I'm making an isometric city builder using Monogame Extended and Tiled. I've got everything set-up and now i need to somehow access the specific tiles so i can change them at runtime as the user clicks on a tile to build an object. The problem is, i can't seem to find a "map.GetLayer("Layername").GetTile(x,y) or .SetTile(x,y) function or something similar.
Now what i can do is edit the xml(.tmx) file which has a matrix in it that represents the map and it's drawn tiles. The problem with this is that i need to build the map in the content pipeline again after editing for the changes to be displayed. I can't really build at runtime or can i?
Thanks in advance!
Something like this will get you part way there.
var tileLayer = map.GetLayer<TiledMapTileLayer>("layername");
TiledMapTile tile;
if(tileLayer.TryGetTile(x, y, out tile))
{
// do something with tile
}
However, there's only a limited amount of things you can actually do with the tile once you've got it from the map.
There's no such thing as a SetTile method because changing tile data at runtime is not currently supported. This is a limitation of the renderer, which has been optimized for rendering very large maps by building static geometry that can't be changed once it's loaded into the graphics card.
There has been some discussion about building another renderer that would handle dynamic map changes but at this stage nothing like that has been implemented in the library. You could always have a go at implementing a simple renderer yourself, a really basic one is not as hard as you might think.
An alternative approach to dealing with this kind of problem might be to pre-process the map data before giving it to the renderer. The idea would be to effectively separate the layers of the map that are static from those that are dynamic and render the dynamic tiles as normal sprites. Just a thought, I'm not sure about the details of how this might work.
I plan to eventually revisit the Tiled API in the next major version of MonoGame.Extended. Don't hold your breath, these things can take a lot of time, but I am paying attention to the feedback and kinds of problems people are experiencing with the existing API.
Since the map data is stored in a XML (or csv) file which runs through the Content Pipeline you can not change it at runtime.
Anyways, in a city builder you usually do not change existing tiles but you place object on top of existing tiles.
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I started a new Xcode project with the ARKit template and simply replaced the "ship.scn" with my "test.scn" filename asset. The object is about 16.5mm wide and 4.8mm tall. The ship worked fine of course, but my test object that reads "test" does not rotate as I move around it, or scale when I move towards or away from it, yet it does track in one location.
I compared the ship and test attribute panels, and I can't find anything that is different about them, except that the ship is textured and my test text is not. What is inherently special about scn objects that would make them behave correctly in ARKit besides their size? I've read through the documentation about anchoring, but it seems like I wouldn't have to do this in code if it's already a scn object.
In case anyone wants to test the file I'm using in the ARKit template to see how it's behaving, the file is here: https://ufile.io/ey49t
I’m answering the question because I think it could help others that are making a similar mistake, but it can be closed if it doesn’t make sense.
The problem is that the size was much too large where I could not see scaling or rotation no matter how much I moved around the room. Compare the scaled size in the last attribute panel on the ship model - not its actual size. Then get the size of your own model scaled down enough so that it is actually resonable.
The 10.2.7 runtime has the class 'AttributeLabelClass' that allows you to format the labels for graphics and add it to a GraphicsLayer such that all Graphics with a certain attribute will render the same way.
Does anyone know if anything like this survived into the 100.0+ timeframe? I've been looking all over for this with no luck (which usually means it's right in front of my nose).
I'm fairly sure something like this exists because I've seen prototype demos of their efforts to resolve label confliction rendering issues.
We're hoping to have this feature back in Update 1. The public API might not be fully complete by then, but you'll at least be able to set everything with the json definition, and a more full-blown API for all the properties by Update 2.
I'm making a silverlight website which includes paint-like features including freedraw. To achieve this I used the technique described on the following website: http://codeding.com/articles/freehand-drawing-in-silverlight .
The problem is, when I run the demo project it will start to lag extremely after just a few seconds of drawing. I realise that that is probably caused by the amount of shapes this techniue requires, however, and this is my main question:
How on earth does the demo on the website not lag nomatter howmuch I draw, while my local project which should have the EXACT same code lags right away?
I tried finding something about improving canvas performance overall, but the only thing I found was turning the drawing into a static image, which is not really ideal since I use undo/redo functionality.
The number of shapes added to the Canvas shouldn't be the reason for the lagging, there must be something else like converting the drawing into image for undo/redo functionality. For undo/redo, you can save the strokes-information instead of images. Creating & storing images during each undo/redo operation will consume too much memory.
A stroke is nothing but a set of points from the start (mousedown event) to end (mouseup event), and a set of strokes forms a complete drawing. You can always recreate the drawing using the saved strokes-information (just like you can recreate using images). You can use simple data-structures like List<List<Point>> to store a complete drawing, this is very memory efficient instead of creating & storing the image itself.
A few days ago I've explored geomaps and, however, it turned out to be easy to change the properties of the elements.
But I have two questions:
I'd like to add rivers and forests on the maps. So Ive considered to set a background image instead of the geomaps figure. But I can't find a way to get this one fixed. Is there a way to set a background picture for a country or region?
How can I change the shape of the "bubbles" when you select a city e.g. "London"? I'd like to change it to a square.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Unfortunately what you're looking for is not available in geocharts in their current implementation.
Using a background image is possible in the sense that you can use CSS to make all shapes in the map transparent, and use a background image in the div to make it appear as if the little circles are being drawn on a map with forest and rivers, but you will run in to two big hurdles:
Your map will need to be identical in size/layout to the Google Maps SVG
If Google ever changes the SVG they use (or the view/projection they use) you will need to edit yours too
This isn't ideal, obviously. You could work around it by creating custom javascript to write rivers and forests on your map, but that is going to be a huge headache (especially if you are using multiple maps/views).
As for the circles, you can't change them to squares without hacking the actual SVG in the background with javascript. While this is definitely possible (if you're really good with SVG/Javascript), it again isn't using any of the fancy features of geocharts, and is more just a custom solution that will have to be updated if/when google updates their API.
Rather than doing it that way, you may want to look in to the same implementation on google maps itself. That will allow you to use custom markers, draw custom shapes, etc. with a lot more flexibility (and a much more stable API).
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.