I'm trying to make a truncated icosahedron, though with more subdivision (so more hexagons)
In the game I use it, eacht pentagon and hexagon is a separate object. So after generating the icosahedron, I just use the generated points to place either a pentagon or a hexagon on it (instead of doing the find-middles-of-each-triangle-thing, I do this since I need them to be separate object anyway.) I have some questions about it though, and google doesn't really help, so I'm hoping there are some smart smath-knowing people here :D
Here we go:
Am I assured that the length of each sides is equal?
Since each hexa/petagon is a separate object, I need to rotate them to get them positioned properly, any help with this?
Assuming I have hexa/petagons with a radius of 1 (one), how far for the middle do I have to position them? (Basecly, whats the relationship between the radius of my hexa/pentagons and the radius of my truncated icosahedron.)
Here's my first test, I generated a icosahedron and then on each point put a pentagon model, which I rotate so it's pointing away from the middle. As you can see they still need to be rotated to fit together (question 2) and their distance to the middle has to the tweaked aswell (question 3).
I'll continue on working on this too, though all help will be appreciated! (I'm making this in Unity, using c#, so if you give sample code, it would be really really awesome if you use that.)
Thanks a lot!
Well, not the answer to your questions but maybe worth thinking about:
Wouldn't it be easier to start with a ready made Blender, Maya, ... model of a soccer ball like for example this one on Blend Swap, change it to fit your needs. Or do it on your own as there are a couple of YouTube tutorials. Then you will have far more options like LOD, materials. You can design it in Blender with each pentagon/hexagon as single object and so it will be imported in Unity.
Related
I'm stuck on collision detection:
I've read about different ways of dealing with collisions, and choose to implement it with AABB. Problem appears right in the beginning: I have my test object - wood tower, and I'd like to enclose it with AABB object, I'm iterating through vertices to find min and max values for each axis, which works ok, but takes a lot time, even for single one object (It's quite big object I think ~8000 vertices).
What is proper way of doing it? Should data like this be in object files or I'm just doing it wrong way? Object may be big (I don't know if it is), but it's just one object, I'm afraid about what will happen when I set more of them
I'm writing with c# and OpenTK
Edit:
I know I should use the simplified collision model, I'm trying to find the boundaries over which I will build the AABB box (I had the screen hooked up, but it looks like mods didn't like it). Iterating over each vector seems somehow wrong (although it works, I have a nice box, fitted to the size of the model, but not in the effective processing time)
Yes, you should do that when creating the model resource file. I think your calculation method is fine as is.
And then if this model rotates or scales in your game, make a new AABB from the OBB(which was the AABB loaded from the file before transformation).
I am currently facing a problem I cannot wrap my head around. In my 2D game which in the end should become some kind of virtual model railway, I can create a path, consisting of different railtypes. Each rail has it's own waypoints. Now the issue is as follows:
Straight rails don't need many waypoints, since they only need two to be defined; The start and the end point. Curves on the other hand need a lot more waypoints, so the objects movement on them is not all jaggy and unsmooth. The problem I am facing is, that the waypoints then are so unevenly distributed on the whole railway, it makes the speed which the object moves along the path very uneven.
I also already know the issue: The points are so cramped in the curve sections that the distribution looks like this:
See this picture for an example with red Gizmo.Spheres as waypoints
Now when I move an object along that said path, I do it like this:
wagon.transform.position = Vector2.MoveTowards(wagon.transform.position, wagon.GetNextPosition(), wagon.GetSpeed());
The third parameter of the method Vector2.MoveTowards() is the maxDistanceDelta, so it can only move that amount into the direction of wagon.GetNextPosition(), which is constantly updated.
The twist is, that the densly packed points result in a way shorter distance than the maxDistanceDelta. So in those parts of the railway, the object moves way slower then wagon.GetSpeed() per frame.
I already have a solution to this, which sadly I cannot use: I took every waypoint and distributed them evenly on the path. I don't want that; I want the path to stay as is, but the speed to the eye to be uniform.
Thanks in advance for your help!
PS: I already looked in similar threads, but none of those solutions seems to work for me :( Namely:
This thread
And this one
I would comment this but unfortunately I don't have enough reputation, so here it is:
The best idea I can think of is to create 2 waypoints for your curve (at the start and finish) and use a parabolic function to define the movement between them. So in other words, your train follows a parabola instead of moving towards waypoints directly.
I found a useful answer on a unity forum about parabolic trajectories which you may find useful for your project (It is the first answer beneath the question at the time of writing).
How are you generating those waypoints?
Could you use bezier curves instead?
If yes, there it's typical to run into exactly this issue and solutions have been found. Not solutions with absolute accuracy, but usually sufficient for games (aka visualizations that in the end only need to be as accurate as the pixels you see).
There is this outstanding video about the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw
First off, I'd like to note that I've seen the other topic trying to explain this.
I've read over the topic and tried to implement the math, but it doesn't seem to work. I'm probably doing something wrong.
For reference, I'm using C# in the Unity engine. I'm working on a game simmilar to Miegakure, in the fact that you "turn" to face the fourth dimension, seeing it in slices. This means that projecting 4D objects to 3D doesn't work. I need to get 3D Cross-sections.
I already have this working for my actual terrain itself, since it's voxels which makes it easy to change how the mesh generator iterates through the 4D world.
My current problem is non-voxel meshes. I want to have them in my world, for things like the player, and dynamic blocks that move from dimension to dimension (Therefore giving the effect of hypercubes)
In that post, they use some complicated vector math, which I don't think I understand.
So long story short, I just need a slightly better explanation. Does anyone have a link I can steal of an example from 3D>2D slicing, so I can try and extend it to 4D>3D?
Literally any help, even just a re-explanation of that previous post, or someone translating it to actual script, would be nice.
Thanks in advance!
i'm trying to develop Pentago-game in c#.
right now i'm having 2 players mode which working just fine.
the problem is, that i want One player mode (against computer), but unfortunately, all implements of minimax / negamax are for one thing calculated for each "Move" (placing marble, moving game-piece).
butin Pentago, every player need to do two things (place marble, and rotate one of the inner-boards)
I didn't figure out how to implement both rotate part & placing the marble, and i would love someone to guide me with this.
if you're not familiar with the game, here's a link to the game.
if anyone want's, i can upload my code somewhere if that's relevant.
thank you very much in advance
If a single legal moves consists of two sub-moves, then your "move" for game algorithm purposes is simply a tuple where the first item is the marble placement and the second item is the board rotation e.g.:
var marbleMove = new MarbleMove(fromRow, fromCol, toRow, toCol);
var boardRotation = new BoardRotation(subBoard, rotationDirection);
var move = new Tuple<MarblMove, BoardRotation>(marbleMove, boardRotation);
Typically a game playing algorithm will require you to enumerate all possible moves for a given position. In this case, you must enumerate all possible pairs of sub-moves. With this list in hand you can move on to using standing computer game playing approaches.
Rick suggested tuples above, but you might want to actually just have each player make two independent moves, so it remains their turn twice in a row. This can make move ordering easier, but may complicate your search algorithm, depending on which one you are using.
In an algorithm like UCT (which is likely to outperform minimax for simple implementations) breaking into two moves can be more efficient because the algorithm can first figure out what moves placements are good, and then figure out what rotation is best. (Googling UCT doesn't give much. The original research paper isn't very insightful, but this page might be better: http://senseis.xmp.net/?UCT)
I've been trying to make a little simple game just to test my logics, and it's a simple labyrinth, it's ugly, and so far sucky.
The engine works pretty well, given that the labyrinth already exists (a matrix), it could be even enjoyable, but I have no intention on drawing a bunch of maps, which might be setting values on 400 (20x20) fields of a matrix. not funny.
Then I've created a function to randomize it, setting floor/wall for each field, and (I expected that) not every map is winnable. then I've made another function which checks if the maps is playable (receives two points, and checks if there's a valid path between them, then I just pass the start and the end. Pretty nifty) and it worked.
If you haven't noticed, this is a VERY stupid way of creating my random labyrinth for the following reasons:
1 - It might come out really easy (giant isles of floor, or a bunch of walls together, making only one, extremely visible path, creating a stupit (though valid) labyrinth
2 - It is potentially the fastest way of creating a perfect random labyrinth EVER, but at the same time it's potentially the slowest too, taking as long as... infinite. This difference is noticed more when I set the grid for 30x30 or more (when something is not overflown)
3 - It's dumb and an offence to logic itself.
In my deffense, I didn't plan making it this way from the beginning, as described, one thing led to another.
So I've started thinking about ways to do a beautiful (full of paths, tricky and winnable) labyrinth, then I've thought about making tiny small (let's say) 5x5 blocks with predesigned entrances and mount them together in a way that it fits, but it would go against my true random desire, as well as my unwillingness to draw it by hand.
Then I've thought about a function to create a random path, run it once to the end, and run it several times to somewhere close to the end, and some crossings and stuff, some creating dead ends, which seemed better to me, but I just couldn't imagine it creating a decent labyrinth.
You can check what I've done so far in this link.
Note: I have no intentions in harming anyone's pc with anything.
First one to open it, please comment here saying that it's safe. - Done (thank you, Jonno_FTW)
If you still don't trust it, use a Virtual Machine.
OBS: I know this is not the best way of developing anything. I should get a decent game engine, bla bla bla, it was some kind of challenge for myself.
I've done maze generation. You don't want to place stuff randomly and validate. Instead, you generate it out from a starting point.
Pick a starting point, move in a random direction. Have a random probability of picking a new direction. Never move into an occupied square, if you bump into one the current trail ends. If the current trail ends pick a square you have already visited and pick a new direction and do a random walk like you did for the first one. Repeat until the maze is as full as you want it to be.
The probability of the direction change should be an input parameter as it makes quite a difference. Note that if you are doing a 3D maze the odds of a vertical turn should be a lot lower than the odds of a horizontal move.
Here's an expansive website dedicated to labyrinths:
http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/algrithm.htm
Explains what types of labyrinths there are, goes over the generation algorithms and the solution algorithms, has a lot of cool pictures.
Have a look at the source code in my Roguelike game, Tyrant:
Code for Dungeon.java
There are a lot of diferent map generation techniques used to produce the different level types. But the most basic pattern is to iterate the following:
Start with a blank map
Create a single random room / open space in the map
Randomly select a tile at the edge of the currently open area
Attempt to "grow" a corridor or room randomly out from that space (if it doesn't fit, do nothing)
Loop back to step 3 as many times as you need to create a decent maze
Finally, do a pass over the whole map and convert and remaining blank space to walls
Here's a screenshot of the type of thing you get (Look at the mini-map from the maze structure):
Tyrant screenshot http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/af45502c9c.png
Your question makes me think of the XScreensaver Maze program. Look at its screenshots to see if that's the desired effect.
It looks like it took its maze generation algorithm from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has a great article on Maze generation algorithms
How you create a random labyrinth will depend on what you want it to look like. If you're creating something that's designed to have a lot of dead ends, then you can just "randomly" trace a path from the start point to the end point, and then randomly fill in the empty spaces, essentially carving the path out of a solid block of material. E.g. imagine you had a stone tablet. First step would be to carve the "solution" path. Then you'd go in and make all of the dead ends.
If you want something that's more "play" than "puzzle", then creating a bunch of tile pieces that fit together in different ways is probably the way to go. That's how the Diablo games did it as far as I can tell; a number of predesigned "sets" and rules about how they fit together. You'd mark the four sides of the block with things like "three open spaces followed by two closed," and then if another piece also has a matching description, they can be put together.
After that, all you have to do is figure out how you can consistently render "random" behavior.
There's actually a trick that Al Lowe used for one of his Leisure Suit Larry games (LSL 3, I believe) that might be helpful.
Basically, he made a bamboo forest 'maze' that the player had to navigate. Rather than creating a separate 'square' of maze for each screen, however, he simply 'flipped' the one screen he had already created and made dead ends by blocking various entrances with a single 'bamboo wall' graphic.
Perhaps you could do the same: have the generator carve a valid maze, and then tell it to place dead-end blocks along some of the paths. That would ensure that there's always at least one valid, open path to the 'finish line', as well as preventing players from just strolling through a super-easy layout.
It'll also make a 30x30 maze more workable, since the computer won't have to test every square of a 900-square grid for validity.