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• Calculating Screen Resolutions Using WPF

  - by Jeff Ferguson

  WPF measures all elements in device independent pixels (DIPs). These DIPs equate to device pixels if the current display monitor is set to the default of 96 DPI. However, for monitors set to a DPI setting that is different than 96 DPI, then WPF DIPs will not correspond directly to monitor pixels. Consider, for example, the WPF properties SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight and SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth. If your monitor resolution is set to 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high, and your monitor is set to 96 DPI, then WPF will report the value of SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight as 768 and the value of SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth as 1024. No problem. This aligns nicely because the WPF device independent pixel value (96) matches your monitor's DPI setting (96). However, if your monitor is not set to display pixels at 96 DPI, then SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight and SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth will not return what you expect. The values returned by these properties may be greater than or less than what you expect, depending on whether or not your monitor's DPI value is less than or greater than 96. Since the SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight and SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth properties are WPF properties, their values are measured in WPF DIPs, rather than taking monitor DPI into effect. Once again: WPF measures all elements in device independent pixels (DIPs). To combat this issue, you must take your monitor's DPI settings into effect if you're looking for the monitor's width and height using the monitor's DPI settings. The handy code block below will help you calculate these values regardless of the DPI setting on your monitor: Window MainWindow = Application.Current.MainWindow; PresentationSource MainWindowPresentationSource = PresentationSource.FromVisual(MainWindow); Matrix m = MainWindowPresentationSource.CompositionTarget.TransformToDevice; DpiWidthFactor = m.M11; DpiHeightFactor = m.M22; double ScreenHeight = SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenHeight * DpiHeightFactor; double ScreenWidth = SystemParameters.PrimaryScreenWidth * DpiWidthFactor; The values of ScreenHeight and ScreenWidth should, after this code is executed, match the resolution that you see in the display's Properties window.

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• 2D Side Scrolling game and "walk over ground" collision detection

  - by Fire-Dragon-DoL

  The question is not hard, I'm writing a game engine for 2D side scrolling games, however I'm thinking to my 2D side scrolling game and I always come up with the problem of "how should I do collision with the ground". I think I couldn't handle the collision with ground (ground for me is "where the player walk", so something heavily used) in a per-pixel way, and I can't even do it with simple shape comparison (because the ground can be tilted), so what's the correct way? I'know what tiles are and i've read about it, but how much should be big each tile to not appear like a stairs?Are there any other approach? I watched this game and is very nice how he walks on ground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmSAQwbbig8&feature=player_embedded If there are "platforms" in mid air, how should I handle them?I can walk over them but I can't pass "inside". Imagine a platform in mid air, it allows you to walk over it but limit you because you can't jump in the area she fits Sorry for my english, it's not my native language and this topic has a lot of keywords I don't know so I have to use workarounds Thanks for any answer Additional informations and suggestions: I'm doing a game course in this period and I asked them how to do this, they suggested me this approach (a QuadTree): -All map is divided into "big nodes" -Each bigger node has sub nodes, to find where the player is -You can find player's node with a ray on player position -When you find the node where the player is, you can do collision check through all pixels (which can be 100-200px nothing more) Here is an example, however i didn't show very well the bigger nodes because i'm not very good with photoshop :P How is this approach?

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• How Scan any File or Folder Using Windows 8’s Built-in Anti-Virus

  - by Taylor Gibb

  Windows 8 includes a built-in antivirus solution that runs in the background. You might, however, be surprised that there is no obvious way to scan an item on demand. Here’s how to launch the Windows Defender GUI as well as add a scan option to the context menu. Manually Opening Windows Defender The first way to scan your files is to use the Windows Defender GUI, to do so navigate to: C:\Program Files\Windows Defender Then launch: MSASCui.exe When the GUI opens, choose to do a custom scan, then click the Scan now button. Now choose the folder you want to scan, and then click OK. That’s all there it to it. Scan Using the Context Menu If you don’t fancy opening the GUI, you could always add an option to the context menu. To do so, press the Windows + R keyboard combination to open a run box and type: shell:sendto Then press enter. Now go ahead and download this batch file we wrote, then unzip its contents into the SendTo folder. Now when you right click on a file or folder, you will be able to scan items using the “Send to” menu. Unfortunately it does use the command line scanner, nevertheless it gets the job done. That’s all there is to it. Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• BUILD 2012 day 1 Keynote recap

  - by pluginbaby

  On October 30, 2012 Steve Ballmer kicked off the first BUILD conference keynote. Steve shared some insights around Windows 8: 4 million customers upgraded to Windows 8 over the weekend since the October 26 release (so in 3 days only!). Focus on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Syncing everything through SkyDrive Xbox Music free streaming and Xbox Smart Glass. He did all the demos himself, showing off great “Windows 8 generation” devices already available (including an 82-inch Windows 8 “slate” by Perceptive Pixel). Steve Guggenheimer (Microsoft's Corporate Vice President DPE) talked about The Business Opportunity with Windows 8.   Notable announcements of day 1: The Windows Phone 8 SDK is now available at dev.windowsphone.com (includes SDK, free version of VS2012, Blend 5, and emulators). Release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8: Ability to use C# 5 or Visual Basic 11 features in your code (async programming mode, ...), share code between WP8 and Windows Store apps. Windows Phone 8 individual developer registration is reduced to $8 for the next 8 days! (hurry up…) Note: strange absence of Steven Sinofsky on stage…   Watch the entire keynote online: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/1-001 Read the full transcript: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Speeches/2012/10-30BuildDay1.aspx

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• From .psd to working HTML and CSS - help me suck less

  - by kevinmajor1

  I am not much of a designer. My strength lies in coding. That said, I'm often forced into the role of "The Man," responsible for all aspects of site creation. So, that said I'm wondering if the pros can give me tips/solutions/links to tutorials to my main questions. Resolution. What should I aim for? What are the lower and upper edges I should be aware of? I know that systems like 960 Grid were popular recently. Is that the number I should still aim for? Slicing up a .psd - are there any tricks I should know? I've always found it difficult to get my slices pixel perfect. I'm also really slow at it. I must be looking at it wrong, or missing something fundamental. The same goes for text. Layouts are always filled with the classic "Lorem...", but I can never seem to get real content to fit quite as well on the screen. The advanced (to me, anyway) looking things, like a part of a logo/image overlaying what looks like a content area. How does one do that? How do layouts change/are informed by the decision to go fixed or liquid? Again, any tips/tricks/suggestions/tutorials you can share would be greatly appreciated.

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• BlitzMax - generating 2D neon glowing line effect to png file

  - by zanlok

  Originally asked on StackOverflow, but it became tumbleweed. I'm looking to create a glowing line effect in BlitzMax, something like a Star Wars lightsaber or laserbeam. Doesn't have to be realtime, but just to TImage objects and then maybe saved to PNG for later use in animation. I'm happy to use 3D features, but it will be for use in a 2D game. Since it will be on black/space background, my strategy is to draw a series of white blurred lines with color and high transparency, then eventually central lines less blurred and more white. What I want to draw is actually bezier curved lines. Drawing curved lines is easy enough, but I can't use the technique above to create a good laser/neon effect because it comes out looking very segmented. So, I think it may be better to use a blur effect/shader on what does render well, which is a 1-pixel bezier curve. The problems I've been having are: Applying a shader to just a certain area of the screen where lines are drawn. If there's a way to do draw lines to a texture and then blur that texture and save the png, that would be great to hear about. There's got to be a way to do this, but I just haven't gotten the right elements working together yet. Any help from someone familiar with this stuff would be greatly appreciated. Using just 2D calls could be advantageous, simpler to understand and re-use. It would be very nice to know how to save a PNG that preserves the transparency/alpha stuff. p.s. I've reviewed this post (and many many others on the Blitz site), have samples working, and even developed my own 5x5 frag shaders. But, it's 3D and a scene-wide thing that doesn't seem to convert to 2D or just a certain area very well. I'd rather understand how to apply shading to a 2D scene, especially using the specifics of BlitzMax.

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• Having a problem with texturing vertices in WebGL, think parameters are off in the image?

  - by mathacka

  I'm having a problem texturing a simple rectangle in my WebGL program, I have the parameters set as follows: gl.texImage2D(gl.TEXTURE_2D, 0, gl.RGBA, gl.RGBA, gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, textureImage); I'm using this image: On the properties of this image it says it's 32 bit depth, so that should take care of the gl.UNSIGNED_BYTE, and I've tried both gl.RGBA and gl.RGB to see if it's not reading the transparency. It is a 32x32 pixel image, so it's power of 2. And I've tried almost all the combinations of formats and types, but I'm not sure if this is the answer or not. I'm getting these two errors in the chrome console: INVALID_VALUE: texImage2D: invalid image (index):101 WebGL: drawArrays: texture bound to texture unit 0 is not renderable. It maybe non-power-of-2 and have incompatible texture filtering or is not 'texture complete'. Or the texture is Float or Half Float type with linear filtering while OES_float_linear or OES_half_float_linear extension is not enabled. the drawArrays function is simply: "gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 6);" using 6 vertices to make a rectangle.

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• Huge procedurally generated 'wilderness' worlds

  - by The Communist Duck

  Hi. I'm sure you all know of games like Dwarf Fortress - massive, procedural generated wilderness and land. Something like this, taken from this very useful article. However, I was wondering how I could apply this to a much larger scale; the scale of Minecraft comes to mind (isn't that something like 8x the size of the Earth's surface?). Pseudo-infinite, I think the best term would be. The article talks about fractal perlin noise. I am no way an expert on it, but I get the general idea (it's some kind of randomly generated noise which is semi-coherent, so not just random pixel values). I could just define regions X by X in size, add some region loading type stuff, and have one bit of noise generating a region. But this would result in just huge amounts of islands. On the other extreme, I don't think I can really generate a supermassive sheet of perlin noise. And it would just be one big island, I think. I am pretty sure Perlin noise, or some noise, would be the answer in some way. I mean, the map is really nice looking. And you could replace the ascii with tiles, and get something very nice looking. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. :D -TheCommieDuck

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• Windows Phone 7 Prototype 002: Animated Page Transitions + Writeable Bitmaps

  Motion is a key part of WP7 application development. Without motion, the WP7 UI is just a bunch of text. Not nearly as exciting. To delight users, you can add some transitions between pages.  The sample app includes some storyboards to animate between two pages. Other people have noted that you can just use the transitioning content control form the SIlverlight toolkit. Peter Torr also had a nice animating frame control in his mix demo code (his blog has some other great code samples for WP7 app dev). I took some of those concepts and the code from the TransitioningContentControl to make a new animating frame control. In this prototype, the frame takes a snapshot of the old content and the new content using writeable bitmaps and animates the snapshots and then replaces those with the actual page. The benefit is smoother animation on pages with lots of controls. Otherwise, if you have a large panorama, it might not animate that cleanly.  Like the other solutions based on the TransitioningContentControl, you can centralize all the animations in one place and not have to handle them on each individual page. Peters code also had a nice snippet for choosing the animation based on the navigation direction so you could just have a forward / backward animation and not have to do anything on each page. You could also probably add some more advanced transitions using pixel shaders or make an default no transition state if you wanted to have some specific animation on a page where individual  controls transitioned out differently like some of the WP7 shell apps. Sample Code 100% guaranteed to work on my emulatorDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• How can I better implement A star algorithm with a very large set of nodes?

  - by Stephen

  I'm making a game with nodejs in which many enemies must converge on the player as the player moves around a relatively open space (right now it is an open field with few obstacles, but eventually there may be some small buildings in the field with 1 or 2 rooms). It's a multiplayer game using websockets, so the server needs to keep track of enemies and players. I found this javascript A* library which I've modified to be used on the server as a nodejs module. The library utilizes a Binary Heap to track the nodes for the algorithm, so it should be pretty fast (and indeed, with a small grid, say 100x100 it is lightning fast). The problem is that my game is not really tile-based. As the player moves around the map, he is moving on a more or less 1-to-1 per-pixel coordinate system (the player can move in 8 directions, 1 or 2 pixels at a time). In preliminary tests, on an 800x600 field, the path-finding can take anywhere from 400 to 1000 ms. Multiply that by 10 enemies and the game starts to get pretty choppy. I have already set it up so that each enemy will only do a path-finding call once per second or even as slow as once every 2 seconds (they have to keep updating their path because the players can move freely). But even with this long interval, there are noticeable lag spikes or chops every couple of seconds as the enemies update their paths. I'm willing to approach the problem of path-finding differently, if there's another option. I'm assuming that the real problem is the enormous grid (800x600). It also occurs to me that maybe the large arrays are to blame, as I've read that V8 has trouble with large arrays.

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• Convert mkv to mp4 with ffmpeg

  - by JohnS

  When I try converting mkv to mp4 using ffmpeg, the following error occurs: [ipod @ 0x16fa0a0] Application provided invalid, non monotonically increasing dts to muxer in stream 0: -2 = -2 av_interleaved_write_frame(): Invalid argument I used this command to convert the file: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy -absf aac_adtstoasc output.m4v The input file has the following characteristics: mediainfo input.mkv General Unique ID : 200459305952356554213392832683163418790 (0x96CF0ED8DB5914CBB9E18163689280A6) Complete name : input.mkv Format : Matroska Format version : Version 2 File size : 1.46 GiB Duration : 1h 5mn Overall bit rate : 3 168 Kbps Encoded date : UTC 2010-09-26 21:44:02 Writing application : mkvmerge v2.9.5 ('Tu es le seul') built on Jun 17 2009 16:28:30 Writing library : libebml v0.7.8 + libmatroska v0.8.1 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : [email protected] Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Duration : 1h 5mn Bit rate : 2 910 Kbps Width : 1 280 pixels Height : 720 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate : 25.000 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.126 Stream size : 1.31 GiB (90%) Writing library : x264 core 105 r1724 b02df7b Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=2pass / mbtree=0 / bitrate=2910 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:1.00 Default : Yes Forced : No Audio ID : 2 Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Mode extension : CM (complete main) Codec ID : A_AC3 Duration : 1h 5mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 256 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 121 MiB (8%) Language : English Default : Yes Forced : No Being new to ffmpeg, I'm not sure what the error means or how to correct it. Thanks!

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• Resolution Independence in libGDX

  - by ashes999

  How do I make my libGDX game resolution/density independent? Is there a way to specify image sizes as "absolute" regardless of the underlying density? I'm making a very simple kids game; just a bunch of sprites displayed on-screen, and some text for menus (options menu primarily). What I want to know is: how do I make my sprites/fonts resolution independent? (I have wrapped them in my own classes to make things easier.) Since it's a simple kids game, I don't need to worry about the "playable area" of the game; I want to use as much of the screen space as possible. What I'm doing right now, which seems super incorrect, is to simply create images suitable for large resolutions, and then scale down (or rarely, up) to fit the screen size. This seems to work okay (in the desktop version), even with linear mapping on my textures, but the smaller resolutions look ugly. Also, this seems to fly in the face of Android's "device independent pixels" (DPs). Or maybe I'm missing something and libGDX already takes care of this somehow? What's the best way to tackle this? I found this link; is this a good way of solving the problem?: http://www.dandeliongamestudio.com/2011/09/12/android-fragmentation-density-independent-pixel-dip/ It mentions how to control the images, but it doesn't mention how to specify font/image sizes regardless of density.

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• Resolution independence - resize on the fly or ship all sizes?

  - by RecursiveCall

  My game relies heavily on textures of various sizes with some being full-screen. The game is targeted for multiple resolutions. I found that resizing textures (downsizing) works quite well for this game’s art type (it’s not Pixel Art or anything like that). I asked my artist to ensure that all textures at the edges of the screen to be created in such a way that they can safely “overflow” off screen; this means that aspect ratio is not an issue. So with no aspect ratio issues, I figured that I would simply ask my artist to create assets in very high resolution, and then resize them down to the appropriate screen resolution. The question is, when and how do I do that? Do I pre-resize everything to common resolutions in Photoshop and package all assets in the final product (increasing the size download that the user has to deal with) and then select the appropriate asset based on the detected resolution? Or do I ship with the largest set of Textures, detect the resolution on load, set a render target and draw all downsized assets to it and use that? Or for the latter, do I use some sort of a CPU-sided algorithm to resize on game load?

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• Why Freezing when sending email?

  - by Outlaw Lemur

  So i have a kinect program which when it detects a human, it saves images of them and sends your email a notification email, the thing is that when it sends the email, it freezes and stops running, Why does it do this? Email Notification Code: void SendNotificationEmail() { string email = textBox1.Text; string message = "Someone has been detected in your house!\n Go to www.kinected.webs.com to view your photos now!!!!"; System.Net.Mail.MailMessage emailsend = new System.Net.Mail.MailMessage(); emailsend.To.Add(email); emailsend.Subject = "There is an Intruder In Your Home!"; emailsend.From = new System.Net.Mail.MailAddress("[email protected]"); emailsend.Body = message; System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient smtp = new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient("smtp.mail.yahoo.com."); smtp.Send(emailsend); } When its supposed to fire: void nui_ColorFrameReady2(object sender, ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e) { // 32-bit per pixel, RGBA image xxx PlanarImage Image = e.ImageFrame.Image; //int deltaFrames = totalFrames - lastFrameWithMotion; //if (totalFrames2 <= stopFrameNumber & deltaFrames > 300) { ++totalFrames2; string bb1 = Convert.ToString(totalFrames2); // string file_name_3 = "C:\\Research\\Kinect\\Proposal\\Depth_Img" + bb1 + ".jpg"; xxx string file_name_4 = "C:\\temp\\Kinect1_Img" + bb1 + ".jpg"; video.Source = BitmapSource.Create( Image.Width, Image.Height, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Bgr32, null, Image.Bits, Image.Width * Image.BytesPerPixel); BitmapSource image4 = BitmapSource.Create( Image.Width, Image.Height, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Bgr32, null, Image.Bits, Image.Width * Image.BytesPerPixel); if (PersonDetected == 1) { if (totalFrames2 % 10 == 0) { image4.Save(file_name_4, Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf.ImageFormat.Jpeg); SendNotificationEmail(); PersonDetected = 0; // lastFrameWithMotion = totalFrames; // topFrameNumber += 100; } } } } Thanks for any help!

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• The Raspberry Pi Now Has Its Own App Store

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Raspberry Pi, the credit-card sized computer with an ARM processor, now has its own appstore where Raspberry Pi hobbyists and developers can share their creations in a one-stop location accessible to all Raspberry Pi users. In today’s press release about the store, the Raspberry Pi Foundation writes: We’ve been amazed by the variety of software that people have written for, or ported to, the Raspberry Pi. Today, together with our friends at IndieCity and Velocix, we’re launching the Pi Store to make it easier for developers of all ages to share their games, applications, tools and tutorials with the rest of the community. The Pi Store will, we hope, become a one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi needs; it’s also an easier way into the Raspberry Pi experience for total beginners, who will find everything they need to get going in one place, for free. The store runs as an X application under Raspbian, and allows users to download content, and to upload their own content for moderation and release. At launch, we have 23 free titles in the store, ranging from utilities like LibreOffice and Asterisk to classic games like Freeciv and OpenTTD and Raspberry Pi exclusive Iridium Rising. We also have one piece of commercial content: the excellent Storm in a Teacup from Cobra Mobile. For more information about the store, including how to install the app store on your Pi, check out the full press release here. To get started browsing the store, hit up the link below. Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• How do I create a 2.5d parallax effect?

  - by Nikolay Dyankov

  I have a decent background in 3D graphics and programming, but I'm new to game development. I'm currently exploring different possibilities and I really want to make an RPG game. I was thinking about classic 2D isometric view, but I really love how Diablo 2 looks and feels to play. My question is - how can I achieve Diablo 2's parallax effect? Everything looks hand drawn with baked lights and shadows and looks awesome, but when you move around you notice some perspective. For example, let's say that I drew a big hall with columns in Photoshop with an orthographic perspective (classic pixel art style, just parallel lines). How would I give parallax effect to this scene when the character moves around? If I use camera-facing sprites for everything it would probably look OK in the distance, but it would be really fake when a character comes close to a column (cylinder) for example. Any suggestions? How did Blizzard make the parallax effect in Diablo 2? See this screenshot: http://guidesmedia.ign.com/guides/10629/images/act2tombs.jpg

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• XNA Masking Mayhem

  - by TropicalFlesh

  I'd like to start by mentioning that I'm just an amateur programmer of the past 2 years with no formal training and know very little about maximizing the potential of graphics hardware. I can write shaders and manipulate a multi-layered drawing environment, but I've basically stuck to minimalist pixel shaders. I'm working on putting dynamic point light shadows in my 2d sidescroller, and have had it working to a reasonable degree. Just chucking it in without working on serious optimizations outside of basic culling, I can get 50 lights or so onscreen at once and still hover around 100 fps. The only issue is that I'm on a very high end machine and would like to target the game at as many platforms I can, low and high end. The way I'm doing shadows involves a lot of masking before I can finally draw the light to my light layer. Basically, my technique to achieveing such shadows is as follows. See pics in this album http://imgur.com/a/m2fWw#0 The dark gray represents the background tiles, the light gray represents the foreground tiles, and the yellow represents the shadow-emitting foreground tile. I'll draw the light using a radial gradient and a color of choice I'll then exclude light from the mask by drawing some geometry extending through the tile from my point light. I actually don't mask the light yet at this point, but I'm just illustrating the technique in this image Finally, I'll re-include the foreground layer in my mask, as I only want shadows to collect on the background layer and finally multiply the light with it's mask to the light layer My question is simple - How can I go about reducing the amount of render target switches I need to do to achieve the following: a. Draw mask to exclude shadows from the foreground to it's own target once per frame b. For each light that emits shadows, -Begin light mask as full white -Render shadow geometry as transparent with an opaque blendmode to eliminate shadowed areas from the mask -Render foreground mask back over the light mask to reintroduce light to the foreground c. Multiply light texture with it's individual mask to the main light layer.

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• Correct level of abstraction for a 3d rendering component?

  - by JohnB

  I've seen lots of questions around this area but not this exact question so apologies if this is a duplicate. I'm making a small 3d game. Well to be honest, it's just a little hobby project and likely won't turn out to be an actual game, I'll be happy to make a nice graphics demo and learn about 3d rendering and c++ design. My intent is to use direct3d9 for rendering as I have some little experience of it, and it seems to meet my requirements. However if I've learned one thing as a programmer it's to ask "is there any conceivable reason that this component might be replaced by a different implmentation" and if the answer is yes then I need to design a proper abstraction and interface to that component. So even though I intend to implment d3d9 I need to design a 3d interface that could be implemented for d3d11, opengl... My question then is what level is it best to do this at? I'm thinking that an interface capable of creating and later drawing Vertex buffers and index buffers Textures Vertex and Pixel "shaders" Some representation of drawing state (blending modes etc...) In other words a fairly low level interface where my code to draw for example an animated model would use the interface to obtain abstract vertex buffers etc. I worry though that it's too low level to abstract out all the functionallity I need efficiently. The alternative is to do this at a higher level where the interface can draw objects, animations, landscapes etc, and implement them for each system. This seems like more work, but it more flexible I guess. So that's my question really, when abstracting out the drawing system, what level of interface works best?

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• Silverlight Cream for May 25, 2010 -- #869

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Miroslav Miroslavov, Victor Gaudioso, Phil Middlemiss, Jonathan van de Veen, Lee, and Domagoj Pavlešic. From SilverlightCream.com: Book Folding effect using Pixel Shader On the new CompleteIT site, did you know the page-folding was done using PixelShaders? I hadn't put much thought into it, but that's pretty cool, and Miroslav Miroslavov has a blog post up discussing it, and the code behind it. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to create a Slider with a ToolTip that shows the Value of the Slider This is pretty cool... Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial shows how to put the slider position in the slider tooltip... code and video tutorial included. Backlighting a ListBox Put this in the cool category as well... Phil Middlemiss worked out a ListBox styling that makes the selected item be 'backlit' ... check out the screenshot on the post... and then grab the code :) Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #33 Jonathan van de Veen is discussing changes to his project/team and how that has affected development. Read about what they did right and some of their struggles. RIA Services and Storedprocedures Lee's discussing Stored Procs and RIA Services ... he begins with one that just works, then moves on to demonstrate the kernel of the problem he's attacking and the solution of it. DoubleClick in Silverlight Domagoj Pavlešic got inspiration from one of Mike Snow's Tips of the Day and took off on the double-click idea... project source included. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Join the Geek+ Community on Google+ and Share Your Random Geekery

  - by The Geek

  It turns out that Google+ recently added a new feature that allows you to create your own community inside of Google+, where anybody that’s a member can post images, links, or start a discussion. We’ve created the Geek+ Community, so stop by and join in the fun. You’ll notice that there’s only a few members right now, but we’re hoping that we can get every How-To Geek reader to participate in the geeky discussion. You’re welcome to: Post random geeky stuff that you find. Yell at us for articles that you don’t like, or tell us how we can do things better. Participate in discussions with other HTG readers. Post up your own Geek Trivia. We might even publish it over here on How-To Geek. Ask others for advice. Just read everything that the other readers post. Lots of other things we can’t think of right now. Note: If you want tech support, you should post on our regular forum. Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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• Web to Print system - which client side technology should I use

  - by mr null

  I'm getting started to develop Web to Print system. My main concern is which client-side techology should I use: jQuery/CSS Flex/ActionScript or something else? For now, idea is that user/customer choose Product eg: Business card Attributes: Dimensions,Paper type, ... etc Template or blank Adjust product (editor) Preview & order Output should be PDF 300dpi. My main issue is: adding/adjusting text in editor. (font size, font family...). Because application should be cross browser. And I think that 10px Arial can't be the same in Firefox 5 and IE 8. It must be pixel perfect in every browser. If somebody order $100 of business cards, and text is different that he/she saw when ordering - that is a big problem. So, Flash platform should be the answer. But, as I see it's dying technology, 2012 is here - HTML5 is replacing Flash rapidly. I hope that you understand me, so every guideline or few smart words would be very appreciating.

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• What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

  - by Michael

  What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

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• Regarding sprite design and resolution for tablets and phones

  - by Dimitris P.

  I am about to start working on a game for android devices, in my spare time, to get familiar with android development. I'm more interested in using the best practices possible than getting a quick result, and that is why I need some guidance regarding graphics. I think the game is going to be fully sprite based. Everything is going to be in .bmp form, or something similar, and my question is: Should I design the sprites in a small resolution (ie for phone screens) and scale them up to fit into larger screens (tablet screens), should I do it vice-versa or should I consider a completely different approach? Would designing a different set of sprites for each of the most used resolution settings be worth it or are there simpler solutions to the problem with fewer drawbacks than the ones I mentioned above? (If I follow the first approach, for example, the larger the screen the worse the graphics will get, since every pixel of the original drawing will cover several pixels on the screen). Is there a standard approach for dealing with this kind of problems? If you need me to be more detailed or more clear about something I mentioned (or forgot to) please don't hesitate to ask. Also, excuse me for any inaccurate use of the English language. Thank you in advance for your input.

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• Making an interactive 2D map

  - by Chad

  So recently I have been working on a Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past clone, and I am wondering how I could handle certain map interactions (like cutting grass, lifting rocks, etc). The way I am currently doing the tilemap is with 2 PNGs. The first is the "tilemap" where each pixel represents a 16x16 tile and the (red, green) values are the (x, y) coords for the tile in the second PNG (the "tileset"). I am then using the blue channel to store collision data. Each tile is split into 4 8x8 tiles and represented by a 2 bit value (0 = empty, 1 = Jumpdown point, 2 = unused right now, 3 = blocking). 4 of these 2 bit values make up the full blue channel (1 byte). So collisions work great, and I am moving on to putting interactive units on the level; but I am not sure what a good way is to do it. I have experimented with spawning an entity for each grass and rock, but there are just WAY to many; FPS just dies even if I confine it to the current "zone" the user is in (for those who remember LTTP it had zones you moved between). It does make a difference that this is a browser-based JavaScript game. tl;dr: What is a good way to have an interactive map without using full blown entities for each interactive item?

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• Keeping game model and graphics/animation separate but in sync

  - by AJM

  Suppose I'm building a chess game where I want to have animations. Pieces glide to their new squares when moved. Pieces perform attack animations when capturing other pieces. I'm not sure how to effectively separate the data and logic needed for these animations and the actual game model (in the MVC sense). The pieces themselves should ideally not have to worry about their pixel coordinates or current animation frame. At the same time, many changes to the model are effectively driven by animations. A moved piece changes its position after (before?) its sprite is done gliding. A piece is removed from the board after the capturing piece is finished its attack animation. How would you suggest I manage the game model, the graphics and animations, and their relationships? For example, where would the animations "live"? How would animations be created and managed in response to player moves? How would animations drive updates to the game model, or how would the game model drive animations?

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