I'm a complete noob in gamedev, but I've watched a number of videos on generating a 2D array to setup Grid-based combat (pathing, obstacles etc), and I don't find the programmable approach intuitive or visually friendly.
Is it possible to setup such level with obstacles using multiple tilemaps?
1st tilemap would include the whole level zone (I named it "General Tilemap"):
2nd tilemap would only contain tiles that would be marked as collision when being read (I named it "Collision Tilemap") and player wouldn't be able to move to them:
My logic would be to read the adjacent tiles around the player, and if:
A tile exists on the General tilemap, but not on the Collision tilemap, player can click it and move there.
A tile exists on both tilemaps, it is marked as collision, it cannot be clicked.
A tile doesn't exist, it is out of boundaries, it cannot be clicked.
Could you please let me know if this is a valid approach (for smaller levels at least, I won't be making anything large so scalability is not an issue), or have I gone completely off course and there's a superior way to do this properly?
I'm currently stuck at the very first step - reading whether the tile on a coordinate (next to player) is existing or null for both tilemaps. Doing my best to figure it out though.
Thanks!
Managed to check if tilemap contains a tile on xy coordinates in Start function, by finding the relevant Tilemap and using hasTile to read it it has value or not. This returns a boolean.
Tilemap generalTilemap = GameObject.Find("General Tilemap").GetComponent<Tilemap>();
hasGTile = generalTilemap.HasTile(playerTileCoord);
Still not sure if this approach will work for me long-term, especially when I get to the pathfinding algorithm, but we'll see!
Related
I am working on a 2D game with colleagues that is basically a fighting game on a vertical map with platforms. Right now I am spawning items on the map for player to gather, but I was wondering how could I do that while checking that I'm not in one of the platform's collider to avoid spawning the item in?
You should take a look at the overlap functions from Physics2D (for example here). Just generate a drop position and pass it to this function, if it returns null then the position is free. If you get unexpected results make sure to set the layer mask to the same as the platforms or whatever objects you don't want to intersect with.
I,m creating a dungeon generator in unity3d. I have a pile of prefabs(rooms, corridors, junctions). Randomly a piece is chosen for starting piece and then depending on the connecting rules next pieces are chosen. Also the dungeon can be multi layered. Like 1 room above the other etc. Problem is room collisions. On the same layer 2 rooms can be placed on top of each other and this is a problem.
My first idea was to use arrays to model the layers and then find best suiting locations for stairs up and down. But the problem with this is that not all angles are 90degrees. I have a 3 way intersection in the shape of Y. So everything that comes after this is angled. And its not easily represented on array.
Second idea was the use of collisions and backtracing. I place the tile and then if no collision I can move forward. But if collides I try to find a better suiting piece or remove the previous piece and but something new there. But I can't figure out a good method to do this.
Anyone have any suggestions or ideas on how to generate multilayered dungeons with non 90 degree angles?
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.
xcode 5 iOS7 sprite kit.
My wish is to make a sprite that has its own gravity.
Like a planet. If another sprite comes within a certain range of it, it will slowly pull the other sprite closer.
I have two sprites. One moving and one stationary. When the moving sprite gets in a given distance of the stationary sprite the stationary sprite gravity should slowly pull the other sprite towards it. This way the moving sprite would change its path in a soft curve.
My idea would be to calculate the distance from the stationary object to any other object and if close enough start pulling and if the moving object gets out of range ageing, then stop pulling.
Would probably need to research some vector calculation.
Thats my immediate thoughts.
Is this possible and how? Does it already exist?
A friend of mine did this for his physics dissertation. multibody gravity simulation. So yeah you can but you need to be willing to learn some maths. Apparently there is a clever optimisation to make it run decently nlog(n) rather than n^2). you probably want to ask this on the physics version of stack overflow to get a good answer. I have the code at home ... will post it later but you will want an explanation - i used it in an xna app. Its badass once you get it working - although if you want naturally orbiting objects then you will want to code them using parametric equations for easy and cool orbits. Simply because its hard to solve and with time even using double will result in some errors (the good implementations also work out the error and adjust - again will post later). But the real problem is solving for stable orbits. You then use the algorithm for free moving bodies such and player objects / npcs. Although solving accurate movement for npc in a changing field is v hard.
you want to look at this question: Jon Purdys answer is the one you want
multi body physics - gravity
and this one (which is linked from above) ...
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/19404
There is not a dead-simple way of doing that in any platform as far as I know maybe except for some game engines/platforms that export for different platforms (cocos2d, construct 2 etc).
What you need is a physics engine whether you write one (which is a complicated but fun thing to do) or use an available one.
Luckily I've found a link describing the usage of the famous 2D physics engine "Box2D" on iOS.
This one explains how you can include Box2D in an openGL application (but you can apply this to other environments (sprite kit) I think altough I'm not an iOS guy);
http://www.iforce2d.net/b2dtut/setup-ios
Anyways, you now know what to look for...
For iOS 8.0+ : you have SKFieldNode : radialGravityField()
For iOS 8.0- : one solution could be : 3 to 9
add your sprite ( planet ) with its physics
add an invisible SKNode ( the gravity zone ) with its own physics, as a child of your sprite, but with a radius much more than your sprite's one
you have a little explanation about invisible node here : https://developer.apple.com/documentation/spritekit/skphysicsworld
both, your sprite and the invisible node are centered in a zero gravity world
we look for contact and not collision ( set correctly your bit masks )
when any object get in contact with the invisible node ( gravity zone ), first you remove any moving action or impulse from it and then we add to this object an SKAction to move it toward the center of your sprite ( planet )
at second contact between this object and your sprite ( planet ), you remove all actions again from the object with a velocity = zero