I need a 3D equivalent to Collider2D.GetContacts for ground deteciton in my platformer, but I can't see how to do this neatly, in theory the physics engine should be keeping track of these points anyway, so this should be possible without any extra processing, but I can't figure out how. A 3D equivalent to this function simply doesn't seem to exist, so what is the best alternative?
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I am currently developing an asteroid mining/exploration game with fully deformable, smooth voxel terrain using marching cubes in Unity 3D. I want to implement an "element ID" system that is kind of similar to Minecraft's, as in each type of material has a unique integer ID. This is simple enough to generate, but right now I am trying to figure out a way to render it, so that each individual face represents the element its voxel is assigned to. I am currently using a triplanar shader with a texture array, and I have gotten it set up to work with pre-set texture IDs. However, I need to be able to pass in the element IDs into this shader for the entire asteroid, and this is where my limited shader knowledge runs out. So, I have two main questions:
How do I get data from a 3D array in an active script to my shader, or otherwise how can I sample points from this array?
Is there a better/more efficient way to do this? I thought about creating an array with only the surface vertices and their corresponding ID, but then I would have trouble sampling them correctly. I also thought about possibly bundling an extra variable in with the vertices themselves, but I don't know if this is even possible. I appreciate any ideas, thanks.
I'm trying to make an augmented reality application about chemistry using Vuforia and Unity3D. I will physically have a big image of periodic table of elements and some small spherical objects, and I don't know how to determine which element is covered by the sphere when I put it on the periodic table. Does anyone have an idea or has done this already? I will next associate that chemical element with the sphere.
I think your best bet would be to try and track not only the position of the printed periodic table as Vuforia image target, but also the position of the 'small spherical objects' as Vuforia model targets. Whether or not that would work depends on the exact characteristics of those spherical objects and to which degree they are suitable for tracking as model targets. Otherwise consider replacing the spherical objects with alternative objects possibly with trackable stickers on them.
Hi I have a small question on how the raycasting with layermasks work vs using RaycastAll.
I am trying to project my rays from inside my object and layermask the rays to collide with the same layer as the original object, therefore i need to ignore the "hit" on the original object itself.
My question is: when Raycasting uses a layermask does it register a collision with other undesirable layers too and then simply ignore them, or does it not even register a collision with those layers in the first place? Would it be worse or equal on performance if I used RaycastAll to logically decide to respond to a layer or not vs somehow using strictly layermasks? Or is it not even an appreciable difference?
I know some posts say that "if you cast it from inside the object it wont collide with that object" but evidently it does.
Thanks
You can take a look at official Unity's physics preformance tutorial. To start with, Raycast is rather cheap operation but it's performance really depends on how you actually do Raycasting. For example, for one of your questions - RaycastAll is more expensive than doing Raycast on a separate layer, it's also mentioned in the link above. It's based on how actually physics work. Unity doesn't implement physics itself, instead it uses existing solutions (like PhysiX for 3d, and earlier it was Box2d for 2d physics).
Also the length of your ray actually influences Raycast's performance. The shorter ray you cast the better performance you get. The worst case is Raycasting to infinity. Another case is that Collider.Raycast is cheaper than Physics.Raycast.
It's no secret, that there is nothing more that some bunch of math equations behind physics in game development so you may thing in such things - the simplier equation you have, the better performance and time to complete you get. So Raycast can be treated as system of equations where you have the equation of the line (actual Raycast) and some number of equations, which describe some 2d/3d object in plane/space and the task is two calculate the points of intersection between your line (Ray) and other objects.
If you don't have complex physics in your game you may not see the difference between RaycastAll and Raycast with layermask, or shorter ray's length, but performance really differs.
This question is (mostly) game engine independent but I have been unable to find a good answer.
I'm creating a turn-based tile game in 3D space using Unity. The levels will have slopes, occasional non-planar geometry, depressions, tunnels, stairs etc. Each level is static/handcrafted so tiles should never move. I need a good way to keep track of tile-specific variables for static levels and i'd like to verify if my approaches make sense.
My ideas are:
Create 2 Meshes - 1 is the complex game world, the second is a reference mesh overlay that will have minimal geometry; it will not be rendered and will only be used for the tiles. I would then Overlay the two and use the 2nd mesh as a grid reference.
Hard-code the tiles for each level. While tedious it will work as a brute force approach. I would, however, like to avoid this since it's not very easy to deal with visually.
Workaround approach - Convert the 3d to 2D textures and only use 1 mesh.
"Project" a plane down onto the level and record height/slope to minimize complexity. Also not ideal.
Create individual tile objects for each tile manually (non-rendered). Easiest solution i could think of.
Now for the Unity3D specific question:
Does unity allow selecting and assigning individual Verts/Triangles/Squares of a mesh and adding componenets, scripts, or variables to those selections; for example, selecting 1 square in the 10x10 unity plane and telling unity the square of that plane now has a new boolean attached to it? This question mostly refers to idea #1 above, where i would use a reference mesh for positional and variable information that were directly assigned to the mesh. I have a feeling that if i do choose to have a reference mesh, i'd need to have the tiles be individual objects, snap them in place using the reference, then attach relevant scripts to those tiles.
I have found a ton of excellent resources (like http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html) on tile generation (mostly procedural), i'm a bit stuck on the basics due to being new to unity and im not looking for procedural design.
I'm new to using xna and I want to make my player collide with with multipe walls from the same class. So I looked around and I understood that the best way for doing that is to create a list of variables containing the walls id's and make a loop that circles them all and then returns the variable of the objects that collide.
My question is if there is a faster more efficient way for doing that? I mean if I have like 10000 objects that loop can cause a lot of memory use.
Thx in advance
Option 1) If these 10000 object are walls of a level, then you should probably use some sort of grid (like this very old example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda#mediaviewer/File:Legend_of_Zelda_NES.PNG)
With a grid you only have to check collision with adjacent objects, or only with objects that are nearby.
Option 2) If these 10000 objects are enemies or bullets that move more freely, then you could also calculate the distance first and only check for collision if the objects are nearby.
But may I ask why you are using XNA? I used to work with XNA 4.x but in my understanding it is pretty much dead (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/389018/microsoft-email-confirms-plan-to-cease-xna-support). If you're new to XNA, I would advice to use other software to make games (like Unity3D). In Unity3D the hard part of collision detection is done for you (is has standard functions for collision detection) and Unity3D also works with C# (like XNA)
You always want to do the least amount of processing to get the job done. For a tiled 2D game you usually have a 2 dimensional grid. When the player want to walk on a certain tile you can check that tile if it is allowed to walk there. In this case you just have to check a single tile. If you have a lot of NPC's you could divide your map into sections and keep track of in what sections the NPC's are. Now you just have to do collision detection on the enemies within your section.
When you need expensive collision, pixel perfect or polygon collision you should first check if an object is even close with a simple radius float or BoundingSphere only then you go on with more expensive collision detection.
Same goes for pretty much anything, if you have a 100x100 tilemap but only need to draw 20x10 for the screen then you should just render that portion by calculations. In unreal, mappers create invisible boxes, when inside these boxes it only draws a certain part of the map and only checks collision within these boxes. GameDev is all about tricks to make things work smoothly.