My goal is to create some simple dice games, that show a more involved scoreboard and all other players on the main screen, but a general status of whose turn it is and scoreboard on the controller when it's not the players turn. That way you wouldn't need to see the main screen in order to play, but the main screen would still add value if you could see it. Anyone have any input on this?
This is generally possible, yes. Your question is very vague and the answer depends on what tools you intend to work with. Unity WebGL cannot be rendered on phones so far, but if you use JS based game creation tools, you can show whatever you like on the controller and main screen.
Related
I am an educational content developer converting traditional lessons and materials into online activities. I make videos showing these materials being moved around a table or board, and need a way for them to practice at home.
In the past, I've just made each card/etc on a Google Slide and set it up for kids to manipulate, but that can lead accidentally stretching or deleting something (or just playing around).
What I need:
Import images.
Set one image as background
Set other images as cards that can be clicked and dragged on background.
Ideally, set specific areas where different card can be placed.
Place starting cards in stacks (ideally, either in specific order or shuffled)
Return cards to original stacks with one click.
Ideally, cards on which users can write their own text and/or import picture.
What is the easiest way to achieve this?
Stencyl seems totally capable but can do more so the tutorials aren't focused on something so simple. Dulst is built for cards specifically, but it seems more oriented to a Pokemon-style attack-your-enemy's-cards game.
Before I get shot down on this one, I realize that the 'how' answer for this question might be slightly debatable, however I'm more interested in the 'what'.
In a nut shell I want to know which methods I can use to interact with a PC video game interface. I want to create a program that can extract data from a video game market interface.
My first initial thought was that I would need to programmatically take screen shots and then use some Optical Character Recognition software to extract the text. Then run whatever operation on the extracted text to derive my incites.
Then I was thinking it might just be easier to have a bunch of mini screen shots that I just use to find matches on certain sections of the screen. When a match is found, I would then know what the text is on the screen, without having to actually 'extract' it.
For those out there whom have done this, can you point me in one direction or the other? Perhaps there is a method that I am completely unaware of.
If its the case that this question is not suitable for this forum. It would be much appreciated if you could direct me elsewhere.
Edit: I should probably add that I'm not looking to spend a fortune on this project... so any free software would be the best. Perhaps that's a tall order.
I'm starting to think Sikuli is the direction I'm going to go. Open Source image recognition software, integrates with Python, Ruby, Java, JDBC, JavaScript and more.
-- Expanding on the question --
There are basically 3 categories of tools:
Recorder while you manually work along your workflow, a recorder tracks your mouse and keyboard actions. After stopping the recording, you might playback (autorun your worflow). The recordings can usually be edited and augmented with additional features.
GUI aware the tool allows to programmatically operate on GUI elements like buttons. This is based on the knowledge of internal structures and names of the GUI elements and their features. Some of these tools also have a recording feature.
Visually the tool “sees” images (usually retangular pixel areas) on the screen and allows to act on these images using mouse and keyboard simulation. There might be some recorder feture as well with such a tool.
SikuliX belongs to the 3rd category and currently does not have a recorder feature.
Answer in progress...
In games with moddable UIs, like many MMOs, you could create a mod that streams data through a series of black and white squares that could be read with optical sensors. From there, a microcontroller could deliver the data back to the PC via USB or wifi.
My approach as a noob. First determine if OCR 100% needed, I think this plays a role in speed.
if possible:
-run game in window (allows for trouble shooting and easy troubleshooting)
-is there a high contrast option for game? Will help Sikuli find things
then you plan out your scenarios:
You have to create different functions for different situations. A lot of gaming is "do you see this?" Then "do this" until that is gone.
Start with small parts you want to automate then build on them. Making sure your parts can scale in case small change need to happen, they will. For instance you want to open the menu if you see an object, lets say a tree.
Assume you have some sort of walking algorithm.
setROI(region1) #focus here for tree
if exists(tRee):
click(loCation) #you could hit the shortcut key to opening the menu
click(iTem) #if the item moves in the menu then you may need to scroll to find it first or you can change the ROI and start seeing if sikuli can differentiate your item from one you dont want to click.
You would get that to loop into other actions and proceed. Goodluck.
I tried to sign up, but I was unable; perhaps a problem from my side. Hopefully I'll get an answer as anonymous.
I apologize for the grammar/syntax, but English isn't my native language.
Recently I lost my job, so I have enough spare time to try something fun. I decided to create a simple text RPG game for me and some friends. It will very close to the board games like Talisman, Dungeon Run, and HeroQuest, using dice and a simple attribute/skill system. So no 3d graphics. The only 2d element, if I decide to include it, will be a map
that will allow the hero to move between locations. Currently I'm using Windows XP SP3, for the game I use wxDev-C++, and although cross platform would be cool, I don't really care.
I have some experience in C++ (currently using wxDev-C++), but I'm far from being called an expert or even a great programmer. I was about to start writing parts of the code, but I decided to check if creating a GUI for the game is possible. In some forums, many suggested I use Qt, CEGUI or wxWidgets, but most examples I saw are grey boxes that are
indifferent at best, when I want something that fits better in a fantasy setting. I don't claim I would do better, but I want a GUI that is more fantasy related.
What I want from the GUI:
1. A "cool" Gui with decent graphics. I could even create an image to serve as a mask in Photoshop, but the GUI builder will have to support imported images.
2. A relatively large textbox in the middle (with a scrollbar) that will display die rolls, damage and options.
3. The ability to display dynamically values (like the change in the health after each action without requiring to refresh manually)
4. Display an icon or a small image of the character in the area where I display stats/abilities.
5. Open new windows created with tha same GUI builder to allocate points, buy/sell things and open a map.
About the map in the game: I decided to create a map in photoshop. When the hero decides to move to another location, a new window will open showing the map. I thought of 2 possible ways to move between locations: 1) Create hotspots on the image and select one by clicking on the name of the location.(I dare not think about the complexity of this so we
move to idea #2) and 2) Have the image as a backgroung to a grid with vertical and horizontal coordinates. When the hero selects a new area to visit, he clicks on the area, but what he really does is click on the grid, which returns the two values (x,y) of the location and informs the game about the area the hero wants to visit.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's too much, so what I'm most interested in are the 1-3. I know that even if they are possible, it will propably take forever, but as I said I have spare time, and I like learning new things. I apologize for the size of the post, but I decided to post as many info as possible so you know what I want.
If any of you has used Qt, CEGUI or wxWidgets could you tell which covers most of my criteria? I saw some great stuff build with CEGUI, but I don't know if it is too hard to learn?
Thank in advance.
I know my answer comes pretty late, I only recently started using stackoverflow fairly recently, but maybe this response will help anybody.
CEGUI fully supports skinning widgets using XML. Our CEED editor (WYSIWYG) fully supports layout editing, but the skinning editor (LNF editor) is not finished as of now (11.11.2014), the development version supports exchanging images however and changing sizes and proportions, but more advanced adjustments have to be done in XML.
CEGUI has an imageset editor, fully supported by the CEED editor. Creating imagesets (sets of named subimages, with position and dimension inside a big texture atlas) is supported there. Additionally there is a way to create imagesets from just a bunch of jpg/png/... files using a tool. You would have to ask for specifics in the forum though because it is not integrated into CEED yet.
So basically with CEGUI you are free to make whatever fantasy GUI you want. Skinning simple elements like buttons and progress bars isn't much work in XML anyways. Without the finished editor, some more advanced widgets are more work to skin, but many skins have already been created done this way and some of them are even publically available in the forum and in the CEGUI stock files.
StaticText widgets supports what you want, you can even use images in there or change fonts and colours in the text if you want. Scrollbars are supported too.
I am not sure what you mean by this. You have to specify this.
A simple "Generic/Image" widget is available in CEGUI for this purpose. You can use precreated images or even RTT textures.
You can create and destroy windows in CEGUI without issues.
Regarding the map: I m not sure what you mean, but getting the position of a click in respect to an image (representing the map) is possible in CEGUI.
CEGUI is not particularly hard to learn. There is always the forums and the chat if you got questions. For an Open Source project it is quite well documented so if you read all of the API docu, and look at the supplied samples in the sample browser, you should already get quite far. And for everything additional there is the forum (search), the IRC chat and a community wiki (mind the targeted versions of an article there though)
For a project like yours, CEGUI seems perfectly suited (this is what it was created for in the first place). Qt is not really optimal for games for numerous reasons. wxWidgets I have never used.
I'm developing my first Android game and I'm having a bit of difficulty making the UI as smooth as I would like. I've spent a couple of hours googling around with no luck, I'm probably just searching for the wrong thing.
I have two different XML layout resources where each layout contains just one SurfaceView subclass. When I call activity.setContentView(R.layout.second_layout) to transition from the first layout to the second layout there is a noticeable period of time where a black screen (with a small white bar along the top) is displayed in between the two views.
I've tried various things such as; constructing the second view manually at runtime (i.e not using a layout XML file), calling activity.overridePendingTransition(android.R.anim.fade_in, android.R.anim.fade_out) after activity.setContentView(R.layout.second_layout) and attempting to render to the canvas before the view has loaded (turns out the canvas is unavailable).
I don't see other games (or apps) having this issue so I presume there is a reasonably simple solution.
If you need some more information about my particular situation in order to help out then please let me know what information is missing. Any help would be largely appreciated.
Update: My answer below was written in 2010. Since then Fragments have become the norm, particularly since Fragment nesting was made possible and the support library allows this functionality to be used in a backwards compatible fashion. As such, instead of transitioning to a new Activity to perform a new "user task", you can use the one Activity and push and pop fragments within that Activity's view hierarchy. Animations can also be performed as a part of a fragment transaction (e.g. Fragment transaction animation: slide in and slide out).
This became pretty apparent not long after posting this question, however I thought I should come back here and make it clear to everyone else.
Activities are positively the way to go when developing for Android. Don't be put off by the fact that a transition may seem too minor for a separate Activity, the very foundation of Android is built around the idea of an Activity.
Many animation effects are simply gratuitous eye candy -- however, there are situations where animations effectively communicate to the user what's going on.
What are some of your favorite uses for animations, and what specific animation type would you use?
E.g.: Animate items downwards when a new item is inserted into a list
I really like Google Chrome's use when a file is being downloaded. It's hard to describe, but, it's a circle that fills like a pie chart as the download progresses, and the circle is overlaid with the icon for the file you're downloading. Very slick.
One example I can think of is the animation used by operating systems when you minimize a window.
Both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X animate the window going down to the taskbar (or the Dock in OS X) to show the user where the window went. Otherwise novice users that hit minimize by accident might have trouble getting the window back.
I don't use linux, but I'm pretty sure it does the same. I'm not being discriminative =)
From enjoy3d.com
enjoy3d.com http://worldsware.com/images/mouse.gif
Press your mouse button
and move to look around.
There is a very nice paper by Ben Bederson and Angela Boltman in which they evaluate the impact of animation on user’s ability to build a mental map of the information in the space:
Does Animation Help Users Build Mental Maps
of Spatial Information?
I believe that all visual changes should not be swift. Be it status notification, window maximized/minimized, or data deleted/added. I cannot find a reference, but usually it is recommended that all animations should not be around 1-2 seconds, matching human's response time.
My favorite uses of animation is not in a commercial software (though Apple is good at this) but a research paper called Phosphor which I consider one of the great UI ideas that have not yet implemented into major operating systems.
AJAX loading gifs - you've got to have an indicator that you definitely registered an event and you're doing something about it
Progress bars are nice for things that take more than a moment or two, but only when they are accurate. An inaccurate progress bar is worse than none, in my opinion.