I am using opengl in a tilemap editor. Storing the tilemap in GL_LUMINANCE32F format, then modifying it with opengl commands.
Now, I'm realising canvas size limitations are a burden for people drawing tilemaps. So how could I implement an infinite canvas? (such that expands and shrinks without user needing to explicitly trigger it to expand or shrink)
The expanding or shrinking of the canvas in need isn't hard, I can easily create another canvas, move the old canvas contents on it and remove the old canvas. Instead, what I have no clue of is that how could I get the canvas to detect when it can shrink, and how much can it shrink?
So I should detect how many rows and columns of zeroes I have in edges of my canvas.
Make the infinite canvas from tiles.
One idea that comes to mind is to find how much to shrink in X and Y directions separately by the following method: Render a rectangular 'margin' of, say, half the size of the canvas and use ARB_ occlusion_query to find out if it's empty. If not empty, split in half and repeat (i.e. do a binary search to find the right size). This takes log(N) steps, where N is the size (width or height) of the canvas, so it's pretty quick, if done every now and then.
Shrinking the canvas like you suggest would not be helpful to artists. Frequently they expand the area they're working just to have area to work with. There's also spritesheets which have blank area around the models that are required to work in the target program.
My suggestion is to grow as needed, but allow the artists to tweak the sizes manually when they wish to do it.
Related
I want to be able to register/de-register Objects to a list and check if the mouse is hovering over them to display tool-tips. However I'm stumbling at the beginning.
I'm going to use: al_get_pixel & al_unmap_rgba to retrieve the alpha of each pixel and decide if it's visible enough to count as a hit when hovering over it with the mouse.
The major problem I'm having is working out how best to store this individual "hitmap" & the reference to the object that generated it; As many different types objects (as struct's) of different sizes may need hitmaps generated. I was hoping I could do something similar to checking if the complex object 'extends' the base object but I don't see how I can achieve this in c++.
Ps; I know I could create an array the size of the screen for each object, but I'm doing this mainly with the purpose of maximizing efficiency. I'd make dynamic sized arrays but...
al_get_pixel will work, but it will be terribly slow, even if you lock all your bitmaps, unless you use something like a picking buffer. The basic idea is to render every interactive area on each object with a different color id. This means you need to draw your scene twice, once normally, and once with picking colors. Then when you need to read back a mouse position, you can use the picking buffer to read a single pixel and get its color id.
You might also want to try different methods of collision detection, such as bounding boxes, bounding circles, or other easily collision detectable shapes.
There is a third option, which is pixel perfect collision. It involves making 1bpp masks out of all your objects and then checking for collision between those.
Using moveto and lineto to draw various lines on a window canvas...
What is the simplest way to determine at run-time if an object, like a bit map or a picture control is in "contact" (same x,y coordinates) with a line(s) that had been drawn with lineto on a window canvas?
A simple example would be a ball (bitmap or picture) "contacting" a drawn border and rebounding... What is the easiest way to know if "contact" occurs between the object, picture or bitmap and any line that exists on the window?
If I get it right you want collision detection/avoidance between circular object and line(s) while moving. There are more option to do this I know of...
Vector approach
you need to remember all the rendered stuff in vector form too so you need list of all rendered lines, objects etc ... Then for particular object loop through all the other ones and check for collision algebraically with vector math. Like detecting intersection between bounding boxes and then with particular line/polyline/polygon or what ever.
Raster approach
This is simpler to mplement and sometimes even faster but less acurate (only pixel precision). The idea is to clear object last position with background color. Then check all the pixels that would be rendered at new position and if no other than background color present then no colision occurs so you can render the pixels. If any non background color present then render the object on the original position again as collision occur.
You can also check between old and new position and place the object on first non collision position so you are closer to the edge...
This approach need fast pixel access otherwise it woul dbe too slow. Standard Canvas does not allow this without using BitBlt from GDI. Luckily VCL GRaphics::TBitmap has ScanLine[] property allowing direct pixel access without any performance hit if used right. See example of it in your other question I answered:
bitmap rotate using direct pixel access
accessing ScanLine[y][x] is as slow as Pixels[x][y] but you can store all the pointers to each line of bitmap once and then just use that instead which is the same as accessing your own 2D array. So you really need just bitmap->Height calls of ScanLine[y] for entire image rendering after any resize or assigment of bitmap...
If you got tile based scene you can use this approach on tiles instead of pixels something like this:
What is the best way to move an object on the screen? but it is in asm ...
Field approach
This one is also considered to be a vector approach but does not require collision checks. Instead each object creates repulsive force the bigger the closer you are to it which is added to the Newton/D'Alembert physics driving force. When coefficients set properly it will avoid collisions on its own. This is used also for automatic placement of items etc... for more info see:
How to implement a constraint solver for 2-D geometry?
Hybrid approach
You can combine any of the above approaches together to better suite your needs. For example see:
Path generation for non-intersecting disc movement on a plane
When in cocos2d-x you set ResolutionPolicy::SHOW_ALL then it might appear black areas from top-bottom or from left-right sides. Can I cover the black area with some nice images?
I don't think you can just add something into those back areas.
Instead the solution is to build a scene which already contain the nice images you want to add. The steps are:
Use this inside your AppDelegate::applicationDidFinishLaunching() to detect screen size:
CCSize frameSize = pEGLView->getFrameSize();
Set a design resolution proportional to this frameSize maintaining its aspect ratio.
Put your "content" in the mid. Then, you have to calculate where are the "black areas" and add sprites to cover them. Keep in mind that for different screen the holes can be different, so you need to do some maths there and properly cover different hole sizes.
So, doing ResolutionPolicy::SHOW_ALL sets the openGL view to that size. That's why that can't be done with that.
On the other hand, there are many ways to tackle this.
What i did was :
1. Don't set the ResolutionPolicy.
Use a layer for those nice images/effects.
Create a new layer in that same scene and set the width and height of that layer according to aspect ratio of your content. And make this as your primary game view.
I was wandering how it's possible to create a large terrain in opengl. My first idea was using blender and create a plane, subdevide it, create the terrain and export it as .obj. After taking a look at blender I thought this should be possible but soon I realized that my hexacore + 8GB RAM aren't able too keep up the subdeviding in order to support the required precision for a very large terrain.
So my question is, what is the best way to do this?
Maybe trying another 3D rendering software like cinema4d?
Creating the terrain step-by-step in blender and put it together later? (might be problematic to maintain the ratio between the segments)
Some methods I don't know about?
I could create a large landscape with a random generation algorithm but I don't want a random landscape I need a customized landscape with many details. (heights, depth, paths)
Edit
What I'll do is:
Create 3 different heightmaps (1. cave ground (+maybe half of the wall height), 2. inverted heightmap for cave ceiling, 3. standard surface heightmap)
Combine all three heightmaps
Save them in a obj file or whatever format required
do some fine tuning in 3d editing tool (if it's too large to handle I'll create an app with LOD algorithm where I can edit some minor stuff)
save it again as whatever is required (maybe do some optimization)
be happy
Edit2
The map I'm creating is so big that Photoshop is using all of my 8GB Ram so I have to split all 3 heightmaps in smaller parts and assemble them on the fly when moving over the map.
I believe you would just want to make a height map. The larger you make the image, the further it can stretch. Perhaps if you made the seams match up, you could tile it, but if you want an endless terrain it's probably worth the effort to generate a terrain.
To make a height map, you'll make an image where each pixel represents a set height (you don't really have to represent it as an image, but it makes it very easy to visualize) which becomes a grey-scaled color. You can then scale this value to the desired maximum height (precision is decided by the bit-depth of the image).
If you wanted to do this with OpenGL, you could make an interface where you click at points to raise the height of particular points or areas.
Once you have this image, rendering it isn't too hard, because the X and Y coordinates are set for your space and the image will give you the Z coordinate.
This would have the downside of not allowing for caves and similar features (because there is only one height given for a point). If you needed these features, they might be added with meshes or a 2nd
If you're trying to store more data than fits in memory, you need to keep most of it on disk. Dividing the map into segments, loading the nearer segments as necessary, is the technique. A lot of groups access the map segments via quadtrees, which usually don't need much traversion to get to the "nearby" parts.
Variations include creating lower-resolution versions of larger chunks of map for use in rendering long views, so you're keeping a really low-res version of the Whole Map, a medium-res version of This Valley Here, and a high-res copy of This Grove Of Trees I'm Looking At.
It's complicated stuff, which is why nobody really put the whole thing together until about GTA:San Andreas or Oblivion.
I have been able to find a lot of information on actual logic development for games. I would really like to make a card game, but I just dont understand how, based on the mouse position, an object can be selected (or atleast the proper way) First I thought of bounding box checking but not all my bitmaps are rectangles. Then I thought f making a hidden buffer wih each object having a different color, but it seems ridiculous to have to do it this way. I'm wondering how it is really done. For example, how does Adobe Flash know the object under the mouse?
Thanks
Your question is how to tell if the mouse is above a non-rectangular bitmap. I am assuming all your bitmaps are really rectangular, but they have transparent regions. You must already somehow be able to tell which part of your (rectangular) bitmap is transparent, depending on the scheme you use (e.g. if you designate a color as transparent or if you use a bit mask). You will also know the z-order (layering) of bitmaps on your canvas. Then when you detect a click at position (x,y), you need to find the list of rectangular bitmaps that span over that pixel. Sort them by z-order and for each one check whether the pixel is transparent or not. If yes, move on to the next bitmap. If no, then this is the selected bitmap.
Or you may use geometric solution. You should store / manage the geometry of the card / item. For example a list of shapes like circles, rectangles.
Maybe triangles or ellipses if you have lots of time. Telling that a triangle has a point or not is a mathematical question and can be numerically unstable if the triangle is very thin (algorithm has a dividing).. Fix: How to determine if a point is in a 2D triangle?
I voted for abc.