JoshIdeas

Today I discovered an awesome performance boost for my games. I actually made one of my games run really slow trying to figure out how to make it appear or look better. AndEngine was putting weird lines around certain sprites. Seemed to occur most often with transparency enabled pngs.

Check out this link as an example:
AndEngine Issue number 59

So in my attempt to try and figure this out I went through all my sprites and added a

mSprite.setBlendFunction(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);

to each one.

I left them like this thinking it was actually helping… The weird lines around the sprites did occur less, so I figured this was the only fix. At least for now…

Then, I saw this awesome forum posting:
AndEngine Forum Posting

Since I implemented this fix into the AndEngine source I no longer need that ugly setBlendFunction(); and now the game is running really smooth. And the colors are more brilliant.

I thought it would be really cool to have a live wallpaper that had Street Fighter like effects and fighting scenes so I started working on a Pivot Fighter Live Wallpaper that hopefully will be just that. This idea originally started from a game called Pivot Fighter that’s for the Android game platform. I’ve been working on, more off then on, this Android game for about a year now. The code base for Pivot Fighter (Android Game) is about 16,000 lines of code! 16,000! I thought it would be easy to take the code or ideas from Pivot Fighter and turn it into a live wallpaper. So far it has been pretty easy and I get to reuse this AI for the Pivot Fighter Android game. Pretty cool

The characters were created by Hyun (FlyingPanda1990). Here’s a sneak peek.

The Pivot Fighter live wallpaper has almost 3,000 lines of code so far and will have more, lots more.

How am I designing this AI?

So far the code I have that acts as AI is merely random selection. This will be replaced with “assessment” logic or situational awareness. It has two main parts. One, a parent decision and Two, a sub decision control system. This is a really good start to a basic control system. This allows me to build the entire movement and fighting selection prior to implementing the situational logic that will do the “thinking” for each character.

The basic feel of the code is run two threads. Each thread is in responsible for one individual character. The logic is simple from there. Simply choose a randomly generated number between 1 and whatever and then execute. It will continue to execute that randomly chosen number until that number has expired. This works really well since we can tell the system to never break out of the loop until a certain goal has been reached. We can also add in code that checks the situation or the opponents movements. This aids it telling the AI character that he’s in danger should choose a more appropriate decision that will aid in his protection

It’s like this:

boolean mIsParentDecisionRunning = false;
	int decision = 0;
	int previousDecision = -1;
	int decisionMin = 1;
	int decisionMax = 3;

	// sub decision maker
	boolean mIsSubDecisionRunning = false;
	int subDecision = 0;
	int previousSubDecision = 0;
	int subDecisionMin = 0;
	int subDecisionMax = 0;

	public void loadAI()
	{
		mScene.registerUpdateHandler(new IUpdateHandler()
		{
			@Override
			public void onUpdate(float pSecondsElapsed)
			{
				if(mIsParentDecisionRunning == false)
				{
					decision = decisionMin + (int)(Math.random() * ((decisionMax - decisionMin) + 1));

					if(previousDecision != decision)
					{
						previousDecision = decision;

						mIsParentDecisionRunning = true;
					}
				}

				if(mIsParentDecisionRunning == true)
				{
					switch(decision)
					{
					case DECISION_PARENT_MOVE:

						UserDataType userDataType = (UserDataType)mBodyFighter.getUserData();

						if(userDataType.mCanMove == true)
						{
							if(mIsSubDecisionRunning == false)
							{
								subDecision = subDecisionMin + (int)(Math.random() * ((subDecisionMax - subDecisionMin) + 1));

								if(previousSubDecision != subDecision)
								{
									previousSubDecision = subDecision;

									mIsSubDecisionRunning = true;
								}
							}

							if(mIsSubDecisionRunning == true)
							{
								switch(subDecision)
								{
								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_TOWARDSOPPONENT:

									break;

								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_AWAYFROMOPPONENT:

									break;

								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_JUMP:

									break;

								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_JUMPTOWARDSOPPONENT:

									break;

								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_JUMPAWAYFROMOPPONENT:

									break;

								case DECISION_SUB_MOVE_CROUCH:

									break;

								default:

									break;

								} // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  END SUBDECISION MOVE SWITCH
							}
						}
						break; // ====================  END DECISION PARENT MOVE
					}
				}
			}

			@Override
			public void reset() {}
		});
	}

Hello, my name is Noah Wood and I produce the music and Art for the Android games my Uncle and I design. On Youtube I go by the channel name of GamingMonstas and my Artist name is Agama. 

Check out my YouTube Channel.

If you like my music then please donate

Agama – ThePlanets
Agama – Celestial
Agama – Liliton
Agama – Blosics
Agama – Dropline
Agama – WarmBells
Agama – The Creep

I am a big gamer and a beginner at Fl Studio.  I have been drawing almost my entire life and it is one of my biggest hobbies. When I got into producing music I started out with other programs such as Mixcraft and Dubstep Studio.