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• importing BaseGameUtils library

  - by David

  Hey :) I am trying to add the BaseGameUtils library to my workspace, I am using this guide: https://developers.google.com/games/services/android/init , I have downloaded from here :https://developers.google.com/games/services/downloads/ The BaseGameUtils sample but when I am trying to import it using Eclipse it gives me so many wrong things like Main,MainActivity and not the real BaseGameUtils, what is wrong here?

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• Why can we recognize game engines?

  - by Bart van Heukelom

  About many games you can say "oh that's the Unreal engine for sure", "this was made by upgrading GTA 4", etc. We can often recognize the engine used for a game just by looking at its graphics (disregarding menus and such). I'm wondering, why is this? All game engines use the same 3D rendering technology that we all use, and the different games usually have a distinct art style, so what's left to recognize?

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• Virtual Economy Setup - Virtual currencies advice

  - by Sarah Simpson

  I'm trying to figure out how to build my virtual economy. It seems like some games have one currency and some of them have up to 3 and 4 different ones. The game is an action game which is currently single player but I'm planning on adding a tournament mode that allows users to compete against each other. The virtual goods that a user would be able to purchase would be either customization to the character or powerups and utilities that give the character more abilities in the game. The character is able to gain coins during game play. The advice I'm trying to get is whether or not it makes sense to set up more than one currency and more than two currencies? What are the pros and cons? Reference to some resources that indicate research would be great.

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• Light following me around the room. Something is wrong with my shader!

  - by Robinson

  I'm trying to do a spot (Blinn) light, with falloff and attenuation. It seems to be working OK except I have a bit of a space problem. That is, whenever I move the camera the light moves to maintain the same relative position, rather than changing with the camera. This results in the light moving around, i.e. not always falling on the same surfaces. It's as if there's a flashlight attached to the camera. I'm transforming the lights beforehand into view space, so Light_Position and Light_Direction are already in eye space (I hope!). I made a little movie of what it looks like here: My camera rotating around a point inside a box. The light is fixed in the centre up and its "look at" point in a fixed position in front of it. As you can see, as the camera rotates around the origin (always looking at the centre), so don't think the box is rotating (!). The lighting follows it around. To start, some code. This is how I'm transforming the light into view space (it gets passed into the shader already in view space): // Compute eye-space light position. Math::Vector3d eyeSpacePosition = MyCamera->ViewMatrix() * MyLightPosition; MyShaderVariables->Set(MyLightPositionIndex, eyeSpacePosition); // Compute eye-space light direction vector. Math::Vector3d eyeSpaceDirection = Math::Unit(MyLightLookAt - MyLightPosition); MyCamera->ViewMatrixInverseTranspose().TransformNormal(eyeSpaceDirection); MyShaderVariables->Set(MyLightDirectionIndex, eyeSpaceDirection); Can anyone give me a clue as to what I'm doing wrong here? I think the light should remain looking at a fixed point on the box, regardless of the camera orientation. Here are the vertex and pixel shaders: /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Vertex Shader /////////////////////////////////////////////////// #version 420 /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Uniform Buffer Structures /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Camera. layout (std140) uniform Camera { mat4 Camera_View; mat4 Camera_ViewInverseTranspose; mat4 Camera_Projection; }; // Matrices per model. layout (std140) uniform Model { mat4 Model_World; mat4 Model_WorldView; mat4 Model_WorldViewInverseTranspose; mat4 Model_WorldViewProjection; }; // Spotlight. layout (std140) uniform OmniLight { float Light_Intensity; vec3 Light_Position; vec3 Light_Direction; vec4 Light_Ambient_Colour; vec4 Light_Diffuse_Colour; vec4 Light_Specular_Colour; float Light_Attenuation_Min; float Light_Attenuation_Max; float Light_Cone_Min; float Light_Cone_Max; }; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Streams (per vertex) /////////////////////////////////////////////////// layout(location = 0) in vec3 attrib_Position; layout(location = 1) in vec3 attrib_Normal; layout(location = 2) in vec3 attrib_Tangent; layout(location = 3) in vec3 attrib_BiNormal; layout(location = 4) in vec2 attrib_Texture; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Output streams (per vertex) /////////////////////////////////////////////////// out vec3 attrib_Fragment_Normal; out vec4 attrib_Fragment_Position; out vec2 attrib_Fragment_Texture; out vec3 attrib_Fragment_Light; out vec3 attrib_Fragment_Eye; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Main /////////////////////////////////////////////////// void main() { // Transform normal into eye space attrib_Fragment_Normal = (Model_WorldViewInverseTranspose * vec4(attrib_Normal, 0.0)).xyz; // Transform vertex into eye space (world * view * vertex = eye) vec4 position = Model_WorldView * vec4(attrib_Position, 1.0); // Compute vector from eye space vertex to light (light is in eye space already) attrib_Fragment_Light = Light_Position - position.xyz; // Compute vector from the vertex to the eye (which is now at the origin). attrib_Fragment_Eye = -position.xyz; // Output texture coord. attrib_Fragment_Texture = attrib_Texture; // Compute vertex position by applying camera projection. gl_Position = Camera_Projection * position; } and the pixel shader: /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Pixel Shader /////////////////////////////////////////////////// #version 420 /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Samplers /////////////////////////////////////////////////// uniform sampler2D Map_Diffuse; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Global Uniforms /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Material. layout (std140) uniform Material { vec4 Material_Ambient_Colour; vec4 Material_Diffuse_Colour; vec4 Material_Specular_Colour; vec4 Material_Emissive_Colour; float Material_Shininess; float Material_Strength; }; // Spotlight. layout (std140) uniform OmniLight { float Light_Intensity; vec3 Light_Position; vec3 Light_Direction; vec4 Light_Ambient_Colour; vec4 Light_Diffuse_Colour; vec4 Light_Specular_Colour; float Light_Attenuation_Min; float Light_Attenuation_Max; float Light_Cone_Min; float Light_Cone_Max; }; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Input streams (per vertex) /////////////////////////////////////////////////// in vec3 attrib_Fragment_Normal; in vec3 attrib_Fragment_Position; in vec2 attrib_Fragment_Texture; in vec3 attrib_Fragment_Light; in vec3 attrib_Fragment_Eye; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Result /////////////////////////////////////////////////// out vec4 Out_Colour; /////////////////////////////////////////////////// // Main /////////////////////////////////////////////////// void main(void) { // Compute N dot L. vec3 N = normalize(attrib_Fragment_Normal); vec3 L = normalize(attrib_Fragment_Light); vec3 E = normalize(attrib_Fragment_Eye); vec3 H = normalize(L + E); float NdotL = clamp(dot(L,N), 0.0, 1.0); float NdotH = clamp(dot(N,H), 0.0, 1.0); // Compute ambient term. vec4 ambient = Material_Ambient_Colour * Light_Ambient_Colour; // Diffuse. vec4 diffuse = texture2D(Map_Diffuse, attrib_Fragment_Texture) * Light_Diffuse_Colour * Material_Diffuse_Colour * NdotL; // Specular. float specularIntensity = pow(NdotH, Material_Shininess) * Material_Strength; vec4 specular = Light_Specular_Colour * Material_Specular_Colour * specularIntensity; // Light attenuation (so we don't have to use 1 - x, we step between Max and Min). float d = length(-attrib_Fragment_Light); float attenuation = smoothstep(Light_Attenuation_Max, Light_Attenuation_Min, d); // Adjust attenuation based on light cone. float LdotS = dot(-L, Light_Direction), CosI = Light_Cone_Min - Light_Cone_Max; attenuation *= clamp((LdotS - Light_Cone_Max) / CosI, 0.0, 1.0); // Final colour. Out_Colour = (ambient + diffuse + specular) * Light_Intensity * attenuation; }

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• Game World Design [on hold]

  - by GameDev

  I have one doubt about world game developing. I want to do a kind of platform game mixed with RPG (Side Scroll). What's the best to draw the world, - Draw everything than use the camera to move around the world - Draw just what you see as the player moves draw the new stuff. I'm new at this and didn't had any course for it. So if anyone can help me thanks :) PS: Any recommendation to learning game concept, like drawing world theory, play etc.. (not code and i want to 2D and i only see books for 3D stuff)

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• Drawing text from update method in XNA

  - by Sigh-AniDe

  I am having a problem drawing the "Game Over!" text once the user is on the last tile. This is what I have: The Update and drawText methods are in a class named turtle: public void Update(float scalingFactor, int[,] map, SpriteBatch batch, SpriteFont font) { if (isMovable(mapX, mapY - 1, map)) { position.Y = position.Y - (int)scalingFactor; angle = 0.0f; Program.form.direction = ""; if (mapX == 17 && mapY == 1)// This is the last tile(Tested) { Program.form.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red; drawText(batch, font); } } } public void drawText(SpriteBatch spritebatch, SpriteFont spriteFont) { textPosition.X = 200; // a vector2 textPosition.Y = 200; spritebatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend); spritebatch.DrawString(spriteFont, "Game Over!!!", textPosition, Color.Red); spritebatch.End(); } This update is in the Game1 class: protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); turtle.Update(scalingFactor, map, spriteBatch, font); base.Update(gameTime); } I have also added the font content to LoadContent: font = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("fontType"); What am I doing wrong? Why does the text not want to show on game completion? If I call the turtle.draw() in the main Draw method. The "Game Over" text stays on screen from the beggining. What am I missing? Thanks

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• 3D Studio Max biped restrictions?

  - by meds

  I have a stock biped character in 3D studio max which has a jump animation. The problem I have with the jump animation is that there is actual y offset happening inside it which makes it awkward to play while the character is jumping since it's not only jumping in the game world but the jump animation is adding its own height offset. I'm tryuing to remove the jump animations height offset, so far I've found the root node and deleted all its key frames which has helped a bit. The problem I'm having now is that the character still has some height offset and if I try to lower it it has a fake 'ground' that isn't at 0 and the limbs sort of bend on the imaginary floor, si there a way to remove this restriction just for the jump animation? Here's what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/qoWIR.png Any idea for a fix? I'm using Unity 3D if that opens any other possibilities...

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• What are the possible options for AI path-finding etc when the world is "partitionned"?

  - by Sebastien Diot

  If you anticipate a large persistent game world, and you don't want to end up with some game server crashing due to overload, then you have to design from the ground up a game world that is partitioned in chunks. This is in particular true if you want to run your game servers in the cloud, where each individual VM is relatively week, and memory and CPU are at a premium. I think the biggest challenge here is that the player receives all the parts around the location of the avatar, but mobs/monsters are normally located in the server itself, and can only directly access the data about the part of the world that the server own. So how can we make the AI behave realistically in that context? It can send queries to the other servers that own the neighboring parts, but that sounds rather network intensive and latency prone. It would probably be more performant for each mob AI to be spread over the neighboring parts, and proactively send the relevant info to the part that contains the actual mob atm. That would also reduce the stress in a mob crossing a border between two parts, and therefore "switching server". Have you heard of any AI design that solves those issues? Some kind of distributed AI brain? Maybe some kind of "agent" community working together through message passing?

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• Keeping the camera from going through walls in a first person game in Unity?

  - by Timothy Williams

  I'm using a modified version of the standard Unity First Person Controller. At the moment when I stand near walls, the camera clips through and lets me see through the wall. I know about camera occlusion and have implemented it in 3rd person games, but I have no clue how I'd accomplish this in a first person game, since the camera doesn't move from the player at all. How do other people accomplish this?

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• How to determine where on a path my object will be at a given point in time?

  - by Dave

  I have map and an obj that is meant to move from start to end in X amount of time. The movements are all straight lines, as curves are beyond my ability at the moment. So I am trying to get the object to move from these points, but along the way there are way points which keep it on a given path. The speed of the object is determined by how long it will take to get from start to end (based on X). This is what i have so far: //get_now() returns seconds since epoch var timepassed = get_now() - myObj[id].start; //seconds since epoch for departure var timeleft = myObj[id].end - get_now(); //seconds since epoch for arrival var journey_time = 60; //this means 60 minutes total journey time var array = [[650,250]]; //way points along the straight paths if(step == 0 || step =< array.length){ var destinationx = array[step][0]; var destinationy = array[step][1]; }else if( step == array.length){ var destinationx = 250; var destinationy = 100; } else { var destinationx = myObj[id].startx; var destinationy = myObj[id].starty; } step++; When the user logs in at any given time, the object needs to be drawn in the correct place of the path, almost as if its been travelling along the path whilst the user has not been at the PC with the available information i have above. How do I do this? Note: The camera angle in the game is a birds eye view so its a straight forward X:Y rather than isometric angles.

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• Triangle Strips and Tangent Space Normal Mapping

  - by Koarl

  Short: Do triangle strips and Tangent Space Normal mapping go together? According to quite a lot of tutorials on bump mapping, it seems common practice to derive tangent space matrices in a vertex program and transform the light direction vector(s) to tangent space and then pass them on to a fragment program. However, if one was using triangle strips or index buffers, it is a given that the vertex buffer contains vertices that sit at border edges and would thus require more than one normal to derive tangent space matrices to interpolate between in fragment programs. Is there any reasonable way to not have duplicate vertices in your buffer and still use tangent space normal mapping? Which one do you think is better: Having normal and tangent encoded in the assets and just optimize the geometry handling to alleviate the cost of duplicate vertices or using triangle strips and computing normals/tangents completely at run time? Thinking about it, the more reasonable answer seems to be the first one, but why might my professor still be fussing about triangle strips when it seems so obvious?

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• Scaling Down Pixel Art?

  - by Michael Stum

  There's plenty of algorithms to scale up pixel art (I prefer hqx personally), but are there any notable algorithms to scale it down? In my case, the game is designed to run at 1280x720, but if someone plays at a lower resolution I want it to still look good. Most Pixel Art discussions center around 320x200 or 640x480 and upscaling for use in console emulators, but I wonder how modern 2D games like the Monkey Island Remake look good on lower resolutions? (Ignoring the options of having multiple versions of assets (essentially, mipmapping))

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• How do engines avoid "Phase Lock" (multiple objects in same location) in a Physics Engine?

  - by C0M37

  Let me explain Phase Lock first: When two objects of non zero mass occupy the same space but have zero energy (no velocity). Do they bump forever with zero velocity resolution vectors or do they just stay locked together until an outside force interacts? In my home brewed engine, I realized that if I loaded a character into a tree and moved them, they would signal a collision and hop back to their original spot. I suppose I could fix this by implementing impulses in the event of a collision instead of just jumping back to the last spot I was in (my implementation kind of sucks). But while I make my engine more robust, I'm just curious on how most other physics engines handle this case. Do objects that start in the same spot with no movement speed just shoot out from each other in a random direction? Or do they sit there until something happens? Which option is generally the best approach?

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• Random World Generation

  - by Alex Larsen

  I'm making a game like minecraft (although a different idea) but I need a random world generator for a 1024 block wide and 256 block tall map. Basically so far I have a multidimensional array for each layer of blocks (a total of 262,114 blocks). This is the code I have now: Block[,] BlocksInMap = new Block[1024, 256]; public bool IsWorldGenerated = false; Random r = new Random(); private void RunThread() { for (int BH = 0; BH <= 256; BH++) { for (int BW = 0; BW <= 1024; BW++) { Block b = new Block(); if (BH >= 192) { } BlocksInMap[BW, BH] = b; } } IsWorldGenerated = true; } public void GenWorld() { new Thread(new ThreadStart(RunThread)).Start(); } I want to make tunnels and water but the way blocks are set is like this: Block MyBlock = new Block(); MyBlock.BlockType = Block.BlockTypes.Air; How would I manage to connect blocks so the land is not a bunch of floating dirt and stone?

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• Acceptable GC frequency for a SlimDX/Windows/.NET game?

  - by Rei Miyasaka

  I understand that the Windows GC is much better than the Xbox/WP7 GC, being that it's generational and multithreaded -- so I don't need to worry quite as much about avoiding memory allocation. SlimDX even has some unavoidable functions that generate some amount of garbage (specifically, MapSubresource creates DataBoxes), yet people don't seem to be too upset about it. I'd like to use some functional paradigms to write my code too, which also means creating objects like closures and monads. I know premature optimization isn't a good thing, but are there rules of thumb or metrics that I can follow to know whether I need to cut down on allocations? Is, say, one gen 0 GC per frame too much? One thing that has me stumped is object promotions. Gen 0 GCs will supposedly finish within a millisecond or two, but if I'm understanding correctly, it's the gen 1 and 2 promotions that start to hurt. I'm not too sure how I can predict/prevent these.

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• Scrolling background stops after awhile?

  - by Lewis

  Can anyone tell me where my maths is wrong please, it stops scrolling after awhile. if (background.position.y < background2.position.y) { background.position = ccp(background.contentSize.width / 2, background.position.y - 50 * delta); background2.position = ccp(background.contentSize.width / 2, background.position.y + background.contentSize.height); } else { background.position = ccp(background2.contentSize.width / 2, background2.position.y - 50 * delta); background.position = ccp(background2.contentSize.width / 2, background2.position.y + background.contentSize.height); } //reset if (background.position.y <-background.contentSize.height / 2) { background.position = ccp(background.contentSize.width / 2 ,background2.position.y + background2.contentSize.height); } else if (background2.position.y < -background2.contentSize.height / 2) { background2.position = ccp(background2.contentSize.width / 2, background.position.y + background.contentSize.height); }

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• Odd Android touch event problem

  - by user22241

  Overview When testing my game I came across a bizarre problem with my touch controls. Note this isn't related to multi-touch as I completely removed my ACTION_POINTER_UP and ACTION_POINTER_DOWN along with my ACTION_MOVE code. So I'm simply working with ACTION_UP and ACTION_DOWN now and still get the problem. The problem I have a left and right button on the left of the screen and a jump button on the right. Everything works as it should but if I touch a large area of my hand (the fleshy part at the base of the thumb for instance) onto the screen, then release it and then press one of my arrows, the sprite moves in that direction for a few seconds, and then ACTION_UP is mysteriously triggered. The sprite stops and then if I release my finger and re-apply it to an arrow, the same thing happens. This goes on and on and eventually (randomly??) stops and everything work OK again. Test device & OS Google Nexus 10 Tablet running Jellybean 4.2.2 Code //Action upon which to switch actionMask = event.getActionMasked(); //Pointer Index of the currently touching pointer pointerIndex = event.getActionIndex(); //Number of pointers (for multi-touch) pointerCount = event.getPointerCount(); //ID of the pointer currently being processed (Multitouch) pointerID = event.getPointerId(pointerIndex); switch (actionMask){ //Primary pointer down case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN: { //if pressing left button then set moving left if (isLeftPressed(event.getX(), event.getY())){ renderer.setSpriteLeft(); } //if pressing right button then set moving right else if (isRightPressed(event.getX(), event.getY())){ renderer.setSpriteRight(); } //if pressing jump button then set sprite jumping else if (isJumpPressed(event.getX(),event.getY())){ renderer.setSpriteState('j', true); } break; }//End of case //Primary pointer up case MotionEvent.ACTION_UP:{ //When finger leaves the screen, stop sprite's horizontal movement renderer.setSpriteStopped(); break; }

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• Doing powerups in a component-based system

  - by deft_code

  I'm just starting really getting my head around component based design. I don't know what the "right" way to do this is. Here's the scenario. The player can equip a shield. The the shield is drawn as bubble around the player, it has a separate collision shape, and reduces the damage the player receives from area effects. How is such a shield architected in a component based game? Where I get confused is that the shield obviously has three components associated with it. Damage reduction / filtering A sprite A collider. To make it worse different shield variations could have even more behaviors, all of which could be components: boost player maximum health health regen projectile deflection etc Am I overthinking this? Should the shield just be a super component? I really think this is wrong answer. So if you think this is the way to go please explain. Should the shield be its own entity that tracks the location of the player? That might make it hard to implement the damage filtering. It also kinda blurs the lines between attached components and entities. Should the shield be a component that houses other components? I've never seen or heard of anything like this, but maybe it's common and I'm just not deep enough yet. Should the shield just be a set of components that get added to the player? Possibly with an extra component to manage the others, e.g. so they can all be removed as a group. (accidentally leave behind the damage reduction component, now that would be fun). Something else that's obvious to someone with more component experience?

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• Bitmap font rendering, UV generation and vertex placement

  - by jack

  I am generating a bitmap, however, I am not sure on how to render the UV's and placement. I had a thread like this once before, but it was too loosely worded as to what I was looking to do. What I am doing right now is creating a large 1024x1024 image with characters evenly placed every 64 pixels. Here is an example of what I mean. I then save the bitmap X/Y information to a file (which is all multiples of 64). However, I am not sure how to properly use this information and bitmap to render. This falls into two different categories, UV generation and kerning. Now I believe I know how to do both of these, however, when I attempt to couple them together I will get horrendous results. For example, I am trying to render two different text arrays, "123" and "njfb". While ignoring the texture quality (I will be increasing the texture to provide more detail once I fix this issue), here is what it looks like when I try to render them. http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/599/badfontrendering.png Now for the algorithm. I am doing my letter placement with both GetABCWidth and GetKerningPairs. I am using GetABCWidth for the width of the characters, then I am getting the kerning information for adjust the characters. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can implement my own bitmap font renderer? I am trying to do this without using external libraries such as angel bitmap tool or freetype. I also want to stick to the way the bitmap font sheet is generated so I can do extra effects in the future. Rendering Algorithm for(U32 c = 0, vertexID = 0, i = 0; c < numberOfCharacters; ++c, vertexID += 4, i += 6) { ObtainCharInformation(fontName, m_Text[c]); letterWidth = (charInfo.A + charInfo.B + charInfo.C) * scale; if(c != 0) { DWORD BytesReq = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, 0, 0, &mat); U8 * glyphImg= new U8[BytesReq]; DWORD r = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, BytesReq, glyphImg, &mat); for (int k=0; k<nKerningPairs; k++) { if ((kerningpairs[k].wFirst == previousCharIndex) && (kerningpairs[k].wSecond == m_Text[c])) { letterBottomLeftX += (kerningpairs[k].iKernAmount * scale); break; } } letterBottomLeftX -= (gm.gmCellIncX * scale); } SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 1); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 2); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID + 3); zFight -= 0.001f; float BottomLeftX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float BottomLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin + charInfo.charBitmapHeight) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopLeftX = BottomLeftX; float TopLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin + charInfo.B - charInfo.C) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightY = TopLeftY; float BottomRightX = TopRightX; float BottomRightY = BottomLeftY; SetTextureCoordinate(TopLeftX, TopLeftY, vertexID + 1); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomLeftX, BottomLeftY, vertexID + 0); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomRightX, BottomRightY, vertexID + 3); SetTextureCoordinate(TopRightX, TopRightY, vertexID + 2); /// index setting letterBottomLeftX += letterWidth; previousCharIndex = m_Text[c]; }

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• How can I make an MMORPG appeal to casual players?

  - by Philipp

  I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

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• multithreading problem with Nvidia PhysX

  - by xcrypt

  I'm having a multithreading problem with Nvidia PhysX. the SDK requires that you call Simulate() (starts computing new physics positions within a new thread) and FetchResults(waits 'till the physics computations are done). Inbetween Simulate() and FetchResults() you may not 'compute new physics' It is proposed (in a sample) that we create a game loop as such: Logic (you may calculate physics here and other stuff) Render + Simulate() at start of Render call and FetchResults at end of Render() call However, this has given me various little errors that stack up: since you actually render the scene that was computed in the previous iteration in the game loop. I wonder if there's a way around this? I've been trying and trying, but I can't think of a solution...

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• Pathfinding results in false path costs that are too high

  - by user2144536

  I'm trying to implement pathfinding in a game I'm programming using this method. I'm implementing it with recursion but some of the values after the immediate circle of tiles around the player are way off. For some reason I cannot find the problem with it. This is a screen cap of the problem: The pathfinding values are displayed in the center of every tile. Clipped blocks are displayed with the value of 'c' because the values were too high and were covering up the next value. The red circle is the first value that is incorrect. The code below is the recursive method. //tileX is the coordinates of the current tile, val is the current pathfinding value, used[][] is a boolean //array to keep track of which tiles' values have already been assigned public void pathFind(int tileX, int tileY, int val, boolean[][] used) { //increment pathfinding value int curVal = val + 1; //set current tile to true if it hasn't been already used[tileX][tileY] = true; //booleans to know which tiles the recursive call needs to be used on boolean topLeftUsed = false, topUsed = false, topRightUsed = false, leftUsed = false, rightUsed = false, botomLeftUsed = false, botomUsed = false, botomRightUsed = false; //set value of top left tile if necessary if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY - 1 >= 0) { //isClipped(int x, int y) returns true if the coordinates givin are in a tile that can't be walked through (IE walls) //occupied[][] is an array that keeps track of which tiles have an enemy in them // //if the tile is not clipped and not occupied set the pathfinding value if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = curVal; topLeftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = true; } //if it is occupied set it to an arbitrary high number so enemies find alternate routes if the best is clogged if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; //if it is clipped set it to an arbitrary higher number so enemies don't travel through walls if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //top middle if(tileY - 1 >= 0 ) { if(isClipped(tileX * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = curVal; topUsed = true; used[tileX][tileY - 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped(tileX * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //top right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY - 1 >= 0) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY - 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = curVal; topRightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY - 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY - 1] = 2000000000; } //left if(tileX - 1 >= 0) { if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = curVal; leftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY] = true; } if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY] = 2000000000; } //right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = curVal; rightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY] = 2000000000; } //botom left if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX - 1][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomLeftUsed = true; used[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX - 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX - 1][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //botom middle if(tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomUsed = true; used[tileX][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //botom right if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length) { if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == false && occupied[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] == false && !(used[tileX + 1][tileY + 1])) { pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = curVal; botomRightUsed = true; used[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = true; } if(occupied[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = 1000000000; if(isClipped((tileX + 1) * 50 + 25, (tileY + 1) * 50 + 25) == true) pathFindingValues[tileX + 1][tileY + 1] = 2000000000; } //call the method on the tiles that need it if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY - 1 >= 0 && topLeftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileY - 1 >= 0 && topUsed) pathFind(tileX , tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY - 1 >= 0 && topRightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY - 1, curVal, used); if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && leftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && rightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY, curVal, used); if(tileX - 1 >= 0 && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomLeftUsed) pathFind(tileX - 1, tileY + 1, curVal, used); if(tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomUsed) pathFind(tileX, tileY + 1, curVal, used); if(tileX + 1 <= used.length && tileY + 1 <= used[0].length && botomRightUsed) pathFind(tileX + 1, tileY + 1, curVal, used); }

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• Handling early/late/dropped packets for interpolation in a 3D multiplayer game

  - by Ben Cracknell

  I'm working on a multiplayer game that for the purposes of this question, is most similar to Team Fortress. Each network data packet will contain the 3D position of the target moving object. (this object could be another player) The packets are sent on a fixed interval, and linear interpolation will be used to smooth the transition between packets. Under normal circumstances, interpolation will occur between the second-to-last packet, and the last packet received. The linear interpolation algorithm is the same as this post: Interpolating positions in a multiplayer game I have the same issue as in that post, but the answers don't seem like they will work in my situation. Consider the following scenario: Normal packet timing, everything is okay The next expected packet is late. That's okay, we'll just extrapolate based on previous positions The late packet eventually arrives with corrections to our extrapolation. Now what do we do with its information? The answers on the above post suggest we should just interpolate to this new packet's position, but that would not work at all. If we have already extrapolated past that point in time, moving back would cause rubber-banding. The issue is similar in the case of an early or dropped packet. So I believe what I am looking for is some way to smoothly deal with new information in an ongoing interpolation/extrapolation process. Since I might be moving on to quadratic or even cubic interpolation, it would be great if the same solutiuon could be applied to those as well.

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• What is the best way to check if there is overlap between player and static, non-collidable items in bullet physic engine

  - by tigrou

  I'd like to add non collidable objects (eg: power ups, items, ...) in a game world using Bullet Physics Engine and to know if there is collision between player and them. Some info : there is a lot of items ( 1000), all are box shapes and they don't overlap. Here is things i have tried : btDbvt* bvtItems = new btDbvt(); //btDbvt is a hierachical AABB tree, used by Bullet foreach(var item ...) { btDbvtVolume volume = ... //compute item AABB; bvtItems->insert(volume, (void*)someExtraData); } Then, to find collisions between items and player : playerRigidBody->getAabb(min, max); btDbvtVolume playervolume = ... //compute player AABB bvtItems->collideTV(bvtItems->m_root, playervolume, *someCollisionHandler); This works fairly well (and its very fast), however, there is a problem : it only check items AABB against player AABB. That loss of precision is acceptable for items but not for player which is not a box. It would actually need another check to make sure player really collide with item but i don't know how to do this in Bullet. It would have been nice to have a function like this : playerRigidBody->checkCollisionWithAABB(); After doing trying that, I discovered that a btGhostObject exist and seems to have been made for that. I changed my code like this : foreach(var item...) { btCollisionObject* ghostObject = new btGhostObject(); ghostObject->setCollisionShape(boxShape); ghostObject->setCollisionFlags(ghostObject->getCollisionFlags() | btCollisionObject::CF_NO_CONTACT_RESPONSE); startTransform.setOrigin(...); //item position ghostObject->setWorldTransform(startTransform); dynamicsWorld->addCollisionObject(ghostObject, btBroadphaseProxy::SensorTrigger, btBroadphaseProxy:: CharacterFilter); } It also works ok, but there is a huge fps drop (almost ten times slower) which is not acceptable. Maybe there is something missing (forget set a flag) and Bullet is doing extra job for nothing or maybe all that ghostObjects are polluting broad phase and ghostObject is not the right thing for that. Any help would be appreciated.

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• XNA RTS A* pathfinding issues

  - by Slayter

  I'm starting to develop an RTS game using the XNA framework in C# and am still in the very early prototyping stage. I'm working on the basics. I've got unit selection down and am currently working on moving multiple units. I've implemented an A* pathfinding algorithm which works fine for moving a single unit. However when moving multiple units they stack on top of each other. I tried fixing this with a variation of the boids flocking algorithm but this has caused units to sometimes freeze and get stuck trying to move but going no where. Ill post the related methods for moving the units below but ill only post a link to the pathfinding class because its really long and i don't want to clutter up the page. These parts of the code are in the update method for the main controlling class: if (selectedUnits.Count > 0) { int indexOfLeader = 0; for (int i = 0; i < selectedUnits.Count; i++) { if (i == 0) { indexOfLeader = 0; } else { if (Vector2.Distance(selectedUnits[i].position, destination) < Vector2.Distance(selectedUnits[indexOfLeader].position, destination)) indexOfLeader = i; } selectedUnits[i].leader = false; } selectedUnits[indexOfLeader].leader = true; foreach (Unit unit in selectedUnits) unit.FindPath(destination); } foreach (Unit unit in units) { unit.Update(gameTime, selectedUnits); } These three methods control movement in the Unit class: public void FindPath(Vector2 destination) { if (path != null) path.Clear(); Point startPoint = new Point((int)position.X / 32, (int)position.Y / 32); Point endPoint = new Point((int)destination.X / 32, (int)destination.Y / 32); path = pathfinder.FindPath(startPoint, endPoint); pointCounter = 0; if (path != null) nextPoint = path[pointCounter]; dX = 0.0f; dY = 0.0f; stop = false; } private void Move(List<Unit> units) { if (nextPoint == position && !stop) { pointCounter++; if (pointCounter <= path.Count - 1) { nextPoint = path[pointCounter]; if (nextPoint == position) stop = true; } else if (pointCounter >= path.Count) { path.Clear(); pointCounter = 0; stop = true; } } else { if (!stop) { map.occupiedPoints.Remove(this); Flock(units); // Move in X ********* TOOK OUT SPEED ********** if ((int)nextPoint.X > (int)position.X) { position.X += dX; } else if ((int)nextPoint.X < (int)position.X) { position.X -= dX; } // Move in Y if ((int)nextPoint.Y > (int)position.Y) { position.Y += dY; } else if ((int)nextPoint.Y < (int)position.Y) { position.Y -= dY; } if (position == nextPoint && pointCounter >= path.Count - 1) stop = true; map.occupiedPoints.Add(this, position); } if (stop) { path.Clear(); pointCounter = 0; } } } private void Flock(List<Unit> units) { float distanceToNextPoint = Vector2.Distance(position, nextPoint); foreach (Unit unit in units) { float distance = Vector2.Distance(position, unit.position); if (unit != this) { if (distance < space && !leader && (nextPoint != position)) { // create space dX += (position.X - unit.position.X) * 0.1f; dY += (position.Y - unit.position.Y) * 0.1f; if (dX > .05f) nextPoint.X = nextPoint.X - dX; else if (dX < -.05f) nextPoint.X = nextPoint.X + dX; if (dY > .05f) nextPoint.Y = nextPoint.Y - dY; else if (dY < -.05f) nextPoint.Y = nextPoint.Y + dY; if ((dX < .05f && dX > -.05f) && (dY < .05f && dY > -.05f)) stop = true; path[pointCounter] = nextPoint; Console.WriteLine("Make Space: " + dX + ", " + dY); } else if (nextPoint != position && !stop) { dX = speed; dY = speed; Console.WriteLine(dX + ", " + dY); } } } } And here's the link to the pathfinder: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_Cqt6txUDkddU40QXBMeTR1djA I hope this post wasn't too long. Also please excuse the messiness of the code. As I said before this is early prototyping. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

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