gamedevlists-general — List for discussing general game development issues

RE: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

> Threaded is easier than non-threaded?  Ha!

Well, I think threading is _conceptually_ easier than non-threaded.
Having a thread that basically just sits there waiting to feed a stream
is much cleaner than remembering to sprinkle your code with
"updateAudio()" threads.

Of course, if you don't know how to deal with portability issues and
threads, or if you've never dealt with synchronization problems, yeah,
then _in practice_ threading is WAY uglier.

Brian

RE: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Brian S. <bs...@mi...>]

Threaded is easier than non-threaded?  Ha!

No, I think the advantage is that a non-threaded architecture is more =
portable (as Brian Hook has already mentioned, old Mac OS doesn't have =
preemptive threading, and older consoles didn't either) and it's more =
efficient not to have a separate thread if you can run your main loop =
fast enough to service the sound buffers.

Threaded is easier if you're a company like RAD selling a sound engine, =
because you can guarantee good performance and you don't have to field a =
bunch of calls from people with games running at 15 fps complaining that =
their sound is dropping out.

As for SMP, well, about 0.00001% of gamers are going to have 2 or more =
processors ;)

--brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Mads Bondo Dydensborg [mailto:ma...@ch...]=20
Sent: Saturday, March 16, 2002 2:39 AM
To: Ignacio Casta=F1o
Cc: gam...@li...
Subject: Re: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer


On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, Ignacio Casta=F1o wrote:

> Hi,
> I will be writting sound mixer next week, and I have to admit that I=20
> have no idea of sound programming. I could use sdl or any other=20
> library, but i just want to do that myself to learn how it's done.=20
> I've been looking for info about sound programming witout much look,=20
> I've only found low level details about the sound blaster :-( So if=20
> somebody knows where to find a good tutorial about this, I would=20
> really appreciate it.

I do not know about tutorials, but I wrote my own mixer once in about =
1000 lines of code. It used a seperate thread, because I thought that to =
be easier. The problem with my code was that I could only support mone 8 =
bit samples. This is easy to do. When you want to support stereo, or =
even more channels, and formats where the byte order is important (e.g. =
16 bit samples), it begins to suck. Also, you need to support a number =
of different interfaces if you wish your code to work across platforms.

> Anyway, I just can learn that by reading source code, for example,=20
> quake's sound engine runs on every game update, while sdl's and=20
> minifmod's run in a different thread. Updating the audio in the game=20
> loop seems to be easier to me, at least i have to write less platform=20
> independant code, but it seems that you have that work already done.=20
> On the other hand threaded audio seems to be the right thing, since=20
> most libraries do that.

Threaded is easier. For _ultimate_ performance, you want to schedule =
yourself, in this case from the game loop.

But, seriously, who needs that? Carmack might, because he writes to =
highend metal, but the rest of us? You loose SMP benefits, etc.

YMMV.

Mads

--=20
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               =
ma...@ch...
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right =
to say it.
  - Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 1907 (many times =
wrongfully
    attributed to Voltaire)


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Re: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Mickael P. <mpo...@ed...>]

> During the lull between Candy Cruncher and our next product I'd like to
> take a day and write our own audio mixer to minimize our dependencies on
> per-platform audio mixing capabilities.  We can survive without hardware
> mixing (in fact, we don't support it right now at all because it's so
> damn flaky).

When I'm writing small demos, I'm generaly using something like FMOD or
BASS that are two nice libraries that unfortunately exists only on PC...
Well, all that to say that in the FMOD documentation the author explains 
that his tests shows that software mixing is generaly faster and of better
quality than hardware mixing, due to various things like the fact that the
drivers are crappy...


 
> I've never done an audio mixer before, but I understand the general
> theory of audio mixing.  Anyone have any pointers, tips, gotchas before
> I dive into it?

Basicaly it's just a loop that makes the signed sum of values of 
interpolated samples... nothing to be mad about :)

The first thing to consider, is that when you are doing software mixing
you have virtually an unlimited number of voices. You can also perform
reverberation pretty easily. Pausing the sound replay also became very
easy.
Among the problems I see, is the fact that you have to double bufferize
to make it efficient. If you make the buffer too long, you will have too
much delay in the sound replay. If you make it too short, you can suffer
problems with frame rate variation (tip => make it in another thread).
[Note: Sometimes instead of double buffering you can have ring buffers
with read/write pointers.]

You can also have problems with interpolation. I remember that numerous
demo making sites talk about this (about sound tracker replays, and how
to make it nice from adlib to Gus cards), and especialy all that is 
related to "clicks", looped samples, ...


    Mickael Pointier
Eden Studios

Re: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Mads B. D. <ma...@ch...>]

On Sat, 16 Mar 2002, Ignacio Casta=F1o wrote:

> Hi,
> I will be writting sound mixer next week, and I have to admit that I have=
 no
> idea of sound programming. I could use sdl or any other library, but i ju=
st
> want to do that myself to learn how it's done. I've been looking for info
> about sound programming witout much look, I've only found low level detai=
ls
> about the sound blaster :-(
> So if somebody knows where to find a good tutorial about this, I would
> really appreciate it.

I do not know about tutorials, but I wrote my own mixer once in about 1000
lines of code. It used a seperate thread, because I thought that to be
easier. The problem with my code was that I could only support mone 8 bit
samples. This is easy to do. When you want to support stereo, or even more
channels, and formats where the byte order is important (e.g. 16 bit
samples), it begins to suck. Also, you need to support a number of
different interfaces if you wish your code to work across platforms.

> Anyway, I just can learn that by reading source code, for example, quake'=
s
> sound engine runs on every game update, while sdl's and minifmod's run in=
 a
> different thread. Updating the audio in the game loop seems to be easier =
to
> me, at least i have to write less platform independant code, but it seems
> that you have that work already done. On the other hand threaded audio se=
ems
> to be the right thing, since most libraries do that.

Threaded is easier. For _ultimate_ performance, you want to schedule
yourself, in this case from the game loop.

But, seriously, who needs that? Carmack might, because he writes to
highend metal, but the rest of us? You loose SMP benefits, etc.

YMMV.

Mads

--=20
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               ma...@ch...
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it.
  - Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 1907 (many times wrongfully
    attributed to Voltaire)

Re: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[<cas...@ya...>]

Hi,
I will be writting sound mixer next week, and I have to admit that I have no
idea of sound programming. I could use sdl or any other library, but i just
want to do that myself to learn how it's done. I've been looking for info
about sound programming witout much look, I've only found low level details
about the sound blaster :-(
So if somebody knows where to find a good tutorial about this, I would
really appreciate it.

Anyway, I just can learn that by reading source code, for example, quake's
sound engine runs on every game update, while sdl's and minifmod's run in a
different thread. Updating the audio in the game loop seems to be easier to
me, at least i have to write less platform independant code, but it seems
that you have that work already done. On the other hand threaded audio seems
to be the right thing, since most libraries do that.


Ignacio Castaño
ca...@as...


Brian Hook wrote:
> During the lull between Candy Cruncher and our next product I'd like to
> take a day and write our own audio mixer to minimize our dependencies on
> per-platform audio mixing capabilities.  We can survive without hardware
> mixing (in fact, we don't support it right now at all because it's so
> damn flaky).
>
> I've never done an audio mixer before, but I understand the general
> theory of audio mixing.  Anyone have any pointers, tips, gotchas before
> I dive into it?
>
> The overall architecture I envision is that the app will queue up sounds
> that will be told to play by our sound manager object.  At regular
> intervals the sound manager is told to mix the currently active audio
> into a buffer that gets dumped to whatever output device we have.  I
> already have a good chunk of this in place because that's how our
> streaming audio works -- in fact, it would be relatively trivial for me
> to just have the streaming audio thread mix in external sound buffers.
>
> The only bit I'm concerned about is servicing the audio via a thread vs.
> servicing the audio during game updates.  A separate thread (or
> interrupt on MacOS....God, will that operating system PLEASE die?!) at
> least prevents me from having the audio puke on a long file load.
>
> Brian



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RE: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

> Have you considered looking at the SDL? www.libsdl.org - it 
> works on Mac, Linux, Windows and a number of other platforms. 

I'm familiar with it, given that we use it for our MacOS, BeOS and Linux
games =)  I avoided it early on because it was faster for me to just
write up my own stuff (where I controlled the abstractions) instead of
becoming dependent on a third party.  If I had to do it all over again I
may have gone 100% SDL though.

> Another candidate could be "OpenAL" - www.openal.org. 

I have no aversion to using open source software -- we use Ogg Vorbis,
Lua, Zlib, and IJG (JPG)-- but I try to do so only when there's a very
compelling reason to do so.  Integrating OpenAL or SDL into our main
source trunk will probably take longer than just writing an audio mixer.

Brian

Re: [GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Mads B. D. <ma...@ch...>]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Brian Hook wrote:

> 
> During the lull between Candy Cruncher and our next product I'd like to
> take a day and write our own audio mixer to minimize our dependencies on
> per-platform audio mixing capabilities.  We can survive without hardware
> mixing (in fact, we don't support it right now at all because it's so
> damn flaky).

[..]
> 
> The only bit I'm concerned about is servicing the audio via a thread vs.
> servicing the audio during game updates.  A separate thread (or
> interrupt on MacOS....God, will that operating system PLEASE die?!) at
> least prevents me from having the audio puke on a long file load.

Have you considered looking at the SDL? www.libsdl.org - it works on Mac,
Linux, Windows and a number of other platforms. It uses the LGPL license,
which means that you can do commercial stuff with it as well as OSS. (Loki
beeing a prime example of the commercial approach - economic problems
aside).

Take a look at it - it is not very sophisticated, but it does work. 

Another candidate could be "OpenAL" - www.openal.org. The website looks
quite stale, but there are current stuff in the cvs. LGPL as well
(IIRC). Supported platforms include at least Linux and Windows. (I can't
remember if Mac is supported).

Mads

-- 
Mads Bondo Dydensborg.                               ma...@ch...
The Microsoft Dictionary:

           interoperability: The ability of a Microsoft product to operate
                             with another Microsoft product.

[GD-General] Writing an audio mixer

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

During the lull between Candy Cruncher and our next product I'd like to
take a day and write our own audio mixer to minimize our dependencies on
per-platform audio mixing capabilities.  We can survive without hardware
mixing (in fact, we don't support it right now at all because it's so
damn flaky).

I've never done an audio mixer before, but I understand the general
theory of audio mixing.  Anyone have any pointers, tips, gotchas before
I dive into it?

The overall architecture I envision is that the app will queue up sounds
that will be told to play by our sound manager object.  At regular
intervals the sound manager is told to mix the currently active audio
into a buffer that gets dumped to whatever output device we have.  I
already have a good chunk of this in place because that's how our
streaming audio works -- in fact, it would be relatively trivial for me
to just have the streaming audio thread mix in external sound buffers.

The only bit I'm concerned about is servicing the audio via a thread vs.
servicing the audio during game updates.  A separate thread (or
interrupt on MacOS....God, will that operating system PLEASE die?!) at
least prevents me from having the audio puke on a long file load.

Brian

Re: [GD-General] XML Parser

[Ivan-Assen I. <as...@ha...>]

> If you just need to do some quick tooling, there are several XML tools
> for Java that are very functional and easier than Xerces. We have used
> nanoxml, which is tiny and easy to implement for simple stuff.

And once the thread has strayed outside the One True Language,
I should mention that the XML support in .NET is very nice and easy to use.

Re: [GD-General] XML Parser

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

If you just need to do some quick tooling, there are several XML tools
for Java that are very functional and easier than Xerces. We have used
nanoxml, which is tiny and easy to implement for simple stuff.

And I recently whipped off some useful XML tooling code in a couple of
hours using Python.

	Kent

Chris Brodie wrote:
> 
> I've been using Expat for quite a while to parse my documents. I've now come to the point where I need to start writing data back in to my XML documents.
> 
> I've had a quick look around but all I've managed to find is Xerces, which seems to be so massive that I'm finding it dificult to understand(besides the fact that the DLL way larger than the rest of my application).
> 
> Anyone have suggestions for a lightweight XML parser + Writer?
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Chris
> 
> NOTICE
> This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material of Macquarie Bank or third parties. If you are not the intended recipient of this email you should not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on this e-mail or any attachments, and should destroy all copies of them. Macquarie Bank does not guarantee the integrity of any emails or any attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Macquarie Bank.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Quirk                   | MindRover: "Astonishingly creative."
Game Architect               | Check it out!
ken...@co...      | http://www.mindrover.com/
_____________________________|_________________________________________

RE: [GD-General] XML Parser

[Gareth L. <GL...@cl...>]

Take a look at http://www.firstobject.com/dn_markup.htm

If you need a simpler but less restrictive ( license wise ) version they
have a cut down version on CodeProject.

I really like it myself.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Brodie [mailto:Chr...@ma...]
Sent: 07 March 2002 08:28
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-General] XML Parser


Thanks for the help guys, I might try to write one myself. I don't need
performance as I'm just saving settings to config files. After some recent
emails I realised that my internal data representation is a tree structure
anyway so it shouldn't be too hard I guess to dump that back to disk in some
formatted way.

Thanks all for your consideration

Chris


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RE: [GD-General] XML Parser

[Chris B. <Chr...@ma...>]

Thanks for the help guys, I might try to write one myself. I don't need performance as I'm just saving settings to config files. After some recent emails I realised that my internal data representation is a tree structure anyway so it shouldn't be too hard I guess to dump that back to disk in some formatted way.

Thanks all for your consideration

Chris


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This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material of Macquarie Bank or third parties. If you are not the intended recipient of this email you should not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on this e-mail or any attachments, and should destroy all copies of them. Macquarie Bank does not guarantee the integrity of any emails or any attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Macquarie Bank. 

RE: [GD-General] XML Parser

[Awen L. <ali...@ed...>]

You can use the (probably embedded on your system) xml stuff from Microsoft.
Works well from me. Cost you some COM understanding, and probably intensive
memory alloc/free. But...
(btw Xerces is smarter)

-----Message d'origine-----
De : gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]De la part de
Chris Brodie
Envoyé : jeudi 7 mars 2002 02:04
À : 'gam...@li...'
Objet : [GD-General] XML Parser


I've been using Expat for quite a while to parse my documents. I've now come
to the point where I need to start writing data back in to my XML documents.

I've had a quick look around but all I've managed to find is Xerces, which
seems to be so massive that I'm finding it dificult to understand(besides
the fact that the DLL way larger than the rest of my application).

Anyone have suggestions for a lightweight XML parser + Writer?

Many thanks

Chris


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This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright
material of Macquarie Bank or third parties. If you are not the intended
recipient of this email you should not read, print, re-transmit, store or
act in reliance on this e-mail or any attachments, and should destroy all
copies of them. Macquarie Bank does not guarantee the integrity of any
emails or any attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the
author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Macquarie Bank.


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[GD-General] XML Parser

[Chris B. <Chr...@ma...>]

I've been using Expat for quite a while to parse my documents. I've now come to the point where I need to start writing data back in to my XML documents. 

I've had a quick look around but all I've managed to find is Xerces, which seems to be so massive that I'm finding it dificult to understand(besides the fact that the DLL way larger than the rest of my application).

Anyone have suggestions for a lightweight XML parser + Writer?

Many thanks

Chris


NOTICE
This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material of Macquarie Bank or third parties. If you are not the intended recipient of this email you should not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on this e-mail or any attachments, and should destroy all copies of them. Macquarie Bank does not guarantee the integrity of any emails or any attached files. The views or opinions expressed are the author's own and may not reflect the views or opinions of Macquarie Bank. 

RE: [GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

More wild guesswork - READ_PORT_ULONG reads a ULONG from a hardware
register? This is a common part of waiting until a blit has completed on the
hardware. This is done so that rendering in a windows doesn't buffer up
hundreds of frames - the driver waits until the blit used by Present()
actually finishes rendering before submitting any more data.

When you go fullscreen, you're using a buffer flip instead, which often uses
a different throttling mechanism.

No idea what HalRequestlpi does. Best ask Richard Huddy - he's the nVidia
driver expert.


Tom Forsyth - purely hypothetical Muckyfoot bloke.

This email is the product of your deranged imagination,
and does not in any way imply existence of the author.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barstow Jason [mailto:JBa...@uk...]
> Sent: 06 March 2002 15:50
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: RE: [GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required
> 
> 
> > > hall.dll			35%
> > > 
> > > That 35% in hall.dll breaks down to
> > > 	READ_PORT_ULONG
> > > and
> > > 	HalRequestlpi
> > > (among some others)
> > 
> > A wild guess: "hall" ~= "hardware abstraction layer <something>"
> > 
> > Another guess: the time is spent waiting for the graphics card to
> > complete some operations.  I.e. your CPU has more graphics commands
> > for your GPU, but has to wait for the GPU input queue to have some
> > room before it can write the new commands.  Meanwhile the 
> GPU is busy
> > filling pixels.
> > 
> > Try rendering to a smaller window to see if the time proportions
> > change.
> 
> Sorry, I made a typo; it is indeed hal.dll (the kernal 
> hardware abstraction
> layer)
> I ran the initial test @ 400 x 300 x 16bit windowed.
> 
> I've subsequently disabled rendering altogether (the 
> device->Present still
> operative)
> and sound and dplay and dinput, and the spike is still there.
> 
> However, switching to fullscreen and the READ_PORT_ULONG disappears.
> (HalRequestlpi is still there.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-general mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-general
> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=557
> 

Re: [GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required

[Thatcher U. <tu...@tu...>]

On Mar 06, 2002 at 10:39 -0500, Thatcher Ulrich wrote:
> Another guess: the time is spent waiting for the graphics card to
> complete some operations.  I.e. your CPU has more graphics commands
> for your GPU, but has to wait for the GPU input queue to have some
> room before it can write the new commands.  Meanwhile the GPU is busy
> filling pixels.

Or, waiting for vsync.

> Try rendering to a smaller window to see if the time proportions
> change.

Also, try disabling vsync.

-- 
Thatcher Ulrich <tu...@tu...>
http://tulrich.com

RE: [GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required

[Barstow J. <JBa...@uk...>]

> > hall.dll			35%
> > 
> > That 35% in hall.dll breaks down to
> > 	READ_PORT_ULONG
> > and
> > 	HalRequestlpi
> > (among some others)
> 
> A wild guess: "hall" ~= "hardware abstraction layer <something>"
> 
> Another guess: the time is spent waiting for the graphics card to
> complete some operations.  I.e. your CPU has more graphics commands
> for your GPU, but has to wait for the GPU input queue to have some
> room before it can write the new commands.  Meanwhile the GPU is busy
> filling pixels.
> 
> Try rendering to a smaller window to see if the time proportions
> change.

Sorry, I made a typo; it is indeed hal.dll (the kernal hardware abstraction
layer)
I ran the initial test @ 400 x 300 x 16bit windowed.

I've subsequently disabled rendering altogether (the device->Present still
operative)
and sound and dplay and dinput, and the spike is still there.

However, switching to fullscreen and the READ_PORT_ULONG disappears.
(HalRequestlpi is still there.)

Re: [GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required

[Thatcher U. <tu...@tu...>]

On Mar 06, 2002 at 11:16 -0000, Barstow Jason wrote:
> I'm profiling our (DX8,PC) game and getting the following results :
> 
> System : Win2000, Geforce2 GTS
> 
> game.exe			15%
> nv4_disp.dll		10%
> ntoskrnl.exe		14%
> hall.dll			35%
> 
> That 35% in hall.dll breaks down to
> 	READ_PORT_ULONG
> and
> 	HalRequestlpi
> (among some others)
> 
> Can anyone offer advice on what the hal.dll hit is/means?

A wild guess: "hall" ~= "hardware abstraction layer <something>"

Another guess: the time is spent waiting for the graphics card to
complete some operations.  I.e. your CPU has more graphics commands
for your GPU, but has to wait for the GPU input queue to have some
room before it can write the new commands.  Meanwhile the GPU is busy
filling pixels.

Try rendering to a smaller window to see if the time proportions
change.

-- 
Thatcher Ulrich <tu...@tu...>
http://tulrich.com

[GD-General] Assistance with VTune results required

[Barstow J. <JBa...@uk...>]

I'm profiling our (DX8,PC) game and getting the following results :

System : Win2000, Geforce2 GTS

game.exe			15%
nv4_disp.dll		10%
ntoskrnl.exe		14%
hall.dll			35%

That 35% in hall.dll breaks down to
	READ_PORT_ULONG
and
	HalRequestlpi
(among some others)

Can anyone offer advice on what the hal.dll hit is/means?

Thanks,
Jason Barstow.

[GD-General] J2ME for scripting

[Warrick B. <War...@po...>]

Has anyone had any experience using J2ME for game scripting?  I looked at
using Java a few years ago for scripting (Among others such as Python,
Netscapes JavaScript, ...) but it seemed too heavy weight back then (Seemed
like it worked well in Vampire the Masquerade though) but from what I've
read of J2ME it seems somewhat slimmer (With it running on mobile phones
etc..).  I tried navigating the sun site but I'm at a loss what I need to
download as I just need the minimum of a bare bones compiler & VM + docs -
I'm not interested in any of their APIs as I will most likely want to
replace them if I were to use it (Apart from maybe some stuff like string
manipulation etc...).  Also I'm not clear on Suns licensing issues regarding
Java these days...

Many Thanks,

Warrick.

Re: [GD-General] Arcade games' levels

[<cas...@ya...>]

Ignacio Castaño
> But use a gpl editor to make non-gpl maps. Anyway, I think our version was
> licensed under different conditions.

I meant that you can use a gpl program and the results don't need to be
under gpl, for example you can use gimp and your artwork won't be under gpl.


Ignacio Castaño
ca...@as...



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Re: [GD-General] Arcade games' levels

[<cas...@ya...>]

Death Hunter wrote:
> > The problem of csg editors is that you have to clip overlapping brushes,
> > remove invisible faces, etc. but if you don't care about that i'd
> recommend
> > you quark. At Crytek we used a modified version of it, and everybody was
> > really happy.
> >
> >
> But it's GPL!!! God, I hate that license.

But use a gpl editor to make non-gpl maps. Anyway, I think our version was
licensed under different conditions.


Ignacio Castaño
ca...@as...



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Re: [GD-General] Arcade games' levels

[<cas...@ya...>]

Death Hunter wrote:
> How are the levels in standard 3d arcade games modelled? Like Rayman2,
MDK2,

In MDK2 they used 3dsmax, you can find some articles about using 3dsmax for
level design in www.gamasutra.com

In our case we also use it, but in my opinion it is a pain in the ass. The
most difficult thing is mapping the levels, with csg editors that's done
automatically and with farly good results, then you can ajust (scale,
translate and rotate) the texture coordinates. If somebody knows a method to
do that in 3dsmax, please let me know...

The problem of csg editors is that you have to clip overlapping brushes,
remove invisible faces, etc. but if you don't care about that i'd recommend
you quark. At Crytek we used a modified version of it, and everybody was
really happy.


Ignacio Castaño
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[GD-General] Arcade games' levels

[Death H. <dea...@ga...>]

Hi!

    I have a few questions on the subject.

Have you ever played Pandemonium? Tarzan? 3D games where levels are full 3d
enviroments, but you move your character only left-right/jump. I'm wondering
how is that achieved. How do I know where is the 'walking path' for the
character? How are levels like these edited? They act as if they were 2d,
just look and move in 3d.

How are the levels in standard 3d arcade games modelled? Like Rayman2, MDK2,
etc. In Unreal, Quake and similar FPS games, everything is composed of
brushes and everything is geometrically pretty regular. But in those games,
everything looks much more natural, not everything is inside some buildings,
and there are so many types of surfaces with which you can interact.

I hope I'm not offtopic...

DHunter

Re: [GD-General] FPS style input Control

[Paul C. <pa...@pa...>]

What you want is quaternions.  Using quaternions to build your camera matrix
removes the nasty singularities, and allows you to rotate right round, 360
degrees, without any problems.  Try doing a search through the gd-algo list
on quaternions and google should turn up alot of info.  Theres a pdf at
http://www.magic-software.com/Doc.html that describes the quaternion math
you need, (and http://mathworld.wolfram.com is another good resource) which
should give you most of the info you need.  The quaternion to matrix
conversion is probably the important bit :).

hth

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Idahosa Edokpayi" <ida...@sw...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 4:00 AM
Subject: [GD-General] FPS style input Control


> Given control input with X and Y axes how do I use the axes to do FPS
style
> of control. I know about pitch and yaw but I would like to not have the
> discontinuity at the poles, i.e. you can't look straight up or down.
>
> Idahosa Edokpayi
>
>
>
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