Draw order of 3D-Models in XNA - xna

i'm having trouble with drawing 3D-Models in the right order in XNA.
Here are two images that describe the problem:
Pic1: http://imgur.com/wGPIk&L5AY1l
Pic2: http://imgur.com/wGPIkl&L5AY1
The ball is moving downwards and as soon as it intersects the terrain, the perspective is changing so that it looks like as if the ball is behind the terrain.
If i change the order of drawing, it will look like the ball is on top of the terrain all the time..
Can someone please explain how to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance

The problem is the SpriteBatch call that draws your FPS counter in the corner.
SpriteBatch changes the state of the graphics device. Whenever you're done drawing your 2D objects (in this case, your frame rate counter in the upper-left corner), you need to restore the device state.
After calling SpriteBatch.End(), add this code:
device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default;
where device is a reference to the current GraphicsDevice that you're drawing with.

This looks like a ZBuffer problem. Have you checked that your Zbuffer is enabled and working? Try what David Lively said. if that works, check that you don't draw your 3D models Inside the Begin and End calls of the SpriteBatch class.
Begin readies the device for drawing 2D objects, if you try now to call 3D drawing this can't work. End makes sure that everything, set for 2D, is unset and reverted to the states before the Begin call.

Related

Apply an impulse to SKNode to move across screen and detect collision

I am making a basic app that pushes shapes across the screen and detects collision with Sprite Kit. My first attempt was using moveTo on the nodes. The issue I had was with collision, the objects would rotate around each other instead of bounce.
Therefore I found I need to use applyForce OR applyImpulse.
In this situation I have a circle for example that is position off screen at its start of life. We then determine a target exit point, and want to 'flick'/'push' the node in that direction.
I cannot figure out how to applyImpulse towards the target end position I have as a CGPoint. I need to get this to a CGVector but I am not sure what needs to be done. I had a look around and found some Ray tuts but they just show applyForce or moveTo. I am not sure how to calculate this.
I found a site that explains 2D physics well.
http://www.rodedev.com/tutorials/gamephysics/
With this I worked out what the angle needed to be and have a speed that I can control and it works well.
You can move an object by changing manually the x and y position so you can reach your end point. In the update function you change yourObject.position.x and yourObject.position.y if I have understood correctly your question. If not please be more explicit. Hope that helps.

ccDraw. Fill screen everywhere except on sprite

So I am trying to get a very basic "flashlight"-style thing going in one of my games.
The way I was getting it to work, was having a layer on top of my game screen, and this layer would draw a black rectangle with ~ 80% opacity, creating the look of darkness on top of my game scene.
ccDrawSolidRect(ccp(0,0), ccp(480,320), ccc4f(0, 0, 0, 0.8));
What I want to do is draw this rectangle EVERYWHERE on the screen, except for around a cone of vision that will represent the "light source".
What this would create would be a dark overlay on top of everything except for the light, giving it the illusion of a torch/light/flashlight.
The only way I can foresee this happening is by using ccDrawSolidPoly(), but since the position of the light source changes, so would the vertices for the poly.
Any suggestions on how to achieve this would be great.
You can use ccDrawSolidPoly() and avoid having to manually update vertices. For this you can create a new subclass of CCNode representing your light object, and do your custom shape drawing in its -(void)draw method.
The ccDraw...() functions will draw relative to the local sprite coordinates, so you can then move and rotate your new sprite to suit your needs and cocos2d will do the vertices transformations for you.
Update: I found out that you might be better off subclassing CCDrawNode instead of CCNode, as it has some facilities for raw OpenGL drawing (OpenGL's vertexArrayBuffer and vertexBufferObject internal variables and a buffer for vertices, their colors and their texCoords). If your stuff is very simple, maybe subclassing the plain CCNode is enough.
Could a png be used instead as a mask, as the layer above
Like that binocular vision you sometimes see in cartoons?
Or a filter similar to a photoshop mask that darkens as it grows outwardly to wards the edge of the screen
Just a thought anyway...
A picture of more of what your trying to explain might be good too

Making a Drawable layer in cocos2d

I want to make sort of a chalk board for part of my app, and I was wondering how to accomplish this?
I was thinking I could create a sprite and have it's image set to something very small (maybe a small point), and then add a new instance of that sprite everywhere the user touches to simulate a draw event. Something like [self addChild:someSprite]; for each touch location.
But it seems like that would be extremely memory inefficient. There has to be a better way than that, Maybe drawing actual lines? I'm probably overlooking some method.
Thanks for any help.
You need to use CCRenderTexture for chalk board paintings. Check this article & project for a drawing example.
Your variant isn't such "memory inefficient" as you think. No matter how much sprites will you create with the same texture, your texture will be placed to the memory only once. And all the sprites will use pointer to it. Just one thing to prevent many unnessesary calls is to use CCBatchNode. It will draw all it's children with single draw call. Without using it, draw will be called on every children.

How to place sprites at specific x,y coordinates in xna 4.0

Okay im working on making a tic tac toe game for one of my game development courses using XNA 4.0 I need to place sprites or some other objects so the game can check if the mouse is being clicked in the correct spots. I am going to use transparent sprites as a kind of button. How do I code them to go to these specific x,y coordinates. The game board is drawn on the background, I have all the coordinates to where to place these sprites. I am just stuck on putting the sprites in the correct positions.
SpriteBatch.Draw has a position parameter. Pass in an appropriately-valued Vector2.
Well if you check the Draw method you will find a parameter for the position.
Check this code sample
spriteBatch.Begin();
Vector2 pos = new Vector2(10, 10);
spriteBatch.Draw(SpriteTexture, pos, Color.White);
spriteBatch.End();
This is how you draw a sprite, with SpriteTexture as the image, on the position x10, y10 with the color White to modulate the texture.
You can also find more informations here.
Keep in mind that there are many overloaded methods to the Draw method. One you can even pass in rotation information and the like. So .Draw(...) has a lot of functionality you can use beyond just placing a sprite.

Dynamically alter or destroy a Texture2D for drawing and collision detection

I am using XNA for a 2D project. I have a problem and I don't know which way to solve it. I have a texture (an image) that is drawn to the screen for example:
|+++|+++|
|---|---|
|+++|+++|
Now I want to be able to destroy part of that structure/image so that it looks like:
|+++|
|---|---|
|+++|+++|
so that collision now will work as well for the new image.
Which way would be better to solve this problem:
Swap the whole texture with another texture, that is transparent in the places where it is destroyed.
Use some trickery with spriteBatch.Draw(sourceRectangle, destinationRectangle) to get the desired rectangles drawn, and also do collision checking with this somehow.
Split the texture into 4 smaller textures each of which will be responsible for it's own drawing/collision detection.
Use some other smart-ass way I don't know about.
Any help would be appreciated. Let me know if you need more clarification/examples.
EDIT: To clarify I'll provide an example of usage for this.
Imagine a 4x4 piece of wall that when shot at, a little 1x1 part of it is destroyed.
I'll take the third option:
3 - Split the texture into 4 smaller
textures each of which will be
responsible for it's own
drawing/collision detection.
It's not hard do to. Basically it's just the same of TileSet struct. However, you'll need to change your code to fit this approach.
Read a little about Tiles on: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html#tiles
Many sites and book said about Tiles and how to use it to build game worlds. But you can use this logic to everything which the whole is compost from little parts.
Let me quick note the other options:
1 - Swap the whole texture with
another texture, that is transparent
in the places where it is destroyed.
No.. have a different image to every different position is bad. If you need to change de texture? Will you remake every image again?
2- Use some trickery with
spriteBatch.Draw(sourceRectangle,
destinationRectangle) to get the
desired rectangles drawn, and also do
collision checking with this somehow.
Unfortunately it's don't work because spriteBatch.Draw only works with Rectangles :(
4 Use some other smart-ass way I don't
know about.
I can't imagine any magic to this. Maybe, you can use another image to make masks. But it's extremely processing-expensive.
Check out this article at Ziggyware. It is about Deformable Terrain, and might be what you are looking for. Essentially, the technique involves settings the pixels you want to hide to transparent.
Option #3 will work.
A more robust system (if you don't want to be limited to boxes) would use per-pixel collision detection. The process basically works as follows:
Calculate a bounding box (or circle) for each object
Check to see if two objects overlap
For each overlap, blit the sprites onto a hidden surface, comparing pixel values as you go. If a pixel is already set when you try to draw the pixel from the second sprite, you have a collision.
Here's a good XNA example (another Ziggyware article, actually): 2D Per Pixel Collision Detection
Some more links:
Can someone explain per-pixel collision detection
XNA 2-d per-pixel collision
I ended up choosing option 3.
Basically I have a Tile class that contains a texture and dimention. Dimention n means that there are n*n subtiles within that tile. I also have an array that keeps track of which tiles are destroyed or not. My class looks like this in pseudo code:
class Tile
texture
dimention
int [,] subtiles; //0 or 1 for each subtile
public Tile() // constructor
subtiles = new int[dimention, dimention];
intialize_subtiles_to(1);
public Draw() // this is how we know which one to draw
//iterate over subtiles
for(int i..
for(int j ...)
if(subtiles[i,j] == 1)
Vector2 draw_pos = Vector2(i*tilewidth,
j*tileheight)
spritebatch.Draw(texture, draw_pos)
In a similar fashion I have a collision method that will check for collision:
public bool collides(Rectangle rect)
//iterate over subtiles
for i...
for j..
if(subtiles[i,j]==0) continue;
subtile_rect = //figure out the rect for this subtile
if(subtile_rect.intersects(rect))
return true;
return false;
And so on. You can imagine how to "destroy" certain subtiles by setting their respective value to 0, and how to check if the whole tile is destroyed.
Granted with this technique, the subtiles will all have the same texture. So far I can't think of a simpler solution.

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