I am trying to make a Dungeons and Dragons app that has different editable layers of objects. The lowest layer should be the background, such as water, roads, etc. The second layer should be terrain objects such as trees and buildings. The third layer should be placeable objects such as players, monsters, NPCs, and chests.
I have been trying to use two separate SKTileMapNodes, setting one zPosition above the other, then placing SKShapeNodes on top for placeable objects. However, I cannot seem to get two SKTileMapNodes working simultaneously.
Here are my two SKTileMapNodes. I cannot use the editor to get any tiles to display in ObjectMap. The BackgroundMap is all of the coloration currently. I want to put a blank grid of tiles like such in the ObjectMap:
Blank tile
TileMapNodes (used imgur because of an error):
Is there a better way to accomplish my goals? I would like to use the SKTileMap as it is easy to change/ paint over.
Related
I'm trying to create an experience where I have a couple of detailed 3D models of buildings on the map with extruded building footprints of neighboring buildings via a vector tile source. The 3D models would be the main focus point and the extruded footprints would be for reference. One challenge I'm running into is that I have a global building footprint layer and it has a footprint for the 3D buildings which doesn't match up perfectly. Additionally, when extruded, it ends up merging/overlapping the nice 3D models.
I'd like to be able to hide the individual footprints that overlap the 3D models. My original thought was to grab the bounding box of the 3D model and then use the new within style expression, but it looks like this will only filter points and lines, not polygons. The building footprint polygons have no unique information in them that I could use to filter on.
I know I could monitor map movements and query the rendered features and manually detect intersecting polygons, but since there is no unique property on the footprint, I can't filter or use feature state.
Any ideas of how to efficiently avoid rendering individual polygons in a specific area that come in from a vector tile source?
It is a common issue that the buildings layer in Mapbox Streets don't contain any unique attributes to allow filtering or rendering differently.
The best solution is usually to source a different buildings layer, and in this case, remove those redundant buildings in pre-processing.
I can think of one rather crazy workaround that might work here, although the performance may be poor.
Add the building layer with very low opacity, of type fill, essentially invisible. (Maybe invisible would work.) Call your main source buildings`.
Create a secondary building source of type geojson, and a secondary fill-extrusion layer. Call this source buildings-copy.
On map move or moveend, use querySourceFeatures to obtain a copy of all buildings.
Process this copy using Turf to remove the buildings you don't want, and call setData to set the copy as the data for buildings-copy.
You may need to do some clever caching to get reasonable performance.
I am trying to understand how Unity decides what to draw first in a 2D game. I could just give everything an order in layer, but I have so many objects that it would be so much easier if it was just drawing in the order of the hierarchy. I could write a script that gives every object its index, but I also want to see it in editor.
So the question is, is there an option that I can check so that it uses the order in the hierarchy window as the default sorting order?
From your last screenshot I could see you are using SpriteRenderer.
The short answer to the question "is there an option that I can check so that it uses the order in the hierarchy window as the default sorting order?" would be no, there isn't by default*.
Sprite renderers calculates which object is in front of others in one of two ways:
By using the distance to the camera, this will draw the objects closest to the camera on top of the rest of the objects in that same order in layer, as per the docs:
Sprite Sort Point
This property is only available when the Sprite Renderer’s Draw Mode is set to Simple.
In a 2D project, the Main Camera is set to Orthographic Projection mode by default. In this mode, Unity renders Sprites in the order of their their distance to the camera, along the direction of the Camera’s view.
If you want to keep everything on the same sorting layer/order in layer you can change the order in which the objects appear by moving one of the two objects further away from the camera (this is probably further down the z axis). For example if your Cashew is on z = 0, and you place the walnut on z = 1 then the cashew will be drawn on top of the walnut. If Cashew is on z=0 and the walnut is on z = -1 then the walnut will be draw on top (Since negative is closer to the camera). If both of the objects are on z - 0 they are both equally as far away from the camera, so it becomes a coin toss for which object gets drawn in front, as it does not take into account the hierarchy.
The second way the order can be changed is by creating different sorting layers, and adjusting the order in layer in the sprite renderer component. But you already figured that out.
*However, that doesn't mean it cannot be done, technically...
If you feel adventurous there is nothing stopping you from making an editor script that automates setting the order in layer for you based on the position in the hierarchy. This script would loop through all the objects in your hierarchy, grab the index of the object in the hierarchy, and assign the index to the Order in Layer.
I don't think Unity has such feature (https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/2DSorting.html).
Usually you shall define some Sorting Layers:
far background
background
foreground
and assign Sprite Renderer of each sprite to one of Sorting Layers
I'm going to be using sktilemapnodes for my 2d iOS platformer. What is better or more efficient?
Using a single size sktilemapnode that is the entire level or breaking the area up into multiple sktilemap nodes.
Example:
I have 3 layers of backgrounds that I'm going to use for a parallax background effect.
1st Layer (furthest back) is just a gradient sky. I have it broken up into 512x512 px tiles. I only have 8 different tiles that can be used as a 1x8 grid of tiles. I could then continue this pattern left/right or up/down in order to have the sky be as large as I need it to be.
Question: My question is whether I should use 1 tile map node for the entire sky, or if I should break it up into smaller chunks that are repeatable (like the 1x8 grid). If I break it up into smaller chunks I wouldn't need it to be so big, and as the camera moves around in my game I can move these chunks around.
I'm wondering if this would consume less resources this way.
2nd Layer are hills. I have about 8 different tiles that are 128x64 px each. I can arrange them into a repeatable pattern to my liking. So again I can have a tilemapnode that is the size of the pattern that I can repeat, and I can create multiple nodes or I can just create the entire map in 1 node.
3rd layer is a little different because it is basically a pattern image of trees that holds 27 512x512 px tiles. 9x3 grid. But again, I can use 1 node, or multiple.
I'm just concerned with efficiency. What is going to give me the most bang for my buck so that I can have room to process other game objects. This is just the background u know....
With the Tilemapnode, I'm not sure if tiles that are not visible are not processed each cycle or if I need to do some sort of check manually. I want to have the options of having massive maps on certain levels. I'm new to using sktilemapnodes, so I'm trying to figure out how I would use them in the most efficient way possible.
Each SKTileMapNode is a single node. Apple does a good job of making sure that multiple map nodes don't use too many resources. That is why there is a single node for a map instead of a node for every tile in a map. It is common practice to layer multiple SKTileMapNode(s) to create a parallax effect or simply to create layers.
For example, a platform game with mountains in the background and clouds behind that would use a single SKTileMapNode for the mountains and a single one for clouds. This gives the added benefit of being able to use transparency in tiles.
I'm creating my game with dynamicly generated terrain. It is very simple idea. There are always three parts of terrain: segment on which stands a player and two next to it. When the player is moving(always forward) to the next segment new one is generated and the last one is cut off. It works wit flat planes, but i don't know how to do it with more complex terrain. Should I just make it have the same edge from both sides(for creating assets I'm using blender)? Or is there any other option? Please note that I'm starting to make games with unity.
It depends on what you would like your terrain to look like. If you want to create the terrain pieces in something external, like Blender, then yes all those pieces will have to fit together seamlessly. But that is a lot of work as you will have to create a lot of pieces that fit together for the landscape to remain interesting.
I would suggest that you rather generate the terrain dynamically in Unity. You can create your own mesh using code. You start by creating an object (in code), and then generating vertex and triangle arrays to assign to the object, for it to have a visible and sensible mesh. You first create vertices at specific positions and then add triangles that consist of 3 vertices at a time. If you want a smooth look instead of a low poly look, you will reuse some vertices for the next triangle, which is a little trickier.
Once you have created your block's mesh, you can begin to change your code to specify how the height of the vertices could be changed, to give you interesting terrain. As long as the first vertices on your new block are at the same height (say y position) as the last vertices on your current block (assuming they have the same x and z positions), they will line up. That said, you could make it even simpler by not using separate blocks, but by rather updating your object mesh to add new vertices and triangles, so that you are creating a terrain that is just one part that changes, rather than have separate blocks.
There are many ways to create interesting terrain. One of the most often used functions to generate semi-random and interesting terrain, is Perlin Noise. Another is his more recent Simplex noise. Like most random generator functions, it has a seed value, which you can keep track of so that you can create interesting terrain AND get your block edges to line up, should you still want to use separate blocks rather than a single mesh which dynamically expands.
I am sure there are many tutorials online about noise functions for procedural landscape generation. Amit Patel's tutorials are good visual and interactive explanations, here is one of his tutorials about noise-based landscapes. Take a look at his other great tutorials as well. There will be many tutorials on dynamic mesh generation as well, just do a google search -- a quick look tells me that CatLikeCoding's Procedural Grid tutorial will probably be all you need.
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.