Develop Reference

Create a slash effect using image and progressively drawing

What I want
To create an effect like an slash in my 2D project. For that, I've an image in my assets already, and I want to draw it from top to the bottom, allowing it to be drawn in maybe half a second, progressively.
The idea is to draw it to create the effect of the slash itself, and the progressively mode is to "fit" the slash image itself, imagine the first one of the following link, that would be drawn from left to right.
To achieve that kind of drawing, the only thing that I've found is fillAmount for an Image, combined with the fillMethod.
The problem
The problem is that these methods are for the Image class, that it's not recommended for game drawing but only for UI.
Anyway, I've tried to do it this way, and I've not been able to do it, because the Unity environment didn't let me drag&drop my slash asset into the Image variable that I had created into my script. I thought that it may be because of the type of import, but also trying to import it with the other options resulted in nothing better.
The questions
Just answering one of these questions would solve my situation (or I think so):
How can I make Unity accept my image/asset into my Image object in the script?
Another way to create such effect using Sprite or GameObjects directly?

Method 1: You can use sprite sheet to create a 2D animation
1-1. Prepare a splash effect sprite sheet (an image map contains continuous action image), like
1-2. Change the sprite mode to multiple in inspector window
1-3. Slice the sprites in sprite editor
1-4. Multi-select the sprites and drag into hierarchy window, Unity will ask you to save this animation
1-5. You will get an animation GameObject
Method 2: If you can make it like a circular progress bar, check Radial/ Circular Progress Bar in unity3d

Objects having same distance/radius from the center (camera) in Unity 3D

It's a 360 Video application on Unity 3D.
I want to place several objects around the camera (which has a fixed position), but I need this objects to have the same distance (same radius) from the Camera (which is the center). How can I do this? Either on Editor or by code.
I have been manually displacing objects around the camera, by dragging them by arrow tool. But it's as inaccurate as a pain to do. :)
Any light on this would help me a lot! Not only me, but anyone working with 360 videos in Unity.
Thank you all in advance!

To solve your problem, an easy solution would be to add a child "child_of_camera" to your camera and then add a child "child_of_child" to the "child_of_camera".
Now that you've done this, move the "child_of_child" away to however far from the camera you'd like it to be. After this, apply the random rotation you'd like to "child_of_camera".
Duplicate "child_of_camera" to however many objects you'd like on screen and then rotate them all to your preference.
Now, when you're moving around the camera, these children will follow along with the camera.
If you're looking so that the rotation of the camera doesn't affect the objects there are two ways you can handle this:
Place camera and "child_of_camera" (this name would now be misleading and should be renamed) under an empty GameObject and move "empty_GO" on the X,Y,Z axis instead of the camera.
or
Create a quick script to attach onto "child_of_camera" so that it always sets the "child_of_camera"s world space rotation to Vector3.zero.
As I stated in the comments, this solution is most likely not the optimal way to fix your problem but it is definitely a very simple solution that is easy to understand and implement. I hope it helps.

C# - I am trying to create a grid lock game and I need your assistance

Since I don't have 10 reputation to post an image, I am going to leave a link of the game picture. http://thinkfun.com/mathcounts/play-rush-hour
This is what I want to create. A game where a rectangle must pass through other rectangles through the hole to win the game. The main rectangle can only move forward and other rectangles can move either right, left, up or down depending on their position. You must move the other rectangles in a way that they could make a way for the main rectangle to pass.
Here is my plan how I am going to create this game:
Create all the forms, import all the images and graphics to get ready to work with them.
Write code for 1 rectangle that would be able to move around.
Write an algorithm that wouldn't allow for rectangles to go through each other.
Make a winning hole.
Code other rectangles, make a full game.
Make fancy animations.
Import statistics : score, move counter and etc.
Here are my questions that I wanted to ask before trying to develop this game.
(Oh, and by the way, I am using Visual Studio C# form )
I assume that these rectangles are not going to be buttons, then what kind of a "button" (or whatever you call those extra features ) should I use?
How do I make a skin for those rectangles? So I can make it look like wood and make a nice skin for the main rectangle.
These are all my questions so far. I would like to know how to overcome those problems and I would like to hear some extra tips. Thank you very much for your time!

Use Graphics to draw your rectangles. Else make an object to hold info for it and you can import an Image as your "skin".
See number 1.

First off: Do you want to create a game or learn winForms? If the answer is create a game. Chose a Game Engine (Unity is nice, and uses c#) and work with that instead.
If you want to learn winForms you'd probably want a PictureBox, then add your code your code in OnMouseUp, OnMouseDown, etc. Good luck :)

XNA 2D Game Camera doesnt work

I'm making a zelda-like 2D Role-Playing-Game with XNA and wanted to implement a camera which follows the player today. Soo... I didn't really understand how it's working, but I found a nice code-example here: http://www.david-amador.com/2009/10/xna-camera-2d-with-zoom-and-rotation/
I implemented it and changed the spritebatch.Begin(); to what the guy in the thread said. Now it is working ... well. The collisions are alright and the player is centered (since I set the position of the camera to the position of the player once a frame) but: The textures don't get drawed the way they did before. So for example the shadow is drawn under the grass (=you can't see the shadows) the player is sometimes drawn over the NPCs and sometimes under them and the wall-tiles disappear and reappear like they want :(
Do I have to change the drawing-code or the order they get drawn?
Hope somebody know what I am doing wrong...

In your Spritebatch.Draw call you can specify the layer depth. When specifying the layer depth, you will need to use the proper Sprite Sort Mode when initializing your SpriteBatch.

XNA, WPF light show visualizer

HI all,
I'm developing a software to control light show ( through DMX protocol ), i use C# and wpf to develop my main software (.net 4.0)
To help people preview their show, i would like to make a live 3D visualizer...
First, i thought that i could use wpf 3D to make the visualizer, but i need to work with light ..
My main application should send property ( beam angle, orientation (X,Y), position(X,Y), Brush ( color,shape,effect)) to the 3D visualizer
But i would like to be able to move light (position in the scene) by mouse during execution and had value in return...
So ..
Does XNA is the easiest way to doing that ?
Can you help me for that :
Generating light (orientation , bitmap like filter in front of light )
Dynamically moving object with mouse and get position in return
Dynamically add or remove fixture
All of your advice, sample, example are very welcome ... I don't espect to have a perfect result at the first time but i need to understand the main concepts for doing that
Thank You !!

XNA does not contain any functionality for managing a "scene" - you will have to implement that yourself. For example: you might make a Light class containing the information about your light (position, orientation, etc), and then have a List<Light> of them, which you update and render yourself.
I will now assume that you have a 3D model of a "Light" (as in: the metal box containing the lightbulb) and also a 3D model of a stage. And that you can figure out how to render them - there are plenty of tutorials online for simple model rendering in XNA. Here is a starting point.
So your 3rd requirement ("Dynamically add or remove fixture") should be fairly simple once you can render things. Just add and remove Lights from your List of them based on user input. See the Input namespace.
And your 2nd requirement ("Dynamically moving object with mouse and get position in return") should also be simple. If you want your user to move lights by clicking and dragging, just keep track of the mouse position between frames and apply that as an adjustment to the clicked Light's position (or rotation).
To figure out which Light the user clicks in the first place, a good starting point is the Picking Sample.
I am assuming here that the user will click the Light (metal box) itself to move/rotate it. If you would rather have the user click and drag the endpoint of the light (the spot it projects) - that is more difficult. One idea that comes to mind: Intersect a ray from your Light with the stage to find the centre of the projected spot. At that point draw a dummy "handle" object (like a sphere) that the user can click and drag around. When the user finishes dragging, figure out the new orientation for the Light to make that the new centre.
Finally your 1st requirement ("Generating light (orientation , bitmap like filter in front of light )") is the tricky one. My understanding of this is that you want a way to draw the endpoint of the beam of light on your stage model? If so, what you are looking for is called Projective Texture Mapping. Presumably you will have a circular texture for basic lights, and perhaps other textures for gobos.
The quick-and-dirty way to do this would be to draw your stage model, once for each light, with additive blending (so that each light added with the other lights and the black had no effect), with a colour set to whatever you want the light colour to be, and with a black and white texture (a white circle on black background) drawn with TextureAddressMode.Clamp, with a shader that draws the texture with projective texture mapping which is set up with the light as the projection point.