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  • Making a 2D game with responsive resolution

    - by alexandervrs
    I am making a 2D game, however I wish for it to be resolution agnostic. My target resolution i.e. where things look as intended is 1600 x 900. My ideas are: Make the HUD stay fixed to the sides no matter what resolution, use different size for HUD graphics under a certain resolution and another under a certain large one. Use large HD PNG sprites/backgrounds which are a power of 2, so they scale nicely. No vectors. Use the player's native resolution. Scale the game area (not the HUD) to fit (resulting zooming in some and cropping the game area sides if necessary for widescreen, no stretch), but always fill the screen. Have a min and max resolution limit for small and very large displays where you will just change the resolution(?) or scale up/down to fit. What I am a bit confused though is what math formula I would use to scale the game area correctly based on the resolution no matter the aspect ratio, fully fit in a square screen and with some clip to the sides for widescreen. Pseudocode would help as well. :)

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  • How to use UILongPressGestureRecognizer with sprite drag & wait?

    - by ganesh
    May be it's asked before also but I couldn't find any good answer. Please tell me how this can be implemented with UILongPressGestureRecognizer? A user drags a sprite from X location to Y location. Then it waits at Y location (touch is not ended yet) for 1 or 2 secs and release the touch i.e touch is ended. In this case, shouldn't following states be triggered in below order for UILongPressGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizerStateBegan UIGestureRecognizerStateChanged UIGestureRecognizerStateEnded ? My problem is if UIPanGestureRecognizer is also implemented to handle drags, UILongPressGesture is never triggered even after Long waits. Any thoughts?

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  • Platformer Enemy AI

    - by hayer
    I'm currently developing a platformer shooter. The game is multiplayer and while my net code could use some real work I have put that off for the time, so currently I'm trying to implement the AI. The game is pretty simple; Players run around on a map filled with a X amount of zombies that try to eat their brains, classic and overused I know. Weapons spawn at random intervals around the map. The problem is that the zombies, when they find their pray the have to follow it for some while.. And here is the problem, running the AI navcode seems to take for ever. So here is the ideas I have come up with so far Have the AI update at different intervals with a maximum of Y ms with no updates. Have the zombies assigned to groups of zombies. One is appointed the leader of the group who finds the way to the player - the rest just follows the leader. If the leader dies another one of the zombies in the group is appointed president of the zombie swarm. If there is less than five zombies in a group they try to meet up with other zombies.(Aka they are assigned to a different group and therefor a new leader) Multi-threading option one or two? For navigation I have some kinda navmesh(since the game is not tile-based) that tells the zombies where they can walk etc. If anyone else got some ideas on how to do navigation I would love some input. For LoS(zombie - player) I have split the map into grids. If the players grid is connected to the zombies grid(if I go with option two I would only need to check if leader zombies grid is connected to player, aka less checks) - if they are connected and there is more than 250ms since last check do a raytrace.. This is my first time programming AI so input on any field is appreciated.

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  • Effective way to check if an Entity/Player enters a region/trigger

    - by Chris
    I was wondering how multiplayer games detect if you enter a special region. Let's assume there is a huge map that is so big that simply checking it would become a huge performance issue. I've seen bukkit (a modding API for Minecraft servers) firing an Event on every single move. I don't think that larger games do the same because even if you have only a few coordinates you are interested in, you have to loop through a few trigger zone to see if the player is inside your region - for every player. This seems like an extremely CPU-intense operation to me even though I've never developed something like that. Is there a special algorithm that is used by larger games to accomplish this? The only thing I could imagine is to split up the world into multiple parts and to register the event not on the movement itself but on all the parts that are covered by your area and only check for areas that are registered in the current part. And another thing I would like to know: How could you detect when someone must have entered a trigger but you never saw him directly in it since his client only sent you an move packet shortly before entering and after leaving the trigger area. Drawing a line and calculate all colliding parts seems rather CPU intensive if you have to perform it every time.

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  • Does DirectX implement Triple Buffering?

    - by Asik
    As AnandTech put it best in this 2009 article: In render ahead, frames cannot be dropped. This means that when the queue is full, what is displayed can have a lot more lag. Microsoft doesn't implement triple buffering in DirectX, they implement render ahead (from 0 to 8 frames with 3 being the default). The major difference in the technique we've described here is the ability to drop frames when they are outdated. Render ahead forces older frames to be displayed. Queues can help smoothness and stuttering as a few really quick frames followed by a slow frame end up being evened out and spread over more frames. But the price you pay is in lag (the more frames in the queue, the longer it takes to empty the queue and the older the frames are that are displayed). As I understand it, DirectX "Swap Chain" is merely a render ahead queue, i.e. buffers cannot be dropped; the longer the chain, the greater the input latency. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that the most widely used graphics API would not implement such fundamental functionality correctly. Is there a way to get proper triple buffered vertical synchronisation in DirectX?

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  • How does interpolation actually work to smooth out an object's movement?

    - by user22241
    I've asked a few similar questions over the past 8 months or so with no real joy, so I am going make the question more general. I have an Android game which is OpenGL ES 2.0. within it I have the following Game Loop: My loop works on a fixed time step principle (dt = 1 / ticksPerSecond) loops=0; while(System.currentTimeMillis() > nextGameTick && loops < maxFrameskip){ updateLogic(dt); nextGameTick+=skipTicks; timeCorrection += (1000d/ticksPerSecond) % 1; nextGameTick+=timeCorrection; timeCorrection %=1; loops++; } render(); My intergration works like this: sprite.posX+=sprite.xVel*dt; sprite.posXDrawAt=sprite.posX*width; Now, everything works pretty much as I would like. I can specify that I would like an object to move across a certain distance (screen width say) in 2.5 seconds and it will do just that. Also because of the frame skipping that I allow in my game loop, I can do this on pretty much any device and it will always take 2.5 seconds. Problem However, the problem is that when a render frame skips, the graphic stutter. It's extremely annoying. If I remove the ability to skip frames, then everything is smooth as you like, but will run at different speeds on different devices. So it's not an option. I'm still not sure why the frame skips, but I would like to point out that this is Nothing to do with poor performance, I've taken the code right back to 1 tiny sprite and no logic (apart from the logic required to move the sprite) and I still get skipped frames. And this is on a Google Nexus 10 tablet (and as mentioned above, I need frame skipping to keep the speed consistent across devices anyway). So, the only other option I have is to use interpolation (or extrapolation), I've read every article there is out there but none have really helped me to understand how it works and all of my attempted implementations have failed. Using one method I was able to get things moving smoothly but it was unworkable because it messed up my collision. I can foresee the same issue with any similar method because the interpolation is passed to (and acted upon within) the rendering method - at render time. So if Collision corrects position (character now standing right next to wall), then the renderer can alter it's position and draw it in the wall. So I'm really confused. People have said that you should never alter an object's position from within the rendering method, but all of the examples online show this. So I'm asking for a push in the right direction, please do not link to the popular game loop articles (deWitters, Fix your timestep, etc) as I've read these multiple times. I'm not asking anyone to write my code for me. Just explain please in simple terms how Interpolation actually works with some examples. I will then go and try to integrate any ideas into my code and will ask more specific questions if need-be further down the line. (I'm sure this is a problem many people struggle with).

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  • Best practices with Vertices in Open GL

    - by Darestium
    What is the best practice in regards to storing vertex data in Open GL? I.e: struct VertexColored { public: GLfloat position[]; GLfloat normal[]; byte colours[]; } class Terrian { private: GLuint vbo_vertices; GLuint vbo_normals; GLuint vbo_colors; GLuint ibo_elements; VertexColored vertices[]; } or having them stored seperatly in the required class like: class Terrian { private: GLfloat vertices[]; GLfloat normals[]; GLfloat colors[]; GLuint vbo_vertices; GLuint vbo_normals; GLuint vbo_colors; GLuint ibo_elements; }

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  • Making game constants/tables available to game logic classes/routines in a modular manner

    - by Extrakun
    Suppose I have a game where there are several predefined constants and charts (a XP chart, cost of goods and so on). Those could be defined at runtime, or load from files at start-up. The question is how should those logic routines access the constants and charts? For example, I could try using global variables, but that cause all classes relying on the variables to be tightly coupled with them.

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  • Should I be using Lua for game logic on mobile devices?

    - by Rob Ashton
    As above really, I'm writing an android based game in my spare time (android because it's free and I've no real aspirations to do anything commercial). The game logic comes from a very typical component based model whereby entities exist and have components attached to them and messages are sent to and fro in order to make things happen. Obviously the layer for actually performing that is thin, and if I were to write an iPhone version of this app, I'd have to re-write the renderer and core driver (of this component based system) in Objective C. The entities are just flat files determining the names of the components to be added, and the components themselves are simple, single-purpose objects containing the logic for the entity. Now, if I write all the logic for those components in Java, then I'd have to re-write them on Objective C if I decided to do an iPhone port. As the bulk of the application logic is contained within these components, they would, in an ideal world, be written in some platform-agnostic language/script/DSL which could then just be loaded into the app on whatever platform. I've been led to believe however that this is not an ideal world though, and that Lua performance etc on mobile devices still isn't up to scratch, that the overhead is too much and that I'd run into troubles later if I went down that route? Is this actually the case? Obviously this is just a hypothetical question, I'm happy writing them all in Java as it's simple and easy get things off the ground, but say I actually enjoy making this game (unlikely, given how much I'm currently disliking having to deal with all those different mobile devices) and I wanted to make a commercially viable game - would I use Lua or would I just take the hit when it came to porting and just re-write all the code?

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  • What light attenuation function does UDK use?

    - by ananamas
    I'm a big fan of the light attenuation in UDK. Traditionally I've always used the constant-linear-quadratic falloff function to control how "soft" the falloff is, which gives three values to play with. In UDK you can get similar results, but you only need to tweak one value: FalloffExponent. I'm interested in what the actual mathematical function here is. The UDK lighting reference describes it as follows: FalloffExponent: This allows you to modify the falloff of a light. The default falloff is 2. The smaller the number, the sharper the falloff and the more the brightness is maintained until the radius is reached. Does anyone know what it's doing behind the scenes?

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  • How to port animation from one skeleton to another?

    - by shawn
    While I need to do this in a Blender3D modeler script, the math should be similar for other modelers or realtime engines. Blender3D specific terminology: Armature = skeleton EditBone = rest pose bone (stores the rest pose matrix) PoseBone = can store a different pose (animation matrix) for each frame of your animation I need to share animations (Blender Actions) between Armatures which have EditBones with same names and which have the same positions, but can have different (rest pose) angles and scales. Plus the Armatures might have different bone hierarchy (bone parenting/ no bone parenting). Why I need this: I've made an importer/exporter for a 3d format for a game. The format doesn't store enough info to connect/parent the bones, which makes posing/animating character models in a 3d modeller nearly impossible (original model files for the 3d modeler don't exist, this is for modding). As there are only 2 character skeleton types in the game, I decided to optionally allow to generate the bone from a hardcoded data in the model importer and undo that in the exporter. This allows to easily pose the model for checking weights, easily create weights, makes it easier for Blender to generate automatic weights and of course makes animating possible. This worked perfectly: the importer optionally generated the Armature itself and the exporter removed those changes, so the exported model works with existing animations in the game. But now I'm writing an importer and exporter for the game's animation format and here come the problems of: Trying to make original animations work in Blender with my "custom" (modified) Armature Trying to make animations created by using the "custom" (modified) Armature work with the original models in the game (and Blender). Constraints or bone snapping inside Blender won't work as they don't care that the bones have different angles in the rest pose, they will still face the same direction. It seems I just need to get the "difference" between the EditBone matrices of all EditBones for the two Armatures somehow and apply that difference to PoseBone matrices of all PoseBones, for all frames of my animation. I need to know how to get that difference and how to apply it. BTW, PoseBone matrices are relative to rest pose, they are by default [1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 0]) [0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 1]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000](matrix [row 2]) [0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000](matrix [row 3]) So the question is: How to get the difference between two bone (EditBone) matrices to apply that difference to the animation matrices (PoseBone matrices)? Please be easy on the matrix math.

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  • Styles of games that work at low-resolution

    - by Brendan Long
    I'm taking a class on compilers, and the goal is to write a compiler for Meggy Jr devices (Arduino). The goal is just to make a simple compilers with loops and variables and stuff. Obviously, that's lame, so the "real goal" is to make an impressive game on the device. The problem is that it only has 64 pixels to work with (technically 72, but the top 8 are single-color and not part of the main display, so they're really only useful for displaying things like money). My problem is thinking of something to do on a device that small. It doesn't really matter if it's original, but it can't be something that's already available. My first idea was "snake", but that comes with the SDK. Same with a side-scrolling shooter. Remaining ideas include a tower defense game (hard to write, hard to control), an RPG (same), tetris (lame).. The problem is that all of the games I like require a high-resolution screen because they have a lot of text. Even a really simple game like nethack would be hard because each creature would be a single color. tl;dr What styles of games require a. No text; and b. Few enough objects that representing them each with a single color is acceptable?

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  • How do I calculate the boundary of the game window after transforming the view?

    - by Cypher
    My Camera class handles zoom, rotation, and of course panning. It's invoked through SpriteBatch.Begin, like so many other XNA 2D camera classes. It calculates the view Matrix like so: public Matrix GetViewMatrix() { return Matrix.Identity * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-this.Spatial.Position, 0.0f)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(-( this.viewport.Width / 2 ), -( this.viewport.Height / 2 ), 0.0f) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(this.Rotation) * Matrix.CreateScale(this.Scale, this.Scale, 1.0f) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(this.viewport.Width * 0.5f, this.viewport.Height * 0.5f, 0.0f); } I was having a minor issue with performance, which after doing some profiling, led me to apply a culling feature to my rendering system. It used to, before I implemented the camera's zoom feature, simply grab the camera's boundaries and cull any game objects that did not intersect with the camera. However, after giving the camera the ability to zoom, that no longer works. The reason why is visible in the screenshot below. The navy blue rectangle represents the camera's boundaries when zoomed out all the way (Camera.Scale = 0.5f). So, when zoomed out, game objects are culled before they reach the boundaries of the window. The camera's width and height are determined by the Viewport properties of the same name (maybe this is my mistake? I wasn't expecting the camera to "resize" like this). What I'm trying to calculate is a Rectangle that defines the boundaries of the screen, as indicated by my awesome blue arrows, even after the camera is rotated, scaled, or panned. Here is how I've more recently found out how not to do it: public Rectangle CullingRegion { get { Rectangle region = Rectangle.Empty; Vector2 size = this.Spatial.Size; size *= 1 / this.Scale; Vector2 position = this.Spatial.Position; position = Vector2.Transform(position, this.Inverse); region.X = (int)position.X; region.Y = (int)position.Y; region.Width = (int)size.X; region.Height = (int)size.Y; return region; } } It seems to calculate the right size, but when I render this region, it moves around which will obviously cause problems. It needs to be "static", so to speak. It's also obscenely slow, which causes more of a problem than it solves. What am I missing?

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  • Examples of interesting implementations of character stats?

    - by Tchalvak
    I've got this BBG going ( http://ninjawars.net ), and the character stats currently are simplistic. I'm looking to add a few stats to the current 1/2 (strength and maximum hitpoints, essentially). I've come up with: (strength (unchanged), speed, stamina, and some others that are somewhat interesting wildcard stats). However, I'm not satisfied with how boring the effects of some of these stats are, because they're very linear. Better stat, better effects of the stat, but the stats don't interact with each-other, there's no Rock-Paper-Scissors interaction, having more is always better all the time. So what I'd really like is to see examples of interesting character stats or effects of stats? Examples that I can think of off hand: Call of Cthulu's Insanity stat (things get really weird/chaotic if you start losing sanity) White Wolf stats, to a certain extent (the stats themselves have some basic effects, and all skills effectiveness base themselves off of stats as well) What are some other ways people have used stats to check out?

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  • Django and Google App Engine Helper not finding the ipaddr module.

    - by Phil
    I'm trying to get Django running on GAE using this tutorial. When I run python manage.py runserver I get the stacktrace below. I'm new to both django and python so I don't know what my next steps are (This is Ubuntu Jaunty btw). It seems django isn't finding the GAE module ipaddr which comes with SDK 1.3.1. How do I get django to find this module? /home/username/bin/google_appengine/google/appengine/api/datastore_file_stub.py:40: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead import md5 /home/username/bin/google_appengine/google/appengine/api/memcache/__init__.py:31: DeprecationWarning: the sha module is deprecated; use the hashlib module instead import sha Traceback (most recent call last): File "manage.py", line 18, in <module> InstallAppengineHelperForDjango() File "/home/username/Development/GAE/myapp/appengine_django/__init__.py", line 543, in InstallAppengineHelperForDjango InstallDjangoModuleReplacements() File "/home/username/Development/GAE/myapp/appengine_django/__init__.py", line 260, in InstallDjangoModuleReplacements import django.db File "/home/username/Development/GAE/myapp/django/db/__init__.py", line 57, in <module> 'TIME_ZONE': settings.TIME_ZONE, File "/home/username/Development/GAE/myapp/appengine_django/db/base.py", line 117, in __init__ self._setup_stubs() File "/home/username/Development/GAE/myapp/appengine_django/db/base.py", line 128, in _setup_stubs from google.appengine.tools import dev_appserver_main File "/home/username/bin/google_appengine/google/appengine/tools/dev_appserver_main.py", line 82, in <module> from google.appengine.tools import appcfg File "/home/username/bin/google_appengine/google/appengine/tools/appcfg.py", line 53, in <module> from google.appengine.api import dosinfo File "/home/username/bin/google_appengine/google/appengine/api/dosinfo.py", line 25, in <module> import ipaddr ImportError: No module named ipaddr

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  • "Unable to create OpenGL 3.3 context (flags 0, profile 1)"

    - by Tsvetan
    Trying to run any of the well-known McKesson's tutorials on a friend's laptop results in the aforementioned exception. I read that in order to run applications which use OpenGL 3.3 you must at least have an ATI HD or Nvidia 8xxx GPU series. He has an ATI HD class graphics processor which eliminates (maybe) this issue. Also, I read that this error may result in having old drivers. He updated his drivers but that didn't solve the problem. The tutorials are built as said in the book introduction and glsdk is installed. If more information is needed, say so and I will provide it. What are the other reasons for this kind of exception? And how can I fix them?

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  • Making a surface transparent from blackness of texture

    - by Dan the Man
    I am making a "halo" shader in unity using GLSL. And I've come to a roadblock. What I need to do is take a texture, like the following, and make it transparent according to the darkness of it. And I don't want a cutout, because that cuts it off at a hard edge. This line of code doesn't seem to work. gl_FragColor = texture2D( vec4( _MainTex.r, _MainTex.g, _MainTex.b, _MainTex.a), vec2(textureCoordinates));

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  • OpenGL: Filtering/antialising textures in a 2D game

    - by futlib
    I'm working on a 2D game using OpenGL 1.5 that uses rather large textures. I'm seeing aliasing effects and am wondering how to tackle those. I'm finding lots of material about antialiasing in 3D games, but I don't see how most of that applies to 2D games - e.g. antisoptric filtering seems to make no sense, FSAA doesn't sound like the best bet either. I suppose this means texture filtering is my best option? Right now I'm using bilinear filtering, I think: glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); From what I've read, I'd have to use mipmaps to use trilinear filtering, which would drive memory usage up, so I'd rather not. I know the final sizes of all the textures when they are loaded, so can't I somehow size them correctly at that point? (Using some form of texture filtering).

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  • XNA windows phone release black textures

    - by Lukasz Kajstura
    i just made a 3d game in XNA for windows phone 7. I build it in release mode on visual studio 2010 and suddenly when I run game there is no textures on models - 2 models are black and one is transparent. Models are in .X format exported from 3dsmax and have textures in .jpg also added to game content. I set build action to none and all worked fine in debug mode. When I change to release mode - black textures. When I set build action to compile it gives me warning: Asset was built 2 times with different settings: using TextureImporter and TextureProcessor using TextureImporter and TextureProcessor, referenced by... and still no textures. What can I do?

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  • car crash android game

    - by Axarydax
    I'd like to make a simple 2d car crashing game, where the player would drive his car into moving traffic and try to cause as much damage as possible in each level (some Burnout games had a mode like this). The physics part of the game is the most important, I can worry about graphics later. Would engine like emini or box2d work for this kind of game? Would Android devices have enough power to handle this? For example if there were about 20 cars colliding, along with some buildings, it would be nice if I could get 20 fps.

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  • Dealing with 2D pixel shaders and SpriteBatches in XNA 4.0 component-object game engine?

    - by DaveStance
    I've got a bit of experience with shaders in general, having implemented a couple, very simple, 3D fragment and vertex shaders in OpenGL/WebGL in the past. Currently, I'm working on a 2D game engine in XNA 4.0 and I'm struggling with the process of integrating per-object and full-scene shaders in my current architecture. I'm using a component-entity design, wherein my "Entities" are merely collections of components that are acted upon by discreet system managers (SpatialProvider, SceneProvider, etc). In the context of this question, my draw call looks something like this: SceneProvider::Draw(GameTime) calls... ComponentManager::Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) which calls (on each drawable component) DrawnComponent::Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) The SpriteBatch is set up, with the default SpriteBatch shader, in the SceneProvider class just before it tells the ComponentManager to start rendering the scene. From my understanding, if a component needs to use a special shader to draw itself, it must do the following when it's Draw(GameTime, SpriteBatch) method is invoked: public void Draw(GameTime gameTime, SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.End(); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null, EffectShader, ViewMatrix); // Draw things here that are shaded by the "EffectShader." spriteBatch.End(); spriteBatch.Begin(/* same settings that were set by SceneProvider to ensure the rest of the scene is rendered normally */); } My question is, having been told that numerous calls to SpriteBatch.Begin() and SpriteBatch.End() within a single frame was terrible for performance, is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to instruct the currently running SpriteBatch to simply change the Effect shader it is using for this particular draw call and then switch it back before the function ends?

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  • How to implement smooth flocking

    - by Craig
    I'm working on a simple survival game, avoid the big guy and chase the the small guys to stay alive for as long as possible. I have taken the chase and evade example from MSDN create and drawn 20 mice on the screen. I want the small guys to flock when they arent evading. They are doing this, but it isnt as smooth as I would like it to be. How do i make the movement smoother? Its very jittery.# Below is what I have going at the moment, flocking code is within the IF statement, when it isnt set to evading. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :) namespace ChaseAndEvade { class MouseSprite { public enum MouseAiState { // evading the cat Evading, // the mouse can't see the "cat", and it's wandering around. Wander } // how fast can the mouse move? public float MaxMouseSpeed = 4.5f; // and how fast can it turn? public float MouseTurnSpeed = 0.20f; // MouseEvadeDistance controls the distance at which the mouse will flee from // cat. If the mouse is further than "MouseEvadeDistance" pixels away, he will // consider himself safe. public float MouseEvadeDistance = 100.0f; // this constant is similar to TankHysteresis. The value is larger than the // tank's hysteresis value because the mouse is faster than the tank: with a // higher velocity, small fluctuations are much more visible. public float MouseHysteresis = 60.0f; public Texture2D mouseTexture; public Vector2 mouseTextureCenter; public Vector2 mousePosition; public MouseAiState mouseState = MouseAiState.Wander; public float mouseOrientation; public Vector2 mouseWanderDirection; int separationImpact = 4; int cohesionImpact = 6; int alignmentImpact = 2; int sensorDistance = 50; public void UpdateMouse(Vector2 position, MouseSprite [] mice, int numberMice, int index) { Vector2 catPosition = position; int enemies = numberMice; // first, calculate how far away the mouse is from the cat, and use that // information to decide how to behave. If they are too close, the mouse // will switch to "active" mode - fleeing. if they are far apart, the mouse // will switch to "idle" mode, where it roams around the screen. // we use a hysteresis constant in the decision making process, as described // in the accompanying doc file. float distanceFromCat = Vector2.Distance(mousePosition, catPosition); // the cat is a safe distance away, so the mouse should idle: if (distanceFromCat > MouseEvadeDistance + MouseHysteresis) { mouseState = MouseAiState.Wander; } // the cat is too close; the mouse should run: else if (distanceFromCat < MouseEvadeDistance - MouseHysteresis) { mouseState = MouseAiState.Evading; } // if neither of those if blocks hit, we are in the "hysteresis" range, // and the mouse will continue doing whatever it is doing now. // the mouse will move at a different speed depending on what state it // is in. when idle it won't move at full speed, but when actively evading // it will move as fast as it can. this variable is used to track which // speed the mouse should be moving. float currentMouseSpeed; // the second step of the Update is to change the mouse's orientation based // on its current state. if (mouseState == MouseAiState.Evading) { // If the mouse is "active," it is trying to evade the cat. The evasion // behavior is accomplished by using the TurnToFace function to turn // towards a point on a straight line facing away from the cat. In other // words, if the cat is point A, and the mouse is point B, the "seek // point" is C. // C // B // A Vector2 seekPosition = 2 * mousePosition - catPosition; // Use the TurnToFace function, which we introduced in the AI Series 1: // Aiming sample, to turn the mouse towards the seekPosition. Now when // the mouse moves forward, it'll be trying to move in a straight line // away from the cat. mouseOrientation = ChaseAndEvadeGame.TurnToFace(mousePosition, seekPosition, mouseOrientation, MouseTurnSpeed); // set currentMouseSpeed to MaxMouseSpeed - the mouse should run as fast // as it can. currentMouseSpeed = MaxMouseSpeed; } else { // if the mouse isn't trying to evade the cat, it should just meander // around the screen. we'll use the Wander function, which the mouse and // tank share, to accomplish this. mouseWanderDirection and // mouseOrientation are passed by ref so that the wander function can // modify them. for more information on ref parameters, see // http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/14akc2c7(VS.80).aspx ChaseAndEvadeGame.Wander(mousePosition, ref mouseWanderDirection, ref mouseOrientation, MouseTurnSpeed); // if the mouse is wandering, it should only move at 25% of its maximum // speed. currentMouseSpeed = .25f * MaxMouseSpeed; Vector2 separate = Vector2.Zero; Vector2 moveCloser = Vector2.Zero; Vector2 moveAligned = Vector2.Zero; // What the AI does when it sees other AIs for (int j = 0; j < enemies; j++) { if (index != j) { // Calculate a vector towards another AI Vector2 separation = mice[index].mousePosition - mice[j].mousePosition; // Only react if other AI is within a certain distance if ((separation.Length() < this.sensorDistance) & (separation.Length()> 0) ) { moveAligned += mice[j].mouseWanderDirection; float distance = Math.Abs(separation.Length()); if (distance == 0) distance = 1; moveCloser += mice[j].mousePosition; separation.Normalize(); separate += separation / distance; } } } if (moveAligned.LengthSquared() != 0) { moveAligned.Normalize(); } if (moveCloser.LengthSquared() != 0) { moveCloser.Normalize(); } moveCloser /= enemies; mice[index].mousePosition += (separate * separationImpact) + (moveCloser * cohesionImpact) + (moveAligned * alignmentImpact); } // The final step is to move the mouse forward based on its current // orientation. First, we construct a "heading" vector from the orientation // angle. To do this, we'll use Cosine and Sine to tell us the x and y // components of the heading vector. See the accompanying doc for more // information. Vector2 heading = new Vector2( (float)Math.Cos(mouseOrientation), (float)Math.Sin(mouseOrientation)); // by multiplying the heading and speed, we can get a velocity vector. the // velocity vector is then added to the mouse's current position, moving him // forward. mousePosition += heading * currentMouseSpeed; } } }

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  • Best way to store a large amount of game objects and update the ones onscreen

    - by user3002473
    Good afternoon guys! I'm a young beginner game developer working on my first large scale game project and I've run into a situation where I'm not quite sure what the best solution may be (if there is a lone solution). The question may be vague (if anyone can think of a better title after having read the question, please edit it) or broad but I'm not quite sure what to do and I thought it would help just to discuss the problem with people more educated in the field. Before we get started, here are some of the questions I've looked at for help in the past: Best way to keep track of game objects Elegant way to simulate large amounts of entities within a game world What is the most efficient container to store dynamic game objects in? I've also read articles about different data structures commonly used in games to store game objects such as this one about slot maps, but none of them are really what I'm looking for. Also, if it helps at all I'm using Python 3 to design the game. It has to be Python 3, if I could I would use C++ or Unityscript or something else, but I'm restricted to having to use Python 3. My game will be a form of side scroller shooter game. In said game the player will traverse large rooms with large amounts of enemies and other game objects to update (think some of the larger areas in Cave Story or Iji). The player obviously can't see the entire room all at once, so there is a viewport that follows the player around and renders only a selection of the room and the game objects that it contains. This is not a foreign concept. The part that's getting me confused has to do with how certain game objects are updated. Some of them are to be updated constantly, regardless of whether or not they can be seen. Other objects however are only to be updated when they are onscreen (for example, an enemy would only be updated to react to the player when it is onscreen or when it is in a certain range of the screen). Another problem is that game objects have to be easily referable by other game objects; something that happens in the player's update() method may affect another object in the world. Collision detection in games is always a serious problem. I need a way of containing the game objects such that it minimizes the number of cases when testing for collisions against one another. The final problem is that of creating and destroying game objects. I think this problem is pretty self explanatory. To store the game objects then I've considered a number of different methods. The original method I had was to simply store all the objects in a hash table by an id. This method was simple, and decently fast as it allows all the objects to be looked up in O(1) complexity, and also allows them to be deleted fairly easily. Hash collisions would not be a major problem; I wasn't originally planning on using computer generated ids to store the game objects I was going to rely on them all using ids given to them by the game designer (such names would be strings like 'Player' or 'EnemyWeapon4'), and even if I did use computer generated ids, if I used a decent hashing algorithm then the chances of collisions would be around 1 in 4 billion. The problem with using a hash table however is that it is inefficient in checking to see what objects are in range of the viewport. Considering the fact that certain game objects move (as well as the viewport itself), the only solution I could think of in order to only update objects that are in the viewport would be to iterate through every object in the hash table and check if it is in the viewport or not, updating only the ones that are in the valid area. This would be incredibly slow in scenarios where the amount of game objects exceeds 500, or even 200. The second solution was to store everything in a 2-d list. The world is partitioned up into cells (a tilemap essentially), where each cell or tile is the same size and is square. Each cell would contain a list of the game objects that are currently occupying it (each game object would be inserted into a cell depending on the center of the object's collision mask). A 2-d list would allow me to take the top-left and bottom-right corners of the viewport and easily grab a rectangular area of the grid containing only the cells containing entities that are in valid range to be updated. This method also solves the problem of collision detection; when I take an entity I can find the cell that it is currently in, then check only against entities in it's cell and the 8 cells around it. One problem with this system however is that it prohibits easy lookup of game objects. One solution I had would be to simultaneously keep a hash table that would contain all the positions of the objects in the 2-d list indexed by the id of said object. The major problem with a 2-d list is that it would need to be rebuilt every single game frame (along with the hash table of object positions), which may be a serious detriment to game speed. Both systems have ups and downs and seem to solve some of each other's problems, however using them both together doesn't seem like the best solution either. If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments, opinions or solutions on new data structures or better implementations of the existing data structures I have in mind, please post, any and all criticism and help is welcome. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Please don't close the question because it has a bad title, I'm just bad with names!

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  • XNA - Finding boundaries in isometric tilemap

    - by Yheeky
    I have an issue with my 2D isometric engine. I'm using my own 2D camera class which works with matrices and need to find the tilemaps boundaries so the user always sees the map. Currently my map size is 100x100 (with 128x128 tiles) so the calculation (e.g. for the right boundary) is: var maxX = (TileMap.MapWidth + 1) * (TileMap.TileWidth / 2) - ViewSize.X; var maxX = (100 + 1) * (128 / 2) - 1360; // = 5104 pixels. This works fine while having scale factor of 1.0f but not for any other zoom factor. When I zoom out to 0.9f the right border should be at approx. 4954. I´m using the following code for transformation but I always get a wrong value: var maxXVector = new Vector2(maxX, 0); var maxXTransformed = Vector2.Transform(maxXVector, tempTransform).X; The result is 4593. Does anyone of you have an idea what I´m during wrong? Thanks for your help! Yheeky

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  • Maintaining State in Mud Engine

    - by Johnathon Sullinger
    I am currently working on a Mud Engine and have started implementing my state engine. One of the things that has me troubled is maintaining different states at once. For instance, lets say that the user has started a tutorial, which requires specific input. If the user types "help" I want to switch in to a help state, so they can get the help they need, then return them to the original state once exiting the help. my state system uses a State Manager to manage the state per user: public class StateManager { /// <summary> /// Gets the current state. /// </summary> public IState CurrentState { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the states available for use. /// </summary> /// <value> public List<IState> States { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the commands available. /// </summary> public List<ICommand> Commands { get; private set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the mob that this manager controls the state of. /// </summary> public IMob Mob { get; private set; } public void Initialize(IMob mob, IState initialState = null) { this.Mob = mob; if (initialState != null) { this.SwitchState(initialState); } } /// <summary> /// Performs the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> public void PerformCommand(IMessage message) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { ICommand command = this.CurrentState.GetCommand(message); if (command is NoOpCommand) { // NoOperation commands indicate that the current state is not finished yet. this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } else if (command != null) { command.Execute(this.Mob); } else if (command == null) { new InvalidCommand().Execute(this.Mob); } } } /// <summary> /// Switches the state. /// </summary> /// <param name="state">The state.</param> public void SwitchState(IState state) { if (this.CurrentState != null) { this.CurrentState.Cleanup(); } this.CurrentState = state; if (state != null) { this.CurrentState.Render(this.Mob); } } } Each of the different states that the user can be in, is a Type implementing IState. public interface IState { /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="player">The player to render to</param> void Render(IMob mob); /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command); /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> void Cleanup(); } Example state: public class ConnectState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IMob connectedPlayer; public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; var game = mob.Game as IGame; // It is not guaranteed that mob.Game will implement IServer. We are only guaranteed that it will implement IGame. if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } //Output the game information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Name)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(game.Description)); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line //Output the server MOTD information mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Join("\n", server.MessageOfTheDay))); mob.Send(new InformationalMessage(string.Empty)); //blank line mob.StateManager.SwitchState(new LoginState()); } /// <summary> /// Gets the command. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message.</param> /// <returns>Returns no operation required.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage message) { return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // We have nothing to clean up. return; } } With the way that I have my FSM set up at the moment, the user can only ever have one state at a time. I read a few different posts on here about state management but nothing regarding keeping a stack history. I thought about using a Stack collection, and just pushing new states on to the stack then popping them off as the user moves out from one. It seems like it would work, but I'm not sure if it is the best approach to take. I'm looking for recommendations on this. I'm currently swapping state from within the individual states themselves as well which I'm on the fence about if it makes sense to do there or not. The user enters a command, the StateManager passes the command to the current State and lets it determine if it needs it (like passing in a password after entering a user name), if the state doesn't need any further commands, it returns null. If it does need to continue doing work, it returns a No Operation to let the state manager know that the state still requires further input from the user. If null is returned, the state manager will then go find the appropriate state for the command entered by the user. Example state requiring additional input from the user public class LoginState : IState { /// <summary> /// The connected player /// </summary> private IPlayer connectedPlayer; private enum CurrentState { FetchUserName, FetchPassword, InvalidUser, } private CurrentState currentState; /// <summary> /// Renders the current state to the players terminal. /// </summary> /// <param name="mob"></param> /// <exception cref="System.NullReferenceException"> /// ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer /// or /// LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server. /// </exception> public void Render(IMob mob) { if (!(mob is IPlayer)) { throw new NullReferenceException("ConnectState can only be used with a player object implementing IPlayer"); } //Store a reference for the GetCommand() method to use. this.connectedPlayer = mob as IPlayer; var server = mob.Game as IServer; // Register to receive new input from the user. mob.ReceivedMessage += connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; if (server == null) { throw new NullReferenceException("LoginState can only be set to a player object that is part of a server."); } this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; switch (this.currentState) { case CurrentState.FetchUserName: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; case CurrentState.FetchPassword: mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your password")); break; case CurrentState.InvalidUser: mob.Send(new InformationalMessage("Invalid username/password specified.")); this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchUserName; mob.Send(new InputMessage("Please enter your user name")); break; } } /// <summary> /// Receives the players input. /// </summary> /// <param name="sender">The sender.</param> /// <param name="e">The e.</param> void connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage(object sender, IMessage e) { // Be good memory citizens and clean ourself up after receiving a message. // Not doing this results in duplicate events being registered and memory leaks. this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; ICommand command = this.GetCommand(e); } /// <summary> /// Gets the Command that the player entered and preps it for execution. /// </summary> /// <param name="command"></param> /// <returns>Returns the ICommand specified.</returns> public Commands.ICommand GetCommand(IMessage command) { if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchUserName) { this.connectedPlayer.Name = command.Message; this.currentState = CurrentState.FetchPassword; } else if (this.currentState == CurrentState.FetchPassword) { // find user } return new NoOpCommand(); } /// <summary> /// Cleanups this instance during a state change. /// </summary> public void Cleanup() { // If we have a player instance, we clean up the registered event. if (this.connectedPlayer != null) { this.connectedPlayer.ReceivedMessage -= this.connectedPlayer_ReceivedMessage; } } Maybe my entire FSM isn't wired up in the best way, but I would appreciate input on what would be the best to maintain a stack of state in a MUD game engine, and if my states should be allowed to receive the input from the user or not to check what command was entered before allowing the state manager to switch states. Thanks in advance.

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