resolution independent grid for animations? - c#

I'm working on a game made in XNA,C# and I want to enable xml based animations.
XML will look like this
<Animation>
<AnimatedObject>
<Filename>Spaceship_Jet_01</Filename>
<Flipped>false</Flipped>
<StartPosition_X>300</StartPosition_X>
<StartPosition_Y>500</StartPosition_Y>
<GOTOPosition_X>650</GOTOPosition_X>
<GOTOPosition_Y>500</GOTOPosition_Y>
<Time>10000</Time>
</AnimatedObject>
</Animation>
This will move an object to the side, like this
http://imm.io/odc7 (sorry the X coordinate is wrong)
I noticed there will be problems, when the players display resolution is different from mine because I enter pixel precise information about where the object comes from and where it has to go.
I thought about a grid so I can tell the programm to move the object from (30,27) to (22,27) e.g.. Is this a good solution? The grid has to be independent from the resolution but the number of tiles has to be constant and I have to draw the object to the screen. That means I have to find the right pixle position of the tile at position (22,27) and then "move" the object to that tile.
Is there a better way to do that? How can I solve this with XNA?

If you use a 2D camera you won't have any problem... because calculating the new view to adapt it to the new resolution is not difficult.... and you have not to change anything of your loads methods nor logic...
You can do, but I don`t like
Work with positions in [0..1] range, is difficult to measure.
Fix the position with the new resolution factor when you load the xml... is ugly...
Pos *= NewResolutionSize/DefaultResolutionSize;

Related

XNA 2D Transformation

I have actually the following map (isometric projection), and I can move/zoom/rotate without problem with matrix transformations (SpriteBatch): picture.
And I wanted to know if it was possible (if so, how), to get the following result, without referring to 3D: picture.
All suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance. :)
Its going to be a huge pain in the ass, especially but I think it is at least possible if you don't change the viewing angle.
Some ideas:
Make each tile its own little image unit.
The more far back the tile is from the camera, lower its layer priority when you draw it so that it gets blocked by tiles in front of it. Also you will have to figure out an algorithm that correctly sizes the tiles based on their distance. This algorithm will have to be more and more precise the closer you want to get the tiles, but there should be some mathematical/geometric formula that can do it automatically.
You quite literally CANNOT rotate the camera at all, unless you want to have separate sprites for every single angle for every single tile.

Texture/model flickering in distance (3D)

Ok, in my XNA project i've added simple shader + model loading code, anything works. I created a very simple low-detailed model in 3Ds Max. Exported and imported to XNA with FBX format.
The problem is:
if i move my simple camera to some distance from this model, one of its components starts to flicker. I tried another model and there is the same situation, some of components start to flicker and only if i get to some distance from model.
This flickering (or blinking or ..) appears only with textured objects (probably), and looks like:
in each frame random parts/pixels of model (or not so random) replaced with object which is behind a model or its component... :(
UPDATE: Now i know - problem is in my model (i checked some other models). I dont understand why but Plane object gives that flickering. Maybe the problem is not in Plane object.
This is only an educated guess but: Your far-plane is too far away, or your near-plane is too close, or both.
A perspective camera gives you a viewable area that looks like this:
Your Z-buffer (depth buffer) covers the range between the near and the far planes. A typical Z-buffer might have 24-bits of precision, giving you 224 possible values. The further apart your near and far planes are, the greater the world-space distance each possible value must covers. In other words: your Z buffer is less accurate.
What you are seeing is known as "Z-fighting". This is where the Z-buffer is not accurate enough to differentiate between the depths of two given pixels. So you end up with pixels that should have been rejected as being "behind" what was already rendered, drawn instead.
(Alternately your model has some coplanar or nearly coplanar triangles - that is triangles who's surfaces are too close together. Same issue: Not enough precision in the Z-buffer to differentiate between the two surfaces.)
You may also wish to enable backface-culling (RasterizerState.CullCounterClockwise), if it is not already enabled. This culls triangles facing away from the camera, removing one possible source of Z-fighting.
I have seen this happen before on models where there are two or more surfaces overlapping in the same plane, one surface is inside the other but in the same plane - so the system can not tell which surface is in front of the other and usually ends up with a mash-up of both surfaces.
It looks like you have a smaller rectangular surface intersecting with a larger rectangular surface that makes up the lower base shape of your model. Probably from another object inside the box? Or from a object subtraction error that left two rectangles inside each other on that surface maybe?
Either way modify the model so there are no longer two surfaces with in each other.

How to make scroll map in XNA (2D)?

I have a map, containing many objects in an area sized 5000*5000.
my screen size is 800*600.
how can i scroll my map, i don't want to move all my objects left and right, i want the "camera" to move, But unfortunately i didn't found any way to move it.
Thanks
I think you are looking for the transformMatrix parameter to SpriteBatch.Begin (this overload).
You say you don't want the objects to move, but you want the camera to move. But, at the lowest level, in both 2D and 3D rendering, there is no concept of a "camera". Rendering always happens in the same region - and you must use transformations to place your vertices/sprites into that region.
If you want the effect of a camera, you have to implement it by moving the entire world in the opposite direction.
Of course, you don't actually store the moved data. You just apply an offset when you render the data. Emartel's answer has you do that for each sprite. However using a matrix is cleaner, because you don't have to duplicate the code for every single Draw - you just let the GPU do it.
To finish with an example: Say you want your camera placed at (100, 200). To achieve this, pass Matrix.CreateTranslation(-100, -200, 0) to SpriteBatch.Begin.
(Performing a frustum cull yourself, as per emartel's answer, is probably a waste of time, unless your world is really huge. See this answer for an explanation of the performance considerations.)
Viewport
You start by creating your camera viewport. In the case of a 2D game it can be as easy as defining the bottom left position where you want to start rendering and expand it using your screen resolution, in your case 800x600.
Rectangle viewportRect = new Rectangle(viewportX, viewportY, screenWidth, screenHeight);
Here's an example of what your camera would look like if it was offset off 300,700 (the drawing is very approximate, it's just to give you a better idea)
Visibility Check
Now, you want to find every sprite that intersects the red square, which can be understood as your Viewport. This could be done with something similar to (this is untested code, just a sample of what it could look like)
List<GameObject> objectsToBeRendered = new List<GameObject>();
foreach(GameObject obj in allGameObjects)
{
Rectangle objectBounds = new Rectangle(obj.X, obj.Y, obj.Width, obj.Height);
if(viewportRect.IntersectsWith(objectBounds))
{
objectsToBeRendered.Add(obj);
}
}
Here's what it would look like graphically, the green sprites are the ones added to objectsToBeRendered. Adding the objects to a separate list makes it easy if you want to sort them from Back to Front before rendering them!
Rendering
Now that we found which objects were intersecting we need to figure out where on the screen the will end up.
spriteBatch.Begin();
foreach(GameObject obj in objectsToBeRendered)
{
Vector2 pos = new Vector2(obj.X - viewportX, obj.Y - viewportY);
spriteBatch.Draw(obj.GetTexture(), pos, Color.White);
}
spriteBatch.End();
As you can see, we deduce the X and Y position of the viewport to bring the world position of the object into Screen Coordinates within the viewport. This means that the small square that could be at 400, 800 in World Coordinates would be rendered at 100, 100 on the screen given the viewport we have here.
Edit:
While I agree with the change of "correct answer", keep in mind that what I posted here is still very useful when deciding which animations to process, which AIs to update, etc... letting the camera and the GPU make the work alone prevents you from knowing which objects were actually on screen!

Restrict movement on reaching map border or any objects

I'm totally new in game-dev and would like to know the best practice about above question.
Let me explain more.
I want to create 2D game with top-down view and with free movement (without snapping to the grid) just like any Zelda game on GameBoy.
How should I store map bounds? Is there a way to do this automatically? For example I have a texture with background and texture with foreground where black color should appear transparent and should allow to move in space of it.
Thanks in advance.
For easy 2D collision detection, you'll probably implement bounding boxes.
Basically you will create a rectangle that represents every Game Object. The coordinates and size of the rectangle will be the same as the Texture2D (it is common to make this a property on the given class). Every time you update the position of your Texture, you update the position of your bounding box.
Now to check for collision, just loop through your game objects and see if any of the bounding boxes intersect.
Once you get the idea, you'll see that its very easy to implement. XNA also provides some math helpers to abstract the math (though its simple addition and subtraction).
Try this link for a more in depth explanation with code examples: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/180069-xna-2d-bounding-box-collision-detection/

Math - Displaying multiple objects in a single view using trigonometry

It might be that my math is rusty or I'm just stuck in my box after trying to solve this for so long, either way I need your help.
Background: I'm making a 2d-based game in C# using XNA. In that game I want a camera to be able to zoom in/out so that a certain part of objects always are in view. Needless to say, the objects move in two dimensions while the camera moves in three.
Situation: I'm currently using basic trigonometry to calculate which height the camera should be at for all objects to show. I also position the camera between those objects.
It looks something like this:
1.Loop through all objects to find the outer edges of our objects : farRight, farLeft, farUp, farDown.
2.When we know what the edges of what has to be shown are, calculate the center, also known as the camera position:
CenterX = farLeft + (farRight - farLeft) * 0.5f;
CenterY = farUp + (farDown - farUp) * 0.5f;
3.Loop through our edges to find the largest value compared to our camera position, thus the furthest distance from the center of screen.
4.Using the largest distance-value we can easily calculate the needed height to show all of those objects (points):
float T = 90f - Constants.CAMERA_FIELDOFVIEW * 0.5f;
float height = (float)Math.Tan(MathHelper.ToRadians(T)) * (length);
So far so good, the camera positions itself perfectly based on the calculations.
Problem:
a) My rendering target is 1280*720 with a Field of View of 45 degrees, so one always sees a bit more on the X-axis, 560 pixels more actually. This is not a problem per se but more one that on b)...
b) I want the camera to be a bit further out than it is, so that one sees a bit more on what is happening beyond the furthest point. Sure, this happens on the X-axis, but that is technically my flawed logic's result. I want to be able to see more on both the X- and Y-axis and to control this behavior.
Question
Uhm, so to clarify. I would like to have some input on a way to make the camera position itself, creating this state:
Objects won't get closer than say... 150 pixels to the edge of the X-axis and 100 pixels to the edge of the Y-axis. To do this the camera shall position itself along the Z-axis so that the field of view covers it all.
I don't need help with the coding, just the math and logic of calculating the height of my camera. As you probably can see, I have a hard time wrapping this inside my head and even harder time trying to explain it to you.
If anyone out there has been dealing with this or is just better than me at math, I'd appreciate whatever you have to say! :)
Don't you just need to add or subtract 150 or 100 pixels (depending on which edge you are looking at) to each distance measurement in your loop at step 3 and carry this larger value into length at step 4? Or am I missing something.
I can't explore this area further at the moment, but if anyone is having the same issue but is not satisfied by provided answer there is another possibility in XNA.
ViewPort.Unproject()
This nifty feature converts a screen space coordinate to a world space one.
ViewPort.Project()
Does the opposite thing, namely converting world space to screen space. Just thought that someone might want to go further than me. As much as my OCD hates to leave things not perfect, I can't be perfectioning this... yet.

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