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• Checkers AI Algorithm

  - by John

  I am making an AI for my checkers game and I'm trying to make it as hard as possible. Here is the current criteria for a move on the hardest difficulty: 1: Look For A Block: This is when a piece is being threatened and another piece can be moved in behind it to protect it. Here is an example: Black Moves |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| White Blocks |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| 2: Move pieces out of danger: if any piece is being threatened, and a piece cannot block for that piece, then it will attempt to move out of the way. If the piece cannot move out of the way without still being in danger, the computer ignores the piece. 3: If the computer player owns any kings, it will attempt to 'hunt down' enemy pieces on the board, if no moves can be made that won't in danger the king or any other pieces, the computer ignores this rule. 4: Any piece that is owned by the computer that is in column 1 or 6 will attempt to go to a side. When a piece is in column 0 or 7, it is in a very strategic position because it cannot get captured while it is in either of these columns 5: It makes an educated random move, the move will not indanger the piece that is moving or any piece that is on the board. 6: If none of the above are possible it makes a random move. This question is not really specific to any language but if all examples could be in Java that would be great, considering this app is written in android. Does anyone see any room for improvement in this algorithm? Anything that would make it better at playing checkers?

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• Textures do not render on ATI graphics cards?

  - by Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen

  I'm rendering textured quads to an orthographic view in XNA through hardware instancing. On Nvidia graphics cards, this all works, tested on 3 machines. On ATI cards, it doesn't work at all, tested on 2 machines. How come? Culling perhaps? My orthographic view is set up like this: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(0, graphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, -graphicsDevice.Viewport.Height, 0, 0, 1); And my elements are rendered with the Z-coordinate 0. Edit: I just figured out something weird. If I do not call this spritebatch code above doing my textured quad rendering code, then it won't work on Nvidia cards either. Could that be due to culling information or something like that? Batch.Instance.SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone); ... spriteBatch.End(); Edit 2: Here's the full code for my instancing call. public void DrawTextures() { Batch.Instance.SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.Default, RasterizerState.CullNone, textureEffect); while (texturesToDraw.Count > 0) { TextureJob texture = texturesToDraw.Dequeue(); spriteBatch.Draw(texture.Texture, texture.DestinationRectangle, texture.TintingColor); } spriteBatch.End(); #if !NOTEXTUREINSTANCING // no work to do if (positionInBufferTextured > 0) { device.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; textureEffect.CurrentTechnique = textureEffect.Techniques["Technique1"]; textureEffect.Parameters["Texture"].SetValue(darkTexture); textureEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); if ((textureInstanceBuffer == null) || (positionInBufferTextured > textureInstanceBuffer.VertexCount)) { if (textureInstanceBuffer != null) textureInstanceBuffer.Dispose(); textureInstanceBuffer = new DynamicVertexBuffer(device, texturedInstanceVertexDeclaration, positionInBufferTextured, BufferUsage.WriteOnly); } if (positionInBufferTextured > 0) { textureInstanceBuffer.SetData(texturedInstances, 0, positionInBufferTextured, SetDataOptions.Discard); } device.Indices = textureIndexBuffer; device.SetVertexBuffers(textureGeometryBuffer, new VertexBufferBinding(textureInstanceBuffer, 0, 1)); device.DrawInstancedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, 0, 0, textureGeometryBuffer.VertexCount, 0, 2, positionInBufferTextured); // now that we've drawn, it's ok to reset positionInBuffer back to zero, // and write over any vertices that may have been set previously. positionInBufferTextured = 0; } #endif }

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• Coding different states in Adventure Games

  - by Cardin

  I'm planning out an adventure game, and can't figure out what's the right way to implement the behaviour of a level depending on state of story progression. My single-player game features a huge world where the player has to interact with people in a town at various points in the game. However, depending on story progression, different things would be presented to the player, for e.g. the Guild Leader will change locations from the town square to various locations around the city; Doors would only unlock at certain times of the day after finishing a particular routine; Different cut-screen/trigger events happen only after a particular milestone has been reached. I naively thought of using a switch{} statement initially to decide what the NPC should say or which he could be found at, and making quest objectives interact-able only after checking a global game_state variable's condition. But I realised I would quickly run into a lot of different game states and switch-cases in order to change the behaviour of an object. That switch statement would also be massively hard to debug, and I guess it might also be hard to use in a level editor. So I thought, instead of having a single object with multiple states, maybe I should have multiple instances of the same object, with a single state. That way, if I use something like a level editor, I can put an instance of the NPC at all the different locations he could ever appear at, and also an instance for each conversation state he has. But that means there'll be a lot of inactive, invisible game objects floating around the level, which might be trouble for memory, or simply hard to see in a level editor, i don't know. Or simply, make an identical, but separate level for each game state. This feels the cleanest and bug-free way to do things, but it feels like massive manual work making sure each version of the level is really identical to each other. All my methods feel so inefficient, so to recap my question, is there a better or standardised way to implement behaviour of a level depending on state of story progression? PS: I don't have a level editor yet - thinking of using something like JME SDK or making my own.

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• Stats on Screen Size for Flash Games

  - by ashes999

  I'm working on a Flash game after many, many years. I'm trying to figure out size to make my application run (eg. 600x800). Because it's a tall (not wide) game, I'm confused. I know about (and love) the Steam hardware stats. However, for Flash gaming, I have two nit-picks with their survey sample: 1) Caters to more hardcore gamers with better hardware (overall) 2) Captures only a subset of Flash gamers. Doesn't capture people who play at school, work, etc. or not netbooks and lighter machines. Are there any sort of statistics I can use to determine which size to use? Ideally, I would like to know something like: 800x600 will fit 94% of users screens 1024x768 will fit 74% of users screens 1200x960 will fit 53% of users screens etc.

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• Is finding graph minors without single node pinch points possible?

  - by Alturis

  Is it possible to robustly find all the graph minors within an arbitrary node graph where the pinch points are generally not single nodes? I have read some other posts on here about how to break up your graph into a Hamiltonian cycle and then from that find the graph minors but it seems to be such an algorithm would require that each "room" had "doorways" consisting of single nodes. To explain a bit more a visual aid is necessary. Lets say the nodes below are an example of the typical node graph. What I am looking for is a way to automatically find the different colored regions of the graph (or graph minors)

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• glm quaternion camera rotating on wrong axis

  - by Jarrett

  I'm trying to get my camera implemented with a glm::quat used to store the rotation. However, whenever I do circles with the mouse, the camera rotates along the axis I am viewing (i.e. I think it's called the target axis). For example, if I rotated the mouse in a clockwise fashion, the camera rotates clockwise around the axis. I initialize my quaternion like so: void Camera::initialize() { orientationQuaternion_ = glm::quat(); orientationQuaternion_ = glm::normalize(orientationQuaternion_); } I rotate like so: void Camera::rotate(const glm::detail::float32& degrees, const glm::vec3& axis) { orientationQuaternion_ = orientationQuaternion_ * glm::normalize(glm::angleAxis(degrees, axis)); } and I set the viewMatrix like so: void Camera::render() { glm::quat temp = glm::conjugate(orientationQuaternion_); viewMatrix_ = glm::mat4_cast(temp); viewMatrix_ = glm::translate(viewMatrix_, glm::vec3(-pos_.x, -pos_.y, -pos_.z)); } The only axis' I actually try to rotate are the X and Y axis (i.e. (1,0,0) and (0,1,0)). Anyone have any idea why I see my camera rotating around the target axis?

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• How exactly are textures drawn on faces of cubes?

  - by Christian Frantz

  Are they drawn from the lower left corner clockwise? I know how triangles are created, I'm not just sure if textures are the same way. The texture on my cube is skewed way off and after playing around with the U,V coordinates, I still can't get it right. //front left bottom corner ok vertices[0] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector2(1, 0))); //front left upper corner vertices[1] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 1, 0), new Vector2(1, 1))); //front right upper corner ok vertices[2] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 1, 0), new Vector2(0, 1))); //front lower right corner vertices[3] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 0, 0), new Vector2(0, 0))); //back left lower corner ok vertices[4] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 0, -1), new Vector2(0, 1))); //back left upper corner vertices[5] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 1, -1), new Vector2(1, 1))); //back right upper corner ok vertices[6] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 1, -1), new Vector2(1, 0))); //back right lower corner vertices[7] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 0, -1), new Vector2(0, 0)));

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• JOGL hardware based shadow mapping - computing the texture matrix

  - by axel22

  I am implementing hardware shadow mapping as described here. I've rendered the scene successfully from the light POV, and loaded the depth buffer of the scene into a texture. This texture has correctly been loaded - I check this by rendering a small thumbnail, as you can see in the screenshot below, upper left corner. The depth of the scene appears to be correct - objects further away are darker, and that are closer to the light are lighter. However, I run into trouble while rendering the scene from the camera's point of view using the depth texture - the texture on the polygons in the scene is rendered in a weird, nondeterministic fashion, as shown in the screenshot. I believe I am making an error while computing the texture transformation matrix, but I am unsure where exactly. Since I have no matrix utilities in JOGL other then the gl[Load|Mult]Matrix procedures, I multiply the matrices using them, like this: void calcTextureMatrix() { glPushMatrix(); glLoadIdentity(); glLoadMatrixf(biasmatrix, 0); glMultMatrixf(lightprojmatrix, 0); glMultMatrixf(lightviewmatrix, 0); glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, shadowtexmatrix, 0); glPopMatrix(); } I obtained these matrices by using the glOrtho and gluLookAt procedures: glLoadIdentity() val wdt = width / 45 val hgt = height / 45 glOrtho(wdt, -wdt, -hgt, hgt, -45.0, 45.0) glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, lightprojmatrix, 0) glLoadIdentity() glu.gluLookAt( xlook + lightpos._1, ylook + lightpos._2, lightpos._3, xlook, ylook, 0.0f, 0.f, 0.f, 1.0f) glGetFloatv(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, lightviewmatrix, 0) My bias matrix is: float[] biasmatrix = new float[16] { 0.5f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.5f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.f, 0.5f, 0.f, 0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5f, 1.f } After applying the camera projection and view matrices, I do: glTexGeni(GL_S, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_EYE_LINEAR) glTexGenfv(GL_S, GL_EYE_PLANE, shadowtexmatrix, 0) glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S) for each component. Does anybody know why the texture is not being rendered correctly? Thank you.

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• Blender to Collada to Assimp - Rigid (Non-skinned) Animation

  - by gareththegeek

  I am trying to get simple animations to work, exporting from Blender and importing into my application. My first attempt was as follows: Open Blender at factory settings. Select the default cube and insert a location keyframe. Select another frame and move the cube. Insert a second location keyframe. Export to Collada. When I open the Collada file using assimp it contains zero animations, even though in Blender the cube animates correctly. On my next attempt, I inserted a bone armature with a single bone, made it the parent of the cube, and animated the bone instead. Again the animation worked correctly in Blender. Assimp now lists one animation but both key frames have the position [0, 0, 0] Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get animated (non-skinned) meshes from Blender into Assimp? My ultimate goal here is to export animated meshes from Blender, process them offline into my own model format, and load them into my SharpDX based graphics engine..

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• OpenGL 2D Depth Perception

  - by Stephen James

  This is the first time i have ever commented on a forum about programming, so sorry if I'm not specific enough. Here's my problem: I have a 2D RPG game written in Java using LWJGL. All works fine, but at the moment I'm having trouble deciding what the best way to do depth perception is. So , for example, if the player goes in front of the tree/enemy (lower than the objects y-coordinate) then show the player in front), if the player goes behind the tree/enemy (higher than the objects specific y-coordinate), then show the player behind the object. I have tried writing a block of code to deal with this, and it works quite well for the trees, but not for the enemies yet. Is there a simpler way of doing this in LWJGL that I'm missing? Thanks :)

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• Thread safe double buffering

  - by kdavis8

  I am trying to implement a draw map method that will draw the tiled image across the surface of the component. I'm having issue with this code. The double buffering does not seem to be working, because the sprite flickers like crazy; my source code: package myPackage; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.Toolkit; import java.awt.image.BufferStrategy; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import javax.swing.JFrame; public class GameView extends JFrame implements Runnable { public BufferedImage backbuffer; public Graphics2D g2d; public Image img; Thread gameloop; Scene scene; public GameView() { super("Game View"); setSize(600, 600); setVisible(true); setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); backbuffer = new BufferedImage(getWidth(), getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB); g2d = backbuffer.createGraphics(); Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(); img = tk.getImage(this.getClass().getResource("cage.png")); scene = new Scene(g2d, this); gameloop = new Thread(this); gameloop.start(); } public static void main(String args[]) { new GameView(); } public void paint(Graphics g) { g.drawImage(backbuffer, 0, 0, this); repaint(); } @Override public void run() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub Thread t = Thread.currentThread(); while (t == gameloop) { scene.getScene("dirtmap"); g2d.drawImage(img, 80, 80,this![enter image description here][1]); } } private void drawScene(String string) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub // g2d.setColor(Color.white); // g2d.fillRect(0, 0, getWidth(), getHeight()); scene.getScene(string); } } package myPackage; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Component; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.Toolkit; public class Scene { Graphics g2d; Component c; boolean loaded = false; public Scene(Graphics2D gr, Component co) { g2d = gr; c = co; } public void getScene(String mapName) { Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(); Image tile = tk.getImage(this.getClass().getResource("dirt.png")); // g2d.setColor(Color.red); for (int y = 0; y <= 18; y++) { for (int x = 0; x <= 18; x += 1) { g2d.drawImage(tile, x * 32, y * 32, c); } } loaded = true; } }

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• How can I make a game like doodlejump XNA c#

  - by Ramy

  I wanted to know how can I make the background scroll down like doodlejump. I have a game made and I have to transform it so it's like doodle jump, but I'm wonder how or where to look so I can make he background keep moving as in progressing through the background till let's say the character dies. namespace IFM20884 { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; public abstract class BackgroundScroll : Sprite { private float speedOfBackground = 0.2f; // speed that the background moves public BackgroundScroll (GraphicsDeviceManager graphics) : base(graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2f, graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2f) { } //Getter public float speedOfBackground { get { return this.speedOfBackground ; } set { this.speedOfBackground = value; } } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime, GraphicsDeviceManager graphics) { //Makes background go down. ForcePosition(Position.X, Position.Y + (gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds * this.speedOfBackground )); if (Position.Y - (Height / 2) > graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { ForcePosition(Position.X, Position.Y - this.Height); } } public override void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { ForcePosition(Position.X, Position.Y - this.Height); base.Draw(spriteBatch); ForcerPosition(Position.X, Position.Y + this.Height); base.Draw(spriteBatch); } } }

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• XNA 2D line-of-sight check

  - by bionicOnion

  I'm working on a top-down shooter in XNA, and I need to implement line-of-sight checking. I've come up with a solution that seems to work, but I get the nagging feeling that it won't be efficient enough to do every frame for multiple calls (the game already hiccups slightly at about 10 calls per frame). The code is below, but my general plan was to create a series of rectangles with a width and height of zero to act as points along the sight line, and then check to see if any of these rectangles intersects a ClutterObject (an interface I defined for things like walls or other obstacles) after first screening for any that can't possibly be in the line of sight (i.e. behind the viewer) or are too far away (a concession I made for efficiency). public static bool LOSCheck(Vector2 pos1, Vector2 pos2) { Vector2 currentPos = pos1; Vector2 perMove = (pos2 - pos1); perMove.Normalize(); HashSet<ClutterObject> clutter = new HashSet<ClutterObject>(); foreach (Room r in map.GetRooms()) { if (r != null) { foreach (ClutterObject c in r.GetClutter()) { if (c != null &&!(c.GetRectangle().X * perMove.X < 0) && !(c.GetRectangle().Y * perMove.Y < 0)) { Vector2 cVector = new Vector2(c.GetRectangle().X, c.GetRectangle().Y); if ((cVector - pos1).Length() < 1500) clutter.Add(c); } } } } while (currentPos != pos2 && ((currentPos - pos1).Length() < 1500)) { Rectangle position = new Rectangle((int)currentPos.X, (int)currentPos.Y, 0, 0); foreach (ClutterObject c in clutter) { if (position.Intersects(c.GetRectangle())) return false; } currentPos += perMove; } return true; } I'm sure that there's a better way to do this (or at least a way to make this method more efficient), but I'm not too used to XNA yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it here. At the very least, is there an efficient to determine which objects may be in front of the viewer with greater precision than the rather broad 90 degree window I've given myself?

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• OpenGL 2D Depth Perception

  - by Stephen James

  I have a 2D RPG game written in Java using LWJGL. All works fine, but at the moment I'm having trouble deciding what the best way to do depth perception is. So , for example, if the player goes in front of the tree/enemy (lower than the objects y-coordinate) then show the player in front), if the player goes behind the tree/enemy (higher than the objects specific y-coordinate), then show the player behind the object. I have tried writing a block of code to deal with this, and it works quite well for the trees, but not for the enemies yet. Is there a simpler way of doing this in LWJGL that I'm missing?

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• How much it will cost to create tile-set similar to HoM&M 2?

  - by Alexey Petrushin

  How much it will cost to create tile-set similar to HoM&M 2? I'm mostly interested in the tile-set graphics only, no animation needed, the big images of town and creatures can be done as quick and dirty pensil sketches. The quality of tiles and its amount should be roughly the same as in HoM&M 2. Can You please give a rough estimate how much it will take man-hours and how much will it cost?

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• How do I move the camera sideways in Libgdx?

  - by Bubblewrap

  I want to move the camera sideways (strafe). I had the following in mind, but it doesn't look like there are standard methods to achieve this in Libgdx. If I want to move the camera sideways by x, I think I need to do the following: Create a Matrix4 mat Determine the orthogonal vector v between camera.direction and camera.up Translate mat by v*x Multiply camera.position by mat Will this approach do what I think it does, and is it a good way to do it? And how can I do this in libgdx? I get "stuck" at step 2, as I have not found any standard method in Libgdx to calculate an orthogonal vector. EDIT: I think I can use camera.direction.crs(camera.up) to find v. I'll try this approach tonight and see if it works. EDIT2: I got it working and didn't need the matrix after all: Vector3 right = camera.direction.cpy().crs(camera.up).nor(); camera.position.add(right.mul(x));

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• C++ problem with assimp 3D model loader

  - by Brendan Webster

  In my game I have model loading functions for Assimp model loading library. I can load the model and render it, but the model displays incorrectly. The models load in as if they were using a seperate projection matrix. I have looked over my code over and over again, but I probably keep on missing the obvious reason why this is happening. Here is an image of my game: It's simply a 6 sided cube, but it's off big time! Here are my code snippets for rendering the cube to the screen: void C_MediaLoader::display(void) { float tmp; glTranslatef(0,0,0); // rotate it around the y axis glRotatef(angle,0.f,0.f,1.f); glColor4f(1,1,1,1); // scale the whole asset to fit into our view frustum tmp = scene_max.x-scene_min.x; tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.y - scene_min.y,tmp); tmp = aisgl_max(scene_max.z - scene_min.z,tmp); tmp = (1.f / tmp); glScalef(tmp/5, tmp/5, tmp/5); // center the model //glTranslatef( -scene_center.x, -scene_center.y, -scene_center.z ); // if the display list has not been made yet, create a new one and // fill it with scene contents if(scene_list == 0) { scene_list = glGenLists(1); glNewList(scene_list, GL_COMPILE); // now begin at the root node of the imported data and traverse // the scenegraph by multiplying subsequent local transforms // together on GL's matrix stack. recursive_render(scene, scene->mRootNode); glEndList(); } glCallList(scene_list); } void C_MediaLoader::recursive_render (const struct aiScene *sc, const struct aiNode* nd) { unsigned int i; unsigned int n = 0, t; struct aiMatrix4x4 m = nd->mTransformation; // update transform aiTransposeMatrix4(&m); glPushMatrix(); glMultMatrixf((float*)&m); // draw all meshes assigned to this node for (; n < nd->mNumMeshes; ++n) { const struct aiMesh* mesh = scene->mMeshes[nd->mMeshes[n]]; apply_material(sc->mMaterials[mesh->mMaterialIndex]); if(mesh->mNormals == NULL) { glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); } else { glEnable(GL_LIGHTING); } for (t = 0; t < mesh->mNumFaces; ++t) { const struct aiFace* face = &mesh->mFaces[t]; GLenum face_mode; switch(face->mNumIndices) { case 1: face_mode = GL_POINTS; break; case 2: face_mode = GL_LINES; break; case 3: face_mode = GL_TRIANGLES; break; default: face_mode = GL_POLYGON; break; } glBegin(face_mode); for(i = 0; i < face->mNumIndices; i++) { int index = face->mIndices[i]; if(mesh->mColors[0] != NULL) glColor4fv((GLfloat*)&mesh->mColors[0][index]); if(mesh->mNormals != NULL) glNormal3fv(&mesh->mNormals[index].x); glVertex3fv(&mesh->mVertices[index].x); } glEnd(); } } // draw all children for (n = 0; n < nd->mNumChildren; ++n) { recursive_render(sc, nd->mChildren[n]); } glPopMatrix(); } Sorry there is so much code to look through, but I really cannot find the problem, and I would love to have help.

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• Can I use GLFW and GLEW together in the same code

  - by Brendan Webster

  I use the g++ compiler, which could be causing the main problem, but I'm using GLFW for window and input management, and I am using GLEW so that I can use OpenGL 3.x functionality. I loaded in models and then tried to make Vertex and Index buffers for the data, but it turned out that I kept getting segmentation faults in the program. I finally figured out that GLEW just wasn't working with GLFW included. Do they not work together? Also I've done the context creation through GLFW so that may be another factor in the problem.

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• MeshBuilder, assembly missing

  - by BlackBear

  I'm trying to build a terrain starting from a heightmap. I've already some ideas about the procedure, but I can't even get started. I feel like I have to use a MeshBuider. The problem is that Visual Studio (I'm using the 2008 version) wants an assembly. Effectively on the MSDN there's a line specifying the assembly needed by the MeshBuilder, but I don't know how to import/load it. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance :)

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• Detect two specific objects collision with bullet physics

  - by sebap123

  I have got some problem with defining collision between objects in my game using bullet physics. I know that objects are colliding with each other simultaneously and I don't have to do anything more. However I need to be noticed when one object collides with one of the rest. It is quite awkward written so I will tell what I want to achive. I have got ball which hits wall from tubes. Everything is on the floor. When ball hits wall some fragments fall down to infinity. So I have got bellow floor btStaticPlaneShape. This is place where most of objects is stoping and then I can start another action. But not all of them. So I've been trying to use function checkCollideWith but it isn't good method as it was said in reference and wiki. So I've checked method described in wiki http://bulletphysics.org/mediawiki-1.5.8/index.php/Collision_Callbacks_and_Triggers called contact information. This isn't good method either because it is extremly hard to identify what is what when colliding. You have to also remember that ball is almost all the time colliding with something - floor, wall or eart level. So is there any other method to check what is colliding with what?

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• Render 2 images that uses different shaders

  - by Code Vader

  Based on the giawa/nehe tutorials, how can I render 2 images with different shaders. I'm pretty new to OpenGl and shaders so I'm not completely sure whats happening in my code, but I think the shaders that is called last overwrites the first one. private static void OnRenderFrame() { // calculate how much time has elapsed since the last frame watch.Stop(); float deltaTime = (float)watch.ElapsedTicks / System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch.Frequency; watch.Restart(); // use the deltaTime to adjust the angle of the cube angle += deltaTime; // set up the OpenGL viewport and clear both the color and depth bits Gl.Viewport(0, 0, width, height); Gl.Clear(ClearBufferMask.ColorBufferBit | ClearBufferMask.DepthBufferBit); // use our shader program and bind the crate texture Gl.UseProgram(program); //<<<<<<<<<<<< TOP PYRAMID // set the transformation of the top_pyramid program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramid, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramidNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(top_pyramidUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(top_pyramidTrianlges); // draw the textured top_pyramid Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Triangles, top_pyramidTrianlges.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<< CUBE // set the transformation of the cube program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cube, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cubeNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(cubeUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(cubeQuads); // draw the textured cube Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Quads, cubeQuads.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<<<< BOTTOM PYRAMID // set the transformation of the bottom_pyramid program["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateRotationY(angle * rotate_cube)); program["enable_lighting"].SetValue(lighting); // bind the vertex positions, UV coordinates and element array Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramid, program, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramidNormals, program, "vertexNormal"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(bottom_pyramidUV, program, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(bottom_pyramidTrianlges); // draw the textured bottom_pyramid Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Triangles, bottom_pyramidTrianlges.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); //<<<<<<<<<<<<< STAR Gl.Disable(EnableCap.DepthTest); Gl.Enable(EnableCap.Blend); Gl.BlendFunc(BlendingFactorSrc.SrcAlpha, BlendingFactorDest.One); Gl.BindTexture(starTexture); //calculate the camera position using some fancy polar co-ordinates Vector3 position = 20 * new Vector3(Math.Cos(phi) * Math.Sin(theta), Math.Cos(theta), Math.Sin(phi) * Math.Sin(theta)); Vector3 upVector = ((theta % (Math.PI * 2)) > Math.PI) ? Vector3.Up : Vector3.Down; program_2["view_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.LookAt(position, Vector3.Zero, upVector)); // make sure the shader program and texture are being used Gl.UseProgram(program_2); // loop through the stars, drawing each one for (int i = 0; i < stars.Count; i++) { // set the position and color of this star program_2["model_matrix"].SetValue(Matrix4.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(stars[i].dist, 0, 0)) * Matrix4.CreateRotationZ(stars[i].angle)); program_2["color"].SetValue(stars[i].color); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(star, program_2, "vertexPosition"); Gl.BindBufferToShaderAttribute(starUV, program_2, "vertexUV"); Gl.BindBuffer(starQuads); Gl.DrawElements(BeginMode.Quads, starQuads.Count, DrawElementsType.UnsignedInt, IntPtr.Zero); // update the position of the star stars[i].angle += (float)i / stars.Count * deltaTime * 2 * rotate_stars; stars[i].dist -= 0.2f * deltaTime * rotate_stars; // if we've reached the center then move this star outwards and give it a new color if (stars[i].dist < 0f) { stars[i].dist += 5f; stars[i].color = new Vector3(generator.NextDouble(), generator.NextDouble(), generator.NextDouble()); } } Glut.glutSwapBuffers(); } The same goes for the textures, whichever one I mention last gets applied to both object?

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• Where can I buy freely redistributable (creative commons) game assets?

  - by Erlend

  I'd like to know about any 3D asset shops out there that specialize in game assets and, most importantly, license their assets under an open license like Creative Commons or similarly permissive. We are looking to buy some professional looking assets for use and redistribution with our open source 3D game engine. The problem is that all the commercial 3D assets we've come by are only sold under very restrictive licenses, which won't allow us to include the models in our code repository (since free code hosting repositories require that all your data, including media, is open source or otherwise copyleft) nor in turn redistribute the assets as part of our downloadable SDK. I realize this sounds like a weak business idea, since users could just buy the asset and start sharing it with everyone. But somehow this has worked for hundreds of WordPress theme shops, so I was hoping maybe someone's trying similar things for commercial game assets.

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• Physics engine that can handle multiple attractors?

  - by brice

  I'm putting together a game that will be played mostly with three dimensional gravity. By that I mean multiple planets/stars/moons behaving realistically, and path plotting and path prediction in the gravity field. I have looked at a variety of physics engines, such as Bullet, tokamak or Newton, but none of them seem to be suitable, as I'd essentially have to re-write the gravity engine in their framework. Do you know of a physics engine that is capable of dealing with multiple bodies all attracted to one another? I don't need scenegraph management, or rendering, just core physics. (collision detection would be a bonus, as would rigid body dynamics). My background is in physics, so I would be able to write an engine that uses Verlet integration or RK4 (or even Euler integration, if I had to) but I'd much rather adapt an off the shelf solution. [edit]: There are some great resources for physics simulation of n-body problems online, and on stackoverflow

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• HTML5 game engine for a 2D or 2.5D RPG style "map walk"

  - by stargazer

  please help me to choose a HTML5 game engine or Javascript libraries I want to do the following in the game: when the game starts a part the huge map (full size of the map: about 7 screens) is shown. The map itself is completely designed in the editor mapeditor.org (or in some comparable editor - if you know a good alternative to mapeditor.org - let me know) and loaded at runtime or at design time. The game engine should support loading of isometric maps (well, in worst case only orthogonal maps will be sufficient) both "tile layer" and "object layer" from mapeditor.org should be supported. Scrolling/performance of this map should be fast enough. The map and the game should be either in 2D (orthogonal map) or in 2.5D (isometric map) The game engine should support movement of sprites with animation. Let say I have a sprite for "human" with animation sequences showing "walking" in 8 directions - it should be imported into game engine and should "walk" on the map without writing a lot of Javascript code. Automatic scrolling of the map the "human" nears the screen border. Collision detection, "solid" objects. The mapeditor.org supports properies on tiles. Let say I assign a "solid" property to some tiles in editor. It should be easy to check this "solid" property in the game engine and implement kind of "solid" behavior, so the animanted sprites do not walk through the walls. Collision detection - it should be easy to implement some custom functionality like "when sprite A is close to sprite B - call this function" Showing "dialogs" or popup windows on top of the map - should be easy to implement. Cross-browser audio support - (it is implemented quite well in construct 2 from scirra, so I'm looking for the comparable audio quality) The game itself is a king of RPG but without fighting scenes and without huge "inventory". The main character just walking on the map, discovers some things, there are dialogs and sounds. The functionality of this example from sprite.js http://batiste.dosimple.ch/sprite.js/tests/mapeditor/map_reader.html is very close to what I'm developing. But I'm not a Javascript guru (and a very lazy guy) and would like to write even less Javascript code as in the example...

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