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• How to monetize and/or protect framework rights?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  I made a game engine/framerwork for ActionScript 3 that allows very efficient and flexible level design for Platformers, Tower Defense game, RPG's, RTS and racing games. The algorithms I used are new and are not available in any other level editor I've seen. What are the best ways to benefit myself and others with my new framework? It is written for ActionScript 3 so unless I translate it to C# I'm guessing it will be decompiled and used by others. I want to have some lisence, allowing me to share the framework and still benefit from it. Any advice would be appreciated. This issue has been on my mind a lot this year. I am hoping to find a solution that will bring me some relief.

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• 3D Vector "End Point" Calculation for procedural Vector Graphics

  - by FrostFlame64

  Alright, So I need some help with some Vector Math. I've developing some game Engines that have Procedural Fractal Generation for Some Graphics, such as using Lindenmayer Systems for generating Trees and Plants. L-Systems, are drawn by using Turtle Graphics, which is a form of Vector graphics. I first created a system to draw in 2D Graphics, which works perfectly fine. But now I want to make a 3D equivalent, and I’ve run into an issue. For my 2D Version, I created a Method for quickly determining the “End Point” of a Vector-like movement. Given a starting point (X, Y), a direction (between 0 and 360 degrees), and a distance, the end point is calculated by these formulas: newX = startX + distance * Sin((PI * direction) / 180) newY = startY + distance * Cos((PI * direction) / 180) Now I need something Similarly Equivalent for performing this Calculation in 3D, But I haven’t been able to Google anything that could show me how to do this. I'm flexible enough to get whatever required information is needed for this method calculation, in any reasonable form (Vector3, Quaternion, ect). To summarize: Given a starting point/vector position in 3D space (X, Y, Z), a Direction in 3D space (Vector3, Quaternion, ect), and a Distance, I need to find the “End Point” in 3D Space. Thank you for your time and help.

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• Improving Click and Drag with C++

  - by Josh

  I'm currently using SFML 2.0 to develop a game in C++. I have a game sprite class that has a click and drag method. The method works, but there is a slight problem. If the mouse moves too fast, the object the user selected can't keep up and is left behind in the spot where the mouse left its bounds. I will share the class definition and the given function implementation. Definition: class codePeg { protected: FloatRect bounds; CircleShape circle; int xPos, yPos, xDiff, yDiff, once; int xBase, yBase; Vector2i mousePos; Vector2f circlePos; public: void init(RenderWindow& Window); void draw(RenderWindow& Window); void drag(RenderWindow& Window); void setPegPosition(int x, int y); void setPegColor(Color pegColor); void mouseOver(RenderWindow& Window); friend int isPegSelected(void); }; Implementation of the "drag" function: void codePeg::drag(RenderWindow& Window) { mousePos = Mouse::getPosition(Window); circlePos = circle.getPosition(); if(Mouse::isButtonPressed(Mouse::Left)) { if(mousePos.x > xPos && mousePos.y > yPos && mousePos.x - bounds.width < xPos && mousePos.y - bounds.height < yPos) { if(once) { xDiff = mousePos.x - circlePos.x; yDiff = mousePos.y - circlePos.y; once = 0; } xPos = mousePos.x - xDiff; yPos = mousePos.y - yDiff; circle.setPosition(xPos, yPos); } } else { once = 1; xPos = xBase; yPos = yBase; xDiff = 0; yDiff = 0; circle.setPosition(xBase, yBase); } Window.draw(circle); } Like I said, the function works, but to me, the code is very ugly and I think it could be improved and could be more efficient. The only thing I can think of as to why the object cannot keep up with the mouse is that there are too many function calls and/or checks. The user does not really have to mouse the mouse "fast" for it to happen, I would say at an average pace the object is left behind. How can I improve the code so that the object remains with the mouse when it is selected? Any help improving this code or giving advice is greatly appreciated.

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• Using MVC with a retained mode renderer

  - by David Gouveia

  I am using a retained mode renderer similar to the display lists in Flash. In other words, I have a scene graph data structure called the Stage to which I add the graphical primitives I would like to see rendered, such as images, animations, text. For simplicity I'll refer to them as Sprites. Now I'm implementing an architecture which is becoming very similar to MVC, but I feel that that instead of having to create View classes, that the sprites already behave pretty much like Views (except for not being explicitly connected to the Model). And since the Model is only changed through the Controller, I could simply update the view together with the Model in the controller, as in the example below: Example 1 class Controller { Model model; Sprite view; void TeleportTo(Vector2 position) { model.Position = view.Position = position; } } The alternative, I think, would be to create View classes that wrap the sprites, make the model observable, and make the view react to changes on the model. This seems like a lot of extra work and boilerplate code, and I'm not seeing the benefits if I'm just going to have one view per controller. Example 2 class Controller { Model model; View view; void TeleportTo(Vector2 position) { model.Position = position; } } class View { Model model; Sprite sprite; View() { model.PropertyChanged += UpdateView; } void UpdateView() { sprite.Position = model.Position; } } So, how is MVC or more specifically, the View, usually implemented when using a retained-mode renderer? And is there any reason why I shouldn't stick with example 1?

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• Software design of a browser-based strategic MMO game

  - by Mehran

  I wonder if there are any known tested software designs for Travian-like browser-based strategic MMO games? I mean how would they implement the server of such games or what is stored in database and what is stored in RAM? Is the state of the world stored in one piece or is it distributed among a number of storage? Does anyone know a resource to study the problems and solutions of creating such games? [UPDATE] Suggested in comments, I'm going to give an example how would I design such a project. Even though I'm not sure if I'm proposing the right one. Having stored the world state in a MongoDB, I would implement an event collection in which all the changes to the world will register. Changes that are meant to happen in the future will come with an action date set to the future and those that are to be carried out immediately will be set to now. Having this datastore as the central point of the system, players will issue their actions as events inserted in datastore. At the other end of the system, I'll have a constant-running software taking out events out of the datastore which are due to be carried out and not done yet. Executing an event means apply some update on the world's state and thus the datastore. As scalable as this design sounds, I'm not sure if it will be worth implementing. For one, it is pointless to cache the datastore as most of updates happen once without any follow ups. For instance if you have the growth of resources in your game, you'll be updating the whole world state periodically in which case, having incorporated a cache, you are keeping the whole world in RAM (which most likely is impossible). So can someone come up with a better design?

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• Embed IF text parser in another game?

  - by DragonFax

  Are there any existing interactive fiction text parsing engines that I can embed in another game or application? I'm looking to use something as a library. I can pass it the available objects and verbs from my own side. It will parse the sentences from the user and give me back some sort of structure/AST describing what the user asked for. Then my own code can then act upon that request. I don't need something SIRI level. The simple sentences and actions that current IF games support is fine. But I'm not looking to write a whole text/sentence parser myself. This isn't an If game and I can't write it entirely in an interactive-fiction language like inform 7. Unfortunatly, I can't seem to find any examples of anyone using the text parsing capabilities of these engines without writing the entire game in that engine's language.

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• Understanding how texCUBE works and writing cubemaps properly into a cube rendertarget

  - by cubrman

  My goal is to create accurate reflections, sampled from a dynamic cubemap, for specific 3d objects (mostly lights) in XNA 4.0. To sample the cubemap I compute the 3d reflection vector in a classic way: half3 ReflectionVec = reflect(-directionToCamera, Normal.rgb); I then use the vector to get the actual reflected color: half3 ReflectionCol = texCUBElod(ReflectionSampler, float4(ReflectionVec, 0)); The cubemap I am sampling from is a RenderTarget with 6 flat faces. So my question is, given the 3d world position of an arbitrary 3d object, how can I make sure that I get accurate reflections of this object, when I re-render the cubemap. Should I build the ViewProjection matrix in a specific way? Or is there any other approach?

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• In-Game Encyclopedias

  - by SHiNKiROU

  There are some games where there is an in-game encyclopedia where you can know many things about characters and settings of the game. For example, the Codex in Mass Effect. I want to know if it is exclusive to Bioware, and get inspired about other encyclopedia systems. What are some other examples of in-game encyclopedias? How effective is it? I also want some examples where the in-game encyclopedia is not effective at all or an ignored feature

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• Keep 3d model facing the camera at all angles

  - by Sparky41

  I'm trying to keep a 3d plane facing the camera at all angles but while i have some success with this: Vector3 gunToCam = cam.cameraPosition - getWorld.Translation; Vector3 beamRight = Vector3.Cross(torpDirection, gunToCam); beamRight.Normalize(); Vector3 beamUp = Vector3.Cross(beamRight, torpDirection); shipeffect.beamWorld = Matrix.Identity; shipeffect.beamWorld.Forward = (torpDirection) * 1f; shipeffect.beamWorld.Right = beamRight; shipeffect.beamWorld.Up = beamUp; shipeffect.beamWorld.Translation = shipeffect.beamPosition; *Note: Logic not wrote by me i just found this rather useful It seems to only face the camera at certain angles. For example if i place the camera behind the plane you can see it that only Roll's around the axis like this: http://i.imgur.com/FOKLx.png (imagine if you are looking from behind where you have fired from. Any idea what to what the problem is (angles are not my specialty) shipeffect is an object that holds this class variables: public Texture2D altBeam; public Model beam; public Matrix beamWorld; public Matrix[] gunTransforms; public Vector3 beamPosition;

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• Collision with half semi-circle

  - by heitortsergent

  I am trying to port a game I made using Flash/AS3, to the Windows Phone using C#/XNA 4.0. You can see it here: http://goo.gl/gzFiE In the flash version I used a pixel-perfect collision between meteors (it's a rectangle, and usually rotated) that spawn outside the screen, and move towards the center, and a shield in the center of the screen(which is half of a semi-circle, also rotated by the player), which made the meteor bounce back in the opposite direction it came from, when they collided. My goal now is to make the meteors bounce in different angles, depending on the position it collides with the shield (much like Pong, hitting the borders causes a change in the ball's angle). So, these are the 3 options I thought of: -Pixel-perfect collision (microsoft has a sample(http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/tutorial/collision_2d_perpixel_transformed)) , but then I wouldn't know how to change the meteor angle after the collision -3 BoundingCircle's to represent the half semi-circle shield, but then I would have to somehow move them as I rotate the shield. -Farseer Physics. I could make a shape composed of 3 lines, and use that as the collision object for the shield. Is there any other way besides those? Which would be the best way to do it(it's aimed towards mobile devices, so pixel-perfect is probably not a good choice)? Most of the time there's always a easier/better way than what we think of...

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• I made a game in XNA - how can I share it with my friends?

  - by Raven Dreamer

  I've just finished programming a charming (albeit bare-bones) XNA version of arcade classic Tempest. Hooray! Given that this was a homework assignment, I'd like to be able to share it with my professor and my friends/classmates to solicit feedback. (And let's be honest - if I have a question about how to add in an additional feature, it might be nice to be able to share it with folks on this site as well.) Is there a better way of sharing an XNA game than by shuttling the visual studio - produced executable around? Some way to host it on a website would be ideal.

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• Not getting desired results with SSAO implementation

  - by user1294203

  After having implemented deferred rendering, I tried my luck with a SSAO implementation using this Tutorial. Unfortunately, I'm not getting anything that looks like SSAO, you can see my result below. You can see there is some weird pattern forming and there is no occlusion shading where there needs to be (i.e. in between the objects and on the ground). The shaders I implemented follow: #VS #version 330 core uniform mat4 invProjMatrix; layout(location = 0) in vec3 in_Position; layout(location = 2) in vec2 in_TexCoord; noperspective out vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth out vec3 viewRay; void main(void){ pass_TexCoord = in_TexCoord; viewRay = (invProjMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0)).xyz; gl_Position = vec4(in_Position, 1.0); } #FS #version 330 core uniform sampler2D DepthMap; uniform sampler2D NormalMap; uniform sampler2D noise; uniform vec2 projAB; uniform ivec3 noiseScale_kernelSize; uniform vec3 kernel[16]; uniform float RADIUS; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; noperspective in vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth in vec3 viewRay; layout(location = 0) out float out_AO; vec3 CalcPosition(void){ float depth = texture(DepthMap, pass_TexCoord).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); vec3 ray = normalize(viewRay); ray = ray / ray.z; return linearDepth * ray; } mat3 CalcRMatrix(vec3 normal, vec2 texcoord){ ivec2 noiseScale = noiseScale_kernelSize.xy; vec3 rvec = texture(noise, texcoord * noiseScale).xyz; vec3 tangent = normalize(rvec - normal * dot(rvec, normal)); vec3 bitangent = cross(normal, tangent); return mat3(tangent, bitangent, normal); } void main(void){ vec2 TexCoord = pass_TexCoord; vec3 Position = CalcPosition(); vec3 Normal = normalize(texture(NormalMap, TexCoord).xyz); mat3 RotationMatrix = CalcRMatrix(Normal, TexCoord); int kernelSize = noiseScale_kernelSize.z; float occlusion = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < kernelSize; i++){ // Get sample position vec3 sample = RotationMatrix * kernel[i]; sample = sample * RADIUS + Position; // Project and bias sample position to get its texture coordinates vec4 offset = projectionMatrix * vec4(sample, 1.0); offset.xy /= offset.w; offset.xy = offset.xy * 0.5 + 0.5; // Get sample depth float sample_depth = texture(DepthMap, offset.xy).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (sample_depth - projAB.x); if(abs(Position.z - linearDepth ) < RADIUS){ occlusion += (linearDepth <= sample.z) ? 1.0 : 0.0; } } out_AO = 1.0 - (occlusion / kernelSize); } I draw a full screen quad and pass Depth and Normal textures. Normals are in RGBA16F with the alpha channel reserved for the AO factor in the blur pass. I store depth in a non linear Depth buffer (32F) and recover the linear depth using: float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); where projAB.y is calculated as: and projAB.x as: These are derived from the glm::perspective(gluperspective) matrix. z_n and z_f are the near and far clip distance. As described in the link I posted on the top, the method creates samples in a hemisphere with higher distribution close to the center. It then uses random vectors from a texture to rotate the hemisphere randomly around the Z direction and finally orients it along the normal at the given pixel. Since the result is noisy, a blur pass follows the SSAO pass. Anyway, my position reconstruction doesn't seem to be wrong since I also tried doing the same but with the position passed from a texture instead of being reconstructed. I also tried playing with the Radius, noise texture size and number of samples and with different kinds of texture formats, with no luck. For some reason when changing the Radius, nothing changes. Does anyone have any suggestions? What could be going wrong?

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• DX9 Deferred Rendering, GBuffer displays as clear color only

  - by Fire31

  I'm trying to implement Catalin Zima's Deferred Renderer in a very lightweight c++ DirectX 9 app (only renders a skydome and a model), at this moment I'm trying to render the gbuffer, but I'm having a problem, the screen shows only the clear color, no matter how much I move the camera around. However, removing all the render target operations lets the app render the scene normally, even if the models are being applied the renderGBuffer effect. Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?

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• Hardware instancing for voxel engine

  - by Menno Gouw

  i just did the tutorial on Hardware Instancing from this source: http://www.float4x4.net/index.php/2011/07/hardware-instancing-for-pc-in-xna-4-with-textures/. Somewhere between 900.000 and 1.000.000 draw calls for the cube i get this error "XNA Framework HiDef profile supports a maximum VertexBuffer size of 67108863." while still running smoothly on 900k. That is slightly less then 100x100x100 which are a exactly a million. Now i have seen voxel engines with very "tiny" voxels, you easily get to 1.000.000 cubes in view with rough terrain and a decent far plane. Obviously i can optimize a lot in the geometry buffer method, like rendering only visible faces of a cube or using larger faces covering multiple cubes if the area is flat. But is a vertex buffer of roughly 67mb the max i can work with or can i create multiple?

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• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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• glColor3f Setting colour

  - by Aaron

  This draws a white vertical line from 640 to 768 at x512: glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glBegin(GL_LINES); glColor3f((double)R/255,(double)G/255,(double)B/255); glVertex3f(SX, -SPosY, 0); // origin of the line glVertex3f(SX, -EPosY, 0); // ending point of the line glEnd(); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); This works, but after having a problem where it wouldn't draw it white (Or to any colour passed) I discovered that disabling GL_TEXTURE_2D Before drawing the line, and the re-enabling it afterwards for other things, fixed it. I want to know, is this a normal step a programmer might take? Or is it highly inefficient? I don't want to be causing any slow downs due to a mistake =) Thanks

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• Sprites, Primitives and logic entity as structs

  - by Jeffrey

  I'm wondering would it be considered acceptable: The window class is responsible for drawing data, so it will have a method: Window::draw(const Sprite&); Window::draw(const Rect&); Window::draw(const Triangle&); Window::draw(const Circle&); and all those primitives + sprites would be just public struct. For example Sprite: struct Sprite { float x, y; // center float origin_x, origin_y; float width, height; float rotation; float scaling; GLuint texture; Sprite(float w, float h); Sprite(float w, float h, float a, float b); void useTexture(std::string file); void setOrigin(float a, float b); void move(float a, float b); // relative move void moveTo(float a, float b); // absolute move void rotate(float a); // relative rotation void rotateTo(float a); // absolute rotation void rotationReset(); void scale(float a); // relative scaling void scaleTo(float a); // absolute scaling void scaleReset(); }; So instead of having each primitive to call their draw() function, which is a little bit off topic for their object, I let the Window class handle all the OpenGL stuff and manipulate them as simple objects that will be drawn later on. Is this pattern used? Does it have any cons against it's primitives-draw-themself pattern? Are there any other related patterns?

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• XNA Moddable Game - Architecture Design and Reflection

  - by David K

  I've decided to embark on an XNA moddable game project of a simple rogue style. For all purposes of this question, I'm going to not be using a scripting engine, but rather allow modders to directly compile assemblies that are loaded by the game at run time. I know about the security problems this may raise. So in order to expose the moddable content, I have gone about creating a generic project in XNA called MyModel. This contains a number of interfaces that all inherit from IPlugin, such as IGameSystem, IRenderingSystem, IHud, IInputSystem etc. Then I've created another project called MyRogueModel. This references MyModel project, and holds interfaces such as IMonster, IPlayer, IDungeonGenerator, IInventorySystem. More rogue specific interfaces, but again, all interfaces in this project inherit from IPlugin. Then finally, I've created another project called MyRogueGame, that references both MyModel and MyRogueModel projects. This project will be the game that you run and play. Here I have put the actual implementation of the Monster, DungeonGenerator, InputSystem and RenderingSystem classes. This project will also scan the mods directory during run time and load any IPlugins it finds using reflection and override anything it finds from the default. For example if it finds a new implementation of the DungeonGenerator it will use that one instead. Now my question is, in order to get this far, I have effectively 2 projects that contain nothing but interfaces... which seems a little... strange ? For people to create mods for the game, I would give them both the MyModel and MyRogueModel assemblies in which they would reference. I'm not sure whether this is the right way to do it, but my reasoning goes as follows : If I write 1 input system, I can use it in any game I write. If I create 3 rogue like games, and a modder writes 1 rendering system, that modder could use the rendering system for all 3 games, because it all comes from the MyModel project. I come from a more web based C# role, so having empty interface projects doesn't seem wrong, its just something I haven't done before. Before I embark on something that might be crazy, I'd just like to know whether this is a foolish idea and whether there's a better (or established) design principle I should be following ?

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• How do I get the child of a unique parent in ActionScript?

  - by Koen

  My question is about targeting a child with a unique parent. For example. Let's say I have a box people can move called box_mc and 3 platforms it can jump on called: Platform_1 Platform_2 Platform_3 All of these platforms have a child element called hit. Platform_1 Hit Platform_2 Hit Platform_3 Hit I use an array and a for each statement to detect if box_mc hits one of the platforms childs. var obj_arr:Array = [Platform_1, Platform_2, Platform_3]; for each(obj in obj_arr){ if(box_mc.hitTestObject(obj.hit)){ trace(obj + " " + obj.hit); box_mc.y = obj.hit.y - box_mc.height; } } obj seems to output the unique parent it is hitting but obj.hit ouputs hit, so my theory is that it is applying the change of y to all the childs called hit in the stage. Would it be possible to only detect the child of that specific parent?

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• XNA Transparency depending on drawing order?

  - by DarthRoman

  I am drawing two 3D objects, both of them can fade from opaque to transparent independently, and they can intersect between them (so you cannot say when one of them is before the other one). Look at the image for a better understanding (one of the object is a terrain and the other one an area): Now, if I apply transparency to both of them, and draw the terrain before the area, the terrain is not transparent respecting to the area, but the area is: And finally, if I draw the area before the terrain, then the area is not transparent respecting of the terrain: QUESTION: How can I make all the objects transparent to the rest of objects without depending on the drawing order?

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• Impact of variable-length loops on GPU shaders

  - by Will

  Its popular to render procedural content inside the GPU e.g. in the demoscene (drawing a single quad to fill the screen and letting the GPU compute the pixels). Ray marching is popular: This means the GPU is executing some unknown number of loop iterations per pixel (although you can have an upper bound like maxIterations). How does having a variable-length loop affect shader performance? Imagine the simple ray-marching psuedocode: t = 0.f; while(t < maxDist) { p = rayStart + rayDir * t; d = DistanceFunc(p); t += d; if(d < epsilon) { ... emit p return; } } How are the various mainstream GPU families (Nvidia, ATI, PowerVR, Mali, Intel, etc) affected? Vertex shaders, but particularly fragment shaders? How can it be optimised?

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• Mapping dynamic buffers in Direct3D11 in Windows Store apps

  - by Donnie

  I'm trying to make instanced geometry in Direct3D11, and the ID3D11DeviceContext1->Map() call is failing with the very helpful error of "Invalid Parameter" when I'm attempting to update the instance buffer. The buffer is declared as a member variable: Microsoft::WRL::ComPtr<ID3D11Buffer> m_instanceBuffer; Then I create it (which succeeds): D3D11_BUFFER_DESC instanceDesc; ZeroMemory(&instanceDesc, sizeof(D3D11_BUFFER_DESC)); instanceDesc.Usage = D3D11_USAGE_DYNAMIC; instanceDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(InstanceData) * MAX_INSTANCE_COUNT; instanceDesc.BindFlags = D3D11_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; instanceDesc.CPUAccessFlags = D3D11_CPU_ACCESS_WRITE; instanceDesc.MiscFlags = 0; instanceDesc.StructureByteStride = 0; DX::ThrowIfFailed(d3dDevice->CreateBuffer(&instanceDesc, NULL, &m_instanceBuffer)); However, when I try to map it: D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE inst; DX::ThrowIfFailed(d3dContext->Map(m_instanceBuffer.Get(), 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE, 0, &inst)); The map call fails with E_INVALIDARG. Nothing is NULL incorrectly, and this being one of my first D3D apps I'm currently stumped on what to do next to track it down. I'm thinking I must be creating the buffer incorrectly, but I can't see how. Any input would be appreciated.

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• WIn API Basic Paint program

  - by Tom Burman

  Just trying to learn a bit of Win API. Im trying to make a basic drawing app, a bit like MS Paint. For the time being im trying to get one function to work which is, when you left click and drag the mouse around the screen a line is drawn behind the mouse. Heres what i have so far, but for some reason: 1) the line starts drawing straight away rather then waiting for the left click 2) the line isn't solid its very dotty. case WM_MOUSEMOVE: { if(MK_LBUTTON){ hdc = GetDC(hwnd); hPen = CreatePen(PS_SOLID,5,RGB(0, 0, 255)); SelectObject(hdc, hPen); int x = LOWORD(lParam); int y = HIWORD(lParam); MoveToEx(hdc,x,y,NULL); LineTo(hdc, LOWORD(lParam), HIWORD(lParam)); ReleaseDC(hwnd,hdc); } else break; } } Thanks for any help!

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• Rendering different materials in a voxel terrain

  - by MaelmDev

  Each voxel datapoint in my terrain model is made up of two properties: density and material type. Each is stored as an unsigned integer value (but the density is interpreted as a decimal value between 0 and 1). My current idea for rendering these different materials on the terrain mesh is to store eleven extra attributes in each vertex: six material values corresponding to the materials of the voxels that the vertices lie between, three decimal values that correspond to the interpolation each vertex has between each voxel, and two decimal values that are used to determine where the fragment lies on the triangle. The material and interpolation attributes are the exact same for each vertex in the triangle. The fragment shader samples each texture that corresponds to each material and then uses the aforementioned couple of decimal values to interpolate between these samples and obtain the final textured color of the fragment. It should work fine, but it seems like a big memory hog. I won't be able to reuse vertices in the mesh with indexing, and each vertex will have a lot of data associated with it. It also seems pretty slow. What are some ways to improve or replace this technique for drawing materials on a voxel terrain mesh?

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• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

  In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

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