to lost device, etc, works fine too). For experimenting, I added some code to take an identity matrix and scale is down on the x/y axis to 0.75f, which then gave me the expected result for the controls (but also made the text smaller and out of position), but I don't know why I would need to scale anything. My rendering code is so simple, I just wanted to draw my 2D objects 1;1 the size they came from the file... I am really very inexperienced in D3D, so the answer might be very simple...

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  • Application toolkits like QT versus traditional game/multimedia libraries like SFML

    - by Aaron
    I currently intend to use SFML for my next game project. I'll need a substantial GUI though (RPG/strategy-type) so I'll either have to implement my own or try to find an appropriate third party library, which seem to boil down to CEGUI, libRocket, and GWEN. At the same time, I do not anticipate doing that many advanced graphical effects. My game will be 2D and primarily sprite-based with some sprite animations. I've recently discovered that QT applications can have their appearance styled so that they don't have to look like plain OS apps. Given that, I am beginning to consider QT a valid alternative to SFML. I wouldn't have to implement the GUI functionality I'd need, and I may not be taking advantage of SFML's lower-level access anyway. The only drawbacks I can think of immediately are the learning curve for QT and figuring out how to fit game logic inside such a framework after getting used to the input/update/render loop of traditional game libraries. When would an application toolkit like QT be more appropriate for a game than a traditional game or multimedia library like SFML?

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