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• How can state changes be batched while adhering to opaque-front-to-back/alpha-blended-back-to-front?

  - by Sion Sheevok

  This is a question I've never been able to find the answer to. Batching objects with similar states is a major performance gain when rendering many objects. However, I've been learned various rules when drawing objects in the game world. Draw all opaque objects, front-to-back. Draw all alpha-blended objects, back-to-front. Some of the major parameters to batch by, as I understand it, are textures, vertex buffers, and index buffers. It seems that, as long as you are adhering to the above two rules, there's little to be done in regards to batching. I see one possibility to batch, while still adhering to the above two rules. Opaque objects can still be drawn out of depth-order, because drawing them front-to-back is merely a fillrate optimization, meanwhile state changes may very well be far more expensive than the overdraw of drawing out of depth-order. However, non-opaque objects, those that require alpha-blending at least, must be drawn back-to-front in order to avoid rendering artifacts. Is the loss of the fillrate optimization for opaques worth the state batching optimization?

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• infer half vector length in BRDF

  - by cician

  it's my first question on stack. Is it possible to infer length of the half angle vector for specular lighting from N·L and N·V without the whole view and light vectors? I may be completely off-track, but I have this gut feeling it's possible... Why? I'm working on a skin shader and I'm already doing one texture lookup with N·L+N·E and one texture lookup for specular with N·H+N·V. The latter one can be transformed into N·L+N·E lookup if only I had the half vector length. Doing so could simplify the shader a bit and move some operations into the pre-computed lookup texture. It would make a huge difference since I'm trying to squeeze as much functionality as possible to a single pass mobile version so instruction count matters. Thanks.

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• What is the standard technique for shifting the frames of a sprite according to user input?

  - by virtual__

  From my own experience, I developed two techniques for changing the sprites of a character that's reacting to user input -- this in the context of a classic 2D platformer. The first one is to store all character's pixmaps in a list, putting the index of the currently used pixmap in an ordinary variable. This way, every time the player presses a key -- say the right arrow for moving the character forward -- the graphics engine sees what's the next pixmap to draw, draws it, and increments the index counter. That's a pretty common approach I believe, the problem is that in this case the animation's quality depends not only on the number of sprites available but also on how often your engine listens to user input. The second technique is to actually play an animation every key press event. For this you can use any sort of animation framework you want. It's only necessary to set the timer, the animation steps and to call the animation's play() method on your key press event handler. The problem with that approach is that is lacks responsiveness, since the character won't react to any input while the current animation is still being played. What I want to know is whether you are using one of these techniques -- or something similar -- in your games, or whether there's a standard method for animating sprites out there that's widely known by everybody but me.

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• How do I reconstruct depth in deferred rendering using an orthographic projection?

  - by Jeremie

  I've been trying to get my world space position of my pixel but I4m missing something. I'm using a orthographic view for a 2.5d game. My depth is linear and this is my code. float3 lightPos = lightPosition; float2 texCoord = PostProjToScreen(PSIn.lightPosition)+halfPixel; float depth = tex2D(depthMap, texCoord); float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x *2-1; position.y = (1-texCoord.y)*2-1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1; position = mul(position, inViewProjection); //position.xyz/=position.w; // I comment it but even without it it doesn't work float4 normal = (tex2D(normalMap, texCoord)-.5f) * 2; normal = normalize(normal); float3 lightDirection = normalize(lightPos-position); float att = saturate(1.0f - length(lightDirection) /attenuation); float lightning = saturate (dot(normal, lightDirection)); lightning*= brightness; return float4(lightColor* lightning*att, 1); I'm using a sphere but it's not working the way I want. I reproject the texture properly onto the sphere but the light coordinates in the pixel shader seems to be stuck at zero even if when I move the light volume update properly.

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• When dealing with a static game board, what are some methods to make it more interesting?

  - by Ólafur Waage

  Let's say you have a game board that you look at. It does not move but there is some action going on. For example Chess, Checkers, Solitaire. The game I'm working on is not one of these but it's a good reference. What are some methods you can apply to the game or the design that increases the appeal of the game to the user? Of course you can make it prettier but what are some other methods you can use? For example: Visual cues, game design changes, user interface arrangement, etc.

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• How can I improve the "smoothness" of a 2D side-scrolling iPhone game?

  - by MrDatabase

  I'm working on a relatively simple 2D side-scrolling iPhone game. The controls are tilt-based. I use OpenGL ES 1.1 for the graphics. The game state is updated at a rate of 30 Hz... And the drawing is updated at a rate of 30 fps (via NSTimer). The smoothness of the drawing is ok... But not quite as smooth as a game like iFighter. What can I do to improve the smoothness of the game? Here are the potential issues I've briefly considered: I'm varying the opacity of up to 15 "small" (20x20 pixels) textures at a time... Apparently varying the opacity in this manner can degrade drawing performance I'm rendering at only 30 fps (via NSTimer)... Perhaps 2D games like iFighter are rendered at a higher frame rate? Perhaps the game state could be updated at a faster rate? Note the acceleration vales are updated at 100 Hz... So I could potentially update part of the game state at 100 hz All of my textures are PNG24... Perhaps PNG8 would help (due to smaller size etc)

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• How do I create a big multiplayer world in UDK?

  - by Dorpe

  I want to create a big multiplayer world in UDK and I'm having a few difficulties. I created the biggest terrain possible but then any terrain related action I do takes forever. However, I've seen videos of people make same size terrain and working without a problem. My pc is strong enough, so maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I want to make it even bigger then the biggest terrain size, so I was thinking of doing level streaming but then I read that streaming is working server side which means if I have a player on every terrain all terrains will still be loaded and I want to save as much memory possible so it will work well online. Thanks for any help you can give.

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• ERROR #342: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_SEMANTICNAME_NOT_FOUND

  - by Telanor

  I've stared at this for at least half an hour now and I cannot figure out what directx is complaining about. I know this error normally means you put float3 instead of a float4 or something like that, but I've checked over and over and as far as I can tell, everything matches. This is the full error message: D3D11: ERROR: ID3D11DeviceContext::DrawIndexed: Input Assembler - Vertex Shader linkage error: Signatures between stages are incompatible. The input stage requires Semantic/Index (COLOR,0) as input, but it is not provided by the output stage. [ EXECUTION ERROR #342: DEVICE_SHADER_LINKAGE_SEMANTICNAME_NOT_FOUND ] This is the vertex shader's input signature as seen in PIX: // Input signature: // // Name Index Mask Register SysValue Format Used // -------------------- ----- ------ -------- -------- ------ ------ // POSITION 0 xyz 0 NONE float xyz // NORMAL 0 xyz 1 NONE float // COLOR 0 xyzw 2 NONE float The HLSL structure looks like this: struct VertexShaderInput { float3 Position : POSITION0; float3 Normal : NORMAL0; float4 Color: COLOR0; }; The input layout, from PIX, is: The C# structure holding the data looks like this: [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public struct PositionColored { public static int SizeInBytes = Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(PositionColored)); public static InputElement[] InputElements = new[] { new InputElement("POSITION", 0, Format.R32G32B32_Float, 0), new InputElement("NORMAL", 0, Format.R32G32B32_Float, 0), new InputElement("COLOR", 0, Format.R32G32B32A32_Float, 0) }; Vector3 position; Vector3 normal; Vector4 color; #region Properties ... #endregion public PositionColored(Vector3 position, Vector3 normal, Vector4 color) { this.position = position; this.normal = normal; this.color = color; } public override string ToString() { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(base.ToString()); sb.Append(" Position="); sb.Append(position); sb.Append(" Color="); sb.Append(Color); return sb.ToString(); } } SizeInBytes comes out to 40, which is correct (4*3 + 4*3 + 4*4 = 40). Can anyone find where the mistake is?

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• What is involved with writing a lobby server?

  - by Kira

  So I'm writing a Chess matchmaking system based on a Lobby view with gaming rooms, general chat etc. So far I have a working prototype but I have big doubts regarding some things I did with the server. Writing a gaming lobby server is a new programming experience to me and so I don't have a clear nor precise programming model for it. I also couldn't find a paper that describes how it should work. I ordered "Java Network Programming 3rd edition" from Amazon and still waiting for shipment, hopefully I'll find some useful examples/information in this book. Meanwhile, I'd like to gather your opinions and see how you would handle some things so I can learn how to write a server correctly. Here are a few questions off the top of my head: (may be more will come) First, let's define what a server does. It's primary functionality is to hold TCP connections with clients, listen to the events they generate and dispatch them to the other players. But is there more to it than that? Should I use one thread per client? If so, 300 clients = 300 threads. Isn't that too much? What hardware is needed to support that? And how much bandwidth does a lobby consume then approx? What kind of data structure should be used to hold the clients' sockets? How do you protect it from concurrent modification (eg. a player enters or exists the lobby) when iterating through it to dispatch an event without hurting throughput? Is ConcurrentHashMap the correct answer here, or are there some techniques I should know? When a user enters the lobby, what mechanism would you use to transfer the state of the lobby to him? And while this is happening, where do the other events bubble up? Screenshot : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/sansrewyh.png/

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• Efficient skeletal animation

  - by Will

  I am looking at adopting a skeletal animation format (as prompted here) for an RTS game. The individual representation of each model on-screen will be small but there will be lots of them! In skeletal animation e.g. MD5 files, each individual vertex can be attached to an arbitrary number of joints. How can you efficiently support this whilst doing the interpolation in GLSL? Or do engines do their animation on the CPU? Or do engines set arbitrary limits on maximum joints per vertex and invoke nop multiplies for those joints that don't use the maximum number? Are there games that use skeletal animation in an RTS-like setting thus proving that on integrated graphics cards I have nothing to worry about in going the bones route?

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• Will we see a trend of "3d" games coming up in the near future?

  - by Vish

  I've noticed that the trend of movies is diving into the world of movies with 3-dimensional camera.For me it provoked a thought as if it was the same feeling people got when they saw a colour movie for the first time, like in the transition from black and white to colour it is a whole new experience. For the first time we are experiencing the Z(depth) factor and I really mean when I said "experiencing". So my question is or maybe if not a question, but Is there a possibility of a genre of 3d camera games upcoming?

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• Yet another frustum culling question

  - by Christian Frantz

  This one is kinda specific. If I'm to implement frustum culling in my game, that means each one of my cubes would need a bounding sphere. My first question is can I make the sphere so close to the edge of the cube that its still easily clickable for destroying and building? Frustum culling is easily done in XNA as I've recently learned, I just need to figure out where to place the code for the culling. I'm guessing in my method that draws all my cubes but I could be wrong. My camera class currently implements a bounding frustum which is in the update method like so frustum.Matrix = (view * proj); Simple enough, as I can call that when I have a camera object in my class. This works for now, as I only have a camera in my main game class. The problem comes when I decide to move my camera to my player class, but I can worry about that later. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; CurrentContainmentType = CamerasFrustrum.Contains(cubes.CollisionSphere); Can it really be as easy as adding those two lines to my foreach loop in my draw method? Or am I missing something bigger here? UPDATE: I have added the lines to my draw methods and it works great!! So great infact that just moving a little bit removes the whole map. Many factors could of caused this, so I'll try to break it down. cubeBoundingSphere = new BoundingSphere(cubePosition, 0.5f); This is in my cube constructor. cubePosition is stored in an array, The vertices that define my cube are factors of 1 ie: (1,0,1) so the radius should be .5. I least I think it should. The spheres are created every time a cube is created of course. ContainmentType CurrentContainmentType = ContainmentType.Disjoint; foreach (Cube block in cube.cubes) { CurrentContainmentType = cam.frustum.Contains(cube.cubeBoundingSphere); ///more code here if (CurrentContainmentType != ContainmentType.Disjoint) { cube.Draw(effect); } Within my draw method. Now I know this works because the map disappears, its just working wrong. Any idea on what I'm doing wrong?

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• How many BasicEffects do you have in a Game? What is the best way to render multiple objects/shapes at once?

  - by Deukalion

  I'm trying to understand 3D rendering and it seems that everytime you render a new object (A 3D Cube or something) you need to have a new BasicEffect for each Box you render unless you want the exact same texture? ...so if I have over a hundred boxes with each different textures, I need at least as many BasicEffects? Will that not be "too much" for the CPU/GPU in the end or result in lagging? Is there any good way to render multiple objects (cubes or other shapes) at the same time? I've tried changing the BasicEffect.Texture with each cube drawn, but it resulting in changing the first Cube's texture too. Any suggestions would be really appreciated, I'm really new to 3D in XNA so I'm trying to wrap my head around the best methods for example render a Map with objects (of shapes).

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• Climbing boxes in box2D

  - by Rothens

  I've just stepped into the world of Box2D with libgdx. I've already made a stack of boxes: They are dropped randomly ontop of each other. What I'd like to achieve is to make a character, that could freely climb on the boxes, (He can grip on the boxes anywhere, not just on the side/top of a box) but his weight affects the stack as well, so the boxes could fall down. My google-fu failed me... Is there any way to make this possible?

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• Possible to pass pygame data to memory map block?

  - by toozie21

  I am building a matrix out of addressable pixels and it will be run by a Pi (over the ethernet bus). The matrix will be 75 pixels wide and 20 pixels tall. As a side project, I thought it would be neat to run pong on it. I've seen some python based pong tutorials for Pi, but the problem is that they want to pass the data out to a screen via pygame.display function. I have access to pass pixel information using a memory map block, so is there anyway to do that with pygame instead of passing it out the video port? In case anyone is curious, this was the pong tutorial I was looking at: Pong Tutorial

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• Prevent collisions between mobs/npcs/units piloted by computer AI : How to avoid mobile obstacles?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  Lets says we have character a starting at point A and character b starting at point B. character a is headed to point B and character b is headed to point A. There are several simple ways to find the path(I will be using Dijkstra). The question is, how do I take preventative action in the code to stop the two from colliding with one another? case2: Characters a and b start from the same point in different times. Character b starts later and is the faster of the two. How do I make character b walk around character a without going through it? case3:Lets say we have m such characters in each side and there is sufficient room to pass through without the characters overlapping with one another. How do I stop the two groups of characters from "walking on top of one another" and allow them pass around one another in a natural organic way. A correct answer would be any algorithm, that given the path to the destination and a list of mobile objects that block the path, finds an alternative path or stops without stopping all units when there is sufficient room to traverse.

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• XNA - Inconsistent accessibility: parameter type is less accessible than method

  - by DijkeMark

  I have a level class in which I make a new turret. I give the turret the level class as parameter. So far so good. Then in the Update function of the Turret I call a function Shoot(), which has that level parameter it got at the moment I created it. But from that moment it gives the following error: Inconsistent accessibility: parameter type 'Space_Game.Level' is less accessible than method 'Space_Game.GameObject.Shoot(Space_Game.Level, string)' All I know it has something to do with not thr right protection level or something like that. The level class: public Level(Game game, Viewport viewport) { _game = game; _viewport = viewport; _turret = new Turret(_game, "blue", this); _turret.SetPosition((_viewport.Width / 2).ToString(), (_viewport.Height / 2).ToString()); } The Turret Class: public Turret(Game game, String team, Level level) :base(game) { _team = team; _level = level; switch (_team) { case "blue": _texture = LoadResources._blue_turret.Texture; _rows = LoadResources._blue_turret.Rows; _columns = LoadResources._blue_turret.Columns; _maxFrameCounter = 10; break; default: break; } _frameCounter = 0; _currentFrame = 0; _currentFrameMultiplier = 1; } public override void Update() { base.Update(); SetRotation(); Shoot(_level, "turret"); } The Shoot Function (Which is in GameObject class. The Turret Class inherited the GameObject Class. (Am I saying that right?)): protected void Shoot(Level level, String type) { MouseState mouse = Mouse.GetState(); if (mouse.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed) { switch (_team) { case "blue": switch (type) { case "turret": TurretBullet _turretBullet = new TurretBullet(_game, _team); level.AddProjectile(_turretBullet); break; default: break; } break; default: break; } } } Thanks in Advance, Mark Dijkema

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• Spherical harmonics lighting interpolation

  - by TravisG

  I want to use hardware filtering to smooth out colors in texels of a texture when I'm accessing texels at coordinates that are not directly at the center of the texel, the catch being that the texels store 2 bands of spherical harmonics coefficients (=4 coefficients), not RGBA intensity values. Can I just use hardware filtering like that (GL_LINEAR with and without mip mapping) without any considerations? In other terms: If I were to first convert the coefficients back to intensity representations, than manually interpolate between two intensities, would the resulting intensity be the same as if I interpolated between the coefficient vectors directly and then converted the interpolated result to intensities?

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• World to Pixel Transformation

  - by D00d

  My objects have a location in world coordinates (basically 1.0f is a meter). If I simply draw my objects using their world coordinates, each meter will correspond to a pixel. Obviously that's not what I want. Now, I don't want to have to apply a transformation to each and every object's position when I draw them. As I happen to be using XNA, and spritebatch allows a Matrix to be passed in as an argument in it's begin method, I was wondering if there is a way to pass the World to Pixel transformation in there. Any suggestions? So far Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(zoom, zoom, 1)) puts the objects in their proper spot, but it also scales up the sprites. Is there a way to transform the position without enlarging the sprite? Thanks

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• StringBuffer behavior in LWJGL

  - by Michael Oberlin

  Okay, I've been programming in Java for about ten years, but am entirely new to LWJGL. I have a specific problem whilst attempting to create a text console. I have built a class meant to abstract input polling to it, which (in theory) captures key presses from the Keyboard object and appends them to a StringBuilder/StringBuffer, then retrieves the completed string after receiving the ENTER key. The problem is, after I trigger the String return (currently with ESCAPE), and attempt to print it to System.out, I consistently get a blank line. I can get an appropriate string length, and I can even sample a single character out of it and get complete accuracy, but it never prints the actual string. I could swear that LWJGL slipped some kind of thread-safety trick in while I wasn't looking. Here's my code: static volatile StringBuffer command = new StringBuffer(); @Override public void chain(InputPoller poller) { this.chain = poller; } @Override public synchronized void poll() { //basic testing for modifier keys, to be used later on boolean shift = false, alt = false, control = false, superkey = false; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LSHIFT) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RSHIFT)) shift = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LMENU) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RMENU)) alt = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LCONTROL) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RCONTROL)) control = true; if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_LMETA) || Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_RMETA)) superkey = true; while(Keyboard.next()) if(Keyboard.getEventKeyState()) { command.append(Keyboard.getEventCharacter()); } if (Framework.isConsoleEnabled() && Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_ESCAPE)) { System.out.println("Escape down"); System.out.println(command.length() + " characters polled"); //works System.out.println(command.toString().length()); //works System.out.println(command.toString().charAt(4)); //works System.out.println(command.toString().toCharArray()); //blank line! System.out.println(command.toString()); //blank line! Framework.disableConsole(); } //TODO: Add command construction and console management after that } } Maybe the answer's obvious and I'm just feeling tired, but I need to walk away from this for a while. If anyone sees the issue, please let me know. This machine is running the latest release of Java 7 on Ubuntu 12.04, Mate desktop environment. Many thanks.

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• Android loading screens blocking, good practice?

  - by Oren

  I've noticed many (if not all) android games don't support the "back" button functionality during their loading screens. Which leads to some frustrating moments when a user accidentally starts up the game and has to wait for the long loading stage to end in order to close it. So my questions are: 1) Why is that ? Is there a good reason to avoid something like asynchronous loading (or some other solution to this problem) in android games ? 2) If there is no good reason not to support this functionality, what would be the best way to accomplish it ?

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• How to calculate continuous motion with angular velocity in 2d

  - by Rulk

  I'm really new with physics. Maybe someone would be able to help me to solve the next problem: I need to calculate position of an agent on the plane(2D) in next time step where time step is large(20+ seconds) What I know about agent's motion: Initial Position Direction(normalised vector) Velocity(linear function from time ) - object always moves along it's direction Angular Velocity(linear function from time) Optional: External force direction External force (linear function from time) Running discreet simulation with t-0 is not an option.

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• How to detect collisions between sprite and a user generated shape of some sort?

  - by Huwell

  How to detect a collision between a sprite and a user generated shape of some sort. For example. There are some objects on the screen. The user takes their finger and draws an circle shape around a object (The selection rule is painting circle around the sprite, but the painting shapes may be various). I need to detect which object selected, which just like: (demo images) http://i52.tinypic.com/28h0t1g.png

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• Good starting platform for a teenage games programmer

  - by gkrogers

  My son (15) has decided that he wants to pursue a career as a games programmer. I've said that he should get started now with a simple game. He has no programming experience yet, but I am a programmer (business apps, not games) so I can teach him programming, but what would be a good platform for him to start on? Initially I'm looking for something that can provide quick results, to keep his enthusiasm up. What would you suggest?

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• UDK : UTWeap_RocketLauncher gift CreateInventory: Any idea why this does not work properly?

  - by John Sloan

  I am giving the player an instanced class of UTWeap_RocketLauncher in an instance of UTGame. PlayerPawn.CreateInventory(class'FobikRocketLauncher',false); // Does not work PlayerPawn.CreateInventory(class'FobikLinkGun',false); // Works Even if I give the original class (eg. UTWeap_RocketLauncher) it does not actually show up. However if I do a "GiveWeapons" cheat, I get it just fine. It also works if I had code it into the map. - But UTWeap_LinkGun works fine either way. Any ideas? It shows the default ammo amount, and the icon on the HUD.

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