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Children learn through play, which by it's core nature is subversive. In digital games we can enforce and feedback any arbitrary rules and do not require "conceptual rules" like don't step outside the white lines. Have we started using tutorials as a crutch rather than keeping our mechanics consistent and self-explanat...
I'm a programmer but have not yet developed any games. I have played various 3D games and always wondered how the Map of the field is stored and rendered. I know some acceleration card is a necessary hardware, but how exactly the view is changed without even a single flicker on the screen. Do you have any online ma...
I have had my eye on functional programming languages for a while, but am hesitating to actually get into them. But I think it's about time I at least starting glancing that direction to make sure I'm ready for anything. I've seen talk of Haskell, F#, Scala, and so on. But I have no clue the differences between the lan...
I am developing a game that is running as a web application. The fact is that the game lose sense if one player creates several accounts. Imagine that is a turn-based strategy game, and if you play against yourself (with another account) you can earn tons of points easily. At first, I thought about logging every single...
I was thinking about how to implement game states into my game. The main things I want for it are: Semi-transparent top states-being able to see through a pause menu to the game behind Something OO-I find this easier to use and understand the theory behind, as well as keeping orgranised and adding more to. I was pla...
This is borderline non-gamedev but PIDs are commonly used in games so I thought I'd give it a shot. I've got a few PID controllers in my game, used for things like steering and throttle control. I'm having trouble tuning them accurately. It never feels like I'm getting closer to the optimial solution, and it's very te...
What does it take to get an ESRB rating for my game?
How would I go about creating vehicle physics for a car that can loose traction? I want it to seem like the driver has a flat foot, so when you press the gas, they cars driving (rear) wheels loose traction, and makes it somewhat hard to control. I would also like to be able to do doughnuts and "drift" around corners. I...
I have a game that generates a random level map at the start of the level. I want to implement some way to save and load the level. I was thinking maybe XML would be a good option for saving all the variable, then it would be easy for me to build something that can parse that XML and generate the exact same level. But ...
What would the algorithm be for generating/drawing the asteroid shapes from the original Asteroids game? Is it even an algorithm? Or would they be hard coded shapes? Here is a screenshot to jog your memory. Screenshot from Asteroids game http://www.heinzwerner.de/emu_asteroids.jpg EDIT - Also found this: alt text http:...
I have a game with 4 difficulty levels (or levels of AI) and I'm wondering what to name them instead of the boring Easy, Normal, Hard, Impossible.
I'd like to shake the camera around a bit during an explosion, and I've tried a few different functions for rocking it around, and nothing seems to really give that 'wow, what a bang!' type feeling that I'm looking for. I've tried some arbitrary relatively high frequency sine wave patterns with a bit of linear attenuat...
Does anyone know when the source code for Doom 3 is to be released? I've heard a lot of things but nothing conclusive. Thanks Adam Edit any info is appreciated
Do I need to learn C++ to use Open GL?
There is a number of ways to catch mouse or keyboard under Windows. So I tried some of them, but every of them has some advantages and drawbacks. I want to ask you: Which method do use? I've tried these: WM_KEYDOWN/WM_KEYUP - Main disadvantage is that, I can't distinguish between left and right-handed keys like AL...
Firstly, this is AI for PacMan and not the ghosts. I am writing an Android live wallpaper which plays PacMan around your icons. While it supports user suggestions via screen touches, the majority of the game will be played by an AI. I am 99% done with all of the programming for the game but the AI for PacMan himself is...
Aside from 3d ripper DX does anyone know any other 3d asset tools to help 3d artist in learning modelling and/or animations.
I have quite a few debug drawing methods in my engine that can generate geometry useful for debugging, like spheres and cubes. At the moment I do not generate any normals for these shapes. Is there a general purpose method of generating face normals and per vertex normals for an arbitrary mesh? (I'd imagine you would ...
I'm going to write a server for an online multiplayer with these requirements: Pretty simple turn based game (think a card game) that is played entirely on the server (security reasons) Must be able to run multiple games (tables) with 4 players per table, but no lobby system required (another server takes care of that...
Say I have a moving circular target defined as: Vector2 position; Vector2 velocity; float radius; And a rotating turret (mounted on a moving vehicle of some kind) defined as: Vector2 position; Vector2 velocity; float angle; // radians float angularVelocity; // radians per second const float maxAngularVelocity; // radi...
Possible Duplicate: Tools for creating 2d tile based maps I am Indie Game developer and I am looking for a tile based 2d level editor. I also would like to know the free ones as well as paid ones, which you feel as the best.
I and a couple of friends are doing a game on our spare time and we've finished about 80% of the game.. so all the obvious stuff and core mechanincs. We've done a couple of games before and we always have problems finishing. The problem isn't that we're not passionate enough about the game, it's rather that no one of ...
I have been dabling in game development since I started programming, but never very seriously. I work as a business app developer, but I'm working on some games in my spare time. In the business world (on the Microsft web-dev stack) ASP.NET MVC is becoming really popular, because of its ease of unit-testing the way the...
Is there a nice way in OpenGL to blur objects without using shaders? Currently, I'm accomplishing blur by rendering the object slightly up, down, left, right, and the four diagonals from its original position. It seems like there should be a much better way of doing this. I'm working in a 2d scene.
I've used TDD in personal projects, but I wondered if anyone had any experience of using this approach across a large team? Was there resistence to the test-first approach? Did you keep code coverage high for the whole project? How did coverage survive fixing those two-in-the-morning-and-you-ship-in-four-hours crash bu...
Currently I am learning how to use XNA by making a 2D Game. So far I am doing okay, but I want to implement a click-to-move instead of using the keys to walk around but I haven't found any samples around and I am sort of clueless on how to approach it. I know that XNA works well for xbox controls and keyboard but I hav...
Is there any point in including manuals with games today? It seems like most manuals are more for background story or art than any actual help. Additionally, it seems like most games are including "help" inside of their games in the means of tutorials or similar means. Do enough users actually look at their manuals ...
I created a horizontally scrolling landscape using CCParallaxNode. However it does not seem to support endless scrolling in one direction. As soon as the first image "ends" the background shines through. Adding an unlimited number of images is of course not an option. I thought about the usual way, namely adding two sp...
Are there any very simple open source games available just to demonstrate the basics of the programming techniques? Preferably something which fits in to a couple hundred lines of actual code. Specifically, I'm looking for an open source game written in Objective-C and Cocoa. I would also appreciate one written in C....
I have a 3D field with many MovieClips in it, and seems like the one last added is the one that overlaps others and not the one with highest z value. Is there any property/function that sets z-index? (sorting children by z value seems too much like a hack). A 3D engine that can place MovieClips will be helpful(but not...
I am planing to develop a game, in fact a puzzle game, I have changed the graphics but the level design is all the same. For example, the original puzzle game have five aliens as the obstacle in the human way to airship, the aliens spit fire on human. So here I have changed the alien to chameleon, with same positions(t...
I think I've seen "questions" like this on stackoverflow but sorry if I'm overstepping any bounds. Inspired by my recent question and all the nice answers (Checklist for finished game?) I think every gamedev out there has something he/she thinks that almost every game should have. That knowledge is welcome here! So t...
Note: I plan on making my own GUI system. It will be good for learning, lightweight, only have bits I need, ties in with the game, etc. I was thinking about how to do it. The elements I mean are: Radio buttons Enter text here boxes Buttons Sliders Checkboxes I'm not looking as to how to make them, yet. But more o...
There are a few types of feedback you can get from playtesters, and I wonder how to best gather data for each of them... Crash Reports. When my C++ game crashes while someone is playing it, how do I best make sure that I know about it and even better... what caused it? Even getting something as simple as the file an...
I'm on the planning stages for an internal game engine I am about to start creating, which will be used for all my games going forward. But I'm struggling a bit with how it should be built. The choices come down to: framework or library. My basic objective is to hide engine details as much as possible to keep high ...
I'm a software engineer and I'm hoping to move my career towards game development. I'm reading a book right now on 2D using C++/DirectX. When I get into 3D I know I want to do it correctly. For example, I know nothing about 3d space. So if I learn only an API I might know it but I don't know if I can develop an interra...
Hey. My input system has a GetKey() method that returns a key in a map. Simple enough. However, I want to know if the key is not available - be it a typo, or misuse of wording, or something else. I am the only person working on this project; would it be a good idea to simply set some compile time throw to see if it cat...
Basically Danny Varod seems to know as he posted it as an answer to this question: Display a Message Box over a Full Screen DirectX application I think, theoretically this might work, but I have no idea how to actually do it. Since I'm also not allowed to post a comment under his comment nor am I allwoed to ask on meta...
Simple enough question: What math should all game programmers have a firm grasp of in order to be successful? I'm not specifically talking about rendering math or anything in the niche areas of game programming, more specifically just things that even game programmers should know about, and if they don't they'll probab...
Game development is currently a largely non-academic enterprise. There are a lot of commercial developers of games, as well as a large hobbyist community. The academic community focusing on games seems to be small, and new. [Or so it appears to me]. Having said all that, are there some must read papers/books on game...
So, i'm a student looking to get my foot in the door of game development and im looking to do something 2D, maybe a tetris/space invaders/something-with-a-little-mouse-interaction clone. I pointed my searches in the direction of C++ and 2d and was eventually lead to DirectX/OpenGL Now as i understand it, all these pac...
A few questions on the site have mentioned the need for more open source projects. I agree and wonder what frameworks should be developed. I'll start the list. A geometry kernel, including serialization (JSON, binary, compressed binary), tailored for OpenGL/DirectX Gesture recognition
Looking to make textures for Unity3d, and I'm stuck at what seems to be a simple stage. My goal is to create an RGBA image, with color information for every pixel, and a separate alpha channel. These two components get fed into Unity as base color and reflection strength, respectively. (Using "Reflective/Bumped Diffuse...
I'm pretty interested in seeing demographic data as I find them good targeting tools. But other than the ESA reports (free) and NPD numbers (paid) does anyone know any other sources for such data?
I'm new to game development and development in general, I want to make a Connect 4 game. I have made a few simple game tutorials and I decided I wanted to make my own game now. I figured a connect 4 game should be a simple start for me, can anyone help me out how to go about with this please? Should I use Cocos2d or wr...
A long time ago, 4:3 was pretty much the only apect ratio you would find on a PC. Today the most common one is 16:10, but most new monitors (especially laptops) are 16:9 I'm writing a 2D platformer, and I can't decide how I should handle all the different ratios. Here are some ideas: 4:3 gets more content, widescreens...
Does anyone know of a clearly written reference implementation of morphological antialiasing (MLAA)? Intel provide a paper and reference implementation at the following address, but I find the code very opaque. http://visual-computing.intel-research.net/publications/publications.htm
Simple question: What are the pros and cons, as well as overall opinions, of outsourcing work as an independent game developer? (For example: paying an artist to draw characters, or a composer to write music, etc.) In particular I'm interested in the case where the developer (be it an individual or a team) can still co...
Ludum Dare 18 is coming up and I'll be participating in it. I've done a couple other short-term game competitions in the past but this is my first big one (and my first solo one). I am REALLY excited for it, but I'm wondering if there are any tricks to preparing for this sort of thing, and any advice on what to do whil...
On one question I saw users using the word "mobs" - I have never heard this term, and got me thinking - is there glossary of game and gamedev terms that anyone has come across? ps. what are mobs?
More and more games are going the data driven route which means that there needs to be a layer of security around easy manipulation. I've seen it where games completely bundle up their assets (audio, art, data) and I'm wondering how they are managing that? Are there applications / libraries that will bundle and assist ...
Basically every Game company wants to see a portfolio that exhibits your skill set. If you're specializing in AI though, what and how should you show off your skills. Some thoughts Is nice graphics in an AI demo a must(get past nontechnical HR that don't understand AI, think 3d verse 2d)? Demo multi-featured AI or a ...
I want to port a rigged mesh from a custom format to COLLADA. The bones I have define a position for the bone (local) and a matrix that transforms the child-bones' positions into the next-higher coordinate space. (The position of the root usually is {0, 0, 0}.) How can I convert these to the inverse bind-pose matrices ...
What are the best resources on multi-threaded game or game engine design and development? As this is obviously where computers are headed, I intend to study this topic and I'd like to know what resources and examples are out there.
How do I make animated menus with cocos2d, I just want to animate the buttons and not the entire scene. Effects I look for is flipping buttons (like the back of the button is the next menu), buttons that retract once selected and re appear with new button. Basically what I ask for is cool effects between menu transitio...
How can I get voice recognition features into the Unity Game Engine? Is there a plug-in or a framework (hopefully freeware) that I could use? If so, do you have any ideas on how to install it? Also, how much of a problem would there be with background noises in the game interfering with the voice inputs into the game? ...
Is there a plugin to integrate Face FX with Blender? I only see plugins for Maya, Max, SoftImage, and MotionBuilder on the Face FX website.
Has anybody used this library before? What were your experiences? Pros/Cons?
A useful list of AI middleware. Please provide URL, free/open-source or licenced, and brief description of abilites. Format: Package (License) Link Pros Cons
Following on from the aspect ratios question, I'm interested to hear what other people are using when working on 2D UI systems (most likely their own home-grown solutions). Specifically, how do you handle coordinate systems. To my mind there are three options: Hard-coded co-ordinates (e.g.: 0 -> 720, 0 -> 576) Normali...
I'm trying to make a WPF-3D game. WPF uses XAML. I'm trying to find free 3D assets from the internet. :-) What format of 3D models I should be looking for, direct XAML or 3D Studio format or what? I know that there are some 3D Studio format to XAML -converters, but I don't know if they really work...
To give a bit of background, I'm developing an MMO in the web browser. Crazy? Yes, but it certainly isn't impossible. The server sends updates to the client by means of long-polling JSONp tags which are opened in advance and marked for updates to be sent at a certain timestamp. The problem is that you simply can't pump...
I'm making a somewhat simple side-scroller in Flash. The way I'm currently doing the really basic physics(you don't fall through floors/can't walk through walls) is that I have a big symbol of all the walls/floor/ceiling and use some complex hit testing against that. Basically, if you are moving down when you hit, move...
I'm benchmarking some simple code for drawing using OpenGL. In the following code, the number of indices being drawn is 4,644 (or 1,548 triangles per frame = @60fps 92,880 Triangles per second). glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); glOrtho(0, screen...
I've read a lot about the benefits of organizing data into 'Structs of Arrays' (SoA) instead of the typical 'Array of Structs' (AoS) to get better throughput when using SIMD instructions. While the 'why' makes total sense to me, I'm not sure how much to do this when working with things like vectors. Vectors themselves ...
I've seen many a time in source code, things like this [well, this is more of a pseudo C++ idea of mine] typedef shared_ptr<Resource> ResourcePtr;// for ease ResourcePtr sound1 = resourceManager.Get<SoundResource>("boom.ogg"); sound1->Play(); ResourcePtr sprite = resourceManager.Get<Image>("sprite.png"); I was...
In 'normal' business programming optimization step is often left until really needed. Meaning you should not optmize until it is really needed. Remember what Donald Knuth said "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil" When is the time to opti...
I am new to game programming and am trying to make a basic 2d top-down space game with 2 space ships that fight each other. I am doing well with the user controlled space ship, but have no idea how to even start programming an AI. Are certain methods/patterns better for this situation? Where would I even begin?
Suppose I have a bunch of 2D art in some vectorized format such as SVG. Is there an easy-ish way to render that directly without having to implement a full SVG renderer myself? Of course I could rasterize it off-line (e.g. in the content pipeline) for different resolutions/zoom levels, but I would like to maintain the ...
The news just came across the Google blog that Wave is going to go away in the not too distant future. Clicky for the story. This is a real shame for my team who has been making heavy use of Wave as a remote collaboration tool. Looks like we need a new platform. What tools does your remote team like to use to collabo...
In XNA (and Direct3D in general AFAIK), rather than creating individual vertex and fragment shaders, you bundle potentially many related shaders into 'Effects'. When you come to use an effect you select a 'technique' (or iterate through all of them) and then each 'technique' has a number of 'passes'. You loop through t...
I have terrain being rendered in my project using VBOs in OpenGL. I would like to apply some Frustum Culling but have no idea how to access each polygon as its drawn to check if it is in view. I think this is where octrees come into play but I have no idea how this is really done. Does anyone know a good tutorial on ho...
Hey all, I am working on a simple game to include some rigid body dynamics, involving placing (moving & rotating) some springs to bounce a falling ball into a target area. My problem is correctly calculating the exit velocity of the ball after it hits the spring surface (Vexit, Ve for short) Assume the following: Initi...
How would I go about using a random seed to generate a game level? The same seed should always generate the exact same level. For this example it would be a Worms style level. So each level would have a theme (grasslands, snow etc), base terrain, different objects such as trees. So where would I start to create this ki...
What is the significance of MeshTextureCoords element in a .x Mesh file?
List here the most common splines found in game development, how many points the method needs to interpolate a curve, and how can you build a data type that allows you to get an interpolation of the curve points. Examples: Bezier curves, B-Splines, Cubic Splines, etc. P.S.: I'm putting this as a community wiki so we ca...
I have a very basic understanding of audio and was hoping I could get some help to resolve a problem with the audio design in my engine. Let me give you a run-down of how I've currently got it fitting together. I have an AudioManager that handles setting up and tear down of the XAudio2 interface as well as the master v...
How do I update the version of OpenGL on Windows so that I can use anything newer than the Version 1.1 header file that is included in the Platform SDK? Even version 7.0A of the SDK for Windows 7 only includes GL.h and GLU.h for version 1.1 of OpenGL. I've installed the NVidia driver for my board that includes OpenGL...
How does the name of a game relate to how popular it becomes? Have there been studies around this subject? Are people influenced by the name of a game?
I'm curious what solutions game developers have come up with for serializing the different types of data that they deal with for their games. Do you guys use some monolithic GameObject hierarchy that houses a serialization interface for derived types, use sort of custom RTTI-based solution, perform explicit stream seri...
Do people write their own DB for some reason?
Possible Duplicate: Where to advertise my game? Let's say I have developed a game and I want to "get it out there". What I have in mind is open-source, non-commercial games. What websites do you know of where you can promote your newly developed game, rather than simply posting it on your blog?
I would like to add the option to play against another person over my wifi network in my pong game. How do I make this happen? Also, I would like to know how to be able to have 4 players at the same time like I would if I make a monopoly type game or something similar. I'm a newbee so please point me in the right direc...
Possible Duplicate: How to make animated buttons in a menu with Cocos2d? How do I make fun and interactive menus with cocos2d, all the tutorials are just for simple clickable menus. Can any one help me learn this? It would be see the menu flip or slide away, I know you can do this with scenes but how do I make this ...
If I have a file stucture for my final, released game something like: Main folder Media Images Other assets Sounds Executable List item And a different one for my 'in development' project, with the same Media folder but: Main Source and .obj, etc. Media with everything Bin folder with executable I obviously c...
given a set of vertices and triangles for each mesh. Does anyone know of an algorithm, or a place to start looking( I tried google first but haven't found a good place to get started) to perform boolean operations on said meshes and get a set of vertices and triangle for the resulting mesh? Of particular interest are s...
I hear that the console game platforms have strict requirements for their games. For example I just read an answer that stated loading screens must have an animation on them so that the game doesn't appear to be frozen -- this makes sense, of course! I think a lot of the guidelines in these books would probably be grea...
Are there resources for programmers with little to no graphics design talent, but still want to make good-enough graphics for their own programs? I'm interested in both 2d and 3d computer generated graphics techniques, as well as free graphics repositories.
I've seen this question on SO, but here i want it to focus on GFX. So in your opinion what applications/features should every aspiring GFX programmer write/change to get better? Community wiki since there is no "right answer". LE: Not referring to actual games, but to graphical features for example changing something i...
I am making a game with WPF and C#, and I frequently am in need of artwork for it. Some things could be easily shared, such as explosion animations, exhaust plumes, etc. I was wondering if there are any good web sites for this? All I can find are tutorials and the infrequent sample, but I imagine there is a site out...
I want to create a Windows Form-based adventure game where the player clicks a hex on a static map to bring up their next encounter. I have the map already and plan to scan it and convert it to a .bmp file. My problem is that I'm not sure how to tie the map image in with the game code. Unless I'm mistaken, I think I ne...
I want to add some nice atmospheric scattering to my 3D game engine but I am very concerned with conserving resources. I am not very familiar with how its done but can someone please give me some suggestions how to achieve this effect without using too many resources? For example, should I use precomputed or real time ...
We are a "nano" game dev company working on REFUSION. DX9 renderer is almost done and question is: Should we move it to DX11 or not? Anyone have experience with this? Here are some videos from dev progress from the very beginning: Dev test videos EDITED: I'm going to ask more fundamental. What about NextNextGen XBOX...
How do I make a Battleships game for the Iphone? I'm new to programming, I've done some tutorials and I feel I'm making progress with this but I would like to make a full game like battleships. Can anyone help me out with this? I'm trying to learn cocos2d-Iphone so I would like to use that if possible. David
I would like to write a game that could be played on smart phones and was wondering if HTML5 might be a way to write games to work on a wide selection of smart phones.
I saw the general level design question but not much of it applies to building good solid levels for RTS games. Where can i find information on rules and mechanics of RTS level design?
Can I make an entire game in Unity 3D for the iphone without using any Objective - C or Cocoa?
[Hypothetically] I'm at a smaller company and looking for a place to get the word out about our available openings. Alternately, I'm looking for a place to browse through resumes of people looking for jobs. What are some services I can use to find the people I need? Answer Format One URL per answer Costs (if applica...
I'm working on a relatively simple 2D side-scrolling iPhone game. The controls are tilt-based. I use OpenGL ES 1.1 for the graphics. The game state is updated at a rate of 30 Hz... And the drawing is updated at a rate of 30 fps (via NSTimer). The smoothness of the drawing is ok... But not quite as smooth as a game ...
Now, for the record, I'm currently not implementing any racing game whatsoever, but this problem just popped into my mind and now I'm curious. So how would one go about finding out which participant of a race is currently the first one? It can't be something trivial like just sorting by distance to the finish line beca...

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