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• How to show a minimap in a 3d world

  - by Bubblewrap

  Got a really typical use-case here. I have large map made up of hexagons and at any given time only a small section of the map is visible. To provide an overview of the complete map, i want to show a small 2d representation of the map in a corner of the screen. What is the recommended approach for this in libgdx? Keep in mind the minimap must be updated when the currently visible section changes and when the map is updated. I've found SpriteBatch, but the warning label on it made me think twice: A SpriteBatch is a pretty heavy object so you should only ever have one in your program. I'm not sure i'm supposed to use the one SpriteBatch that i can have on the minimap, and i'm also not sure how to interpret "heavy" in this context. Another thing to possibly keep in mind is that the minimap will probably be part of a larger UI...is there any way to integrate these two?

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• Looking for 2D Cross platform suggestions based on requirements specified

  - by MannyG

  I am an intermediate developer with minor experience on enterprise mobile applications for iphone, android and blackberry looking to build my first ever mobile game. I did a google search for some game dev forums and this popped up so I thought I would try posting here as I lack luck elsewhere. If you have ever heard of the game for the iphone and android platform entitled avatar fight then you will have an idea of the graphic capabilities I require. Basically the battles which are automated one sprite attacking another doing cool animations but all in 2d. My buddy and I have two motivations, one is to jump into mobile Dev as my experience is limited as is his so we would like some trending knowledge (html5 would be nice to learn) . The other is to make some money on the side, don't expect much but polishing the game and putting our all will hopefully reward us a bit. We have looked into corona engine, however a lot of people are saying it is limited in the graphics department, we are open to learning new languages like lua, c++, python etc. Others we have looked at include phonegap, rhomobile, unity, and the list goes on. I really have no idea what the pros and cons of these are but for a basic battle sequence and some mini games we want to chose the right one. Some more things that we will be doing include things like card games, side scrolling flying object based games, maybe fishing stuff. We want to start small with these minigames and work our way up to the idea we would like to implement in the future. We only want to work in 2D. So with these requirements please help me chose a platform to work on (cross platform is what we are ideally leaning towards). Please feel free to throw in some pieces of advice you may have for newbie game developers like myself too. Thank you for reading!

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• Beginning android games, 2nd edition engine

  - by Benjamin Stephen

  I recently bought the book from Apress and have worked my way through it, unfortunately, it seems to just be dealing with side scrolling games and not Zelda-like top down games. I was wondering if anyone out there can tell me if it's possible to use their engine to create such a game? It doesn't go into how to build a top down tile map. Using the engine in their book, how can I make a tile map easily that has walls and things like that? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Game World Design [on hold]

  - by GameDev

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

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• Arrive steering behavior

  - by dbostream

  I bought a book called Programming game AI by example and I am trying to implement the arrive steering behavior. The problem I am having is that my objects oscillate around the target position; after oscillating less and less for awhile they finally come to a stop at the target position. Does anyone have any idea why this oscillating behavior occur? Since the examples accompanying the book are written in C++ I had to rewrite the code into C#. Below is the relevant parts of the steering behavior: private enum Deceleration { Fast = 1, Normal = 2, Slow = 3 } public MovingEntity Entity { get; private set; } public Vector2 SteeringForce { get; private set; } public Vector2 Target { get; set; } public Vector2 Calculate() { SteeringForce.Zero(); SteeringForce = SumForces(); SteeringForce.Truncate(Entity.MaxForce); return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 SumForces() { Vector2 force = new Vector2(); if (Activated(BehaviorTypes.Arrive)) { force += Arrive(Target, Deceleration.Slow); if (!AccumulateForce(force)) return SteeringForce; } return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 Arrive(Vector2 target, Deceleration deceleration) { Vector2 toTarget = target - Entity.Position; double distance = toTarget.Length(); if (distance > 0) { //because Deceleration is enumerated as an int, this value is required //to provide fine tweaking of the deceleration.. double decelerationTweaker = 0.3; double speed = distance / ((double)deceleration * decelerationTweaker); speed = Math.Min(speed, Entity.MaxSpeed); Vector2 desiredVelocity = toTarget * speed / distance; return desiredVelocity - Entity.Velocity; } return new Vector2(); } private bool AccumulateForce(Vector2 forceToAdd) { double magnitudeRemaining = Entity.MaxForce - SteeringForce.Length(); if (magnitudeRemaining <= 0) return false; double magnitudeToAdd = forceToAdd.Length(); if (magnitudeToAdd > magnitudeRemaining) magnitudeToAdd = magnitudeRemaining; SteeringForce += Vector2.NormalizeRet(forceToAdd) * magnitudeToAdd; return true; } This is the update method of my objects: public void Update(double deltaTime) { Vector2 steeringForce = Steering.Calculate(); Vector2 acceleration = steeringForce / Mass; Velocity = Velocity + acceleration * deltaTime; Velocity.Truncate(MaxSpeed); Position = Position + Velocity * deltaTime; } If you want to see the problem with your own eyes you can download a minimal example here. Thanks in advance.

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• what tool should I use for drawing 2d OpenGL shapes?

  - by Kenny Winker

  I'm working on a very simple OpenGL ES 2.0 game, and I'm not sure what tool to use to create the vertex data I need. My first thought was adobe illustrator, but I can't seem to google up any info on how to convert an .ai file to vertices. I'm only going to be using very simple 2d shapes so I wonder if I need to use a 3d modelling program? How is this typically done, when you are working with 2d non-sprite shapes?

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• Finding direction of travel in a world with wrapped edges

  - by crazy

  I need to find the shortest distance direction from one point in my 2D world to another point where the edges are wrapped (like asteroids etc). I know how to find the shortest distance but am struggling to find which direction it's in. The shortest distance is given by: int rows = MapY; int cols = MapX; int d1 = abs(S.Y - T.Y); int d2 = abs(S.X - T.X); int dr = min(d1, rows-d1); int dc = min(d2, cols-d2); double dist = sqrt((double)(dr*dr + dc*dc)); Example of the world : : T : :--------------:--------- : : : S : : : : : : T : : : :--------------: In the diagram the edges are shown with : and -. I've shown a wrapped repeat of the world at the top right too. I want to find the direction in degrees from S to T. So the shortest distance is to the top right repeat of T. but how do I calculate the direction in degreed from S to the repeated T in the top right? I know the positions of both S and T but I suppose I need to find the position of the repeated T however there more than 1. The worlds coordinates system starts at 0,0 at the top left and 0 degrees for the direction could start at West. It seems like this shouldn’t be too hard but I haven’t been able to work out a solution. I hope somone can help? Any websites would be appreciated.

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• How can I cull non-visible isometric tiles?

  - by james

  I have a problem which I am struggling to solve. I have a large map of around 100x100 tiles which form an isometric map. The user is able to move the map around by dragging the mouse. I am trying to optimize my game only to draw the visible tiles. So far my code is like this. It appears to be ok in the x direction, but as soon as one tile goes completely above the top of the screen, the entire column disappears. I am not sure how to detect that all of the tiles in a particular column are outside the visible region. double maxTilesX = widthOfScreen/ halfTileWidth + 4; double maxTilesY = heightOfScreen/ halfTileHeight + 4; int rowStart = Math.max(0,( -xOffset / halfTileWidth)) ; int colStart = Math.max(0,( -yOffset / halfTileHeight)); rowEnd = (int) Math.min(mapSize, rowStart + maxTilesX); colEnd = (int) Math.min(mapSize, colStart + maxTilesY); EDIT - I think I have solved my problem, but perhaps not in a very efficient way. I have taken the center of the screen coordinates, determined which tile this corresponds to by converting the coordinates into cartesian format. I then update the entire box around the screen.

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• Determining explosion radius damage - Circle to Rectangle 2D

  - by Paul Renton

  One of the Cocos2D games I am working on has circular explosion effects. These explosion effects need to deal a percentage of their set maximum damage to all game characters (represented by rectangular bounding boxes as the objects in question are tanks) within the explosion radius. So this boils down to circle to rectangle collision and how far away the circle's radius is from the closest rectangle edge. I took a stab at figuring this out last night, but I believe there may be a better way. In particular, I don't know the best way to determine what percentage of damage to apply based on the distance calculated. Note : All tank objects have an anchor point of (0,0) so position is according to bottom left corner of bounding box. Explosion point is the center point of the circular explosion. TankObject * tank = (TankObject*) gameSprite; float distanceFromExplosionCenter; // IMPORTANT :: All GameCharacter have an assumed (0,0) anchor if (explosionPoint.x < tank.position.x) { // Explosion to WEST of tank if (explosionPoint.y <= tank.position.y) { //Explosion SOUTHWEST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, tank.position); } else if (explosionPoint.y >= (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)) { // Explosion NORTHWEST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x, tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)); } else { // Exp center's y is between bottom and top corner of rect distanceFromExplosionCenter = tank.position.x - explosionPoint.x; } // end if } else if (explosionPoint.x > (tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width)) { // Explosion to EAST of tank if (explosionPoint.y <= tank.position.y) { //Explosion SOUTHEAST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width, tank.position.y)); } else if (explosionPoint.y >= (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)) { // Explosion NORTHEAST distanceFromExplosionCenter = ccpDistance(explosionPoint, ccp(tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width, tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height)); } else { // Exp center's y is between bottom and top corner of rect distanceFromExplosionCenter = explosionPoint.x - (tank.position.x + tank.contentSize.width); } // end if } else { // Tank is either north or south and is inbetween left and right corner of rect if (explosionPoint.y < tank.position.y) { // Explosion is South distanceFromExplosionCenter = tank.position.y - explosionPoint.y; } else { // Explosion is North distanceFromExplosionCenter = explosionPoint.y - (tank.position.y + tank.contentSize.height); } // end if } // end outer if if (distanceFromExplosionCenter < explosionRadius) { /* Collision :: Smaller distance larger the damage */ int damageToApply; if (self.directHit) { damageToApply = self.explosionMaxDamage + self.directHitBonusDamage; [tank takeDamageAndAdjustHealthBar:damageToApply]; CCLOG(@"Explsoion-> DIRECT HIT with total damage %d", damageToApply); } else { // TODO adjust this... turning out negative for some reason... damageToApply = (1 - (distanceFromExplosionCenter/explosionRadius) * explosionMaxDamage); [tank takeDamageAndAdjustHealthBar:damageToApply]; CCLOG(@"Explosion-> Non direct hit collision with tank"); CCLOG(@"Damage to apply is %d", damageToApply); } // end if } else { CCLOG(@"Explosion-> Explosion distance is larger than explosion radius"); } // end if } // end if Questions: 1) Can this circle to rect collision algorithm be done better? Do I have too many checks? 2) How to calculate the percentage based damage? My current method generates negative numbers occasionally and I don't understand why (Maybe I need more sleep!). But, in my if statement, I ask if distance < explosion radius. When control goes through, distance/radius must be < 1 right? So 1 - that intermediate calculation should not be negative. Appreciate any help/advice!

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• importing animations in Blender, weird rotations/locations

  - by user975135

  This is for the Blender 2.6 API. There are two problems: 1. When I import a single animation frame from my animation file to Blender, all bones look fine. But when I import multiple (all of the frames), just the first one looks right, seems like newer frames are affected by older ones, so you get slightly off positions/rotations. This is true when both assigning PoseBone.matrix and PoseBone.matrix_basis. bone_index = 0 # for each frame: for frame_index in range(frame_count): # for each pose bone: add a key for bone_name in bone_names: # "bone_names" - a list of bone names I got earlier pose.bones[bone_name].matrix = animation_matrices[frame_index][bone_index] # "animation_matrices" - a nested list of matrices generated from reading a file # create the 'keys' for the Action from the poses pose.bones[bone_name].keyframe_insert('location', frame = frame_index+1) pose.bones[bone_name].keyframe_insert('rotation_euler', frame = frame_index+1) pose.bones[bone_name].keyframe_insert('scale', frame = frame_index+1) bone_index += 1 bone_index = 0 Again, it seems like previous frames are affecting latter ones, because if I import a single frame from the middle of the animation, it looks fine. 2. I can't assign armature-space animation matrices read from a file to a skeleton with hierarchy (parenting). In Blender 2.4 you could just assign them to PoseBone.poseMatrix and bones would deform perfectly whether the bones had a hierarchy or none at all. In Blender 2.6, there's PoseBone.matrix_basis and PoseBone.matrix. While matrix_basis is relative to parent bone, matrix isn't, the API says it's in object space. So it should have worked, but doesn't. So I guess we need to calculate a local space matrix from our armature-space animation matrices from the files. So I tried multiplying it ( PoseBone.matrix ) with PoseBone.parent.matrix.inverted() in both possible orders with no luck, still weird deformations.

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• Is there a way to legally create a game mod?

  - by Rodrigo Guedes

  Some questions about it: If I create a funny version of a copyrighted game and sell it (crediting the original developers) would it be considered a parody or would I need to pay royalties? If I create a game mod for my own personal use would it be legal? What if I gave it for free to a friend? Is there a general rule about it or it depends on the developer will? P.S.: I'm not talking about cloning games like this question. It's all about a game clearly based on another. Something like "GTA Gotham City" ;) EDIT: This picture that I found over the internet illustrate what I'm talking about: Just in case I was not clear: I never created a mod game. I was just wondering if it would be legally possible before trying to do it. I'm not apologizing piracy. I pay dearly for my games (you guys have no idea how expensive games are in Brazil due to taxes). Once more I say that the question is not about cloning. Cloning is copy something and try to make your version look like a brand new product. Mods are intended to make reference to one or more of its source. I'm not sure if it can be done legally (if I knew I wasn't asking) but I'm sure this question is not a duplicate. Even so, I trust in the moderators and if they close my question I will not be offended - at least I had an opportunity to explain myself and got 1 good answer (by the time I write this, maybe some more will be given later).

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• Capitalizing on JavaScript's prototypal inheritance

  - by keithjgrant

  JavaScript has a class-free object system in which objects inherit properties directly from other objects. This is really powerful, but it is unfamiliar to classically trained programmers. If you attempt to apply classical design patterns directly to JavaScript, you will be frustrated. But if you learn to work with JavaScript's prototypal nature, your efforts will be rewarded. ... It is Lisp in C's clothing. -Douglas Crockford What does this mean for a game developer working with canvas and HTML5? I've been looking over this question on useful design patterns in gaming, but prototypal inheritance is very different than classical inheritance, and there are surely differences in the best way to apply some of these common patterns. For example, classical inheritance allows us to create a moveableEntity class, and extend that with any classes that move in our game world (player, monster, bullet, etc.). Sure, you can strongarm JavaScript to work that way, but in doing so, you are kind of fighting against its nature. Is there a better approach to this sort of problem when we have prototypal inheritance at our fingertips?

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• Tessellation Texture Coordinates

  - by Stuart Martin

  Firstly some info - I'm using DirectX 11 , C++ and I'm a fairly good programmer but new to tessellation and not a master graphics programmer. I'm currently implementing a tessellation system for a terrain model, but i have reached a snag. My current system produces a terrain model from a height map complete with multiple texture coordinates, normals, binormals and tangents for rendering. Now when i was using a simple vertex and pixel shader combination everything worked perfectly but since moving to include a hull and domain shader I'm slightly confused and getting strange results. My terrain is a high detail model but the textured results are very large patches of solid colour. My current setup passes the model data into the vertex shader then through the hull into the domain and then finally into the pixel shader for use in rendering. My only thought is that in my hull shader i pass the information into the domain shader per patch and this is producing the large areas of solid colour because each patch has identical information. Lighting and normal data are also slightly off but not as visibly as texturing. Below is a copy of my hull shader that does not work correctly because i think the way that i am passing the data through is incorrect. If anyone can help me out but suggesting an alternative way to get the required data into the pixel shader? or by showing me the correct way to handle the data in the hull shader id be very thankful! cbuffer TessellationBuffer { float tessellationAmount; float3 padding; }; struct HullInputType { float3 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; float3 tangent : TANGENT; float3 binormal : BINORMAL; float2 tex2 : TEXCOORD1; }; struct ConstantOutputType { float edges[3] : SV_TessFactor; float inside : SV_InsideTessFactor; }; struct HullOutputType { float3 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float3 normal : NORMAL; float3 tangent : TANGENT; float3 binormal : BINORMAL; float2 tex2 : TEXCOORD1; float4 depthPosition : TEXCOORD2; }; ConstantOutputType ColorPatchConstantFunction(InputPatch<HullInputType, 3> inputPatch, uint patchId : SV_PrimitiveID) { ConstantOutputType output; output.edges[0] = tessellationAmount; output.edges[1] = tessellationAmount; output.edges[2] = tessellationAmount; output.inside = tessellationAmount; return output; } [domain("tri")] [partitioning("integer")] [outputtopology("triangle_cw")] [outputcontrolpoints(3)] [patchconstantfunc("ColorPatchConstantFunction")] HullOutputType ColorHullShader(InputPatch<HullInputType, 3> patch, uint pointId : SV_OutputControlPointID, uint patchId : SV_PrimitiveID) { HullOutputType output; output.position = patch[pointId].position; output.tex = patch[pointId].tex; output.tex2 = patch[pointId].tex2; output.normal = patch[pointId].normal; output.tangent = patch[pointId].tangent; output.binormal = patch[pointId].binormal; return output; } Edited to include the domain shader:- [domain("tri")] PixelInputType ColorDomainShader(ConstantOutputType input, float3 uvwCoord : SV_DomainLocation, const OutputPatch<HullOutputType, 3> patch) { float3 vertexPosition; PixelInputType output; // Determine the position of the new vertex. vertexPosition = uvwCoord.x * patch[0].position + uvwCoord.y * patch[1].position + uvwCoord.z * patch[2].position; output.position = mul(float4(vertexPosition, 1.0f), worldMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, viewMatrix); output.position = mul(output.position, projectionMatrix); output.depthPosition = output.position; output.tex = patch[0].tex; output.tex2 = patch[0].tex2; output.normal = patch[0].normal; output.tangent = patch[0].tangent; output.binormal = patch[0].binormal; return output; }

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• Painting with pixel shaders

  - by Gustavo Maciel

  I have an almost full understanding of how 2D Lighting works, saw this post and was tempted to try implementing this in HLSL. I planned to paint each of the layers with shaders, and then, combine them just drawing one on top of another, or just pass the 3 textures to the shader and getting a better way to combine them. Working almost as planned, but I got a little question in the matter. I'm drawing each layer this way: GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(lighting); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); //... Setup shader SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.None, RasterizerState.CullNone, lightingShader); SpriteBatch.Draw(texture, fullscreen, Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(darkMask); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); //... Setup shader SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.LinearClamp, DepthStencilState.None, RasterizerState.CullNone, darkMaskShader); SpriteBatch.Draw(texture, fullscreen, Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); Where lightingShader and darkMaskShader are shaders that, with parameters (view and proj matrices, light pos, color and range, etc) generate a texture meant to be that layer. It works fine, but I'm not sure if drawing a transparent quad on top of a transparent render target is the best way of doing it. Because I actually just need the position and params. Concluding: Can I paint a texture with shaders without having to clear it and then draw a transparent texture on top of it?

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• How do I get my character to move after adding to JFrame?

  - by A.K.

  So this is kind of a follow up on my other JPanel question that got resolved by playing around with the Layout... Now my MouseListener allows me to add a new Board(); object from its class, which is the actual game map and animator itself. But since my Board() takes Key Events from a Player Object inside the Board Class, I'm not sure if they are being started. Here's my Frame Class, where SideScroller S is the player object: package OurPackage; //Made By A.K. 5/24/12 //Contains Frame. import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.Button; import java.awt.CardLayout; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Container; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.GridBagLayout; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.Rectangle; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter; import java.awt.event.MouseEvent; import java.awt.event.MouseListener; import javax.swing.*; import javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicOptionPaneUI.ButtonActionListener; public class Frame implements MouseListener { public static boolean StartGame = false; JFrame frm = new JFrame("Action-Packed Jack"); ImageIcon img = new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/Images/ActionJackTitle.png")); ImageIcon StartImg = new ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/Images/JackStart.png")); public Image Title; JLabel TitleL = new JLabel(img); public JPanel TitlePane = new JPanel(); public JPanel BoardPane = new JPanel(); JPanel cards; JButton StartB = new JButton(StartImg); Board nBoard = new Board(); static Sound nSound; public Frame() { frm.setLayout(new GridBagLayout()); cards = new JPanel(new CardLayout()); nSound = new Sound("/Sounds/BunchaJazz.wav"); TitleL.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(970, 420)); frm.add(TitleL); frm.add(cards); cards.setSize(new Dimension(150, 45)); cards.setLayout(new GridBagLayout ()); cards.add(StartB); StartB.addMouseListener(this); StartB.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(150, 45)); frm.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frm.setSize(1200, 420); frm.setVisible(true); frm.setResizable(false); frm.setLocationRelativeTo(null); frm.pack(); } public static void main(String[] args) { SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { new Frame(); } }); } public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) { nSound.play(); StartB.setContentAreaFilled(false); cards.remove(StartB); frm.remove(TitleL); frm.remove(cards); frm.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 1)); frm.add(nBoard); //Add Game "Tiles" Or Content. x = 1200 nBoard.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(1200, 420)); cards.revalidate(); frm.validate(); } @Override public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mouseExited(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mousePressed(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } }

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• database design help for game / user levels / progress

  - by sprugman

  Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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• Where can I find free or buy "next-gen" 3D Assets?

  - by Valmond

  Usually I buy 3D Assets from sites like turbosquid.com or similar. My problem is that I have lately implemented glow, normal maps, specular (and specular power) maps and reflection maps and I can't find any models that use those techniques. So where can I find / buy "next gen" assets (at least models/items with a normal map)? I have checked for similar posts but those I found are about either free only or 2D or 'ordinary' 3D so I hope this is not a duplicate.

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• How is this lighting effect done?

  - by Mike

  This is the most beautiful 2d lighting I have ever seen. Does anyone know how he went about doing it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIQRhOFkvQY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnTYXPuecMs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhC_jVM8IYU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aw5BdjWqqU Or download it here: http://grantkot.com/PollutedPlanet/publish.htm edit: I am not asking how the particles are simulated; I don't care about the physics.

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• music for an arcade game?

  - by user717572

  I'm thinking about music for my brick breaker game, but I don't know how to choose any. If I'd make a loop from a few seconds, I think it would get annoying very quickly. I also found some longer length tracks (about 2 minutes), but when this is over, it's going to be repeated anyway, just like when you'd select a new level, you'd have to listen to the same beginning of the song again. I can't put an hour of music in my application, so what would you recommend I'd do for the music?

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• Triangle Strips and Tangent Space Normal Mapping

  - by Koarl

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

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• Why does my sprite glitch when moving? [closed]

  - by rphello101

  Using Slick 2D/Java, I'm using the mouse to rotate a sprite and WASD to move it (A and D are used to strafe). I finally got the directional keys and rotation to work in sync, but I'm having problems with sporadic movement. It seems that the move speed is not always set to the value I have it at. Sometimes the sprite with just shoot across the screen. Furthermore, it seems that at 0 degrees, when the left key is pressed, the sprite moves backwards, not to the left. There also seems to be quite a bit of glitching when two keys are pressed, like left and up. Anyone see anything obvious? Here is the rotational code: int mX = Mouse.getX(); int mY = HEIGHT - Mouse.getY(); int pX = sprite.x+sprite.image.getWidth()/2; int pY = sprite.y+sprite.image.getHeight()/2; double mAng; if(mX!=pX){ mAng = Math.toDegrees(Math.atan2(mY - pY, mX - pX)); if(mAng==0 && mX<=pX) mAng=180; } else{ if(mY>pY) mAng=90; else mAng=270; } sprite.angle = mAng; sprite.image.setRotation((float) mAng); Movement code: Input input = gc.getInput(); Vector2f direction = new Vector2f(); Vector2f velocity = new Vector2f(); Vector2f left; Vector2f right; direction.x = (float) Math.cos(Math.toRadians(sprite.angle)); direction.y = (float) Math.sin(Math.toRadians(sprite.angle)); if(direction.length()>0) direction = direction.normalise(); left = new Vector2f(-direction.y, direction.x); right = new Vector2f(direction.y, -direction.x); velocity.x = (float) (direction.x * sprite.moveSpeed); velocity.y = (float) (direction.y * sprite.moveSpeed); if(input.isKeyDown(sprite.up)){ sprite.x += velocity.x*delta; sprite.y += velocity.y*delta; }if (input.isKeyDown(sprite.down)){ sprite.x -= velocity.x*delta; sprite.y -= velocity.y*delta; }if (input.isKeyDown(sprite.left)){ sprite.x += left.x * sprite.moveSpeed * delta; sprite.y += left.y * sprite.moveSpeed * delta; }if (input.isKeyDown(sprite.right)){ sprite.x += right.x * sprite.moveSpeed * delta; sprite.y += right.y * sprite.moveSpeed * delta; }

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• Scaling Skeletal values to be able to reach objects on the screen

  - by Sweta Dwivedi

  I have created a game using Kinect + XNA and the game runs on full screen mode.. However when i try to touch or reach a certain area on the screen using hand.. I cant reach it.. I will already be outside the range of the sensor trying to touch the object on the game screen.. Is there anyway I can scale the skeletal values so that the users can easily touch objects on the screen without having to stretch or bend too much?

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• LWJGL - OpenGL - Texture shading

  - by Trixmix

  I want to use LWJGL to create a shader that all it does is change the color of the given texture. For example I tell it to draw the letter A using a sprite sheet then I can tell the shader to draw the letter in a certain color. How would you do something like this without needed to create different colored letter sprite sheets? Task for the shader: Simply change all pixels to a certain color in the texture. Input: Color , texture. Output: it draws onto the screen the new colored texture. How do i accomplish such a thing?

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• Robust line of sight test on the inside of a polygon with tolerance

  - by David Gouveia

  Foreword This is a followup to this question and the main problem I'm trying to solve. My current solution is an hack which involves inflating the polygon, and doing most calculations on the inflated polygon instead. My goal is to remove this step completely, and correctly solve the problem with calculations only. Problem Given a concave polygon and treating all of its edges as if they were walls in a level, determine whether two points A and B are in line of sight of each other, while accounting for some degree of floating point errors. I'm currently basing my solution on a series of line-segment interection tests. In other words: If any of the end points are outside the polygon, they are not in line of sight. If both end points are inside the polygon, and the line segment from A to B crosses any of the edges from the polygon, then they are not in line of sight. If both end points are inside the polygon, and the line segment from A to B does not cross any of the edges from the polygon, then they are in line of sight. But the problem is dealing correctly with all the edge cases. In particular, it must be able to deal with all the situations depicted below, where red lines are examples that should be rejected, and green lines are examples that should be accepted. I probably missed a few other situations, such as when the line segment from A to B is colinear with an edge, but one of the end points is outside the polygon. One point of particular interest is the difference between 1 and 9. In both cases, both end points are vertices of the polygon, and there are no edges being intersected, but 1 should be rejected while 9 should be accepted. How to distinguish these two? I could check some middle point within the segment to see if it falls inside or not, but it's easy to come up with situations in which it would fail. Point 7 was also pretty tricky and I had to to treat it as a special case, which checks if two points are adjacent vertices of the polygon directly. But there are also other chances of line segments being col linear with the edges of the polygon, and I'm still not entirely sure how I should handle those cases. Is there any well known solution to this problem?

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• Ouya / Android : button mapping bitwise

  - by scorvi

  I am programming a game with the Gameplay3d Engine. But the Android site has no gamepad support and that is what I need to port my game to Ouya. So I implemented a simple gamepad support and it supports 2 gamepads. So my problem is that I put the button stats in a float array for every gamepad. But the Gameplay3d engine saves their stats in a unsigned int _buttons variable. It is set with bitwise operations and I have no clue how to translate my array to this.

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