I have read about using CompositionTarget.Rendering Timer for the primary gaming loop in silverlight. To be used for hit testing and general game logic as would be done in any language.
This said I was wondering is it best to move objects around inside this x pixels at a time (as a game in any other language) or can I utilise silverlight animations better and use such features as easing?
The objects I refer to would be in games such as tetris and pong rather than a platform game where the user is moving a character around.
The other area is sprite animation. For example is a walking animation done best with the gaming loop changing frames or keyframe silvrelight animations?
here's a really good source for information about game loops in silverlight
http://blogs.msdn.com/nikola/archive/2009/08/19/exposed-5-methods-to-create-game-loop-which-is-the-best.aspx
To address the core of your question ... I think it all comes down to the content pipeline. What I mean by that is that you should ask yourself. Which method makes it easier for the content creator (which may or may not be you) to create animations? For the most part, you want to optimize for that process, which for many games takes longer than the actual programming, and is done by less technical folks.
Related
We are in the process of developing our first website made using Three.js. It of course uses a collection of 3D models, some of which are fairly busy cityscapes. We made them low poly, and are avoiding animation at this point, but would like to add some moving elements eventually.
My 3D designer is more used to working with objects used in Unity games, and he says that the industry standard is to keep each model below 100K polygons. Is there a similar limit that is typically used for Three.js?
In my mind, the issue should rather be focussed on file size, so we are trying to optimize this of course. I was just wondering if anyone knows whether there are other concerns to take into consideration in terms of poly-count?
I'm creating a side-scroller video game for my final project in my grade 12 programming class. Right now I have nice delta-timer my partner made for me, a flying ship, asteroids, and a scrolling background. I've added a few basic things such as collision detection between asteroids and the ship, and ship movement. Now, my next steps are implementing random enemy spawns, and projectiles (laser beams :D) from both ships. Implementing random enemy spawns should fun and relatively easy, however I'm struggling with figuring out how I will create so many bullets that will fit on the screen. I need bullets from the enemy, and the ship (player controlled).
How can I achieve this? I know there are probably many answers to this question, but I would really like to see the types of approaches people have to this problem.
So far I have thought that:
a) I could make the game have a (say) 200 bullets max on the screen
b) I could make a dynamic array (I believe this term means the array gets bigger or smaller), that way I don't limit the amount of possible projectiles
...and then I'm afraid that all these bullets will cause lag from all the collision processing that will happen.
Please shed some light on this, and help guide me along the path to an efficient; well executed; side-scroller game.
Thanks,
Guest dude
I'm trying to write an CAD-like application in WPF(.NET 4.0) that needs to be able to display a lot of 2D points/lines. It will be used to display CAD-plans of entire cities with zoom, pan, rotate and point snapping on mouseover.
Right now I purely use WPF. I read the objects from the CAD file draw them into a StreamGeometry, use it as stroke of a new Path and add it to a Canvas, with several transforms.
My problem is that this solution doesn't scale well enough. It works fine with small CAD-files, but when I want to display like half a city(with houses and land boundaries) it is very very delayed.
I also tried to convert my CAD-file to an image, but
- a resolution a 32000x32000 is sometimes not enough
- when zooming out the lines are too thin.
In the end I need to be able to place this on a Canvas(2D/3D) as background.
What are my best options here?
Thanks,
Niklas
wpf is not good for a large 3d models. im afraid it is too slow. Your best bet is direct 3d or openGL
However, even with the speed of direct3d,openGL you will still need to work out how to cull as many polygons/vertices as possible before the rendering of the scene if you are trying to show an entire city.
there is a large amount of information on this (generally under game development)
there are a few techniques including frustrum culling, near and far plane culling.
also, since you probably have a static scene you may be able to use binary spacial partitioning.
As I understand the subject is 2D CAD system within WPF.
Great! I use it...
OpenGL and DirectX are in infinite loop OnDraw always. The CPU works all the time.
WPF/Silverlight 2D is smart model.
Yes, total amount of elements (for example, primitives inherited from Shape) must be not so much. But how many?
I tested own app (Silverlight). WPF will be a bit faster I hope...
Here my 2D CAD results. Performance is still great. Each beam consists of multiple primitives.
Use a VirtualCanvas like this one from Chris Lovett.
I've written a simple game-like app in WPF. The number of objects drawn is well within WPF capabilities - something like a few hundred ellipses and lines with simple fills. I have a DispatcherTimer to adjust the positions of the objects from time to time (1/60th of a second).
The code to compute the new positions can be quite intensive when there are lots of objects, and can fully load a processor. Whenever this occurs, WPF starts skipping frames, presumably trying to compensate for the "slowness" of my application.
What I would much rather happen is for all the frames to be drawn anyway, only slower. The dropped frames do not add any speed - because visual updates were pretty quick anyway.
Can I somehow force WPF to have my changes to the visuals be reflected on the screen regardless of whether WPF thinks it's a good idea?
Unfortunately I don't think there's anything you can do about this, although I will happily be corrected! WPF is designed to be an application creation framework, not a games library, so it priortises application performance and "usability" over framerate. This actually works very well when producing applications as it allows you to use quite rich animations and effects while maintaining perceived performance on lower end systems.
The only thing I think you might be able to try is push your movement code's Dispatcher priority down slightly to below Render (Loaded is the next one down) using something like:
this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Loaded, MoveMyStuff);
I don't have any kind of test harness to verify if that will help though.
This issue was fixed by using a Canvas with an OnRender override instead of creating and moving UIElements. This does mean that everything needs to be drawn by hand in OnRender, but it can now run at any FPS consistently, without skipping any frames.
I made a ragdoll similar to the one in this demo. This rag doll will be used for a turn based rpg game where the physics will be used for animations such as character taking damage, dying, falling down, etc.
What I am pondering at the moment is as how should go about this, should I stick the rag doll by the head to the background (leaving the body dangling) and basically throw around its body parts around as to simulate punching etc (as shown in Fig 1), or stiffen the joints and statically rotate and move the body parts for the actions taken(as shown in Fig 2), and when it comes to the character dying(or a similar action) just loosen the joints and let the rag doll fall down. Or is there a better way to go about doing this?
I am new to farseer physics and don't even know if what I mentioned is even possible or overwhelmingly hard to do.
Illustration http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8681/charactermovementrg5.jpg
Please note that the red line in the figures represents the character's arm
Not sure that ragdolls are the way to go here, if you want animations. But if you do want to use them, I'd lock the feet to the floor and have some rotation springs in the joints so that when no forces are applied, the body stands upright. Then if it gets a hit, it'll kind of bend over, but should rebound to it's stand-up state afterwards (you may have to help it along the way back, e.g. apply some forces/torques until it's back where you want it).
For animations, such as the character punching, you could perhaps apply a spring joint (I think that's the name). Connect it to the fist and the destination, and the arm should automatically move there. You could do the same with a kick, just release the lock on that foot. However, I think it might be hard to get it to look right. On the other hand, it would look unique to other games, even though it might look kinda funny.
If you're skilled, you might wanna create an animation editor and save an animation as a sequence of forces and torques that need to be applied to limbs in order to get them to where and when they should be.
I think a better approach is to have an animated sprite played, rather than going through joint manipulation .
Maybe you can use some RotateTransform implementations to articulate arms and legs.
For sure animated sprites are the best, and painless, way of doing this.