Gabriel Gambetta - Pathfinding Demystified (Part I): Introduction Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV Introduction Pathfinding is one of these topics that usualy baffles game developers. The A* algorithm in particular is poorly understood, and the general belief seems to be that it’s arcane magic. The objective of this series of articles is to explain pathfinding in general and A* in particular in a very clear and accessible way, and put an end to the misconception that it’s a difficult topic. Note that the focus is on pathfinding for games; unlike a more academic approach, we’ll just skip search algorithms such as Depth-First or Breadth-First. This first article explains the very basic concepts of pathfinding. A Simple Setup Although you’ll be able to apply these concepts to arbitrarily complex 3D environments, let’s start with an extremely simple setup: a 5 x 5 square grid. The very first thing we do is to represent this environment as a graph. Each node represents a “state” your character can be in. Now let’s add the edges. An Example explored = []
Flood Fill Table of Contents Back to index Introduction The purpose of Flood Fill is to color an entire area of connected pixels with the same color. It's the Bucket Tool in many painting programs. Here's an example: the original image is on the left. The Flood Fill algorithm is also sometimes called Seed Fill: you plant a seed (the pixel where you start), and, recursively, more and more seeds are planted around the original seed if those pixels have the correct color. There exist many different floodfill algorithm, 3 of them are discussed here, and two versions of each: a version with recursion, and a version with a stack. There also exists the so called Boundary Fill, this is very similar to Flood Fill, but will color an area with pixels of a certain color as boundary. You can download the full source code of this tutorial here. Test Program To test the different flood fill algorithms, we need a test program that allows you to create shapes to fill. 4-Way Recursive Method (floodFill4)
Choosing which Steam game to play using Python - Dev Blog Introduction Steam sales are a wonderful thing and with the Autumn Sale going on now, a lot of game libraries are going to grow larger by the end of it. For this reason, I thought it might be a good idea to make a random Steam game chooser to give some of those dusty, forgotten games in the games list a chance to be played. Code First, you're going to need a Steam API key which you can get from here. You'll also need to know your 64-bit Steam ID which you can find from here. Explanation The code sets up a Tk window with an image of the game acting as a link to play it and a button underneath to find another random game. Sometimes a game doesn't have an image which is why I have the try-except block in the choosegame function. For the GUI, to make the window non-resizable, tk.resizable(0, 0) is called. Save the file with a .pyw extension to not show a console window.
Composing Music For Video Games: Chords - Music and Sound As with previousarticles this article does not aim to cover this area in depth but to provide a rudimentary understanding to aid individuals looking for such material. The material is intended to help not just composers new to the field but also give developers a better understanding of audio. Major and Minor Chords Chords come in all shapes, sizes and flavours. C - Cm - Cdim The dissonance created of the diminished chord leaves us feeling very uneasy. Brass StringsXylophone Compared to the xylophone the brass and strings portray greater power, emphasising the diminished chord. Suspended Chords In the first tutorial key words were discussed to help plan out the emotional and tonal feel of a scene. This is always good for themes where things are ‘too good to be true’. A suspended chord is a chord whereby one interval in the chord, we’ll use a triad to keep it simple, is replaced by another interval. Csus4 - Csus2 Now you can hopefully see how these chord constructions can be useful.
Collector Editions: Are they worth it anymore? | Videogame ProfessionalVideogame Professional Collector Editions… They are desirable, huge boxes containing so many goodies that the discs themselves get lost in it. Collector editions are aimed for the wealthy players or fans that are willing to go to the point of selling a kidney to get them. In this 2014 ultra-competitive market for video games, collector editions have multiplied in count. So is it becoming a scam or a real exclusivity? In Japan, the business practices of the limited edition is a veritable institution. In Japan, the business practices of the limited edition is a veritable institution In the west, the phenomenon came largely later and quietly. But unlike the Japanese limited editions, which generally offer a box worthy of the name, and an original collectible, the western editions are geared more toward DVD collector’s edition set that appeared in the early 2000s. The reluctance to export limited editions complete is hardly surprising. Japanese market cannot be the prerogative of the global supply software Why?
The hardest and easiest way to be a better coder — Of Games and Code Imagine visiting an alien planet that is much like modern Earth. Its denizens are humanoid. They love music and stories. Their technology supports things like newspapers, trains, and building complex architectural feats. Their culture includes a reverence for well-organized education and an impressive system of medical care and research. No computers, no internet. No video games. I think our modern programming culture has an egregious missing piece like this society’s missing electricity. This might just be the easiest way to improve yourself as a programmer because the first steps you can take are simple and greatly rewarding. The currency of code Coder-to-coder communication, not coder-to-cpu, is the currency of programming. It’s easy to think about programming as telling the processor exactly what to do. Stepping away from the trees, the forest is the experience of the end user. The reality is that programming is an ongoing process. Even coders get the feels Code as communication
What to do if you're a one-man-army game develo... - Posts - Quora When the drill sergeant shouts out, "There's a dangerous secret mission behind the enemy lines and I need volunteers! I need 'em now! and you, naturally, take a step backwards. It's all very well being a one-man (or woman) team. Many people involved in games hit this wall. "I'm doing a first person shooter in the style of [some big title]. Then, there inevitably follows a couple of small images. This particular kind of mania is actually quite normal for us compulsive gaming types. I'd like to give you a few forum posts as examples of those asset creators who have started off well but crashed and burned—there are so many to choose from—but that would be cruel -- and we can't throw stones; we're all just as susceptible. We cheat, of course! Now I know that your dad told you cheating was wrong, but hey! Assets that you find on the Internet were once created by somebody, and that person owns the copyright. Everyone in the game industry has a specific job.