monogame-and-libgdx-dev

[compact willow]

@vale dew in C#?
You can use the Func<> generic type if the function you wish to pass has a return type, and the Action<> generic type otherwise

[vale dew]

@compact willow iam making a timer class and i want to do

if (this.time <= 0){
 this.function();
}

and i want this.function to be set by a paremeter when new object created (sorry for english)

[compact willow]

so the function will have a void return type and no arguments?

[vale dew]

it may have a arguments but i set them when creating the new object

[compact willow]

the function's footprint needs to be absolute to pass it as an argument

[vale dew]

ok i have to go to study now will try again when i comeback

[hot hazel]

you can use any delegate

Action<T> and Func<T> are just convenient generic options

[quiet ibex]

@vale dew you have to remember that the method you're passing the delegate to has to be able to invoke it

Func<> and Action<> covers all the method signatures that you should ever need

if you know some arguments ahead of time, you could make an invoker object that holds both the arguments and the delegate and invoke that

[hot hazel]

theres also standard EventArgs<T> if you are doing events

[quiet ibex]

you end up passing junk through them though, so unless you have a really good reason to pass a mostly useless object around, avoid them

[hot hazel]

i wrote my own event handlers for my UI code

event system*

[hot hazel]

explicit delegates are nice but not necessary

[orchid frigate]

Hello there,

Got a small problem with my current Monogame project. I did rewrite an old game I did write back in 2015 with a friend of mine.
For the core system I did write a ECS system which consists of the following interfaces

IGameEngine
IEntityManager
IEventManager

The game manager holds a instance if an implementation of the entity- and eventManager interfaces.

Know I was thinking about adding some kind of screen mechanic so that I can create a instance for example the main-, setting menu or the game itself. Each screen is part of a manager class which is a finite state machine. Only one screen could be active at once and each screen can create a transition to another screen by either creating a instance and push it to the FSM or by pop itself so the last screen is reactivated.

Now I was thinking what to do with the "game engine" instance holding the components, entitles and systems there a two possible scenarios in my head but both just doesn't sound right.

Passing the "ECS" container around between the screens clearing the content between the screens

• This would get me into trouble restoring an old state from a previous screen because I did clear the entites. caching the entites, components and systems in the screen and freeze them to add them later on seems fishy

Create a new "ECS" instance for each screen. Because only one screen is active at the time only one ECS would be updated and drawn but somehow my mind thinks this idea is not right as well

Is there something I do miss or is my mind just playing tricks to me and one of the solutions is totally fine?

[hot hazel]

what are these 'screens'

shouldnt only one need an ECS? (also id separate the ECS from the screens, maybe put it into a game container you can pass around if necessary)

(your game engine is the ECS)

also i dont think you need it to be an interface, presumably theres only one version of it

[orchid frigate]

A screen is some class implementing a interface
This "screen" should represent a state of the game such as a game menu

I think in unity this is called "scene"

The ECS itself is a "GameEngine" instance which holds a "EntityManager" and a "EventManager"

[hot hazel]

yeah, still seems like a spearate concept from your ECS

in my game, there is the UI code, which is any UI

the game and editor containers are both UI

the game and editor just have a reference to the current map/game instance

they're responsible for scheduling updating/drawing/etc the game, but the game itself handles everything game related

[orchid frigate]

So let's think about the following situation

I do start the game the ECS is filled with an entity per UI element with the components and systems needed to get everything into a working state

Now I click on the start game button

If I clear the entities in the manager everything is gone, which is okay in this situation

If I stick to this solution if I want to implement a pause menu in the game I need to delete all entities which will prevent me from restoring the old game state

I can't get my head around this problem 😦

[hot hazel]

why is your game code coupled to the UI like that?

why do you need to delete entities to display a pause menu?

[orchid frigate]

I could add a "disabled component" to them to tag them as inactive

Which could be implemented into the systems to stop watching all entitles which are tagged as disabled

[hot hazel]

still dont know why these two things are coupled like this

[orchid frigate]

Do you know the Entity Component System?

Maybe I did implement something wrong

[hot hazel]

yes

[compact willow]

ECS is not a catch-all solution

[hot hazel]

i still dont understand the relationship between your game entities and your UI code

[orchid frigate]

ECS is not a catch-all solution
@compact willow I know that it's just another way to represent your game entites
And the system is not the solution for every problem for the game structure

[compact willow]

right and the architecture need not be ubiquitous

[orchid frigate]

right and the architecture need not be ubiquitous
@compact willow So it is totally valid to use the ECS only in the game itself
For other screens like the menu something simpler could be used?

[compact willow]

Right. Only use ECS where ECS is warranted.
And always make sure that your UI logic is completely decoupled from your game logic

[hot hazel]

you can also have an ECS for your UI and an ECS for your entities

or even if you combine them, the UI can be loosely coupled to your game entities

[compact willow]

that too

I've been told that ECS is deceptively good for UI work

[orchid frigate]

i still dont understand the relationship between your game entities and your UI code
@hot hazel At the moment In my thinking an UI element is a entity with components representing the element

As example an visibleComponen
An PositionComponen
And clickableComponent

Some system is doing the logic

That's why in my head the things are so tightly coupled

[hot hazel]

well if you want, you could have an EntityHUD system or something?

theres several ways you could handle this

but you are going to likely want a UI hierarchy/tree

and all entity UIs go into one node

your pause menu/game code could disable the entity UI while the pause menu is active

[orchid frigate]

So to rethink the whole problem:

There are screen/scenes which can use different systems
As example the game screen could use the ecs while a "menu screen" is using a Object-Oriented data structure to represent a UI

Each screen is a own set of logic and data?

So using a different system per screen is totally normal

Because my next "problem" was how to create a text box with ECS where I need a system keeping track of the buttons firing events like crazy 😄

Is this correct?

[hot hazel]

i would decouple the UI from the ecs

if you want your entities to have UIs make a system/component that interfaces with your UI system

[orchid frigate]

Hmm there is no real UI in the game

The game is some kind of cannon hill clone
So there could be some health bars
A gui showing the direction and force of the canon

Any some kind of box where you can see which projectile you did select and how many are left

So I think I will use the old approach before creating the ECS

I will create a new UI system which is working correctly :D
Use a screenmanager to get transitions and use the ECS only in the game itself 🙂

thanks @hot hazel

[restive tapir]

Xanatos gave karma to CobaltHex

[orchid frigate]

thanks @compact willow

[restive tapir]

Xanatos gave karma to Kaho

[gray heron]

How does monogame compare to libgdx? Is it better at cross compiling to targets?

[compact willow]

@gray heron according to their website, libgdx supports building for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, BlackBerry and HTML5.

MonoGame supports building for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, tvOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch

So monogame has better (ie: has) smarttv and console support, but libgdx has slightly better mobile support, and web support

[gray heron]

Yea they claim that but I'm just wondering if someone actually has experience with the two

and blackberry doesn't count lol

its really just ios + android, I need top notch support for them two

[compact willow]

(MonoGame also supports windows phone but.. y'know)

[vale dew]

ok i have a problem and i dont know why it happens
iam making a clicker game and this happen when i try to handle clicking with event handler

public EventHandler click;
public void update(gameTime dt){
  if type == "first" {
   this.score_increasment = 1;
   this.click += new EventHandler(delegate (Object sender,EventArgs e)
                {
                Game1.score += this.score;
                });     
}
if (this.mstaten.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && mstateo.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && this.rec.Contains(mousePosition))
            {
                click.Invoke(this,new EventArgs());
            }
}

and when i run it it increase the score with random number instade of 1

ok nvm i fixid it

it works when i put it in the constructor instade of update

[compact willow]

well yeah with that code you're adding the event listener on every update

[proper stone]

Would creating an editor for my monogame engine(if you can call it that) be worthwhile?

If so, where would I even start? lol

[hot hazel]

depends on what you want

may make it easier

if thirdparty tools work why bother

my game has an editor built in so that in theory others could make content

(should anyone ever play my game 🙂 )

[proper stone]

@hot hazel What did you use for your editor?

Just ingame gui?

[hot hazel]

i made everything

but yes its using my gui code

[proper stone]

Ah gotcha

[quiet ibex]

@proper stone first you need to figure out something that makes your editor special enough to be worth making. Since you're probably gonna spend somewhere between 80 and 800 hours making it

assuming its a relatively simple editor tailored specifically for the game your making

if you don't expect to save at least twice that by partially automating your tasks, then don't bother. Better off spending 8-40h writing pipeline extensions for editors that fit your need

[hot hazel]

fuck pipeline extensions

just write it into your game code

[quiet ibex]

sure, as long as you only ship on one platform, don't care about the size of your game and never plan to ship asset updates

oh and dont care about load times

[hot hazel]

none of those things are restricted to a pre-compile content pipeline

also you dont have to use the monogame one

if you're making an AAA 3d game sure

[proper stone]

@quiet ibex I just want to do it for fun

For the experience

[peak nacelle]

Anyone here?

I am trying to make a rectangle that will cover the background

 graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1200; // Game Width
            graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 700; // Game Height
            graphics.ApplyChanges();

I created this but it doesnt seem to work

 Rectangle Screen = new Rectangle(0, 0, 1200, 700);

doesnt the resolution start from 0, 0

[hot hazel]

how are you rendering it?

spritebatch?

[quiet ibex]

@peak nacelle a Rectangle is just a struct that describes the position and dimensions of a rectangle, its not visible unless you draw something looking like it

[peak nacelle]

Im not drawing it

I want it to use is for

.Interacts

So i dont need to

[frigid dagger]

@peak nacelle the 0 position of the X and Y axis is not tied to the screen itself

you should set the X and Y to Game1.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.X and Game1.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Y

X and Y in the way that you are using them are just world coordinates, when working with UI it is good to use screen coordinates

if you have a camera that moves around the world your X and Y positions will be left behind

also you said .Interacts I hope you didnt just type the method incorrectly in your code it should be .Intersects

[peak nacelle]

Yeah thanks

[proper stone]

Anyone think they can help me fix this? https://gyazo.com/b5e76b1df310471cba2d1b494876c511 I've never really used wpf/xaml before

[peak nacelle]

Rectangle Screen = new Rectangle(0, 0, 1200, 700);
            Rectangle Tank2Rectangle = new Rectangle((int)Tank1[0].Position.X - 68, (int)Tank1[0].Position.Y - 29, 98, 60);
            Rectangle TankRectangle = new Rectangle((int)Tank[0].Position.X - 68, (int)Tank[0].Position.Y - 29, 98, 60);

            bool inBound;

            if (TankRectangle.Intersects(Screen) || Tank2Rectangle.Intersects(Screen))
            {
                inBound = true;
            }
            else
            {
                inBound = false;
            }

            if (inBound == false)
            {
                Tank1[0].Position += Tank1[0].Direction * -5f;
                Tank[0].Position += Tank[0].Direction * -5f;
            }

shoudnt these recrangles intersect?
idk why they dont
or at least if they do
my if statements dont work

If the screen rectangle is in the tankrectangle when the game loads
will this affect it?
does .intersect mean they first dont have to intersect

[quiet ibex]

@peak nacelle use breakpoints and inspect your variables, the positions are probably not what you think they are

and you might as well do csharp if (!TankRectangle.Intersects(Screen) && !Tank2Rectangle.Intersects(Screen)) { Tank1[0].Position += Tank1[0].Direction * -5f; Tank[0].Position += Tank[0].Direction * -5f; }

[peak nacelle]

yeah they are not what they are supposed to be

false instead of true

idk why

i drew the rectangles

and they are correct

they should intersect

[plush acorn]

I am not exactly sure if intersects works when on rectangle is completrly inside the other @peak nacelle

[peak nacelle]

yeah i think so too

what else can i use tho?

[plush acorn]

I think you can impmement your own AABB

Or if u want rotatuins some OOBB would be good to go to

[quiet ibex]

@peak nacelle the standard rectangle intersection works for all cases, have you inspected the values live, or just deduced what they should be by looking at the code?

[peak nacelle]

i drew the rectangles

and i know for a fact

the tankrectangle

is inside the screen rectangle

when game loads

but the code says

its not

i @quiet ibex

[quiet ibex]

@peak nacelle then you didn't check the actual values, you need to use the debugger

[frigid dagger]

rectangles can intersect other rectangles that are 1pixel x 1pixel large, a full rectangle overlap will still count as an intersect

i have used a 1pixel rectangle at the point of my mouse cursor to show intersects with my mouse and other rectangles

@peak nacelle just start typing Console.Writeline(Tank2Rectangle) or Console.Writeline(inBound) in different parts of the code and watch for any relevant data on the console when you launch your program

we dont know what your Position value, and you offset the rectangle of your tank by 68 pixels to the left of your position, so maybe the tank is off screen by 68 pixels

you can also try building your screen rectangle to be half the size of your actual screen so you can see if anything is happening outside the Screen rectangle

also show us what your direction vector is looking at and explain why you are using negative velocity, you want the tanks to move away from the screen when they leave the boundary?

[peak nacelle]

Its fine melt

i fixed it

using another method

idk why it didnt work

@frigid dagger

r u online?

How can i make an effect stop playing?

i used

if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.W))
            {
                Position += Direction * LinearVelocity;
                effect.Play();
            }

but i cant find something that will stop it from playing

[hot hazel]

is that a sound effect?

if so, that returns a SoundEffectInstance that has Play/Stop/etc on it

[peak nacelle]

Ok thanks

[flat osprey]

Hey all, Anyone about that uses monogame and willing to spare a min? 🙂

[hot hazel]

!dontask

[hot hazel]

@flat osprey ^

[flat osprey]

Ah cool, I managed to sort my previous problem but now I have a new one haha. Do you know how to resize a texture in monogame by any chance? 😄

Also.. I mean like how could you set a percentage for scale, Using rectangles atm to try and scale it

[wide lava]

As we uses libgdx, feel free to ask anything about coding.

[hot hazel]

@wide lava #show-off-your-work

[wide lava]

@hot hazel Ok. I delete that post. 👍

[frigid dagger]

@flat osprey
if you are trying to scale individuals sprites you can draw them with method 5 of 7 in spriteBatch.Draw
spriteBatch.Draw(texture, rectangle, sourceRectangle, Color.White, 0f, Vector2.Zero, SpriteEffects.None, 1f);
your first rectangle is the physical rectangle of your sprite, the sourceRectangle is used on your texture to find the coordinates and size of the sprite you are using
so if you upload an image that is 32*32 pixels in the top left corner of your sheet, you can identify the source as (0, 0, 32, 32)
now you can make your actual in game rectangle to be new Rectangle(positionX, positionY, 32 * 2, 32 * 2) this means you will represent the source image 2 * larger
if you want to use a percentage of scale you can make a quick conversion,
int percentageScale = 100;
float trueScale = percentageScale / 100;
and then use trueScale on your rectangles width and height fields, the width and height of a rectangle cant be represented by a float but you might have a 150% value in some cases so create the width and height of your rectangle separately then use it in the rectangle as an int.

Alternatively you can scale sprites using method 6 of 7 of draw. In this case there is a field that takes a float scale with 0f value being no scaling applied.
this method doesnt use rectangles for positioning, it applies the scaling onto whatever your source rectangle is, and positions the sprite at a vector2

the final method is applying a scale to your entire spriteBatch by use of a scale matrix
create a matrix somewhere that you will access it in your spriteBatch.Begin method
Matrix scale = Matrix.CreateScale(1f);
and use overload 5 of 5 in your spritebatch.begin
spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Immediate, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null, null, scale);
this is the most vanilla way to create a spritebatch with a scale added and not worrying about other fields.
the scale of a matrix should be 1f to show 100% of your sprites size, but just as earlier you can change the float to 1.5f etc. if you feed it an int of 150

[hot hazel]

i would advise not using the percentageScale, id also recommend using floats all around, you'll get a lot more precision

[vale dew]

so i was looking for a timer and found System.Timer and its good but when i want to make like dealy betwen action and another and it make the code complecated and big so is there is any way i can do it ?

[tribal compass]

I'm not sure what you're trying to do exactly but you probably want the monogame timer over system.timer

https://jjagg.github.io/MonoGame-docfx/api/Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameTime.html

[vale dew]

i want to make it like after(x,somthing_to_do) or every(x,somthing_to_do) and like this

[quiet ibex]

@vale dew here's the thing, its a lot more complicated than that. You have to remember that the simulation updated in increments, so you'll be timing your stuff to coincide with an update/draw and depending on what you're doing, you may need to compensate for the action happening late

so what you really need is a scheduler, so you can say "invoke this action in that timeslot"

this way you'll be able to schedule things and still maintain the execution order in each update/draw

[tribal compass]

if i want to use a 16x16 tileset for a top-down, but those tiles are too small on the screen (1920x1080) is the best way to increase the size to use scale 2.0 in Draw()?

It looks a little fuzzy when i do that

[quiet ibex]

@tribal compass there are various ways of going about it, but the simplest one would be to switch sampler state to point sample

[tribal compass]

do you have a docs link? I'm not sure how to do that

[quiet ibex]

its a parameter you pass to spritebatch.Begin()

[tribal compass]

ah

okay i'll try that, thanks

[frigid dagger]

@vale dew heres an example of a timer using monogames gametime.
double timer;

inside your Update(gameTime)
{

timer += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; //this returns the number of milliseconds passed since last update in a 60 frame game it is usually 16ms

if(timer >= 1000) //1000 is milliseconds - so 1 second
{
//perform action here
timer = 0; //set the timer back down to 0
}
}

you basically want to create a variable that counts up by 16 milliseconds every single game loop and when the milliseconds reach your desired number you perform your action and reset the timer to 0 so it can start counting again

[tribal compass]

Does anyone have a guide on programmatically determining tiles based on a grid in a top down game?

G G G G
G D D G
G G D G
G G G G

like what's the best practice for drawing the correct tiles in each position here, assuming G is grass, D is dirt, and the tileset has a tile for every corner

[quiet ibex]

@tribal compass you'd want to read up on Wang Tiles, by storing your information slightly differently you can index the tiles directly using it

but for a corner, you'd do a walk around the tile, starting at the top and checking 3 tiles, if the second tile is empty and the other 2 are filled, then its a corner

you'd need to run that check 4 times for every tile, so you still want to bake the result

Tiled has proper support for all of this, so i'd recommend you switch map editors https://doc.mapeditor.org/en/stable/manual/using-wang-tiles/

[tribal compass]

I was able to get most of the way there last night by building an algorithm that does the walking and checking

Still some bugs to work out, but that seems like the only solution.

Every time a player changes the tile, the algorithm checks the neighbors of all affected tiles adjacent.

And updates the map appropriately

[lament gyro]

@tribal compass I did something like that. the issue comes from the amount of tile types you have. If you check the center tile + the surrounding you need to basically check the 3x3 grid. So you have 2^9=512 possible patterns. if you have 3 its 3^9=19683 possible patterns... depending on what you try to do, you run into a complexity issue.

[hot hazel]

@frigid dagger i do not recommend keeping time in a double like that

id do something morel ike ```TimeSpan lastUpdate;
void Update(GameTime gameTime) {
if (gameTime.TotalGameTime > lastUpdate + TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)) {
...;
lastUpdate = gameTime.TotalGameTime;
}
}

[tribal compass]

@lament gyro There are a lot of possible patterns, but I only run the check on the affected tiles with every click, only when the tiles actually change. I then save the results to the map. It's complex, but it doesn't have an impact on performance that I've detected. Hopefully down the road when its time to do some refactoring I'll find ways to make improvements.

[lament gyro]

What I did, was creating a dictionary with the tile patterns as the key that returns the texture index as value.

[tribal compass]

yeah, that's the map

the player can change the map, so i need to have an algorithm pick t he right texture

to reference

[lament gyro]

have you programmed it by hand with if then elses or what was your approach?

[tribal compass]

i do all my programming with my hands

two for loops, i and j from -1 to 1 around the clicked square

that handles all the surrounding squares

each square i look at all of those surrounding squares

and i have a clunky set of boolean logic for each potential tile

in if-else

                !IsDirt(Map[x - 1, y - 1]) && !IsDirt(Map[x, y - 1]) && !IsDirt(Map[x + 1, y - 1]) &&
                !IsDirt(Map[x - 1, y])     &&                           !IsDirt(Map[x + 1, y])     &&
                !IsDirt(Map[x - 1, y + 1]) && !IsDirt(Map[x, y + 1]) &&  IsDirt(Map[x + 1, y + 1])
            )
            {
                Map[x, y].Sprite = TileSprite.TopLeft;
            }```

[lament gyro]

that is the exact thing I did at first too.

but I ran into issues with it when I wanted my map to be more komplex

like having gras, dirt, sand, mud, and so on tiles... maybe some water ontop of it

[tribal compass]

my design wouldn't allow for a tile to be more than one thing and it would not allow the player to modify a square in contact with 'blocked' tiles

so i think as long as my logic doesn't break it should be fine

[lament gyro]

then stick with it

[tribal compass]

but my tile system isn't going to be more than water, dirt, grass, or tree

at least in this part of the game where the player can modify the ground

[lament gyro]

I'm just asking, because I ran into a lot of problems when trying the same thing 2-3 months ago.

but I didn't want to enforce "map creation" rules, because my map is randomly generated... It was a lot more difficult then i thought at first

[tribal compass]

yeah that's why i'm not trying to do procedural/generated maps

its hard enough to get this part to work for now

but i imagine it comes down to careful, meticulous organization

because as far as i can tell there are no short cuts

[lament gyro]

If you want to see a great ingame map editor in action, you can take a look at rise to ruins. helped me a lot in understanding some approaches.

[tribal compass]

its not in scope for my current project, but i'll keep it in mind

the best i've seen so far is dwarf fortress

[lament gyro]

I just know the ascii one, never dug into it. :\

[tribal compass]

that's the one

you can add tilesets

there are plenty

its map generation is far more impressive than anything else i've seen

i just wish they could figure out some of the performance problems in the game

[orchid frigate]

I'm totally confused right now :D

I did write a wrapper class for the keyboard class so I can use it with my dynamic controls system

class KeyboardWrapper
    {
        private KeyboardState previousKeyState;
        private KeyboardState currentKeyState;

        public void UpdateState()
        {         
            Console.WriteLine("currentState: " + previousKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space));
            Console.WriteLine("StateToSet: " + currentKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space));
            previousKeyState = currentKeyState;
            //Console.WriteLine("newState: " + previousKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space));
            currentKeyState = Keyboard.GetState();

            Console.WriteLine("RealState: " + currentKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space));

        }

        public KeyboardState GetState()
        {
            UpdateState();
            return currentKeyState;
        }

        public KeyboardState GetPreviousState()
        {
            return previousKeyState;
        }

        public bool IsKeyDown(Keys key)
        {
            return GetState().IsKeyDown(key);
        }

        public bool IsKeyUp(Keys key)
        {
            return GetState().IsKeyUp(key);
        }

        public bool IsKeyPressed(Keys key)
        {
            //bool currentDown = currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(key);
            //bool previousUp = previousKeyState.IsKeyUp(key);

            //return currentDown && previousUp;
            return false;
        }

Now if I press the space key I check on the UpdateState the "currentKeyState" is always true. Anyone can spot my mistake?

currentState: True
StateToSet: True
RealState: False

    class StaticKeyboardControls : IGameObjectController
    {
        private readonly KeyboardWrapper keyboardWrapper;

        private Keys fire = Keys.Space;
        public Keys Fire => fire;

        private Keys strenghtUp = Keys.W;
        public Keys StrenghtUp => strenghtUp;

        private Keys strenghtDown = Keys.S;
        public Keys StrenghtDown => strenghtDown;

        private Keys rotationUp = Keys.A;
        public Keys RotationUp => rotationUp;

        private Keys rotationDown = Keys.D;
        public Keys RotationDown => rotationDown;

        public StaticKeyboardControls()
        {
            keyboardWrapper = new KeyboardWrapper();
        }

        public bool IsFirePressed()
        {
            keyboardWrapper.UpdateState();
            return keyboardWrapper.IsKeyPressed(fire);
        }
    }

Thats the current implementation of the class using the wrapper, the idea is to provide a interface which can be a controller or a keyboard
The class is not done yet.

I do call it for testing purpose on the Update function

            var test = new StaticKeyboardControls();
            if (test.IsFirePressed())
            {
                //Console.WriteLine("Fire!");
            }

AND I think I did spot my error just yet -.- creating a new instance in every update is not a good idea :D

Thank you for reading this 😄

Now it is working, stupid me 😄 -.-

[quiet ibex]

@orchid frigate you want to make sure the update in th wrapper happens only once per frame

otherwise you'll miss presses and releases

[tribal compass]

Has anyone run into issues with using static classes to handle common functions used across the game?

performance-wise

I have an inventory interface and I don't want to avoid re-writing common actions like adding things to the inventory

[quiet ibex]

@tribal compass a static method is the least costly method to invoke, although for the most part a member method has the same invocation cost

and if you're gonna make it static, you should consider making it an extension method, if one of the parameters are clearly the intended context

[tribal compass]

okay that's what i figured

i'm not a fan of extension methods, but that's just a personal thing

[quiet ibex]

why not? makes your api far more discoverable

[tribal compass]

https://daedtech.com/why-i-dont-like-c-extension-methods/

[quiet ibex]

@tribal compass did you even read that article? he was arguing against turning instance methods into static methods, not against extension methods themselves

[tribal compass]

i understand

contains a lot of the points i don't like about extension methods

anyways, i'm trying to figure out how to do what i'm looking to do and I don't have the answer quite yet

don't really appreciate the accusation that i didn't read an article i used as justification, don't really understand why that was necessary

[quiet ibex]

well you said you didn't like them and cited the article, presumably as the reason for why

[tribal compass]

correct

and it is still the reason why

i don't like statics in general so i'm looking for a better solution

[quiet ibex]

well you gotta do inheritance-based oop then

[tribal compass]

hmmm

probably going to go with dependency injection that i followed at one of my previous jobs

[quiet ibex]

why means you need to know which data you need up front, so you can slice it up into objects suitable for the problem at hand

dependency injection solves a completely different problem though

[tribal compass]

ok

[quiet ibex]

since its all about the initialization andgetting the data to the right place

wont solve stuff like adding items to an inventory

[tribal compass]

I can use the constructor of the Inventory to have its own instance of InventoryManager

[quiet ibex]

sure, but then you're using InventoryManager like a static class, ending up with the stuff you said you wanted to avoid

[tribal compass]

no, i'm good with it working that way

easy to mock for unit testing

avoids statics

doesn't hide implementation

can enforce things through the IInventory interface

[quiet ibex]

normally you'd want to mock data, not functionality

[tribal compass]

If i need to unit test Inventory, and it has a property InventoryManager, I'll need to create a mock of Inventorymanager

Or else my unit test is also testing InventoryManager

[quiet ibex]

and if you have static methods then you'd mock the inventory to test the methods

[tribal compass]

yes but then i'm using static methods

which i would liek to avoid

[quiet ibex]

so i dont see how using the manager pattern would make things easier to mock here

i'm not saying use static methods, i'm just not seeing how they're bad for mocking

[tribal compass]

i didn't make any comment on whether or not static methods were easer/harder to mock

the pattern I'm currently sold on allows me to mock the properties in my classes

that's all

[quiet ibex]

fair enough, didn't think you where running a monologue there

[tribal compass]

ok

[raw warren]

Any engine programmers here?

[hot hazel]

!dontask

[loud sonnet]

@raw warren everyone is making some sort of engine here

[mighty dagger]

I'm looking for some help with my 2D voxel game engine's physics/collision. I've been working on this for a few weeks and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with my AABB collision detection - https://pastebin.com/pwAg6ena https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WSf2fJX8uwkPccFUhm6g2PjrzHR25sph/view?usp=sharing

I'm trying to achieve something similar to terraria or minecraft's collision system where you can fall down a 1x1 hole and not get stuck on the corners

[hot hazel]

got a video/gif?

also i recommend something like github

[mighty dagger]

I made some changes to it so let me make a quick gif

(changes since the last gif I made, the code is current)

[hot hazel]

i would prefer not to read an entire project of code

[mighty dagger]

hold on imgur is not letting me upload the gif

I'm going to make a webm instead

https://imgur.com/nH2f4ZF

pretty much everything is in Actor.cs which is the pastebin link, but I included all of the relevant code in a zip on the google drive link just in case

[hot hazel]

first step would be to shrink the AABB

i recommend drawing it overtop the player as like a red rect or something

so you can see where its getting stuck

[mighty dagger]

Good idea, I really should have just drawn some debugging stuff. Just added it and it looks like my AABB is actually working fairly close to how I want it to, but my player is not being updated properly

https://i.imgur.com/Hpp7t5H.mp4

[hot hazel]

id draw an open rectangle above the player for better clarity

also maybe if you can highlight collisions

but it doesnt look like it perfectly matches the player

it looks like its clamped to the grid

[mighty dagger]

I changed floor to round and it's a bit better, but completely stopped collisions, debugging now

[quiet ibex]

@mighty dagger there's no reason your Actor class should own the AABB implementation. You could clean it up a lot by separating the intersection checks to a separate class

[earnest wigeon]

I've posted this in "shader-dev" but this channel seems to be also relevant.

I'm working on a cross-platform node-based material editor similar to my previous similar project (https://itch.io/queue/c/290843/urho3d-projects?game_id=273385 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGMyL1ZK5WE ). The UrhoSharp engine seems to be dead so I'm working on generalization of the tech and making it configurable to various engine. I've already build the base of the new editor - a Spirv node-based shader viewer and about to start building the actual meat of the new one. The idea is to have a visual material and a tool to generate shaders for render passes for different platforms via spirv-cross, etc. Would you be interested in contributing to the project? Or, at least, do you see such project be useful to your project?

Please mention me in a reply so I can get notification.

[hot hazel]

please do not advertise in this channel

im sure someone will find it useful, though monogame nor (i assume) gdx support spirv

[quiet ibex]

@earnest wigeon where's the monogame integration? and why are you linking to an itch.io page when you want contributors? should've linked to github instead

[earnest wigeon]

@hot hazel the editor suppose to generate spirv that could be translated into HLSL, GLSL, MSL, etc. Game engine doesn't need vulkan support to use it.

[hot hazel]

meh, a lot of work for likely wasted effort

monogame uses a custom cross platform HLSL compiler

[earnest wigeon]

@quiet ibex there is no game engine integration at the moment as it's not even close to completion 😦 Itch.io proves that it is doable as I already did it for a different engine (Urho3D).

CobaltHex, so you sure a visual shader editor won't be useful for monogame?

[hot hazel]

not saying it wont be

just having it output to spirv not likely

unless you want to write a compiler for fx/mgfx

[earnest wigeon]

spirv-cross suppose to take care of it

it can output hlsl and then one can compile it into fx, I guess

fx is a compiled hlsl shader, am I right?

[hot hazel]

no

fx is a legacy hlsl format

mgfx is the monogame-specific compiled version of that

[earnest wigeon]

I see

[hot hazel]

fx is the effects framework, which may also give you trouble, (though basically just need to bundle things into passes, all stages go into a single file, few other changes)

basically a dx9 relic

[earnest wigeon]

I kinda remember it from old times but I was using OpenGL back then so I'm not very familiar with it.

[quiet ibex]

it'd need to be able to be limited to dx9 features on the output or its going to end up being unusable for monogame

[earnest wigeon]

is there a lowest shader model version to be supported?

dx9 is quite flexible on it

[hot hazel]

ragath i think monogame actually supports dx11

2.0 i think is the lowest i think gleb

i think you can compile 4.5 or 5.0 shaders too, but they may not work on ogl targets

[quiet ibex]

the tech supports it, but not the effect class

[hot hazel]

you can write your shaders in sm 5.0, just not use things like structured buffers/etc

[toxic moat]

Hi! 🖐🎮

[hot hazel]

hi

[cyan brook]

Hi! I am doing my first steps with Monogame, I have followed the Getting started tutorial from the official website and it's working ok, but I have a question: the code to prevent the ball from getting out of the window is on the "Update" method, so it is calculated at every loop, even when it does not really change (or not often). But couldn't find a way to move it to the "Initialize" method since the texture width/height is used to get the limits, and the texture is not set until the "LoadContent" method. And putting it there seems a little out of context. Any idea? 🙃

[hot hazel]

put whatever check you want in the load content method

Initialize might come after load content im not sure, but it doesnt really matter imo

[pearl ore]

Initialize comes before LoadContent. But like Cobalt said, you can put the check in LoadContent. If you want it to make sense, just think of the method as "when the content is to be loaded". So: "when the content is to be loaded, load the texture, store it into a variable, and set the width/height limits based on the texture".

[cyan brook]

All right, thanks a lot!!!

[limpid belfry]

just migrating back to monogame for a bit of fun but, it appears to hate VS 2017

there's new things called NuGet packages? they never had this when I programmed in monogame ages ago, this thing won't install now cause

really i was going to go back to vs 2013 at this rate cause this is really crap

there's so much junk with monogame now

like i don't even understand what is going on here, I never saw this crap when i was coding in VS years ago

[raw warren]

NuGet packages allow you to import code

For example, I imported the AnimatedSprite class

Also, I’ve never once had that issue you pointed out in your last screenshot (I am also using VS 2017)

[limpid belfry]

yeah this is a fresh monogame install too

i simply am too small brain to figure out what's going on

"using directive is unnecessary"

it's auto generated

why is this thing such dumb

i'm pretty sure all my public key tokens are messed up

why would that be when this is a fresh install?

no idea

[limpid belfry]

well ok

now i'm getting some where

[limpid belfry]

https://community.monogame.net/t/monogame-win-10-universal-template-fails-to-load-in-vs-2017/9228/5

Now I am here downloading a new windows SDK

[limpid belfry]

Right after all that fixes I now have this

I was useing the "MonoGame Windows 10 Universal Project" now I'm using the "MonoGame Cross Platform Desktop Project" because of this error:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: 'Could not load file or assembly 'SharpDX, Version=4.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b4dcf0f35e5521f1'. The system cannot find the file specified.'

It all looks like it works to me so i don't care it's only to mess around in now

[quiet ibex]

sadly monogame hasn't managed it's nuget dependencies well in the past, so might have to reference the correct sharpdx nugets manually

[hot hazel]

i recommend installing mongame on your machine

that will also give you the tools

[quiet ibex]

true, but its still better to have nuget dependencies

[pearl ore]

Now that I'm thinking about it I think I've had that problem as well, having to add SharpDX to Nuget for the DirectX project to build

Somehow I managed to get everything in Nuget. Someone added the pipeline tool for Mac and Windows, so now you can clone my project, restore Nuget packages and you'll be all set. We had to do it that way cause my partner was working on his University's computers at the time and they don't have admin access to install MonoGame

[quiet ibex]

now that they're adding support for .net core projects, it also opens up the possibility of creating a meta package that retroactively adds the nuget dependencies that monogame should've had in the first place

[limpid belfry]

oh nice

cause that was a nightmare

[limpid belfry]

Height based landscape maker

Exports to a 1024x1024 image, that will be used for height data, now, this will be able to generate land mass and have it kind of how dwarf fortress does it but I'm using this for a base landscape

I have to fix the performance issue with it which I have an idea for this

[hot hazel]

that is a painful blue

[rain totem]

it's definitely very bright

[obtuse island]

ok ok why is it called visual studio 2019 when its updated in 2020 🤔 🤔

[hot hazel]

cuz they havent bothered to make a new proper release

if they plan to at all

[quiet ibex]

they've released every 2-3 years since the dawn of time pretty much. doubt it'll change now

[pale eagle]

Anyone able to help me with implementing movement to my cars in MonoGame?

[pearl ore]

!dontask

[vagrant basalt]

Fair enough

[lament gyro]

Does anyone know a good solution for "reusing" the vertexbuffer of a SpritePatch?
What I wanna do, is let the SpriteBatch generate the vertex data for my tile map, so my cpu doesn't need calculate/upload it for every frame.

[pearl ore]

Probably just use an actual vertex buffer: http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/index-and-vertex-buffers

And then you can render it with BasicEffect. You'd need to set up a projection matrix, I usually just take the same one MonoGame's SpriteBatch class uses and then apply a transform matrix to it.

[quiet ibex]

yea you want a vertex buffer optimized for static usage

but you need to consider the layout in the buffer, so you aren't pushing all the off-screen vertices through the gpu in vain

[lament gyro]

thx for your answers, I was afraid ther isn't an "easy" solution.

the offscreen verts aren't really an issue imho. the cpu time of creating the verts is much more precious.

[quiet ibex]

@lament gyro its a big deal when your tilemaps get larger, here's an example implementation of it https://github.com/Ragath/TileRenderer

it basically sets up screen-sized rows of vertices going in a vertical zig-zag pattern across the screen. that way the gpu knows the position of the first and last visible vertex in the buffer

[lament gyro]

my map is chunked (32x32 tiles), so I can decide wich chunk to render. checking for each vert or tile if it is in visible, might be more costly than beneficial. But I'll think about it.

[quiet ibex]

there's even faster ways of rendering huge tilemaps using a shader that samples 2 textures, but it runs into precision issues on some gpu's at certain mapsizes

the rendering takes so little time when using it, that you can see noticeable fps drops just by moving your mouse across the screen though

11k fps was the most i managed to crank out of it

[lament gyro]

11k is a litle more then I need. 😉

my issue is, that my map is pretty dynamic (chunks get load/generated, tiles are animated and can be changed), so I have to balance speed and flexibility.

but I defenetly never need to do it more then 30-60 times a second.

[quiet ibex]

you want to avoid generating chunks during regular gameplay if you can help it. most procgen algorithms generate a fair bit of garbage

[lament gyro]

I have that part working, its on its own thread, so there are no bigger issue.

[quiet ibex]

i was doing a 2d zelda style game with generated levels, but i hid the generation when transitioning between dungeons and the overworld

the gc stalls all threads, not just the one doing the work

[lament gyro]

I know, it's a bit of a pain, but exceptable for my game. I'll try to optimize that, if it becomes a real issue.

[hot hazel]

heres my impl of the tilemap shader https://bitbucket.org/cobalthex/dyingandmore/src/default/Media/Shaders/Tiles.fx

[lament gyro]

sorry, im not that used to reading shader code. Does this get a texture with colors that represents the the tiles and it basicaly creates them with the right texture?

[hot hazel]

so theres two textures

one is your tilemap texture

the other is your tile layout in the form of a texture (basically upload your tilemap array as a texture)

then the shader, when rendering the map divides the texel position into tilemap squares

finds the right tile to draw from the tile layout texture and draws the corresponding pixels from the tilemap texture

(some math there, not too complicated)

[lament gyro]

could be an interesting approach... thx

[hot hazel]

it is 100000% more efficient

[lament gyro]

is there any benchmarking you have done? how many tiles are doable?

[hot hazel]

the beauty of doing it in a shader

it will always take the same amount of time regardless of the size

only factor is size of viewport (number of pixels rendered)

[lament gyro]

theres probaply the max texture size limit too

[hot hazel]

modern GPUs no

(not practically at least)

dx9 era was 2048x2048

and if you need you can always chunk it, but i doubt your map will be larger than like 2^32

[lament gyro]

for now I think the "classic" approach is easier to implement, but doing it that way sounds realy interesting...

[hot hazel]

meh, i would say this method is worth figuring out

[lament gyro]

the "issue" is, that my map is composed of more than one layer. that makes it a litle more complicated

and im not 100% convinced that this is "that" much faster, then just rerendering the vertex buffer.

for now, being flexible is major point.

[hot hazel]

so if you had a vertex buffer

[lament gyro]

but Ill defenetly tinker around with it

[hot hazel]

you quads for every tile

vs one quad

[lament gyro]

if I get 100+ fps on low end PCs with both methods, why should I care about more complicated one?

[quiet ibex]

it is much faster, the difference between rendering a vertex buffer and rendering a fullscreen dual-textured quad is huge

but there is a size limit you'll hit, not because of the size of the texture, but due to floating point errors in the math you're using in the pixel shader

[lament gyro]

I'd guess odd transforms are a big issue?

[hot hazel]

meh

i wouldnt say odd

but you're gonna run into floating point issues in any thing involving the gpu likely

(if your numbers get big)

anyway for me tilemap rendering traditionally was fine until i wanted to also render a large map with all of my other stuff as well (and running gameplay code, etc)

it was low hanging fruit

[lament gyro]

just a small update for you guys: my benchmark scenario is 707458 Quads rendered. with the normal sprite batch i get ~12.5 fps, with the reuse of the vertex buffer ~100 fps. Im really happy with it.

[reef light]

nice!

[pastel spade]

I'm making a purely 2D fighting game using LiteNetLib for networking. I am loading sprites in from textures. Do any of you know if there are any benefits from using monogame over Unity? I'm thinking executable size, platform compatability, performance etc.

[lament gyro]

why do you care about executable size?

[dapper monolith]

The biggest factor that always makes me use MonoGame over Unity is having more control over everything. I always feel like Unity gets in the way of how I want to do certain things.

[reef light]

that is a loaded question that will spark debate.

you can make wonderful stuff in MG

i tend to push unity when you are doing something heavy in 3D

but champion MG for everything else

[scarlet glacier]

weird question: does Nez support rendering to a texture? I still want to use Nez's rendering stuff but I want to have a fixed resolution regardless of window size

is it a bad idea to override Draw()?

[reef light]

just depends on why you are overriding it

[sweet tinsel]

Hey all I need help with a math problem. I have a 3d rocket that's rotated to look straight ahead. I want the camera to follow the rocket. The mouse should turn the rocket, however, the rocket should always be moving straight. I'm using LibGDX for this and I haven't received any meaningful help in their discord

[prime sigil]

Does anyone know how I can draw a filled-in circle in Monogame, the same way I can easily draw a rectangle with the spriteBatch.Draw()?

[hot hazel]

a few methods, but all will involve a shader

[prime sigil]

How do I involve shaders?

[hot hazel]

either draw geometry yourself (quads here, so a 4 element vertex buffer) or spritebatch.Draw, both with a custom effect

but you can easily create a shader to draw a circle in a quad (simple polar math), or you can use an SDF shader, which may not look quite as good, but lets you draw several shapes with that

[prime sigil]

I see

What's a buffer?

Vertex buffer*

Compared to a normal vertex

And since it's a shader, I need to add an "Effect" right?

[pearl ore]

https://github.com/DoogeJ/MonoGame.Primitives2D

This extends SpriteBatch for primitives (rectangles, circles, etc.). I wouldn't say it's the most performant thing in the world but it's most likely adequate.

What Cobalt suggested would be much better, but I use this as a quick n dirty way of drawing circles (and other primitives).

[prime sigil]

I see, thanks!

Quick question though, do I just copy the Primitives2D.cs file into my project to make use of it?

[pearl ore]

Yep

[strange tendon]

I'm working on a fork of MonoGame. Is there a resource that explains what the different .sln and .csproj are meant to encapsulate?

[hot hazel]

such as?

@prime sigil a buffer is a collection of something (like an array/list). so a vertex buffer stores your vertices (on the GPU)

shaders = effects in monogame

[prime sigil]

Shaders being Effects in monogame explains a lot

Curious what the difference is between these two

When creating a new .fx

[prime sigil]

Why do shaders/effects only work when the SpriteSortMode is set to Immediate? (SpriteSortMode.Immediate)
Is there no way to have effects work when it's set to Back to Front, for keeping the layers of my sprites intact?

[hot hazel]

they dont

how are you applying your shader?

[prime sigil]

Like that

I'm using this tutorial

https://gmjosack.github.io/posts/my-first-2d-pixel-shaders-part-1/

But it doesn't 100% work, I get different result sometimes

[hot hazel]

yeah you need to use spriteBatch.Begin(..., effect)

[prime sigil]

I see, will play around with it more, thanks

Yep, it works!

Another thing though, do you know why my sprite doesn't show pure red despite using float4(1,0,0,1) for the whole texture?

[hot hazel]

thats a multiplying factor

so if your color is 1,1,1,1 its gonna be 1,0,0,1, but if its 0.5, 1, 1, 1 its gonna be 0.5,0,0,1

[prime sigil]

What's strange is that every pixel in my ship sprite seems to be 1,1,1,1
For example, when I try to do grayscaling:

color.gb = color.r

It's as if nothing was applied to it

[prime sigil]

Nvm! I think I fixed it

The output by the default .fx template was: return tex2D(SpriteTextureSampler, coords) * color
but I changed it to: return color
And it works now

[fleet cosmos]

Hey guys! Does anybody here is using Monogame 3.8 packages from nugget? i was able to create a project, as well as build it, with no issues... But, my problem is with the Content Pipeline Tool. I've installed it trough nugget as well, and can open it with no problems. But it does not build SpriteFonts at all, complaining about FreeType6.dll missing. I've done some search, and found some people saying to install VC++ Redistributable, and i did, but no success at all. Anybody managed to get it working?

btw, i'm sorry if this is not the correct place to ask. First time poster here. 🙂

[hot hazel]

freetype is its own library

you can probably just google search for the dll

or find freetype's website

[fleet cosmos]

Hey @hot hazel, thanks for the reply. I've got the dll, and even inside the tools folder on monogame pipeline it's there, still, the pipeline seems to not be able to find it... I'll keep trying here, since, because of a weird texture bug on my graphics driver, monogame 3.7 is not that good for me, while 3.8 is...

[restive tapir]

TheLorencini gave karma to CobaltHex

[hot hazel]

copy it to the directory where your executable is

[fleet cosmos]

copy it to the directory where your executable is
@hot hazel it's there already...

even copied it to system32

very weird...

on 3.7, at least i could use the pipeline tool, but had the texture bug on the lib itself.

i guess i'll have to do some weird merge of the two (using 3.7 pipeline tool, and 3.8 dll filed)...

let's see

after all, 3.8 is not stable yet... can be some bug.

[hot hazel]

personally i use my own sprite font tools

[fleet cosmos]

personally i use my own sprite font tools
@hot hazel read some things about that, but never got the time to actually try it... Bitmap fonts seems to be a good way to go, since no matter the font i use, ttf fonts tend to be kinda blurried on my projects...

[hot hazel]

well id say use bitmap fonts

but roll your own solution

[pearl ore]

I think you need to install the 2012 .NET Visual C++ redistributable IIRC to fix the freetype6 DLL not being found.

[hot hazel]

why would you need the 2k12 .net redist

[fleet cosmos]

I think you need to install the 2012 .NET redistributable IIRC to fix the freetype6 DLL not being found.
@pearl ore .NET? I've read that the one that fixes this is the VSC++ 2012 redistributable... Even now, that i'm back on 3.7, i've had to install it.

[pearl ore]

Yeah you are correct, I wrote that with half my brain working. My fault.

[stoic crown]

does anyone here uses Ogmo editor 3.0?

I'm having problems, for some reason I can't save changes made to the project (like adding a new entity)

I didn't know where to ask for help so I'm trying here

[hot hazel]

#misc-dev or any official communication locations would be better

https://github.com/Ogmo-Editor-3/OgmoEditor3-CE/issues ?

[trail cradle]

hey guys

wait

wrong chat

my bad

[raw warren]

My dudes, I cant instal monogame directly on Visual Studio

Halp pls

[hot hazel]

gonna need more details

[hidden shell]

Hello, I'm having trouble creating a deterministic, fixed timestep game loop.
Here's a pastebin for how I'm trying to limit my # of physics steps to 15 per second: https://pastebin.com/TgVyDvib

The code displays the ticks per second to console every second.
What I expect is for it to always display 15. However, sometimes the ticks per seconds is 16 instead of 15.
Is the reason it's sometimes running an extra update per second due to rounding issues? I can't seem to figure it out

[lament gyro]

I'd asume some float rounding issues too.

you defenetly suffer from precision loss. Maybe do something like devide the System time with your time step.

[raw warren]

https://www.twitch.tv/dj_c_wied

[quiet ibex]

@hidden shell its impossible to guarantee 15 updates per real second. fixed timesteps only guarantee that each step has the same length and it pauses between steps or run extra steps to keep it roughly in sync with the real time

the virtual time is what's updated in fixed increments

[sand pumice]

any good tutorial for monogame devs

[hot hazel]

look up xna tutorials

[sand pumice]

thanks

[lament gyro]

I know "don't ask" but, has someone experience with Aether.Physics2D?

[flat osprey]

Hi all, small problem, Was hoping somebody could help with. I made a dictionary<string, int> to hold player stats. Strings for the names of a stat and the int for the value of the stat. How would I go about modifying the dictionary values from another dictionaries<string, int> values? Thanks

[quiet ibex]

@flat osprey dictionary["foo"] = bar;

but are you sure you want stats in a dictionary? you need to attach logic to them or they'll be useless

so unless you need a data-driven map between stats and logic, it seems more logical to make strongly typed stats

[flat osprey]

Yeh maybe i'm going about it the wrong way, I thought I could just use dictionaries to hold each races, class and players stats then modify the players values where keys match the race / class 's key

[quiet ibex]

well you could, but you wouldn't get value from the dictionary if the number of items in it didn't differ a lot between objects

[flat osprey]

Mind if I pm just show what i'm doing as to not spam here?

[quiet ibex]

so why not make a Race and Occupation class? they could then be referenced to define a Hero class for instance

might as well put it here, someone else might learn something

[flat osprey]

Well yeh, I made race classes and "class(like rogues, mage ect" classes that have 6 stats, Rather than running through them all to add to the players I wanted to store them in a collection so I could just run a loop when modifying the players stats

[quiet ibex]

ok, sounds like you've defined new classes where you really just needed new data

[flat osprey]

So I want the player to have these stats all set to 0 then if they choose to be a human then all the human modifiers are applied and then they can continue to choose a race and then thats use to modify them

[quiet ibex]

you can probably define 1 class to cover rogue/mage/etc

[flat osprey]

Well I made a race class and a classType class, Then with each race and class I made new classes than inherit from them because later I want to add more stuff to each of them, abilities ect..

[quiet ibex]

i wouldn't inherit from them until it proved necessary

you want to focus on the data when designing a class hierarchy, much like when normalizing a database

from what i've heard so far, you have at least 3 classes. Race, ClassType(would swap this for Occupation to make the naming clear) and Ability

you might also want 2 Modifier classes, one for additive modifiers and one for multiplicative

and you'll need a class that describes the actual ingame entity, i usually name it Hero to avoid conflicts with Player(usually useful for controller mappings, etc.) and Gamer(often used for steam integrations and the like)

i also tend to have an Enemy class and have both it and the Hero inherit from an abstract Actor that's the base class for anything interactible

the actor could then contain all the logic needed to calculate effective stats from bonuses and modifiers

[flat osprey]

I get what you're saying but I don't know what way to handle the stats for each race ect.. What collection would be best for this situation?

[quiet ibex]

doesn't really matter, you're probably going to pick the race from a list in a menu, so an array would work fine

i'd define the races in a csv file for simplicity, that way they diff nicely in source control and you can do mass-edits in excel

CsvHelper can do the parsing in a couple of lines

[flat osprey]

So for example just give the human an int array0-5, How would I pick out the stat though, Like I'd have to know what cell each attribute is supposed to be, This is why I was trying to use dictionaries because the key can be the name and value is well.. the value

Ah

[quiet ibex]

i'd just put the base stats as columns, which means the race class gets a property for each

[flat osprey]

See this isn't supposed to be anything big, Just a small console game so I can practice programming.. Just realised.. Why not just create a database lol ffs

Appreciate you taking the time to help bud 🙂

[quiet ibex]

yea, the csv files essentially becomes tables in a database. but there's a big advantage to using them over an actual database, since they diff nicely in source control

so you can do branches testing out balancing fixes and then cleanly merge them without conflicts

[pseudo sigil]

Hey folks! I have a quick question. I'm writing a game in monodev and it's an online multiplayer type deal. Does anyone have any good links on server-side collision? Any help would be much appreciated, I haven't been able to find much personally.

[quiet ibex]

@pseudo sigil its no different from any other type of collision detection

[sturdy prairie]

how inefficient is it to make a draw call using a texture atlas like:

sb.Draw(texture_atlas, hitbox, texture_atlas.GetByID(1), Color.White);

as opposed to making a method with the texture_atlas that creates a texture from a selected region?

[hot hazel]

the sb.draw would be way more efficient if im understanding you correctly

[sturdy prairie]

well both are sb.draw

so I'm not sure which one you're talking about

[hot hazel]

what do you mean 'creates a texture from a selected region'?

[sturdy prairie]

I mean like

so the texture atlas is a giant Texture2D

I would have a method that looks like this

public Texture2D GetTexture(Rectangle source)
{
    //code that takes texture_atlas and returns a new texture that is the region implied by the rectangle
}```

does that make sense?

like it crops out the section of the texture atlas and makes a new texture from it

[hot hazel]

my point is in monogame

new textures would be individual pieces of gpu memory

spritebatch, hence the name, batches draw calls i believe only by texture

so if you are switching textures, you lose all benefit

that is the purpose of the sourceRectangle in SpriteBatch.Draw

[sturdy prairie]

so it would take less memory by certain

what about gpu power though?

[hot hazel]

if you create two textures

when you draw something it has to bind that texture

then if you wish to draw a second texture it has to bind that

(in addition those are multiple draw calls)

modern dx/gl can do bindless textures, but i dont think monogame supports that and i dont know enough to talk about that

its basically no different from rendering a 3D mesh with a texture

the reason atlases exist is to be faster and smaller than individual textures

[sturdy prairie]

so hands down it's faster

awesome

thank you!

[hot hazel]

also easier

[sturdy prairie]

definitely

thanks @hot hazel

[restive tapir]

Osuology gave karma to CobaltHex

[hot hazel]

anyone have experience with debugging opengl shaders for monogame? getting program crashes when certain shaders run, and theres no debug output

[hot hazel]

figured it out. unless im doign something special, one cannot have more than one position per vertex

[quiet ibex]

you can have multiple uv coordinates and other features, but multiple positions makes no sense

[hot hazel]

Dx supports them, I was using for misc vertex data

I guess the question is should I put the stuff in a texture instead

[surreal cobalt]

ok so this sounds weird but I want to have a 3d rendered item in a 2d space

like, it's only a visible difference to the viewer

[hot hazel]

Everything on a screen is 2d

Gonna need more details of what you want

[surreal cobalt]

so for example

floors and stuff are 2d

but walls are 3d

like pretty much everything but walls are 2d

actually I'm just gonna figure stuff out on my own and be less dumb with questions

[flat orchid]

hello

i am interested in the ways of the monogame™️

i've seen some few code bits and some unity knowledge transfers over to here

is it true?

do the same barebones rules mostly apply to both

[hot hazel]

monogame is only a framework

so while it does provide some things like a simple model renderer and spritebatching it doesnt require you use them and they are otherwise pretty barebones

it doesnt really dictatate how you build anything

so anything you did in unity you'd have to do in monogame

but you'd also have to do most of the stuff unity did for you

[raw warren]

@flat orchid I prefer Monogame over Unity because I have so much more control over my project. A big downside is that there’s no GUI. It’s just code

So it’s up to what you prefer

[flat orchid]

Wdym there's no GUI?

@raw warren

No integrated UI library?

[raw warren]

No no

There’s no gui for the person working on it. Like how Unity has its workspace. You just type code into your IDE (I recommend VS). You don’t drag and drop assets or anything of that sort

Kyle Schaub has a great tutorial on Udemy that covers both C# and MonoGame

Hope that helps @flat orchid

Keep in mind that MonoGame is primarily for 2d

Unity is better for 3d, but not so great for 2d

[hot hazel]

you can use monogame for 3d no prob

again, you'll be doing 90% of the work yourself however (or find a library)

[raw warren]

Well yeah

It’s just more efficient to use Unity

[hot hazel]

i wouldnt call it efficient

just easier

[gray matrix]

hey guys i just got started with MonoGame this weekend, are there any good tutorials for how to change scenes? like from splash screen to main menu?

[hot hazel]

monogame/etc dont dictate anything about how you do that

e.g. my game does not use scenes

so its up to whatever library you're using really

[quiet ibex]

@gray matrix what you're looking for is documentation on how to manage game states. A simple version would be having a class for each state(scene) and call update/draw on it through the Game1 class

the update method could then return a string/enum indicating the next state to switch to and then do a switch statement that swaps out the active state in the beginning of Game1.Update

its important that you only swap states in the beginning of update though, otherwise you might end up drawing a junk scene that hasn't been updated yet

[gray matrix]

wait what? are you saying i should be using the same Game1 class to render ALL my stuff with just different game states?

[hot hazel]

in my game i have a map class thats basically the game renderer

it itself is just a UI component

my main class renders the UI and the UI can update what UI is drawing

so they UI could be menus, the game, the editor, etc

[raw warren]

Long life libgdx...

[jolly sail]

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/understanding-state-design-pattern-by-implementing-finite-state/

good article

[jolly sail]

just realized this chat isn't for unity/c# lol

[unborn ibex]

What would you say are some things that could be improved in libgdx?

[hot hazel]

This is not a channel for advertising

[raw warren]

@hot hazel Sorry I didnt know.

[raw warren]

hello guys

any libgdx clevermind?

[dusky wraith]

!justask

[raw warren]

Hey guys! I have a question related to Monogame and Unity, I thought asking here would be the best place, do let me know if it's not :P

I am a decent programmer with a decent background and I recently started my own game project. Game development terms and structure is not unknown territory for me, however it is my first real game project ever, while intimidating I still feel confident about it 🙂 We're making a multiplayer 2d game with a top-view camera.

As the lone programmer of the project, as of right now (In the process of getting a second one), I am faced with quite a difficult question which is "Should we use Unity or something like Monogame?". I've read alot of articles, reddit posts and messed around with both Unity and Monogame. However, I'd like to get a more direct input with my situation in mind.

We've been using Unity for the past month or two, however my feeling is that Unity is taking care of a lot of things for me in a way I don't necessarily like, but also brings alot of tools to facilitate the workflow between programmers and artists as well as making things easier for me. As I'm working with pixel artists mainly using Aseprite, using Unity's built-in tools to process spritesheets and create animations has been a charm as we were able to quickly see results in a somewhat playable state.
While this aspect is great, as a programmer, I'm feeling forced to follow Unity's pattern which I don't necessarily like and Monogame definitely allow me to do whatever the hell I want and ultimately, gives me a lot more control as to what's going in the game compared to having to work with Unity's pre-made abstraction.

While that last paragraph would totally convince me to use Monogame over Unity, my main concern is the workflow between programmers and artists and the overall additional dev time required if I go with the monogame way. What is your guys opinion on that? Have you ever been faced with this situation or ever thought about it?

Thanks 🙂

A good analogy I came up with while thinking about this whole thing was "Do we want to use a lego box with pre-made parts that we only need to connect together or do we want to take the massive box of regular legos"

[cold pilot]

is it possible to do webapi calls using monogame? trying to figure out if I can port some server stuff from gms2 to monogame

[quiet ibex]

@raw warren depends on the game, it's possible to have monogame be the quicker implementation option. but you do need to know what you're doing

and given that you're looking for a second programmer and asking this question, you probably don't

[raw warren]

That's quite the harsh answer to reply with "You need a second programmer so you don't know what you're doing"

[quiet ibex]

unity is no walk in the park either though. it takes strong management and a disciplined team to work efficiently with it

[raw warren]

And the reason i'm getting a second one is because I can't do all the work alone honestly, a second mind to think about things and figure out stuff as we go on is always better

[quiet ibex]

that's not what i meant, i was commenting on the fact that you're looking for a programmer and you don't have the answer to the questions posed here

[raw warren]

Ah! I understand now, sorry about that assumption.

With that aside though, I agree, Unity is no walk in the park either, I don't expect Unity to be easier in fact.

[quiet ibex]

its also very important that you get the right person for the job, or adding another head is only going to slow you down

conversely it also means you need the skills to work effectively with a team

[raw warren]

Which is understandable, and I totally agree. I'll keep that in mind for sure. If we take the second programmer out of the equation however, what is your take on my concerns? Would you recommend one over another?

[quiet ibex]

for a solo 2d project i'd lean towards monogame, simply because you can get stuff done well in it far quicker

unity is better suited for teams of 5-10 ppl

[raw warren]

Interesting take, I never thought about the team size being a factor of what to choose honestly. I do have a couple people with me focusing on art since the project will require a lot, with that in mind, Unity would be a wise choice to keep that workflow clean I assume. My main concern however, since this will be a learning process for me on making an actual game (I've only made mods for existing games so far), is that using Unity may not allow me to fully understand how my game would work and not entirely having control on it.

I feel like this is a decision between "Controlling my code" and "Having great tools out of the box"

[quiet ibex]

your artists shouldn't be directly interacting with the engine while they work. The should be sending their assets into the pipeline and the rest is up to you pretty much

unity doesn't have "great tools" it has lots of "good enough" tools. which is why you can work quicker with monogame, if you know what you're doing

unity was designed around a process where decisions are made ahead of time in a meeting, followed by 1 or more teams spending a day or 2 implementing the decision into the game. That's not a quick workflow for a small team

[raw warren]

Now that you mention it, I do see that process in Unity now, hence why I felt like the code I was writing wasn't really "satisfying" if that makes any sense. I do see the upsides of Monogame alot more now, when starting out I assume I will write a lot of code to get the game working but in the long run, implementing new stuff would be easier since all of the code will be for my game and only my game compared to Unity which targets "A game in general". Correct me if i'm wrong

And "Good enough" tools is indeed the right term 😛

[quiet ibex]

well monogame just brings you to a lower level of abstraction, so you can implement your game using conventions and policies as opposed to hand-tweaking individual attributes

which means 1 man can do what it normally takes 10 people to do. as long as he knows what he's doing

but it also means you can't throw resources at a problem to make it go away

[raw warren]

That makes sense! Thanks for your insight, it was very helpful, I know what I'll be studying from now on 🙂

thanks @quiet ibex

[restive tapir]

Raphy gave karma to Ragath

[raw warren]

I'm definitely open to more opinions should anyone else want to throw their 10 cents as well 🙂

[hot hazel]

2 cents?

following along ragath's statement

unity provides a lot of things for you

however if you want to do things differently, you're fighting unity

monogame does less for you, so theres less to fight

so it really depends on if unity works the way you want it to

[raw warren]

Thanks @hot hazel

[restive tapir]

Raphy gave karma to CobaltHex

[raw warren]

how to change window size? (libGDX)

[lone radish]

I'm working on a space game, I have a problem with the planets and the star moving during warp. They both use the same class for movement but somehow only the first of them that's being updated moves

[lone radish]

I fixed it

[raw warren]

how to change window size? (libGDX)
@raw warren buy 4k screen

@raw warren buster

[distant perch]

the Lwjgl3ApplicationConfiguration has a setWindowedMode(<width>,<height>)

[raw warren]

@distant perch HOW?

i need example, i really dumb in this damned api

[distant perch]

your talking about the size of the window when running as a desktop app, right?

[raw warren]

yes

but i want create app for android

[distant perch]

so you probably have some Lwjgl Launcher class that looks a bit like that:

public class Lwjgl3Launcher {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        createApplication();
    }

    private static Lwjgl3Application createApplication() {
        return new Lwjgl3Application(new YourGame(), getDefaultConfiguration());
    }

    private static Lwjgl3ApplicationConfiguration getDefaultConfiguration() {
        Lwjgl3ApplicationConfiguration configuration = new Lwjgl3ApplicationConfiguration();
        configuration.setWindowedMode(1234, 123); // <- where you can set the default window size here
        return configuration;
    }
}

[raw warren]

i talking about libgdx, man...

[distant perch]

I know, that's the class that launches a libgdx game

import com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl3.Lwjgl3Application;
import com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl3.Lwjgl3ApplicationConfiguration;

[raw warren]

BRAINCRACK

[distant perch]

how does "DesktopLauncher" look like

[raw warren]

package com.mygdx.game.desktop;

import com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication;
import com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplicationConfiguration;
import com.mygdx.game.Drop;

public class DesktopLauncher {
    public static void main (String[] arg) {
        LwjglApplicationConfiguration config = new LwjglApplicationConfiguration();
        new LwjglApplication(new Drop(), config);
    }
}

[distant perch]

well there you go

[raw warren]

oh im stupid

[distant perch]

add
config.setWindowedMode(something something)

[raw warren]

ok i understand

facepalm

[distant perch]

😉

[raw warren]

@distant perch the configuration has only 2 setters

[distant perch]

try

config.height = 480;
config.width = 640;

[raw warren]

frameworks are too complex for my brain

@distant perch this works

thanx man you have quantum brain

[distant perch]

if you want to change the window size while the game is running you can also call

Gdx.graphics.setWindowedMode(width, height);

but since you mentioned you wanted to code for android as well I would check before calling that if it's not on android (changing the window size on android doesn't make much sense)

if (!Gdx.app.getType().equals(ApplicationType.Android)) {
    Gdx.grpahics.setWindowedMode(width, height);
}

[raw warren]

also works

where do you learn about all these methods?

[distant perch]

just playing around with it and if I'm stuck, asking people on discord

but the libgdx wiki is not too bad https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki

[raw warren]

@distant perch okay, thanks)

[restive tapir]

DannyWarp gave karma to this_is_phil

[lone radish]

I need help

if you look closely(might be too bad resolution) the planet vibrates when I move. You can se the stars flickering in the lower left. I don't understand why i vibrates. I can provide the code for the movement

[quiet ibex]

@lone radish that's because of improper handling of subpixel positioning

[lone radish]

What now?

I am rewriting the whole thing tho

I am making it a render target instead

[quiet ibex]

you probably had a blurry render and then set the samplerstate to pointclamp

[lone radish]

I was printing it directly to device

[quiet ibex]

a pointclamp samplerstate is not good enough to deal with this on its own

[lone radish]

But I have another problem now

Wait

Tell me about the subpixel thing @quiet ibex

[quiet ibex]

@lone radish basically the pointclamp filter can make pixels disappear if you try to draw them between screen pixels

its also why it looks like the thing vibrates

[lone radish]

I don't use a samplerState at all

The planets don't vibrate anymore but the stars do dissapear from time to time

[dense sable]

What should you do in this case?

I think I have the same problem

I don't know if it's visible enough but when the camera moves in a horizontal or vertical momement it's ok but not with diagonal movement

[quiet ibex]

@dense sable there's no one size fits all solution for this sadly, one option is to render different things on different "pixel grids"

i've done that in a game where the camera is fixed to the player and the rest of the world is rendered to a render target that's then aligned to make the camera movement completely smooth

the player sprite can be positioned between 2 background pixels in that case though. so it's not a pixel-perfect render

[dense sable]

I'll consider using two different render targets, but I don't really see what to do to have a smooth camera movement

i feel like now it's just doing ←↓←↓ pixel by pixel

[hot hazel]

I think the idea is that you can move the render target at partial pixels, but it may look blurry so only use it for the backgrounds

[orchid perch]

I recognize that name...

Anyway, one simple solution to this week-old discussion is just to always render everything at exact pixels. Just... round them off.

Intuitively it would make things jitter but in practice it looks good.

[quiet ibex]

@orchid perch no that's what he has and it does noticeably jitter

it's just such a common problem, that people go "omg, i didn't know things could look this smooth" when you get it right

[orchid perch]

Yeah.

Jittering means you're either jumping back and forth, or in pixel steps of alternating lengths.

If everything is floating point and you only floor it for the final render it usually works out.

My suggestion is always if you're making a pixel-perfect game to work in pixels. I actually am using integer position values at all times and I think I got the motion right. Could do a write up on it.

[timber mesa]

after joining a game jam and realizing with horror that I had no idea how to architect a game I looked into some ways to structure a game; libgdx comes with an entity-component system plugin that I'm currently playing around with but I have a question: components are supposed to contain "data" and not "functionality".

But how strict is that? in Kotlin, which I'm using for my playing-around, functions can be treated like data. It's cute, but is it "actually" data? What happens if I put a field for a function from say, integers to integers into a component's constructor (not as a method, just as raw data)? What goes wrong? Does this kind of thing have undesired side effects? And if there is a channel to ask questions in better than this one, which one is it? Thanks!

[raw warren]

In general, most ECS's don't literally enforce the data-only components, but it's in the purpose of the ECS design itself that components be only data so they have as little overhead as possible.

In concept, data is simply values that are stored. floats, ints, bytes, data that's read/written to.

I'm not sure what you mean by functions getting treated like data, unless you're talking about delegates/function pointers. In which case, yes, in theory, a delegate/fp is just like any other data, and will be modified/reinterpreted in undefined ways if you treat it like other data types. However, there's nothing inherently wrong with passing those around.

[quiet ibex]

@timber mesa when you bundle logic and data, you end up eliminating the reusability benefits of the ECS

[raw warren]

Hello everyone, I am new to Youtube and I just uploaded my first video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbGm5PevWyA support me in this new project and be part of this new project that begins

[upbeat eagle]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/625720247667916820/787650528673792001/unknown.png
How can I fix this error please?

[hot hazel]

can you translate that to english?

[upbeat eagle]

The imported project [path] was not found. We have also tried to find [Path] in the rescue path for [path]. Theses search paths are defined in [Path]. Check if the indicated path in the <import> declaration is correct and if the file exists on the hard drive in one of theses search paths. [Path]

@hot hazel

[hot hazel]

Try reinstalling monogame, or use the nuget pkg

[fossil mesa]

I highly recommend libgdx. I'm writing this game with it now.

[inland vessel]

Love the visual aesthetic of your game @fossil mesa The tower looks dope

[tight venture]

LwjglApplicationConfiguration config = new LwjglApplicationConfiguration(); that is loooooooooooong

[supple depot]

that tower looks nice

[true wind]

That's just the graphics from Stardew Valley though...

[fossil mesa]

Yeah, they are useful for prototyping.

[raw warren]

im newbie to monogames

[marsh palm]

Does anyone know a good tutorial for Tower defence games in monogame?

[digital dragon]

I don't think there is a tutorial specific to tower defence, but if you look for XNA tutorials you will find a lot. Most of the stuff described for XNA still applies to monogame

the monogame documentation lists various sources for tutorials as well

https://docs.monogame.net/articles/tutorials.html

[marsh palm]

Thanks

[quiet ibex]

@marsh palm it's tough to find tutorials for specific games and tech combinations. but you should have no trouble finding info about how tower defence games are constructed and then you can more easily look up how to do the specific things in monogame

[glacial hull]

Hi guys, sorry, maybe my question is not for this channel, but I can't find where I can ask )) So I am Manual QA Tester and now testing games based on libgdx and want to start automate my tests and don't know which tools I can use for it, I saw many tools for mobile automated tests but idk is there match for gaming, if you can give me advice or provide to the right channels it will be very helpful for me )))

[azure geode]

You might need to create an interaction layer that allows you to simulate inputs within the game and use a standard automated testing suite.

[quiet ibex]

@glacial hull if you want the test to be more than a glorified keyboard macro, you're gonna have to talk to the devs and establish an architecture that allows for testing

and it's usually not viable to replicate an entire testing session with some scripts

[glacial hull]

Yep also think about it, thank's for advice

[flat orchid]

has anyone worked with fmod in monogame? if so, any tips/guide/info on setting it up and getting it to work?

[hot hazel]

any reason you want to use fmod in particular?

[flat orchid]

does wwise work easier?

if wwise has a specific solution for monogame then sure

[hot hazel]

is what monogame provides not sufficient?

[flat orchid]

for audio?

no

most engines have really lackluster audio solutions

and even if it did have a good one, i'd still be using fmod

[hot hazel]

well i imagine fmod is like using it anywhere else

im pretty sure someone has written a .net interop lib

[flat orchid]

yea let me find that

i found a solution on git

https://github.com/Martenfur/ChaiFoxes.FMODAudio

apparently there's a small bit of fucking around with this

but it should work(?)

[frigid fiber]

I'm using FMOD with MonoGame and I used the aforementioned github link. However the latency is awful :(

Oh. wait. I'm actually not using that link. I started using that, but I switched to the FMOD c# bindings when I wanted to decrease the dependencies of my project. The FMOD installable api includes the C# bindings.

[flat orchid]

why this though

like

this is from the tut, i'm telling it to search in content yet the command goes through nectoreapp31

oh i just needed to build lol

N I C E

it works

@frigid fiber how do i link an fspro project to monogame now?

i'm guessing you've managed it

[frigid fiber]

@flat orchid You have to build the .fspro (F7, I think) from FMOD Studio. Then it generates 1 or more .bank files.
Then you use FMOD.Studio.System.loadBankFile () to load those .bank files

[flat orchid]

thanks a lot @frigid fiber

[restive tapir]

Subdivisions X-1 gave karma to Kak

[raw warren]

Is there an easy way of getting MonoGame to work with MonoDevelop?

[hot hazel]

In what way?

[flat orchid]

download the monogame api and import that in monodevelop

sounds like it makes sense

or nuget package(?)

if monodev has those, idk haven't used it

[hot hazel]

can also clone it off github/download release

you just need to link in the assemblies

[raw warren]

MonoGame is integrated within MonoDevelop, but it's broken

that's why I was having issues

[hot hazel]

i use VS, but don't use the integrations, I just link it from nuget

[raw warren]

yeah it works fine with VS on my old laptop

but my new laptop is running ubuntu

so I just didn't know if anyone had an easy fix for it

that's all

[hot hazel]

does nuget not work?

[raw warren]

I'll give that a shot

I'm not sure how that will interact with the MonoDevelop that's already there

[hot hazel]

I think it prefers the nuget versions but either should work hopefully

[quiet ibex]

@raw warren guessing you're using the Linux version of MonoDevelop? it's about a decade past it's expiration date, unless someone picked it up after xamarin

[hot hazel]

vs code might be sufficient

[raw warren]

ok

thanks all for the help

[formal basin]

i started using monogame today and it's gotten me to learn a lot about how it works further down to the metal

very refreshing

[twin cove]

@formal basin And is Monogame more beginner friendly then unity in general?

[formal basin]

not really, but if you want to get into it from unity you'll recognize a lot of things from unity's basic scripting functionality

[cunning vault]

How do I add Monogame build targets to Visual Studio?

[hot hazel]

do you want the content pipeline or just monogame?

[upbeat pendant]

Hi, I have a question about libGDX. To make a long story short, a few months ago I found Unity very limiting and I switched to libGDX and it's really great. I love the code freedom and cleanliness. I want to continue to develop in libGDX, but there is one thing that concerns me the most... Is it possible to make a good looking 3D game using libgdx?

what you think?

[hot hazel]

assuming it lets you create your own shaders and supports e.g. multiple textures, then yes of course

it will be a lot more work to make it look good over what unity provides out of the box however

[upbeat pendant]

technically it allows us to create shaders. There is even some shader lib. But this still looks poor compared to the default Unity scene... So I wonder if there is any good looking game made with libGDX which I could refer to as a proof of concept?

For me Space Haven is so far best looking game made with libGDX, but is 2D and completely different art style

[plain quartz]

How to build game in visual studio using monogame ?

[rocky shard]

Hey fellow MonoGame developers, I have a real puzzler for you. The first (and rarely, also the second) time that I start my game every hour or so, nearly all of my textures are black. I'm loading my textures from a packed spritesheet created with TexturePacker, and from what I've noticed, the only images that load successfully are from one specific folder: images/entity/monster. Here are some images so you can see what I mean. This is a very difficult issue to debug because after it happens once, it takes around another hour before it will randomly happen again.

I'm really stumped on this, so any tips at all would really be appreciated. This happens no matter how/where I run it, as far as I can tell

[quiet ibex]

you just have to comb through your code for bugs, make sure everything is meticulously planned out and work exactly as intended

[hardy jolt]

It seems a nice game, I didn't know it at all. I will add it to my Google Sheet of (mostly 2D) indie games sorted by engine used: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z1RV6w4HjPODFcao34h72Vw-9KxtQ9rv0ZM7folTUMU/ 😉

[orchid frigate]

Hey everyone,

I do write a game and do use a entity component system model for this

I do have the following parts for the core of the structure

EntityManager
ComponentManager
EventManager

And a wrapper to get a central access point for everything.

Now I was thinking how I could use UI to show data to the player because the gui is not connected to the ECS right now and everything I read told me better don't enforce the gui system into the ecs. My idea was to register the gui elements into the EventPipeline and push status changes throug the pipeline to the display.

What do you think about this approach?
I would create a "GUISystem" which catches those events updating the gui data. But since the gui is not using the rendering system from the ecs it kind of breaks the idea of a central system which manages everything.

https://pastebin.com/9x5dA7Vf <- Button
https://pastebin.com/ZQQaYAts <- underlaying class
https://pastebin.com/26E0PEDd <- if you want to go deeper
https://pastebin.com/FewznHv9 <- another class to go deeper

All ui elements are build on this base

[hot hazel]

What is the purpose of component manager?

[hot hazel]

@orchid frigate you seem to have a lot of indirection

also a lot of your doc comments leave more questions than answers

[orchid frigate]

I do use it to manage the components for the ecs

It also does pool the old already used components so I can reuse them to prevent the gc.

That the docs are missleading and not really helpful is bad,sorry I do need to improve it.

Do you need more information?

[orchid frigate]

Yep I do need to refactor this as soon as all the GUI elements I need are written

[hot hazel]

Components are typically structs, if you're storing in an array that shouldn't be an issue

[orchid frigate]

I do store them in a list one for each type to increase the performance 👍

But still my question to seperate the GUI completely from the ecs is this a good one?

Not sure how to integrate it into the ecs otherwise

[hot hazel]

while some composability is nice in a GUI, it doesn't really make sense to have it as a proper ecs imo

its very hierarchical

if you want an ecs for your gui id say it makes more sense to have your gui itself be its own ecs, and then if you need your entities in game have components that refer to entities of the GUI

as they don't have any overlap otherwise (your UI entities should data bind with the game but that should be the extent of the relationship)

[orchid frigate]

Thank you very much I will try to implement this 👍

[orchid perch]

Me over here using his ECS for his GUI like: 👀

[hot hazel]

doable, but not sure its worth the complexity

[sage quest]

How difficult would you say learning monogame is compared to other frameworks like pygame, and if it is more difficult what features or unique attributes does it have that sets it apart form others like pygame. Lastly, I noticed that monogame has sort of a structure to it ( a separate function to load, draw, update, etc.) how does this impact development with it compared do other frameworks that don't have this, for better or for worse.

[hot hazel]

monogame just provides you with the basic abstractions so you don't have to worry about things like creating a window, interacting with graphics api (dx/opengl), etc

and provide some helpful helpers (math library code, model/textures/etc)

beyond that, it's all up to you

its not an engine

the load/draw/update/etc that it provides are optional

[quiet ibex]

@sage quest it impacts your development a lot or not at all, depends on how you use it. But it sounds like you don't know C# so if you read up on that, you'll start to figure out what really sets it apart from things like pygame

[honest fjord]

what's up LIBGDX FAN CLUB 😂

last week, there was the good ol' libgdx game jam that i know lots of you participated in.

i did too, and i submitted a very 'cool' tech demo that demonstrates some basic networking/multiplayer capability.

what's especially cool, is that you don't even have to play it, and you can just read this awesome blog post i wrote about it:
https://developer-doge.itch.io/alice3gdx/devlog/237461/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-networking-a-basic-browser-game

cheers!

[vale zephyr]

soo, do i really need to use SpriteBatch for something like drawing solid color rectangles on the window/game

[digital dragon]

what else would you want to use?

or more to the point: why not use spritebatch?

[vale zephyr]

just based on what i saw in monogames documention, spritebatch is used for actual sprites, no?

[digital dragon]

well, it's for pretty much all things 2D

[vale zephyr]

oh

[digital dragon]

spritebatch abstracts the whole concept of drawing 2D graphics within a 3D renderer so you don't have to take care of texture positioning beyond a 2D plane

it is put together as a batch of graphics in order to have it only create one object to draw for the graphics card instead of creating a draw call for every single sprite

so you draw your 2D sprites / textures / text into a spritebatch (or multiple if necessary, iirc there is a call limit), the spritebatch then combines it for you into just one image and sends it to the graphics card

[vale zephyr]

yeah i got it

[hot hazel]

the alternative is to build quads (two triangles) and render those yourself

but thats basically what spritebatch is doing for you

[mighty herald]

Type parameter 'T' cannot be instantiated directly

anyone know what am i doing wrong?

[hot hazel]

: new()

After the class decl before {

[mighty herald]

?

[hot hazel]

Sorry, where T : new()

Google generic constraints c#

[mighty herald]

this is java D:

i had to do it for school D:

[amber pawn]

(sorry i just saw this, and this exchange is freaking funny as hell)

afaik there are generic constraints in java

[quiet ibex]

generics would be useless without constraints

[mighty herald]

:0

[hot hazel]

Less useful *

[amber pawn]

so the google keyword i'd use is "java generic array instantiate"
but honestly seeing the results point to reflection is discouraging

[mighty herald]

so rather than doing new T[][] i should pass in an existing array?

[amber pawn]

i think array is maybe not what you want to use in java for generic typed collections

[quiet ibex]

@hot hazel no you can't actually do anything without constraints, but typically you have a few implicit ones built into the language

[hot hazel]

?

[pale wind]

Hi you can watch my video I am developing a dungeon puzzle game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVcWQxfNgS0

[hot hazel]

why?

[cunning wraith]

Hey, looks great! Where will you release it? (Steam, itch.io, Game Jolt...)

[pale wind]

Hey, thanks. While an alpha version for android in googleplay is planned. At the moment I am drawing the environment. Subscribe to me instagram @wad_code

[weak salmon]

W A D gave karma to Pabeio

[cunning wraith]

Very cool! Do you think you are going to release it for computer too?

[pale wind]

The mobile version is smoother, and of course

[cunning wraith]

Great!

[pale wind]

Stay tuned for updates and news!

[cunning wraith]

Ok! Thank you, and good luck with your project!

[pale wind]

Thank you too

[weak salmon]

W A D gave karma to Pabeio

[lilac atlas]

Thank you

[cunning wraith]

No problem

[vocal sun]

@raw warren

[raw warren]

Yes

People here

[vocal sun]

it's a bit of a ghosttown...

[raw warren]

Understandable

[raw warren]

monogame

the big ded

[stiff slate]

dead

[gaunt sky]

Hello

[amber wave]

ded

[digital dragon]

I still do monogame stuff, but I never really have to ask about anything.
Monogame is so simple, there aren't really many questions coming up about it

[flat turret]

same. The monogame discord is so active that any questions I have I can get answered there

[flat turret]

<@&133522354419662848>

[digital dragon]

monogame is an open source continuation of the XNA framework.
XNA is a freeware game development framework that microsoft used to publish back in the xbox 360 days.

[flat turret]

@little moat thoughts on monogame for webgl?

[drifting sorrel]

Monogame for webgl is the reflection of a project that is a management disaster.
650+ bugs reported with none fixed during months, incredibly interesting PR with things like compute shaders or geometry shaders which are completely ignored by management, and one of the maintainers decides to incorporate a new platform which nobody asked for and for no real reason other that "look my lame 2d game runs in a browser with major bugs" with a technology already obsolete the moment they shipped it.

[raw warren]

<@&133522354419662848> scammer

<3 thankss

[burnt drift]

Could I get a link to that?

[hot hazel]

idk about anyone else but I keep getting notified that this channel has unreads

[lone patio]

is there some sort of component-based game object library for monogame?

[hot hazel]

a quick google search reveals one here: https://www.monogameextended.net/docs/features/entities/entities/

https://www.reddit.com/r/monogame/comments/alf6mm/ecs_frameworks_and_monogame/

[lone patio]

oooh thanks @hot hazel

[weak salmon]

Technostalgic gave karma to CobaltHex

[lone patio]

wasn't really sure exactly what search terms to use

[jovial mortar]

It's from spam messages that got deleted.

[lone patio]

If I'm looking for a 2D rigidbody physics engine to use with monogame, what would you guys recommend? I've only really seen Farseer physics recommended for c# online but I've used that in the past and I remember having some issues with it so I'd prefer to use something different. Does anyone have suggestions? I think I'd prefer to use something written natively in C# rather than a port, but I'm still open to using a port as well. Thanks in advance!

[hot hazel]

What is the issue you were having?