Creating Animations Without Hardcore Art for 2D Action RPG I'm working on a 2D action RPG. One of the issues I run into is art in the vein of Flash games like FF7, Secret of Mana, or Epic Battle Fantasy, I would like to actually display the weapon with the player while they're walking around, and swap it out with a different image when they change weapons. As a simple example, if I have a bronze and gold sword, when walking around, attacking, etc. you would see the bronze or gold sword image accordingly. This is an oversimplifcation, because I'm not sticking to only recolouring based on the weapon I may actually change the design (not 100 sure about this yet). As such, my core question is how can I design this to minimize the amount of artwork I need to make for each weapon? It seems like I need to create standardized weapon sizes (eg. 18x36px sword), positions relative to the character to show them for each frame, and I need to create a sprite sheet for each frame. (I have four directional images for walking, each with four frames of animation.) This means, per weapon, I need another 4x4 frames of animation that's a lot (for a non artist like me). The other approach would be programmatic animation but how will that work? I have to worry about Positioning must be always similar for each weapon (different sizes?) Occlusion the whole weapon appears when looking down, but most of it is hidden when looking up how can I standardize this? For reference, see (really) FF7 they did a fairly decent job of this, albeit in 3D. Sample


How do you handle animations that are for transitioning between states? How does one usually handle animations that are for going between a game object's states? For example, imagine a very simple game in which a character can only crouch or stand normally. Currently, I use a custom Animation class like this class Animation int numFrames int curFrame Bitmap spriteSheet ... various functions for pausing, returning frame, etc. and an example Character class class Character int state Animation standAni Animation crouchAni ... etc, etc. Thus, I use the state of the character to draw the necessary animation. if(state STATE STAND) draw(standAni.updateFrame()) else if(state STATE CROUCH) draw(crouchAni.updateFrame()) Now I've come to the point where I want to draw "in between" animations, because right now the character will just jump immediately into a crouch instead of bending down. What is a good way to handle this? And if the way that I handle storing Animations in the Character class is not a good way, what is? I thought of creating states like STATE STANDING TO CROUCHING but I feel like that may get messy fast.


How to make my animation play once? In 3ds max, I've made a Cannon that sets itself up, but I only want this animation to play once, here's where I'm trying to make it loop only once When I click the toggle at the bottom, it stops the animation for constantly looping, but when I click 'Save', and run my game, it still continues to loop. What am I doing wrong?


How can I make background elements wrap around the screen? I'm looking to make my clouds wrap around the screen in my game (like the picture). Right now it just continues off the screen. The current movement code is Cloud.center CGPointMake(Cloud.center.x 0.032, Cloud.center.y)


Adjusting a skeleton to a Specific Stance Imagine having a climbing wall and you take 4 adjacent handholds and footholds where together they create a stance. Is there any algorithm or technique with which it would give you a realistic human pose? Currently im adjusting the skeleton by firstly finding the center of the 4 holds where then i construct the chest shoulder and pelvis accordingly. And by the use of IK i give position to the remaining limbs being which the arms and legs. Is there any other more elegant better technique how to do such positioning of a skeleton ? As how i am adjusting the skeleton isnt so much of a realistic pose.All is done in 2D


Setting up images for frame animation I am learning the basics of iPhone frame animation. I have code that loops through 15 images to do an animation (void)viewDidLoad super viewDidLoad UIImageView iv UIImageView alloc initWithFrame CGRectMake(40, 40, 95, 70) NSMutableArray arr NSMutableArray alloc init for(int i 1 i lt 15 i ) UIImage img UIImage imageNamed NSString stringWithFormat "someImage 02d", i arr addObject img iv.animationImages arr iv.animationDuration 1.0 2 self.view addSubview iv iv startAnimating I want to load images of Link from a picture I found on the internet. How can I take this image (available as a png) and load the unique parts of the image? I have heard of people putting multiple images into a single PNG to improve performance. How do I extract the individual images into an array for use in code like the above? Please keep in mind this is my first time doing frame animation. I realize this code can likely be improved. I'm trying to keep things simple.


Unity Increase animation speed of individual component in a blend tree? I have blend tree with four different turns a sprinting turn, running turn, walking turn, and standing turn. I need to somehow make the angular velocity increase from sprinting down to standing, so that as the character gets slower he turns faster (otherwise it is basically unplayable). How do I increase the angular velocity of an individual animation in the blend tree? The usual "speed" attribute disappears when I put the animation in the blend tree...and I have not figured out how to access the blend tree substate from code yet. Here is an image of the blend tree, and the inspector


Unity animation won't play on trigger. What do I do to fix it? Ok so I added a play animation line to my trigger script. I made an animation, added it to the trigger object, attached the animation to the trigger, and tested. The target goes to the trigger as it should, deletes the trigger, but the animation never plays. So I check the console, and it's telling me "The AnimationClip 'MazeDoorClose' used by the Animation component 'SuckInTarget' must be marked as Legacy." so I do that, but now the trigger activates before the target gets there, and there is still no animation playing! I know this sounds confusing so in an attempt to make it easier to understand I made a short video . Sorry for the crappy quality, but hey it's free. Here is the code using UnityEngine using System.Collections public class SuckIn MonoBehaviour public Transform target public float speed public string ObjectWithTagToBeDestroyed public string ThingToAnimate void Update() float step speed Time.deltaTime target.position Vector3.MoveTowards(target.position, transform.position, step) void OnTriggerEnter(Collider coll) if (coll.gameObject.tag "Ball") Destroy(GameObject.FindWithTag(ObjectWithTagToBeDestroyed)) GetComponent lt Animation gt ().Play(ThingToAnimate) Before you ask yes the animation is on the object as it should be, and as Unity told me to do I marked it as a legacy animation. Any ideas what am doing wrong?


Flashing candle light What is a simple way to simulate flashing candle torch fire light? I'm not asking about animating the flames, I'm only interested in the light surrounding the fire, similar to what this device does https www.youtube.com watch?v dPsVr4pU8Tg


Why are my animations flickering? My animation is supposed to be used in my physics project I am making. I am using 10 millisecond setInterval() and setTimeout() and it glitches in and out. The setTimeout() handles the clear() function in my code, but I have the setTimeout() at 9 milliseconds and it works the best. If someone can help me, here's the code var canvas document.getElementById("canvas") var ctx canvas.getContext("2d") var x 10 var y 0 var xPos 0 var yPos 0 function updateVariables() x x 0.9 y y 0.9 y y 1 xPos x yPos y function clear() ctx.clearRect(0,0,600,600) function Draw() ctx.fillRect(xPos,yPos,20,10) ctx.fillRect(0,131,600,20) setTimeout(clear, 9) function collisionCheck() if (yPos gt 120) yPos 120 function keyCheck() setInterval(Draw, 10) setInterval(updateVariables, 1) setInterval(collisionCheck, 10) lt canvas id "canvas" gt lt canvas gt


How to implement scene changing in real time? I want to implement real time scene changing effects to make my game could changing from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter. And Chaning effects like this game. Giana Sisters. I think Giana Sisters use animation to transit from two scenes, but I dont know how to make these animations. Is any other suggestions could make this effects?


Animations won't transfer states until entire animation is completed I am following the survival shooter tutorial and am using Unity 5. I just completed this video (linked) and I tested played it to see my animations worked but it seems like it will only transition from idle to walking after the entirety of the idle animation completes. The idle animation is quite long so my character will move around when it looks like its idling since the movement responds right away. Did I mess up something in my transitions? I followed the directions exactly and didn't change anything in the inspector that I wasn't told to do.


How to handle animations for a turn based deterministic game? I have a turn based combat system where all monsters act one turn, then all players, etc. The combat mechanics are completely deterministic I can pre calculate the outcome of a turn. I'm interested if I should do all calculations ahead of time (monster A will be at X, monster B will be at Y), and then just play a bunch of animations based on these calculations (Calculate for A) (Calculate for B) (Animate A move to X) (Animate B move to Y) OR do one animation per calculation? (Calculate for A) (Animate A move to X) (Calculate for B) (Animate B move to Y)


Realtime inverse kinematics on unity apps for android and iOS Hello I want to understand how much overheads do implementing inverse kinematics in realtime add. I am looking at an implementation as such demonstrated in the video. https www.youtube.com watch?v Gyakxv34404 amp feature youtu.be Let me explain the exact requirement now. Assuming a game of mario, where mario is a 3D Character. And there is a coin placed at a height. So when mario comes into area of effect for the coin, we know the initial position of his arms, and we know the expected final position which is the position of the coin. So we create a trajectory from initial to final position in realtime and the main character moves accordingly in the trajectory. Now I can understand this would work fine in editor but if we have exported the game and this computations happen realtime for every object, how much CPU intensive would this be? Do all the existing IK assets provided on store for example in this video of final IK https www.youtube.com watch?v ZuWvGq3yV44 the characters are following the trajectory in real time I suppose. But what if we were to create the trajectory realtime depending on player positions, would that be a CPU intensive task to NOT work on mobile devices?


Rain World How to have intelligent movement animation? In the project RainWorld the characters seem to move "intelligently" as they move "unrestricted". They seem to know "how" to move their limbs and "what" needs to be done. Here for an example the lizard seems to know how to move his body after he got struck by a weapon. Also here it looks as if it is intelligently grasping the long ladder using the jet thinging to climb itself up. I had been looking into many sources to find out how such gets done but with no significant result. I need help to point myself to the right direction. Edit I have figured out from dev log that characters are just bunch of boxs connected bounded by an elastic bound "string". But the way the character moves still eludes me.


Control rig sequence is not in UE4 menu In the Unreal Engine docs, it is mentioned that, in order to create a Animation Sequence using the Control Rig, it is possible to create a ControlRig Sequence. Now, why do I need that? I need it to create Animation Sequences for my character and I do not want to create the Animation Sequence in other softwares, like Blender. So why I can not find ControlRig Sequence in UE4 menus?


2D motion synthesis for a human character I want to make the player controlled character of my two dimensional sidescroller responsive to environmental forces, while still being controllable. I read about the commercial software product Euphoria, which is used to synthesize the motions of characters for example in GTA IV. I realize that three dimensional motion synthesis is so complex that I will not be able to use it in my games. Luckily I am creating a two dimensional sidescroller. I assume that it is a lot easier to synthesize motion in two dimensions. Actually I found a relevant scientific paper from 1994 about exactly this topic. After a quick flip it is a rather complicated and not a fully complete (ready to be ported to C ) concept. But is it outdated? What are common approaches to solving this problem in the 21st century? Do you know 2D games using a motion synthesis concept?


What software can I use to animate my character in Unity3D? I am new in game development and I want to know what software can help me to create good animations for my 3rd person character.


How to use a normal map for light effects with an AnimatedSrpite? I am trying to add light effects with normal map on an AnimatedSprite. I was following that tutorial but with no success. I am using a Ligth2D, this sprite sheet and have created a shader on Material to apply the normal map with this code shader type canvas item uniform sampler2D normal map void fragment() NORMAL 2.0 texture(normal map, UV).rgb 1.0 Here is the result One can observe a light reflection on the left upper of the hourglass, but the light is neither smooth nor consistant. NB I have made the spirte sheet myself, feel free to use it.


Should I use procedural animation? I have started to make a fantasy 3d fps swordplay game and I want to add animations. I don't want to animate everything by hand because it would take a lot of time, so I decided to use procedural animation. I would certainly use IK (starting with simple reaching an object with hand ...). I also assume procedural generation of animations will make less animations to do by hand (I can blend animations ...). I want also to have a planner for animation which would simplify complex animations those which can be split to a sequence run and then jump, jump and then roll or which are separable legs running and torso swinging with sword . I want for example a character to chop a head of a big troll. If troll crouches character would just chop his head off, if it is standing he would climb on a troll. I know that I would have to describe the state ("troll is low", "troll is high", "chop troll head" ..) which would imply what regions animation will be in (if there is a gap between them character would jump), which would imply what places character can have some of legs and hands or would choose an predefined animation. My main goal is simplicity of coding, but I want my game to be looking cool also. Is it worthy to use procedural animation or does it make more troubles that it solves? (there can be lot of twiddling ...) I am using Blender Game Engine (therefore Python for scripting, and Bullet Physics).


Animating Two Objects' Interaction? I want to animate a character who could be doing any number of things. Say for example, I want the character to get into bed, under the covers. Do I animate the character and the sheets moving together? Separately? If separately do I need to call both animations simultaneously to ensure it fits together properly? Or, if two characters are going to hug. Do I animate them hugging or just animate them separately hugging and try to align them in game?


Why does exporting to FBX in 3dmax loses simulated animation I made a cloth simulation (wind blowing a cloth). When I export it to FXB and the animation box is ticked on export menu it seems ok (no error in longs). When I reload it to Unity. or 3DMAX again. The wind animation is lost. How can I fix that? Thanks


Character and Weapon animation interaction If I have two models, for example some character, and a bow, how do I work with them together in 3DS Max to animate them both (for example, when the character shoots an arrow with his bow, the characters pulls his hand out, the bow is scratching etc). Also, any guidelines on how to port custom weapon models to UDK?


Slot machine game Phaser 3 I need an advice on creating a slot machine phaser game. So it looks like this I need to plan an approach to do the animation of the reels of the slot machine. I have idea of using tileSprite, are there any other ideas of implementing this game?


What is the technical term for animation of a dead body? In some 3D games when a 3D model of a person is shot to death (or suddenly dead) his body falls to the ground and every limb, the head and the body move free. What is this particular way of handling dead bodies called? Is it possible with UDK? If you didn't understand, I meant like in this video see how the corpse falls.


2D Scaling a character with multiple RigidBody2Ds? So, this example is in the Godot Engine, but other engines porbably have this kind of problem, too I have a character with multiple RigidBody2Ds, that also has a bone skeleton for animation over them. Now, the problem is, that Godot's physics engine handles the transforms of the bodies, so they won't scale properly. If you scale the children (CollisionShape2Ds and Sprites) the positions will be off. Is anybody aware of a proper way to work around this? Being able to scale these kind of characters would be awesome. Thanks for all your answers. Greetings, Footurist


Unity Implementing Fall with Animation I have a character controller. I am primarily using FSM with the animations and blends. However, I am running into some trouble with the fall. I walk up to a ledge and walk off...sometimes I will make it off the edge and the falling animation will play...but sometimes I get stuck halfway off the edge. Also, the falling animation completely disregards any motion vectors I had prior to transferring to the falling state. Is there a way to transition to fall, retaining the current x y velocities? In an effort to fix this, I tried giving the attached rigidbody a force vector slightly up and in the direction of travel so that the character gets a little hop over the edge...but again, no luck.


Abstracting Entity System animation states I recently started designing a Game Engine using the Entity System paradigm, i.e. having entities as an aggregation of components, and systems that implement the actual game. Whereas I've had difficulties in various aspects, what concerns me most is the abstraction modularity of the various Components Systems. Specifically, let's say my Player has several animation states, eg. Walking, Sleeping, Jumping, and one type of Opponent entity has several (not necessarily the same) states as well, eg. Walking, Hiding etc. How should I design the engine, so that it handles the various (animation) states of each entity type? Should there be different animation Systems for each Entity type? Should I use flags that signal the animation System to render the correct entity? Also, can I avoid using "hard coded" enums for the various poses? I can see that a scripting system could probably help, but I'm almost sure there is a simpler solution.


Maya Rigging Shoulder joint attached to head? I'm fairly new to modeling and rigging in Maya so my question is in the image below how can I unbind the rigs head from the shoulder pivot? I've searched online for why this occurs and I can only guess that it's due to bad Joint placement?


How to motion capture animations? I'm not an animation artist and so I want to create some animations for testing. I want to use a camcorder to record me while I'm running and so I want to know if exists a software that grab the video and translate it in animation frames.


How to animate infinite rotary movement I would like to add a chainsaw (or something similar to it... a rotary blade) to my game as a melee weapon. In fact, a rotary blade is a better example. Would it be better to do it in blender somehow, using skeleton, or should I just create two parts (the handle and the blade) and then rotate it in UE4?


Unity Animation With Motion Now running in place I am new to unity. I am trying to assemble a character that walks forward, stops, and walks forward again when I maneuver the joystick (ps4 controller) accordingly. I have the whole thing pretty much set up... However, my animations broke at some point. Initially, when I added the animations to my character, the character moved with the animation according to the motion encoded in the animations (all of which were auto rigged at Mixamo...so I am almost certain the bug is downstream in something I did or enabled somehow). Now, every animation has the character running, turning, jumping etc. in place. Meanwhile, the animation subscreen (when I inspect the clip) shows the character running forward. I tried implementing some fixes I found online I changed the root motion node to Root Transform, for instance...and that is when the most confusing thing happened a few of the animations started working...but all of the animations showed the character running in place in the subscreen...so now I have no idea what is happening. Additionally, the animation clips which do not move the character actually transform the character back to the starting position (actually, that isn't correct I moved the character into the air to test this the clips without motion transform the character back to the starting position on the ground). I have disabled all scripts...so have I somehow broken the animations...??? Re Importing the animations does not fix them either. Here are the images of my character settings, then the controller, and then an animation clip which shows the character moving forward in the sub clip and where motion information is clearly present...


Can I create cocos2d animations without using Xcode? I need to have someone do animation work for an iOS game I'm developing (using cocos2d), however this person does not have a Mac and as such cannot run Xcode. Is there a way for them to create animations for me without the use of Xcode?


Bejeweled like game, managing different gem powerup behaviors? In general, what I am asking is, given any game where a game element can look behave affect other elements one way under one set of conditions, and look behave affect other elements a different way under another, and there are many such conditions, what is the best approach to developing this flexibility into the core? (with one aim being to keep the game "fresh" by introducing variation on the game play during the life of a game...) Specifically, In a Match 3 game, a valid move involves swapping a pair of adjacent tiles so that three identical tiles in a row are formed. The identical tiles are removed from the grid and replaced by those above them. New spaces (on top) on the grid are now filled with new tiles. This is the standard behavior. Richer Match 3 games, such as Bejweled, offer modified behavior based on the same mechanic when a player matches 4 tiles in row resulting in retention of the one tile that was swapped, and triggering alternative animations, sounds, scoring, etc. And yet still, 5 in a row, and cross patterns, "power up" tiles behave in very different ways and affect neighboring tiles in alternative ways as well. ANY pointers for good practices here would be highly appreciated.


Can't attach animation to script I'm working on a little game (which is also my first one) and I want to insert a splash screen at the beginning (after the Unity one). I've finally achieved to add a fade in and a fade out transistion when the splash screen starts and ends, but the fade out is activated by a button and I wont to play it simply after a certain time. I've made a script for that using UnityEngine using UnityEngine.UI using System.Collections public class FadeInOut 2 MonoBehaviour public Animation anim IEnumerator Start() yield return new WaitForSeconds(2f) anim.GetComponent lt Animation gt ().Play() Application.LoadLevel(Application.loadedLevel 1) The problem is when I try to attach the animation the Inspector refuses to do it. Any ideas? Thanks


How to implement scene changing in real time? I want to implement real time scene changing effects to make my game could changing from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter. And Chaning effects like this game. Giana Sisters. I think Giana Sisters use animation to transit from two scenes, but I dont know how to make these animations. Is any other suggestions could make this effects?


How can animate a set of rigs without reinventing the wheel? I have a set of rigs of my own defined 3D doll in Javascript. I would like to animate a set of rigs to simulate walking, jumping, etc. Obviously I could do it by myself, but I'm sure I would be reinventing the wheel. Are there algorithms, libraries (won't matter the language) or anything that I can download and it will give me the position of the rigs in function of time for many animations like walking, jumping?


How do you time jump animation with uneven landing surface? Say my player jumps off from a certain point on a 2D surface. Say my surface is uneven, and has varying y positions along the level, how would I then be able to time my jump animation accordingly? (The issue being is that the animation might get cut off half way through, or vice versa the animation would be already finished while the player is still jumping landing)


How to transition between states and mix states in a finite state machine? I don't understand how to use a finite state machine with the entity controlled by the player. For example I have a Mario style game (2d platform). I can jump, run, walk, take damage, swim, etc. So my first thought was to use this actions as states. But what happens, if you are running when you take damage? Or jumping, taking damage and shooting at the same time? I just want to add functionalities (actions) to the player in a clean way (not using it for all the actions in the entity update) .


Get enum value "string", and get int value of that Sorry if the title is confusing, but I literally don't even know how to summarise this into a title. So here's the problem I have a list of combat moves for a character. I have an animation for each of those possible moves. When the "combat manager" (instantiated to manage each individual fight) works out what move the enemy and your person will make, it should tell the Animator to play the animation specific to the selected move. I'm really not sure how to go about this so The player's Animator has a state for each possible move, containing that move's animation. The script controlling the Animator has a public enum "CombatMove" containing every possible move (ie. CombatMove.WhicheverMove). So the Combat Manager will get the name of the move (eg. "Right Middle Jab"), remove the spaces and search for an enum value whose name is that string (eg. CombatMove.RightMiddleJab). Now it has the corresponding enum value, it retrieves the int value of that (eg. 0). It then sends that int value to the Animator, where each move's transition will occur if the int value equals the move's int value on the enum. So summed up move's string name, turned into an enum value name, turned into its int value, used to specify which move animation should be played. The questions 1) How do you find an enum value whose name equals a given string? 2) How do you get the int value of that enum value? If this is confusing, please comment what makes no sense and I will try to explain, I'm honestly so lost that I don't even know how to ask what I need to ask. EDIT IF anyone is wondering what I mean by 'int value', Fafase's answer at http answers.unity3d.com questions 764091 using c enums to control an animator.html says that each enum value has an int value by default, which can be used in animation conditions however I have no idea how to access them, which part 2 of my problem.


Correct way How to think to plan out "control animation flow"? So basically, a problem I've had in past attempt at making games (little playing around with stuff) how to do a correct, non sloppy way of planning the flow of animations control? Let's take an example you have a character, that can walk in the 4 cardinal directions, and can attack. It's that simple. Obviously, you can only walk in one direction at the same time, and let's assume you can attack when not moving in a direction only. How would you take upon implementing this? Don't know if I'm clear, but what'd your thinking process go like? I always end up with a huge mess of ifs and else ifs to get the animations to represent what is actually supposed to happen after moving in a direction, ie. character after having moved up, will maintain it's upwards facing (will stay on the "up" animation) Have the facing direction when moving be consistent if you start walking left, it gets the left animation, correct. Then you start walking upwards at the same time, or downwards, and you'd like the animation to keep being left. You start walking up, up animation. And as you start moving left or right after starting to move up, you maintain up animation. See what I mean? I'll be here for clarifications on the question, sorry if confuse. For 4 directions it'd not be that hard to do something "decently structured", but when things start adding up, it becomes so confuse! Edit Another thing I hadn't thought about I was simply, upon WASD, altering the object's velocities, and handling all the animation stuff through what velocities were involved. Which leads to wrong things I had thought about, such as if I get pushed, it'd walk left stupidly instead of backing off facing the direction it had. Another edit What I want is an answer of the sort "First, for movement, you'd have a look at all the possible directions, and have an int or such indicating what's the current direction. Do a big switch, and inside of each direction, you'd have ifs for further x and y, but not z, because that's gonna be englobed in whatever. Then you should also have another control layer directly on the input handling to help filter unwanted actions or combinations, such as, you don't want to press A and D and have the velocities cancel each other out. For such, you'd have some further "status" for the object..." something of this kind! Thanks!


Gamemaker Running Animation Flashing, showing single frame, and displaying jump and run sprites at same time EDIT I changed the origin of the run sprite to the center, and it is no longer hovering above the jumping sprite. It now flashes in the same location as the run sprite when moving to the side. Everything else is the same. When I move side to side, the jump sprite moves along the ground while a single frame of the running sprite animation shows up above it and to the side. Both of the sprites flash when this happens. While moving sideways, the sprite slowly sinks into the floor. Jumping works just fine. I'm very new to game maker and programming in general, so I'm probably making some dumb mistakes. Everything was working fine before I added the "animate" section. Here's the code I'm using get player input key right keyboard check(vk right) key left keyboard check(vk left) key jump keyboard check pressed(vk space) react to imput move key right key left hsp move movespeed if (vsp lt 10) vsp grav if (place meeting(x,y 1,obj wall)) vsp key jump jumpspeed horizontal collisions if (place meeting(x hsp,y,obj wall)) while(!place meeting(x sign(hsp),y,obj wall)) x sign(hsp) hsp 0 x hsp vertical collisions if (place meeting(x,y vsp,obj wall)) while(!place meeting(x,y sign(vsp),obj wall)) y sign(vsp) vsp 0 y vsp animate if (move! 0) image xscale move if (place meeting(x,y 1,obj wall)) if (move! 0) sprite index spr player run else sprite index spr player idle else if (vsp lt 0) sprite index spr player jump else sprite index spr player fall if (vsp gt 0) sprite index spr player jump


Trade offs of linking versus skinning geometry What are the trade offs between inherent in linking geometry to a node versus using skinned geometry? Specifically What capabilities do you gain lose from using each method? What are the performance impacts of doing one over the other? What are the specific situations where you would want to do one over the other? In addition, do the answers to these questions tend to be engine specific? If so, how much?


Can CCAnimations be paused? I am new to cocos2d. I am using CCAnimation. It's working fine, except I want to pause the animation occasionally. How do I do this? Here's what I'm doing so far mySprite runAction CCRepeatForever actionWithAction CCAnimate actionWithAnimation walkAnim


How to show the bow string stretching animation (?) I was wondering how the animation in the angry birds of pulling the slingshot is done. One similar animation is available in this game but with a bow and arrow. I think both of them use the almost similar technique for it. I tried to search for this on Google and all I got was the trajectory related stuff like calculating the trajectory of object once it is thrown. I could not find anything related to how the animation (?) for stretching the slingshot bow string with respect to the force applied by user the bow string is achieved. Can anybody point me in right direction in how to achieve that effect. Tutorials are welcome!


Running subsystems at difference update intervals I want to update the rendering at 60fps, but the logic at some lower rate, say 15Hz. But if an object only moves when the game logic updates, then it would appear to stutter badly especially for lower frequencies. I guess the rendering system could interpolate an entity's vector and draw the model moving at a lower dt, but if the game logic causes the entity to change direction it will appear to teleport back, and so on. I can imagine many more problems. How is this usually solved in games? Surely most engines want to decouple rendering from game logic, so there must have been some though put into this. Or does everyone just update all systems that have graphical effects at the same rate?


Automated animation retargeting I am currently developing a video game using my own game engine I develop at the same time. While making a good progress in the past months, I am currently stuck. I assume I only miss a minor thing, but I need another pair of eyes and I really hope you can help me! I wrote a converter which reads FBX files (using the official FBX SDK 2017.0.1) and converts them into my own custom file format. I am able to read meshes, texture and material information, the skeleton and all animation stacks. In my game (engine) I am able to display the textured meshes and animate them with any of the read animation stacks. However, there is one problem for me. I bought meshes for NPC characters from a 3D artist and I also bought a huge animation pack from another artist. The character meshes include the perfectly textured and rigged mesh with all joints and the animation pack contains a rigged dummy mesh with all joints and animations. I want to be able to use any animation from the animation pack on any mesh from the character artist. My first step was to write a joint mapper. When reading the files I know which joint has which type. So, I am able to map the joints from the character mesh to the animation mesh and vice versa. The skeletons of both meshes are pretty similar and the mapping is going to work out. In the FBX samples the animation calculation for a given vertex is Inv(Mesh GlobalPosition Mesh GeometryTransform) Joint GlobalPosition Inv(Joint TransformLinkMatrix) Joint TransformMatrix Mesh GeometryTransform Since Mesh GeometryTransform is the identity matrix for all files I have bought, I can remove it from the term above. The result is Inv(Mesh GlobalPosition) Joint GlobalPosition Inv(Joint TransformLinkMatrix) Joint TransformMatrix Joint GlobalPosition is the transformation in Bone Space and the only matrix that is time dependent in this equation. Inv(Joint TransformLinkMatrix) Joint TransformMatrix is used to transform the World Space to the Bone Space, as I understood. Finally, Inv(Mesh GlobalPosition) is used to transform the result back to World Space. If I understood something wrong, please correct me!!! The joints which are used for the animation mesh are in a different space than the joints from the character mesh, because they come from different artists. I believe the missing part is to map between the joint spaces of both meshes. However, I do not know where to enter the mapping and I also don't know which spaces do I need to map? Object Space? Bone Space? I'd appreciate any kind of help and will reward a useable solution with credits in my game!


Skeletal Animation No initial bone rotation I am currently trying to implement animations in my game. I am having an issue where the bones do not rotate properly. In my program, I apply an inverse bind pose to each bone to move them to bone space. Then I recursively calculate the transformations for each bone for the keyframe. The bone transformation looks like this bone.Transform InverseRootGlobal Global bone.InversePose InverseRootGlobal is the inverted root node transformation Global is the recursively calculated transformation bone.InversePose is the inverse pose matrix It appears that all is correct apart from the bones initial rotation. When I move the bones to bone space, they loose their rotation from the bind pose and 'point up'. Here's what it looks like If it helps, I am using Assimp to import the data. Thanks in advance.


What makes a good tech tree? In strategy simulation games there are often tech research trees which allow players research new abilities options, improve existing options and decease negative effects. Some games seem to follow the abc approach of item 1 gt item 2 gt item 3 with minor stat changes while others make every unlocked option wildly change the way a game is played by throwing new units into the game which are able to change the balance of the game. Some make unlocking one branch block off another for the rest of the game while other will let you research everything. Some let you research multiple things while others will penalize you for switching research before it is complete. On that note tech trees can be progressive (with dedicated research over time unlocking an item) while some need you to collect enough money points in order to unlock instantly. What are some general guidelines for when to employ what strategy in a game? What games types of games would benefit more from one tech tree type over another and why? When should a linear tech tree be employed over a branching one? Edit For example a game where the main character has to build up an organisation and research technologies in secret while others are finding them and shut them down resulting in lost research laboratories, which reduce research output. The research output should increase somewhat exponentially as the game goes on as better technology is unlocked and research laboratories are upgraded. There would presumably be a very large tech tree to explore and the constant danger of losing facilities to other parties until you either unlock some endgame tech or lose everything. Why this isn't a duplicate Some people are marking this question as a duplicate because there is a related question about tech tree size. This question has to do more with the connections, cost and relationships between the technology options (of which size is a factor but not everything).


Is my StatisticManager idea overkill? I'm writing a shmup and I'm working on implementing things like level design and achievements. I have a trigger system that I've implemented which allows me to do basic things and can assist the basic level workflow. However, as it is, this isn't really flexible enough to recognize some other things, such as Determine when an enemy is killed vs. removed from the game Not taking damage during some period of time Killing enemies using a particular weapon Killing enemies in a particular order Whereas the triggers I have available now basically poll for information, these need to look through a series of events to understand whether the condition is met. So I've conceived a StatisticManager class which would be able to take and store all these events, and provide queries so that new triggers could be written to test for these things. For example, a trigger might ask for an ordered list of enemies killed during some time period, and then determine whether a particular sequence of kills is met. The design raises a lot of concerns, though, such as determining when to discard archive data, and how to get statistical data from previous game sessions. Certainly efficiency is a concern. So my question is Does my StatisticManager idea seem appropriate for my needs? What other designs should I consider?


What do you do when you are at an impasse in the design phase? I own a small web dev shop, and in our down time, I plan on having my guys work on a game (I will be paying them anyway, right?). A few buddies and I started talking about this game, and have been going through the motions of talking designing it out. Only problem we are at an impasse, and can't seem to get passed it. The vote is at 50 50 . Compromising hasn't worked. I have though about just making an executive decision since I am funding the development design of the game, but I don't want to lose my friends support for the game, and their other opinions. I don't know what to do.


Game window systems and internal frames I don't know if this is a valid question, but What kind of window manager do games use which have internal frames (Frames inside frames)? Does this differ between the programming languages (Are e.g. in Java the AWT Swing libraries used to manage these and other graphical elements, such as buttons,or is this to restrictive (speed, graphical possibilities?)) A special example would be EVE Online, where the client can use the ingame windows like on a normal desktop.


Player's feeling towards stage selection in a platform game In a 2D platform game with RPG elements (not that it matters much), there's three ways, among others, for the player to choose the next stage he will play He can only play the next stage and the ones he already beat On game start, half of the stages are open, and the other half is released when he beats the first half All stages are available to the player What's the difference in perspective to the players general experience and his feelings towards a game rating of these three alternatives? (I know it sounds like a copy of an exercise, but it isn't. I did this way so people may take this question in a more academic way)


RTS Balancing for Units with Different Costs I am creating a space based RTS. So far, we have three units Fighters (cost 5 resources) Interceptors (cost 20) Rocket Ships (cost 40). I've designed this game in a Rock Paper Scissors format (Fighters beat Interceptors, Interceptors beat Rocket Ships, Rocket Ships beat Fighters), but the game is designed so that classes beat each other at cost (i.e. a single Interceptor will beat a single Fighter, but four Fighters (cost 20) will beat a single Interceptor (cost 20)). In this case, when I am using the Incomplete Wins technique to calculate the proportions of each ship that I would expect to see, should I calculate interactions using 1v1 interactions or "at cost" interactions? I believe the two will lead to very different results (for example, a single Fighter does 20 of damage to Interceptor before it itself is destroyed, but four Fighters destroy the Interceptor while only losing one ship the first interaction leads to a 1 resource advantage for the Interceptor player, while the second interaction leads to a 15 resource advantage for the Fighter player). I would think it I should do the latter comparison, but the linked page does a single unit comparison (one Knight vs one Archer, even though Knight costs half that of Archer) EDIT This RTS is partially derived from Total Annihilation Supreme Commander, so no projectiles hit instantly and the scale of the game is intended to be somewhat large. In that case, should I instead perform comparisons between armies that cost the same? For example, instead of comparing one Fighter vs one Interceptor or four Fighters vs one Interceptor, should I instead compare 40 Fighters vs 10 Interceptors? Would that be more accurate and also help reduce randomness of projectile hits?


Successful Elements to a 4X Game 4X games (That is, Xpand, Xplore, Xploit and Xterminate) like Civilization, Sins of a Solar Empire, and other top Strategy games, all seem to have the same addictive hook. I'd like to know what elements these developers incorporate into their games to make them Well paced (You can't beat the game in 5 minutes, but it wont take a week) Replayable (The first game isn't your last) Competetive (The AI doesn't play like a 3 year old) Not repetetive (Such as using the same strategy over and over, or spamming units) Economical (Not having 7 trillion metal and coins after 10 minutes of play) Not to much micro managing Exciting (Necessary?) combat You stil need to use strategy Intuitive interfaces (Civilization 5 is a good example) And any other important parts to the Strategy 4X genre Some of these seem pretty simple, but others look like balancing acts, and I'd like to have some opinions on how to make a game that is fun to play. I'd be grateful if anyone could answer tell me how you or another game developer has managed to successfully balance them together.


Should my platformer have collectibles? By collectibles, I mean objects that you collect mainly for the sake of collecting them, not to power up. Think coins in Super Mario or bandages in Super Meat Boy. I've seen a few platformers that do not have any collectibles and it's the platforming itself which is challenging (my platformer itself is challenging), but I think adding collectibles will add extra challenge and re playability, especially if some of the collectibles are really well hidden. Tradition would dictate that you should have collectibles, as it's a way for players to gain extra lives or even gain points, but that would not be the only reason to have collectibles. I'm not interested in making features for feature sake. I'm purely wanting an opinion on whether collectibles should be included in a game and what should the collectibles do when you collect enough? Is a simple 1 life fine? Should there be some cool object you get? Possibly should collecting really change something hectic, like collect 100 coins and your character is invincible? How do I decide if my platformer should have collectibles? Closed. While I disagree with the closing as according to the FAQ What should be asked game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc). I got some nice pros and cons from everyone. I have updated the question slightly to be more specific.


Revisitability of Game Elements In some games, when you miss a pickup, you can never get it again unless you restart the game, and those pickups count in your collection. (therefore, you must restart the game to finish the collection, if you made any mistakes). In Pok mon, you have only one Master Ball, limited supply of Ethers and legendary Pok mon appear once per game. Trading fixes all of those problems. For a more radical perfectionist, they demanded all dialogs, background music, and even items to be revisitable. Some games, like Naruto Ninja Council, satisfied all of those needs. Is it always a good practice to make things revisitable? Even cutscenes and music? When is it not a good practice to do so?


Balancing game difficulty against player progression It seems that the current climate of games seems to cater to an obvious progression of player power, whether that means getting a bigger, more explosive gun in Halo, leveling up in an RPG, or unlocking new options in Command and Conquer 4. Yet this concept is not exclusive to video or computer games even in Dungeons and Dragons players can strive to acquire a 2 sword to replace the 1 weapon they've been using. Yet as a systems designer, the concept of player progression is giving me headache after headache. Should I balance around the players exact capabilities and give up on a simple linear progression? (I think ESIV Oblivion is a good example of this) Is it better to throw the players into an "arms race" with their opponents, where if the players don't progress in an orderly manner, it is only a matter of time until gameplay is unbearably difficult? (4th Edition DnD strikes me as a good example of this) Perhaps it would make most sense to untether the core gameplay mechanics from progression at all give them flashier, more interesting (but not more powerful!) ways to grow?


Can one build a game based on something that already exists and make money off of it? Possible Duplicate Is it legally possible to make a clone of the game? I was planning on producing a game but then I had to stall. I have an idea to make a game, but its very similar to a game already out there. If I made my own graphics, audio and use my own code, would I be allowed to sell it?


Javascript injection problems to beat my game! HELP So I have a web application game that runs completely on the client side and just returns the score back to the server to list the highest scorer. Now I have noticed that I can easily manipulate the scores via accessing the variables from the console and injecting my own value! This SUCKS! I am a total noob in this kinda development and have absolutely no clue how I can stop this apart from obfuscating the code and praying to god that the hacker doesn't figure out which variable is he supposed to use! Now I was hoping there are better ways to stop the hacker to gain access of my variables. Could someone help me out with this issue!?


Which elements make some maps in multiplayer FPS games more fun than others? I'm working on a sci fi multiplayer FPS game, and am currently designing maps with layout influences from the 2015 Star Wars Battlefront game and from the original Halo CE game, as those games have the maps which I find very enjoyable. When I was building the map layouts for my game, I started to wonder why I was looking at these older games for reference instead of, say, maps from these games's sequels. I know that the enjoyability of certain maps is subjective, but there's a big difference in the amount of fun my friends and I have had playing the maps in these specific games instead of the newer sequels. Something about the maps in these games provides an inherently fun, memorable experience, and some newer games (like Battlefront II or Halo V) lack that experience. Maybe some of these maps aren't really anything special, but I know that certain maps like Blood Gulch have been praised by fans for years. What makes these maps so memorable and fun to play on multiplayer? Is it a product of the developers' map making experience and the resources of the large companies (the Battlefront devs went to Iceland for reference), or are there specific layout styles and or structures that are known to provide interesting close quarters scenarios? Is there an intangible quality to good maps?


What is the story of game programmers beside gaming history? Nowadays, game programming is like a big business ish, technological, academical, programming havoc. There are dozen of engines, free or not, don't reinvent the wheel dos and don't, plenty of different platform, plenty of game genres, and a lot of languages. The video game economy boomed around the 90's (I guess, with the NES etc), and just before that, I wonder how game programmers were doing their job, what languages they used, what was the equivalent of the current "dev kit", anyways what were those few guys technics and tools to achieve a working game on such tiny computer power ? I read that the playstation had only 3MB memory total besides CD swapping, how could they achieve to build an executable to hold on 2mb or ram, for complex games like Metal Gear Solid or Vagrant Story ? Since I'm young and I missed all that, I have some questions... Were game makers only or most programmers ? Why do I think a game programmer who has played a lot, has a more important role that game designers, 3D artists, because they know how a game is really made ? Since C was invented in the 70, did all programmers use it, or were they forced to use ASM to get the best optimisation ? Is being a game programmer a safe job (I mean in the job market) ? Since computers are so freaking fast today, how has the optimisation task changed ? Do we use computer console power to their maximum, or do we waste it because we can't come up with complex enough gameplay ?


Handling Block Collisions The title isn't great, but let me try and explain my problem. I'm working on a little game at the moment the gist of which is that you're an entity in this 2 D world and you have to dodge obstacles. These obstacles approach form all 4 directions and you're stuck in the middle and simply have to survive as long as you can without dying (from hitting the walls, obstacles, etc.) Right now, my problem is this The obstacles are randomly generated, so they often collide with obstacles coming from the other directions. I feel like something should happens when they collide, but I don't really know what to do with them. Ideally, I would have the blocks generate such that they never collide, however this as proven to be both mathematically and computationally difficult. I'd still like to get this to happen if possible (if you have any clever tricks let me know) but I'm willing to consider other ideas as well. One thing that sounded cool to me was that upon collision, and explosion happens that abruptly shoves your entity away from the collision and deals a little damage. Conversely, a "black hole" could form and suck you towards the collision possibly dragging you into oncoming obstacles, etc. The problem I have with both of these ideas is that they're random. So there's no guarantee that it'll be consistent between play throughs. Seeing as they could potentially deal damage to the entity, it seems unfair. One person could have a significantly easier time than another because there were no collisions. Am I right to have these concerns? Or does the randomness add to the fun of things? Any ideas on how I could fairly handle such collisions? Thanks!


How to create a legally valid timestamp of unpublished game artwork Before publishing promotional material of my first indie game I wanted to mark all my artwork with a legally valid timestamp. There are two ways I know to do this 1 go to a sollecitor lawyer and pay for them to certify the document 2 use an online webservice to mark any given file folder readable to the service Anyone has already done this and if yes how (e.g. which website have you used? which type of solecitor have you contacted? etc..)? I am doing all this because I have prepared a kickstarter video that I wanted to publish in these days to ask for some additional funds to complete my game and, as it contains sequences of the game, I am at the same time worried about publishing it (somebody might copy the characters as I say in the video that I would like to do also a comic book series based on those characters). I guess that "eCO" (or something similar) becomes a must in this case right? Kind Regards PS I know that there is always the good old "send yourself a mail with a stamp and a date" but is not very strong as proof.


Procedural object generation and unique identification My question relates to procedural content generation and data management of the emerging objects in a database. I assume a networked game, with a server client model. Unspecified objects in the game world are generated while the game is running with procedural algorithms (for example perlin noise). The players ( clients) can modify the properties of these objects, but have to notify the server of these changes. How could this communication address unique objects, so that both the server and the client know of which object they are speaking? Not only the inner properties of the objects can differ, but also visible, such as the position. When the player wants to select one of these objects the game has to find out the id does anyone know which methods or algorithms can accomplish that?


A Star pathfinding on oblique map I'm making an RPG and want to make npc ai to navigate the city. I am using polylines for collision detection, and my map is 2D, but oblique styled. I am considering using the A algorithm to help them navigate. I've gotten the A algorithm to work with a top down 2D array of nodes But am not sure how to go about implementing this in my game. The overall world is 100x100 64x64px tiles, but the viewport (red box) only shows a small portion of them My questions are as follows Do I make a 2D 100x100 array, each cell size 64x64 px to mimic the real map? How do I account for the polyline barriers collision if 1's (unwalkable) and 0's (walkable) can only be assigned to a square cell? Performance is it better to just created a pathing grid for the viewport, or always generate one for the entire 100x100 map? Barriers Collision I create my collision barriers directly in Tiled. Is there a way to programmatically insert unwalkable into the matrix for a given location of the barrier? I am lost as to where to go next in translating this to my game. Thanks!


What game mechanic can I use to show that the player character is bored? I'm designing a part in my game where the player must notice that his character feels bored about a certain mundane task he is doing, without being boring for the player. By observing the game mechanic, the player should understand that his character is bored or fatigued. To keep the player interested in playing though, the mechanic has to gamify that mundane process into something interesting or challenging. How could this be done?


Main characteristics of a game I was doing some reading for college and I searched for "Main characteristics of games" "Main characteristics of video games" and other similar ones, the result were a bunch of psychological studies and some non totally related links. The bottom line there was no real definition. I can see why, however I m suprised there are no attempts I m going to think I m looking for the wrong thing, so can you help? My purpose is to try to understand what is a video game and what isnt. ie bad games are still games, so fun and immersion are not characteristics of a game ( before I started thinking about this I thought that was the case) Cheers


What are the advantages and disadvantages of different grids in a turn based strategy game? The two most common types are using hexagons and squares. My question is rather concerned with game design. Why are specifically those two found so often? What are disadvantages that speak against using other polygons such as triangles, pentagons or octagons?


How should I structure a design document? Should the design document be a continuous line of text, with real sentences, more like a description of the entire game, or should I structure it in simple points? What are the benefits, and are there more ways of structuring it?


Cartesian Coordinates Layout The way cartesian coordinations are presented and used is kinda confusing. When working with 2D the vertical axis is Y, though when working with 3D the vertical axis is Z and Y becomes the "depth" axis. Basically I'm thinking the correct way, and best way would be to use the layout of axis. Though Blender (3D modelling program) and other program, a lot games, present the axis in the "weird order" (my opinion) Also if you read on Wikipedia about cartesian coordinates, your are presented with that layout of axis. Wikipedia Cartesian Coordinates Is there any specific or logical reason for this "flip" of axis?


What is the point in using API such as Open GL or DirectX when there are game engines? I was wondering why today programmers place so much emphasis on API like DirectX, and even OpenGl. As far as I know, you'd need thousands of lines of code to make a simple 3D game using one of the aforementioned. But with game engines like Unity, the process is simplified and you can pretty much drag around shapes to create the graphics in lieu of programming it. So what I wanted to know why is knowing APIs DirectX more preferable than being knowledgeable in Unity, other than the fact that with an API you can code it to be portable on other systems. To me it's like choosing Assembly over a high level language like C. Sure, with assembly I'll really understand what's happening at machine level, but it's take a lot longer to write programs using it and it would be a lot harder to debug.


Ideal way to instantiate abilities in a class give a dynamic list of abilities to use? I have a PlayerClass class that is used to set my Player's class. For instance, this will make him a warrior PlayerClass warrior new WarriorClass() WarriorClass will instantiate abilities like so Ability ability1 new LeapAbility() Now my problem is that I will eventually dynamically update my Warrior's abilities (think talent trees or perks). So say I give warrior a list of abilities to use. How do I do this in code? Right now I need to know the Abilities before hand and hard code their instantiation in. Put another way, how do I instantiate a dynamic list of objects? I'm open to other solutions too if this doesn't make sense or is impossible.


What is an alternative to scratch damage to solve combat deadlocking? Scratch damage is a game mechanic whereby any successful attack always does some minimal amount of damage. This is often used in subtractive combat systems, where the defense is subtracted directly from the damage done by an attacker. Therefore, the target will always take some minimal damage. The downside of such a system, for me at least, is that it's a hack. It takes a simple formula like Damage Attack Defense and turns it into a (slightly) more complex one Damage max(Attack Defense, 1). I also feel that it detracts from a player's skill in developing their character etc. No matter how many defense bonuses they get, every attack will do some small damage. So why get your defense so high, if it won't mean anything? Furthermore, this now encourages the use of larger numbers for Hp and damage, so that the scratch damage is truly negligable. After all, if the minimum damage is 1, and you only have 10 Hp, that's still 10 of your health. Even with 20 Hp, that's 5 . And I would rather avoid using larger numbers like that unless it's absolutely necessary. However, there is one very important upside of scratch damage it solves the deadlock problem. Deadlock happens when neither side is able to do damage to the other. If you invest all of your resources into defense, and few into attack, then your character may not take damage, but they won't be able to deal very much either. Thus, you could come upon an encounter where neither side will be able to inflict damage, so battle continues forever. This is especially if you don't have random mechanics like critical hits (which I also hate). At least with scratch damage, someone will eventually win. It may only be the one with the most Hp or highest number of attacks, but the battle will end. So I like having a combat system where there will always be an outcome. But I don't like having scratch damage. What are my alternatives? Alternatives that don't involve rolling random numbers I want combat to be 100 deterministic. If the same battle is fought, the exact same outcome must happen. If you want specifics on the gameplay, think in terms of turn based combat, where battle can be automated (you design your forces, then pit them against others).


Calculation of a fight with many entities User A can have many entities A Entity is a object that has properties such as health, attack, defence, agility, stamina, etcetera. When User A want to attack User B with x entities I am looking for the algorithm equation to calculate the fight. I have brought some couple of ideas but they all have some pros and cons and I am not sure which one I would use or If I should use one of them at all? Model A The while loop Basically I would get all the entities that is suppose to fight in this battle, I would assign each of them (objects) in to an array (the User A array and the User B array). Now I would simply loop through until one of the array is empty. Inside the loop I would let one of the User attack first, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) and then let the next User attack back, calculate the result (If the Entity has 0 health, remove it) And then continue. The Pros with Model A would be that every entity would be battling and instead of just do a calculation on all around there would be a justice fight. The Cons To loop through like 10 entities would be fine but what about 1000 2000 entities? And how about the different strength of each entity I mean how could I decide which entity should battle against what entity? This could be just an sorted array (weakest to strongest) But then I couldn't have like different types of entities is better against a different type of entity, meaning like a Gunner wouldn't mean anything If it met a Swordsman even though a Gunner would most likely win such in a real fight. Model B The idea of Model B is quite simple basically calculate all the attributes (properties) together and then If User A army has greater stats than User B army, User A army would win the fight. The Pros with this is it easy on the performance. The Cons are "Which entities would survive?" And it would basically be, the one with greatest army would win. You wouldn't even have a "chance" to win. Model B B Then I started to think what If I take the concept of Model B calculate the stat and then I have a battle between just those two single entities. This way User B actually would have a chance ( a small one but the possibility to win) even though the User A has greater army (better stats). The Cons are yet again, How would I know which entities that would survive on the winning team? The answer I am looking for to this question is what Model should I use? And how would I solve the cons in that particular Model. Or should I use some completely different model (idea) ? (If possible please provide some php pseudo code)


How can I know how difficult a question is? I'm making a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" style of game. I'm really stuck at the part where I should arrange questions from easy to hard. Isn't this subjective? How can I tell how hard difficult a question is?


How is game development different from other software development? For a solid general purpose software developer, what specifically is different about game development, either fundamentally or just differences in degree? I've done toy games like Tic tac toe, Tetris, and a brute force sudoku solver (with UI) and I'm now embarking on a mid sized project (mid sized for being a single developer and not having done many games) and one thing I've found with this particular project is that separation of concerns is a lot harder since everything affects state, and every object can interact with every other object in a myriad of ways. So far I've managed to keep the code reasonably clean for my satisfaction but I find that keeping clean code in non trivial games is a lot harder than it is for my day job. The game I'm working on is turn based and the graphics are going to be fairly simple (web based, mostly through DOM manipulation) so real time and 3d work aren't really applicable to me, but I'd still be interested in answers regarding those if they're interesting. Mostly interested in general game logic though. P.S. Feel free to retag this, I'm not really sure what tags are applicable.


G rated word lists in various languages for programming children's games I'm programming a word guessing game that uses large lists of words (no definitions, just words). Word length is configurable. Parents could set the word length to be very short and let small children play the game. I'd like to make sure there are no obviously obscene words in the list. For American English, the closest I've found was a Scrabble like dictionary file that uniformly labelled questionable words with "obscene" so I can easily filter them out. Does anyone know of a better list in English, and or any lists in other languages?


Which elements make some maps in multiplayer FPS games more fun than others? I'm working on a sci fi multiplayer FPS game, and am currently designing maps with layout influences from the 2015 Star Wars Battlefront game and from the original Halo CE game, as those games have the maps which I find very enjoyable. When I was building the map layouts for my game, I started to wonder why I was looking at these older games for reference instead of, say, maps from these games's sequels. I know that the enjoyability of certain maps is subjective, but there's a big difference in the amount of fun my friends and I have had playing the maps in these specific games instead of the newer sequels. Something about the maps in these games provides an inherently fun, memorable experience, and some newer games (like Battlefront II or Halo V) lack that experience. Maybe some of these maps aren't really anything special, but I know that certain maps like Blood Gulch have been praised by fans for years. What makes these maps so memorable and fun to play on multiplayer? Is it a product of the developers' map making experience and the resources of the large companies (the Battlefront devs went to Iceland for reference), or are there specific layout styles and or structures that are known to provide interesting close quarters scenarios? Is there an intangible quality to good maps?


How can I reward dungeon masters that take risks? I am working on a MORPG project featuring essentially two major roles adventurers and dungeon masters. My concern is about balancing the two roles. For those who have heard of it, the principle is inspired from the French comics Dungeon. The business model of a dungeon, as stated in the comics, is the following dungeon masters place treasures in heavily guarded dungeons, to lure in adventurers seeking fame and fortune. While some of them succeed, most die in the process, dropping valuable items which joins the pile of treasures of the dungeon, further attracting more adventurers. Dungeon master make a living by collecting the right amount from these drops to create new rooms, pay mercenaries, fetch new creatures, breed dragons and whatnot. Adventurers are quite classic they are combat oriented characters that can attack monsters or fellow players and earn XP, items and money in the process, gradually making them stronger. Dungeon masters are trade oriented. Their difficulty is balancing budgets treasures and dragons are expensive. Now, I already expect a sort of equilibrium among dungeon masters because dungeons that are either too hard or too easy are naturally penalized (low attempt rate or low kill rate, respectively). DM vs DM balancing check. Since PvP combat is enabled in dungeons, there is also a competition among adventurers pushing weak players to stick to easy dungeons that offer little reward to more advanced players. Adventurers vs advanturers balancing check. However there is one specific imbalance between the two roles that I am trying to solve adventurers have a bias toward attempting dungeons above their league, because even if they die (dropping some items and respawning outside the dungeon), they will have gained some XP in the process. This is good because it rewards risk takers. On the other hand, dungeon masters do not have any advantage of this kind if an adventurer completes the dungeon and escapes with their share of the treasure, nothing is gained. This would be a pity if it lead dungeon master to be too cautious about their defenses, killing the probability of ever completing the dungeon. Adventurer vs DM balancing problem. Hence my question what reward mechanism could I introduce that incitates dungeon masters to maintain a small but non zero winning probability?


How to make an object towards the mouse on one Axis Gamemaker Studio 2 I am trying to have my "obj playership" move towards the Cursor on a single Axis. Prefer it to be the Vertical Axis. I tried doing this is an "Execute Code Box" in a step event "direction mouse x" "speed 1 " but the movement looks weird and does not do what I am trying to do. To better refine my question I'm trying to have my "obj playership" move just up and down in relation to the mouse, so if I'm moving my mouse up or down the obj playership" will follow towards the mouse either up or down.


How can I handle a bunch of achievements in a game? Take for example Team Fortress 2. There are a huge load of achievements, and I'm wondering how the manages all of them. And since there's a lot of achievements, I'd also like to know how it "knows" you've achieved one. Basically, how can the game handle a huge achievement system? Is there some special process? Are there hundreds and hundreds of boolean variables all over the code, waiting for certain conditions to be met, then ,Bam, achievement? If there are several approaches, what are they?


How important is music to mobile phone (smart PDA) games? Specifically iPhone iTouch, Droids, and the new Windows Phone 7? I don't know how to quantify this, or if any research has been done. I am wondering how important the music is to the gaming and what of games come with music at all, if good music at that.


memorizing button tap code iOS game I'm using a single view app in Xcode 6.1 for my game with Storyboards. Not unity or sprite kit. It's a small game not even 3MB. Anyways, I created un lockable characters with a BOOLEAN. (void)hidden if(scoreNumber gt 9 HighScoreNumber gt 9) BlueChar YES (IBAction)Blue bird.image UIImage imageNamed "BLUE.png" if(BlueChar YES) BlueChar BOOL BlueChar.hidden NO When you click on BlueChar button, the UIImageView is connected to BlueChar character. So when you tap START GAME button game starts and you play as BlueChar. Then when it's GameOver and you click START GAME button again, the BlueChar button that was clicked isn't saved and instead you play as Original Character. How do I make it that if you click BlueChar button ONCE, now you can play as BlueChar forever unless you click on another button that represents another character? How do I make the game save the last button clicked unless user clicks on another button in Objective C code?


Should cooldown be time or tick based? In the past I've done cooldowns as a specific time in ms, but I was thinking isn't having tick based cooldowns better. This would be more accurate and efficent(not sure). The bad side I can think about is that if the tick rate is increased, it would affect the game logic. While having a base update rate and a multiplier(that can be applied to everything that is tied to tick rate) would probably fix this, I am not sure if this is a good approach.


How do I fairly distribute new powerful cards to players in a collectible card game? I'm writing a game in which users start with a few cards. They use those cards to play against other players. The winner can steal a card from the other player. The aim is to get more different rare higher powered cards. If everyone starts with 10 low powered cards, how would anyone ever get higher powered cards? They'd just be playing against people who have the same type of cards as them. How do you fairly distribute these more powerful cards among players?


Algorithm for determining random events I'm struggling with coming up with an elegant solution to generating random events in the game that I'm working on. Say there are 4 classes of events that can happen, with varying events in those classes that may occur. So something along the lines of main events "common event", "not so common event", "somewhat rare event", "rare event" sub events 0 "common event 1", "common event 2",.. ... I have a somewhat kludgey solution in place that first just has a random number generated between 0 and 100, and if the number falls within a given range then a main event will be triggered. Then I'll do another random roll to see which sub event occurs. Is there a better solution than something along these lines? Like I mention, it doesn't feel very elegant, and I'd like to make it easily expandable for the addition of future events.


A game that can balance itself over time? So after reading some history and learning about how some countries were allowed to survive by stronger countries, just so that a power gap wouldn't exist. That being said, we can assume that if this power gap did exist, eventually the world will rebalance itself one way or another. Would that be applicable in games? Can a game (for example, Overwatch or any MMORPG) balance itself over time whether the imbalances are a result of how the classes are built or even the population of people in every faction? I thought about it a lot and I tried finding dissimilarities between my real world example and games. In games, you are allowed to have many identities. You can essentially have a character in every faction. In a game like OW you can pick any hero. You don't have a fixed identity that defines you like IRL so cloning the idea of a "Country Nation" in real life to a game is nearly impossible as developers don't have power over how many characters factions the player can have. Nations have finite resources. All MMOs I played have infinite resources which simply doesn't make sense compared to the real world. Finite resources is what makes nations great whether by smart utilization of said resources or conquering invading other nations. That being said, I still have a feeling that it's possible, one day, to have a game that can balance itself over time. But to achieve that, I believe we need to put many constraints on the gameplay to mimic real life constraints that "define" a nation. What do you guys think? What would those constraints be?


Can Achievement systems be implemented later in development? I'm undecided if I want to implement this feature in my game at the time or not. I don't want the project to get to far out of control so I'm focusing on core mechanics first. Is this a feature that is easy to implement later assuming I data drive everything and store everything?


Do delays after losing and before restarting serve as a defense against burnout, or are they addiction machines? In games like Super Hexagon or even Everwing, there's a very brief but noticeable delay from losing to starting over waiting for the restart button to appear, pressing it, etc... Is this a defense against player burnout? If there's no pause that separates one game try from next, the game might feel never ending and burn out the player quickly. Or is it a way to keep the player addicted? I often suspected this in Everwing, because that game's hardly shy about its avaricious nature. Perhaps there's a psychological effect in making the player wait before they can play again like building the craving part of a habit? Or perhaps a lack of this delay is to keep the flow going, so to speak? Ori and the Blind Forest does something similar in its Ginso Tree level. It has very fast restarts, no button or anything, and deaths do not restart the music that's playing in the BG. The result is that deaths do not break the flow of the game, and despite them the whole level feels seamless. So, are there any studies on this? Barring those, anecdotes? I couldn't find anything, anywhere.


How to target an entity that is moving I want my arrow to chase the minion that I just rightclicked on. I have a Minion Class and an Arrow Class. These are the constructors lt summary gt Constructs a minion lt summary gt public Minion(Texture2D sprite, int x, int y, int windowWidth, int windowHeight, bool isFriendly, int minionHealth) lt summary gt Constructor of the bullet from champion to minion lt summary gt public Arrow(Texture2D sprite, Vector2 sourceEntity, Vector2 targetEntity, float arrowSpeed, int arrowAttackSpeed, int damageDone, bool isArrowActive) In the Game1 I have the standard if click structure and I check if the click is on the minions. But I check this with foreach (Minion minion in enemyMinions) So I want to mark somehow the minion I clicked on and then to send the arrow directly to its moving location. How to do that? Update checks if rightmouse button was clicked to activate the arrow if (mouse.RightButton ButtonState.Released amp amp previousButtonState ButtonState.Pressed) checks if the right mouse click was on a minion and the minion is in champion's range for (int i 0 i lt enemyMinions.Count i ) if (enemyMinions i .CollisionRectangle.Contains(mouse.X, mouse.Y) amp amp (Math.Abs(mouse.X enemyMinions i .X) lt vayne.ChampionRange) Math.Abs(mouse.Y enemyMinions i .Y) lt vayne.ChampionRange) mark the minion that the click was made on theCurrentTarget enemyMinions i sets the arrow.targetEntity to that particular minion arrow.TargetX theCurrentTarget.X arrow.TargetY theCurrentTarget.Y arrow.IsArrowActive true previousButtonState mouse.RightButton


Driver AI in racing game I'm curious how I could control cars in a racing game. Should my AI agent control its car with commands like "throttle on 0.35, steereing wheel on 0.5 right, brake on 0.0"? Or should I rather pre compute a curve the car sticks to, and visuals like front wheels turning are just to make everything looks consistent? Or is there any other way?


Strategy Games Online Resources I am looking for some good online (ebooks) resources about strategy games discussing the gameplay and the interactive aspects of strategy games, and how to design interesting and challenging strategy game. I found this book (http www.amazon.co.uk Game Guru Strategy Dave Morris dp 1904705456) and seems interesting by reading table of contents. Unfortunately, I did not find any way to buy an ebook version of it and I am in Middle East and ordering this book would take lots of time. Any idea?


Twin stick shooting with keyboard In a top down shooting game, what alternatives are there for input if I want the direction of movement to be independent from the direction I'm shooting at? I'd like to avoid shooting with the mouse as it's much too precise, but alternatives that make it harder to aim could also work. Alternatives I've already considered are Arrows for movement and WASD for shooting. The Binding of Isaac does this and it has two problems. It only allows for shooting in four directions, where I'd prefer at least eight and most keyboards start ignoring some key presses if you press more than 2 keys at one, making it impossible to move in a diagonal while shooting. Arrows or WASD for movement, shooting direction becomes fixed in the direction you are facing when you start shooting. I don't remember where I saw this. This allows for shooting on any direction, but you have to stay still for a moment to change shooting direction, and it just doesn't feel very dynamic.


Mental Image of the engine behind an RTS like SimCity Settlers, what is it? Disclaimer I'm first a programmer and then an RTS gamer. This means I'm a complete and utter newb in terms of patterns, best practices and glossary of technical terms on the game dev world. Since I was a kid that most of my electric electronic toys were always taken apart to learn how they were made and most of the pieces were stored for future use. This gave me a VERY curious mind in terms of How does it work? I've started planning scribbling for more RTS games than the market has dished out, but never got around to implement any of them due to the lack of basic knowledge about Game Devel. So what I'm asking is that someone could point me in the direction of the engine schematics of an RTS game like SimCity Civ Settlers. Something that will assume a bit of programming background but will introduce the terms used for programming a RTS base game. How do they do the Unit Manager? Is it called this way? Is creating a complex multi threading system wise? Should I use multi threading just for groups of units? Well, I think you get the picture of how newb I am ) Many thanks in advance.


Game Design Turn based ship to ship combat with simultaneous movement Im currently building a browser based game, which basicly goes like 2 Players place starships on a 2d plane, move them around and fire their guns at each other. The game is divided by turns, each one has 2 phases Phase 1 Movement Phase 2 Firing Summarized, it is basicly a table top game played in the browser. Due to earlier experience i want to avoid the issue of Players talking movement in turns, i.e. Player A moves ship 1, B moves 2, A moves 3, B moves 4. It makes for some awkward experience and delays the actual firing Phase too Long. So instead im aiming for something along the lines of "Both Players move all their ships in one step and see the actual Resolution of ALL ships movement afterwards they then can issue weapons fire". The Problem is Manovering ships in this game is Kind of important, because weapons have different arcs of fire and ships different parts of structure. So ideally i want to make "smart" movement choices in order to bring as many weapons as possible to bear while also protecting damaged parts of my fleet ships. However, with parallel, "blind" movement, i cant really make smart choices. What would be a way, from a game design Point of view, to allow parallel, blind movement while also ensuring impactful choices ?


Clay Jam continuous path tap I saw this game Clay Jam, that the user can create a path in the sand. The path is a continuous one, and it can varies from a single point to curves. How one can develop smooth and continuous paths?


Having the player face themselves after the mid game I am writing a game, in the vein of a jRPG, in which you begin playing as the main villain. You don't know it. You think you are playing the hero and the more successful you are and the stronger you make them the harder they will be to defeat at the very end of the game. My main concern is anyone who puts in a significant effort early game could feel punished for it. It is also troublesome if the player finds the challenge of the final boss insurmountable because of actions from very early in the game. Is there a way I can signal early on in the second act that if they over powered the villain it may haunt them? And there is also the possibility the twist will get out and people will just game it from the beginning. It is my intent to get some replay value out of it by having people do multiple runs based on different villain playthroughs. But is it a distraction if everyone learns the twist. Or conversely is it better if I reveal it myself in game so everyone knows what they are working at from the start? How do I make my potentially disengaging design hold up without turning people away?


Designing an RPG damage type system I made this thread to gather what the majority of RPG players like in terms of damage variety in a hack and slash game. I play quite a bit of ARPG (mostly Diablo 3 and Grim Dawn as of now) and recently have generated some game ideas of my own. One specific criteria that I am reaching is intuitiveness. The players should be able to easily distinguish between the damage types and choose the correct way to build their character suiting to their flavors. At the moment, I am stuck with deciding the right number of damage types and what they are. I have a basic list for myself Physical Magical Fire Ice Cold Lightning Poison Here comes another question should Magical be there? Is it a redundancy since the 4 elemental Fire,Cold,Lightning and Poison is "magical" already? or Should there be an independent and unique type called Magical? Or, should the Magical damage, if increased, will also modify all those elemental damage? I am looking for a good desgin here. Next question, I want to implement the mechanics of Bleeding as a Damage Over Time type of damage. Then, what type of damage should Bleeding be? Physical? or Poison? I have a solution, which is for each damage type, add a "Duration" counterpart which represents the DOT of this damage type, then the list becomes (Type,Duration damage of this type) Physical, Bleeding Magical, Corruption(just a random word to fill in) Fire, Burn Cold, Chill Lightning, Electrified Poison..........??? Here comes the problem, Poison is already a DOT, introducing another DOT counterpart for Poison would be weird. Another problem with this system is that it is complicated, so many stats. So my question is, how do we efficiently implement the least amount of damage type to produce the most amount of diversity in gamestyles and build types. I really want to promote freedom and creativity, which means that if someone likes playing DOT lightning he could. Sorry if my questions aren't clear, but I would love if everyone shares their ideas of a Damage type system, how many are there is good, and how does damage over time works.


Optimal touch controls for a twin stick shoot 'em up? So we recently launched a shoot 'em up arcade type game (think Smash TV or I Made a Game with Zombies in It!). You can move in one direction and fire in another, so the ideal control scheme is probably two analog joysticks (like the Xbox 360 has). We support WASD to move and arrow keys to fire. The best way to control though is to move with WASD and aim with the mouse. We're getting a lot of people asking for mobile versions of the game (mostly for iPad and Android) and the problem is we just can't come up with a good way to translate the controls over to a touch device. Interestingly, someone actually hacked an early version of our game a while back to work on Android by overlaying D pads, and sure enough, it was almost impossible to control. The game gets really difficult later on, and the thought of releasing a game with a crappy control scheme that nobody could possibly ever use to beat the game does not sit well with me. So I was wondering if anyone has any previous experience or suggestions on how to approach this problem? Overlaying two D pads on the screen is clearly not the way to go and we're kind of at a loss for other ideas.


Should the game host be the authority, or another dumb client? When designing a networked multiplayer game where one player hosts and others connect, there are two strategies I'm aware of Have the host player's game be the authority, with all other players as dumb clients trying to catch up with the current game state. In the code, there will have to be lots of special cases, depending on if the current player is the host or not. Make the host a dumb client like everyone else by running a hidden dedicated server on another thread. The dedicated server will be the authority, and the host will connect to it like everyone else (through localhost). What are the advantages disadvantages of each of these? Which is used most often (or does it vary by game type size)?


Who kept a blog for a year with a new game idea every day, and where is it? There's this indie game developer who tried to come up with a new original idea for a game every day for a year and he put all his thoughts on his website. 200 ideas so far, if I remember correctly. I don't remember the URL to his site, or the name of the author. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Delete this post if it doesn't belong here! Just wanted to add it to the blog thread if I managed to find it


Game economy for a tower defense game I am currently working on a tower defense game, and I am having trouble figuring out how to implement the cost of turrets, upgrades, and the gain from completing a level, killing an enemy. Below is a summary of the requirements There are multiple types of turrets, each turret has different properties, such as reload speed, range. Each upgrade has multiple levels. Each turret can have multiple types of ammo, each ammo type can have different upgrades, such as blast range, damage, addons. Each upgrade has multiple levels The sources of income are killing enemies, each enemy has a different value completing a level My problem is with balancing everything so the game is at least playable, or in the right direction to get balanced by testing it. I know there is no magic formula for this but I believe people with experience will know where to start, and what process to follow. So my questions are 1 is there a method to calculate the cost of turrets, upgrades? what factors should I take into consideration? 2 Should I use two different currencies for upgrades and turret purchases? 3 How to calculate the upgrade cost as the upgrade level increases? i.e. when the user purchases more of the same upgrade.


How to make a chat lobby in my game? I'm writing my own RTS game in Delphi. Single player part is almost done and works well and I'm thinking about adding multi player to it now. There's going to be a lobby where players should be able to chat and organize games. I tried googling for a convenient way to do it, but couldn't find anything related .. My idea looks like follows Players are identified by Names they choose and their IPs There's main chat area where all players meet There are rooms, where players may select game options (map, teams, flag colors, etc..). After everything is settled players exchange IPs and multi player engine starts. I want to avoid usage of server side software. Currently I'm looking into running everything through SQL database where each player commits posts and his state and reads other players posts states. Whats the common practice of organizing in game chat lobby?


How should I define interaction modes in a strategic game? I am creating a typical strategic game that gamer can select, deploy and move the game characters (Human mostly) and move or create buildings on its isometric map. These all are going to be done by gamers gestures obviously, So each time I am handling a tap, pan, swipe or pinch, it is important to know what was the gamer at the middle of or was doing so the new gesture can be handled. Doing this, I created a global enumerated type including Idle,Select,PanMap and Place and defined a variable with name gameMode to control what the gamer is about to do. for example when the game starts it is valued "Idle" and when gamer touches a building or a character it will be selected only if the gameMode is Idle and if so gameMode will be changed to Select so the handlePan() method can manage the new gesture and sees if the user is moving the map or a selected building for instant. When the gamer selects a building and does a pan afterward, the game logic should update the gameMode. When the first touch point of the pan gesture is recieved by handlePan() function, the function will check it against the selected building(currentSelection) to see if the gamer is tended to move the building or it is just a simple map panning, by changing the gameMode to "Place" or "PanMap" and check which gameMode is the case while processing the rest of the touches so they can be handled correctly. As I have mentioned above, I have four game modes including idle, select, panmap(while something is selected), place (when gamer is moving something on the map) Can anyone with strategic experience tell me is this kind of handling user interaction is the best way? if yes do you think these modes are enough? Can you tell me what was your modes in case you used this method? I am using SpriteKit with xcode.


Questions about property centric game object runtime I was reading Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory So according to him, I should use an array of entities, and arrays for each property, such as an array gameObjectsPosition, gameObjectsHealth... But in my case, the world is divided in a chunk grid. Each chunk have its own array (or for the moment vector but I plane to change that) of entities (game objects). Then, what should I do? Create a single array containing all entities positions wherever there are (and so one for health, level, orientations, dimensions...), or create the property specific arrays in each chunk? Then how to process these property arrays? I mean, for each dynamic entity, I could update dimensions, sizes and health or I could for each property update each entity. Example UpdateWorld() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updatePosition() entity.updateHealth() entity.updateDimensions() entity.updateMesh() UpdateWorld() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updatePosition() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateHealth() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateDimensions() for each entity in dynamicEntities entity.updateMesh() How to handle sizes for each chunk? That'd mean each chunk have an array with MAX ENT PER CHUNK (say in my example 1024), and then if a chunk have 24 entities there would be 1000 entities useless. Also, I can't use more than 1024 entities. I could use pointers, but then the CPU cache would hit a lot of misses. How to handle IDs? If I have an array of entities I need to use IDs. I can use macro SID has specified in the book, but the IDs are not ordinals (they may not begin at 0)


Game planning and software design? I feel that UML is not convenient In my university, they always emphasize and hype about UML design and stuff, in which I feel it is not going to work well with game structure design. Now, I just want a professional advice on how should I begin my game designing? The story is I have some skill in programming and have done many minor game such as getting some 2D platformer working to some extend. The problems that I find about my program is the poor quality design. After coding for a while, things start to break down due to poor planning (When I add new feature, it tends to make me have to recode the whole program). However, to plan everything out without a single design flaw is a bit too ideal. Therefore, any advice to how should I plan my game? How should I put it into visible pictures, so that me and my friends are able to overview the designs? I planned to start coding a game with my friend. This is going to be my first teamwork, so any professional advices would be a pleasure. Is there any other alternatives than UML? Another question is how does "prototyping" normally looks like?