How to Choose Colours Procedurally (Algorithms)

Poisson Disk Sampling This article originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 21, released in March 2008. One way to populate large worlds with objects is to simply place objects on a grid, or randomly. While fast and easy to implement, both these methods result in unsatisfying worlds: either too regular or too messy. In this article we look at an alternative algorithm that returns a random set of points with nice properties: the points are tightly packed together; butno closer to each other than a specified minimum distance. Figure 1 shows an example of such a set, which is called Poisson-disk sample set. Poisson disk sampling has many applications in games: random object placement;sampling for graphics applications;procedural texture algorithms; andmesh algorithms. In this article we will look mostly at object placement and briefly at texture generation. Figure 1 Implementation There are several algorithms for producing a Poisson disk sample set. Here are the details: Here is how all this look in pseudo code: Figure 7

Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make—and break—online video Lee Hutchinson has a problem. My fellow Ars writer is a man who loves to watch YouTube videos—mostly space rocket launches and gun demonstrations, I assume—but he never knows when his home Internet service will let him do so. "For at least the past year, I've suffered from ridiculously awful YouTube speeds," Hutchinson tells me. "Ads load quickly—there's never anything wrong with the ads!—but during peak times, HD videos have been almost universally unwatchable. Hutchinson, a Houston resident who pays Comcast for 16Mbps business-class cable, is far from alone. Why does online video have such problems? But cynical types who suspect their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) intentionally degrade streaming video may be right as well. These business decisions involve "peering" agreements that Internet companies make to pass traffic from one to another and negotiations over caching services that store videos closer to people's homes so they can load faster in your browser.

How to Use Perlin Noise in Your Games (Originally appeared in Dev.Mag Issue 20, released in February 2008.) Perlin noise is the foundation of many procedural texture and modelling algorithms. It can be used to create marble, wood, clouds, fire, and height maps for terrain. Edit 19 June 2011: The examples were originally given in pseudo-code. Edit 19 May 2012: I always thought the cloudy noise described in this article is called Perlin noise. Real Classical Perlin noise, and simplex noise, can also be combined, just like the “smooth noise” is combined in this article, to give cloudy noise. Implementation Written in its concise mathematical form, the Perlin noise generation seems daunting, but it is actually easy to implement. Generate a number of arrays containing “smooth” noise. That’s it! Figure 1 Generating Smooth Noise First, you need to create an array with random values between 0 and 1. The following pseudo C snippet shows how the kth octave is generated. Note that the line: is not the same as Blending the Arrays Textures

Essential Math for Games Programmers As the quality of games has improved, more attention has been given to all aspects of a game to increase the feeling of reality during gameplay and distinguish it from its competitors. Mathematics provides much of the groundwork for this improvement in realism. And a large part of this improvement is due to the addition of physical simulation. Creating such a simulation may appear to be a daunting task, but given the right background it is not too difficult, and can add a great deal of realism to animation systems, and interactions between avatars and the world. This tutorial deepens the approach of the previous years' Essential Math for Games Programmers, by spending one day on general math topics, and one day focusing in on the topic of physical simulation. Topics for the various incarnations of this tutorial can be found below. Current Materials Slides The latest available versions of the slides for the math tutorials at GDC 2015 are as follows: Past Materials Core Mathematics

Getting More out of Seamless Tiles We have used tiles to decorate our living spaces for more than 4000 years . Tiles have several properties that make them attractive for use: they can be mass-produced; they are easy to build with (because of their geometric properties); and combinations of tiles lead to a huge number of decorative options. Early game makers recognised that these advantages of tiles also apply to tiles in computer graphics, and using tiles was (and still is) a popular way to make game graphics. In computer terms, here are the advantages of a tile system: it is efficient, it is easy to program, and a few tiles give you a huge number of possible game maps. The last point is really the one that makes tiles shine, and it really comes to its full with procedural content generation. But tiled games can also suffer from some defects: the geometric regularity of tiles might be less appealing than organic design; and the repetition can be jarring. Tiles Some Tile Basics Grids Penrose tiles A Few Definitions Symmetries Blur

samsquire/ideas Bézier Curves for your Games: A Tutorial (Image source) We all know what a curve is. Here are some examples. A Bézier curve is a type of curve that is easy to use, and can describe many shapes. In games, Bézier curves are sometimes useful to describe paths: the racing line in a racing game, or the line in line-drawing games such as Flight Control, or the looping butterfly that enlivens an RPG. Bézier curves are popular because their mathematical descriptions are compact, intuitive, and elegant. In this guide, I give you the instructions necessary to implement algorithms for using Bézier curves in your games. Mathematical Description Let’s start with the mathematics. The value t can range from 0 to 1. Here is an example of the simplest type of Bézier curve, a line-segment: [x, y] = (1 – t)P_0 + tP_1 This is shorthand notation for the two equations that give the coordinates separately (see Vector Fundamentals): x = (1 – t)P_{0x} + tP_{1x} y = (1 – t)P_{0y} + tP_{1y} The points P_0 and P_1 are the control points. Here is the formula: Cases

Kim Jong-il's Sushi Chef Kenji Fujimoto: Newsmakers The sushi chef was leaving his apartment when he noticed the stranger outside. He could tell by the man's suit—black and badly made—that he was North Korean. Right away, the chef was nervous. Even in his midsixties, the chef is a formidable man: He has thick shoulders, a broad chest; the rings on his strong hands would one day have to be cut off. But he'd long since quit wearing his bulletproof vest, and the last time a North Korean made the journey to visit him in Japan, a decade ago, he was there to kill him. The stranger came closer. "This is about your family," the stranger said. "Go away," the chef told the man, and without another word the man disappeared. A month later, in early July, another North Korean in a black suit came to the chef's door. "Come with me, Fujimoto," the man said, and together they went to a bare-bones hotel near the Sakudaira train station. Luring people back to North Korea to be executed or dispatched to gulags was a favorite trick of the regime.

Bézier Path Algorithms In the article Bézier Curves for your Games: A Tutorial, I introduced Bézier curves and Bézier paths. In this tutorial I provide some algorithms useful for working with Bézier curves: determining the length of a piece of curve; interpolating a set of points with a Bézier path; and reducing a large point set to a smooth Bézier curve. (Image by snuffyTHEbear). Calculating curve length Assuming that the line segments we use for drawing are a reasonable representation of our curve, we can estimate the curve length by summing the lengths of the segments. A more complicated strategy is necessary when we need the length of only a part of the curve, and not the complete curve. First, we must cache the accumulative length of segments when we update the drawing points. Then, we can use a simple subtraction to find the length of the piece of the curve (assuming, for a moment, that we need it only between points that coincide with the drawing points). Note that we subtract 1 from the smaller index.

Glass The hardware looks much better in person than I expected. In fact, I would even say it looks good. The industrial design is solid, and though it is being manufactured in small batches, it has the build quality you might expect from something being mass-produced. Glass is very clearly an early “alpha” product, and it’s only being sold to very few developers and invitees, so my thoughts below will focus mainly on the design challenges facing ambient computing in general and to point out some things I hadn’t thought about before actually wearing Glass. I was standing outside on a sunny day when I put on Glass for the first time. The software is very rudimentary, which is fine considering the “alpha” nature of the device, but I expected it to be smarter. While some of the human <=> computer interface design challenges facing ambient computers are obvious in theory, many of them are very hard to identify until you actually experience using the device as part of your life. Kudos

Jurassic Hack Jurassic Hack Jurassic Park est sans aucun doute l'un de mes films préférés. D'ailleurs vous souvenez-vous de cette scène d'anthologie où Samuel L. Jackson (aka Ray Arnold) essaye de redémarrer le système piégé par Nedry ? Et bien ce que vous propose Jurassic Systems, c'est de revivre vous-même ce moment. Sachez aussi qu'il y a une fonctionnalité cachée dans le système... je pense que je l'ai trouvé (une photo) mais pas sûr. Source Vous avez aimé cet article ? The inside story of ESGN's fall In early 2013, a 32-year-old Brit named Rory Dickenson moved to Berlin to work a pair of short-term freelance jobs. But he hadn't been there long when he found an opportunity he couldn't ignore. A human resources service put Dickenson in touch with a company calling itself the Esports Global Network. Dickenson was pretty familiar with the growing competitive gaming, or esports, industry, and he could easily guess what this new online video network might be about. He knew about The International, a tournament for the game Dota 2 that the previous year had boasted a prize pool of $1.6 million. And he knew of the success that competitive gaming had seen in some countries, like Korea, where pro gamers were treated the way professional athletes are in other parts of the world. On October 2013, he went to the group's offices for an interview. From the outside, ESGN appeared to have everything going for it. In Korea, StarCraft is more than just a game with a rabid fanbase.

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