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  • 2D Tile Map for Platformer, XML or SQLite?

    - by Stephen Tierney
    I'm developing a 2D platformer with some uni friends. We've based it upon the XNA Platformer Starter Kit which uses .txt files to store the tile map. While this is simple it does not give us enough control and flexibility with level design. I'm doing some research into whether to store level data in an XML file or in a database like SQLite. Which would be the best for this situation? Do either have any drawbacks (performance etc) compared to the other?

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  • How do game engines implement certain features?

    - by Milo
    I have always wondered how modern game engines do things such as realistic water, ambient occluded lighting, eye adaptation, global illumination, etc. I'm not so much interested in the implementation details, but more on what part of the graphics API such as D3D or OpenGL allow adding such functionality. The only thing I can think of is shaders, but I do not think just shaders can do all that. So really what I'm asking is, what functions or capabilities of graphics APIs enable developers to implement these types of features into their engines? Thanks

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  • Splitting Graph into distinct polygons in O(E) complexity

    - by Arthur Wulf White
    If you have seen my last question: trapped inside a Graph : Find paths along edges that do not cross any edges How do you split an entire graph into distinct shapes 'trapped' inside the graph(like the ones described in my last question) with good complexity? What I am doing now is iterating over all edges and then starting to traverse while always taking the rightmost turn. This does split the graph into distinct shapes. Then I eliminate all the excess shapes (that are repeats of previous shapes) and return the result. The complexity of this algorithm is O(E^2). I am wondering if I could do it in O(E) by removing edges I already traversed previously. My current implementation of that returns unexpected results.

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  • Tool to convert Textures to power of two?

    - by 3nixios
    I'm currently porting a game to a new platform, the problem being that the old platform accepted non power of two textures and this new platform doesn't. To add to the headache, the new platform has much less memory so we want to use the tools provided by the vendor to compress them; which of course only takes power of two textures. The current workflow is to convert the non power of tho textures to dds with 'texconv', then use the vendors compression tools in a batch. So, does anyone know of a tool to convert textures to their nearest 'power of two' counterparts? Thanks

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  • How to prevent multiple playing sounds from destroying your hearing?

    - by Rookie
    The problem is that when I play 100 sounds almost at same time, all I hear is noise. It's not very attractive to listen it for 30 minutes straight. I tried to fix this by allowing only 1 sound of each sound type to be played at once. But it still sounds really ugly; eventually my brain keeps hearing only the very end of the shot sounds (or the start of it?), and that gets on my nerves really quickly. Eventually I would just decide to turn off the sounds completely. So is there any point of using sounds in a game like this at all? How does our dear reality handle this problem? If there is a war out there, how does it sound when hundred of men shoot almost at the same times? Edit: Here is how the game sounds currently; there isn't even 100 sounds playing at once, maybe 20? http://www.speedyshare.com/VTBDw/headache.mp3 At the beginning it sounds OK, but then it becomes unbearable! In that audio clip there is allowed only 1 sound to be played at once, so it will stop the previous playing sound when new sound is played. Edit2: And here is same headache but 32 simultaneous sounds allowed to be played at same time: http://www.speedyshare.com/TuWAR/headache-worse.mp3 Quite a torture, eh?

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  • How to define type-specific scripts when using a 'type object' programming pattern?

    - by Erik
    I am in the process of creating a game engine written in C++, using the C/C++ SQLite interface to achieve a 'type object' pattern. The process is largely similar to what is outlined here (Thank you Bob Nystrom for the great resource!). I have a generally defined Entity class that when a new object is created, data is taken from a SQLite database and then is pushed back into a pointer vector, which is then iterated through, calling update() for each object. All the ints, floats, strings are loaded in fine, but the script() member of Entity is proving an issue. It's not much fun having a bunch of stationary objects laying around my gameworld. The only solutions I've come up with so far are: Create a monolithic EntityScript class with member functions encompassing all game AI and then calling the corresponding script when iterating through the Entity vector. (Not ideal) Create bindings between C++ and a scripting language. This would seem to get the job done, but it feels like implementing this (given the potential memory overhead) and learning a new language is overkill for a small team (2-3 people) that know the entirety of the existing game engine. Can you suggest any possible alternatives? My ideal situation would be that to add content to the game, one would simply add a script file to the appropriate directory and append the SQLite database with all the object data. All that is required is to have a variety of integers and floats passed between both the engine and the script file.

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  • Collision detection, stop gravity

    - by Scott Beeson
    I just started using Gamemaker Studio and so far it seems fairly intuitive. However, I set a room to "Room is Physics World" and set gravity to 10. I then enabled physics on my player object and created a block object to match a platform on my background sprite. I set up a Collision Detection event for the player and the block objects that sets the gravity to 0 (and even sets the vspeed to 0). I also put a notification in the collision event and I don't get that either. I have my key down and key up events working well, moving the player left and right and changing the sprites appropriately, so I think I understand the event system. I must just be missing something simple with the physics. I've tried making both and neither of the objects "solid". Pretty frustrating since it looks so easy. The player starting point is directly above the block object in the grid and the player does fall through the block. I even made the block sprite solid red so I could see it (initially it was invisible, obviously).

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  • Learning to optimize with Assembly

    - by niktehpui
    I am a second year student of Computer Games Technology. I recently finished my first prototype of my "kind" of own pathfinder (that doesn't use A* instead a geometrical approach/pattern recognition, the pathfinder just needs the knowledge about the terrain that is in his view to make decisions, because I wanted an AI that could actually explore, if the terrain is already known, then it will walk the shortest way easily, because the pathfinder has a memory of nodes). Anyway my question is more general: How do I start optimizing algorithms/loops/for_each/etc. using Assembly, although general tips are welcome. I am specifically looking for good books, because it is really hard to find good books on this topic. There are some small articles out there like this one, but still isn't enough knowledge to optimize an algorithm/game... I hope there is a modern good book out there, that I just couldn't find...

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  • Better data structure for a game like Bubble Witch

    - by CrociDB
    I'm implementing a bubble-witch-like game (http://www.king.com/games/puzzle-games/bubble-witch/), and I was thinking on what's the better way to store the "bubbles" and to work with. I thought of using graphs, but that might be too complex for a trivial thing. Thought of a matrix, just like a tile map, but that might get too 'workaroundy'. I don't know. I'll be doing in Flash/AS3, though. Thanks. :)

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  • Mapping a 3D texture to a standard hollow-hull 3D model

    - by John
    I have 3D models which are typical hollow hulls. If such a model also had a 3D volumetric/voxel texture map then given a point P inside such a model, I'd like to be able to find its uvw coordinates within the 3D texture. Is this possible by simply setting 3D texcoords on my existing mesh or does it have to be broken up into polyhedra? Is there a way to map a 3D texture onto a mesh without doing this?

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  • Do Apple and Google ask for a share if custom payment is done in a free app?

    - by user1590354
    I have a multiplatform game (web/iOS/Android) in the making. In the free version the core game is still fully playable but people who choose to pay will get more social features (and no ads, of course). I was thinking that rather than having a free and a paid version for all the platforms I may release the apps just for free and if the users want more, they have to register and pay a one-time fee (through a payment gateway or PayPal). The extra content would then be available in all the clients they have access to. Theoretically, this means a better value for the players and less maintenance and headache for me (obviously I have to handle all the payment troubles myself). Does it fit into the business model of Apple/Google? Or will they still claim their share of the registration fee?

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  • Tangent basis calculation problem

    - by Kirill Daybov
    I have the problem with seams with calculating a tangent basis in my application. I'm using a seems to be right algorithm, but it gives wrong result on the seams. What am I doing wrong? Is there a problem with an algorithm, or with the model? The designer says that our models with our normal maps are rendered correctly in Xoliul Shader Plugin in 3Ds Max, so there should be a way to calculate correct tangent basis programmatically. Here's an example of the problem I'm talking about. Steps, I've already taken: - Tried different algorithm (from Gamasutra, I can't post the link because I don't have enough reputation yet). I got wrong, much worse, results; - Tried to average basis vectors for vertexes are used in multiple faces; - Tried to average basis vectors for vertexes that have same world coordinates (this would be obviously wrong solution, but I've tried it anyway).

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  • How to draw texture to screen in Unity?

    - by user1306322
    I'm looking for a way to draw textures to screen in Unity in a similar fashion to XNA's SpriteBatch.Draw method. Ideally, I'd like to write a few helper methods to make all my XNA code work in Unity. This is the first issue I've faced on this seemingly long journey. I guess I could just use quads, but I'm not so sure it's the least expensive way performance-wise. I could do that stuff in XNA anyway, but they made SpriteBatch not without a reason, I believe.

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  • Stencil buffer appears to not be decrementing values correctly

    - by Alex Ames
    I'm attempting to use the stencil buffer as a clipper for my UI system, but I'm having trouble debugging a problem I'm running in to. This is what I'm doing: A widget can pass a rectangle to the the stencil clipper functions, which will increment the stencil buffer values that it covers. Then it will draw its children, which will only get drawn in the stencilled area (so that if they extend outside they'll be clipped). After a widget is done drawing its children, it pops that rectangle from the stack and in the process decrements the values in the stencil buffer that it has previously incremented. The slightly simplified code is below: static void drawStencil(Rect& rect, unsigned int ref) { // Save previous values of the color and depth masks GLboolean colorMask[4]; GLboolean depthMask; glGetBooleanv(GL_COLOR_WRITEMASK, colorMask); glGetBooleanv(GL_DEPTH_WRITEMASK, &depthMask); // Turn off drawing glColorMask(0, 0, 0, 0); glDepthMask(0); // Draw vertices here ... // Turn everything back on glColorMask(colorMask[0], colorMask[1], colorMask[2], colorMask[3]); glDepthMask(depthMask); // Only render pixels in areas where the stencil buffer value == ref glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, ref, 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP); } void pushScissor(Rect rect) { // increment things only at the current stencil stack level glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, s_scissorStack.size(), 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_INCR, GL_INCR); s_scissorStack.push_back(rect); drawStencil(rect, states, s_ScissorStack.size()); } void popScissor() { // undo what was done in the previous push, // decrement things only at the current stencil stack level glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, s_scissorStack.size(), 0xFF); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_DECR, GL_DECR); Rect rect = s_scissorStack.back(); s_scissorStack.pop_back(); drawStencil(rect, states, s_scissorStack.size()); } And this is how it's being used by the Widgets if (m_clip) pushScissor(m_rect); drawInternal(target, states); for (auto child : m_children) target.draw(*child, states); if (m_clip) popScissor(); This is the result of the above code: There are two things on the screen, a giant test button, and a window with some buttons and text areas on it. The text area scroll box is set to clip its children (so that the text doesn't extend outside the scroll box). The button is drawn after the window and should be on top of it completely. However, for some reason the text area is appearing on top of the button. The only reason I can think of that this would happen is if the stencil values were not getting decremented in the pop, and when it comes time to render the button, since those pixels don't have the right stencil value it doesn't draw over. But I can't figure out whats wrong with my code that would cause that to happen.

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  • State / Screen management in Entity Component Systems

    - by David Lively
    My entity/component system is happily humming along and, despite some performance concerns I initially had, everything is working fine. However, I've realized that I missed a crucial point when starting this thing: how do you handle different screens? At the moment, I have a GameManager class which owns a component manager and entity manager. When I create an entity, the entity manager assigns it an ID and makes sure it's tracked. When I modify the components that are assigned to an entity. an UpdateEntity method is called, which alerts each of the systems that they may need to add or remove the entity from their respective entity lists. A problem with this is that the collection of entities operated on by each system is determined solely by the individual Systems, typically based on a "required component" filter. (An entity has to have a Renderable component to be rendered, for instance.) In this situation, I can't just keep collections of entities per screen and only Update/Draw those collections. They'd have to either be added and removed depending on their applicability to the current screen, which would cause their associated components to be removed, or enable/disable entities in a group per screen to hide what's not supposed to be visible. These approaches seem like really, really crappy kludges. What's a good way to handle this? A pretty straightforward way that comes to mind is to create a separate GameManager (which in my implementation owns all of the systems, entities, etc.) per screen, which means that everything outside of the device context would be duplicated. That's bothersome because some things are always visible, or I might want to continue to display the game under a translucent menu window. Another option would be to add a "layer" key to the GameManager class, which could be checked against a displayable layer stack held by the game manager. *System.Draw() would be called for each active layer, in the required order as determined by the stack. When the systems request an iterator for their respective entity collections, it would be pre-filtered to a (cached) set of those entities that participate in the active layer. Those collections could be updated from the same UpdateEntity event that's already used to maintain each system's entity collections. Still, kinda feels like a hack. If I've coded myself into a corner, feel free to throw tomatoes as long as they're labeled with a helpful suggestion. Hooray for learning curves.

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  • Adding sub-entities to existing entities. Should it be done in the Entity and Component classes?

    - by Coyote
    I'm in a situation where a player can be given the control of small parts of an entity (i.e. Left missile battery). Therefore I started implementing sub entities as follow. Entities are Objects with 3 arrays: pointers to components pointers to sub entities communication subscribers (temporary implementation) Now when an entity is built it has a few components as you might expect and also I can attach sub entities which are handled with some dedicated code in the Entity and Component classes. I noticed sub entities are sharing data in 3 parts: position: the sub entities are using the parent's position and their own as an offset. scrips: sub entities are draining ammo and energy from the parent. physics: sub entities add weight to the parent I made this to quickly go forward, but as I'm slowly fixing current implementations I wonder if this wasn't a mistake. Is my current implementation something commonly done? Will this implementation put me in a corner? I thought it might be a better thing to create some sort of SubEntityComponent where sub entities are attached and handled. But before changing anything I wanted to seek the community's wisdom.

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  • How do I communicate with an IronPython component in a C#/XNA game?

    - by Jonathan Hobbs
    My XNA game is component-oriented, and has various components for position, physics representation, rendering, etc, all of which extend a base Component class. The player and enemies also have controllers which are currently defined in C#. I'd like to turn them into Python scripts, but I'm not sure how to interact with those scripts. The examples in Embedding IronPython in a C# Application suggest I'd have to create a wrapper class (e.g. a Script component) which compiles a Python script, and call the Update methods of the component in the script Is this the most effective way of working with a Python object? I feel that I'm missing something in my research - there must be a way to load up a script, instantiate a Python object and then work directly with it from within C#. Or is the wrapper required?

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  • Fitting a rectangle into screen with XNA

    - by alecnash
    I am drawing a rectangle with primitives in XNA. The width is: width = GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width and the height is height = GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height I am trying to fit this rectangle in the screen (using different screens and devices) but I am not sure where to put the camera on the Z-axis. Sometimes the camera is too close and sometimes to far. This is what I am using to get the camera distance: //Height of piramid float alpha = 0; float beta = 0; float gamma = 0; alpha = (float)Math.Sqrt((width / 2 * width/2) + (height / 2 * height / 2)); beta = height / ((float)Math.Cos(MathHelper.ToRadians(67.5f)) * 2); gamma = (float)Math.Sqrt(beta*beta - alpha*alpha); position = new Vector3(0, 0, gamma); Any idea where to put the camera on the Z-axis?

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  • Making a Background Scrolling in Stacking Game

    - by David Dimalanta
    Hmmm...Is it a good idea to use a LibGDX parallax background for making a stacking game (i.e. PAPA STACKer Lite)? For example, I'm starting to use the blocks to drag-n-drop it. Next, when the next piece reaches the top of the screen, it automatically scrolls to the next one where the available space left. Aside from that, is it also involved with the camera code (Orthographic Camera) that the screen size appeared like 720x1280 but actually it's 1440x2560 for example? And another thing, does the background scrolling have the option to scroll from start to finish and infinite?

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  • In an Entity/Component system, can component data be implemented as a simple array of key-value pairs? [on hold]

    - by 010110110101
    I'm trying to wrap my head around how to organize components in an Entity Component Systems once everything in the current scene/level is loaded in memory. (I'm a hobbyist BTW) Some people seem to implement the Entity as an object that contains a list of of "Component" objects. Components contain data organized as an array of key-value pairs. Where the value is serialized "somehow". (pseudocode is loosely in C# for brevity) class Entity { Guid _id; List<Component> _components; } class Component { List<ComponentAttributeValue> _attributes; } class ComponentAttributeValue { string AttributeName; object AttributeValue; } Others describe Components as an in-memory "table". An entity acquires the component by having its key placed in a table. The attributes of the component-entity instance are like the columns in a table class Renderable_Component { List<RenderableComponentAttributeValue> _entities; } class RenderableComponentAttributeValue { Guid entityId; matrix4 transformation; // other stuff for rendering // everything is strongly typed } Others describe this actually as a table. (and such tables sound like an EAV database schema BTW) (and the value is serialized "somehow") Render_Component_Table ---------------- Entity Id Attribute Name Attribute Value and when brought into running code: class Entity { Guid _id; Dictionary<string, object> _attributes; } My specific question is: Given various components, (Renderable, Positionable, Explodeable, Hideable, etc) and given that each component has an attribute with a particular name, (TRANSLATION_MATRIX, PARTICLE_EMISSION_VELOCITY, CAN_HIDE, FAVORITE_COLOR, etc) should: an entity contain a list of components where each component, in turn, has their own array of named attributes with values serialized somehow or should components exist as in-memory tables of entity references and associated with each "row" there are "columns" representing the attribute with values that are specific to each entity instance and are strongly typed or all attributes be stored in an entity as a singular array of named attributes with values serialized somehow (could have name collisions) or something else???

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  • Using multiple indexes with buffer objects in OpenTK

    - by Rushyo
    I've got multiple buffers in OpenGL holding data on position, normals and texcoords. I also have an equal number of buffers holding distinct index data for each of those buffers. I quite like this format (indvidual indexes for each buffer) utilised by COLLADA since it strikes me as optimally efficient at accessing each buffer. I've set up pointers to the relevant data arrays using VertexPointer, NormalPointer, etc however I have no way to assign pointers to the index buffers since DrawElements appear to only look at one ElementArrayBuffer. Can I utilise multiple indices some way or will I be better off using a different technique which can support this? I'd prefer to keep the distinct indices if at all possible.

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  • As an indie game dev, what processes are the best for soliciting feedback on my design/spec/idea? [closed]

    - by Jess Telford
    Background I have worked in a professional environment where the process usually goes like the following: Brain storm idea Solidify the game mechanics / design Iterate on design/idea to create a more solid experience Spec out the details of the design/idea Build it Step 3. is generally done with the stakeholders of the game (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc) to reach an 'agreement' which meets the goals of all involved. Due to this process involving a series of often opposing and unique view points, creative solutions can surface through discussion / iteration. This is backed up by a process for collating the changes / new ideas, as well as structured time for discussion. As a (now) indie developer, I have to play the role of all the stakeholders (developers, designers, investors, publishers, etc), and often find myself too close to the idea / design to do more than minor changes, which I feel to be local maxima when it comes to the best result (I'm looking for the global maxima, of course). I have read that ideas / game designs / unique mechanics are merely multipliers of execution, and that keeping them secret is just silly. In sharing the idea with others outside the realm of my own thinking, I hope to replicate the influence other stakeholders have. I am struggling with the collation of changes / new ideas, and any kind of structured method of receiving feedback. My question: As an indie game developer, how and where can I share my ideas/designs to receive meaningful / constructive feedback? How can I successfully collate the feedback into a new iteration of the design? Are there any specialized websites, etc?

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  • Toon/cel shading with variable line width?

    - by Nick Wiggill
    I see a few broad approaches out there to doing cel shading: Duplication & enlargement of model with flipped normals (not an option for me) Sobel filter / fragment shader approaches to edge detection Stencil buffer approaches to edge detection Geometry (or vertex) shader approaches that calculate face and edge normals Am I correct in assuming the geometry-centric approach gives the greatest amount of control over lighting and line thickness, as well eg. for terrain where you might see the silhouette line of a hill merging gradually into a plain? What if I didn't need pixel lighting on my terrain surfaces? (And I probably won't as I plan to use cell-based vertex- or texturemap-based lighting/shadowing.) Would I then be better off sticking with the geometry-type approach, or go for a screen space / fragment approach instead to keep things simpler? If so, how would I get the "inking" of hills within the mesh silhouette, rather than only the outline of the entire mesh (with no "ink" details inside that outline? Lastly, is it possible to cheaply emulate the flipped-normals approach, using a geometry shader? Is that exactly what the GS approaches do? What I want - varying line thickness with intrusive lines inside the silhouette... What I don't want...

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  • How can I prevent seams from showing up on objects using lower mipmap levels?

    - by Shivan Dragon
    Disclaimer: kindly right click on the images and open them separately so that they're at full size, as there are fine details which don't show up otherwise. Thank you. I made a simple Blender model, it's a cylinder with the top cap removed: I've exported the UVs: Then imported them into Photoshop, and painted the inner area in yellow and the outer area in red. I made sure I cover well the UV lines: I then save the image and load it as texture on the model in Blender. Actually, I just reload it as the image where the UVs are exported, and change the viewport view mode to textured. When I look at the mesh up-close, there's yellow everywhere, everything seems fine: However, if I start zooming out, I start seeing red (literally and metaphorically) where the texture edges are: And the more I zoom, the more I see it: Same thing happends in Unity, though the effect seems less pronounced. Up close is fine and yellow: Zoom out and you see red at the seams: Now, obviously, for this simple example a workaround is to spread the yellow well outside the UV margins, and its fine from all distances. However this is an issue when you try making a complex texture that should tile seamlessly at the edges. In this situation I either make a few lines of pixels overlap (in which case it looks bad from upclose and ok from far away), or I leave them seamless and then I have those seams when seeing it from far away. So my question is, is there something I'm missing, or some extra thing I must do to have my texture look seamless from all distances?

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  • Render an image with layers for shadows /reflections, object and ground in 3D Studio Max?

    - by Bernd Plontsch
    I have a scene with a simple object standing on the ground in the center. This object has shadows and reflections on the ground. How can I render an image containing 3 separate layers for The object The ground The reflection / shadow on the ground Which format do I use for this? (It should include all 3 layers + I should be able to enable/disable them in Photoshop) How do I define or prepare those layers for being rendering as image layers?

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