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  • Getting 2D Platformer entity collision Response Correct (side-to-side + jumping/landing on heads)

    - by jbrennan
    I've been working on a 2D (tile based) 2D platformer for iOS and I've got basic entity collision detection working, but there's just something not right about it and I can't quite figure out how to solve it. There are 2 forms of collision between player entities as I can tell, either the two players (human controlled) are hitting each other side-to-side (i. e. pushing against one another), or one player has jumped on the head of the other player (naturally, if I wanted to expand this to player vs enemy, the effects would be different, but the types of collisions would be identical, just the reaction should be a little different). In my code I believe I've got the side-to-side code working: If two entities press against one another, then they are both moved back on either side of the intersection rectangle so that they are just pushing on each other. I also have the "landed on the other player's head" part working. The real problem is, if the two players are currently pushing up against each other, and one player jumps, then at one point as they're jumping, the height-difference threshold that counts as a "land on head" is passed and then it registers as a jump. As a life-long player of 2D Mario Bros style games, this feels incorrect to me, but I can't quite figure out how to solve it. My code: (it's really Objective-C but I've put it in pseudo C-style code just to be simpler for non ObjC readers) void checkCollisions() { // For each entity in the scene, compare it with all other entities (but not with one it's already compared against) for (int i = 0; i < _allGameObjects.count(); i++) { // GameObject is an Entity GEGameObject *firstGameObject = _allGameObjects.objectAtIndex(i); // Don't check against yourself or any previous entity for (int j = i+1; j < _allGameObjects.count(); j++) { GEGameObject *secondGameObject = _allGameObjects.objectAtIndex(j); // Get the collision bounds for both entities, then see if they intersect // CGRect is a C-struct with an origin Point (x, y) and a Size (w, h) CGRect firstRect = firstGameObject.collisionBounds(); CGRect secondRect = secondGameObject.collisionBounds(); // Collision of any sort if (CGRectIntersectsRect(firstRect, secondRect)) { //////////////////////////////// // // // Check for jumping first (???) // // //////////////////////////////// if (firstRect.origin.y > (secondRect.origin.y + (secondRect.size.height * 0.7))) { // the top entity could be pretty far down/in to the bottom entity.... firstGameObject.didLandOnEntity(secondGameObject); } else if (secondRect.origin.y > (firstRect.origin.y + (firstRect.size.height * 0.7))) { // second entity was actually on top.... secondGameObject.didLandOnEntity.(firstGameObject); } else if (firstRect.origin.x > secondRect.origin.x && firstRect.origin.x < (secondRect.origin.x + secondRect.size.width)) { // Hit from the RIGHT CGRect intersection = CGRectIntersection(firstRect, secondRect); // The NUDGE just offsets either object back to the left or right // After the nudging, they are exactly pressing against each other with no intersection firstGameObject.nudgeToRightOfIntersection(intersection); secondGameObject.nudgeToLeftOfIntersection(intersection); } else if ((firstRect.origin.x + firstRect.size.width) > secondRect.origin.x) { // hit from the LEFT CGRect intersection = CGRectIntersection(firstRect, secondRect); secondGameObject.nudgeToRightOfIntersection(intersection); firstGameObject.nudgeToLeftOfIntersection(intersection); } } } } } I think my collision detection code is pretty close, but obviously I'm doing something a little wrong. I really think it's to do with the way my jumps are checked (I wanted to make sure that a jump could happen from an angle (instead of if the falling player had been at a right angle to the player below). Can someone please help me here? I haven't been able to find many resources on how to do this properly (and thinking like a game developer is new for me). Thanks in advance!

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  • How do I implement powerups for my Breakout clone?

    - by Eva
    I'm making a simple Breakout clone in Python that will have very many powerups/powerdowns (so far I came up with 26). Some will affect the paddle (paddle missile, two paddles, short paddle, etc.), some will affect the ball (slow ball, destructo-ball, invisible ball, etc.), some will affect the bricks (brick scramble, move up, bricks indestructible, etc.), and some will affect other game aspects (extra life, more points, less points, etc.). I'm pretty sure I have the code to draw the falling powerups and test for collisions with the paddle down, but I'm confused about how to code the effects of the powerups. Since there are very many powerups, it seemed inefficient to add specific methods to each component as done in this tutorial. However, I can't think of an other ways to implement the powerups. I found a page that hints at some way to design powerup behavior using classes, but I'm at a loss for how to do that. (A short example would help.) Please give me a short code example of another way to implement the effects of the powerups.

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  • Cocos 2D - Hold down CCMenuItem

    - by Will Youmans
    I am using the following code to move a CCSprite left and right. -(id)init{ CCMenuItemImage * moveLeftButton = [CCMenuItemImage itemFromNormalImage:@"Move Left Button.png" selectedImage:@"Move Left Button.png" target:self selector:@selector(moveLeftVoid:)]; } -(void)moveLeftVoid{ id moveLeft = [CCMoveBy actionWithDuration:.3 position:ccp(-10, 0)]; [_mainSprite runAction:moveLeft]; } This does work, but only as a single tap. What I want for the CCSprite to move continously in that direction when the CCMenuItem is held down. Then when it's released the character stops moving. If you need to see more code, please just ask. :) Thanks

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  • How to calculate production when player is offline

    - by Kaizer
    What is the best way to do for example food growth based on how many food buildings you have? Lets say I have a webbased game where you can build a farm wich generates 60 food units per hour. A player has 1 farm in his possession. What is the best way to keep on producing these units even when the player is offline? Should I do the math when the player get's back online again? If so..how can I do this without having to save his last online time every 5 seconds so I can do some maths with it when he logs back in (datetime.now - lastonlinetime)? Next thing is when the player is online, should I refresh his resource count every 5 seconds or so by going to the database and back? This would seem weird to do for every logged on player. I hope you understand my question. kind regards

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  • Base on User Drawing Create Polygon Body as well Image

    - by Siddharth
    In my game, I want to provide a user with drawing feature. By free hand drawing user create a polygon shape. So in my game implementation I have to create body for all found vertices and I have to generate image based on that polygon shape. So my problem is how to create image that match the user provided vertices. In cocos2d I listen that there is an implementation of something like Image Masking. But I don't understand how that thing I implement in andengnine. Please provide any guidance on how to create image same as user generated polygon shape.

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  • Letting the user draw a Polygon Body and Image

    - by Siddharth
    In my game, I want to provide the user with a drawing feature. By free hand drawing, the user creates a polygon shape. Then, in my game implementation, I have to create a body for the found vertices and generate an image based on that polygon shape. My problem is how to create an image that matches the user-provided vertices. I've heard that cocos2d has something called Image Masking. I don't understand how I could implement it in AndEngine. Could someone help?

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  • Android Bitmap: Collision Detecting

    - by Aekasitt Guruvanich
    I am writing an Android game right now and I would need some help in the collision of the Pawns on screen. I figured I could run a for loop on the Player class with all Pawn objects on the screen checking whether or not Width*Height intersects with each other, but is there a more efficient way to do this? And if you do it this way, many of the transparent pixel inside the rectangular area will also be considered as collision as well. Is there a way to check for collision between Bitmap on a Canvas that disregard transparent pixels? The class for player is below and the Pawn class uses the same method of display. Class Player { private Resources res; // Used for referencing Bitmap from predefined location private Bounds bounds; // Class that holds the boundary of the screen private Bitmap image; private float x, y; private Matrix position; private int width, height; private float velocity_x, velocity_y; public Player (Resources resources, Bounds boundary) { res = resources; bounds = boundary; image = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(res, R.drawable.player); width = image.getWidth(); height = image.getHeight(); position = new Matrix(); x = bounds.xMax / 2; // Initially puts the Player in the middle of screen y = bounds.yMax / 2; position.preTranslate(x,y); } public void draw(Canvas canvas) { canvas.drawBitmap(image, position, null); } }

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  • sprite animation in openGL

    - by Sid
    I am facing problems on implementing sprite animation in opneGL ES. i've googled it and the only thing i am getting is the Tutorial implementing via Canvas. i know the way but i am having problems in implementing it. What i need : A sprite animation on collision detection. What i did : Collision Detection function working properly. PS : everything is working fine but i want to implement the animation in OPENGL ONLY. Canvas won't work in my case.

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  • How to make a scrolling background?

    - by Liamh101
    I'm making a Shooter game like "1943" and "Jamestown". I was wondering how I would make the background scroll up to simulate moving forward. I would also like it to scroll slightly to the left and right when the player reaches the sides of the screen. Finally, how would I make this efficient? I was thinking about using a animated GIF or to make a looping BitMap. Please could someone help me out. (I am Using Visual Basic 2010) Thanks!

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  • Showing range on hexagonal grid

    - by user23673
    Here is the situation. I have hexagonal board,and a unit on it,with speed or move value 4.Diffrent terrain has a diffrent cost.When i click on the unit,game should show me a move range. My solution was to check each hex in range of 4,with A* pathfinding,and if path cost was less than 4 then this hex was in range.Finally game nicely show me range of that unit. My question is: Is there other solution to search for range on hex grids or square grid,because even if i am really proud of what i did in my solution,i think,it is a little to exaggerated?:)) What make me ask this question?I noticed that when unit speed is 4 or 6 or even 8,time to computing range for my computer was really good,but when speed was 10 and more i noticed that i needed to wait few second to compute.Well in real games i rather dont see something like this and my A* pathfinding is rather well optimized,so im thinking that my solution is wrong. Thanks for any replies.

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  • Performing mechanical movements using computer

    - by Vi
    How to make a computer (in particular, my laptop) to perform some mechanical movements without buying anything $5, soldering things inside computer or creating big sophisticated circuits? Traditionally CD-ROM tray is used to make computer do some movement IRL by, for example, SSH command, but in laptop tray is one-shot (unless manually reloaded) and also not very comfortable [mis]usage. Some assistance circuits can be in use too, but not complex. For example, there is a little motor that can work on USB power. Devices in my computer: DVD-ROM tray: one-time push. USB power: continuous power to the motor or LEDS or relay that turns on something powerful. Audio card. 3 outputs (modprobe alsa model=test can set Mic and Line-in as additional output). One controllable DC output (microphone) that can power up LED and some electronic (may be even mechanic?) relay. Also with sophisticated additional circuiting can control a lot of devices with a good precision. Both input and output support. Probably the most useful object in computer for radio ham. Modem. Don't know about this much, it doesn't work because of hsfmodem crashes kernel if memory is = 1GB. May be it's "pick up" and "hang up" can turn on and off power taken from USB port? Video card. VGA port? S-Video port? Will them be useful? Backlight. Tunable, but probably unuseful. CardBus (or some) slot. Nothing interesting for the task probably (is it?). AC adapter and battery. Probably nothing programmable here. /* My AC adapter already have additional jacks to connect extra devics */ Keyboard. No use. Touchpad. Good sensor (synclient -m 1), but no output. Various LEDs inside laptop. Probably too weak and requires soldering. Fans inside laptop. Poor control over them, requires soldering and dangerous to tinker. HDD (internal and external) that can be spin down and up (hdparm -Y, cat /dev/ubb). But connecting anything serially with it's power line makes HDD underpowered... And too complex. Is something are missed? Any ideas how to use described components? Any other ideas? May be there are easily available /* in developing countries */ cheap devices like "enhanced multimeters" that are controllable from computer and can provide configurable output and measure current and other things? Things to aid pushing many physical buttons with computer. Isn't this a simple idea and implementation and a lot of use in good hands?

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  • Orbital equations, and power required to run them

    - by Adam Davis
    Due to a discussion on the SO IRC today, I'm curious about orbital mechanics, and The equations needed to solve orbital problems The computing power required to solve complex problems The question in particular is calculating when the Earth will plow into the Sun (or vice versa, depending on the frame of reference). I suspect that all the gravitational pulls within our solar system may need to be calculated, which makes me wonder what type of computer cluster is required, or can this be done on a single box? I don't have the experience to do a back of the napkin test here, but perhaps you do? Also, much thx to Gortok for the original inspiration (see comments).

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  • Anyone have experience with Silicon Mechanics 4-Node Machines?

    - by Matt Simmons
    I'm taking a look at buying some new servers (small infrastructure, 2 racks, etc), and although I like a lot of the features in blades, I'm looking at the price point for Silicon Mechanics' 4-node machines. http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i27091/xeon-2U-4-Node.php It's a bit like a mini-blade enclosure, but has no shared resources, except for the redundant power supplies. A single point of management would be great, but for the low price point here, I'm possibly willing to give that up, if the server quality is adequate. Basically, have you used these machines? Any problems? Anything you like?

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  • Gamification at OOW

    - by erikanollwebb
    Last week was Oracle OpenWorld, and for those of you not in tech or downtown San Francisco, that might not mean a whole lot.  However, if you are familiar with it, Oracle OpenWorld is our premier customer event.  This year, more than 50,000 people attended.  It's not a good week to visit San Francisco on vacation because Oracle customers take over all the hotels in town!  It was crazy, but a lot of fun and it's a great opportunity for the Apps UX group to do customer research with a range of customers.  This year, more than 100+ customers and partners took the time to team up with our UX experts and provide feedback on new designs and ideas. Over three days,  UX teams conducted 8  one-on-one user feedback sessions, 4 focus groups and 7 surveys. In addition, we conducted a voice capture activity and were able to collect close to 70 speech samples at the lab and DEMOgrounds. This was a great opportunity for us to do some testing on some specific gamification concepts with a set of business analysts.  We pulled in 8 folks for a focus group on gamification concepts and whether they thought those would work for their teams. To get ready for this, my designer extraordinaire, Andrea Cantú, flew into town and we spent almost a week locked in a room together brainstorming design ideas.  We killed a few trees trying to get all of our concepts and other examples together in the process, but in the end, we put together a whole series of examples of how you might gamify an Oracle app (in this case, CRM).  Andrea is a genius for this kind of thing and the comps she created looked great.  Here's a picture of her hard at work!  We also had the good fortune to have my boss, Laurie Pattison and my usability contractor, Shobana Subramanian there to note take and observe as well.  Here's a few shots of us, hard at work preparing for the day (or checking out something on Laurie's iPhone...) To start things off, we gave an overview of gamification and I talked about what it's used for.  Then we gave the participants a scenario about our sales person and what we were trying to get her to do. It was a great opportunity to highlight what our business goals might be and why we might want to add game mechanics.  It was also a good way to get them thinking about how that might work for them in their environments and workplaces. There were some surprises for the day.  We asked how many of them were already familiar with the concept of gamification--only two people had heard of it and only one was using game mechanics in his work.  That's in contrast to a survey we just ran internally with folks in a dev org where almost 50% of about 450 respondents had heard of gamification.  As we discussed the ways game mechanics could be used, it became clear that many of the folks had seen some game mechanics in action but didn't know that's what they were.  We also noticed that the folks in this group felt that if they were trying to sell the concept in their orgs, they wouldn't call it gamification.  That's not a huge surprise to me--they said what we've heard in the past, that gamification does not seem like a serious term for enterprise software.  They said they'd sell it with the goals--as a means to increase behaviors by rewarding users for activities.  It's a funny problem.  The word puts some folks off, but at the same time, I haven't seen another one word description that quite captures the range of things that "gamification" can cover.  My guess is that the more mainstream the term becomes, the more desensitized we'll become to the idea the it's trivializing enterprise software in some way.  Still, it was interesting to note that this group still felt that they would not take this concept to their bosses or teams and call it "gamification".  They focused on the goals, and how we could incentivize desired behaviors with game mechanics.  As I have already stated in other posts, I feel like my org is more receptive to discussing how this is just a more transparent type of usability and user experience methods than talking about gamification.  That's the argument they said they would use. All in all, it was a good session.  I love getting to talk to customers, present ideas and concepts, and get their feedback and input.  It's the type of thing that really helps drive our designs and keeps us grounded in what our customers need/want.  We're already planning where to get more feedback opportunities in the coming months. 

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  • Knowing your user is key--Part 1: Motivation

    - by erikanollwebb
    I was thinking where the best place to start in this blog would be and finally came back to a theme that I think is pretty critical--successful gamification in the enterprise comes down to knowing your user.  Lots of folks will say that gamification is about understanding that everyone is a gamer.  But at least in my org, that argument won't play for a lot of people.  Pun intentional.  It's not that I don't see the attraction to the idea--really, very few people play no games at all.  If they don't play video games, they might play solitaire on their computer.  They may play card games, or some type of sport.  Mario Herger has some great facts on how much game playing there is going on at his Enterprise-Gamification.com website. But at the end of the day, I can't sell that into my organization well.  We are Oracle.  We make big, serious software designed run your whole business.  We don't make Angry Birds out of your financial reporting tools.  So I stick with the argument that works better.  Gamification techniques are really just good principals of user experience packaged a little differently.  Feedback?  We already know feedback is important when using software.  Progress indicators?  Got that too.  Game mechanics may package things in a more explicit way but it's not really "new".  To know how to use game mechanics, and what a user experience team is important for, is totally understanding who our users are and what they are motivated by. For several years, I taught college psychology courses, including Motivation.  Motivation is generally broken down into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  There's intrinsic, which comes from within the individual.  And there's extrinsic, which comes from outside the individual.  Intrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from just a general sense of pleasure in the doing of something.  For example, I like to cook.  I like to cook a lot.  The kind of cooking I think is just fun makes other people--people who don't like to cook--cringe.  Like the cake I made this week--the star-spangled rhapsody from The Cake Bible: two layers of meringue, two layers of genoise flavored with a raspberry eau de vie syrup, whipped cream with berries and a mousseline buttercream, also flavored with raspberry liqueur and topped with fresh raspberries and blueberries. I love cooking--I ask for cooking tools for my birthday and Christmas, I take classes like sushi making and knife skills for fun.  I like reading about you can make an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter and lemon, cook slowly and transform them into a sauce hollandaise (my use of all the egg yolks that didn't go into the aforementioned cake).  And while it's nice when people like what I cook, I don't do it for that.  I do it because I think it's fun.  My former boss, Ultan Ó Broin, loves to fish in the sea off the coast of Ireland.  Not because he gets prizes for it, or awards, but because it's fun.  To quote a note he sent me today when I asked if having been recently ill kept him from the beginning of mackerel season, he told me he had already been out and said "I can fish when on a deathbed" (read more of Ultan's work, see his blogs on User Assistance and Translation.). That's not the kind of intensity you get about something you don't like to do.  I'm sure you can think of something you do just because you like it. So how does that relate to gamification?  Gamification in the enterprise space is about uncovering the game within work.  Gamification is about tapping into things people already find motivating.  But to do that, you need to know what that user is motivated by. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those areas where over-the-top gamification seems to work (not to plug a competitor in this space, but you can search on what Bunchball* has done with a company just a little north of us on 101 for the CRM crowd).  Sales people are naturally competitive and thrive on that plus recognition of their sales work.  You can use lots of game mechanics like leaderboards and challenges and scorecards with this type of user and they love it.  Show my whole org I'm leading in sales for the quarter?  Bring it on!  However, take the average accountant and show how much general ledger activity they have done in the last week and expose it to their whole org on a leaderboard and I think you'd see a lot of people looking for a new job.  Why?  Because in general, accountants aren't extraverts who thrive on competition in their work.  That doesn't mean there aren't game mechanics that would work for them, but they won't be the same game mechanics that work for sales people.  It's a different type of user and they are motivated by different things. To break this up, I'll stop here and post now.  I'll pick this thread up in the next post. Thoughts? Questions? *Disclosure: To my knowledge, Oracle has no relationship with Bunchball at this point in time.

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  • What is causing my HTTP server to fail with "exit status -1073741819"?

    - by Keeblebrox
    As an exercise I created a small HTTP server that generates random game mechanics, similar to this one. I wrote it on a Windows 7 (32-bit) system and it works flawlessly. However, when I run it on my home machine, Windows 7 (64-bit), it always fails with the same message: exit status -1073741819. I haven't managed to find anything on the web which references that status code, so I don't know how important it is. Here's code for the server, with redundancy abridged: package main import ( "fmt" "math/rand" "time" "net/http" "html/template" ) // Info about a game mechanic type MechanicInfo struct { Name, Desc string } // Print a mechanic as a string func (m MechanicInfo) String() string { return fmt.Sprintf("%s: %s", m.Name, m.Desc) } // A possible game mechanic var ( UnkillableObjects = &MechanicInfo{"Avoiding Unkillable Objects", "There are objects that the player cannot touch. These are different from normal enemies because they cannot be destroyed or moved."} //... Race = &MechanicInfo{"Race", "The player must reach a place before the opponent does. Like \"Timed\" except the enemy as a \"timer\" can be slowed down by the player's actions, or there may be multiple enemies being raced against."} ) // Slice containing all game mechanics var GameMechanics []*MechanicInfo // Pseudorandom number generator var prng *rand.Rand // Get a random mechanic func RandMechanic() *MechanicInfo { i := prng.Intn(len(GameMechanics)) return GameMechanics[i] } // Initialize the package func init() { prng = rand.New(rand.NewSource(time.Now().Unix())) GameMechanics = make([]*MechanicInfo, 34) GameMechanics[0] = UnkillableObjects //... GameMechanics[33] = Race } // serving var index = template.Must(template.ParseFiles( "templates/_base.html", "templates/index.html", )) func randMechHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, req *http.Request) { mechanics := [3]*MechanicInfo{RandMechanic(), RandMechanic(), RandMechanic()} if err := index.Execute(w, mechanics); err != nil { http.Error(w, err.Error(), http.StatusInternalServerError) } } func main() { http.HandleFunc("/", randMechHandler) if err := http.ListenAndServe(":80", nil); err != nil { panic(err) } } In addition, the unabridged code, the _base.html template, and the index.html template. What could be causing this issue? Is there a process for debugging a cryptic exit status like this?

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  • A Grand Unified Theory of AI

    A new approach unites two prevailing but often opposed strains in the history of AI research Artificial intelligence - Physics - Alternative - Quantum Mechanics - Quantum Field Theory

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  • Need game development sandbox like Etoys to do 2D games prototyping

    - by Dimitry Tato
    I am new to game development, and currently working on development a mobile 2D game (for android). As the part of the development process, I need to build a prototype and playtest it, to see if the game mechanics and user interaction is ok For example: if I have a starship shooting at ememies, I need to see what's the best size for my starship. what trajectories should the enemy ships fly and what velocity. Should the enemy ships be coming only from left to right, or also from top Should the enemy ships form a 'flock' or just fly by themselves what's the best 'powerup' pickup mechanics: to shoot it, or to pick it with the ship etc Implementing these details directly in Java (Android) is time consuming and as many of the 'hypotheses' will be rejected, I also don't want to invest a lot of time to code thigs, majority of which gonna be rejected. I found 'tool' Etoys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34cWCnLC5nM&feature=related and official website http://www.squeakland.org/ which helps to build 'prototype' quickly, but Etoys is meant for children learning programming and is too basic. SO MY QUESTION IS: Is there any prototyping tool, as simple as Etoys and with better prototype quality?

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  • A Guided Tour of Complexity

    - by JoshReuben
    I just re-read Complexity – A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell , protégé of Douglas Hofstadter ( author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339744329&sr=8-1 here are some notes and links:   Evolved from Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, Synergetics some interesting transdisciplinary fields to investigate: Chaos Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory – small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. System Dynamics / Cybernetics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Dynamics – study of how feedback changes system behavior Network Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory – leverage Graph Theory to analyze symmetric  / asymmetric relations between discrete objects Algebraic Topology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_topology – leverage abstract algebra to analyze topological spaces There are limits to deterministic systems & to computation. Chaos Theory definitely applies to training an ANN (artificial neural network) – different weights will emerge depending upon the random selection of the training set. In recursive Non-Linear systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system – output is not directly inferable from input. E.g. a Logistic map: Xt+1 = R Xt(1-Xt) Different types of bifurcations, attractor states and oscillations may occur – e.g. a Lorenz Attractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system Feigenbaum Constants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map – the convergent limit of R (the rate of period-doubling bifurcations) is 4.6692016 Maxwell’s Demon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty – the universe (and thus information) tends towards entropy. While any computation can theoretically be done without expending energy, with finite memory, the act of erasing memory is permanent and increases entropy. Life & thought is a counter-example to the universe’s tendency towards entropy. Leo Szilard and later Claude Shannon came up with the Information Theory of Entropy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) whereby Shannon entropy quantifies the expected value of a message’s information in bits in order to determine channel capacity and leverage Coding Theory (compression analysis). Ludwig Boltzmann came up with Statistical Mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics – whereby our Newtonian perception of continuous reality is a probabilistic and statistical aggregate of many discrete quantum microstates. This is relevant for Quantum Information Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information and the Physics of Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information. Hilbert’s Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_problems pondered whether mathematics is complete, consistent, and decidable (the Decision Problem – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem – is there always an algorithm that can determine whether a statement is true).  Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems  proved that mathematics cannot be both complete and consistent (e.g. “This statement is not provable”). Turing through the use of Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine symbol processors that can prove mathematical statements) and Universal Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine Turing Machines that can emulate other any Turing Machine via accepting programs as well as data as input symbols) that computation is limited by demonstrating the Halting Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem (is is not possible to know when a program will complete – you cannot build an infinite loop detector). You may be used to thinking of 1 / 2 / 3 dimensional systems, but Fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal systems are defined by self-similarity & have non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions !!!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension – the fractal dimension quantifies the number of copies of a self similar object at each level of detail – eg Koch Snowflake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Definitions of complexity: size, Shannon entropy, Algorithmic Information Content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory - size of shortest program that can generate a description of an object) Logical depth (amount of info processed), thermodynamic depth (resources required). Complexity is statistical and fractal. John Von Neumann’s other machine was the Self-Reproducing Automaton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine  . Cellular Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton are alternative form of Universal Turing machine to traditional Von Neumann machines where grid cells are locally synchronized with their neighbors according to a rule. Conway’s Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life demonstrates various emergent constructs such as “Glider Guns” and “Spaceships”. Cellular Automatons are not practical because logical ops require a large number of cells – wasteful & inefficient. There are no compilers or general program languages available for Cellular Automatons (as far as I am aware). Random Boolean Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network are extensions of cellular automata where nodes are connected at random (not to spatial neighbors) and each node has its own rule –> they demonstrate the emergence of complex  & self organized behavior. Stephen Wolfram’s (creator of Mathematica, so give him the benefit of the doubt) New Kind of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science proposes the universe may be a discrete Finite State Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine whereby reality emerges from simple rules. I am 2/3 through this book. It is feasible that the universe is quantum discrete at the plank scale and that it computes itself – Digital Physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics – a simulated reality? Anyway, all behavior is supposedly derived from simple algorithmic rules & falls into 4 patterns: uniform , nested / cyclical, random (Rule 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) & mixed (Rule 110 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 localized structures – it is this that is interesting). interaction between colliding propagating signal inputs is then information processing. Wolfram proposes the Principle of Computational Equivalence - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquivalence.html - all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication. Meaning in information may emerge from analogy & conceptual slippages – see the CopyCat program: http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf Scale Free Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network have a distribution governed by a Power Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law - much more common than Normal Distribution). They are characterized by hubs (resilience to random deletion of nodes), heterogeneity of degree values, self similarity, & small world structure. They grow via preferential attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment – tipping points triggered by positive feedback loops. 2 theories of cascading system failures in complex systems are Self-Organized Criticality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality and Highly Optimized Tolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_optimized_tolerance. Computational Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mechanics – use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. This book is a great intuition pump, but does not cover the more mathematical subject of Computational Complexity Theory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory I am currently reading this book on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Christos-H-Papadimitriou/dp/0201530821/ref=pd_sim_b_1   stay tuned for that review!

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  • The penultimate audit trigger framework

    - by Piotr Rodak
    So, it’s time to see what I came up with after some time of playing with COLUMNS_UPDATED() and bitmasks. The first part of this miniseries describes the mechanics of the encoding which columns are updated within DML operation. The task I was faced with was to prepare an audit framework that will be fairly easy to use. The audited tables were to be the ones directly modified by user applications, not the ones heavily used by batch or ETL processes. The framework consists of several tables and procedures...(read more)

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  • Ledge grab and climb in Unity3D

    - by BallzOfSteel
    I just started on a new project. In this project one of the main gameplay mechanics is that you can grab a ledge on certain points in a level and hang on to it. Now my question, since I've been wrestling with this for quite a while now. How could I actually implement this? I have tried it with animations, but it's just really ugly since the player will snap to a certain point where the animation starts.

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  • Freshen the RTS genre

    - by William Michael Thorley
    This isn't really a question, but a request for feedback. RPS (Rock, Paper, Scissors) RTS (Real Time Strategy) Demo version is out: The game is simple. It is an RTS. Why has it been made? Many if not most RTS’s are about economy and large numbers of unit types. The genre hasn’t actually developed the gameplay drastically from the very first RTS’s produced, some lesson have been learned, but the games are really very similar to how they have always been. RPS brings new gameplay to the RTS genre. Through three means: • New combat mechanics: RPS has two unique modes (as well as the old favourite) of resolving weapon fire. These change how combat happens, and make application of the correct units vital to success. From this comes the requirement to run Intel on your enemies. • Fixed Resource Economy: Each player has a fixed amount of energy, This means that there is a definite end to the game. You can attrition your enemy and try to outlast them, or try to outspend your opponent and destroy them. There is a limit to how fast ships can be built, through the generation of construction blocks, but energy is the fast limit on economy. • Game Modes: Game modes add victory conditions and new game pieces. The game is overseen by a controller which literally runs the game. Games are no longer line them up, gun them down. This means that new tactics must be played making skirmish games fresh with novel tactics without adding huge amounts of new game units to learn. I’ve produced RPS from the ground. I will be running a kickstarter in the near future, but right now I want feedback and input from the game developing community. Regarding the concepts, where RPS is going, the game modes, the combat mechanics. How it plays. RPS will give fresh gameplay to the genre so it must be right. It works over the internet or a LAN and supports single player games. Get it. Play it. Tell me about your games. Thank you Demo: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPS%20Playtest.zip Tutorials: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPSGamePlay.zip

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