Messages

1

General / Re: How to handle config files?

« on: May 07, 2014, 07:06:51 pm »

Yeah I thought it would change text somewhere in the game but I didn't see anything change. I've tried other files that seemed like it would have affect on the actual gameplay as well and nothing changed.

I can think of four possible scenarios off the top of my head:

1) You made the changes whilst the program was still running, and the configuration files only get read on start-up in the application
2) The configuration files are read in the build process for the program and therefore would require a rebuild to get the new values into the application
3) The configuration files are legacy and aren't used by the application at all
4) The configuration data is written to some kind of saved data file which is not being updated by the game after it has been created

I know nothing about the application you're referring to so this is only speculation.

I was thinking maybe 2 but I wasn't actually sure if that was possible. I also thought maybe it was 4, but wasn't sure if that was viable. Thanks. How would something like 2 be handled?

2

General / Re: How to handle config files?

« on: May 07, 2014, 04:32:24 am »

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by read only. What kind of things are read only and what kind of data would need to be read write?

The only thing that comes to mind for read write would be save files.

3

Graphics / Re: Views for online multiplayer

« on: May 07, 2014, 03:39:08 am »

From that article it made it sound like the most effective online setup is having the client-server setup except the client predicts the game state, it kind of sounded like it only predicts what the client player is doing so it's predicting itself. Is that what causes rubber banding effects?

How does something like GGPO work?

4

Graphics / Views for online multiplayer

« on: May 05, 2014, 08:33:02 pm »

I was looking at the tutorial for handling views. I tried thinking of how views would work in some games.

In a fighting game online would one player have an advantage if their resolution is larger than their opponent? Say the view is made to be the edge, the player entities can't move outside the view. The view will stay centered between the two player entities unless they move to the edge of the level. The view zooms out slightly as the player entities get further apart but to a certain distance.

Would this cause one player to move off the screen of the player with a smaller resolution or aspect ratio or some other issue?

What are some common issues in dealing with varying view sizes and aspect ratios?

5

General / Re: How to handle config files?

« on: May 03, 2014, 05:17:50 am »

Yeah I thought it would change text somewhere in the game but I didn't see anything change. I've tried other files that seemed like it would have affect on the actual gameplay as well and nothing changed.

I guess I would like to know pros and cons for having config files that seem to store data for characters, enemies, and other stats in a game. Also, people's personal opinion on what they would do for config files, would they just use an ini file to store the settings or would they use text files for more than just settings?

6

General / How to handle config files?

« on: May 03, 2014, 02:45:41 am »

So I've been wondering how to handle config files. I looked through various games' config files. Saw some were .ini others were .xml and some .dat

What I don't understand is when I changed configurations meant for gameplay it wouldn't take affect. I'm not quite sure I understand why. But then there's the setting config files which did work if I changed them.

For example divekick has gems which it has an xml config file for text that appears. But changing the text in that file doesn't change anything. So I'm kind of wondering, what's the point of these xml, ini, dat, etc. files if they don't actually change anything?

GemText.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<gemText>
        <DiveGem>
                <jumpEffect>+20% JUMP</jumpEffect> <!-- I changed this from +10% JUMP -->
                <kickEffect></kickEffect>
                <meterEffect></meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </DiveGem>
        <KickGem>
                <jumpEffect></jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>+10% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect></meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </KickGem>
        <StyleGem>
                <jumpEffect></jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect></kickEffect>
                <meterEffect>+10% METER</meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </StyleGem>
        <ManlyGem>
                <jumpEffect>+10% JUMP</jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>+10% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect>+10% METER</meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect>BEGIN MATCH WITH CONCUSSION</bonusEffect>
        </ManlyGem>
        <PumpedGem>
                <jumpEffect></jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect></kickEffect>
                <meterEffect></meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect>BEGIN MATCH WITH 30% METER</bonusEffect>
        </PumpedGem>
        <AdvancedDiveGem>
                <jumpEffect>+20% JUMP</jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>-10% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect></meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </AdvancedDiveGem>
        <AdvancedKickGem>
                <jumpEffect>-10% JUMP</jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>+20% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect></meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </AdvancedKickGem>
        <AdvancedStyleGem>
                <jumpEffect>-10% JUMP</jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>-10% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect>+20% METER</meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect></bonusEffect>
        </AdvancedStyleGem>
        <ManliestGem>
                <jumpEffect>+30% JUMP</jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect>+30% KICK</kickEffect>
                <meterEffect>+20% METER</meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect>PERSONAL SUDDEN DEATH</bonusEffect>
        </ManliestGem>
        <AdrenalineGem>
                <jumpEffect></jumpEffect>
                <kickEffect></kickEffect>
                <meterEffect>-50% METER</meterEffect>
                <bonusEffect>BEGIN MATCH IN KICKFACTOR</bonusEffect>
        </AdrenalineGem>
</gemText>

7

Graphics / How would I handle displaying cards?

« on: April 01, 2014, 02:25:29 am »

There were a couple things I was wondering. How would someone make a card, like applying the textures and displaying it? I don't think there would be a texture of every single card, that seems inefficient. Let's say for this card from weiss schwarz card game.
http://images.littleakiba.com/tcg/weiss-schwarz/cards/card10699.jpg

I figured something like this would be a shape, maybe something else if it works better. Then a layer of various textures applied. Where the only different texture would be the main image of the card with the rest being the icons. Then text applied appropriately. I'm not sure if that's right or if I'm even on the right track. But also something that has me scratching my head is handling the text boxes. They shrink and expand based on the amount of text. Would that just be stretching or shrinking the texture vertically?
Here's an example of a card with less text.
http://images.littleakiba.com/tcg/weiss-schwarz/cards/card10712.jpg

I'm just using these cards as examples since I like the design of the text boxes and it really maximizes the image.

8

General / Re: What are scenes as described by this article?

« on: February 01, 2014, 05:53:21 am »

Do you have any resources on scenes? I understand the idea, I think, it handles and contains what it's given so that things outside the scene don't interact with things. So the menu won't interfere with the game or something.

9

General / What are scenes as described by this article?

« on: January 25, 2014, 12:01:28 pm »

So I knew about game objects, game loop, and cohesion I think. But I didn't know about scenes and I don't quite understand what they are or how they interact with everything based on the article. Could anyone help me understand what scenes are?

http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/making-a-game-engine-core-design-principles-r3210

To me it sounds like it has a list of all the game objects that interact with each other. But it doesn't really describe how it does that I think, maybe I'm just missing something in the code excerpt.

Does SFML handle scenes or how would I implement scenes with sfml?

10

SFML projects / Re: 'Tiled' Tile-map Loader

« on: January 21, 2014, 09:55:14 am »

That's what I was discussing with a friend and we came to the conclusion it would have to be a sprite split in half.
Thanks.

11

SFML projects / Re: 'Tiled' Tile-map Loader

« on: January 21, 2014, 12:10:21 am »

How would I get an affect of walking in grass similar to Pokemon?



The character's legs disappear in the grass but their upper half is still visible. Is this possible with tiled and your map loader?

12

SFML projects / Re: 'Tiled' Tile-map Loader

« on: December 08, 2013, 06:12:47 am »

Thanks. I didn't even notice my tileset were set up differently.

13

SFML projects / Re: 'Tiled' Tile-map Loader

« on: December 06, 2013, 10:51:01 pm »

So I had to take a break for a while due to classes and finals and I came back without changing any code from my last issue to get an error. I think the last thing I did was take a new map with the same name since my friend said he enjoyed making maps like that. I set up a breakpoint and it seems to create the error when it loads the map.

Debug Assertion Failed!

Program: C:\Windows\system32\MSVCP110D.dll
File: c:\program files (x86)\microsoft visual studio 11.0\vc\include\vector
Line: 1140

Expression: vector subscript out of range

For information on how your program can cause an assertion
failure, see the Visual C++ documentation on asserts.

(Press Retry to debug the application)

        sf::RenderWindow gameWindow(sf::VideoMode(Game::baseWidth, Game::baseHeight), "Legend of Link");
        tmx::MapLoader ml("map/");
        ml.Load("test_terrain.tmx");   //breaks here
 

14

SFML projects / Re: 'Tiled' Tile-map Loader

« on: November 14, 2013, 04:43:09 am »

I got something basic set up and I was wondering what I can do to improve this. I can see the lines where the tiles are placed and I'm only getting 20fps, according to fraps. Here's a video, it doesn't show up too well but you can see the lines between some of the tiles.


Thanks for any help I'm really new still.

15

Window / GameLoop and checking if window has been closed

« on: October 23, 2013, 02:43:44 am »

How should I handle checking if an event, such as closing the window, has occurred if I also need to be able to go through the game loop?

int main()
{
        MyGame game;
        game.setIsRunning(true);

        sf::RenderWindow gameWindow(sf::VideoMode(MyGame::width * MyGame::scale, MyGame::height * MyGame::scale), "My Game!");
       
        while (gameWindow.isOpen())
    {
        // check all the window's events that were triggered since the last iteration of the loop
        sf::Event event;
        while (gameWindow.pollEvent(event))
        {
            // "close requested" event: we close the window
            if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed)
                gameWindow.close();
        }
        }
       
        while ( game.getIsRunning() == true)
        {
                game.gameLoop();
        }

        return 0;

If I'm constantly running through a loop while the window is open I'll never get to the game loop until the window is closed. Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm still new to SFML and game programming in general. Thanks for any advice or help.