Drawing partial circle arc in 2D - vb.net

I'm trying to draw a partial circle arc in Visual Basic. (Example: 75% of an outer arc.)
I tried to do this both by adding in the Visual Power Packs and by using the below code but I can't seem to figure out how to hide a portion of the arc without either covering everything within the circle or disabling the circle altogether.
(The goal being that as the countdown timer ticks down, a portion of the circle disappears as the clock is counting down. So at 0:15, there's half the circle and the like.)
Is there a way to draw a 2D circle arc that doesn't involve using any sort of graphics engine?

Related

How to make a PhysicsBody based on Alpha Values

Suppose there there is a scene as follows:
There is a scene with the same size as the frame of the device. The scene has a red ball, which is able to move throughout the 'world'. This world is defined by black and white areas, where the ball is ONLY able to move in the area that is white. Here is a picture to help explain:
Parts of the black area can be erased, as if the user is drawing with white color over the scene. This would mean that the area in which the ball can be moved is constantly changing. Now, how would one go about implementing a physicsBody for the an edge between the white and black areas?
I tried redefining the physicsBody every time it is changed, but once the shape becomes complex enough, this isn't a viable solution at all. I tried creating a two-dimensional array of 'boxes' that are invisible and specify whether most of the area within each box is white or black, and if the ball touched a box that was black, it would be pushed back. However, this required heavy rendering and iterating over the array too much. Since my original array contained boxes a little bigger than a pixel, I tried making these boxes bigger to smooth the motion a little, but this eventually caused part of the ball to be stopped by white areas and appear to be inside the black area. This was undesired, since the user could feel invisible barriers that they seemed to be hitting.
I tried searching for other methods to implement this 'destructible terrain' type scene, but the solutions that I found and tried were using other game engines. To further clarify, I am using Objective-C and Apple's SpriteKit framework; and I am not looking for a detailed class full of code, but rather some pseudo-code or implementation ideas that would lead me to a solution.
Thank you.
If your deployment target is iOS 8, this may be what you're looking for...
+ bodyWithTexture:alphaThreshold:size:
Here's a description from Apple's documentation
Creates a physics body from the contents of a texture. Only texels
that exceed a certain transparency value are included in the physics
body.
where a texel is a texture element. You will need to convert an image to the texture before creating the SKPhysicsBody.
I'm not sure if it will allow for a hole in the middle like your drawing. If not, I suspect you can connect two physics bodies, a left half and a right half, to form the hole.

Static circle rotates when I move kinematic rectangle in Box2d

I am writing 2d scroller with Box2D in Xcode. Scrolling is organized by moving kinematic bodies (which all together make ground). Kinematic bodies are moved with setlinearvelocity function.
When dynamic body falls on this ground and stops near the wall it starts to rotate.
Here is an image:
Black circle is dynamic, blue blocks are movable kinematic bodies. When circle falls in such pit it starts to rotate. If I stop moving blue ground it does not.
How can I change this?
Stop moving the ground and move The ball instead. I don't see the reason why you are moving the whole terrain instead of only moving a ball. Making the terrain a static body will make the physics simulation more efficient too.

Trace a ccsprite cocos2d-iphone

I have a layer with a sprite of a simple black donut. I want the user to be able to draw on the sprite in a different color (which I've managed to do without any problem using CCRenderTexture).
My question is how I can calculate whether the image has been traced at least 95% (meaning, find out when 95% of the black pixels are now the new color). I've tried methods like taking a screenshot of the layer and counting the number of black pixels, but it hasn't worked that well (using this solution: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1262893/1577738).
It would be even better if I could just change the color of each pixel as it's touched (to avoid issues with coloring out of the lines). I could theoretically just split the donut into like 10 sprites and change that section's color if the user touches it, but that seems ridiculous if I give the user options to use a bunch of different colors.
Am I going about this the wrong way? Your suggestions are much appreciated!
Reading pixel colors will be rather inaccurate and slow. I suggest dividing the area into smaller rectangles (ie 8x8 or 4x4) and then flag each as "visited" when the user draws on it. If most rectangle areas are flagged, the user has drawn on most parts of the texture.

CCParallax for a moving background

I got a tiled map and I want to make lava lakes. I wish to have some kind of lava texture image on the background looping diagonally slowly. I could make it with four 960x640 images and move all of them diagonally etc. But when I do, a black/white line appears between each...
... and someone suggested me "CCParallax". I have never used it and am not sure if it really can achieve the effect I am seeking.
Also note that as the player moves on the map, the parallax will need to simulate that as well etc.
So my question is, what would you do for this effect? Four looping images or "CCParallax"?
CCParallaxNode is pretty limited because you can't specify endless parallax scrolling without modifying the class. It also doesn't quite fit your use case.
Using four 960x640 images is wasteful. Just to make some lakes underneath the background this is overkill and will negatively affect performance.
The solution depends a bit on how big the lakes are. For example, if these are just 1 or 3x3 tiles in size you could add a textured sprite underneath each lake. If on the other hand your tilemap consists mostly of a few narrow pathways while the rest is lava lakes, then you need a different approach.
You might want to try GL_REPEAT to repeat a single sprite's texture over a defined area. That allows you to use a relatively small texture, for example 64x64, that will be repeated over the rectangle you specified.
You can then modify the sprite's position each frame to scroll the texture. Every time the sprite has moved 64 pixels in horizontal or vertical direction, you subtract 64 pixels (sprite.contentSize.width) from the sprite's position to reset it back to its original state. That means the sprite will never move further than 64 pixels from its initial position in any direction but you still get smooth scrolling.

How to recognize the touch of a non regular sprite image?

I have a sprite and if it is touched the touch should be recognized. I used the coordinates to do so. I took the coordinates (min x, min y, max x , max y)of the sprite image. But The sprite image is not a rectangular shape. So, even if I touch the coordinates outside the sprite and inside the rectangular bounds the sprite is recognized.
But for my application I need only the sprite to be recognized. So, I have to take only the coordinates of the sprite, but it is not regular shape. I am using CCSprite in my program.
So, what can I do to for only the sprite to be selected ? Which classes should use for this?
Thank You.
You could try one of the following...
Create a bounding box smaller than the absolute extents of the sprite image. Yes it will be smaller than the sprite. This will eliminate the dead space click detection of the sprite the trade off being parts of your sprite which look selectable won't be
Use a circular bounding area to detect if the user has clicked on your sprite. Again you will have the dead space problem in my first suggestion but the sphere may give you some better coverage area over the sprite giving you better results on touch detection
This is a standard problem in physics collision detection systems which often end up using circles or rectangles as their collision bodies. I would go with the either a circle or rectangle smaller than the size of your sprite as your bounding area. Going finer detail than that you could generate bounding area polygons. This would however introduce a whole bunch of new issues and concerns.
I am building a Cocos2D game right now and what I am doing is first I step through my sprites and see which sprites the touch hit (they overlap in my app)
Then, for each sprite hit I use [sprite convertTouchToNodeSpace] to get an X,Y co-ordinate inside the sprite, which I can use (although the Y axis is flipped) to reference the CGImage I created the sprite with.
If the pixel at the touch point is 'clear' ie alpha 0, then the sprite was not really touched, and I check the next sprite in the z-order to see if it has color where it was touched.
Sometimes I think I should be using a two color mask image to go along with each sprite, not the sprite image. But, I am mr. make it work, then make it fast.
I realise this is not super efficient, but I do not have very many sprites and I do this only for touches.