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Do I just need to be creating instances of all of my graphics into memory that are loaded from file? What is the best way to handle this? Do I just need some sort of assets manager that creates these graphic instances during the loading screen and is then referred to later?
What are common things that need to be pre-... |
Can anyone explain the general architecture typically used for 3D character animation?
Are movements like walking and falling scripted against the skelton, and simply executed on input? If so, is the scripting typically actual script or hard code?
What are common pitfalls or flaws in character animation engines?
|
After noticing some timing descrepencies with events in my code, I boiled the problem all the way down to my Windows Message Loop.
Basically, unless I'm doing something strange, I'm experiencing this behaviour:-
MSG message;
while (PeekMessage(&message, _applicationWindow.Handle, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE))
{
int timestamp ... |
I liked this question:
What makes aiming in a console first person shooter feel good?
So here it is for PC (and its not a dupe because a mouse is hugely different from an analog stick)
You've probably noticed some games "feel better" than others when it comes to aiming using the mouse. Why is that?
Some of the best en... |
About 5-10% of males have some form of colorblindness. What's the best way to ensure you are not turning away 5-10% of your male population from your game?
Just to note colorblindness does not mean people see in black and white. It usually means they see less green and get red/green confused easily. Colorblindness c... |
I want to parse Blender-Made Files directly into my homemade Lisp program. I've been pulling data out of .X3D files manually. Is this the best format to focus on writing a parser for?
Thanks!
|
I'm trying to speed up particles, and one way to do that is by precomputing the texture rotations. What I want to do is load the texture, rotate it and save it to a handle.
How would I go about doing this?
Thanks in advance.
|
I've been developing a modification for the Source engine for well over a year, but am now facing some troubles with the weapons, gamemovement (player physics) and player feedback from explosives.
This is all because of my weakness in mathematics!!!
What books, tutorials or any other various texts could you recommend ... |
Most application development is based around developing with events, but considering the game-loop style of developing games and the (often) need for high performance/throughput, what role does developing using events have and what are the trade-offs? Does the synchronization/locking that is often involved have a great... |
I would like to make an isometric run-jump style platformer. The player should be able to jump on top of platforms above the floor, hit the side of objects etc.
I'll be using a 2D game engine so I wouldn't like to emulate full 3D collision for dimensions I'm not using.
I'm thinking objects in the game should be plac... |
Can anybody guide me about where can I get the basic starter tutorials for developing using XNA framework?
|
Let's make a list of the best books that every game developer should read.
Each answer should have a single book (by title and optionally author), a link to buy the book, and a short synopsis of what the book is about.
|
It's pretty easy to get animations rolling from a sprite sheet. Though which ways there are on combining the animations with player dynamics and motion?
I've figured there's two starting points anyway:
Player animation contains motion (the animation slab defines how the sprite moves)
Player animation does not contain ... |
My last two credited titles I was Lead Programmer then moved to Lead Design role. At my current company I kinda switch between design and programming hats quite often.
The bulk of my education is in programming and my experience is pretty broad. I honestly can't pick which I prefer, and if I focused then I think I woul... |
In the early days of the industry, instead of fighting piracy, companies let the users share their games freely, and put some nag screen or something like that on the game.
Then they would sell DLC and expansions (yes, DLC is 20 years old actually :P), hintbooks, cheat codes, swags, etc...
Why this model died?
Note: I ... |
What processes, tools, methods are used by game artists to prepare materials for the programmers?
I am interested in tools (ie: photoshop, pixelmator, etc for drawing) and also how they are used together to produce texture atlases or individual images for the programmers.
Methods or way of working (tool-chains maybe), ... |
I am at the design phase of a board game on the iPhone and am considering a couple of options for rendering the view:
Quartz to render top down views of the board with core animation to do the transitions to close ups etc. Using a 3D library (or GL directly) to render dice rolls on top of the 2D view.
Full 3D interfac... |
I want to understand how navmeshes work, how to implement them and why it is better than other types of pathing systems.
|
I'm not sure if this is a suitable question but I found a game that had all it is sprites and stuff saved in INA and AN format and I got curious to know which program is it.
Or is it some sort of compressing or alike and how it is usually done?
Anyone know?
Here is the content of one of the files:
http://pastebin.com/... |
What sort of tools and techniques are available out there for 3D level creation?
In particular for small teams where you might not have the time and resources to make your level creation tools from scratch. I know you could use Blender or any other 3D modeling app for the geometry, but how do you manage the necessary m... |
I want to create a 2D game but I'd like to have the character to wear tons of different equipments on different combinations, like a RPG or something.
So let's say the user changes his/her shoulders and pants, this must be shown to the player and all these different equipments must follow the different characters actio... |
Assume I have a physics primitive I am going to call a "wire", wrapped around a 2D environment (as described in this question).
Here's an illustration of what that might look like:
In the example illustration: The box is being pulled upwards (held up) by the wire, and the box is pulling the wire downwards. The object ... |
I want to be able to destroy and deform a car in-game.
For example, I want two cars to crash and a) break the meshes apart (probably applying force to fly them apart) and b) deform the mesh (like bending the side doors).
How would I go about this?
Thank you in advance.
|
When starting a new 2d project on the iOS framework, it seems pretty to start creating UIView subclasses and having fun with Quartz to create very quick prototypes, but I am guessing there will be times where it will be impractical(or impossible) to use such powerful(and wasteful compared to openGL ES) abstractions.
I ... |
I have a simple 3d software renderer (SDL / C++) which can load a 3ds Model and render it (shaded) and rotate it around X Y Z - Axis.
Now I would like to rotate / move around the object, meaning, the object itself stands still, and everything in the scene is displayed from the angle of the view. Is that what a camera ... |
Note that this is not about graphics/physics/2D/3D/etc.! Rather I'd like to know whether there are dedicated solutions available for implementing custom rules/scoring on top of an existing framework, ideally addressing most common concepts already, for example players, matches, rule variations, game selection, preferen... |
I just wrote a simple Android app that uses SurfaceHolder.Callback interface to communicate the state of the SurfaceView. In the Callback.surfaceDestroyed() method i just informed the rendering thread to terminate and returned, like so:
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {
renderingThread.reques... |
In Box2D, I was curious if it's possible to get a bounding box of a body already created in the world.
So basically, the Body is created, it's interacting with the world and such. And I needed that Body's bounding box. Is it possible?
|
I'll be likely writing one this year. It will end up having unique design so things turn out on its own anyway.
Though, what an experienced level designer would want from a level editor? Requirements? Key features? Things that could be worth the time spent into implementing them?
|
I've made a few games without using XNA and recently started to see some documents and samples around and took an interest on it but i have a few doubts for going into it or not.
What limitations do i have if i am planning to create a mmorpg with XNA for distributing it (if it has a item mall or is paid to play for ex... |
My friend and I are finishing up our first game right now and I have just discovered that even though he can make some decent music tracks, he has no idea how to make a sound effect. An explosion, for example.
How are sound effects made?
|
I've got some experience producing Flash games, and for all Flash's faults I find the designer/developer workflow pretty decent.
I can set up a template FLA with placeholder movieclips and code to that independently of a designer/animator doing their thing. When it comes time for integration, I can either compile thei... |
When designing and play-testing a new game, a lot of the time, the people trying out functionality get used to things, and no longer try the "dumb ways" any more. So if the development breaks something, it may be a feature only a new user would bother trying. What are some of the best ways to make sure that your game h... |
Shuffling cards and impact noises are cool (it is a card based game), but should I invest the time/effort in hooking up background music? I have found Play Audio from Stream Using C# which could be used to allow hooking to DI if online or similar code could be used to play local MP3s, but is it worth the effort? Whic... |
UML diagram + explanations.
Bonus if I can make it happen in Java.
Also killing panda is bad =)
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I was wondering if any experts out there could share the knowledge and resources of what is necessary to start making games with the latest HTML standards and JavaScript (or what some like to call HTML 5). Are there JavaScript libraries that are essential to the process? Aside from the <canvas> tag, what other pieces o... |
We're looking at developing a 2D game that could target Xbox 360. Ideally, we'd also like to submit the game via the XNA program so that gamers could try out the game over Xbox Live. We really love the fact that SDL is cross-platform.
Is writing a 2D game in SDL and then also targeting Xbox 360 possible, and if so ho... |
I'd like to get a better handle on how people in the real world are handling their animation.
Do you load 1 large image and then draw different rectangles based on the animation frame?
Do you load X image files into an array and draw the item in the array based on the animation frame?
How do you handle having different... |
One of my hobbies (aside programming, of course) is 3d modeling (completely amateur, using 3ds MAX) and I'd like to mix programming with 3d modeling (what a marriage!). So I've read a little about it and figured I'd have to have good notions on geometry, math, point spacial position (which I do, from my 3d modeling exp... |
I've done a lot of work (pro-bono) on a patch to a commercial game from ~11 years ago that needs some beta testing. Loads of people are waiting for it.
What are some ways to get good (by that I mean useful) feedback during the beta test phase for a game? I've got lots of people who want to play with it, but I'm concern... |
I'm making a Tower Defense and I have basic pathfinding working, but I got a problem.
I want to make the path blockable, and when a block occurs the runners will attack the blocking towers.
So what I need is a way to find the shortest path that, more importantly, has the lowest number of towers in the way.
How do I do ... |
Creating a full blown 3D game requires a lot more math for physics, but what if I just want to mix 3D models in a 2D game, such as in the New Super Mario Brothers? Would I be able to get the looks of 3D models with the ease of making a 2D game?
|
I am looking for tips to profile the server side game loop of a Java program for CPU usage. I tried to use the TPTP plugin for Eclipse so far.
The problem I am having is that it is really slow. For example the startup of the server is normally done in less than a minute. But with the profiler it takes about 30 minutes.... |
I am a budding game programmer trying to get into the industry programming for PS3, Xbox 360. The main problem I see is the need to demonstrate my skills to a potential employer, but without access to Dev kits for the PS3 or Xbox 360, doing this directly is impossible.
My question is, what is the best alternative way ... |
Is there a way to check if a point is intersecting a body?
For example, lets say there's a body in the world at a position of (100,100).
Is there a way to check if a point at (100,100) intersects that body?
Another example is related to a game called "PHUN". In PHUN you can click and drag bodies around. How would you c... |
I'm unsure as to what people prefer when it comes to HUDs, and scaling them. What would you say is the best practice when it comes to sizing the HUD? I'm thinking there's really two options: Scale up, or use the same area (in pixels) to display it on a higher resolution.
The problems I see with each are with scaling, I... |
I have two related questions:
What are the tools you use to make icons? (valid for all platforms)
What are the standard sizes and file formats you use? (valid for all platforms too)
|
I am developing an iPhone game. There is a fountain that the user should not be able to walk through. Now, this question is about checking circle-point collision or anything like that. I am checking collision with CGRectIntersectsRect(character1.frame, fountain.frame).
But, here is the problem: If I prevent the person... |
I'm using the Box2D physics engine. And there's a type of shape for box2D called b2PolygonShape.
In this class, you can create polygons. There is also a Set() function that takes an array of points and a vertex count.
Box2D has an example like this:
// This defines a triangle in CCW order.
b2Vec2 vertices[3];
vertic... |
Where can I find good (well organized) examples of game code? I'm hoping that I can pick up some organizational tips. Most examples in books are too short and leave out lots of detail for the sake of brevity. I'm particularly interested on how to group your variables and methods so that another programmer would know wh... |
I've made a few games, and am getting faster and better organized each time. I'm well out of the "just make it work" phase and working on methodology and readability. I need some tips on code organization though.
I don't mean patterns - I'm having great success with MVC - but the organization of methods inside the clas... |
I'm asking about a very small domain. One-off extension scripts. IE, defining a new weapon for scorched earth.
When providing and API for small extension I've seen two approaches.
The API exposes classes that the extender then subclasses, overriding the needed methods.
--# weapons/flame_missile.lua
--#extender pulls... |
Sometimes you'll see people recommend that rather than using graphics/sound files/etc. like this...
// Game code
Image myImage = new Image("path/to/image.png");
... you should use a manifest file as a level of indirection instead:
// Manifest file
MY_IMAGE: path/to/image.png
// Game code
Manifest myManifest = new Man... |
Most shadow systems I have seen use a unified shader system for shadowing techniques, resulting in an uber shader for the projects.
What alternatives do you find work well or is the unified shader the best approach?
|
When I download a video game from the publisher's website, it typically needs to update itself several times before I can play it. Why can't the developer simply put the patched version of the game up for download? I assume there must be technical problems with this, but what are they?
|
Most online games suffer for this problem and there are some software companies out there to cover this but recently from what I've seen most companies are trying to avoid those programs creating their own system (blizzard with warden, aion with their own checking, etc...) but it is a very difficult case to prevent suc... |
I'm interested in some performance tweaks for a relatively simple OpenGL ES based 2D iPhone game. What performance tweaks have you found? The performance of the game is pretty good on most devices (3G, 2nd gen touch, and iPhone 4)... But I still want to give the user the best experience possible.
p.s. I'm still using... |
I am working on a 2D tile-based game, and right now I'm trying to get a 2d equivalent of shadow volumes to work. I'm having trouble finding the surfaces that should cast shadows. From any point in the game, I need to find either the unoccluded faces, or the whole tile.
My question is, is how can I find these tiles/edge... |
i would like to start this topic for programs to counter-attack link text.
I am not aware of a big list but with everyone's help i hope to make this a fine topic.
Posting format:
NAME: nProtect GameGuard
GAME TYPE: any type of game
Website: http://global.nprotect.com/product/gg.php
FEATURES?
Protect the users' PC from... |
I'm fairly new to anything OpenGL in general. I've made an OpenGL ES 1.1 based 2D iPhone game by working from sample code. I'm under the impression that OpenGL ES 2.0 is substantially different from 1.1. So what does updating 1.1 code to 2.0 entail?
I'm accustomed to the kinda basic drawing pattern of "push matrix, ... |
I've recently tested an OpenGL ES based 2D game on the iPhone 4. I've done almost all of the development and testing so far on my 3G device. The game works fine (except for a few multitasking things) on the new device. I'd like to replace some of the artwork w/ "better" artwork that takes advantage of the iPhone 4's... |
I have the fundamentals of TCP sockets, UDP communication etc, but can't find much on how to apply these to a real time game environment.
I have a Pong clone, with 4 players, and need to synchronise the paddle positions between the three clients and the server (the server is the fourth player). Currently I use UDP to s... |
Wondering if the PS3 has a way for game developers to make free / affordable games available to their consumer base? Is the only way to get your game on the PS3 to go through an approval process which may cost money?
|
I'm interested in making a game that can be distributed on PSN. Any suggestions?
|
My brother has taken an interest in making games on the DS (via PALIB). I'm worried that since its a homebrew game and homebrew development on the DS is not officially supported, his programming would go to waste.
Is there any significant differences in programming via PALIB over Nintendo's official DS SDK?
|
How do game developers target multiple platforms at once? For example, Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Linux. For 2D games, is it possible to also target the iPhone? I'm be interested in engines used (2D/3D, etc), how the build pipeline is setup and generally how much of the "core code" can be centralized without having to wr... |
Partially as a response to How do game developers target multiple platforms (Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Linux)? but mainly because there are people on here with published games, should cross platform be the first requirement/feature for a developer trying to break into the business? I have always been a believer (in a tota... |
I have been investigating various 3d engines for iPhone/iPad development and have mostly decided to use Ogre3d. I have got the SDK, the iPhone dependancies, built and run the SampleBrowser project on the simulator and (with some difficulty) my 3GS. My problem is with the complexity of the SampleBrowser project.
It i... |
Qt is an excellent application toolkit and overall the best for C++. While some large projects use Qt (KDE for example), I haven't seen many games using it. So I decided to make my own. But what does Qt provide that may be useful when writing a game (in my case a 2D game)?
|
I once tried to write a simple game with UDP in a week as a throwaway test. It went horribly.
I threw it away early. The main problem i had was restoring the game state of all players/enemies/objects to an old state and fast forward the game to the point of time the player is playing (ie half a second before a jump. A ... |
Should a game loop be based on fixed or variable time steps? Is one always superior, or does the right choice vary by game?
Variable time step
Physics updates are passed a "time elapsed since last update" argument and are hence framerate-dependent. This may mean doing calculations as position += distancePerSecond * t... |
A lot of people asked for a trailer for my game, because screenshots do not do it justice. I have tested PlayClaw, Fraps, CamStudio, VirtualDub, and some other minor tools; none have produced a viable result. My game uses vector graphics and is designed to run at 60fps, so lossy compression of a regular screen capture ... |
I'm new to 3D OpenGL/DirectX world and I found out that OpenGL 4.1 and GLSL specifications were just released today.
A friend of mine gave me the Red Book for OGL v2.1 but, as far as I've read, 3.x and 4.x differ a lot from 2.x and a lot of things are deprecated now.
Can I use the book to start learning the basics of 3... |
I'm at the point in my life where I'm starting to look at schools, and was hearing a lot of mixed things about schools such as Digipen or Fullsail that target game development specifically. As someone who is planning on becoming a programmer and getting into the games industry, would getting a game development degree b... |
Other than using a wiki, what good (or purpose-built) tools allow for collaborative work on a game treatment?
I have a couple ideas I'd like to get fleshed-out and built, and have a small team who will work me on the project(s). How can we best iterate-over and define the game-play, graphical styles, etc?
|
I've seen box2d and bullet ported into JavaScript, but neither of them attracted me, except for the source code. It all seemed quite simple, once I looked inside.
What are they doing within each of those libraries to get nice physics simulation? I can not find any explanation.
|
This is a two part question. Let's say I release a new Flash game to the web. Once players start playing I want to understand how it is performing:
What common performance criteria do people track? (e.g. viral coefficient, play length, returning players.)
How should I go about measuring and monitoring these attributes... |
Posted this question on SO but got no answers. Maybe somebody can help me here.
I recently had a well-working program which streamed WAV and Ogg sounds with OpenAL. I then decided to abstract the source and buffer objects into C++ classes. I got as far as the source class. My function which returns the number of proces... |
Where can I find fonts (preferably free, but a reasonable fee is acceptable) that I can use in my for-pay/commericial game?
|
I am a beginning indie developer, and I want to get the word out about my game. What sites can I go to to ask about reviews of my game, and where might I be able to talk about and get feedback on my game from players?
|
I'm experimenting w/ improving the "resolution" of an OpenGL ES based app. Apple mentions here (developer.apple.com) that OpenGL ES in iOS 4 supports multisampling... and this can improve the graphics somewhat. How do you enable multisampling?
|
I need dynamic dijkstra algorithm that can update itself when edge's cost is changed without a full recalculation. Full recalculation is not an option.
I've tryed to "brew" my own implemantion with no success. I've also tryed to find on the Internet but found nothing.
A link to an article explaining the algorithm or ev... |
Most games build on other games' successes and many are downright clones. Where is the limit of imitation before legal issues come into play? Is it down to literary or graphic work like characters and storyline that cause legal problems, or can someone actually claim to own gameplay mechanics?
There are so many similar... |
What means do you use to get your game dev book fix? Do you pony up the big bucks for the thick books, or do you budget yourself and buy one at a time, or do you rent or limit yourself only to your library? Do you prefer to read them on your eBook reader?
How do you obtain your game development books?
|
I've got a somewhat large SWF which I'd like to deliver through a pre-loader so the user doesn't have to appear to wait as long. With Actionscript it's pretty easy to create an external pre-loader but doing so makes it harder to distribute my game. What methods are available for including the pre-loader in a single SWF... |
Are there famous games written in .Net and/or XNA?
|
There are many tutorials to learn GLSL, Cg, HLSL... with classical samples as bump mapping, toon-shading...
But is there a shaders directory?
a website where i can share my shaders
search shader by name, description and implementation
|
I am looking to the fastest way to create really simple particle effect that will be spammed like hell on the game...
Basically, my game looks like a vectrex game, made mostly of lines... I want to make some small explosions that will be really common.
There are something faster than just moving around some points and ... |
I'm in the midst of developing a 2D sprite-based game for Windows 7 Phone, using XNA. The training and tutorials available for it are pretty helpful, but the problem I face is that each of them approaches their class design differently, and the code is not particularly well-factored. As a result, it has been difficult ... |
I am looking for a simple algorithm to plot evenly distributed points on an ellipse, given the major and minor axes. This is really easy to do with a circle like so:
var numberOfPoints = 8;
var angleIncrement = 360 / numberOfPoints;
var circleRadius = 100;
for (var i = 0; i < numberOfPoints; i++) {
var p = new Poin... |
What is the best approach to designing an AssestManager that will hold references to graphics, sounds, etc. of a game?
Should these assets be stored in a key/value Map pair? I.e. I ask for "background" asset and the Map returns the associated bitmap? Is there an even better way?
Specifically I'm writing an Android/Ja... |
The project page indicates that it's pre-alpha code, and suggests the actionscript support is weak. Flash UIs are nice, so I was wondering if anyone has experience getting gameswf to the point where it will embed nicely in C++ (e.g. nice function bindings) and properly play a swf that uses typical modern actionscript.... |
(NOTE: This is a duplicate of a question I asked on SO, having temporarily forgotten about GameDev <hang head in shame>. When one is answered, I will link it back to the other.)
I'm trying to do my first client/server game using Google Apps Engine as my back end (specification requirement.) I've done the tutorials (Ja... |
Many times when I'm working on Flash games I'll find that a particular combination of keys held at the same time doesn't register, e.g. LEFT, DOWN and SPACEBAR.
I know from my days playing Doom this can be caused by the keyboard hardware, but surely technology has moved on since those spongy beige PS2 keyboards?
So my ... |
DISCLAIMER: I know this question starts to leave development island but it is very game development related and still think this is the best place.
I see many free MMOs/online desktop client games out there. I am baffled at the ability to fund such. I don't mind hosting myself but would at least like to have someone ho... |
If I understand correctly, the main point of protecting a single player flash game is to keep it sitelocked. How to do this right and are there any other reasons to do this?
|
I love XNA. I really do. As president of the Game Development Club at my school, we use it and I teach it. But I'm worried about it.
I've always wondered, are there any signs that XNA will ever become more than just a prototyping/arcade game language? I've always gotten the feeling that Microsoft is on the cusp of aban... |
I'm trying to send structs as neatly sorted packets using iPhone Game Kit..
I have a struct which looks like:
typedef struct {
int coolStuff;
char playerID[100];
} MyStruct;
Then I'm using strncpy() to copy the NSString I want into MyStruct.playerID. However, I would like to be able to send a playerID (string) ... |
I'm making a Tower Defense game in Flash with no predefined path.
Although my grid is 40x40 (small?), A* is struggling when recalculating every time. So I made my own modification to ease the recalculation and the touched cell count dropped to around 900 (when modifying near the root). It still freezes for a very short... |
I'm a newbie. I like to play games, but I'd also like to program them too. I know it's difficult to create a game, but please share the basic info I need to get started creating my first game. What do I need to study to become a game developer? What is
game AI? What is a Game Engine? What are the different types of ga... |
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