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• Understanding how texCUBE works and writing cubemaps properly into a cube rendertarget

  - by cubrman

  My goal is to create accurate reflections, sampled from a dynamic cubemap, for specific 3d objects (mostly lights) in XNA 4.0. To sample the cubemap I compute the 3d reflection vector in a classic way: half3 ReflectionVec = reflect(-directionToCamera, Normal.rgb); I then use the vector to get the actual reflected color: half3 ReflectionCol = texCUBElod(ReflectionSampler, float4(ReflectionVec, 0)); The cubemap I am sampling from is a RenderTarget with 6 flat faces. So my question is, given the 3d world position of an arbitrary 3d object, how can I make sure that I get accurate reflections of this object, when I re-render the cubemap. Should I build the ViewProjection matrix in a specific way? Or is there any other approach?

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• How to simulate pressure with particles?

  - by BeachRunnerJoe

  I'm trying to simulate pressure with a collection of spherical particles in a Unity game I'm building. A couple notes about the problem: The goal is to fill a constantly changing 2d space/void with small, frictionless spheres. The game is trying to simulate the ever-growing pressure of more objects being shoved into this space. The level itself is constantly scrolling from left to right, meaning if the space's dimensions are not changed by the user it will automatically get smaller (the leftmost part of the space will continually scroll off-screen). I'm wondering what some approaches are that I can take to tackling these problems... Knowing when to detect when there is space to fill and then add spheres to the space. Removing spheres from the space when it is shrinking. Strategies to simulate pressure on the spheres such that they "explode outwards" when more space is created. The current approach I am contemplating is using a constantly moving wall, that is off screen and moves with the screen, as this image illustrates: . This moving wall will push and trap the spheres into the space. As for adding new spheres, I was going to have either (1) spheres replicate themselves upon detecting free space, OR (2) spawn them at the left side of the space (where the wall is) - pushing the rest of the spheres to fill the space. I foresee problems with idea #1 because this likely wouldn't really create/simulate pressure; idea #2 seems more promising, but raises the question of how to provide a location for these new sphere particles to spawn (and the ramifications of spawning them when there IS no space). Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom!

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• How to visually "connect" skybox edges with terrain model

  - by David

  I'm working on a simple airplane game where I use skybox cube rendered using disabled depth test. Very close to the bottom side of the skybox is my terrain model. What bothers me is that the terrain is not connected to the skybox bottom. This is not visible while the plane flies low, but as it gets some altitude, the terrain looks smaller because of the perspective. Since the skybox center is always same as the camera position, the skybox moves with the plane, but the terrain goes into the distance. Ok, I think you understand the problem. My question is how to fix it. It's an airplane game so limiting max altitude is not possible. I thought about some way to stretch terrain to always cover whole bottom side of the skybox cube, but that doesn't feel right and I don't even know how would I calculate new terrain dimensions every frame. Here are some screenshot of games where you can clearly see the problem: (oops, I cannot post images yet) darker brown is the skybox bottom here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/iMsAf.png untextured brown is the skybox bottom here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/9oZr7.png

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• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

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

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• Repeat a part of spritesheet as background

  - by Moiblpadde

  So I'm trying to repeat a part of my spritesheet as a background (js, canvas). My code so far: var canvas = $("#board")[0], ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"), sprite = new Image(); sprite.src = "spritesheet.png"; sprite.onload = function(){ ctx.fillStyle = ctx.createPattern(spriteBg, "repeat"); ctx.fillRect(0, 25, 500, 500); } This is fine, but as you can see, it repeat the whole sprite, not just a part of it, and I just can't figure out how to do it D:

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• Is it possible to calculate or mathematically prove if a game is balanced / fair?

  - by Lurca

  This question is not focussed on video games but games in general. I went to a boardgame trade fair yesterday and asked myself if there is a way to calculate the fairness of a game. Sure, some of them require a good portion of luck, but it might be possible to calculate if some character is overpowered. Especially in role-playing games and trading card games. How, for example, can the creators of "Magic: The Gathering" make sure that there isn't the "one card that beats them all", given the impressive number of available cards?

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• Creating practically solvable 15 puzzle inputs

  - by Ashwin

  I am now developing a 15 puzzle game. I know the method to detect unsolvable puzzles. But unlike 8-puzzle, solution for 15-puzzle takes quite long time for some input states and can be solved within 5 seconds some other set of input states. Now the problem is that I cannot give the user(the player), a problem for which the solution takes more than 10 seconds(if he/she chooses to see the solution). So what I want is that when I initially shuffle the puzzle, I want to only present those puzzles which can be solved within 10 seconds. There must be some way to determine the hardness of the puzzle. I tried searching the net but could not find it. Does anyone know a way of determining the hardness of a puzzle? NOTE : I am using A* algorithm to find out the solution on a computer with 3GB RAM and 2.27GHZ processor.

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• How do I check on non-transparent pixels in a bitmapdata?

  - by Opoe

  I'm still working on my window cleaning game from one of my previous questions I marked a contribution as my answer, but after all this time I can't get it to work and I have to many questions about this so I decided to ask some more about it. As a sequel on my mentioned previous question, my question to you is: How can I check whether or not a bitmapData contains non transparent pixels? Subquestion: Is this possible when the masked image is a movieclip? Shouldn't I use graphics instead? Information I have: A dirtywindow movieclip on the bottom layer and a clean window movieclip on layer 2(mc1) on the layer above. To hide the top layer(the dirty window) I assign a mask to it. Code // this creates a mask that hides the movieclip on top var mask_mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); addChild(mask_mc) //assign the mask to the movieclip it should 'cover' mc1.mask = mask_mc; With a brush(cursor) the player wipes of the dirt ( actualy setting the fill from the mask to transparent so the clean window appears) //add event listeners for the 'brush' brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,brushDown); brush_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,brushUp); //function to drag the brush over the mask function brushDown(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.startDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase) ; mask_mc.graphics.moveTo(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y); } //function to stop dragging the brush over the mask function brushUp(dragging:MouseEvent):void{ dragging.currentTarget.stopDrag(); MovieClip(dragging.currentTarget).removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME,erase); } //fill the mask with transparant pixels so the movieclip turns visible function erase(e:Event):void{ with(mask_mc.graphics){ beginFill(0x000000); drawRect(brush_mc.x,brush_mc.y,brush_mc.width,brush_mc.height); endFill(); } }

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• Need help with a complex 3d scene (using Ogre and bullet)

  - by Matthias

  In my setup there is a box with a hole on one side, and a freely movable "stick" (or bar, tube). This stick can be inserted/moved through the hole into the box. This hole is exactly as wide as the diameter of the stick. In reality, when you would now hold the end of the stick in your hand and move the hand left/right or up/down, the other end of the stick, which is inside the box, would move into the opposite direction of your hand movement (because the stick is affixed at the pivot point where it is entering the box through the hole). (I hope you understand what I mean so far.) Now I need to simulate such a setup in a 3d program. I have already successfully developed an Ogre3d framework for this application, including bullet. But what I don't know is how I can implement in my program what I have described above. This application must include two more features: The scene camera is attached to the end of the stick that is inserted into the box. So when the user would move the mouse (to control "his" end of the stick outside the box), then the camera attached to the stick would move in the opposite direction, as described above. The stick has some length, and the user can push it further into the box, or pull it closer to him again. That means of course that the max. radius on which the end of the stick inside the box can move depends on how far the stick is pushed into the box. Thus, the more the stick is pushed into the box, the larger the max. radius of this end of the stick with the camera will be. I understand this is maybe quite a complex thing, so I don't expect any real source code here. I already have the Ogre and bullet part as said up and running, as well as a camera attached to the stick. This works fine. What I don't know though is how I can simulate the setup described above. Especially the requirement that the stick is affixed at the position of the hole on the box, where it is inserted into the box. Any ideas how I could approach to implement the described setup?

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• In a 2D platform game, how to ensure the player moves smoothly over sloping ground?

  - by Kovsa

  See image: http://i41.tinypic.com/huis13.jpg I'm developing a physics engine for a 2D platform game. I'm using the separating axis theorem for collision detection. The ground surface is constructed from oriented bounding boxes, with the player as an axis aligned bounding box. (Specifically, I'm using the algorithm from the book "Realtime Collision Detection" which performs swept collision detection for OBBs using SAT). I'm using a fairly small (close to zero) restitution coefficient in the collision response, to ensure that the dynamic objects don't penetrate the environment. The engine mostly works fine, it's just that I'm concerned about some edge cases that could possibly occur. For example, in the diagram, A, B and C are the ground surface. The player is heading left along B towards A. It seems to me that due to inaccuracy, the player box could be slightly below the box B as it continues up and left. When it reaches A, therefore, the bottom left corner of the player might then collide with the right side of A, which would be undesirable (as the intention is for the player to move smoothly over the top of A). It seems like a similar problem could happen when the player is on top of box C, moving left towards B - the most extreme point of B could collide with the left side of the player, instead of the player's bottom left corner sliding up and left above B. Box2D seems to handle this problem by storing connectivity information for its edge shapes, but I'm not really sure how it uses this information to solve the problem, and after looking at the code I don't really grasp what it's doing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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• Having to check collisions twice per game tic

  - by user22241

  I have vertically moving elevators (3 solid tiles wide) and static solid tiles. Each are separate entities and therefore have their own respective collision routines (to check for, and resolve, collisions with the main character) I check my vertical collisions after characters vertical movements and then horizontal collisions after horizontal movements. The problem is that I want my platform to kill the player if it squashes him from the top, and also if he's on a moving platform (that is moving up) that squashes him into a solid block. Correct behaviour, player on solid blocks being squashed from above by decending elevator Here is what happens. Gravity pushes character into solid block, solid block collision routine corrects characters position and sits him on the solid block which pushes him into the moving elevator, elevator routine then checks for collision and kills player. This assumes I am checking solid blocks first, then elevator collisions. However, if it's the other way around, this happens.... Incorrect behaviour, player on accending elevator gets pushed into solid blocks above Player is on an elevator moving up, gravity pushes him into the elevator, solid block CD routine detects no collision, no action taken. Elevator CD routine detects character has been pushed into elevator by gravity, corrects this by moving character up and sitting him on the elevator and pushes him into the solid blocks above, however the solid block vertical routine has now already run for this tic, so the game continues and the next solid block collision that is encountered is the horizontal routine. This detects a collision and moves the character out of the collision to the left or right of the block which looks odd to say the least (character should get killed here). The only way I've managed to get this working correctly is by running the solid block CD, then the elevator CD, then the solid block CD again straight after. This is clearly wasteful but I can't figure out how else to do this. Any help would be appreciated.

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• Making a perfect map (not tile-based)

  - by Sri Harsha Chilakapati

  I would like to make a map system as in the GameMaker and the latest code is here. I've searched a lot in google and all of them resulted in tutorials about tile-maps. As tile maps do not fit for every type of game and GameMaker uses tiles for a different purpose, I want to make a "Sprite Based" map. The major problem I had experienced was collision detection being slow for large maps. So I wrote a QuadTree class here and the collision detection is fine upto 50000 objects in the map without PixelPerfect collision detection and 30000 objects with PixelPerferct collisions enabled. Now I need to implement the method "isObjectCollisionFree(float x, float y, boolean solid, GObject obj)". The existing implementation is becoming slow in Platformer games and I need suggestions on improvement. The current Implementation: /** * Checks if a specific position is collision free in the map. * * @param x The x-position of the object * @param y The y-position of the object * @param solid Whether to check only for solid object * @param object The object ( used for width and height ) * @return True if no-collision and false if it collides. */ public static boolean isObjectCollisionFree(float x, float y, boolean solid, GObject object){ boolean bool = true; Rectangle bounds = new Rectangle(Math.round(x), Math.round(y), object.getWidth(), object.getHeight()); ArrayList<GObject> collidables = quad.retrieve(bounds); for (int i=0; i<collidables.size(); i++){ GObject obj = collidables.get(i); if (obj.isSolid()==solid && obj != object){ if (obj.isAlive()){ if (bounds.intersects(obj.getBounds())){ bool = false; if (Global.USE_PIXELPERFECT_COLLISION){ bool = !GUtil.isPixelPerfectCollision(x, y, object.getAnimation().getBufferedImage(), obj.getX(), obj.getY(), obj.getAnimation().getBufferedImage()); } break; } } } } return bool; } Thanks.

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• SDL 1.2 reports wrong screen size

  - by Aaron Digulla

  I have a multi-monitor setup with two displays, both 1920x1200. In games, I can only select resolutions 1920x1200 (like 2560x1200) which makes games unusable. Full screen doesn't work either because it switches one display to 800x600 which means I can't reach the close button... I have to kill the game and then, I have to restore my desktop because all windows are moved/resized. How can I force SDL to use any resolution that I want?

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• How to control a spaceship near a planet in Unity3D?

  - by tyjkenn

  Right now I have spaceship orbiting a small planet. I'm trying to make an effective control system for that spaceship, but it always end up spinning out of control. After spinning the ship to change direction, the thrusters thrust the wrong way. Normal airplane controls don't work, since the ship is able to leave the atmosphere and go to other planets, in the journey going "upside-down". Could someone please enlighten me on how to get thrusters to work the way they are supposed to?

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• In an Entity-Component-System Engine, How do I deal with groups of dependent entities?

  - by John Daniels

  After going over a few game design patterns, I have settle with Entity-Component-System (ES System) for my game engine. I've reading articles (mainly T=Machine) and review some source code and I think I got enough to get started. There is just one basic idea I am struggling with. How do I deal with groups of entities that are dependent on each other? Let me use an example: Assume I am making a standard overhead shooter (think Jamestown) and I want to construct a "boss entity" with multiple distinct but connected parts. The break down might look like something like this: Ship body: Movement, Rendering Cannon: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled Core: Position (locked relative to the Ship body), Tracking\Fire at hero, Taking Damage until disabled, Disabling (er...destroying) all other entities in the ship group My goal would be something that would be identified (and manipulated) as a distinct game element without having to rewrite subsystem form the ground up every time I want to build a new aggregate Element. How do I implement this kind of design in ES System? Do I implement some kind of parent-child entity relationship (entities can have children)? This seems to contradict the methodology that Entities are just empty container and makes it feel more OOP. Do I implement them as separate entities, with some kind of connecting Component (BossComponent) and related system (BossSubSystem)? I can't help but think that this will be hard to implement since how components communicate seem to be a big bear trap. Do I implement them as one Entity, with a collection of components (ShipComponent, CannonComponents, CoreComponent)? This one seems to veer way of the ES System intent (components here seem too much like heavy weight entities), but I'm know to this so I figured I would put that out there. Do I implement them as something else I have mentioned? I know that this can be implemented very easily in OOP, but my choosing ES over OOP is one that I will stick with. If I need to break with pure ES theory to implement this design I will (not like I haven't had to compromise pure design before), but I would prefer to do that for performance reason rather than start with bad design. For extra credit, think of the same design but, each of the "boss entities" were actually connected to a larger "BigBoss entity" made of a main body, main core and 3 "Boss Entities". This would let me see a solution for at least 3 dimensions (grandparent-parent-child)...which should be more than enough for me. Links to articles or example code would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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• How do you properly organize a commercial game?

  - by Reactorcore

  For the past months I've been studying programming and I've finally learned how to code, but one thing that is confusing me is how to properly organize the design of a game project - code wise. The game I'm building is a pretty standard commercial game. It has the basic components of a normal game: A world, characters and items interacting with each other and all of this is run by game manager. Basically you play as a hero in a world and do stuff. Fight, explore and interact. Think of your standard adventure game that starts off with an intro, goes to the menu system, then gets into the game and back to the menu. Pretty much like 99% of any commercial game or otherwise serious game projects. Thats what I'm aiming at. The problem is: How do you properly code a commercial game architecture? How do you organize it? How do you make it not become unmaintainable spaghetti code? What specific things to keep in mind when building this, codewise? How you can help me: a) Please tell how do you code your own game projects. What is your thought-process when designing the architecture? b) Recommend books, blogs, tutorials, videos or anything else on how to organize a commercial video game. c) Give hints and tips on do's/don'ts when building a game, codewise. Please help!

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• Split a 2D scene in layers or have a z coordinate

  - by Bane

  I am in the process of writing a 2D game engine, and a dilemma emerged. Let me explain the situation... I have a Scene class, to which various objects can be added (Drawable, ParticleEmitter, Light2D, etc), and as this is a 2D scene, things will obviously be drawn over each other. My first thought was that I could have basic add and remove methods, but I soon realized that then there would be no way for the programmer to control the order in which things were drawn. So I can up with two options, each with its pros and cons. A) Would be to split the scene in layers. By that I mean instead of having the scene be a container of objects, have it be a container of layers, which are in turn the containers of objects. B) Would require to have some kind of z-coordinate, and then have the scene sorted so objects with lower z get drawn first. Option A is pretty solid, but the problem is with the lights. In what layer do I add it? Does it work cross-layer? On all bottom layers? And I still need the Z coordinate to calculate the shadow! Option B would require me to change all my code from having Vector2D positions, to some kind of class that inherits from Vector2D and adds a z coordinate to it (I don't want it to be a Vector3D because I still need all the same methods the 2D kind has, just with .z clamped on). Am I missing something? Is there an alternative to these methods? I'm working in Javascript, if that makes a difference.

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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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• Frames per Second and Updates per Second [on hold]

  - by matt murray

  So this is more a general resources question, as I am seeking knowledge on how best to conserve resources in a game (I am writing in Java, and please this is not a thread on what language I should write it in, I have already chosen Java) so that the updates and frames per second could be the highest they could be. In general I am just searching for any articles you may have, any personal experience, anything what so ever that could be of use to a pretty new Java game developer on the subject! Thanks in advance!

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• Sprites, Primitives and logic entity as structs

  - by Jeffrey

  I'm wondering would it be considered acceptable: The window class is responsible for drawing data, so it will have a method: Window::draw(const Sprite&); Window::draw(const Rect&); Window::draw(const Triangle&); Window::draw(const Circle&); and all those primitives + sprites would be just public struct. For example Sprite: struct Sprite { float x, y; // center float origin_x, origin_y; float width, height; float rotation; float scaling; GLuint texture; Sprite(float w, float h); Sprite(float w, float h, float a, float b); void useTexture(std::string file); void setOrigin(float a, float b); void move(float a, float b); // relative move void moveTo(float a, float b); // absolute move void rotate(float a); // relative rotation void rotateTo(float a); // absolute rotation void rotationReset(); void scale(float a); // relative scaling void scaleTo(float a); // absolute scaling void scaleReset(); }; So instead of having each primitive to call their draw() function, which is a little bit off topic for their object, I let the Window class handle all the OpenGL stuff and manipulate them as simple objects that will be drawn later on. Is this pattern used? Does it have any cons against it's primitives-draw-themself pattern? Are there any other related patterns?

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• Any open source editor to make video games online without programming knowledge?

  - by chelder

  With Scratch we can create video games online, from its web platform, and publish them on the same web. I could download its source code and use it, as many others already did (see Scratch modifications). Unfortunately, we need programming knowledge to use it. Actually, Scratch is mainly for teaching kids to code. I also found editors like Construct 2, GameSalad Creator and many others (just type on Google: create a video game without programming). With those editors we can create video games without coding. Unfortunately they are neither open source nor web platform. They need to be installed on Windows or Mac. Do you know some editor like Construct 2 or GameSalad Creator but open source and executable from a web server? Maybe some HTML5 game engine can do it?

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• text extraction from video game dialogue files [on hold]

  - by wdwvt1

  As part of an academic project, I am trying to access the dialogue files (whether audio or text) from a variety of sports video games (Madden or NBA 2kX would be fantastic). I have searched extensively on other sites (scholarly text-mining publications, r/gaming, r/madden, modding sites, etc.) for guidance in how to extract dialogue files, but have been unsuccessful. Given that I don't have even the domain specific language to ask the right question (i.e. the resources I am seeking are out there, I just can't find them) I am asking the SE game dev community for help with the 2 following questions: Is there a canonical resource that I should study that would get me started with how to extract text or audio files from games? I am very fluent in python, which usually excels at mining information from sources, but I struggle with knowing where to start with a video game (as opposed to a more familiar database with a defined API). Is this even feasible, or are protections included with newer games (e.g. NBA 2k13) going to make extraction of these resources in a programmatic way impossible? Thank you for your help!

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• How do I generate a level randomly?

  - by Charlton Santana

  I am currently hard coding 10 different instances like the code below, but but I'd like to create many more. Instead of having the same layout for the new level, I was wondering if there is anyway to generate a random X value for each block (this will be how far into the level it is). A level 100,000 pixels wide would be good enough but if anyone knows a system to make the level go on and on, I'd like to know that too. This is basically how I define a block now (with irrelevant code removed): block = new Block(R.drawable.block, 400, platformheight); block2 = new Block(R.drawable.block, 600, platformheight); block3 = new Block(R.drawable.block, 750, platformheight); The 400 is the X position, which I'd like to place randomly through the level, the platformheight variable defines the Y position which I don't want to change.

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• Unity Occlusion Portals: What and How?

  - by Nick Wiggill

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

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

  - by Luke Laupheimer

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

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