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• Bukkit inventory saving: crashing somewhere

  - by HcgRandon

  I'm working on a command for a bukkit plugin that lets you transfer worlds. In the section about saving the player's inventory, I'm getting a runtime error. My question is: Why is the error happening, and how can I prevent it? The plugin code public void savePlayerInv(Player p, World w){ File playerInvConfigFile = new File(plugin.getDataFolder() + File.separator + "players" + File.separator + p.getName(), "inventory.yml"); FileConfiguration pInv = YamlConfiguration.loadConfiguration(playerInvConfigFile); PlayerInventory inv = p.getInventory(); int i = 0; for (ItemStack stack : inv.getContents()) { //increment integer i++; String startInventory = w.getName() + ".inv." + Integer.toString(i); //save inv pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); pInv.set(startInventory + ".durability", Short.toString(stack.getDurability())); pInv.set(startInventory + ".type", stack.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startInventory + ".enchantment", stack.getEnchantments()); //TODO add enchant saveing } i = 0; for (ItemStack armor : inv.getArmorContents()){ i++; String startArmor = w.getName() + ".armor." + Integer.toString(i); //save armor pInv.set(startArmor + ".amount", armor.getAmount()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".durability", armor.getDurability()); pInv.set(startArmor + ".type", armor.getTypeId()); //pInv.set(startArmor + ".enchantment", armor.getEnchantments()); } //save exp if (p.getExp() != 0) { pInv.set(w.getName() + ".exp", p.getExp()); } } The offending line The stack trace complains about line 130, which is this line. pInv.set(startInventory + ".amount", stack.getAmount()); The stack trace 2012-03-21 13:23:25 [SEVERE] null org.bukkit.command.CommandException: Unhandled exception executing command 'wtp' in plugin Needs v1.0 at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:42) at org.bukkit.command.SimpleCommandMap.dispatch(SimpleCommandMap.java:166) at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.dispatchCommand(CraftServer.java:461) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.handleCommand(NetServerHandler.java:818) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.chat(NetServerHandler.java:778) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:761) at net.minecraft.server.Packet3Chat.handle(Packet3Chat.java:33) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkManager.b(NetworkManager.java:229) at net.minecraft.server.NetServerHandler.a(NetServerHandler.java:112) at net.minecraft.server.NetworkListenThread.a(NetworkListenThread.java:78) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.w(MinecraftServer.java:554) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:452) at net.minecraft.server.ThreadServerApplication.run(SourceFile:490) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.savePlayerInv(CommandWorldtp.java:130) at com.devoverflow.improved.needs.commands.CommandWorldtp.onCommand(CommandWorldtp.java:60) at org.bukkit.command.PluginCommand.execute(PluginCommand.java:40) ... 12 more

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• Making a startscreen for an HTML5 game?

  - by hustlerinc

  How would I make a start screen for a game using HTML5 canvas? I'm not looking for something advanced, just the new game button and highscore link etc. The question might be stupid, but I've never done anything similar, and the tutorials out there don't cover the subject. Is it enough to just make a fillText with an onclick function? Is there a way to find out the size of the text? Help appreciated.

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• Free vs. Paid: Picking a Financial Model

  - by ashes999

  I finally embarked upon my first "paid" game. What this means is that I will incorporate some sort of monetization strategy in my game. This may mean making the app pay-to-download, making it "freemium" with paid content, or something else. Having never done something like this, I'm at a complete loss as to how to figure out what I should do. I know a couple of models (pay to download, freemium, etc.) and I can brainstorm some ideas. But how do I figure out what strategy to use? Perhaps there's some body of research on this? (I recall reading that MMOs popular in Korea use a model where cosmetic changes only are pay-to-buy; everything else is free).

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• Amazon GameCircle Integration

  - by user1095509

  I'm trying to integrate Amazon GameCircle and I have been able to successfully initialize GameCircle in my app, but the problem is when I click on the button that displays achievements, the GameCircle achievement list comes up but it says "You have unlocked 0 of 0 achievements". Same happens with leaderboards i.e there are no leaderboards for this app. I have created a Leaderboard and a few achievements on the online developer portal for Amazon but they don't show for some reason. Can someone help me with this. Any links/resources that help with integrating GameCircle will be appreciated. Thanks.

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• Freelance composer seeking work! [closed]

  - by Ben Fowler

  Hey guys! I'm a freelance composer based in Victoria, Australia trying to break into the game industry to start my career! I've heard it said that having a plan B is planning for failure, so I've decided to go full on for what I want, so here I am! I have composed some music for other games, none of which have made it in yet (still hopeful :P) Any help on how I can break into to game industry as a composer would be MUCH appreciated!

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• Best practices on separating Update and Draw on game loop

  - by Galvanize

  I've been working on my first HTML5 prototype and I found a good model that uses the regular Update and Draw loop we see in game dev. My question is, where does one end and the other begins? The question popped when I wanted to rotate and draw an Image, and I kept wondering if the work of changing the tranformation matrix (that I presume would be a bit expensive since it works on the whole pixel array of an image) and calculating the right position do draw it would characterize drawing work, or maybe not, since after that I may need to check for collision or something similar. Thinkig of it, seems like a silly question, but I would like some advice from more experienced developers. Where does does update ends and draw starts? Thanks in advance.

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• How can I read a portion of one Minecraft world file and write it into another?

  - by RapierMother

  I'm looking to read block data from one Minecraft world and write the data into certain places in another. I have a Minecraft world, let's say "TemplateWorld", and a 2D list of Point objects. I'm developing an application that should use the x and y values of these Points as x and z reference coordinates from which to read constant-sized areas of blocks from the TemplateWorld. It should then write these blocks into another Minecraft world at constant y coordinates, with x & z coordinates determined based on each Point's index in the 2D list. The issue is that, while I've found a decent amount of information online regarding Minecraft world formats, I haven't found what I really need: more of a breakdown by hex address of where/what everything is. For example, I could have the TemplateWorld actually be a .schematic file rather than a world; I just need to be able to read the bytes of the file, know that the actual block data starts always at a certain address (or after a certain instance of FF, etc.), and how it's stored. Once I know that, it's easy as pie to just read the bytes and store them.

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• Grid Based Lighting in XNA/Monogame

  - by sm81095

  I know that questions like this have been asked many times, but I have not found one exactly like this yes. I have implemented a top-down grid based world in Monogame, and am starting on the lighting system soon. How I want to do lighting is to have a grid that is 4 times wider and higher, basically splitting each world tile into a 4x4 system of "subtiles". I would like to use a flow like system to spread light across the tiles by reducing the light by a small amount each time. This is kind of the effect I was going for: http://i.imgur.com/rv8LCxZ.png The black grid lines are the light grid, and the red lines are the actual tile grid, and the light drop-off is very exaggerated. I plan to render the world by drawing the unlit grid to a separate RenderTarget2D, then rendering the lighting grid to a separate target and overlaying the two. Basically, my questions are: What would be the algorithm for a flow style lighting system like this? Would there be a more efficient way of rendering this? How would I handle the darkening of the light with colors, reducing the RGB values in each grid, or reducing the alpha in each grid, assuming that I render the light map over the grid using blending? Even assuming the former are possible, what BlendState would I use for that?

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• How to check battery usage of an iPhone/Android app?

  - by Gajoo

  I think the title says Enough. For example Unity can generate you a report how much CPU/GPU power it's using or how fast it's going to drain device battery, but what about the applications developed using Cocos2d or the ones you develop directly using OpenGL? How should you profile them? In general what should you profile? or Should I simply run the application and wait for it's battery to run out?

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• Nifty default controls prevent the rest of my game from rendering

  - by zergylord

  I've been trying to add a basic HUD to my 2D LWJGL game using nifty gui, and while I've been successful in rendering panels and static text on top of the game, using the built-in nifty controls (e.g. an editable text field) causes the rest of my game to not render. The strange part is that I don't even have to render the gui control, merely declaring it appears to cause this problem. I'm truly lost here, so even the vaguest glimmer of hope would be appreciated :-) Some code showing the basic layout of the problem: display setup: // load default styles nifty.loadStyleFile("nifty-default-styles.xml"); // load standard controls nifty.loadControlFile("nifty-default-controls.xml"); screen = new ScreenBuilder("start") {{ layer(new LayerBuilder("baseLayer") {{ childLayoutHorizontal(); //next line causes the problem control(new TextFieldBuilder("input","asdf") {{ width("200px"); }}); }}); }}.build(nifty); nifty.gotoScreen("start"); rendering glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); GLU.gluOrtho2D(0f,WINDOW_DIMENSIONS[0],WINDOW_DIMENSIONS[1],0f); //I can remove the 2 nifty lines, and the game still won't render nifty.render(true); nifty.update(); glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); GLU.gluOrtho2D(0f,(float)VIEWPORT_DIMENSIONS[0],0f,(float)VIEWPORT_DIMENSIONS[1]); glTranslatef(translation[0],translation[1],0); for (Bubble bubble:bubbles){ bubble.draw(); } for (Wall wall:walls){ wall.draw(); } for(Missile missile:missiles){ missile.draw(); } for(Mob mob:mobs){ mob.draw(); } agent.draw();

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• Black or White Border/Shadow around PNGs in SDL/OPENGL

  - by Dylan

  having the same issue as this: Why do my sprites have a dark shadow/line/frame surrounding the texture? however, when I do the fix suggested there (changing GL_SRC_ALPHA to GL_ONE) it just replaces the black border with a white border on the images, and messes with my background color and some polygons I'm drawing (not all of them weirdly) by making them much lighter... any ideas? heres some of my relevant code. init: glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glEnable(GL_MULTISAMPLE); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE); glAlphaFunc(GL_GREATER, 0.01); glEnable(GL_ALPHA_TEST); glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); glEnable(GL_BLEND); when each texture is loaded: glGenTextures(1, &textureID); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID); gluBuild2DMipmaps(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_RGBA, surface->w, surface->h, GL_BGRA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, surface->pixels); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR); glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);

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• HTML5 Canvas Converting between cartesian and isometric coordinates

  - by Amir

  I'm having issues wrapping my head around the Cartesian to Isometric coordinate conversion in HTML5 canvas. As I understand it, the process is two fold: (1) Scale down the y-axis by 0.5, i.e. ctx.scale(1,0.5); or ctx.setTransform(1,0,0,0.5,0,0); This supposedly produces the following matrix: [x; y] x [1, 0; 0, 0.5] (2) Rotate the context by 45 degrees, i.e. ctx.rotate(Math.PI/4); This should produce the following matrix: [x; y] x [cos(45), -sin(45); sin(45), cos(45)] This (somehow) results in the final matrix of ctx.setTransform(2,-1,1,0.5,0,0); which I cannot seem to understand... How is this matrix derived? I cannot seem to produce this matrix by multiplying the scaling and rotation matrices produced earlier... Also, if I write out the equation for the final transformation matrix, I get: newX = 2x + y newY = -x + y/2 But this doesn't seem to be correct. For example, the following code draws an isometric tile at cartesian coordinates (500, 100). ctx.setTransform(2,-1,1,0.5,0,0); ctx.fillRect(500, 100, width*2, height); When I check the result on the screen, the actual coordinates are (285, 215) which do not satisfy the equations I produced earlier... So what is going on here? I would be very grateful if you could: (1) Help me understand how the final isometric transformation matrix is derived; (2) Help me produce the correct equation for finding the on-screen coordinates of an isometric projection. Many thanks and kind regards

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• Using multiplication and division with delta time

  - by tesselode

  Using delta time with addition and subtraction is easy. player.x += 100 * dt However, multiplication and division complicate things a bit. For example, let's say I want the player to double his speed every second. player.x = player.x * 2 * dt I can't do this because it'll slow down the player (unless delta time is really high). Division is the same way, except it'll speed things way up. How can I handle multiplication and division with delta time?

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• Simple 2D Flight Physics with Box2D

  - by MarkPowell

  I'm trying to build a simple side scroller with an airplane being the player. As such, I want to build simple flight controls with simple but realistic-feeling physics. I'm making use of cocos2D and Box2D. I have a basic system working, but just can't get the physics feeling correct. I am applying force to the plane (which is a b2CircleShape) based on the user's input. So, basically, if the user pushes up, body_->ApplyForce(b2Vec2(10,30), body_->GetPosition()) is called. Similarly, for down -30 is used. This works and the plane flys along with up/down causing it to dive or climb. But it just doesn't feel right. There is no slowdown on climbs, nor speed up during dives. My simple solution is far to simple. How can I get a better feel for a plane climbing/diving? Thanks!

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• Points around a circumference C#

  - by Lautaro

  Im trying to get a list of vectors that go around a circle, but i keep getting the circle to go around several times. I want one circel and the dots to be placed along its circumference. I want the first dot to start at 0 and the last dot to end just before 360. Also i need to be able to calculate the spacing by the ammount of points. List<Vector2> pointsInPath = new List<Vector2>(); private int ammountOfPoints = 5; private int blobbSize = 200; private Vector2 topLeft = new Vector2(100, 100); private Vector2 blobbCenter; private int endAngle = 50; private int angleIncrementation; public Blobb() { blobbCenter = new Vector2(blobbSize / 2, blobbSize / 2) + topLeft; angleIncrementation = endAngle / ammountOfPoints; for (int i = 0; i < ammountOfPoints; i++) { pointsInPath.Add(getPointByAngle(i * angleIncrementation, 100, blobbCenter)); // pointsInPath.Add(getPointByAngle(i * angleIncrementation, blobbSize / 2, blobbCenter)); } } private Vector2 getPointByAngle(float angle, float distance, Vector2 centre) { return new Vector2((float)(distance * Math.Cos(angle) ), (float)(distance * Math.Sin(angle))) + centre ; }

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• How to sync client and server at the first frame

  - by wheelinlight

  I'm making a game where an authoritative server sends information to all clients about states and positions for objects in a 3d world. The player can control his character by clicking on the screen to set a destination for the character, much like in the Diablo series. I've read most information I can find online about interpolation, reconciliation, and general networking architecture (Valve's for instance). I think I understand everything but one thing seems to be missing in every article I read. Let say we have an interpolation delay of 100ms, server tickrate=50ms, latency=200ms; How do I know when 100ms has past on the client? If the server sends the first update on t=0, can I assume it arrives at t=200, therefore assuming that all packets takes the same amount of time to reach the client? What if the first packet arrives a little quick, for instance at t=150. I would then be starting the client with t=150 and at t=250 it will think it has past 100ms since its connect to the server when it in fact only 50ms has past. Hopefully the above paragraph is understandable. The summarized question would be: How do I know at what tick to start simulating the client? EDIT: This is how I ended up doing it: The client keeps a clock (approximately) in sync with the server. The client then simulates the world at simulationTime = syncedTime - avg(RTT)/2 - interpolationTime The round-trip time can fluctuate so therefore I average it out over time. By only keeping the most recent values when calculating the average I hope to adapt to more permanent changes in latency. It's still to early to draw any conclusion. I'm currently simulating bad network connections, but it's looking good so far. Anyone see any possible problems?

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• How to prevent showing outside of world game in Cocos2D-x

  - by HRZ

  I'm trying to make a tower defense game and it can zoom in/out and scrolling over my world map. How to scroll over the game and how to restrict it not to show outside of my map(black area). At below I scroll over the map by using CCCamera but I don't know how I can restrict it. CCPoint tap = touch->getLocation(); CCPoint prev_tap = touch->getPreviousLocation(); CCPoint sub_point = tap - prev_tap; float xNewPos, yNewPos; float xEyePos, yEyePos, zEyePos; float cameraPosX, cameraPosY, cameraPosZ; // First we get the current camera position. GameLayer->getCamera()->getCenterXYZ(&cameraPosX, &cameraPosY, &cameraPosZ); GameLayer->getCamera()->getEyeXYZ(&xEyePos, &yEyePos, &zEyePos); // Calculate the new position xNewPos = cameraPosX - sub_point.x; yNewPos = cameraPosY - sub_point.y; GameLayer->getCamera()->setCenterXYZ(xNewPos, yNewPos, cameraPosZ); GameLayer->getCamera()->setEyeXYZ(xNewPos, yNewPos, zEyePos); And for zooming I used such code: GameLayer->setScale(GameLayer->getScale() + 0.002); //zooming in

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• Is it possible to generate Events and Hooks in Lua for any game without built-in support?

  - by pr0tocol

  Does a game have to have built-in functions to accept and run lua scripts, or can I design Events and Hooks using Lua on any game I please, akin to the days where C code could be used to hook into the WinAPI using dlls? The reason I ask is, I am trying to create a background application that will perform events and hooks on a particular game that does not currently support lua in-game. Brief examples: Events: - An action executed by the PLAYER is detected. For instance, hitting the Q key will normally make my character use an ability, but with my Lua script running in the background, will cause a sound to play on my computer (or something). Hooks: - An action within the GAME is detected. For instance, the game spawns an enemy every minute. When an enemy spawns, the script will detect this and perform an action, for instance playing a sound locally on the computer. I would like to do both, but I know for games like Garry's Mod, the game already has built-in support for running lua scripts. Is there a way to do either events OR hooks using lua similarly to how C/C++ can connect to a game using WinAPI dlls?

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• Problem Implementing Texture on Libgdx Mesh of Randomized Terrain

  - by BrotherJack

  I'm having problems understanding how to apply a texture to a non-rectangular object. The following code creates textures such as this: from the debug renderer I think I've got the physical shape of the "earth" correct. However, I don't know how to apply a texture to it. I have a 50x50 pixel image (in the environment constructor as "dirt.png"), that I want to apply to the hills. I have a vague idea that this seems to involve the mesh class and possibly a ShapeRenderer, but the little i'm finding online is just confusing me. Bellow is code from the class that makes and regulates the terrain and the code in a separate file that is supposed to render it (but crashes on the mesh.render() call). Any pointers would be appreciated. public class Environment extends Actor{ Pixmap sky; public Texture groundTexture; Texture skyTexture; double tankypos; //TODO delete, temp public Tank etank; //TODO delete, temp int destructionRes; // how wide is a static pixel private final float viewWidth; private final float viewHeight; private ChainShape terrain; public Texture dirtTexture; private World world; public Mesh terrainMesh; private static final String LOG = Environment.class.getSimpleName(); // Constructor public Environment(Tank tank, FileHandle sfileHandle, float w, float h, int destructionRes) { world = new World(new Vector2(0, -10), true); this.destructionRes = destructionRes; sky = new Pixmap(sfileHandle); viewWidth = w; viewHeight = h; skyTexture = new Texture(sky); terrain = new ChainShape(); genTerrain((int)w, (int)h, 6); Texture tankSprite = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("TankSpriteBase.png")); Texture turretSprite = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("TankSpriteTurret.png")); tank = new Tank(0, true, tankSprite, turretSprite); Rectangle tankrect = new Rectangle(300, (int)tankypos, 44, 45); tank.setRect(tankrect); BodyDef terrainDef = new BodyDef(); terrainDef.type = BodyType.StaticBody; terrainDef.position.set(0, 0); Body terrainBody = world.createBody(terrainDef); FixtureDef fixtureDef = new FixtureDef(); fixtureDef.shape = terrain; terrainBody.createFixture(fixtureDef); BodyDef tankDef = new BodyDef(); Rectangle rect = tank.getRect(); tankDef.type = BodyType.DynamicBody; tankDef.position.set(0,0); tankDef.position.x = rect.x; tankDef.position.y = rect.y; Body tankBody = world.createBody(tankDef); FixtureDef tankFixture = new FixtureDef(); PolygonShape shape = new PolygonShape(); shape.setAsBox(rect.width*WORLD_TO_BOX, rect.height*WORLD_TO_BOX); fixtureDef.shape = shape; dirtTexture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("dirt.png")); etank = tank; } private void genTerrain(int w, int h, int hillnessFactor){ int width = w; int height = h; Random rand = new Random(); //min and max bracket the freq's of the sin/cos series //The higher the max the hillier the environment int min = 1; //allocating horizon for screen width Vector2[] horizon = new Vector2[width+2]; horizon[0] = new Vector2(0,0); double[] skyline = new double[width]; //TODO skyline necessary as an array? //ratio of amplitude of screen height to landscape variation double r = (int) 2.0/5.0; //number of terms to be used in sine/cosine series int n = 4; int[] f = new int[n*2]; //calculating omegas for sine series for(int i = 0; i < n*2 ; i ++){ f[i] = rand.nextInt(hillnessFactor - min + 1) + min; } //amp is the amplitude of the series int amp = (int) (r*height); double lastPoint = 0.0; for(int i = 0 ; i < width; i ++){ skyline[i] = 0; for(int j = 0; j < n; j++){ skyline[i] += ( Math.sin( (f[j]*Math.PI*i/height) ) + Math.cos(f[j+n]*Math.PI*i/height) ); } skyline[i] *= amp/(n*2); skyline[i] += (height/2); skyline[i] = (int)skyline[i]; //TODO Possible un-necessary float to int to float conversions tankypos = skyline[i]; horizon[i+1] = new Vector2((float)i, (float)skyline[i]); if(i == width) lastPoint = skyline[i]; } horizon[width+1] = new Vector2(800, (float)lastPoint); terrain.createChain(horizon); terrain.createLoop(horizon); //I have no idea if the following does anything useful :( terrainMesh = new Mesh(true, (width+2)*2, (width+2)*2, new VertexAttribute(Usage.Position, (width+2)*2, "a_position")); float[] vertices = new float[(width+2)*2]; short[] indices = new short[(width+2)*2]; for(int i=0; i < (width+2); i+=2){ vertices[i] = horizon[i].x; vertices[i+1] = horizon[i].y; indices[i] = (short)i; indices[i+1] = (short)(i+1); } terrainMesh.setVertices(vertices); terrainMesh.setIndices(indices); } Here is the code that is (supposed to) render the terrain. @Override public void render(float delta) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(1, 1, 1, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); // tell the camera to update its matrices. camera.update(); // tell the SpriteBatch to render in the // coordinate system specified by the camera. backgroundStage.draw(); backgroundStage.act(delta); uistage.draw(); uistage.act(delta); batch.begin(); debugRenderer.render(this.ground.getWorld(), camera.combined); batch.end(); //Gdx.graphics.getGL10().glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); ground.dirtTexture.bind(); ground.terrainMesh.render(GL10.GL_TRIANGLE_FAN); //I'm particularly lost on this ground.step(); }

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• Camera Shake in Unreal Engine 4?

  - by The415

  Just to be straightforward, I am completely new to many aspects of coding and am searching for different specs and guidelines to aid me on my journey to crafting a wonderful game in Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. I was wanting to know how to implement a third-person camera shake into my game, for use of the player sprinting, or crouching, etc. All I need is some tips on setting it up. I can figure the rest out.

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• How do you cope mentally with one very long piece of work

  - by Asher Einhorn

  This is my first games industry job and my task is to take out one major game component and put in a newer one. So far it's been 5 weeks, and I'm still just staring at errors. I think it could be months before it's at the point that it can compile. It's really getting me down. I'm just changing things over, I'm not really writing anything myself. it's just endless. I fix a thousand errors and nine thousand take their place. I'm sure this must be a common thing, so I was just wondering, how do you cope with this? It doesn't seem like I can break it down into little chunks at all.

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• How can state changes be batched while adhering to opaque-front-to-back/alpha-blended-back-to-front?

  - by Sion Sheevok

  This is a question I've never been able to find the answer to. Batching objects with similar states is a major performance gain when rendering many objects. However, I've been learned various rules when drawing objects in the game world. Draw all opaque objects, front-to-back. Draw all alpha-blended objects, back-to-front. Some of the major parameters to batch by, as I understand it, are textures, vertex buffers, and index buffers. It seems that, as long as you are adhering to the above two rules, there's little to be done in regards to batching. I see one possibility to batch, while still adhering to the above two rules. Opaque objects can still be drawn out of depth-order, because drawing them front-to-back is merely a fillrate optimization, meanwhile state changes may very well be far more expensive than the overdraw of drawing out of depth-order. However, non-opaque objects, those that require alpha-blending at least, must be drawn back-to-front in order to avoid rendering artifacts. Is the loss of the fillrate optimization for opaques worth the state batching optimization?

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• Low CPU/Memory/Memory-bandwith Pathfinding (maybe like in Warcraft 1)

  - by Valmond

  Dijkstra and A* are all nice and popular but what kind of algorithm was used in Warcraft 1 for pathfinding? I remember that the enemy could get trapped in bowl-like caverns which means there were (most probably) no full-path calculations from "start to end". If I recall correctly, the algorithm could be something like this: A) Move towards enemy until success or hitting a wall B) If blocked by a wall, follow the wall until you can move towards the enemy without being blocked and then do A) But I'd like to know, if someone knows :-) [edit] As explained to Byte56, I'm searching for a low cpu/mem/mem-bandwidth algo and wanted to know if Warcraft had some special secrets to deliver (never seen that kind of pathfinding elsewhere), I hope that that is more concordant with the stackexchange rules.

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• List<T>.AddRange is causing a brief Update/Draw delay

  - by Justin Skiles

  I have a list of entities which implement an ICollidable interface. This interface is used to resolve collisions between entities. My entities are thus: Players Enemies Projectiles Items Tiles On each game update (about 60 t/s), I am clearing the list and adding the current entities based on the game state. I am accomplishing this via: collidableEntities.Clear(); collidableEntities.AddRange(players); collidableEntities.AddRange(enemies); collidableEntities.AddRange(projectiles); collidableEntities.AddRange(items); collidableEntities.AddRange(camera.VisibleTiles); Everything works fine until I add the visible tiles to the list. The first ~1-2 seconds of running the game loop causes a visible hiccup that delays drawing (so I can see a jitter in the rendering). I can literally remove/add the line that adds the tiles and see the jitter occur and not occur, so I have narrowed it down to that line. My question is, why? The list of VisibleTiles is about 450-500 tiles, so it's really not that much data. Each tile contains a Texture2D (image) and a Vector2 (position) to determine what is rendered and where. I'm going to keep looking, but from the top of my head, I can't understand why only the first 1-2 seconds hiccups but is then smooth from there on out. Any advice is appreciated.

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• Cliché monsters to populate a steampunk fantasy setting dwarven dungeon?

  - by Alexander Gladysh

  I'm looking for a list of cliché monsters for a steampunk computer game (assume one kind or another of casual rogue-like RPG), to populate lower levels of ancient dwarven-built dungeons. Dwarves are a technology/science race in the setting I am aiming for. The world is a low-magic one. I'm stuck after listing various mechanical golems, gigantic spiders (every dungeon must have some of them!), and maybe a mechanical barlog as a megaboss. What would player expect? What are the key cultural references for such setting? I know a couple of games with suitable steampunk dwarves, but none are detailed enough in the underworld monsters area. Please point me in the right direction. (If you have a single funny monster suggestion, please mention it in comments, not in answer. ;-) )

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