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Can anyone suggest a memory efficient way to represent a tree of matrices, for example in a hierarchy model? I'm particularly keen to preserve data locality, and I suspect a structure-of-arrays (matrices & indices to matrices) type approach might be suitable. As well as many chained matrix computations, this structure ...
I have started a few game projects in the past, but have never finished anything. I decided that it was probably because I was writing everything thing from scratch, and just ended up dropping the project once development started taking too long. I've decided that I want to finish my first game now, and needed some op...
I had this chat with a friend of mine about whether an AI can be created or not that could beat any human without resource cheating in a real time strategy game. An AI that would play almost perfectly. The AI of today's games have many areas that can be improved, most of them rely on resource cheating, a better early b...
I'm working on mobile platforms as Android, IOS... Many users of Moblox ask us a windows and an OS X version. There is no difficulties to provide these versions, because we are developing on OS X C++ code but we miss global scores and social network part (facebook, twitter). Is there any library to implement these func...
What relationship is there, if any, of "materials" and vertex/pixel shaders (or the "effects" that combine the latter two)? I have the impression that before the advent of HLSL, materials were explicitly handled by Direct3D or OpenGL. I also have the impression that with HLSL, many prior effects are now handled direct...
As far as I know, .X format can be text encoded and binary-encoded. I basically want to look into the model I'm playing with, get a better understanding of .X, possibly make some changes in it and convert back.
What would be the fastest method for doing anti-aliasing for a flash game that is drawn via blitting to a BitmapObject? A method I thought of would be to make games stage smaller than the BitmapObject that the game is drawn to, and then somehow shrink it to the size of the stage. Would that method work? If so what woul...
I've been struggling with how to implement scripting in my game engine. I only have a few requirements: It should be intuitive, I don't want to write a custom language, parser and interpreter, and I don't want to use threading. (I'm certain there's a simpler solution; I don't need the hassle of multiple game logic thre...
I understand that water ripples (e.g. stone thrown into a pond) are often handled with vertex shaders. My first question is: are the ripples nothing more than an algorithm that is the function of time? If yes, it means that the size and diameter of ripples is not "additive." It means water vertices do not statefully ...
Do any of you have any good examples from two or more games that share some of the same game logic, but are of entirely different genres? Could very well be one of your own games. Take Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft for instance. Entirely different games, but they could have some game logic in common without us knowi...
What do we know about hardware acceleration for drawing operations in Flash? I know that since 10.1 it's there for video playback (and mobile graphics) but that doesn't really help with rendering desktop game graphics. So, is there any information about it, or maybe talk or rumours going around? Do you think it's somet...
I'm learning to create a game engine from scratch in XNA. I'm seeking examples of very small game engines, specifically the architecture and structure of source files, etc. It should include a scripting engine. Articles are also appreciated. More specifically, I have a problem knowing how to connect the scripting engin...
I want to move into some game development, but the only language I know really well is Ruby. Most of what I have read seems to point towards lower level languages like C++ for game development, or languages for specific frameworks like C# for using XNA. Does anyone have any experience using a language like ruby for gam...
my cocos2d game currently has a ccsprite attached to a box2d body. during the game i apply different CCAnimations on my sprite, i would like to perform certain manipulations to the box2d body according to the frame currently displayed by the sprite (change rotation of the body, etc.) my current idea on implementing thi...
I'm using XNA and am having a simple issue which I can't figure out. I'm just messing around and want to get a firm grasp of local/world space coordinates. Matrix rotateCharacter= Matrix.CreateRotationZ(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f)); Matrix moveCharacter = Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(10,10,0))...
No, I'm not looking for glPolygonMode. I'm searching for a method, possibly a GLSL shader that would produce that retro-style wireframe look for objects. Any suggestions? Something like Vector Tanks had. Preferably the solution should work on OpenGL ES 2.0 also. Any hints and pointers (as long as not NULL) appreciated...
This is a very persistent question in game design, especially in games where you need to hold/retain players like MMO or social games. (On a side note grinding can easily calculated so its easy tool for engagement and timed progression). The question other than community building/competition are there solutions that ca...
How can I make my game (right now just a C# Console Application) appear in the Start Menu under Games?? I mean is it possible for any program to register as a Game in Windows Vista / 7?
Is there a well known AI technique to create an opponent in the game Othello (aka Reversi)?
Is there any significant difference between using a square or hexagonal grid for the area searched by a path finding algorithm. In other words, is square or hexagonal better, and if so why.
Although graphics is my main area of focus, I've been dabbling with Game AI concepts for quite some time now; from simple A* path-finding to intricate Perceptrons.. My question is this; Does anyone have any examples of successful (or perhaps more interestingly, failed) implementations of some higher-level AI concepts i...
The immediate question is: in HLSL, how can I orient a surface normal generated in UV space so that I can apply it to a cube face? The overall project is that I'm trying to build a procedural planet generator. I'm using a cube projected to a sphere where each face is a quad-tree. The intermediate project is that I w...
I am starting to learn OpenGL with FreeGLUT using the Superbible and the knowledge I have from my elementary graphics to brush up on my skills. To get more from this experience I want to integrate a GUI to overwrite the one FreeGLUT uses, now my question is this: is this thing possible and what library should I use? So...
Some years ago, if you wrote in C and some subset of C++ and used a sufficient number of platform abstractions (via SDL or whatever), you could run on every platform an indie could get on - Linux, Windows, Mac OS of various versions, obscure stuff like BeOS, and the open consoles like the GP2X and post-death Dreamcast....
I am each day making the art in illustrator more complete and now comes the time where I decide to invest in an animation program/route. I hear at times for people to use Toon Boom but the problem is I don't see a ton of tutorials and it seems like it's more for hand drawn animation. So, I'd use AE for example to draw ...
I'm new to flash and web development too. But I have some background in c#/c++/Qt/python. So, I want to know, what is the best toolchain for quickest dive into. My task is to write a game for facebook.com/vkontakte.ru. I already have the design doc, great artist and game-designer, so, the coding is the only stumbling b...
Most companies have an editor, or a variable control system for tweaking stuff in games, but are there any middleware solutions to this problem? I've written two such systems in the past myself, and worked with five, maybe six different ones, but none of them were off the shelf. Each of these home grown solutions had p...
I'd like to create a simple demo video of a game for iPhone and iPod Touch. What tools do people use for this? Ideally I can capture the device's screen... as opposed to the simulator. Also the game uses tilt controls... hence capturing the device's screen helps put actual game play into the demo video.
I have a degree in Computer Science and while I was in college, I created a simple 2D game in Game Maker. I would like to recreate this game in C++ as a start to learning how to create games in C++. What would be a good book to start out on programming games in C++ for someone who has a bit of C++ experience (My CS M...
Since Quake 1 (I think it was the first), level design tools for FPS games have used solid brushes and CSG operations to define level geometry instead of more conventional poly modeling tools you see in general purpose 3d applications like 3DS MAX. Why is this? Is it: More productive for the level designer? More likel...
I've been working with a few game oriented gui libraries trying to find a good fit. More specifically, a GUI that will work on Windows,Linux,iPhone, and Android with minimal special code. In my tinkering I've noticed a few libraries like to render the their GUI's to an off screen texture that just display the texture ...
I've been dealing with some frame-rate jittering issues with my game lately, and it seems that the best solution would be the one suggested by Glenn Fiedler (Gaffer on Games) in the classic Fix Your Timestep! article. Now - I'm already using a fixed time-step for my update. The problem is that I'm not doing the sugges...
I know a bit about this question but I find that there are quite a lot of diverse opinions on the subject? I know from a players perspective that more options is almost always good. But on the other hand if it has multi-player more means higher complexity (meta game) both for the developers as well as players. On deve...
As part of the project i am working on I am looking to produce some software that works on a LCD display (think call center info boards) and displays various graphs (the bars grow etc in realtime, so incoming call stats etc etc) and flicks between various 'plug-ins'. I asked before, and WPF was suggested, and it looks ...
Hey all, I am trying to take into consideration the effect of inertia of the initial rotation of a ball, hitting a surface, into the exit velocity vector of the ball. My current theory is this: Assume Ball initial rotation is Ri Calculate an exit Velocity vector without any consideration for the ball's initial rotatio...
I'm successfully streaming ogg vorbis data to openAL with the Java library JOrbis, but now I want to loop over a part of this stream, e.g from 30" to 1'30". I thought that at the end of the loop, I could redecode from the beginning of the file, skip the unwanted part, and then keep streaming until the end of the loop...
I have just recently became intrigued by the whole concept of making video games. I am not new to programming, but I am new to the process/requirements/methodologies of programming a video game. I would like to inevitably make games with similar 2d style as POP Caps Plants vs Zombies. Where would one start to do that? ...
I'm a F# user. What library should I use to develop games (2D and/or 3D) in F# and being cross-platform? Like how Processing is. Don't answer DirectX or WPF or other things that are "too .NET" because they are not cross-platform. Show me a library suggestion and a code example and a link to help me to get started in yo...
I'm trying to produce a shader to replicate a white plastic object with a colored light inside. Either by having a shader that will be translucent and if I put a light inside the object the light will show through or by having a shader that fakes the effect of a light inside. The effect im going for is kinda like a lig...
I'm in the middle of planning a game built using JavaScript and HTML5. I'm having trouble understanding how you could prevent someone from simply copying the JavaScript from the web server and either making their own game with it (not my biggest concern), or substituting their own JavaScript functions and dashing any...
I'm in the process of developing and releasing an iOS game, and have found that it just won't run on an iPhone 3G (don't even ask about a 2G) for many reasons. Primarily, the number of sprites and sounds needed for each level continually cause low memory crashes. I've already pared it down to the bare minimum and str...
Hey guys, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm also not sure where else to ask. I have a 3D model in Solidworks that is imported from a STL file. Solidworks imports the file multiple triangular faces and as either a solid, or a surface. See pic below: What I need to do is take the model and have ...
I'm currently programming a PacMan clone as my first ever game with the XNA Game Studio before eventually going to DirectX. As a first ever game, lots of things have given me great headaches, especially collision detection with the walls. The problem I have now is the "AI" I have implemented for the ghosts. It's wish-...
Hi :) I want to ask what is the best way to deal with "mini-states" in game? For example I making game like Simcity, i can build buildings, roads, rails, or I can change something in economy. I am making something like: enum { ROAD_CONSTRUCT, BUILDING_CONSTRUCT VIEW_MAP etc.. } and in the game loop big switch....
Any ideas where I can find info about making 2D jump & run games? I need some general ideas, so I wouldn't reinvent wheel (at least where game design is concerned). Another point is that I am thinking of using boxes instead of images for collision testing. However, it should possible that I can implement slopes. Comman...
There is standard advice for game development to start off emulating simple games you know and build up from there. Which makes me wonder. What are good examples of action games or action RPGs that are very simple to begin with to try and emulate? What is necessary and what is superfluous? Please link to the game's sit...
What kind of game is prisonblock? Any open source that I can learn the math behind it for user actions/gameplay?
I asked a similar question in 'SO' not knowing about this place,anyways here goes: I wanted to know what the best approaches are while creating a platformer based game for handling background & objects. Tiled method - Using small objects & loading on-the-fly : I understand this is good for employing a level editor for...
I recently submitted my iPhone game for review. I also approved the in-app-purchase for my game (and provided the in-app-purchase screenshot). It's a few days later and the app status has been updated from "waiting for review" to "in review"... while the in-app-purchase status is still "waiting for review". Could th...
I'm currently looking into adding sound to my game. I have seen OpenAL and SDL, but I would like to know what else is out there. Can you recommend any good cross-platform Audio APIs for game development?
I'm trying to set the origin of a box2d shape. By default, a shape rotates around the center. But I'm trying to get it to rotate around the left of the shape. Like a clock for example. I've heard of things like SetXForm but that function doesn't seem to even exist. I'm using C++ just in case you needed to know that. ...
I am developing an iphone app. It has following page structure, 1.List of game levels in a UITableView 2.Game page I use "UIViewAnimationTransitionFlipFromRight" between pages Game page has 3 views, One is a scrollView in that my game grid is drawn. Game grid is a sub class of UIView ,that added to Scrollview. To supp...
A little introduction: I'm 25, and going to this private french school, CreaJeux, which begins in october. I will be learning mostly game programming, something I wanted to do a long time ago, since the day I wondered how were 3d graphics working on my playstation, when I was 14 or so. I'm very eager and impatient to b...
I am getting my 3D modeling pipeline started and a few questions have come up about modeling packages and formats: What 3D model format is easy to parse, free to use, and is usable on the iOS/Mac platforms? Will I be able to create my own wrapper classes for said 3D model formats, or is it a code-and-format packaged de...
I read the stencil word a lot, and I don't have a clue what is its real purpose in computer graphics. Seeing the picture in black and white on wikipedia, I'm still having problem with it. Why do we use a stencil or a stencil buffer, and what is the difference with a Z-buffer ? Why using this word which seems to have so...
I recently started to create a sidescroller game, for learning purposes. While creating several levels for it, i stumbled upon the question, how to implement these levels into my game. I made (and i think this is the common way, correct me if i am wrong, i appreciate it) a state-based game, with a menu-state, a game-st...
Currently I am starting a 3D game with C# but I don't have a designer yet nor any images or anything or any money to invest on it. I would like to develop it using some sort of placeholder or whatever to fill the graphics so I can make at least the basics of it and later simply switch for the real thing. Should the p...
I am a graphic artist and not a modeler or a programmer. For the last few months I have been developing the concept for a game, but could not find a proper team of collaborators to make a demo. Then, as luck would have it, I met a group of people from a local Design College that has a new degree in Game Design. After a...
I know of the Truskill algorithm, it's quite complex but effective. My question is there other algorithms/methods to determine a players skill for accurate measuring for multi-player competitive play?
I'm a college student, and I have a really boring class every Tuesday that's 2 hours and 45 minutes long. It's an interesting situation... attendance is required and checked, and electronic devices aren't allowed, but discussion isn't required and the lectures don't really matter to the exams. So I sit there in the bac...
Yes, this is another recommend game engine request; the 'twist' is I am doing a strategy game and on top of sprites, animation and abstraction of input controls, it has to have GUI support for rather complex controls, such as scroll-bars, select boxes, buttons and such. I have tried XNA with various GUI libraries, but...
I'm working on a platformer where I'd like to be able to move or copy bodies between multiple Box2D b2Worlds. The desire has cropped up three times now - moving objects between documents in my editor, moving the player between levels in normal game play, and giving the player a preview of a non-trivial projectile they ...
Since the early days of accelerated graphics, programmers were obligated to use hardware-supported libraries like directX or OpenGL. If we wanted to explain someone what happened by introducing a graphic chip, the simple thing to say is "we just copy the 3D data into a new memory, where another processor will take care...
I don't know if there's an accepted solution to this wicked problem. I'm thinking about the design of an online PvP game. A key aspect of the game, something that is just a given, and not my choice, is that people will join the game at very different times. New players can still show up after there are already powerful...
I'm using XNA to program a game, and have been experimenting with various ways to achieve a 'selected' effect on my sprites. The trouble I am having is that each clickable that is drawn in the spritebatch is drawn using more than a single sprite (each object can be made up of up to 6 sprites). I'd appreciate it if some...
A friend and I are planning on pitching an idea to venture capitalists in a few weeks at SIEGE 2010. He is handling the business plan side of things and all those related questions so I only need technical questions here. What types of things should I be prepared to answer about our project? For reference its an econom...
One of the best ways to earn money with Flash games is by making sponsorship deals. The developer puts the sponsor's logo and a link to their site in the game and lets the game spread around the web. The sponsor gains money from the ads and the extra traffic to their website. Alternatively, they site-lock their game to...
I'm making a simple platformer, and I wanted simple collision handling. So I gave all my objects an AABB hitbox and tried to resolve collisions. However, I can't get it to work. My main character has a 32x32 hitbox and my walls have a 16x16 hitbox. I've used the separating axes solution to resolve the collision, like s...
There is a thing I don't understand about game engines: why it is so common to use physics engines to do raycasting or collision testing? Say that you have a 3D scene loaded in your scene manager (Ogre or whatever) and you have to do some raycasting. Is it really efficient to load all your objects in the physical or c...
Google's new Go language is still in its infancy, and it has yet to find widespread real-world use or support. Even so, it seems like a promising experiment, and I wonder if it could have a future in game development. I haven't been able to find much game-specific discussion of Go elsewhere, and figured a CW discussi...
I got couple of 2 .max files that were created on 2008 version of 3ds Max. The files are really very simple 3d models of room and furniture item. I am using blender 2.53 beta. I have 3ds Max 2011 version. Using this version I exported the model to Autodesk Collada (.dae file) and also to .OBJ files but neither work wit...
I'm mostly a programmer, but I'd like to be able to do competent work on other parts of games I make when working on solo projects. What I'm specifically asking here is what sort of techniques or styles for visual asset creation should I study and use to be able to work with the most efficiency? Basically, what would e...
I am looking for a place in the web where I can turn my current game development process into a vector based approach. I am sorry If this question has been asked once. According to my google search analysis, few places I've found pretty interesting are Tony Pa's tutorials and Metanet. But, due to limited explanations, ...
again. This question is strictly related to this one so, what is the technology that makes physics engines suitable for raycasting? It is a particular data structure? Has it to do with the engine's internal representation of the objects? If so, how do they represent objects so to be able to make polygon-precise raycast...
A unique graphical aesthetic is obviously important when developing a game. I wonder if the same is true for audio? Is it worth investing my time in recording, producing my own sounds or should I just buy stock effects?
Long ago there was this web-based game called Utopia (and I'm sure it is still around), turns are by per hour. You only get new gold/lumber or what-not every hour. Some newer web based games have resources incrementing in finer resolution, like per minute. So say a player has a food production rate of 5 per minute - th...
I am working on an online game that will have very heavy collision detection processing. Player models will collide with other players, mobs, structures, terrain, and solid objects that only exist server side (not stored in client data files). For security purposes, should I do all collision detection server-side? Or s...
How can I make a p2p multiplayer game? I would like to have a server-less multiplayer game. But then, how all the clients know each other? Why the p2p-protocol is so famous in file transfer but not in multiplayer games?
Impressive trailers for your game can really help show players how awesome your game is, but I'm having trouble finding tips that describe how to create a great trailer. I would like to learn about the best way to decide trailer length, structure, music/sound, and content. Basically, what parts of my game do I show i...
Which brings better performance at run-time: a cube imported from a mesh, or a cube made from hardcoded vertices? Are there limitations to a certain method? Is one of them better architectural-wise?
I can think of several 2D games which use the Accelerometer successfully, but in my experience as a player, character control in a 3D environment tends to be frustrating. Mostly because a 3D environment often involves a wider, continuous field of view which prevents me from sitting comfortably while playing. Is this a...
I am an adjunct professor at a technical College in South Carolina. I currently teach courses in .Net programming and Oracle PL/SQL. We’ve noticed an influx of students who want to learn more about computer programming and game development in particular. Their main interest stems from their experiences with video g...
So I currently have my background as a single PNG and some obstacles (like blocks as part of that PNG). In order to create a path, I currently store pixels above a unique green color (my hill) and use this to move the character. My question is, is it better to create something like a collision layer mask or somehow con...
In these online games, say you are a person who has characteristics like: level strength experience defense ... And now you walk into a room of 'others' that you want to e.g. recruit, how would you go about calculating this users ability to recruit? Or any other common action in a online web game like a battle, or lo...
Is it safe to just hookup a wired Xbox controller to my PC via USB? Do I need to buy a special PC Xbox controller? I've read conflicting reports. Any help is appreciated.
This is a kind of embarassing question to me since I'm getting more in-depth with XNA but some times my way of thinking about things in my head contradicts an example and I need to re-think it to make it work. So let's say I am just working with a sprite that is 10 wide and 10 high. Scaling: When I apply a scaling mat...
I have made games with box2dflash, but how much ever i have wanted to try out the test bed, the resources on the net don't help me. I have a folder called Testbed and various Test???.as files inside it. It would be a great help if somebody could just jot down how the testing of a box2dflash game is done. Thank you
I even heard J. Carmack quickly talk about it... How a software can track a player's position so accurately, being on a such huge world, without loading between zones, and on a multiplayer scale ? How is the data formatted when it passes through the netcode ? I can understand how vertices are stored into the graphic ca...
Background: I'm making a retro style game for both fun, and an unofficial contest. I have bought a song, song X. However, I then found notation for song X, and all the instruments. So basically, it's a program recreating song X in a sense. I took the notation, and used another program to make it sound like a chiptune ...
there are many successful social games in Facebook and other social sites like brain buddies, who has the biggest brain and word challenge.both of them have a great soundtrack while playing and in the beginning of the game . my question is how to find a good soundtrack or what's i should look for to find a good soundtr...
I'm trying to spawn a number of CharacterControllers and have them move around an area, but they keep getting stuck on each other. Is there a way to make them pass through each other while still respecting the terrain's obstructions?
I'm developing an abstract strategy turn-based game in C#. Being so, high network load is not expected. The players don't even have to be connected all the time. The host could wait for the current player to connect and make his move. I know I could make a web site to run that, but I want anyone to be able to host thei...
I'm developing a flash game and i want to put it in Facebook ,My question is the Proper maximum size for it. 500 KB 1 MB ??
I'm making a 2D game where the map will be scrolled frequently, and only a small part of it will be visible at any time. Which implementation would run faster? The naive way: Make the map a single huge MovieClip and move it around. The elegant way: Split the map into multiple chunks and use a frustum culling algorithm...
Is anyone aware of a nice 3D map tutorial (how to import and use the map) using XNA without any engine but not limited to an external application (like Tiled for 2D maps) ? I did a search arund here but have'nt found anything towards xna 3d maps only 2d. PS: I am looking for material that can be read online with no cos...
Well this sounds like a pretty vague question but please bear with me. I know of how Gaiaonline gave gold to people who participated in forum posts. I'm curious if in theory these could be applied to social aspects of games like Second life or Sims Online. The question what would be specific quantifiable actions/inte...
I don't want to use box2d or anything, I just want simple moving platforms (up-down, left-right, diagonal and circular paths). My question is to handle the update order / control hierarchy so that the player stays fixed to the platform solidly, without bouncing or wobbling?
I'm currently creating a game framework/engine for educational games. My hope is that this can be used in elementary schools. It is of course extremely important that the games are both fun and educational. Any ideas what should be in my initial requirement specification? What makes a good educational game? Which platf...
What I want to do is put Google Ads in my flash game. The first question is how can I do that? The second question is the best place to put it; while loading, after finishing the game?
Hey guys, i was wondering how i would go about finding the perpendicular lines relative to a surface normal. For instance say i have (0,0,1) the expected output would be (1,0,0) and (0,1,0). What would be the best way of achieving this? I realize that i will be using the cross product, but that requires two vectors, ho...

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