I've double-checked to see if this specific question has been asked before, and I was unable to find anything of use, soooo.....
I've managed to use my PNRG to store ten numbers in an array, but I don't know how to use them to 'persist' my dungeon floors. I've tried to figure out out to use pointers, but it's too confusing for my poor brain!
If this is already asked, just point me (heh, geddit? Point? Pointers? Well, I thought it was funny....) in the right direction!
Thanks in advance!
If you want your dungeon to persist after the player saves and closes the program, you'll have to take your map data, player state, and everything and save it to a file. And then load it from the file rather than generating it randomly at startup.
If you want your dungeon to persist, say, between floors that the player can travel up and down, it's still a valid idea to save the individual floors off to file and load them as needed. A side bonus that Nethack uses is that if the whole thing crashes, it can attempt to reconstruct the save from the last time you moved between floors.
Alternatively, you can simply have your dungeon consist of an ever growing vector, or a 3D array, complete with x,y, and z coordinates.
It's not so much a question about pointers as much as how to store data and where. New to programming or new to roguelike? Just use one big global array for a map and call it done.
(Also, PRNG not PNRG, pseudo-random number generator)
Related
This is not a language-specific question, but for the sake of conversation, I currently work in C# 7.
Over the years I've successfully implemented the Alpha Beta pruning algorithm (even in PASCAL, 35 years ago :)
Each time, I've created semi-deep-copies (discussed below) of the game state which is recursed for each node. I've often wondered if this is necessary and if perhaps I'm not truly understanding the algorithm.
The interweb is full of requests for help for TicTacToe, which makes me think that this must be a common school assignment question - which kinda clogs searches on this fairly basic topic.
Semi-deep-copies ... it appears to me that each node should know:
the full state of the board
the player whose turn it is
the state of play - ie: { playing, Player1 win, Player2 win, draw }
My question is: does each node need its own copy of the board? ... for example Chess has 8x8 grid ... is there something more subtle to the algorithm, or do these nodes each need their own snap-shot of the board state? Is there some cool way (other than copy and apply-possible-move) that nodes can use to derive their state from their parent?
Perhaps someone can explain or point to a "read this, dummy" post, or just confirm that I need to make these instances, as I've attempted to describe, with each recursive call having its own in-memory copy of the game board.
I realize that over the last few decades, memory has become cheap... but combinatorial-explosion is still the main topic. Cheers.
I am not sure if this answers your question. But could you instead of making a copy each turn do the move, make the recursive call, and then undo the move instead? Something like:
board.make_move(move)
eval = minimax(board, ....)
board.unmake_move(move)
I am trying to create multiple SKSpriteNodes that each have their own independent variables that I can change/modify. I would like to be able to run a function when the app starts, for example "createSprites(5)" which would create 5 sprites with the image/texture "shape.png" at random x and y coordinates and add all 5 Sprites to an array that I can access and edit different Sprite's positioning based on the index value. I would then like to be able to have another function "addSprite()" which, each time it is called, create a new Sprite with the same "shape.png" texture, place it at another random X and Y coordinate and also add it to the array of all Sprites to, again, be able to access later and change coordinates etc.
I have been looking through so many other Stack Overflow pages and can not seem to find a solution. My ideal solution would simply be the two functions I stated earlier. One to create an "n" number of Sprites and another function to create and add one more sprite to the array each time it is called.
Hope that makes sense, I'm fairly new to Swift and all this Sprite stuff, so simple informative answers would be very much appreciated.
You're not going to find an ideal solution from the past because nobody has likely had exactly the same desire with both Swift and SpriteKit. Having said that, there's likely partial answers you can blend together, and get the result you want or, at least, an understanding of how to do it.
Sprite Positioning in SK is probably the first thing to read up on:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/GraphicsAnimation/Conceptual/SpriteKit_PG/Sprites/Sprites.html
having gotten that figured out, you can move to random positions.
Random positioning of Sprites:
Duplicate Sprite in Random Positions with SpriteKit
Sprite Kit random positions
Both use earlier versions of randomisation that aren't as powerful as what's available now, in GameplayKit. So... Generating random numbers in Swift with GameplayKit:
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/read/35/overview
It's hard to overstate the importance of understanding the various possibilities of game design implications of varying types of randomisation, so probably wise to read this, from Apple:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/GameplayKit_Guide/RandomSources.html
After that, it's a case of needing to determine what constitutes a time or event at which to create more sprites at more random positions, and how fussy you want to be about proximity to other sprites, and overlaps.
I have been working on a piece of code that takes in a curve (cloud of points with x,y coordinates only for now) and parameterises it to approximate the given shape with nurbs. The issue I have is that the resultant parameterised curve is linear(!) between the first two control points and only between the other ones approximates the input curve. Any idea on why that would happen (i.e. the linear segment between the first two control points)?
Also, the system wouldn't let me post a picture. Hope the problem is clear enough though..
Your software system most probably uses multiple start and end points. This leads to visually straight lines at the given control points. These are in fact not really linear going, they only look like.
Thanks for replying and looking at my problem, but I have found the bug in my code. I used the number of points from the input curve rather than the number of control points wanted (which have similar variable names in my code) to compute the knot vector and thus the problem propagated from that point onwards.
I am working on a basic graph implementation(Adj List based) in C so that I can re-use the basic structure to solve all graph related problems.
To map a graph I draw on a paper,I want the best and easiest way.
Talking of the way I take the input rather then how should I go about implementing it! :)
Should I make an input routine which asks for all the nodes label first and then asks for what all edges are to be connected based on two labels?
What could be a good and quick way out? I want an easy way out which lets me spend less amount of energy on the "Input".
Best is to go for input of an edge list,
that is triplets of,
Source, Destination, Cost
This routine can be used to fill Adj List and Adj Matrix.
With the latter, you would need to properly initialize the Matrix though and setup a convention to determine non existent edges.
Here you find details about representation of graph:
Graph-internal-representaion
However here some codes in c++ and java are also given,which you can easily convert to C codes.
I'm looking for articles on tile based games, like the old ultima 6&7, or even puzzle pirates. Specifically:
How they keep track of objects on the map. Objects such as other characters, or trees, or things the character can move.
AI behind the characters. How the game handles character behavior for
characters on the map that are off screen. Especially with very large maps and numerous characters.
I remember checking out Amit's Game Development page back when I wrote some games. He has a great sub-section on tiles that has most of what you want.
You could look through back issues of Game Developer magazine to see if something addresses what you're asking in detail.
For (1) the easiest way of dealing with a tile-based map where each tile can contain multiple objects is to just have a big multidimensional array of structs representing each tile. The struct contains a pointer to the head of a linked list representing all the objects in that tile. This is very memory efficient and lets you quickly find everything in a certain tile while also enumerating them along some other axis (eg, owner, allocation arena, etc).
RogueBasin is devoted to Rogue-like games (e.g. Rogue, NetHack, ). All of those games were based on a simple square grid. The site has an extensive section on developing games like that: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Articles
You will find both suggestions and code there which could be used to build a game like you describe. After all, the only real difference between Rogue/Larn/NetHack/etc. and Diablo or the Ultima series is using simple text characters to depict the map and gameplay vs. isometric sprites.
In particular you will find information about calculating the area illuminated by a torch or lantern the user is carrying, data structures for storing maps, algorithms for automatic generation of maps, and lots of notes for how different games which have already been written chose to address these problems.
Check out Gamasutra. They have loads of articles for all kinds of game development.
The map would be an array of values. It could be divided into discrete parts. Only parts in range of the player would be loaded and the objects & npc in these parts active.
Since the old hardware had very limited memory and cpu, those games would only be able to load and process parts of the maps.