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• Can anyone recommend an AI sandbox?

  - by user19433

  I'm passionate person, who has been around AI from a long time [1] but never going in deep enough. Now it's time! I've been really looking for some way to concentrate on AI coding but couldn't succeeded to find an AI environment I can focus on. I just want to use an AI sandbox environment which would let me have tools like: visibility information character controller able to easily define a level, with obstacles of course physics collider management triggers management don't need to be a shiny, eye candy graphical render : this is about pathfinding, tactical reasoning, etc.. I have tried : Unreal Dev Kit : while the new release announce is about C++ coding, this is about external tools and will be released in 2013 Cry Engine : really interesting as AI is presents here but coding with it appears to be an hell: did I got it wrong ? Half Life source, C4, Torque, Dx Studio : either quite old, not very useful or costly these imply to dig in documentation (when provided) to code everything, graphics included. Unity 3D : the most promising platform. While you also need to create your own environment, there are lot of examples. The disadvantage is, in addition to spend time to have this env. working, is the languages choice : C#, Javascript or Boo. C# is not that hard, but this implies you'll allways have to convert papers (I love those from Lars Linden) books codes, or anything you can have in Aigamedev are most often in C++. This is extra work. I've look at "Simple Path", the very good Arong Greenberg work but no source provided and AngryAnt work. AI Sandbox : this seems to be exactly what as AI coder I want to use. I saw some preview but from 2009 we still don't know what it will be about precisely, will it be opensource or free (I strongly doubt), will I be able to buy it? will it really provide me tools I need to focus on AI ? That being said, what is the best environment to be able to focus on AI coding only, is it even possible?

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• 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.

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• DX11 - Weird shader behavior with and without branching

  - by Martin Perry

  I have found problem in my shader code, which I dont´t know how to solve. I want to rewrite this code without "ifs" tmp = evaluate and result is 0 or 1 (nothing else) if (tmp == 1) val = X1; if (tmp == 0) val = X2; I rewite it this way, but this piece of code doesn ´t word correctly tmp = evaluate and result is 0 or 1 (nothing else) val = tmp * X1 val = !tmp * X2 However if I change it to: tmp = evaluate and result is 0 or 1 (nothing else) val = tmp * X1 if (!tmp) val = !tmp * X2 It works fine... but it is useless because of "if", which need to be eliminated I honestly don´t understand it Posted Image . I tried compilation with NO and FULL optimalization, result is same

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• 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.

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• sprite animation system height recalculating has some issues

  - by Nicolas Martel

  Basically, the way it works is that it update the frame to show every let's say 24 ticks and every time the frame update, it recalculates the height and width of the new sprite to render so that my gravity logics and stuff works well. But the problem i am having now is a bit hard to explain in words only, therefore i will use this picture to assist me The picture So what i need basically is that if let's say i froze the sprite at the first frame, then unfreeze it and freeze it at the second frame, have the second frame's sprite (let's say it's a prone move) simply stand on the foothold without starting the gravity and when switching back, have the first sprite go back on the foothold like normal without being under the foothold. I had 2 ideas on doing this but I'm not sure it's the most efficient ways to do it so i wanna hear your inputs.

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• How do I prevent other dynamic bodies from affecting the player's velocity with Box2D?

  - by Milo

  I'm working on my player object for my game. PhysicsBodyDef def; def.fixedRotation = true; def.density = 1.0f; def.position = Vec2(200.0f, 200.0f); def.isDynamic = true; def.size = Vec2(50.0f,200.0f); m_player.init(def,&m_physicsEngine.getWorld()); This is how he moves: b2Vec2 vel = getBody()->GetLinearVelocity(); float desiredVel = 0; if (m_keys[ALLEGRO_KEY_A] || m_keys[ALLEGRO_KEY_LEFT]) { desiredVel = -5; } else if (m_keys[ALLEGRO_KEY_D] || m_keys[ALLEGRO_KEY_RIGHT]) { desiredVel = 5; } else { desiredVel = 0; } float velChange = desiredVel - vel.x; float impulse = getBody()->GetMass() * velChange; //disregard time factor getBody()->ApplyLinearImpulse( b2Vec2(impulse,0), getBody()->GetWorldCenter(),true); This creates a few problems. First, to move the player at a constant speed he must be given a high velocity. The problem with this is if he just comes in contact with a small box, he makes it move a lot. Now, I can fix this by lowering his density, but then comes my main issue: I need other objects to be able to run into him, but when they do, he should be like a static wall and not move. I'm not sure how to do that without high density. I cannot use collision groups since I still need him to be solid toward other dynamic things. How can this be done? Essentially, how do I prevent other dynamic bodies from affecting the player's velocity?

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• 2D Grid based game - how should I draw grid lines?

  - by Adam K Dean

  I'm playing around with a 2D grid based game idea, and I am using sprites for the grid cells. Let's say there is a 10 x 10 grid and each cell is 48x48, which will have sprites drawn there. That is fine. But in design mode, I'd like to have a grid overlay the screen. I can do this either with sprites (2x600 pixel image etc) or with primitives, but which is best? Should I really be switching between sprites and 3d/2d rendering? Like so: Thanks!

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• Question about separating game core engine from game graphics engine...

  - by Conrad Clark

  Suppose I have a SquareObject class, which implements IDrawable, an interface which contains the method void Draw(). I want to separate drawing logic itself from the game core engine. My main idea is to create a static class which is responsible to dispatch actions to the graphic engine. public static class DrawDispatcher<T> { private static Action<T> DrawAction = new Action<T>((ObjectToDraw)=>{}); public static void SetDrawAction(Action<T> action) { DrawAction = action; } public static void Dispatch(this T Obj) { DrawAction(Obj); } } public static class Extensions { public static void DispatchDraw<T>(this object Obj) { DrawDispatcher<T>.DispatchDraw((T)Obj); } } Then, on the core side: public class SquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<SquareObject>(); } #endregion } And on the graphics side: public static class SquareRender{ //stuff here public static void Initialize(){ DrawDispatcher<SquareObject>.SetDrawAction((Square)=>{//my square rendering logic}); } } Do this "pattern" follow best practices? And a plus, I could easily change the render scheme of each object by changing the DispatchDraw parameter, as in: public class SuperSquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<SquareObject>(); } #endregion } public class RedSquareObject: GameObject, IDrawable { #region Interface public void Draw() { this.DispatchDraw<RedSquareObject>(); } #endregion } RedSquareObject would have its own render method, but SuperSquareObject would render as a normal SquareObject I'm just asking because i do not want to reinvent the wheel, and there may be a design pattern similar (and better) to this that I may be not acknowledged of. Thanks in advance!

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• Manipulating Perlin Noise

  - by Numeri

  I've been learning about Procedurally Generated Content lately (in particular, Perlin noise). Perlin noise works great for making things like landscapes, height maps, and stuff like that. But now I am trying to generate structures more like mountain ranges (in 2D, as 3D would be way over my head right now) or underground veins of ores. I can't manage to manipulate Perlin Noise to do this. Making a cut off point (i.e. using only the tops of the 'mountains' of a heightmap) wouldn't work, because I would get lumps of mountains/veins. Any suggestions? Thanks, Numeri

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• Deferred Shading - Toolkit

  - by AliveDevil

  I recently managed to get some lights rendered in a scene by using a buffer and a for-loop. The problem with this method is the performance drop if more lights are used. I tried to convert Deferred Rendering in XNA4.0 | ROY-T.NL but it is not working, because I am not using any models. I know I have to render color, normals and lights seperate but I don't know how I could get it working. For understanding my structure better I'm using a world-class which holds some chunks. These chunks are loading all vertices from their items. These items have a property which returns the vertices. The item is returning VertexPositionNormalTexture[]. The chunk loads these Vertices and combines them to one large array of VertexPositionNormalTexture via someList.AsParallel().SelectMany(m => m).ToArray()). m is a VertexPositionNormalTexture. someList is List<VertexPositionNormalTexture>. I got my own shader to draw these vertices how I want them to be drawn. The first thing I would try is setting up two RenderTarget2D for rendering the color and normal part. With two different shaders. Than I would have to render the lights and there's the problem: I don't know how. I set up a structure to simplify working with lights but it didn't really help. public struct Light { public Vector3 Position; public Color4 Color; public float Range; public float Intensity; public Light( Vector3 position, Color color, float range, float intensity ) : this() { this.Position = position; this.Color = color; this.Range = range; this.Intensity = intensity; } public float[] Definition { get { return new[] { Position.X, Position.Y, Position.Z, Color.Red, Color.Green, Color.Blue, Intensity, Range }; } } } The next part is equally different because I don't know how to combine the colorMap, normalMap and textureMap to one finalMap. Some information to the system: I'm using SharpDX (Nightly from some months ago) and the SharpDX.Toolkit (I don't want to mess up with Direct3DDevice and similar things). Can someone help me with this problem? If things are missing or I provided insufficient information tell me, I need to get deferred shading working. Things I'm not able to do: create a rendertarget which holds all lights, merge colorMap, normalMap and lightMap to one finalMap and presenting this to the user.

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• How to get warnings when compiling fx files

  - by jdv-Jan de Vaan

  When I compile DirectX shaders (.fx files), I dont see any compiler warnings unless there was an error in the effect. This happens both when using the offline FXC compiler, as well as calling SlimDx's CompileEffect (which is what we normally do). I could force warnings as errors (/WX), but if you enable that, you get an error that compilation failed, without the warning that caused the problem. So how can I output warnings for shaders that compile properly?

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• XNA C# How to draw fonts in different color

  - by XNA newbie

  I'm doing a simple chat system with XNA C#. It is a chatbox that contains 5 lines of chat typed by the users. Something like a MMORPG chatting system. [User1name] says: Hi [User2name] says: Hello [User1name] says: What are you doing? [User2name] says: I'm fine [System] The time is now 1:03AM. When the user pressed 'ENTER', the text he entered will be added inside an ArrayList chatList.Add(s); For displaying the text he entered, I used for (int i = 0; i < chatList.Count(); i++) { spriteBatch.DrawString(font, chatList[i], new Vector2(40, arr1[i]), Color.Yellow); } *arr1[i] contains 5 y-axis points to print my 5 line of chats in the chatbox Question1: What if I have another type of message which will be added into ChatList (something like a system message). I need the System Message to be printed out in red color. And if the user keeps on chatting, the chat box will be updated according: (MAX 5 LINES) The newest chat will be shown below, and the oldest one will be deleted if they reached the max 5 lines. [User2name] says: Hello [User1name] says: What are you doing? [User2name] says: I'm fine [System] The time is now 1:03AM. [User1name] says: Ok, great to hear that! I'm having trouble to print each line color according to their msg type. For normal msg, it should be yellow. For system msg, it should be red. Question2: And for the next problem, I need the chat texts to be white color, while the names of the user is yellow (like warcraft3 chat system). How do I do that? I have a hard time thinking of a solution for these to work. Advise needed.

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• Camera Collision inside the room model

  - by sanddy

  I am having a problem in Calculating the camera collision for my Room model which consists of sofa, tables and other models. The users shall be moving the camera front, back, rotating so i need to make sure that the camera does not collide with any of the models with in the room. I have treated all my models inside the room by BoundingBox[] and the camera by BoundingSphere. So, far i have implemented collision by looking into the tutorial from http://www.toymaker.info/Games/XNA/html/xna_model_collisions.html which was great. But, I guess the problem lies in the Transformation part. I debugged and found some points to be at Vector(-XXX,-XXX,-XXX) where X is digit. Also i found my radius of some models where too large(in thousand, i just looked into its radius value before converting to BoundingBox). Do I need to scale the model for collision??? Below are my code:- On My LoadContent(): Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[myModel.Bones.Count]; myModel.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); int index = 0; box = new List<BoundingBox>(); BoundingBox worldModel = Utility.CalculateBoundingBox(myModel); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in myModel.Meshes) { Vector3[] obb = new Vector3[8]; worldModel.GetCorners(obb); Vector3[] asdf = (Vector3[])obb.Clone(); Vector3.Transform(obb, ref transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index], obb); BoundingBox worldBox = BoundingBox.CreateFromPoints(obb); box.Add(worldBox); index++; } On CameraPosition Update: BoundingSphere bs = new BoundingSphere(this.cameraPos, 5.0f); if (RoomWalkthrough.Utility.CheckCollision(bs, bb)) { // Do Something } Please Help.

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• How can i get latency when using Game Center?

  - by Freddy

  I'm pretty new to network programming. Basically I'm using game center for making a relatively simple iPhone game using Game-center p2p. However i'm now working on a algorithm to improve the multiplayer performance. But, I need to know how long it took for a package to travel from one device to the another device (latency) for the algorithm to work good. As for now, I have solved the problem by sending a double with time interval since 1970 in the package and then I compare it with the time at the other device. However I have heard that the NSDate methods is connected to the internet, which also will cause latency so the time interval would not be perfectly correct. What is the ideal way to check for how long it take for a package to be sent?

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• Trouble with touch events on iPhone

  - by MrDatabase

  I'm making a simple 2D game for iPhone. Think of the game as a ball on the screen that goes up while the user is touching the screen and falls down when the user stops touching the screen. The ball starts moving up in touchesBegan:withEvent and starts moving down in touchesEnded:withEvent. This works fine almost all the time. However on occasion the ball will keep moving up after the user stops touching... or the ball will keep moving down while the user is touching. Why is this happening? Just fyi the ball is drawn on a UIWindow. The taps are handled by a UIImageview subclass that's clearColor and takes up the entire screen. This "touchLayer" is also moved to the front of the window in the game loop. Any idea why this control scheme occasionally fails? Perhaps the touch events just aren't firing? Or they're fired out of order? Cheers!

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• How to cull liquids

  - by Cyral

  I use culling on my Tiles in my 2D Tile Based Platformer, so only ones needed are drawn on screen. Thats easy to do. However, My Liquid tiles (Water, lava, etc) require an Update Method aswell as the normal Draw, which does checks against tiles, makes it flow, etc. So how should I cull liquid updates in my game? Not culling is to slow, culling only on screen looks awkward when you move. What do you think would be best for the player? Maybe someway of culling the visible tiles PLUS also adding the width/height of the viewport to start culling tiles at a fast enough rate in front of the player so it dosent look awkward when moving? (Not sure how to do this though, something with MaxSpeed of player and width of screen)

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• Dynamic audio score/music

  - by Joel Martinez

  I'm interested in developing a game who's background music changes with the mood and scenario of the game's action. Of course many existing games do this (halo for example), but I was interested in any resources/papers/articles talking about the techniques to develop a system like this. I have some ideas, and I understand that this will be equally challenging to implement at the code level as it will be to come up or acquire music that fits this model. Any links or, answers with ideas in them would he appreciated. Edit: this is the kind of info I'm looking for :) http://halo.bungie.org/misc/gdc.2002.music/

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• How can I transform a Point2f with a matrix on Android?

  - by Vivendi

  I'm developing for Android and I'm using the android.renderscript.Matrix3f class to do some calculations. What I need to do now is to now is to do something like mat.tranform(pointIn, pointOut); So I need to transform a matrix by a given Point class. In awt I would simply do this: AffineTransform t = new AffineTransform(); Point2D.Float p = new Point2D.Float(); t.transform( p, p ); But in Android I now have this: Matrix3f t = new Matrix3f(); PointF p = new PointF(); // Now I need to tranform it somehow.. But the Matrix3f class in Android doesn't have a Matrix.transform(Point2D ptSrc, Point2D ptDst) method. So I guess I have to do the transformation manually. But I'm not really sure how that works. From what I've seen it's something like a translate and then a rotate? Could anyone please tell me how to do this in code?

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• Collision detection code style

  - by Marian Ivanov

  Not only there are two useful broad-phase algorithms and a lot of useful narrowphase algorithms, there are also multiple code styles. Arrays vs. calling Make an array of broadphase checks, then filter them with narrowphase checks, then resolve them. function resolveCollisions(thingyStructure * a,thingyStructure * b,int index){ possibleCollisions = getPossibleCollisions(b,a->get(index)); for(i=0; i<possibleCollitionsNumber; i++){ if(narrowphase(possibleCollisions[i],a[index])) { collisions->push(possibleCollisions[i]); }; }; for(i=0; i<collitionsNumber; i++){ //CODE FOR RESOLUTION }; }; Make the broadphase call the narrowphase, and the narrowphase call the resolution function resolveCollisions(thingyStructure * a,thingyStructure * b,int index){ broadphase(b,a->get(index)); }; function broadphase(thingy * with, thingy * what){ while(blah){ //blahcode narrowphase(what,collidingThing); }; }; Events vs. in-the-loop Fire an event. This abstracts the check away, but it's trickier to make an equal interaction. a[index] -> collisionEvent(eventdata); //much later int collisionEvent(eventdata){ //resolution gets here } Resolve the collision inside the loop. This glues narrowphase and resolution into one layer. if(narrowphase(possibleCollisions[i],a[index])) { //CODE GOES HERE }; The questions are: Which of the first two is better, and how am I supposed to make a zero-sum Newtonian interaction under B1.

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• HTML5 Canvas Game Timer

  - by zghyh

  How to create good timer for HTML5 Canvas games? I am using RequestAnimationFrame( http://paulirish.com/2011/requestanimationframe-for-smart-animating/ ) But object's move too fast. Something like my code is: http://pastebin.com/bSHCTMmq But if I press UP_ARROW player don't move one pixel, but move 5, 8, or 10 or more or less pixels. How to do if I press UP_ARROW player move 1 pixel? Thanks for help.

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• Blender to 3ds max to cal3d format

  - by Kaliber64

  There are quite a few questions on cal3d but they are old and don't apply anymore. In Blender(must be 2.49a for python script to work!!!): I have a scene with 7 meshes, 1 armature, 10 bones. I tried going to one mesh to simplify it but doesn't change anything. I found a small blend file that was used for cal3d and it exported just fine. So I tried to copy it's setup with no success. EDIT*8/13/2012 In the last week here is what I have found so far. I made the mesh in the newest blender(2.62?) and exported it to import it in the old one(2.49a). Did an animation in the old one because importing new blend files to old blenders, its just said it would lose keyframe data and all was good. And then you get the last problem of it not exporting meshes. BUT I found that meshes made in the old one export regardless. I can't find any that won't export. So if I used the old blender to remake my model I could get it to export :) At this point I found a modified release of cal3d (because the most core model variable would not initiate as I made a really small test subject in old blender instead of remaking my big one which took 4 hours.) which fixes the morph objects and adds what cal3d left off with. Under their license they have to release the modification but it has no documentation so I have to figure it out on my own. Its mostly the same. But with this lib it came with a 3ds max exporter. My question now is how do I transfer armature and mesh information from blender to 3ds max in order to export into cal3d format. Every time I try the models are see through and small and there are no bones. The formats I have tried to import are .3ds .obj(mesh only) and COLLADA. In all of them the mesh is invisible and no bones. It says the default texture is on so I should be able to see it. All the vertices are present I found a vertex highlighter so I can see those. If any of this is confusing let me know so I can clear it up. Its late .<=sleep.

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• 3D zooming technique to maintain the relative position of an object on screen

  - by stark

  Is it possible to zoom to a certain point on screen by modifying the field of view and rotating the view of the camera as to keep that point/object in the same place on screen while zooming ? Changing the camera position is not allowed. I projected the 3D pos of the object on screen and remembered it. Then on each frame I calculate the direction to it in camera space and then I construct a rotation matrix to align this direction to Z axis (in cam space). After this, I calculate the direction from the camera to the object in world space and transform this vector with the matrix I obtained earlier and then use this final vector as the camera's new direction. And it's actually "kinda working", the problem is that it is more/less off than the camera's rotation before starting to zoom depending on the area you are trying to zoom in (larger error on edges/corners). It looks acceptable, but I'm not settling for only this. Any suggestions/resources for doing this technique perfectly? If some of you want to explain the math in detail, be my guest, I can understand these things well.

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• 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

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• Power Distribution amongst connected nodes

  - by Perky

  In my game the map is represented by connected nodes, each node has a number of connected nodes. The nodes represent a system in which players can build structures and move units about. If you're familiar with Sins of a Solar Empire the game map is very similar. I want each node to be able to produce power and share it with all connected nodes. For example if A, B, C & D are all connected and produce 100 power units, then each system should have 400 power units available. If node B builds a structure that consumes 100 power units then A, B, C & D should then have 300 power units available. I've been working on this system all day and haven't been able to get it working quite the way I want. My current implementation is to first recurse through each nodes's connected node adding up the power, I keep a list of closed nodes so it doesn't loop, it's quite similar to A* actually. Pseudo code: All nodes start with the properties node.power = 0 node.basePower = 100 // could be different for each node. node.initialPower = node.basePower - function propagatePower( node, initialPower, closedNodes ) node.power += initialPower add( closedNodes, node ) connectedNodes = connected_nodes_except_from( closedNodes ) foreach node in connectedNodes do propagatePower( node, initialPower, closedNodes ) end end After this I iterate through all power consumers. foreach consumer in consumers do node = consumer.parentNode if node.power >= consumer.powerConsumption then consumer.powerConsumed += consumer.powerConsumption node.producedPower -= consumer.powerConsumption end end Then I adjust the initial power for the next propagation cycle. foreach node in nodes do node.initialPower = node.basePower - node.producedPower node.displayPower = node.power // for rendering the power. node.power = 0 end This seemed to work at first but then I came into a problem. Say two nodes A & B produce 100Pu each, it's shared so both A & B have 200Pu. I then make two structures that consume 80Pu each on A (160Pu). Then the nodes power is adjusted to basePower - producedPower (100-160 = -60). Nodes are propagated, both nodes now have 40Pu (A: -60 + B: 100 = 40). Which is correct because they started with 200Pu - 160Pu = 40Pu. However now node.power >= consumer.powerConsumption is false. Whats worse is it's false for any structure that uses more that 40Pu, so the whole system goes down. I could deduct from consumer.powerConsumption but what do I do if power is reduced elsewhere? I don't have the correct data to perform the necessary checks. It's late so I'm probably not thinking straight but I thought to ask on here to see if anyone has any other implementations, better or worse I'd be interested to know.

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• database design help for game / user levels / progress

  - by sprugman

  Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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