Games – repo.mind.cth451

“Certified” Androids?

The story begins with the moment I bought Cytus II on the very first day of its release from google play, expecting some real music gaming on my Surface Pro 3 running homebrew Android 7.1 (yes, that’s totally possible and it runs suprisingly fine with all hardware buttons and touchscreen working). However the game quits immediately and no logs are shown through the adb interface. I contacted Rayark for support and got reply like this:

Cytus II might only be compatible for native Android devices at the moment. Please also check if you have installed Xposed, firewalls, block ads, or any rooting software. If yes, these may effect the performance of the game. We’d like to suggest you to remove these software to ensure the game runs smoothly and properly.

(Probably) 3 weeks after the game’s release, I ended up playing Cytus II on my crammed 5′ mobile phone, not by choice though. Someone asked me, why I can’t buy a regular Android tablet or an iPad to do the same job. Well that could be an option if those people would donate in any means for a new one, and I really don’t think utilizing an existing hardware piece could cause any troubles for commercial devs and companies (Google: really?).

After some searches I reached conclusion that Cytus II has integrated an “compliance check” called SafetyNet and the underlying Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), a framework introduced by Google to verify if any android device falls into the category of “compatible”. Since Surface Pro 3 has never got an official Android release (it’s a Microsoft thing, of course) and the base android x86 is shipped with root and development mode on, there is probably no way that any CTS tests on Surface Pro 3 would pass any time sooner.

Just earlier this day, I saw the news that Google is attmpting to block Gapps from running on “uncertified” devices, where modding the android device or unlocking bootloader would void the “certified” status. There’s even a webpage letting people to “register” their Androids with their device identifier which is absolutely not working after I attempted to register my Surface only getting an unknown error.

I would not blame Rayark for their attempt to place a layer of piracy protection on such a nice game while hurting the ones who modded their devices properly exactly to play these games. My question is: If such a lockdown is so important that this system had been deployed to thousands of android software by now, why make android an open standard? Why not switch to the Apple production mode if a centralized control force seems so vital to the whole android community? Such blockage wouldn’t be easily tolerated if the so called “register uncertified devide page” is just a lie, and I believe there will be a solution to circumvent such unreasonable restrictions eventually. Before that, the vast population of “uncertified” androids and modders wouldn’t be so comfortable and I might really need to ask myself: Why I should spend 3 months porting an open source OS to a new device just to find nothing should works by design.

Sakura island blender render

Sakura Island is the spawn point in my minecraft server. Of course it would not be possible to place sakura trees in game, so what’s actually in Minecraft is pink wool. Nevertheless they still look nice from far away.

I tried water caustics with refraction and fresnel effects, which make water more realistic at the cost of increased samples and render time. Also I attempted a manual material override on tree leaves, However that seems worth it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Minecraft creation by me, exported with mineways on wine, rendered on blender with cuda. As usual, full resolution of 4096×4096 is available on pixiv.

Sakura Island At Night — Rendered in Blender

Triangle Garden (Blender Rendering Teaser)

New features I discovered in blender: manual (and sophiscated) water surface reflection controls! I tried some techiques from the computer graphics class I’m taking this semester, and the result is over fancy. I forgot to ask blender to keep rendering specs. The only specs I remembered are 4096 samples per pixels and that I started blender before I went to sleep, and the process actually had finished before I woke up the next day for classes.

Anyways, here’s the pic. As usual, the image here is downscaled so that the page loads in acceptable time. Shoot me an email for the full image at 4320×2160 if you have 4K (?) displays. See Minecraft Server Page to join the server where I built this thing.

Triangle Garden Rev2 2:1 2160x1080 — Triangle Garden Rev2 2:1 2160×1080

Goodbye, chunky. Hi, Blender! (with the Interior Of Dat Triangle)

This would be one of my last frames of Minecraft renderworks with chunky. I will be switching to blender, an open source modeling software that supports GPU ray tracing with CUDA and allows tweaks to model before performing actual (now night-long) rendering.

Chunky is still pretty straightforward to newbie CG makers, written in java that virtually runs everywhere, but it does not support GPU rendering, and java multi-threading overhead made it even worse.

Blender, on the other hand, needs a few hours to setup but provides far more precise control over elements, vertices, edges and fancy stuff. Cropping down map portions out of the camera view, customize torch light color, removing specific blocks, render entities with actual motion…

So… Goodbyeさようなら, chunky. Hi, Blender!

I might still recommend chunky for those who want to have a sip of minecraft rendering, but for more complex terrain and huge creations, use blender.

Here’s the downscaled rendered frame, but you can still find full resolution on deviant art.

Rendering Specs:

Rendering time: 1.57 days

Threads: 3

Original dimensions: 4000x4000

Downscaled dimensions for uploading: 2000x2000

Chunky Test Run: TonyChyi’s Gazebo

http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=60286621

[455.83962949130677, 72.55133183227652, -515.9317051627162, ENLMC/world]

Cube Home Basement Photo Sphere Preview

WP Photo Sphere (Minecraft: Cube home basement)

Minecraft 1.8 Forge API IBlockState 与渲染

在 Minecraft 内部，方块也可以看作是可放置的物品，使用 Item 类的静态方法 getItemFromBlock(Block someBlock) 可以获得对应的物品。向游戏内注册该方块也是类似的使用 GameRegistry.registerBlock(Block blockToReg, String unlocalizedName)。然而在处理渲染时需要多额外的一步。

以下为 Item 渲染

String nameToReg = MOD_ID + ':' + item.getUnlocalizedName().substring(5);
Minecraft.getMinecraft()
        .getRenderItem().getItemModelMesher()
        .register(item, 0,
        new ModelResourceLocation(nameToReg, "inventory");

以下为 Block 渲染

Item item = Item.getItemFromBlock(block);
// 从 Block 得到对应的 Item
String nameToReg = MOD_ID + ':' + item.getUnlocalizedName().substring(5);
Minecraft.getMinecraft()
        .getRenderItem().getItemModelMesher()
        .register(item, 0,
        new ModelResourceLocation(nameToReg, "inventory");

区别主要在于多了一句从 Block 获得 Item。虽然是以 Item 注册了渲染，实际上这里和 Item 处理渲染的方法并不相同。

`assets/<MOD_ID>/blockstates/<blockUnlocalizedName>.json`

我所写的 mod 中许多方块都会根据不同的 BlockState 改变渲染模型，而 BlockState 中不同 IProperty 组合所对应状态所对应的模型在这里指定。关于 BlockState，见上一篇 Forge API 详解。我在这里以 TransitRailMod 的电缆架作为例子。

在源代码中，WirePanel 是 CustomDirectionalBlock 的子类，因此继承其 EnumFacing FACING 的属性，这个方块又根据电缆架上是否插了日光灯改变 EnumBool LAMP 属性、是否是封闭的改变 EnumBool SHUT 属性。因此罗列一下： Continue reading Minecraft 1.8 Forge API IBlockState 与渲染

Minecraft 1.8 Forge API BlockState 与红石详解

由于网上找到的 Minecraft Forge 文档实在是少的可怜，我决定自己写一份以防未来的自己忘记。具体的实践可以在我的客运铁路 mod 见到。

红石的更新本质上也是方块更新，因此当一个方块想要检测红石信号，处理的代码应当放在 Block 类的 onNeighborBlockChange(World worldIn, BlockPos pos, IBlockState state, Block neighborBlock) 方法。

`BlockState` 与 `IBlockState`

可以在方块的 Class 建立 BlockState 以允许方块拥有不同的状态 (IProperty)，不同的状态可以在 assets/<MODID>/blockstates/<block_instance_name>.json 中定义不同的方块模型。

每一个 IProperty 拥有自己的 name 和可以取到的有限个值，这些值在 Java 内部以 enum 的形式实现。关于 enum 变量类型，可以在王八壳的 javadoc 上找到。

一个方块的 BlockState 可以包含一个或多个 IProperty，可以使用已经定义好的 IProperty 子类（PropertyDirection, PropertyBool）也可以自己定义 enum 建立 PropertyEnum。

Class: `public CustomBlock extends Block`

通过以下方式建立 `IProperty` 及其子类的实例：

public static final PropertyDirection FACING = PropertyDirection.create("facing", EnumFacing.Plane.HORIZONTAL);
建立新的方向属性，名称为 "facing" ，可以取的值为平面方向的朝向，为 EnumFacing 下的 NORTH，EAST，SOUTH，WEST。
public static final PropertyBool POWERED = PropertyBool.create("powered");
建立布尔型只能为 true 或 false 的方块属性。