fledgling here, asking my very first question on Stack Overflow :)
Question:
I'd like to create a shape with number of points according to the user's input.
For example, if a user inputs 5, I'd like to come up with a pentagon. How should I approach this?
What I have in mind: diagrams that show various stats of an object, similar to how you may see a soccer player's traits in a game: Speed, Stamina, Shooting accuracy, etc. However, I want the users to decide what traits they want to have in their diagram. Eventually I'd like to display the changes in those trait values to reflect improvement / worsening of each values.
So far, I've found out that drawables are usually for static images..? And some dynamic image generation may be very (resource) demanding.. Since it's kind of a graph.. maybe there's something out there that I could use? (But I want to make it look pretty and not nerdy looking graph)
I'm trying to do this on Android Studio, and I've never used Kotlin so I'm trying to stick to Java if that's relevant ;-;..
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Related
What is the best method to track/recognize an object using a Kinect and Java or C programming after having a constant track on the object in 3D space I wanted to have the coordinates.
I know the exact object I wanna tack and wanted to the most convenient way to track the object.
I've currently programming with processing using Java, I'm a newbie to this any help would be appreciated.
Stack Overflow isn't really designed for general "how do I do this" type questions. It's designed for more specific "I tried X, expected Y, but got Z instead" type questions. That being said, I'll try to help in a general sense:
Break your problem down into smaller pieces.
Step 1: Can you get Kinect data feeding into your code? Don't worry about doing anything with the data, just display it on the screen for now. Googling something like "Processing Kinect" returns a ton of results, or you could check out the Processing libraries page.
Step 2: After you get that working, then can you identify your target point? Then can you track that point? Again, google is your friend. You might also consider treating this as a separate problem and using something like OpenCV to do image processing on the Kinect feed.
Open Kinect by Daniel Shiffman is a pretty good starting point, and it contains a bunch of examples that get you closer to your goal.
That should be a reasonable starting point: break your problem down into smaller steps, then use google searches to approach those steps one at a time. If you get stuck on a specific step, come back and ask a specific question (don't forget the MCVE) and we'll go from there. Good luck.
I am working on a game scene with multiple objects that need multiple materials. I extensively searched online, but I could not find any satisfactory solution.
My scene will have like a river flowing by and the material there will require a separate shader anyway (it will combine many specular and normal maps into what would look like a river) then there is a terrain that would mix two (grass and sand textures) requiring another shader. There is also a player with hands and amour and all.
EDIT: Essentially I wish to find out the most efficient way of making the most flexible multiple material/shader implementation.
Briefly, there is a lot of complex objects around requiring varied shaders. They are not many in number, but there is a lot of complexity.
So using glUseProgram() a lot of times dosn't seem like the brightest idea. Also Much of the shader code could be made univeral like point light calculation. Making a generic shader and using if's and state uniforms could possibly work, still requiring different shaders for the river and likewise diverging materials.
I basically don't understand the organization and implementation of such a generic system. I have used engines like Unreal or possibly Blender which use Node based materials and allowing the customization of every single material without much lag. How would such a system translate into base GPU code?
If you really face timing problems because of too many glUseProgram() calls, you might want to have a look at shader subroutines and use less but bigger programs. Before that, sort your data to change states only when needed (sort per shader then per material for example). I guess this is always a good practice anyway.
Honestly, I do not think your timing problems come from the use of too many programs. You might for example want to use frustum culling (to avoid sending geometry to the GPU that will be culled) and early z-culling (to avoid complex lighting computations for fragments that will be overriden). You can also use level of detail for complex geometries that are far away, thus do not need as much details.
Think about the games like Spiral Knights and Minecraft(Which I believe both use LWJGL) - How are the characters created? Does, at least Spiral Knights, use some other outside program to make them, then import them somehow? Does Minecraft handle their mob / character creation all in Java or LWJGL(That would make sense to me, since the models are more simple)? I'm confused as to how and where they're made, and the different ways you go about making them. I'm not talking about textures, but the things that the textures are applied to.
Does making the models even use LWJGL?
Please tell me if I misunderstood something, or said something incorrectly that didn't make sense.
It's pretty hard to say without knowing what each individual team's art pipeline looks like. As such I won't try to speculate except to say that as long as you can render 3d geometry, you can surely find or build a routine to import just about any 3d file format: collada, max, maya (mb, ma), .x, ms3d, blend, etc.
The need to consider just 3 things:
Does the 3d tool you're considering support the kind of art you want to create?
Do you or your artist have experience in that tool?
Can you write or find the code to load the 3d file format?
If you can answer those 3 questions positively, then you have a good candidate for the tool to use for this project :-)
I am trying to create a Java package that can be used to write simulation programs.
My goal is to create 'objects' like springs or solid objects like cubes and spheres. They will have mass, velocity, gravity etc. and they can interact with each other.
I have seen some simulation programs on www.myphysicslab.com but my problem is that I don't want to write different equations for different senarios. Is there any way to do this? I am new to programming.
Creating a physics engine is hard. (Very hard). But it can also be a lot of fun. Well, fun in a "why am I doing this to myself?" kind of way.
Assuming your have a fair grasp of the maths involved*, and assuming you're interested in Rigid Body Dynamics there are a couple of classic references to start with:
First of all Chris Hecker's Rigid Body Dynamics tutorials
And of course Witkin and Baraff's SIGGRAPH course
Those are good places to start and will provide more than enough of a challenge for you.
You could also look at Box2D by Erin Catto and his associated GDC tutorials which you can download.
For more specific help, the forums for Bullet also contain a sub-section where you can discuss and ask questions once you have understood some of the basics.
*If you don't have this fair grasp, learn. If you're not willing to, don't try and just use an existing engine. If this is your very first programming experience, just focus on the programming first. Don't get yourself overwhelmed.
Good luck.
To understand physics, you must first understand maths. Attempting to write a physics engine without using mathematical equations is like making a cake without ingredients.
Entire careers are built on creating physics engines, so my advice is to either use an existing engine, or get your books out.
Building a physics simulator can be a lot of work. Two dimensions is considerably simpler than three, so maybe you want to start with 2D. You might want to begin with an existing package like JBox2D. It has a constraint solver, friction, etc. You can build on top of JBox2D or study how it works.
An HTML5 version is available with online demos: GWTBox2D
There is a program called Easy Java Simulations
that does exactly what you want!
You can create java applets and has many of the visual objects ready.
You can also write java code and subprograms.
visit http://fem.um.es/Ejs/ to download.
We're a team of a programmer and a designer and we want to make a medium-sized java game which will be played as an applet in the web browser. Me (the programmer) has 3 years of general development experience, but I haven't done any game programming before.
We're assuming that:
We'll decide on a plot, storyline of the game, etc.
We'll create a list of assets (images) that we need, i.e player images, monster images, towns, buildings, trees, objects, etc. (We're not adding any music/sound efffects for now)
The designer will get started on creating those images while I finish reading some of the game programming books i've bought. The designer will create the first town/level of the game, then pass on those images to me, I will begin coding that first level and he would start on the next level, and after 4-5 levels we'll release v.1 of the game.
Question 1: Is this the correct methodology to use for this project?
Question 2: What format should the designer create those images in. Should they be .bmp, .jpeg, or .gif files? And, would he put all those images in one file, or put each monster/object/building in its own file? Note; We are sticking to 2D for now and not doing 3D.
Question 3: I've seen some game artware where there would be a file for a monster, and in that file there'd be about 3-4 images of a monster from different directions, all put in one file, i think because they're part of an animation. Here's an illustraton:
[Monster looking to right] ... [Monster looking in the front] ... [Monster looking to right[
And all of them are in one file. Is this how he'll have to supply me with those animations?
What i'm trying to find out is, what is the format he'll have to supply me the designed images in, for me to be able to access/manipulate them easily in the Java code.
All answers appreciated :)
I have some comments for each question.
Question 1: You say that you will begin coding level 1, 2, .. one by one. I recommend you to create a reusable framework instead or see it in the big picture instead. For the information you provide I think you are going to make some kind of RPG game. There are lots of things that can be shared between levels such as the Shop, the dialog system, for example. So focus for extensibility.
Why wait for designers to pass on the image? You can begin your coding by starting with pseudo graphics file you created yourself. You can then work with designer in parallel this way. And you can replace your pseudo graphics file with ones provided by designer later.
Question 2: JPG is not suitable for pixel-art style image, that appears a lot in most 2D game. And the GIF support only 256 color. The best choice to me seems to be PNG.
The designer should always keep the original artworks in editable format as well. It's likely that you want to change the graphics in the future.
Question 3: It depends. The format mentioned, where character's animations are kept in single file, is called Sprite. If you kept your resource in this sprite format than you will have some works reading each of the sub-image by specifying coordinates. However, sprite helps you keep things organized. All the 2D graphics related to "Zombie" character is kept in one place. It is therefore easy to maintain.
About the image format: don't let the designer deliver anything as jpg, because you'll lose quality.
Let him send it as png instead, and convert it to your preferred format as needed.
Also, remember to have him send the source files (photoshop/illustrator/3dsmax/whatever) in case you'll ever need tiny changes that you can make yourself without hiring the graphics dude. Who knows if he'll still be available in the future anyway.
I want to suggest to you that, before you make any decisions about your workflows, you and your colleague go have a look at JavaFX and see if maybe that's the toolkit that best meets your needs.
http://java.sun.com/javafx/
The [Monster looking to right] ... [Monster looking in the front] ... [Monster looking to left] style of animation demarcation has been around for as long as I've been peeking into game data, so I would suggest going with that path.
I was about to make the same remark as Wouter: use PNG, modern format which is highly compressed (as opposed to BMP), lossless (as opposed to Jpeg) and full color and with several level of transparency (as opposed to Gif).
Why people put several sprites in the same image? Actually, for Java, I am not sure, if the images are part of a jar... I know it is interesting in CSS, for example, because it reduces the number of images to download, so the number of hits on the server, which is a well known Web optimization. For games on hard disk, reducing the number of small files can be interesting too.
The designer can appreciate this too. At least in times where sprites used a color palette: you had only one image, using the same palette: easier to edit, and slightly reduce the overall size (in times were memory was costly!).
I can't answer on the methodology, I never did a game in team... If it fits your needs, it is probably the right methodology...
duncan points to JavaFX, I will point to pulpcore which seems to be a promising library. Of course, there are plenty others, like JGame and such.
Bunch of pros here: http://www.javagaming.org/
This is not answering any of the questions. But for game develop/Simulation Engines learning if u need a reference:
http://www.cs.chalmers.se/idc/ituniv/kurser/08/simul/
It's a link for the class lectures of Simulation Engines at Chalmers Univ in Gotembourg. The teacher as a game company and gave quite good lectures. Check the slides we had in the classes, maybe they'll help you a bit.