Game Development

12:42 AM

" I am happy to announce that there is absolutely no Visual Basic code involved in any part of Trello. What’s next, flying cars?"

I enjoyed that :)

Installing Umbraco. Going to give it a test run

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Umbraco?

That's like a sort of tool for tightening and loosing nuts and bolts? :P

tylerrrr07

Lol

CMS

umbraco.com

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Directly translation from Danish to English would be Umbracokeys. :P

No clue what their international name is.

tylerrrr07

Look like Hex Wrenches / Allen Wrenches as I've known them

Dave

whats the most efficient way to use path finder so that it stays up to date automatically

i dont like the idea of checking every frame it sounds horrific

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

12:54 AM

Have events for when the terrain might change?

That's how I handle most things, events keep periodic checks to a minimum.

Dave

hmm what if i could find a way to check if the changed terrain effected a given path and only change those paths =/

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Like my Realm.SetTile method also invokes the TileChanged event with the position and the old and new tile.

Dave

oh wait my idea would only work for adding obstacles but not adding a new option

tylerrrr07

Well this installer feels pretty modern

I'm getting pumped

tylerrrr07

1:54 AM

Testing CMSs is more of a pain than you would think...

Dave

2:05 AM

0

Q: Logic to path finding checking

I'm a little stuck on the logic to how i use my path finder efficiently in my game. This is basically how the game works: Building generates goods "Factory" > AI transports goods to "Warehouse" on path tiles > Warehouse receives goods > AI goes back to Factory. Now im wonderin...

would like to here some of you're logical thoughts on this

tylerrrr07

The question that comes to mind is why would a faster route become available?

Or unavailable as you say

Dave

if a user deletes a path tile it would no longer have connection to ware house

if user uses a upgraded path type which has faster walk time a faster route would be found

or if the user restructured their path tiles so its quicker

tylerrrr07

So shouldn't you only recalculate when those things happen instead of all the time?

Dave

yes but what about when initially placing the building too

tylerrrr07

I dont see the problem

Dave

2:13 AM

well im trying to reduce the amount of checking

tylerrrr07

Right... which is why I said only check when those things happen

Dave

but can u see any more improvement than that or is my logic pretty sound cos im not totally confident :P

like if i edit a path every building will have to recalculate right?

tylerrrr07

No

Dave

why not ?

tylerrrr07

Result 1: No path found> Keep checking every frame..

Why would you keep checking every frame?

Dave

2:16 AM

oh

ok good point :P

ill change that to path placed

tylerrrr07

So with your questions being

The two problems i have is: Well checking every frame is going to hurt the game's performance, secondly if I stop rechecking - it won't know when a faster route may become available or unavailable =/

The answer is to check based on events

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Like I suggested about an hour ago...

Dave

ok that does sound better :P

tylerrrr07

You don't mention anything about rechecking for every building in your question. So if thats really your concern you might want to mention it ;)

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Yeah I remember seeing that :P

Dave

2:38 AM

i scared :P

tylerrrr07

Of?

Dave

how im going to do this particular thing

imgur.com/bWjcU

tylerrrr07

Me too :P

Dave

this is the design im testing

two factories to one ware house

i gotta find the two paths - then make them both change as i edit the path

i know im guna get it wrong but here goes xD

tylerrrr07

The more I test these CMSs the more I want to go back and doing my own simple CMS

JMRboosties

3:15 AM

hmmm

take a look at this:

Dave

what about it

JMRboosties

tiles arent syncing up right, it looks like a grid

when i draw it to its native resolution it looks fine

when i double the texture size it does this

Dave

because u have to make them about 2 pixels bigger than the actual grid

so they overlap

if u have 32 by 32

make the images 34 by 34

it will remove the lines u see

JMRboosties

hmm

Dave

its a common thing that has to be done for isometric tiles too

JMRboosties

3:17 AM

why would it not do this when the tiles are at their native resolution?

Dave

most likely due to reduction is size is ever so slightly too much than the actual grid

if say it did it by half a pixel out .. side by side ull have 1 pixel line

so to save the problems just give it a slightly larger size so they overlap

perhaps up the resize by 1 pixel

so if ur reducing by 10% make it 9%

an example would be say u have an image 15 pixels wide u half the width so its 7.5 pixels

it most likely rounds down

JMRboosties

that change to +2 pixels didnt really help...

Dave

what are the image size + how much u changing their size by

JMRboosties

original tile size is 16

im going to 32

Dave

so ur making it larger

JMRboosties

3:21 AM

yea im doubling it

i tried changing the tile size to 34, didnt help

Dave

no need as the numbers are even numbers

hmm

oh wait are u changing the image size as a whole ?

as in ... change the width of the graphic within in the image by 1 or 2 pixels but keep the image itself the same

JMRboosties

here is the line:

spriteBatch.Draw(t.Texture, new Rectangle((int)(x * TileWidth * Multiplier), (int)(y * TileHeight * Multiplier), (int)(TileWidth * Multiplier), (int)(TileHeight * Multiplier)),

where multiplier right now is just 2

Dave

language u using ?

JMRboosties

xna, c#

Dave

so multiplier is 2 in this case?

JMRboosties

3:23 AM

yes

tylerrrr07

I assume x, y, TileHeight, and TileWidth are all ints?

JMRboosties

yea, i was playing with making multiplier a float hence the cast

but right now all the vars are ints

Dave

and return ints a not decimal

JMRboosties

yes

Dave

try this... try reducing their size n see if the lines appear

so divide with multiplier

cos im wondering if xna adds some odd margin when it enlarges images =/

photoshop does it to reduce jaggies from pixelation as u enlarge

JMRboosties

3:26 AM

that could be the case here

so sorry, let me make sure i understand

when i draw at a multiplier of 1 i get no margins

Dave

one alternative is make them large n use the reverse - u can zoom them smaller not larger assuming making them smaller does not create the grid lines

JMRboosties

im afraid i dont know how to zoom in on a texture, im a bit new

i'll look into it

Dave

did u reduce their size and see if the lines occur?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

JMRboosties, try changing the wrapping method.

JMRboosties

@Dave let me get my microscope out

no lines on reduced size

@WilliamMindWorXMariager unsure what that means. is it a param in the draw method?

tylerrrr07

3:30 AM

what if you hard code some values

instead of doing multiplation put real ints in

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JMRboosties spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, null, SamplerState.LinearWrap, null,null);

See how it looks.

Dave

i 'think' the line is some anti alias effect added to enlarging images to keep it smooth looking which would create an alpha pixel margin around the graphic =/

tylerrrr07

also, can you confirm that the tiles line up? (X1 + Width) * Multiplier = X2

JMRboosties

checkin on all these recommendations, h/o

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

When you scale images, it interpolates the pixels. In LinearClamp it'll give a transparent value when it samples outside the texture size. With LinearWrap it'll sample the opposite pixel.

It may not look perfect, but it should look a lot better with minimal work involved.

You may need to set the target profile to HiDef instead of Reach.

Dave

3:33 AM

ok i think william knows more than i but i suspect were thinking the same

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

We're not. :P There is no anti aliasing going on on 2D textures. :P

Anti aliasing has to do with smoothing jagged edges on 3D models.

JMRboosties

@WilliamMindWorXMariager the spritebatch.begin suggestion didnt work unfortunately

Dave

they can be done on images too photoshop does it

alot of pixel artists use the effect when drawing circles

JMRboosties

im going to try tyler's suggestion

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JMRboosties How did it look afterwards?

JMRboosties

3:35 AM

@WilliamMindWorXMariager the same

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Are you sure you did it right then?

JMRboosties

@WilliamMindWorXMariager actually, it looked worse lol

Dave

might help to show us more of the code

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Eh well.

JMRboosties

the grid effect seems to be mostly vertical

when i did that recommendation it became horizontal as well

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

3:36 AM

I fixed it by drawing the scene on a RenderTarget2D and then just resizing that. Worked perfectly and was very versatile.

That's a bit more elaborate, but it's the perfect solution.

Dave

are they png images

or gif?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Dave, Doesn't matter.

JMRboosties

png

Dave

well it should be png if ur making a game william :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Whatever the file format, the content pipeline turns it into a crossplatform XNB file.

JMRboosties

3:37 AM

thats with linearwrap

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

You can use whatever image format the content pipeline supports, and it'll get turned into the same thing.

Dave

that has horizontal lines and vertical

JMRboosties

@Dave right. when i do the regular spritebatch.begin call it is only vertical

Dave

the simple option would be make ur graphics in 32pixel by default.. but draw in 16 pixel by default in the game.... then they will work when reduced at 16 and native at 32

as its only when enlarging larger than their normal this issue occurs

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JMRboosties, Could you give me a link to the tilesheet so I can test something?

JMRboosties

3:41 AM

sure thing

Dave

cant be the tileset if it works in default size + lower

JMRboosties

prob the easiest way to do it

are you thinking double the tileset size to begin with?'

that makes more sense probably.

Dave

as in put them in photoshop n double their size yeh

rather than the code doing it

or have two sprite sheets one for each size

that would remove the image resizing from the code completely and might be better performance

debateable tho cos u use more graphical tile sets

u can bench test it im sure

JMRboosties

yea

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Try actually scaling them down and see if it fixes the issue.

Dave

3:48 AM

@JMRboosties let me try sumin a second with this image

JMRboosties

@WilliamMindWorXMariager scaling them down?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JMRboosties, this.spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, null, SamplerState.PointWrap, null, null);

Use that, it'll fix it.

Also, you really should cut that tilesheet up some. That's an awefully large texture.

JMRboosties

@WilliamMindWorXMariager clutch man, that works!

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Indeed.

JMRboosties

if i can figure out how to break down my map editing program into multiple tiles i will

Dave

3:50 AM

ah u fixed it ?

break it up into relevant groupds

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Like I said, it was a simple matter of how it sampled the texture. :)

Dave

groups

buildings from ground textures is a good start

JMRboosties

i meant technically more than organizationally

but yea, thanks!

Dave

photoshop :P

JMRboosties

haha i know that

tiled writes these map files to xml, im just curious how that will change the way its parsed with multiple tilesheets

Dave

4:01 AM

@tylerrrr07 eeeeeek imgur.com/AM6u1

i did it :D

JMRboosties

now to figure out collisions!

Dave

thats easy

JMRboosties

well i can do some basic collisions already

but i want to incorporate collisions with tiles here

tile-based movement

Dave

well if user is about to go to x5 y 10 ... check if x5 and y10 contains a collision if so dont walk it

use an array containing the x and y's that have collisions

logic code:
if(x in collision_array && y in collision_array[x]){ // u hit sumin }

have to use [x] on array to make sure its checking the Y related to that X

JMRboosties

yea

thats what i was thinking

just need to implement correctly now

Dave

4:06 AM

cant help u there as i know nothing about you're code ;) and im off to bed night all

Code Assasssin

@Dave Good-bye

JMRboosties

see you, thansk for the help

JMRboosties

4:39 AM

Error loading "newmap". Cannot find ContentTypeReader for System.Single.

why would it be giving this error now... i havent touched the map processor at all

and of course launching the debugger on the processor wont work

Code Assasssin

5:18 AM

Well, I'm off - Hope you get that error solved JMR O:

JMRboosties

5:43 AM

thanks man

Kikaimaru

6:52 AM

@JMRboosties It seems like your Content and game class are different so deserialization fails

Gustavo - Gtoknu

9:36 AM

Trello's interesting, but how can it be good as that with no fees? what trello developers win in this trade? lol

Kikaimaru

10:36 AM

Any componend based programmer here? :)

Damir

Does Unity count? :)

But ask away. Someone will see your question... once.

Kikaimaru

Dont know :) How would you implmenet opening chests? For example i have tile based game, with non tile movement, i have character that moves next to chest and tryies to open it, what should i do? :)

Only thing i can think of is on keypress (handled somewhere in players component) i create new object with collision component (over the chest) chest and that object will collide sending message back to that new entity (which will somehow send it back to player) and some logic there will open chest

Damir

Why would you create a new collision component?

Kikaimaru

so i know that players "hand" (that new entity) collided with something (chest in this example)

or in unity in 3d, how would you do about opening chests

Damir

Well, if you want it to be on a key press, I'd just send a generic trigger to the object in the next tile that the player is facing.

You are already doing collisions for movement, right?

Kikaimaru

10:49 AM

yes but player movement is not tilebased

and what do you mean by sending a (generic) trigger?

i dont think i can find other entities from some component on player

Damir

I assumed that you have some kind of a map for which tile has which objects.

Kikaimaru

well take it that its unity and 3D game

Damir

What comes to my mind is to
have a collision component around the player, that registers objects on collision and unregisters them when they're not colliding anymore, and send messages to them when player does something.

Which actually looks like your idea in reverse.

Kikaimaru

11:09 AM

well i could have a collider that would always be a tile infront of my character and store what does it collide with

but its kind of non transparent :)

no one will understand why i do it, if i would crate entity hand... but thats creating a new entity thats wierd too

Dave

2:29 PM

@gajet imgur.com/5bPSv oddly the path finder found the slower path

John McDonald

:/ that sucks

Dave

its been working for days but i been trying tons of combinations this is first time it failed

your fault john :P

TreDubZedd

@Dave what algorithm are you using?

Dave

a*

heuristic is manhatten i think

John McDonald

which is the source, and which is the destination?

Dave

2:35 PM

red is source

the purple is destination

Gustavo - Gtoknu

are you treating the 4 tiles as one single destination?

John McDonald

and where is the heuristic measuring to? Maybe it's measuring to the left-most tile of the destination

TreDubZedd

Or the bottom-most

John McDonald

yup

Either of those cases could produce this path

Dave

yes the 4 tiles are one destination

TreDubZedd

2:38 PM

I'm assuming you're using integral indices? Or are you averaging the positions of the destination tiles?

Dave

umm well im using a script gajet created he would be better at answering this :P i don't know what integral indices are :P

tho i think it does favour the left most

but it was meant to only do that if two paths had equal result

jsfiddle.net/8nyYH/70

sorry no comments in the script :P

John McDonald

well, from the decision point, it does prefer the left-most tile, all the way until it finds its destination

Dave

thought a* was meant to check all routes

and pick the fastest

John McDonald

you're right, I'm not taking into account the distance travelled

So... where are you measuring the heuristic to?

Dave

function getHur

in jsfiddle

jsfiddle really needs line numbers >.<

John McDonald

2:43 PM

I prefer logic

Dave

    function getHur(start) {
        var minHur = Math.abs(start.x - endObjs[0].x) + Math.abs(start.y - endObjs[0].y);

        for (var i = 1; i < endObjs.length; i++)
        if (Math.abs(start.x - endObjs[i].x) + Math.abs(start.y - endObjs[i].y) < minHur) minhur = Math.abs(start.x - endObjs[i].x) + Math.abs(start.y - endObjs[i].y);

        return minHur;
    }

John McDonald

Like... I don't know what endObjs[0] means

Dave

its bit long winded to explain ill be better off waiting for gajet

but it uses manhatten so it draws a straight line from a to b

which is its min huristic

John McDonald

well, I understand it's one of the tiles under the destination

but which one

Dave

well its in a for loop so it checks all four

John McDonald