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• Is there a cross-platform special directory I can use for game save files?

  - by Suds

  I'm developing with LWJGL and Java on a Windows 7 laptop. I've successfully set up saving to the %appdata%\gamename\saves\ or long form c:\users\user\appdata\roaming\gamename\saves\ folder by using File dir = new File(System.getenv("APPDATA") + "\\gamename\\saves\\");. I have hobbyist level experience with Linux, and zero experience with OSX. My game will be fully cross platform. Is System.getenv("APPDATA"); cross platform? If so, where does it point to on Linux or OSX? Is there a best practices alternative that I should use?

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• LOD in modern games

  - by Firas Assaad

  I'm currently working on my master's thesis about LOD and mesh simplification, and I've been reading many academic papers and articles about the subject. However, I can't find enough information about how LOD is being used in modern games. I know many games use some sort of dynamic LOD for terrain, but what about elsewhere? Level of Detail for 3D Graphics for example points out that discrete LOD (where artists prepare several models in advance) is widely used because of the performance overhead of continuous LOD. That book was published in 2002 however, and I'm wondering if things are different now. There has been some research in performing dynamic LOD using the geometry shader (this paper for example, with its implementation in ShaderX6), would that be used in a modern game? To summarize, my question is about the state of LOD in modern video games, what algorithms are used and why? In particular, is view dependent continuous simplification used or does the runtime overhead make using discrete models with proper blending and impostors a more attractive solution? If discrete models are used, is an algorithm used (e.g. vertex clustering) to generate them offline, do artists manually create the models, or perhaps a combination of both methods is used?

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• Intersection points of plane set forming convex hull

  - by Toji

  Mostly looking for a nudge in the right direction here. Given a set of planes (defined as a normal and distance from origin) that form a convex hull, I would like to find the intersection points that form the corners of that hull. More directly, I'm looking for a way to generate a point cloud appropriate to provide to Bullet. Bonus points if someone knows of a way I could give bullet the plane list directly, since I somewhat suspect that's what it's building on the backend anyway.

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• Lightning whip particle effects

  - by Fibericon

  I'm currently using Mercury Particle Engine for the particle effects in my game, and I'm trying to create a sort of lightning whip - basically a lightning effect bound to a line that curves when the player moves. I know how to use the editor, and I have particle effects working in game. However, I'm completely lost as to where I should start for this specific particle effect. Perhaps if I could find the code for it in a different particle engine, I could convert it, but I can't seem to find that either. What I did find was a lot of tutorials for creating the lines associated with lightning programmatically, which doesn't help in this case because I don't want it to be rigid. Perhaps it would be more like some sort of laser beam with crackling effects around it? I'm running into a wall as far as even beginning to implement this goes.

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• Movement of body after applying weld joint

  - by ved

  I have two rectangular bodies. I've applied Weldjoint successfully on these bodies. I want to move that joined body by applying linear impulse. After weld joint, these two bodies becomes single body right? How do I apply force/impulse on the joined body? I am using Box2D with LibGDX. I've tried this: polygon1.applyLinearImpulse(new Vector2(-5, 0), polygon1.getWorldCenter(), true); I thought that if I move polygon1 then polygon2 will also move due to my weld joint but it is not working properly. Why don't they move together after being welded?

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• What is the best type of c# timer to use with a Unity game that uses many timers simultaneously?

  - by Kyle Seidlitz

  I am developing a stand-alone 3d game in Unity that will have anywhere from 1 to 200 timers running simultaneously. There will be a GameObject containing 1 timer. For this game timer durations will range from 5 minutes to 4 days. There will not be any countdown displays or any UI for the timers. Each object is a prefab, with all the necessary materials included. An attached script will handle the timer and all the necessary code to change the materials and make any sound effects. Once the timer is expired, the user will then click on the object again, and the object will be destroyed, and the user's inventory will be adjusted. If the user wants to save or end the game before all the timers are done, the start value of the still running timers is to be saved to an XML file such that when the game is started again, any still running timers will be checked to see if they have expired, where the object's materials will be changed appropriately. I am still trying to figure out what type of timer to use, and see also if there are any suggestions for saving and calculating times over several days. What class(es) of timers should I use? Are there any special issues I should look out for in terms of performance?

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• How to avoid game objects accidentally deleting themselves in C++

  - by Tom Dalling

  Let's say my game has a monster that can kamikaze explode on the player. Let's pick a name for this monster at random: a Creeper. So, the Creeper class has a method that looks something like this: void Creeper::kamikaze() { EventSystem::postEvent(ENTITY_DEATH, this); Explosion* e = new Explosion; e->setLocation(this->location()); this->world->addEntity(e); } The events are not queued, they get dispatched immediately. This causes the Creeper object to get deleted somewhere inside the call to postEvent. Something like this: void World::handleEvent(int type, void* context) { if(type == ENTITY_DEATH){ Entity* ent = dynamic_cast<Entity*>(context); removeEntity(ent); delete ent; } } Because the Creeper object gets deleted while the kamikaze method is still running, it will crash when it tries to access this->location(). One solution is to queue the events into a buffer and dispatch them later. Is that the common solution in C++ games? It feels like a bit of a hack, but that might just be because of my experience with other languages with different memory management practices. In C++, is there a better general solution to this problem where an object accidentally deletes itself from inside one of its methods?

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• Realtime rendering using a ray tracing engine

  - by Keyhan Asghari

  I want to render an object that has a mesh with one million hexagonal elements(100 * 100 * 100). Lights, shadows and textures is not important and each element has a solid color. and finally, the actions I want to have, is simply rotating the object, zooming and panning. I am wondering what ray tracing engine is better for my conditions. or, do I have to take another approach? any help will be appreciated.

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• Converting a DrawModel() using BasicEffect to one using Effect

  - by Fibericon

  Take this DrawModel() provided by MSDN: private void DrawModel(Model m) { Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[m.Bones.Count]; float aspectRatio = graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height; m.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), aspectRatio, 1.0f, 10000.0f); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(new Vector3(0.0f, 50.0f, Zoom), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in m.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; effect.World = gameWorldRotation * transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position); } mesh.Draw(); } } How would I apply a custom effect to a model with that? Effect doesn't have View, Projection, or World members. This is what they recommend replacing the foreach loop with: foreach (ModelMesh mesh in terrain.Meshes) { foreach (Effect effect in mesh.Effects) { mesh.Draw(); } } Of course, that doesn't really work. What else needs to be done?

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• OpenGL ES 2. How do I Create a Basic Fading Streak Effect?

  - by dugla

  For the iPad app I am writing using OpenGL ES 2 I have a single quad - shaded using GLSL - that is dragged around the screen. Very basic. This works fine. But is rather boring. I want to increase the coolness a bit in the following way: when the user drags the quad it leaves a streak behind that fades over time. Continuous dragging would be a bit like a streaking comet across the night sky. What is the simplest way to implement this? Thanks.

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• How can I pass an external instance to the constructor of an object that's being created using the default XNA XML content loader?

  - by Michael

  I'm trying to understand how to use the XNA XML content importer to instantiate non-trivial objects that are more than a collection of basic properties (e.g., a class that inherits from DrawableGameObject or GameObject and requires other things to be passed into its constructor). Is it possible to pass existing external instances (e.g., an instance of the current Game) to the constructor of an object that's being created using the default XNA XML content loader? For example, imagine that I have the following class, inheriting from DrawableGameComponent: public class Character : DrawableGameComponent { public string Name { get; set; } public Character(Game game) : base(game) { } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { } } If I had a simple class that did not need other parameters in its constructor (i.e., the Game instance), then I could simply use this XML: <XnaContent> <Asset Type="MyNamespace.Character"> <Name>John Doe</Name> </Asset> </XnaContent> ...and then create an instance of Character using this code: var character = Content.Load<Character>("MyXmlAssetName"); But that won't work because I need to pass the need to pass the Game into the constructor. What's the best way to handle this situation? Is there a way to pass in things like the current Game using the default XNA XML content loader? Do I need to write my own XML loader? (If so, how?) Is there a better object-oriented design that I should be using for my classes? Note: Although I used Game in this example, I'm really just asking how to pass any type of existing instance to my constructors. (For example, I'm using the Farseer Physics Engine, and some of my classes also need a reference to the Farseer World object too.) Thanks in advance.

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• How should I account for the GC when building games with Unity?

  - by Eonil

  *As far as I know, Unity3D for iOS is based on the Mono runtime and Mono has only generational mark & sweep GC. This GC system can't avoid GC time which stops game system. Instance pooling can reduce this but not completely, because we can't control instantiation happens in the CLR's base class library. Those hidden small and frequent instances will raise un-deterministic GC time eventually. Forcing complete GC periodically will degrade performance greatly (can Mono force complete GC, actually?) So, how can I avoid this GC time when using Unity3D without huge performance degrade?

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• glsl demo suggestions ?

  - by brainydexter

  In a lot of places I interviewed recently, I have been asked many a times if I have worked with shaders. Even though, I have read and understand the pipeline, the answer to that question has been no. Recently, one of the places asked me if I can send them a sample of 'something' that is "visually polished". So, I decided to take the plunge and wrote some simple shader in GLSL(with opengl).I now have a basic setup where I can use vbos with glsl shaders. I have a very short window left to send something to them and I was wondering if someone with experience, could suggest an idea that is interesting enough to grab someone's attention. Thanks

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• XNA ModelMesh.Draw vs GraphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives

  - by cubrman

  I am using XNA 4.0 and I wonder if drawing models with multiple meshes is better by filling the vertex and index buffers first and calling GraphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives() or by simply using good ol' foreach(...) {ModelMesh.Draw()}. Is it possible to add data to vertex/index buffers at all in order to pack all the models on the scene in them and then call Draw only once per frame? I would appreciate a link to an in-depth explanation. Thanks.

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• Trouble using Ray.Intersect method on bounding boxes in a 2D XNA game

  - by getsauce

  I am trying to use a ray and bounding box to determine if a box is between the player and the mouse pointer in 2D space. When I try testing the code, the collision will return true when pointed at the box but it also returns true under other circumstances where it shouldn't. For instance. If I have a player on the left and a box directly to the right, I can put the mouse pointer a few hundred pixels above the box or a few hundred below and it will still return true. Also, I can put my mouse pointer to the left of the player and in a certain area it will still return true. Does anyone have any idea what might cause this? I have left out definitions for some of my members and properties just to make this code sample easier to read. The position property is just a Vector2 for where each object is located. ray = new Ray(new Vector3(player.Position, 0), new Vector3(mouse.Position, 0); box = new BoundingBox(new Vector3(box.Position, 0), new Vector3( new Vector2(box.Position + box.Width, box.Position + box.Height), 0); if (ray.Intersects(box) != null) collision = true; else collision = false;

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• How can I create animated card graphics like in Hearthstone?

  - by Appeltaart

  In the game Hearthstone, there are cards with animated images on them. A few examples: http://www.hearthhead.com/card=281/argent-commander http://www.hearthhead.com/card=469/blood-imp The animations seem to be composed of multiple effects: Particle systems. Fading sprites in and out/rotating them Simple scrolling textures A distortion effect, very evident in the cape and hair of example 1. Swirling smoke effects, the light in example 1 and the green/purple glow in example 2. The first three elements are trivial, what I'd like to know is how the last two could be done. Can this even be done realtime in a game, or are they pre-rendered animations?

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• QuadTree: store only points, or regions?

  - by alekop

  I am developing a quadtree to keep track of moving objects for collision detection. Each object has a bounding shape, let's say they are all circles. (It's a 2D top-down game) I am unsure whether to store only the position of each object, or the whole bounding shape. If working with points, insertion and subdivision is easy, because objects will never span multiple nodes. On the other hand, a proximity query for an object may miss collisions, because it won't take the objects' dimensions into account. How to calculate the query region when you only have points? If working with regions, how to handle an object that spans multiple nodes? Should it be inserted in the nearest parent node that completely contains it, even if this exceeds the node's capacity? Thanks.

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• Creating Gun objects with upgrades?

  - by zardon

  I have a series of guns in my game. I use the Gun class/object like this: (Just an example) @interface Gun : NSObject { NSString *name; // Six-shooter NSNumber *cost; NSNumber *clipPrice; // ie: 700 NSNumber *clipCapacity; // 6 NSNumber *ammoCapacity; // 6 NSNumber *damage; // 0-10 NSNumber *accuracy; // 0-10 NSNumber *fireRate; // 0-10 NSNumber *range; // 0-10 // Not sure if I have all the stats, but this is fine for now } Lets say I want to have 3 upgrades per gun. My problem is I am not sure how to do this. Examples: increase fire-rate increase range increase accuracy silencer double ammo capacity (ie: Drum) double clip capacity (ie: Taped magazine) Thus my question is, I'd like to implement an upgrade system to guns but I am not sure how to do it. Would there be an Upgrade object which is a child to the Gun class, or would it be seperate class altogether. Thanks for your time.

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• Zooming in isometric engine using XNA

  - by Yheeky

  I´m currently working on an isometric game engine and right now I´m looking for help concerning my zoom function. On my tilemap there are several objects, some of them are selectable. When a house (texture size 128 x 256) is placed on the map I create an array containing all pixels (= 32768 pixels). Therefore each pixel has an alpha value I check if the value is bigger than 200 so it seems to be a pixel which belongs to the building. So if the mouse cursor is on this pixel the building will be selected - PixelCollision. Now I´ve already implemented my zooming function which works quite well. I use a scale variable which will change my calculation on drawing all map items. What I´m looking for right now is a precise way to find out if a zoomed out/in house is selected. My formula works for values like 0,5 (zoomed out) or 2 (zoomed in) but not for in between. Here is the code I use for the pixel index: var pixelIndex = (int)(((yPos / (Scale * Scale)) * width) + (xPos / Scale) + 1); Example: Let´s assume my mouse is over pixel coordinate 38/222 on the original house texture. Using the code above we get the following pixel index. var pixelIndex = ((222 / (1 * 1)) * 128) + (38 / 1) + 1; = (222 * 128) + 39 = 28416 + 39 = 28455 If we now zoom out to scale 0,5, the texture size will change to 64 x 128 and the amount of pixels will decrease from 32768 to 8192. Of course also our mouse point changes by the scale to 19/111. The formula makes it easy to calculate the original pixelIndex using our new coordinates: var pixelIndex = ((111 / (0.5 * 0.5)) * 64) + (19 / 0.5) + 1; = (444 * 64) + 39 = 28416 + 39 = 28455 But now comes the problem. If I zoom out just to scale 0.75 it does not work any more. The pixel amount changes from 32768 to 18432 pixels since texture size is 96 x 192. Mouse point is transformed to point 28/166. The formula gives me a wrong pixelIndex. var pixelIndex = ((166 / (0.75 * 0.75)) * 96) + (28 / 0.75) + 1; = (295.11 * 96) + 38.33 = 28330.66 + 38.33 = 28369 Does anyone have a clue what´s wrong in my code? Must be the first part (28330.66) which causes the calculation problem. Thanks! Yheeky

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• Debugging Minimum Translation Vector

  - by SyntheCypher

  I implemented the minimum translation vector from codezealot's tutorial on SAT (Separating Axis Theorem) but I'm having an issue I can't quite figure out. Here's the example I have: As you can see in top and bottom left images regardless of the side the of the green car which red car is penetrating the MTV for the red car still remains as a negative number also here is the same example when the front of the red car is facing the opposite direction the number will always be positive. When the red car is past the half way through the green car it should switch polarity. I thought I'd compensated for this in my code, but apparently not either that or it's a bug I can find. Here is my function for finding and returning the MTV, any help would be much appreciated: Code

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• Adjust sprite bounds of the visible part of texture

  - by Crazy D0G

  Is there any way to adjust the boundaries of the visible part of the sprite? To make it easier to understand: I have a texture, such as shown at figure 1. Then I break it into pieces and fill the resulting fragments using PRKit (wood texture on figure 2 and 3). But the resulting fragments have the transparent (green color on figure 2 and 3) and when creating a sprite from the fragments they have the size of the initial texture. Is there a way to get rid of this transparency and to adjust the size of the visible part (wood texture), openGL or cocos2d-x means? Maybe it help - draw() method from PRKit: void PRFilledPolygon::draw() { //CCNode::draw(); glDisableClientState(GL_COLOR_ARRAY); // we have a pointer to vertex points so enable client state glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture->getName()); glTexEnvf(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); glVertexPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, areaTrianglePoints); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, textureCoordinates); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, areaTrianglePointCount); glTexEnvf(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE); //Restore texture matrix and switch back to modelview matrix glEnableClientState(GL_COLOR_ARRAY);}

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• Manually updating HTML5 local storage?

  - by hustlerinc

  I'm just starting out HTML5 game developement (and game dev in general) and watching all the videos and tutorials available something has crossed my mind. Everyone keep saying I should set the cookie's (or cached files) to be expired after a certain amount of time. So that when it reaches that time the browser automatically downloads all assets again, even if it's the same asset's. Wouldn't it be possible to manually define the version of the game? For example the user has downloaded all the files for 1.01 of the game, when updating I change a simple variable to 1.02. When the user logs in it would compare his version to the current and if they are not equal only then it downloads the files? This could even be improved to download only specific files depending on what needs to be updated? Would this be possible or am I just dreaming? What are the possible downsides of this approach?

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• How to implement an intelligent enemy in a shoot-em-up?

  - by bummzack

  Imagine a very simple shoot-em-up, something we all know: You're the player (green). Your movement is restricted to the X axis. Our enemy (or enemies) is at the top of the screen, his movement is also restricted to the X axis. The player fires bullets (yellow) at the enemy. I'd like to implement an A.I. for the enemy that should be really good at avoiding the players bullets. My first idea was to divide the screen into discrete sections and assign weights to them: There are two weights: The "bullet-weight" (grey) is the danger imposed by a bullet. The closer the bullet is to the enemy, the higher the "bullet-weight" (0..1, where 1 is highest danger). Lanes without a bullet have a weight of 0. The second weight is the "distance-weight" (lime-green). For every lane I add 0.2 movement cost (this value is kinda arbitrary now and could be tweaked). Then I simply add the weights (white) and go to the lane with the lowest weight (red). But this approach has an obvious flaw, because it can easily miss local minima as the optimal place to go would be simply between two incoming bullets (as denoted with the white arrow). So here's what I'm looking for: Should find a way through bullet-storm, even when there's no place that doesn't impose a threat of a bullet. Enemy can reliably dodge bullets by picking an optimal (or almost optimal) solution. Algorithm should be able to factor in bullet movement speed (as they might move with different velocities). Ways to tweak the algorithm so that different levels of difficulty can be applied (dumb to super-intelligent enemies). Algorithm should allow different goals, as the enemy doesn't only want to evade bullets, he should also be able to shoot the player. That means that positions where the enemy can fire at the player should be preferred when dodging bullets. So how would you tackle this? Contrary to other games of this genre, I'd like to have only a few, but very "skilled" enemies instead of masses of dumb enemies.

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• In MMO game, how to handle user characters, who are offline?

  - by Deele

  In my medieval MMO game, players have their own character, that represents themselves inside game. Like a King. Players could have cities and armies, but King acts as main driving force. Then it comes to player, going offline/vacation/disconnect. How to deal with "offline King", to keep some sort of reality in game, without ruining everything for player. I have never liked unrealistic stuff in games, like appearing/dissapearing from thin air, like in WoW or other MMO RPG's, when it comes to connect/disconnect, like in Matrix movie, when you are disconnected, your "avatar" inside the system just vaninshes. Ok, if player char stays where it was left, other players who are online could kick his ass like offline player char was frozen? I see only one solution - give player char, while offline, some sort of AI, that controls char. Is there any other solutions? May be, some sort of legend/story, could make users only as inner-voice, leaving King just passively controlled by user, or other stuff... Please, help! I hope you understand my question.

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• Creating a 2D Line Branch

  - by Danran

  I'm looking into creating a 2D line branch, something for a "lightning effect". I did ask this question before on creating a "lightning effect" (mainly though referring to the process of the glow & after effects the lightning has & to whether it was a good method to use or not); Methods of Creating a "Lightning" effect in 2D However i never did get around to getting it working. So i've been trying today to get a seconded attempt going but i'm getting now-were :/. So to be clear on what i'm trying to-do, in this article posted; http://drilian.com/2009/02/25/lightning-bolts/ I'm trying to create the line segments seen in the images on the site. I'm confused mainly by this line in the pseudo code; // Offset the midpoint by a random amount along the normal. midPoint += Perpendicular(Normalize(endPoint-startPoint))*RandomFloat(-offsetAmount,offsetAmount); If someone could explain this to me it would be really grateful :).

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