Clockwork-Muse

176 reputation

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	176 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 11 months
3 badges		location	Redmond, WA		seen	13 hours ago

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Jun 7	comment	How to load up many images without using too much memory 1) If something is 1/4th smaller, it will take up 1/4th less space, or 3/4th of the original space. 2) BMPs can be uncompressed; also, in general there's a tradeoff between storage size and processing time (ie a table of contents in a book takes an extra page).
Feb 20	comment	Java2D Collision Detection From a general programming perspective, you should be using 'Generics' if at all possible; among other things, it'd make it so you don't have to (explicitly) cast types.
Jan 23	comment	What is a good way to load more than a million images for a collectible card game? `...not fit in RAM...` - depending on the OP's target platform it may not fit on the hard-drive; 1,000,000 x 100kB = 95.37 GB (or so). No way I'm downloading a game that size (initially, although background processes could help here). And 100kB is small - most 'good' card games have quite a bit more detail (read: larger images). There must be something else going on here, because you wouldn't be able to test the interaction between all card combinations easily either (the previously mentioned Magic has enough problems with 12k cards).
Jan 3	comment	How can I remove enemies from my ArrayList after they have died? Without more information, this will be difficult to address completely.
Jan 3	comment	How can I remove enemies from my ArrayList after they have died? +1 - A decently thought out answer that, y'know, actually usefully answers the question (given the current information).
Dec 5	comment	XNA 2D Top Down game - FOREACH didn't work for checking Enemy and Switch-Tile At minimum, you can probably speed up this method by checking `switch.Active` outside the loop over enemies. Also, don't check booleans with `==` - just use the boolean itself (so, `switch.Active && ....`). Personally, the use also seems conceptually backwards (mostly because it's doing two things, not one). You also need to check whether the enemy is currently trapped (and time elapsed if so) - currently enemies are 'permanently stuck' because you keep adding to `moveCounter` every frame, not only when initially being trapped.
Nov 27	comment	Converting a hipoly model to a lowpoly model What program did you use to make the original model? Some tools have this sort of generation built in.
Nov 21	comment	Efficient Algorithm for Recording gameplay's objects positions What about deterministic NPC behavior? Like, say, the output of a script? You may be able to reduce some things a bit better that way.
Nov 12	comment	How to create a reasonably sized urban area manually but efficiently At least around where I live, there's a bunch of houses that are all based on the same plan (or parts of plans, which allowed for some customization). I mean, down to window sizes, etc; including my parent's place. Which means that, without any modifications, the houses literally look like re-colored versions of each other, as if on a memory-limited system... It can be fun to find the 'look alikes' in other neighborhoods.
Sep 6	comment	P2P synchronization: can a player update fields of other players? Unfortunately, without a (trusted, independent) 3rd party, stopping the other party from cheating is impossible. The design of your game may limit the extent of cheating; however, in any situation where either party can be (and is equally likely to be) hostile, you need somebody they both will trust.
Jun 22	comment	Bejewelled Next Best jewel selection Sorry, no, I was thinking of Hexic. But, with sufficient different gems, it would be possible to enter a situation where the engine would have to generate a matching trio every single time to allow continuous play (because nothing else would score). Which might be interesting to see, but not very playable.
Jun 22	comment	Bejewelled Next Best jewel selection It only rotates 120 degrees at a time, right? So what happens if you display a board that (due to previous moves) has scoreable distributions elsewhere in the board, requiring 5 moves from a newly placed block, and the player clicks something wrong first?
Jun 15	comment	Game Resource Generation For these battles, what happens if they lose? Do they lose all those units? What happens if they're disconnected during a battle?
Jun 14	comment	Game Resource Generation What's the time resolution that needs to be saved - what if the player unexpectedly looses connection? What type of game - is this like the 'player cities' in Age of Empires online, or like the individual battles players engage in?
Jun 8	comment	Android Game Development problem with Speed = Distance / Time This isn't the issue, and you've missed something even more important - because Java passes by value, `Math.round()` can't change the value: you have to use the return value of the function.
Jun 5	comment	Can I run into legal issues with random names? Besides the possibility of legal notices, you may want to be able to exclude randomly generated names that turn out to be... 'unfortunate'... regardless.
May 30	comment	Serverside memory efficiency and threading for a turn based game If it is turn based, I'd probably do this as a webservice, and provide a 'default' client. Make it easier for porting to other platforms, too...
May 18	comment	Detecting wins in peer to peer RTS games like Starcraft Actually, it gets even more fun. As @Nicol mentioned, as long as the two players agree, the server's not going to bother arguing. You could use this as a basline for establishing a player's basic skill level, as well as their trustworthyness, which could be used to determine the likelyhood of who the disputed win actually belongs to. The server may also ask for replay data, although since you could also lie about that...
May 1	comment	Model in Maya looks strange, what went wrong? Random wierd issues (or me just not catching something immediately) is why I turned on the incremental saves feature. I've currently got it limited to the previous 5, but unless the model is huge, you could probably set it to infinity. I think it also saves camera state, although if it doesn't, the fact that you would know you had a 'good' model should help.
Apr 30	comment	How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy? Actually, in reference to EVE, it was possible at one point to commit insurance fraud - I'd found a source that was selling starting ships for less than the 'complete replacement' value (I think they must have been using some sort of 'average for class' value or something). I never took advantage of it, though...