depending on your need, alternativly you may use this one ^^  :

http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/fastest-perlinnoise-improved-version-bicubic-amp-bilinear-grad-amp-value-noise/23771/view.html

IMHO, I am not sure it is necessary to use normalmaps, you can get smooth result with normal interpolation by using the angle of the two edges of the triangle that touch the vertex as a weights on computation of the resulting normal. It usually give good results.

(also maybe I would rather consider a lighting/shadow map (and disable light on rendering if not requiered), as it is easy/fast to compute/update in 2d for land/terrain and can also be used to cast other object shadow)

One thought would be to use something like ROAM but not sure that it is the best for contour

here an old applet with source code

EDIT : you can imediatly test the result by converting your contour image in blue gradiant and test it with the above applet

maybe this kind of loop will help (inded feel free to replace currentTimeMillis by nonoTime...)

EDIT: after reading it dos not seems to be as good :/

this one seems better, it will do a fixed step logic/physic and will render only if at least one logic update has been performed (and then max FPS will be also limited to update logic rate but will run logic the same even on computer with very low FPS and will only consume requiered CPU on fastest computer):

If you are looking for fastness rather than precision I would advice to make a first pass using bounding radius of both view and objects (basically distance between center of view and center of object) and remove all object that are too far and than use another method smarter for all remaining viewable objects

basically :

nb: can also be usefull for prototyping something for a client that would cost a lot of money

yes you can !

but anyway this "toy" is really fun, I found it even more interresting for doing some kind of robotics

I would advice to start by trying & playing with standard network object (Sockets) than once you understand how it work you may want to switch to a library (as it is IMO always important to understand how things works).

Also start with TCP it is a lot easier, you should be able to build you first client/server pretty quickly with a good tutorial

wow stencyl looks very nice

arround 25 years, starting by doing my first game on a CPC 464 in basic, than going on 8086 assembly for my first 3d engine, and after turbo pascal, and after ..., and after..., and... finally java!

I am still nostalgic for that time, that was really really cool with a lot of things to discover, different computers, different languages, concurrency, games was a little crappy but imagination and coverage of games was doing all the stuffs, this was really cool

yes sure, It is not really what it is intended to do, I am more looking at this soft like a game rather than a program IDE, I found it fun to manage to get something interresting from it that's why I was saying it may be fun for a contest (with this soft as the constraint of the contest)

sry I was not on JGO for a while...

yes I pointed this artefact above, this is due to a lack of precision in the bicubic computation (it can be corrected)

probleme come from the discretisation of computation not the computation itself , so I believe that it wont help more than correcting the integer cubic interpolation implementation

Scratch is for  learning basics and IMO  really well done for kids and to help people understand, a fast look let me think that Unreal's Kismet look a bit complex ans less user friendly

(nb: we used sracth for a young trainee  (13/14) in our company and in less than one day without having any knowlege in programming he was able to nearly produce a litte game and start to understand basics of programming)

you can simplify a lot the problem by changing frame of reference for computation (in other terms compute collision from the rectangle point of view) this way the given problem "Collision Detection for Circle and Rectangle (including rotated)"
become "Computing collision for a moving circle with a static rectangle"

to do it easily if you rectangle is done with four points ABCD like this
A---B
|     |
C---D

for each physics cycle compute circle position in the rectangle frame of reference :
x distance using the normalized vector CD and point C
y distance using the normalized vector CA and point C

this will give you the position of the circle in the rectangle frame of reference (from the rectangle point of view) where you can compute collision easily (as the rectangle is static : none rotated or translated)

something like (CD & CA normalized):
distCircleX=CDx*CircleX+CDy*CircleY - (Cx*CDx+Cy*CDy);
distCircleY=CAx*CircleX+CAy*CircleY - (Cx*CAx+Cy*CAy);

then compute collsion circle pos if any
if (distCircleX<-radius) => no collision
if (distCircleY<-radius) => no collision
if (distCircleY>CDlenght+radius) => no collision
if (distCircleY>CAlenght+radius) => no collision
if(no corner collision ?) => definitly no collision

 and convert this collison pos from rectangle to original frame of reference

I encourage every one to look & try for fun this project :
 
http://scratch.mit.edu/

I found it fun and very interresting to help people understand basics of programming

You program just using the mouse and can publish your project via Java Applet

(a JGO contest for fun on this tool may be very fun ^^)

hum... du to the crappy java plugin implementation, most customer ask for flash instead of java

only for the syntax (and that's not that true, local variable scope are just really stupid in flash)

@OP:
java & flash have a completly different approach, you wont be able to convert a full project flash to java easily (you can for simple class) but: flash is higher (or at least more far .... ) level language, flash have a lot of predefined features as filters / sprite / etc... that you cant convert from java as it, you also dont manage the rendering loop and flash is damnly slow (maybe slower than javascript if you dont use the right tools : PixelBender/ColorFilter etc ... to deal with pixels) so... as Java & Flash use a completly different approach it is IMO not a good idea to build a project in flash and try to convert it later in flash (it may be right fo simple class test but you may need to earn some experience on flash before)

doing some work (for Superdev.... : a startup that Hire me, pleasant but... ) not "that interresting" but enought to "stuck me out" for out-job stuff :/ I really miss that but I plan/hope that i will soon post some interresting code in shared section

EDIT :
you're right about long time, I got 7 pages on "unread topic" :/

yes, very enthusiast !


walou !

Would like to come back with something a bit more technical but I reallly love this one

http://www.youtube.com/embed/gE6jAegQzmI

+/- 1 : would be really nice.... we also had to deal with remote working but unfortunatly it has never been really satisfying, remote work really require to be well organized

even better if it was an applet 

there is something wrong in the loading process (related to sound maybe) it took more than 30s to start (20Mb bandwith), also the gamesize is to small (maybe it was a bug but I only add very few pixels in height).

it may be a fun game to play with other people

porting those game may requiere gameplay review / deep modification no ? I mean some of them will no be adapted to some IOS device capabilities : screensize / touchscreen

depending on the requested goal : use different layers, and a sprite hierarchie : like weapon is child of body

example :
have n weapons animations and only one body animation, if you want to just change clothes/skin/hair colors you may use same spritesheeet but with a tint filter, when user change weapon tou will just change its children weapon spritesheet/animation

you may use a grid placement to avoid two object to overlap and a stack of pos and maybe a PRNG to avoid different generation, not very optimised but should work well until you use very small object on very big area.

something like :

yes you're absolutely right, this is two separate way and both have their motivations (this was just a personal opinion)

hoho! this topis is becoming hot, where is the JGO fairplay/coolness  

[size=9pt]2 cents :

related to a previous post about libraries :
being employed dont mind you cannot have fun anymore  that's why my side I usually prefer rebuilt everything from scratch, including GUI/network/physics/etc... because often, when thinked enought it does not take so much time to rebuild something (anything), it ends more adapted to the project you're working on and a lot more fun to do. IMHO there is nothing more boring to be employed in a big (blockbuster) company that only use/reuse "pre-made" engine. I mean you can use software/libraries or write software/libraries for other and the second one is a lot more interresting.

about studying to get a job (in all area of work), nothing is more efficient then real work, someone who can show real project  and/or have referent people in different companies will always get more attention to anyone having any study/certification, study is only interresting for the first job.[/size]

22/05/2011 will start a race with 1500€ of prices to win

http://vor2.com/course.php?id_course=348

The race is 950 nm long, duration should be arround 8/15 days depending on skipper ability
 
Note that before this day we will put a new functionality online, the programmator enable to change direction or sails automatically based on two kinds of trigger : dates & gates.

Also a new boat has been modelised and will be available "Class 40" wich is one of the fastest monohull boat.

yes ^^

I did not find any one at the time I wrote it (last year http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/pure-java-png-loader-with-efficient-amp-clear-code/22041/view.html)

yours looks nice and more complete too, anyway I dont find it "easily readable", the one I posted above is short and IMO really easy to "read" even by someone who dont understand anything on PNG, but it is more a base to anyone wanting to write its own, I mean I know it is incomplete in many ways, I just wanted to give "base code"

for example showing where the int chunk value come from :
public final static int CHUNK_PLTE = 1347179589;//bytesToInt("PLTE".getBytes());