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• Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game

  - by brent777

  I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

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• About floating point precision and why do we still use it

  - by system_is_b0rken

  Floating point has always been troublesome for precision on large worlds. This article explains behind-the-scenes and offers the obvious alternative - fixed point numbers. Some facts are really impressive, like: "Well 64 bits of precision gets you to the furthest distance of Pluto from the Sun (7.4 billion km) with sub-micrometer precision. " Well sub-micrometer precision is more than any fps needs (for positions and even velocities), and it would enable you to build really big worlds. My question is, why do we still use floating point if fixed point has such advantages? Most rendering APIs and physics libraries use floating point (and suffer it's disadvantages, so developers need to get around them). Are they so much slower? Additionally, how do you think scalable planetary engines like outerra or infinity handle the large scale? Do they use fixed point for positions or do they have some space dividing algorithm?

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• How can I mark a pixel in the stencil buffer?

  - by János Turánszki

  I never used the stencil buffer for anything until now, but I want to change this. I have an idea of how it should work: the gpu discards or keeps rasterized pixels before the pixel shader based on the stencil buffer value on the given position and some stencil operation. What I don't know is how would I mark a pixel in the stencil buffer with a specific value. For example I draw my scene and want to mark everything which is drawn with a specific material (this material could be looked up from a texture so ideally I should mark the pixel in the pixel shader), so that later when I do some post processing on my scene I would only do it on the marked pixels. I didn't find anything on the internet besides how to set up a stencil buffer and explaining the different stencil operations. I was expecting to find some System-Value semantics like SV_Depth to write to in the pixel shader (because the stencil buffer shares the same resource with the depth buffer in D3D11), but there is no such thing on MSDN. So how should I do this? If I am misunderstanding something please help me clear that up.

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• Dynamic navigation mesh changes

  - by Nairou

  I'm currently trying to convert from grids to navigation meshes for pathfinding, since grids are either too coarse for accurate navigation, or too fine to be useful for object tracking. While my map is fairly static, and the navigation mesh could be created in advance, this is somewhat of a tower defense game, where objects can be placed to block paths, so I need a way to recalculate portions of the navigation mesh to allow pathing around them. Is there any existing documentation on good ways to do this? I'm still very new to navigation meshes, so the prospect of modifying them to cut or fill holes sounds daunting.

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• Animate multiple entities

  - by Robert

  I'm trying to animate multiple(3) entities using one model(IQM format). It's working but performance is really bad because I'm calling animate function for each entity in my game loop (I think problem is there). What's the best way to animate multiple entities (with different animation ofc) in OpenGL? I think I can try build one VBO / entity for better performances but I don't think it's the best way to do it.

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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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• Hashing 3D position into 2D position

  - by notabene

  I am doing volumetric raycasting and curently working on depth jitter. I have 3D position on ray and want to sample 2D noise texture to jitter the depth. Function for converting (or hashing) 3D position to 2D have to produce absolutely different numbers for a little changes (especialy because i am sampling in texture space so sample values differs very very little) and have to be "shader-wise" - so forget about branches, cycles etc. I'm looking forward for yours nice and fast solutions.

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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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• Cocos2D: Upgrading from OpenGL ES 1.1 to 2.0

  - by Alex

  I have recently starting upgrading my ios game to the latest Cocos2D (2.0 rc), and I am having some difficulties upgrading my texture generation code to OpenGL 2.0. In the old version I generated images with this code: CCRenderTexture *rt = [CCRenderTexture renderTextureWithWidth:WIDTH height:HEIGHT]; [rt beginWithClear:bgColor.r g:bgColor.g b:bgColor.b a:bgColor.a]; glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glDisableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glVertexPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, verts); glColorPointer(4, GL_FLOAT, 0, colors); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 0, (GLsizei)nVerts); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); [rt end]; But since OpenGL 2.0 works differently this code won't work. What is the best way to use the new OpenGL?

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• Shader inputs in a general purpouse engine

  - by dreta

  I'm not familiar with SDKs like Unity or UDK that much, so i can't check this off hand. Do general purpouse engines allow users to create custom uniform variables? The way i see it, and the way i have implemented it in an engine i'm writing to learn 3D, is that there is a "set" of uniforms provided by the engine and if you want to write a custom shader then you utilize uniforms you need to create a wanted effect. Now, the thing is, first of all i'm not an artist, second of all, i didn't have a chance to create complex scenes yet. So my question is, is it common practice to define variables that the engine provides and only allow the user to work with what they're given? Allowing users to add custom programs and use them where they want is not hard, but i have issues imagining how you'd go about doing the same for uniforms.

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• generating maps

  - by gardian06

  This is a conglomeration question when answering please specify which part you are addressing. I am looking at creating a maze type game that utilizes elevation. I have a few features I would like to have, but am unsure as to some of the implementation. I have done work doing fileIO maze generation (using a key to read the file, and then generate the level based on that file), but I am unsure how to think about this with elevation in the mix. I think height maps might be a good approach, but don't know how to represent them effectively. for a height map which is more beneficial XML(containing h[u,v] data and key definition), CSV (item1 is key reference, item2 is elevation), or another approach that I have not thought of yet? When it comes to placing the elevation values themselves what kind of deltah values are appropriate to have it noticeable at about a 60degree angle while not really effecting gravity driven physics (assuming some effect while moving up/down hill)? I am thinking of maybe going to procedural generation at some point, but am wondering if it is practical to have a procedurally generated grid (wall squares possibly same dimensions as the open space squares), or if designing to a thin wall open spaces is better? this decision will effect the amount of work need on the graphics end for uniform vs. irregular walls. EDIT: game will be a elevation maze shooter. levels/maps will be mazes with elevation the player has to negotiate. elevations will have effects on "combat" vision, and movement

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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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• MCP 1.7.10 Java class navigation

  - by Elias Benevedes

  So, I'm new to the Minecraft modding community and trying to understand where to start. I've attempted to do it before, but dropped it to the complexity of starting and the lack of a site like this to help (Mind that I'm also semi-new to Java, but have worked extensively in Javascript and Python. I understand how Java is different from the two). I have downloaded MCP 9.08 (Decompiles 1.7.10), and decompiled Minecraft. I'm looking to mod client, so I didn't supply it with a server jar. Everything seemed to work fine in decompile (Only error was it couldn't find the server jar). I can find my files in /mcp908/src/minecraft/net/minecraft. However, if I open up one of the classes in, say, block, I see a bunch of variables starting with p_ and ending with _. Is there any way to make these variables more decipherable, to understand what's going on so I can learn by example? Thank you.

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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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• Efficient way to calculate "vision cones" on 2D tile map?

  - by OverMachoGrande

  I'm trying to calculate which tiles a particular unit can "see" if facing a certain direction on a tile map (within a certain range and angle of facing). The easiest way would be to draw a certain number of tiles outward and raycast to each tile. However, I'm hoping for something slightly more efficient. A picture says a thousand words: The red dot is the unit (who's facing upwards). My goal is to calculate the yellow tiles. The green blocks are walls (walls are between tiles, and it's easy to check if you can pass between two tiles). The blue line represents something like the "raycasting" method I was talking about, but I'd rather not have to do this. EDIT: Units can only be facing north/south/east/west (0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees) and FoV is always 90 degrees. Should simplify some calculations. I'm thinking there's some sort of recursive-ish/stack-based/queue-based algorithm, but I can't quite figure it out. Thanks!

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• What are the parameters of APEX destructible asset / actor, and what are the effect of them?

  - by Semih Kekül

  There are parameters of the NxDestructibleAsset such as: defaultBehaviorGroup.damageToRadius destructibleParameters.fractureImpulseScale p3BodyDescTemplate.density structureSettings.useStressSolver destructibleParameters.runtimeFracture.glass.firstSegmentSize, etc. However, i can not find any document explaining these parameters. Are there any documents/videos or codes (anything) which explains these parameters?

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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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• 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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• How can I get accurate collision resolution on the corners of rectangles?

  - by ssb

  I have a working collision system implemented, and it's based on minimum translation vectors. This works fine in most cases except when the minimum translation vector is not actually in the direction of the collision. For example: When a rectangle is on the far edge on any side of another rectangle, a force can be applied, in this example down, the pushes one rectangle into the other, particularly a static object like a wall or a floor. As in the picture, the collision is coming from above, but because it's on the very edge, it translates to the left instead of back up. I've searched for a while to find an approach but everything I can find deals with general corner collisions where my problem is only in this one limited case. Any suggestions?

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• How do I efficiently generate chunks to fill entire screen when my player moves?

  - by Trixmix

  In my game I generate chunks when the player moves. The chunks are all generated on the fly, but currently I just created a simple flat 8X8 floor. What happens is that when he moves to a new chunk the chunk in the direction of the player gets generated and its neighboring chunks. This is not efficient because the generator does not fill the entire screen. I did try to use recursion but its not as fast as I would like it to be. My question is what would be an efficient way of doing so? How does minecraft do so? When I say this I mean just the way it PICKS which chunks to generate and in what order. Not how they generate or how they are saved in regions, just the order/way it generates them. I just want to know what is a good way to load chunks around the player.

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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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• How can I generate signed distance fields in real time, fast?

  - by heishe

  In a previous question, it was suggested that signed distance fields can be precomputed, loaded at runtime and then used from there. For reasons I will explain at the end of this question (for people interested), I need to create the distance fields in real time. There are some papers out there for different methods which are supposed to be viable in real-time environments, such as methods for Chamfer distance transforms and Voronoi diagram-approximation based transforms (as suggested in this presentation by the Pixeljunk Shooter dev guy), but I (and thus can be assumed a lot of other people) have a very hard time actually putting them to use, since they're usually long, largely bloated with math and not very algorithmic in their explanation. What algorithm would you suggest for creating the distance fields in real-time (favourably on the GPU) especially considering the resulting quality of the distance fields? Since I'm looking for an actual explanation/tutorial as opposed to a link to just another paper or slide, this question will receive a bounty once it's eligible for one :-). Here's why I need to do it in real time:

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• What kind of physics to choose for our arcade 3D MMO?

  - by Nick

  We're creating an action MMO using Three.js (WebGL) with an arcadish feel, and implementing physics for it has been a pain in the butt. Our game has a terrain where the character will walk on, and in the future 3D objects (a house, a tree, etc) that will have collisions. In terms of complexity, the physics engine should be like World of Warcraft. We don't need friction, bouncing behaviour or anything more complex like joints, etc. Just gravity. I have managed to implement terrain physics so far by casting a ray downwards, but it does not take into account possible 3D objects. Note that these 3D objects need to have convex collisions, so our artists create a 3D house and the player can walk inside but can't walk through the walls. How do I implement proper collision detection with 3D objects like in World of Warcraft? Do I need an advanced physics engine? I read about Physijs which looks cool, but I fear that it may be overkill to implement that for our game. Also, how does WoW do it? Do they have a separate raycasting system for the terrain? Or do they treat the terrain like any other convex mesh? A screenshot of our game so far:

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• How should I structure my turn based engine to allow flexibility for players/AI and observation?

  - by Reefpirate

  I've just started making a Turn Based Strategy engine in GameMaker's GML language... And I was cruising along nicely until it came time to handle the turn cycle, and determining who is controlling what player, and also how to handle the camera and what is displayed on screen. Here's an outline of the main switch happening in my main game loop at the moment: switch (GameState) { case BEGIN_TURN: // Start of turn operations/routines break; case MID_TURN: switch (PControlledBy[Turn]) { case HUMAN: switch (MidTurnState) { case MT_SELECT: // No units selected, 'idle' UI state break; case MT_MOVE: // Unit selected and attempting to move break; case MT_ATTACK: break; } break; case COMPUTER: // AI ROUTINES GO HERE break; case OBSERVER: // OBSERVER ROUTINES GO HERE break; } break; case END_TURN: // End of turn routines/operations, and move Turn to next player break; } Now, I can see a couple of problems with this set-up already... But I don't have any idea how to go about making it 'right'. Turn is a global variable that stores which player's turn it is, and the BEGIN_TURN and END_TURN states make perfect sense to me... But the MID_TURN state is baffling me because of the things I want to happen here: If there are players controlled by humans, I want the AI to do it's thing on its turn here, but I want to be able to have the camera follow the AI as it makes moves in the human player's vision. If there are no human controlled player's, I'd like to be able to watch two or more AI's battle it out on the map with god-like 'observer' vision. So basically I'm wondering if there are any resources for how to structure a Turn Based Strategy engine? I've found lots of writing about pathfinding and AI, and those are all great... But when it comes to handling the turn structure and the game states I am having trouble finding any resources at all. How should the states be divided to allow flexibility between the players and the controllers (HUMAN, COMPUTER, OBSERVER)? Also, maybe if I'm on the right track I just need some reassurance before I lay down another few hundred lines of code...

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• Passing data between engine layers

  - by spaceOwl

  I am building a software system (game engine with networking support ) that is made up of (roughly) these layers: Game Layer Messaging Layer Networking Layer Game related data is passed to the messaging layer (this could be anything that is game specific), where they are to be converted to network specific messages (which are then serialized to byte arrays). I'm looking for a way to be able to convert "game" data into "network" data, such that no strong coupling between these layers will exist. As it looks now, the Messaging layer sits between both layers (game and network) and "knows" both of them (it contains Converter objects that know how to translate between data objects of both layers back and forth). I am not sure this is the best solution. Is there a good design for passing objects between layers? I'd like to learn more about the different options.

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