Scaling RenderTarget2D doesn't scale SourceRectangles - xna

I develop a 2D match3 game in XNA. The core logic and animations are done. I use RenderTarget2D to draw the entire board. The board has 8 rows and 8 columns with 64x64 textures (the tiles), which could be clicked and moved. To capture the mouse intersection, I use SourceRectangles for each tile. Of course the SourceRectangles have same size as textures - 64x64.
I would like to scale down the entire board, using the RenderTarget2D, to support different monitor resolutions and aspects. First I draw all tiles in the RenderTarget2D. Then I scale down the RenderTarget2D with a float coefficient. Finally I draw the RenderTarget2D on the screen. As a result the entire board is scaled down properly (all textures are scaled down from 64x64 to 50x50 for example), but the SourceRectagles are not scaled, they remain 64x64 and mouse intersections are not captured for the proper tiles.
Why scaling the RenderTarget2D doesn't handle this? How I can solve this problem?

You should approach this problem differently. Your source rectangles for textures are just that — don't try to use them as button rectangles, or you will get in trouble like this.
Instead, use a different Rectangle hitboxRectangle, which will be the same size as your source rectangle initially, but will scale with your game window, and check intersections against it.

Related

How to do texture edge padding for tiling correctly?

My aim is to draw a set of texures (128x128 pixels) as (gap-less) tiles without filtering artifacts in XNA.
Currently, I use for example 25 x 15 fully opaque tiles (alpha is always 255) in x-y to create a background image in a game, or a similar number of semi-transparent tiles to create the game "terrain" (foreground). In both cases, the tiles are scaled and drawn using floating-point positions. As it is known, to avoid filtering artifacts (like small but visible gaps, or unwanted color overlaps at the tile borders) one has to do "edge padding" which is described as adding an additional fringe of a width of one pixel and using the color of adjacent pixels for the added pixels. Discussions about this issue can be found for example here. An example image of this issue from our game can be found below.
However, I do not really understand how to do this - technically, and specifically in XNA.
(1) When adding a fringe of one pixel width, my tiles would then be 129 x 129 and the overlapping fringes would create quite visible artifacts of their own.
(2) Alternatively, once could add the padding pixels but then not draw the full 129x129 pixel texture but only its "center" (without the fringe) e.g. by choosing the source rectangle of this texture to be (1,1,128,128). But are then the padding pixels not simply ignored or is the filtering hardware really using this information?
So basically, I wonder how this is done properly? :-)
Example image of filtering issue from game: Unwanted vertical gap in brown foreground tiles.

What is the meaning of "nonuniformly scaled texture" in SpriteKit?

On SKCropNode class reference, some examples to specify a mask are given.
Here they are:
This means a crop node can use simple masks derived from a piece of artwork, but it can also use more sophisticated masks. For example, here are some ways you might specify a mask:
An untextured sprite that limits content to a rectangular portion of the scene.
A textured sprite is a precise per-pixel mask. But consider also the benefits of a nonuniformly scaled texture. You could use a nonuniformly scaled texture to create a mask for a resizable user-interface element (such as a health bar) and then fill the masked area with dynamic content.
A collection of nodes can dynamically generate a complex mask that changes each time the frame is rendered.
The second example introduce nonuniformly scaled texture: what's the meaning of this?
This does not help me to understand this second example!
A non-uniformly scaled texture is a texture that is applied to a sprite with xScale != yScale.

A 2D grid of 100 x 100 squares in OpenGL ES 2.0

I'd like to display a 2D grid of 100 x 100 squares. The size of each square is 10 pixels wide and filled with color. The color of any square may be updated at any time.
I'm new to OpenGL and wondered if I need to define the vertices for every square in the grid or is there another way? I want to use OpenGL directly rather than a framework like Cocos2D for this simple task.
You can probably get away with just rendering the positions of your squares as points with a size of 10. GL_POINT's always are a set number of pixels wide and high, so that will keep your squares 10 pixels always. If you render the squares as a quad you will have to make sure they are the right distance from the camera to be 10 pixels wide and high (also the aspect may affect it).

glReadPixels on separate layers

I'll get straight to the point :)
From the above 480 x 320 diagram, I am thinking I can detect collision on pixel level like a worm game.
What I want to know is how to sample pixels on separate layers. As you can see in the diagram, as the worm is falling, I want to only sample the black pixels with glReadPixels() to see if the worm is standing (colliding) with any terrain but when I last tried it, glReadPixels() samples all pixels on screen, without any ideas of "layers".
The white pixel is the background that should not be part of the sampling.
Am I perhaps suppose to have a black and white copy of my terrain on a separate buffer and call glReadPixels() on that separate buffer so that the background images (white pixels) won't get sampled?
Before I was drawing my terrain on the screen in the same buffer/context where I draw my background image.
Any ideas?
What read pixels does is read back the binded buffer, since the buffer is the output of all your compositions, will obviously contain all the data your wrote and doesn't understand you logic arrangement into layer. You can try drawing your terrain into the stencil buffer and read back only that. Use GL_DEPTH_STENCIL (format parameter).

what is source rectangle in spritebatch.draw in xna

What is the purpose of the source rectangle parameter in the SpriteBatch.Draw() method?
MSDN says: A rectangle that specifies (in texels) the source texels from a texture. Use null to draw the entire texture.
What does that mean?
The idea of the sourceRectangle is to allow you to implement what is both a performance optimisation and an artist convenience by arranging multiple sprites into a single texture. This is known as a "Texture Atlas" or a "Sprite Sheet".
(source: andrewrussell.net)
I explain why it is a performance optimisation in this answer. Basically it lets you reduce the number of texture-swaps. (So in the case of my illustration, if you're only drawing an animated character once, using a sprite-sheet will not improve performance.)
It also lets you implement tacky 2D special effects, like having a sprite "wipe" in:
(source: andrewrussell.net)
A texel is more-or-less the same thing as a pixel in the texture (a "texture pixel", if you will). So, when you draw your sprite, you specify the top-left corner of your sprite within the texture, along with its width and height. (The same as if you selected it in an image editor.)
If you pass in null for your source rectangle, XNA will assume a source rectangle that covers the entire texture.
The origin you specify to Draw is also measured in texels from the upper-left corner of the source rectangle.
In a situation where you have a single texture that contains different frames (animated textures), you will want to specify the source rectangle, so that you can draw a single frame from a texture.
i.e.
Look at this spritesheet here
The source rectangle defines the area of the texture that will be displayed. So if you have a 40x40 texture, and your rectangle is (0, 0, 20, 20), only the top left corner of the texture will be displayed. If you specify null for the rectangle, you will draw the entire texture.
This can be helpful when drawing from a spritesheet (a collection of textures that are all put into one bigger texture), and also in image manipulation programs.

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