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• Dynamic real-time pathfinding with C# and unity

  - by Yakri

  A buddy and I are working on a simple 2D top down arena combat game similar to OpenGLAD (grew up on ye olde GLADIATOR). Thing is, we want to make some substantial deviation from our source of inspiration, including completely destructible/changeable terrain. Like rivers that can be frozen, walls which can be knocked down, etc. As well as letting players and NPC's build new terrain objects, some of which cannot be moved through or seen through. So I'm tasked with creating the AI, starting with pathfinding. Because of all the changeable terrain, we need something that can check to see if the player/other NPC's are in line of sight, and which can then check to find current paths around existing terrain, without getting completely confused by new terrain popping up, and old terrain vanishing, and even capable of breaking through terrain. A lot of that will just be filling in the framework of the feature, but I really just don't know where to start. What I'm really looking for are relevant websites, books, articles, or keywords to google. I just can't quite find a direction to start in, because most pathfinding types we've googled up just won't give us even the most basic level of robustness we need.

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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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• How can I get textures on edge of walls like in Super Metroid and Aquaria?

  - by meds

  Games like Super Metroid and Aquaria present the terrain with the other facing parts having rocks and stuff while deeper behind them (i.e. underground) there's different detail or just black. I would like to do something similar using polygons. Terrain is created in my current level as a set of overlapping square boxes. I'm not sure if this rendering method will work such a system for creating terrain but if anyone has ideas I'd love to hear them. Otherwise I'd like to know how I should re-write the terrain rendering system so it actually works to draw terrain in this manner...

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• 3D Sphereical Terrain with an 8 mesh sphere. The edges of the mesh are obvioulsy seen and I'm not su

  - by Justin808

  Hi :) I'm working in Unity3D, but my issue is with 3D meshes. I'm hoping someone here can help or point me in the right direction. I have 2 version of code, http://www.pasteit4me.com/695002 (old) and http://www.pasteit4me.com/690003 (new). The old code, makes a single mesh sphere and creates a terrain on it. The new code makes an 8 mesh sphere and creates a terrain on it. On the new version the edges of the meshes are obviously seen and I'm not sure why. It looks like the edges are adjusted no much, almost 2-3 times more than they should have been. GenerateB() in the old code and Generate() in the new code creates the sphere. MakeTerrain() in both create the terrain. If I dont run the MakeTerrain() function the new sphere looks like a solid mesh. I'm not sure where to start looking in the MakeTerrain() function in the new code to solve the issue :-/ Any ideas? An image of the issue is at http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/3784/screenshot20100611at850.png.

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• Unity scaling instantiated GameObject at Start() doesn't "keep"

  - by Shivan Dragon

  I have a very simple scenario: A box-like Prefab which is imported from Blender automatically (I have the .blend file in the Assets folder). A script that has two public GameObject fields. In one I place the above prefab, and in the other I place a terrain object (which I've created in Unity's graphical view): public Collider terrain; public GameObject aStarCellHighlightPrefab; This script is attached to the camera. The idea is to have the Blender prefab instantiated, have the terrain set as its parent, and then scale said prefab instance up. I first did it like this, in the Start() method: void Start () { cursorPositionOnTerrain = new RaycastHit(); aStarCellHighlight = (GameObject)Instantiate(aStarCellHighlightPrefab, new Vector3(300,300,300), terrain.transform.rotation); aStarCellHighlight.name = "cellHighlight"; aStarCellHighlight.transform.parent = terrain.transform; aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); } and first thought it didn't work. However later I noticed that it did in fact work, in the sense where the scale was applied right at the start, but then right after the prefab instance came back to its initial scale. Putting the scale code in the Update() methods fixes it in the sense where now it stays scaled all the time: void Update () { aStarCellHighlight.transform.localScale = new Vector3(100,100,100); //... } However I've noticed that when I run this code, the object is first displayed without the scale being applied, and it takes about 5-10 seconds for the scale to happen. During this time everything works fine (like input and logging, etc). The scene is very simple, it's not like it has a lot of stuff to load or anything (there's a Ray cast from the camera on to the terrain, but that seems to happen without such delays). My (2 part) question is: Why doesn't it take the scale transform when I do it at the beginning in the Start() method. Why do I have to keep scaling it in the Update() method? Why does it take so long for the scale to "apply/show up".

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• IE 10 dépasse IE 9 sur le marché des navigateurs, Firefox stabilisé, Chrome gagne timidement du terrain

  IE 10 dépasse IE 9 sur le marché des navigateurs, Firefox stabilisé, Chrome gagne timidement du terrainDans son rapport, l'entreprise analytique web Net Applications révèle qu'Internet Explorer continue de dominer largement le marché des navigateurs. Désormais Internet Explorer représente 56,15 % des navigateurs utilisés, loin devant Firefox et ses 19,15 %, Chrome (17,17 %), Safari (5,5 %) ou Opera (1,6 %). Une bonne nouvelle pour Microsoft dont le navigateur détenait 54 % des parts de marché en juin 2012. Dans le détail, on observe une percée significative d'IE 10 qui a gagné 4,26 % et représente...

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• openSUSE 11.4 est disponible, une distribution « tout terrain » riche en outils de développement et en EDI open-sources

  openSUSE 11.4 est disponible Avec un ensemble d'EDI open-sources et de technologies de développement Mise à jour du 14/03/11, par Hinault Romaric openSUSE 11.4 est disponible. La distribution Linux s'appuie sur le kernel 2.6.38, propose un démarrage plus rapide du système, améliore la gestion et la reconnaissance des périphériques ainsi que la gestion des logiciels et la configuration du système. L'environnement de bureau intègre par défaut KDE Plasma qui se décline en version Desktop et Netbook (avec de meilleures performances dans la gestion de l'activité et une interface plus ergonomique). open...

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• What suggestions for a 3d game engine to support a huge terrain?

  - by codist

  There are a lot of 3d game engines around, does anyone with experience with them have advice on which one would likely be able to handle these (arbitrary) requirements? opengl mac/pc 1000x1000km terrain 1000 towns varying in size from 10 to 1000 buildings 128 people in any one location MMO type networking (no solo play) physics engine including airfoil c++ with optional scripting

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• Actionscript 3.0 - Enemies do not move right in my platformer game

  - by Christian Basar

  I am making a side-scrolling platformer game in Flash (Actionscript 3.0). I have made lots of progress lately, but I have come across a new problem. I will give some background first. My game level's terrain (or 'floor') is referenced by a MovieClip variable called 'floor.' My desire is to have the Player and enemy characters walk along the terrain. I have gotten the Player character to move on the terrain just fine; he walks up/down hills and falls whenever there is no ground beneath him. Here is the code I created to allow the Player to follow the terrain correctly. Much more code is used to control the Player, but only this code deals with the Player character's following of the terrain and gravity. // If the Player's not on the ground (not touching the 'floor' MovieClip)... if (!onGround) { // Disable ducking downKeyPressed = false; // Increase the Player's 'y' position by his 'y' velocity player.y += playerYVel; } // Increase the 'playerYVel' variable so that the Player will fall // progressively faster down the screen. This code technically // runs "all the time" but in reality it only affects the player // when he's off the ground. playerYVel += gravity; // Give the Player a terminal velocity of 15 px/frame if (playerYVel > 15) { playerYVel = 15; } // If the Player has not hit the 'floor,' increase his falling //speed if (! floor.hitTestPoint(player.x, player.y, true)) { player.y += playerYVel; // The Player is not on the ground when he's not touching it onGround = false; } Since getting this code to work for the Player, I have created a 'SkullDemon' class, which is one of the planned enemies for my game. I want the 'SkullDemon' objects to move along the terrain like the Player does. With lots of great help, I have already coded the EventListeners, etc. necessary for the 'SkullDemons' to move. Unfortunately, I am having trouble getting them to move along the terrain. In fact, they do not touch the terrain at all; they move along the top of the boundary of the 'floor' MovieClip! I had a simple text diagram showing what I mean, but unfortunately Stackoverflow does not format it correctly. I hope my problem is clear from my description. Strangely enough, my code for the Player's movement and the 'SkullDemon's' movement is almost exactly the same, yet the 'SkullDemons' do not move like the Player does. Here is my code for the SkullDemon movement: // Move all of the Skull Demons using this method protected function moveSkullDemons():void { // Go through the whole 'skullDemonContainer' for (var skullDi:int = 0; skullDi < skullDemonContainer.numChildren; skullDi++) { // Set the SkullDemon 'instance' variable to equal the current SkullDemon skullDIns = SkullDemon(skullDemonContainer.getChildAt(skullDi)); // For now, just move the Skull Demons left at 5 units per second skullDIns.x -= 5; // If the Skull Demon has not hit the 'floor,' increase his falling //speed if (! floor.hitTestPoint(skullDIns.x, skullDIns.y, true)) { // Increase the Skull Demon's 'y' position by his 'y' velocity skullDIns.y += skullDIns.sdYVel; // The Skull Demon is not on the ground when he's not touching it skullDIns.sdOnGround = false; } // Increase the 'sdYVel' variable so that the Skull Demon will fall // progressively faster down the screen. This code technically // runs "all the time" but in reality it only affects the Skull Demon // when he's off the ground. if (! skullDIns.sdOnGround) { skullDIns.sdYVel += skullDIns.sdGravity; // Give the Skull Demon a terminal velocity of 15 px/frame if (skullDIns.sdYVel > 15) { skullDIns.sdYVel = 15; } } // What happens when the Skull Demon lands on the ground after a fall? // The Skull Demon is only on the ground ('onGround == true') when // the ground is touching the Skull Demon MovieClip's origin point, // which is at the Skull Demon's bottom centre for (var i:int = 0; i < 10; i++) { // The Skull Demon is only on the ground ('onGround == true') when // the ground is touching the Skull Demon MovieClip's origin point, // which is at the Skull Demon's bottom centre if (floor.hitTestPoint(skullDIns.x, skullDIns.y, true)) { skullDIns.y = skullDIns.y; // Set the Skull Demon's y-axis speed to 0 skullDIns.sdYVel = 0; // The Skull Demon is on the ground again skullDIns.sdOnGround = true; } } } } // End of 'moveSkullDemons()' function It is almost like the 'SkullDemons' are interacting with the 'floor' MovieClip using the hitTestObject() function, and not the hitTestPoint() function which is what I want, and which works for the Player character. I am confused about this problem and would appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks!

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• How do I draw a texture to a MSTerrain object?

  - by Brad

  I'm using Farseer to make a game in XNA and I can't seem to figure this out. I've decided to use MSTerrain for making my game's terrain because I wanted destructible terrain and MSTerrain seemed like the best bet. Unfortunately, I'm stumped on how to actually show the terrain. When I generate the terrain it's visible in debug view, but MSTerrain does not have a Draw method, so I'm wondering how it is supposed to be drawn to the screen? Is it worth pursuing? I'm starting to think that MSTerrain is more trouble than it's worth, is there another better way to do this with bodies?

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• How do I generate a random curve for landscape (like Worms)? [closed]

  - by Stas

  Possible Duplicate: How do I generate terrain like that of Scorched Earth? How can I generate Worms-style terrain? I must build random curve line for the 2D Game on the BitMap (like in Worms, from the side). Teacher said that I should do it using Terrain Generation through recourcy (I work in Delphi 7). I understand the main principle, but I don't know how to introduce it as code. All measurements according to the screen resolution.

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• Why does my 3D model not translate the way I expect? [closed]

  - by ChocoMan

  In my first image, my model displays correctly: But when I move the model's position along the Z-axis (forward) I get this, yet the Y-axis doesnt change. An if I keep going, the model disappears into the ground: Any suggestions as to how I can get the model to translate properly visually? Here is how Im calling the model and the terrain in draw(): cameraPosition = new Vector3(camX, camY, camZ); // Copy any parent transforms. Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[mShockwave.Bones.Count]; mShockwave.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix[] ttransforms = new Matrix[terrain.Bones.Count]; terrain.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(ttransforms); // Draw the model. A model can have multiple meshes, so loop. foreach (ModelMesh mesh in mShockwave.Meshes) { // This is where the mesh orientation is set, as well // as our camera and projection. foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(modelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, modelPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); mesh.Draw(); } //Terrain test foreach (ModelMesh meshT in terrain.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in meshT.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = ttransforms[meshT.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(0) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(terrainPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, terrainPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); meshT.Draw(); DrawText(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } I'm suspecting that there may be something wrong with how I'm handling my camera. The model rotates fine on its Y-axis.

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• 3D Model not translating correctly (visually)

  - by ChocoMan

  In my first image, my model displays correctly: But when I move the model's position along the Z-axis (forward) I get this, yet the Y-axis doesnt change. An if I keep going, the model disappears into the ground: Any suggestions as to how I can get the model to translate properly visually? Here is how Im calling the model and the terrain in draw(): cameraPosition = new Vector3(camX, camY, camZ); // Copy any parent transforms. Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[mShockwave.Bones.Count]; mShockwave.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix[] ttransforms = new Matrix[terrain.Bones.Count]; terrain.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(ttransforms); // Draw the model. A model can have multiple meshes, so loop. foreach (ModelMesh mesh in mShockwave.Meshes) { // This is where the mesh orientation is set, as well // as our camera and projection. foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(modelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, modelPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); mesh.Draw(); } //Terrain test foreach (ModelMesh meshT in terrain.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in meshT.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.PreferPerPixelLighting = true; effect.World = ttransforms[meshT.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(0) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(terrainPosition); // Looking at the model (picture shouldnt change other than rotation) effect.View = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, terrainPosition, Vector3.Up); effect.Projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView( MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); effect.TextureEnabled = true; } // Draw the mesh, using the effects set above. prepare3d(); meshT.Draw(); DrawText(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } Im suspecting that there may be something wrong with how I'm handling my camera. The model rotates fine on its Y-axis.

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• What kind of physics to choose for our arcade 3D MMO?

  - by Nick

  We're creating an action MMO using Three.js (WebGL) with an arcadish feel, and implementing physics for it has been a pain in the butt. Our game has a terrain where the character will walk on, and in the future 3D objects (a house, a tree, etc) that will have collisions. In terms of complexity, the physics engine should be like World of Warcraft. We don't need friction, bouncing behaviour or anything more complex like joints, etc. Just gravity. I have managed to implement terrain physics so far by casting a ray downwards, but it does not take into account possible 3D objects. Note that these 3D objects need to have convex collisions, so our artists create a 3D house and the player can walk inside but can't walk through the walls. How do I implement proper collision detection with 3D objects like in World of Warcraft? Do I need an advanced physics engine? I read about Physijs which looks cool, but I fear that it may be overkill to implement that for our game. Also, how does WoW do it? Do they have a separate raycasting system for the terrain? Or do they treat the terrain like any other convex mesh? A screenshot of our game so far:

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• Cheap ways to do scaling ops in shader?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  I've got an extensive world terrain that uses vec3 for the vertex position attribute. That's good, because the terrain has endless gradations due to the use of floating point. But I'm thinking about how to reduce the amount of data uploaded to the GPU. For my terrain, which uses discrete / grid-based vertex positions in x and z, it's pretty clear that I can replace my vec3s (floats, really) with shorts, halving the per-vertex position attribute cost from 12 bytes each to 6 bytes. Considering I've got little enough other vertex data, and an enormous amount of terrain data to push into the world, it's a major gain. Currently in my code, one unit in GLSL shaders is equal to 1m in the world. I like that scale. If I move over to using shorts, though, I won't be able to use the same scale, as I would then have a very blocky world where every step in height is an entire metre. So I see these potential solutions to scale the positional data correctly once it arrives at the vertex shader stage: Use 10:1 scaling, i.e. 1 short unit = 1 decimetre in CPU-side code. Do a division by 10 in the vertex shader to scale incoming decimetre values back to metres. Arbirary (non-PoT) divisions tend to be slow, however. Use (some-power-of-two):1 scaling (eg. 8:1), which enables the use of a bitshift (eg. val >> 3) to do the division... not sure how performant this is in shaders, though. Not as intuitive to read values, but possibly quite a bit faster than div by a non-PoT value. Use a texture as lookup table. I've heard that this is really fast. Or whatever solutions others can offer to achieve the same results -- minimal vertex data with sensible scaling.

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• How to eliminate screen jitter in Flash game?

  - by Huang F. Lei

  We made a flash game with a big screen size(1000x600), and the terrain graphic will jitter while the screen scrolling(that's, camera moving with player) continuously. What's the root cause? Or if you know how to eliminate this problem, please tell me. Any help is appreciated. UPDATE: The map's size is more bigger than screen, e.g 6000x1200. And the map has more than one layer, generally it has 3 layers. Terrain is composed by tiles. And FPS is 24. If the FPS is set to 60, things will be better. But any way, it should work well at 24 FPS. I'm not sure if it is a natural problem of flash player, because some times a terrain object(e.g a house) look like a little bit distorted.

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• Tiny Wings - Placing items

  - by Federico

  I'm currently developing a Flash game like 'Tiny Wings'. I have a lot of work done, but i'm currently working on placing the items ( coins and obstacles ) on the terrain. My player it is moving on a auto-generated terrain (based on Emanuele Feronato's tutorials) so every time the player's x position is greater than (screenWidth + x) another hill is generated and so on. I'm currently having problems placing the items in a correct angle and put 5 or more items together on a hill. Could you please help me with this? Thanks, Regards. PS: This is the URL to the Emanuele Feronato post and the code to make the hills http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2011/10/04/create-a-terrain-like-the-one-in-tiny-wings-with-flash-and-box2d-%E2%80%93-adding-more-bumps/

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• Are there any other ways to iterate through the attributes of a custom class, excluding the in-built ones?

  - by Ricardo Altamirano

  Is there another way to iterate through only the attributes of a custom class that are not in-built (e.g. __dict__, __module__, etc.)? For example, in this code: class Terrain: WATER = -1 GRASS = 0 HILL = 1 MOUNTAIN = 2 I can iterate through all of these attributes like this: for key, value in Terrain.__dict__.items(): print("{: <11}".format(key), " --> ", value) which outputs: MOUNTAIN --> 2 __module__ --> __main__ WATER --> -1 HILL --> 1 __dict__ --> <attribute '__dict__' of 'Terrain' objects> GRASS --> 0 __weakref__ --> <attribute '__weakref__' of 'Terrain' objects> __doc__ --> None If I just want the integer arguments (a rudimentary version of an enumerated type), I can use this: for key, value in Terrain.__dict__.items(): if type(value) is int: # type(value) == int print("{: <11}".format(key), " --> ", value) this gives the expected result: MOUNTAIN --> 2 WATER --> -1 HILL --> 1 GRASS --> 0 Is it possible to iterate through only the non-in-built attributes of a custom class independent of type, e.g. if the attributes are not all integral. Presumably I could expand the conditional to include more types, but I want to know if there are other ways I'm missing.

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• techniques for an AI for a highly cramped turn-based tactics game

  - by Adam M.

  I'm trying to write an AI for a tactics game in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics or Vandal Hearts. I can't change the game rules in any way, only upgrade the AI. I have experience programming AI for classic board games (basically minimax and its variants), but I think the branching factor is too great for the approach to be reasonable here. I'll describe the game and some current AI flaws that I'd like to fix. I'd like to hear ideas for applicable techniques. I'm a decent enough programmer, so I only need the ideas, not an implementation (though that's always appreciated). I'd rather not expend effort chasing (too many) dead ends, so although speculation and brainstorming are good and probably helpful, I'd prefer to hear from somebody with actual experience solving this kind of problem. For those who know it, the game is the land battle mini-game in Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004) and you can skim/skip the next two paragraphs. For those who don't, here's briefly how it works. The battle is turn-based and takes place on a 16x16 grid. There are three terrain types: clear (no hindrance), forest (hinders movement, ranged attacks, and sight), and rock (impassible, but does not hinder attacks or sight). The map is randomly generated with roughly equal amounts of each type of terrain. Because there are many rock and forest tiles, movement is typically very cramped. This is tactically important. The terrain is not flat; higher terrain gives minor bonuses. The terrain is known to both sides. The player is always the attacker and the AI is always the defender, so it's perfectly valid for the AI to set up a defensive position and just wait. The player wins by killing all defenders or by getting a unit to the city gates (a tile on the other side of the map). There are very few units on each side, usually 4-8. Because of this, it's crucial not to take damage without gaining some advantage from it. Units can take multiple actions per turn. All units on one side move before any units on the other side. Order of execution is important, and interleaving of actions between units is often useful. Units have melee and ranged attacks. Melee attacks vary widely in strength; ranged attacks have the same strength but vary in range. The main challenges I face are these: Lots of useful move combinations start with a "useless" move that gains no immediate advantage, or even loses advantage, in order to set up a powerful flank attack in the future. And, since the player units are stronger and have longer range, the AI pretty much always has to take some losses before they can start to gain kills. The AI must be able to look ahead to distinguish between sacrificial actions that provide a future benefit and those that don't. Because the terrain is so cramped, most of the tactics come down to achieving good positioning with multiple units that work together to defend an area. For instance, two defenders can often dominate a narrow pass by positioning themselves so an enemy unit attempting to pass must expose itself to a flank attack. But one defender in the same pass would be useless, and three units can defend a slightly larger pass. Etc. The AI should be able to figure out where the player must go to reach the city gates and how to best position its few units to cover the approaches, shifting, splitting, or combining them appropriately as the player moves. Because flank attacks are extremely deadly (and engineering flank attacks is key to the player strategy), the AI should be competent at moving its units so that they cover each other's flanks unless the sacrifice of a unit would give a substantial benefit. They should also be able to force flank attacks on players, for instance by threatening a unit from two different directions such that responding to one threat exposes the flank to the other. The AI should attack if possible, but sometimes there are no good ways to approach the player's position. In that case, the AI should be able to recognize this and set up a defensive position of its own. But the AI shouldn't be vulnerable to a trivial exploit where the player repeatedly opens and closes a hole in his defense and shoots at the AI as it approaches and retreats. That is, the AI should ideally be able to recognize that the player is capable of establishing a solid defense of an area, even if the defense is not currently in place. (I suppose if a good unit allocation algorithm existed, as needed for the second bullet point, the AI could run it on the player units to see where they could defend.) Because it's important to choose a good order of action and interleave actions between units, it's not as simple as just finding the best move for each unit in turn. All of these can be accomplished with a minimax search in theory, but the search space is too large, so specialized techniques are needed. I thought about techniques such as influence mapping, but I don't see how to use the technique to great effect. I thought about assigning goals to the units. This can help them work together in some limited way, and the problem of "how do I accomplish this goal?" is easier to solve than "how do I win this battle?", but assigning good goals is a hard problem in itself, because it requires knowing whether the goal is achievable and whether it's a good use of resources. So, does anyone have specific ideas for techniques that can help cleverize this AI? Update: I found a related question on Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3133273/ai-for-a-final-fantasy-tactics-like-game The selected answer gives a decent approach to choosing between alternative actions, but it doesn't seem to have much ability to look into the future and discern beneficial sacrifices from wasteful ones. It also focuses on a single unit at a time and it's not clear how it could be extended to support cooperation between units in defending or attacking.

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• Infinite detail inside Perlin noise procedural mapping

  - by Dave Jellison

  I am very new to game development but I was able to scour the internet to figure out Perlin noise enough to implement a very simple 2D tile infinite procedural world. Here's the question and it's more conceptual than code-based in answer, I think. I understand the concept of "I plug in (x, y) and get back from Perlin noise p" (I'll call it p). P will always be the same value for the same (x, y) (as long as the Perlin algorithm parameters haven't changed, like altering number of octaves, et cetera). What I want to do is be able to zoom into a square and be able to generate smaller squares inside of the already generated overhead tile of terrain. Let's say I have a jungle tile for overhead terrain but I want to zoom in and maybe see a small river tile that would only be a creek and not large enough to be a full "big tile" of water in the overhead. Of course, I want the same net effect as a Perlin equation inside a Perlin equation if that makes sense? (aka. I want two people playing the game with the same settings to get the same terrain and details every time). I can conceptually wrap my head around the large tile being based on an "zoomed out" coordinate leaving enough room to drill into but this approach doesn't make sense in my head (maybe I'm wrong). I'm guessing with this approach my overhead terrain would lose all of the cohesiveness delivered by the Perlin. Imagine I calculate (0, 0) as overhead tile 1 and then to the east of that I plug in (50, 0). OK, great, I now have 49 pixels of detail I could then "drill down" into. The issue I have in my head with this approach (without attempting it) is that there's no guarantee from my Perlin noise that (0,0) would be a good neighbor to (50,0) as they could have wildly different "elevations" or p/resultant values returning from the Perlin equation when I generate the overhead map. I think I can conceive of using the Perlin noise for the overhead tile to then reuse the p value as a seed for the "detail" level of noise once I zoom in. That would ensure my detail Perlin is always the same configuration for (0,0), (1,0), etc. ad nauseam but I'm not sure if there are better approaches out there or if this is a sound approach at all.

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• Best way to determine surface normal for a group of pixels?

  - by Paul Renton

  One of my current endeavors is creating a 2D destructible terrain engine for iOS Cocos2D (See https://github.com/crebstar/PWNDestructibleTerrain ). It is in an infant stages no doubt, but I have made significant progress since starting a couple weeks ago. However, I have run into a bit of a performance road block with calculating surface normals. Note: For my destructible terrain engine, an alpha of 0 is considered to not be solid ground. The method posted below works just great given small rectangles, such as n < 30. Anything above 30 causes a dip in the frame rate. If you approach 100x100 then you might as well read a book while the sprite attempts to traverse the terrain. At the moment this is the best I can come up with for altering the angle on a sprite as it roams across terrain (to get the angle for a sprite's orientation just take dot product of 100 * normal * (1,0) vector). -(CGPoint)getAverageSurfaceNormalAt:(CGPoint)pt withRect:(CGRect)area { float avgX = 0; float avgY = 0; ccColor4B color = ccc4(0, 0, 0, 0); CGPoint normal; float len; for (int w = area.size.width; w >= -area.size.width; w--) { for (int h = area.size.height; h >= -area.size.height; h--) { CGPoint pixPt = ccp(w + pt.x, h + pt.y); if ([self pixelAt:pixPt colorCache:&color]) { if (color.a != 0) { avgX -= w; avgY -= h; } // end inner if } // end outer if } // end inner for } // end outer for len = sqrtf(avgX * avgX + avgY * avgY); if (len == 0) { normal = ccp(avgX, avgY); } else { normal = ccp(avgX/len, avgY/len); } // end if return normal; } // end get My problem is I have sprites that require larger rectangles in order for their movement to look realistic. I considered doing a cache of all surface normals, but this lead to issues of knowing when to recalculate the surface normals and these calculations also being quite expensive (also how large should the blocks be?). Another smaller issue is I don't know how to properly treat the case when length is = 0. So I am stuck... Any advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! Is my method the best possible one? Or should I rethink the algorithm? I am new to game development and always looking to learn new tips and tricks.

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• Rendering large and high poly meshes

  - by Aurus

  Consider an huge terrain that has a lot polygons, to render this terrain I thought of following techniques: Using height-map instead of raw meshes: Yes, but I want to create a lot of caves and stuff that simply wont work with height-maps. Using voxels: Yes, but I think that this would be to much since I don't even want to support changing terrain.. Split into multiple chunks and do some sort of LOD with the mesh: Yes, but how would I do that? Tessellation usually creates more detail not less. Precompute the same mesh in lower poly version (like Mudbox does) and depending on the distance it renders one of these meshes: Graphic memory is limited and uploading only the chunks won't solve that problem since the traffic would be too high. IMO the last one sounds really good, but imagine the following process: Upload and render the chunks depending on the current player position. [No problem] Player will walk straight forward Now we maybe have to change on of the low poly chunk with the high poly one So, Remove the low poly chunk and load the high poly chunk [Already to much traffic here, I think] I am not very experienced in graphic programming and maybe the upper process is totally okay but somehow I think it is too much. And how about the disk space it would require.. I think 3 kind of levels would be fine but isn't that also too much? (I am using OpenGL but I don't think that this is important)

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• Question about mipmaps + anisotropic filtering

  - by Telanor

  I'm a bit confused here and maybe someone can explain this to me. I created a simple test texture for my terrain which is nothing more than a solid green color with a black grid overlayed on top of it. If I look at the terrain in the distance with mipmapping on and linear filtering, the grid lines become blurry fairly quickly and further back the grid is pretty much invisible. With these settings, I don't get any moire patterns at all. If I turn on anisotropic filtering, however, the higher the anisotropic level, the more the terrain looks like it did with without mipmapping. The lines are much crisper nearby but in the distance I start to see terrible moire patterns. My understanding was that mipmapping is supposed to get rid of moire patterns. I've always had anisotropic filtering on in every game I play and I've never noticed any moire patterns as a result, so I don't understand why it's happening in my game. I am using logarithmic depth however, could that be causing any problems? And if it is, how do I resolve it? I've created my sampler state like so (I'm using slimdx): ssa = SamplerState.FromDescription(Engine.Device, new SamplerDescription { AddressU = TextureAddressMode.Clamp, AddressV = TextureAddressMode.Clamp, AddressW = TextureAddressMode.Clamp, Filter = Filter.Anisotropic, MaximumAnisotropy = anisotropicLevel, MinimumLod = 0, MaximumLod = float.MaxValue });

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• Can't load model using ContentTypeReader

  - by Xaosthetic

  I'm writing a game where I want to use ContentTypeReader. While loading my model like this: terrain = Content.Load<Model>("Text/terrain"); I get following error: Error loading "Text\terrain". Cannot find ContentTypeReader AdventureGame.World.HeightMapInfoReader,AdventureGame,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral. I've read that this kind of error can be caused by space's in assembly name so i've already removed them all but exception still occurs. This is my content class: [ContentTypeWriter] public class HeightMapInfoWriter : ContentTypeWriter<HeightmapInfo> { protected override void Write(ContentWriter output, HeightmapInfo value) { output.Write(value.getTerrainScale); output.Write(value.getHeight.GetLength(0)); output.Write(value.getHeight.GetLength(1)); foreach (float height in value.getHeight) { output.Write(height); } } public override string GetRuntimeType(TargetPlatform targetPlatform) { return "AdventureGame.World.Heightmap,AdventureGame,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral"; } public override string GetRuntimeReader(TargetPlatform targetPlatform) { return "AdventureGame.World.HeightMapInfoReader,AdventureGame,Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral"; } } Does anyone meed that kind of error before?

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• Best way of storing voxels

  - by opiop65

  This should be a pretty easy question to answer, and I'm not looking for how to store the voxels data wise, I'm looking for the theory. Currently, my voxel engine has no global list of tiles. Each chunk has it's own list, and its hard to do things like collision detection or anything that may use tiles that are outside of its own chunk. I recently worked on procedural terrain with a non voxel engine. Now, I want to start using heightmaps in my voxel engine. But, I have a problem. If each chunk has its own list, then it will be pretty difficult to implement the heightmaps. My real question is, is should I store a global list of voxels independent of the chunks? And then I can just easily perform collision detection and terrain generation. However, it would probably be harder to do things such as frustum culling. So how should I store them?

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