I am trying to make a copy of the popular browser game Travian.com. I am currently working on the maps and I was able to get the farms overview image as a png.
What I am trying to accomplish with that map is:
Each element (farm) should be clickable) and redirect to that specific farm page.
As you could see on the map, farms are not just simple squares.
Once I had the farms.png picture, I used on online tool to convert a png into a .svg file. Using a free software, I was able to draw circles around each map to build my svg.
This is the result:
I recently read about canvas and I was wondering if canvas would be a better option in my case rather using svg?
You need to try it yourself and see if it gets redrawn quickly enough that the game is sufficiently responsive for you. If the map is very detailed, the redraw may be too slow and make your game feel slow. You really need to try it and see. If it's too slow for you, then you may need to either:
use bitmap images, or
keep the maps as SVGs, but render them to a Canvas on first load. This way they'll be sharp at whatever resolution screen the user has.
Related
I want to evaluate Libgdx for my app. I want the following things to be possible with Libgdx:
The dynamic loading of images. (✔ Texture)
Cutting images. (✔ TextureRegion)
Support of the multiple screens. (✔ Screen)
Recognizing swinging to the right, left, up and down in a defined area. (✔ GestureDetector)
Nice to have:
Styling of buttons. (?)
Standard elements like lists, ScrollViews etc.(?)
SVG graphics rendering (?)
I am thinking about the three problems. I read that GestureDetector should be very slow (500ms) and that SVG graphics are not natively supported and rendered with extensions very slow.
My third concern is that I can't just style buttons the way I want them to, for example: enter image description here
I would like to know if my requirements can be solved with the LibGDX functions and if they are good and easy to use.
Thanks for your advice!
LibGDX comes with a sublibrary called Scene2D UI, which defines a bunch of standard UI widgets which can be styled with JSON. It comes with different Button classes and ScrollPane which are your ScrollView substitute.
Docs you might want for Scene2D UI:
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Scene2d.ui For the widgets
https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Skin For styling the widgets
In regards to SVG rendering, best option is to render them to PNG files if you want to use LibGDX alone.
Also, you may want to look into TextureAtlas for managing all of your TextureRegions, as well as AssetManager for managing all the external resources in your app https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Managing-your-assets.
It's a good idea to compile all of your texture files into a single texture, so that not many textures have to be bound and unbound in OpenGL, so have a look at this https://github.com/crashinvaders/gdx-texture-packer-gui this will help you produce a TextureAtlas automatically.
I'm kicking around an idea for a side project and am looking for advice on which direction to go in terms of technology. I've done some research already, but am still fairly confused as to what the realistic options are.
I'd like to make an interactive map based on a fictional world (think Middle Earth), including a timeline filter and a details section for additional information on an event or location.
Desired Features:
map on the left
details pane on the right
timeline slider/filter at bottom
Territories
color for political affiliation
displays details in details pane
labels
labels for cities
Hurdles:
Get a clean map image to work with
Map image into intermediate format (svg, geojson, topojson?)
Display map on webpage, style map, add animations, etc
Technologies
SVG
I'm pretty sure I could code all of this in SVG using events and boundaries. I've already been able to create SVG Paths from the image using GIMP, so converting the map into an SVG file seems plausible.
The issue with doing it this way is I would end up doing all the work the hard way when there seems to be lots of frameworks for this kind of thing already.
Kartograph
La Bella Italia is a very nice example and would serve as a good starting point. I love the trade route animations and the border styling with the glow filters.
The bonus here is that I know I can make an svg map, which is all this would need to get up and running.
My issue here is it doesn't seem like Kartograph is as rich of a platform as D3.js. I'm not sure if I can double dip and link some D3 stuff with the kartograph events. If I could, that might be the solution.
D3.js
The sliders, animations(hover and selection), and topojson seem like they would be perfect. But the main issue I have here is getting my image converted into a GeoJson format. From what I can tell these formats are strictly for Real World maps, using longitude/latitude.
So there you have it! I'm hoping there is some good news on how I might convert my map image into topojson so I can enjoy the benefits of D3.js. If not, I suppose I could just try kartograph and wire the events up with D3 controls.
Thoughts?
I'm currently writing my master thesis and I have the same topic like you had these days. I called my project Arda Maps. Feel free to ask me anything if have techonology questions.
I'm using the following frameworks/tools in my project:
QGIS
JQuery
D3.js
GeoJSON/TopoJSON
TimeGlider
I need to create a sprite graphic, I hope that's the right name for it, to use that with jQuery to move that graphic from position to position to make it look like a gif animation.
As I have 400 graphics (all the same size) which should become one single image later, is there a way to create that sprite automated with Photoshop CS5 or any other Software?
So that it will create that sprite image from all my 400 pics?
I was searching for such a thing now for weeks ...
http://css-sprit.es/
This service might help you.
Also google "generate sprite"
Some css sprite generator are already available. Just upload your images and it will automatically give u the sprite image file and css for it.
http://spritegen.website-performance.org
http://www.csssprites.com
http://csssprites.org
You can use sprite-me. Just bookmark the link provided in the website than open your website and run sprite-me, it will automatically show images used in the website in groups and when clicking on generate sprite, you will get sprite image and css.
I found a little tutorial explaining how to create sprites. It might help you to write your own java program.
https://sites.google.com/site/javagamescorner/home/creating-sprites
ive used an online srpite service http://spritegen.website-performance.org/ but i want to know how to make them by myself.
How can i save an image that it should be so small but when used on my web site it comes out normal size?
Sprites aren't about making the image itself small, it's about decreasing filesize by packing several images into one.
Take a look at Yahoo's icon sprite. Notice that they have all their section icons stacked vertically in one large image. They then use CSS to position the background to only show a small window of the sprite image, thus giving you just the icon.
In the end, it's up to you how you arrange your sprite. Check out the bottom of Amazon's sprite.
Either way, hopefully that helps gives you a better idea of the concept of sprites.
From the very site you link:
CSS sprites are a way to reduce the
number of HTTP requests made for image
resources referenced by your site.
Images are combined into one larger
image at defined X and Y coorindates.
Having assigned this generated image
to relevant page elements the
background-position CSS property can
then be used to shift the visible area
to the required component image.
So there is nothing magical involved: you simply need to pack all your pictures into a single giant image with your favourite graphics tool and insert them as CSS background. Just look at this CSS sprite by Google:
(This is a post that I'm moving from ui stackexchange.)
We have some irregular shaped areas...imagine a map of the states of the US. Imagine also that inside each state there is a rectangular region that contains graphics and text. We want to make each of the states react to mouseover/mouseout/click.
If it is a straight up HTML/Javascript page (no Flash), are there other ways to implement this than image maps?
If this is not possible, I would also consider just having the rectangular region within each state react to mouse events.
Does "straight up HTML" mean you can use Javascript? If so, consider the Raphael javascript library, which wraps SVG. Check out their homepage for a great overview of what you can do, including this example of counties (?) of Australia: http://raphaeljs.com/australia.html
You could also consider processing.js, which is a similar visualisation library but wraps canvas as opposed to SVG.
how about coordinates? grab your map of the us, figure out the polygons that contain a state, and every time the user clicks somewhere, get the position of the click and figure out what polygon that position is in.
the only tricky part is doing the translation from logical to physical. i.e. when you get the location of a click it'll probably give you the location in global browser positioning, and you'll need to figure out where your image is using jquery's .position().