1. Diffuse / Gloss

Diffuse & Gloss mix

As I often do, I started with a simple diffuse & gloss mix, the results are OK for many use cases, but for what I wanted to achieve, this does not meet my requirements.

2. Adding fresnel

Diffuse, Gloss & Fresnel

After looking a little at the material, I realized there was no fresnel reflection. Seeing the model with the fresnel, I could see that the reflections did not interact quite as I would like them to. So, time ot scrap this and start again – using a little different method.

3. Achieving the final result

Final Material – 2 variants, Without and with Fresnel Reflection

Material nodes

After some work I achieved the final result I wanted. I am going to explain the nodes of the final result below.

Fresnel Breakdown

As you can see in the material overview above, I’m using a different way to add the fresnel to the object. This is really the only difference in the material to the previous version – and the only one which needs explanation.

Fresnel Breakdown

• Fresnel Node: Adjust IOR of Fresnel.
• Fresnel Strength: Adjusting this lowers the amount of the fresnel that shows – because I wanted it a bit weaker than I got from the Fresnel Node. (Sensitive adjustment)
• Fresnel/Specular Mix: This node mixes the fresnel and the specular map.
• Specular Strength: I wanted some specular in the “non fresnel” areas as well, so this node adds to the whole map.
• Fresnel OFF/ON: This node works as an ON/OFF switch for the fresnel pass. Added this because I might want to use either version at some point.

This material might not be perfect, but it works! It probably won’t work for all materials, but worth a shot.

I am I big fan of the game League of Legends, a game that tracks your skill level with a rating system to rank you. Using this rank system you face opponents that will challenge you, if this was not the case you would get bored of winning.

Play for fun

It might be argued that it is more fun to play a game that you are winning, and that might be the case. But in this example your skill level is being processed by the servers and matched accordingly – so that you do not always win.

So if you only have fun when you win, you are not going to have fun half the games you play? Instead of playing for the sole purpose of winning, play for entertainment, personal progression and mastering the game.

The better you get at a game, the more enjoyment you get out of it. Of course as you get better you will be matched with better opponents, and you might win a few more for a while  – but eventually you will win half the time again.

Losing a game

When you are playing a game that you are losing, are you not entertained? I myself sometimes refuse to give up, I will fight until the defeat screen pops up. In some cases you are able to turn the game around when no one thought it possible.

When you know for sure that you cannot win, spend your time learning. Play for the personal progression. Explore possibilities that you have not been able to try, work on areas you might not perform excellent. Is there something you could be better at in the game?

If you lose the game, it does not matter if you are furious or not. Think about what you learned through the process of losing, maybe you discovered a technique or a combination that you perfected throughout the game.

There is definitely something you have learned or realized, even if you played poorly – then you might have to think about what decisions you made during the game.

Enjoy the game

I do not believe this is something that everyone does, and it might not even come naturally – it might take time to learn to enjoy the games that you are losing.

But when you eventually do, you get much (much) more out of the game you are playing. Neither will you get as upset when you face an opponent that is better than you – maybe you can even learn a thing or two from your opponent and improve yourself.

When I create the textures, I use Blender for the baking of normal maps and other maps that may apply. When this is done I move on to Photoshop for the process of creating the textures themselves, creating several folders, layers, masks and adjustment layers. When this process is completed, I often throw the texture maps into CrazyBump so that I can easily adjust intensity of the different maps. In the end they are all combined in UDK to give me a proper preview of how the texture turned out, if it needs to be changed – I tend to take a break to be honest.

This process makes me have around 4 applications open, and a Photoshop file that frequently turns out to an disorganized mess. It would be much better if there were an application that could provide me the different tasks in one single software, an application that were developed for texturing – oh wait, there is!

I looked at this software a few months back, but it is first now I realize how ingenious this application really is. The node based workflow really makes for a much more fluent experience when you are creating the materials. And it also allows for exposing functions of the material to the software that is going to use it – so the end user can easily generate different results in a simple manner. Examples: Hue, rust intensity, decals for a barrel, as well as giving the ability to randomize the effects used.

There is unfortunately no support for substances in UDK nor Blender, but 3ds Max, Unity and several other packages does support it, and after all you can bake out the results for software that does not support the substance matter.

The only thing that is a little less appealing is the price, it would require some time to save up for that amount of cash when you are a student – but hey, it’s Christmas soon, better add it to the list.

This solution is no longer needed ( for Android devices  at least ). “Support for target-densitydpi in the viewport meta tag was recently removed from WebKit and with Chrome for Android moving forward to current revisions on WebKit, this change is now rolling out in Android. “.

See https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/pixelperfect

Mobile phones gets higher and higher resolutions on their small screens these days, for instance 720p on a 4” device. This increases the DPI of the monitor, and is something that we have to take into account when you create an application.

You can detect what the “Pixel Aspect Ratio” of the device using the “viewport” tag in HTML, as well as using JavaScript. This is useful to get the right dpi setting for your application, and perhaps use the right settings for the separate dpi values.

Medium Pixel Ratio

If you test your application on the computer while you are working with the HTML and CSS, you are viewing the application (most likely) in medium pixel ratio. This is how (most) computer monitors view the website, but Samsung Galaxy S II would view the website in a higher pixel ratio (if configured right).

Why is this a problem? Well, if you do not have the right pixel ratio for the application, one pixel would not be one pixel. If you for example used a 1px border, the border you view on the telephone might be 2px instead of one – and this can be noticeable. If you have several borders in a row, some of them might visually be 1px while others might differ.

Viewport to the rescue!

To set the application to show in the DPI setting that the device has, you can use the “viewport” tag in the head section of your HTML. This ensures that (if detectable) your application will look as sharp as it possibly can on the device. In order to achieve this, include the following code in your viewport tag:

target-densityDpi=device-dpi

It might also be beneficial to also use the default width of the device for your application, as well as setting the maximum scale of the application – and not allow the user to scale the application. Which means the entire viewport tag would be as follows:

<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no, target-densityDpi=device-dpi'>

Detecting with JavaScript

If you would like to detect the pixel ratio using JavaScript you can do that as well. Using this method you can (for example) load the correct CSS stylesheet for each of the DPI values. Do remember pictures as well though.

var pixelRatio = window.devicePixelRatio;
if(pixelRatio >= 2) {
	// pixelratio 2 or above – Extra high DPI
} else if (pixelRatio >= 1.5) {
	// Pixelratio 1.5 or above – High DPI
} else if (pixelRatio <= 0.75) {
	// Pixelratio 0.75 or less – Low DPI
} else {
	// Pixelratio 1 or undetected. – Medium DPI
}

Now that almost all of us walk around with a smartphone in our pocket, we carry around with us a LoL small machine – capable of running software that older generations of phones could only dream of. The new ones even have quad-core processors and backing that power with 1GB of ram.

If you are into gaming I suspect you do have some games installed on your phone – even if some of them are just there for passing the time while you wait for the bus or something, they are there. This is a market that is growing rapidly – and a good you can reach a sea of possible buyers of your game!

If you are like me, and you do not know the native language for iPhone, android or windows phone, how do you get around this “obstacle”? Most certainly you can sit down and spend some time learning the language, but if you already know gaming HTML/CSS and Javascript – no need. PhoneGap is here to the rescue!

Its easy

To create an application or a game with phonegap, you can code the entire thing using only these three languages – and it will build it for you! And you are not limited to selecting one device to target, you can build cross-platform; iOS, Android, Windows Phone (7), Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry and more.

I have a decent amount of knowledge in online gaming web development, and when I first tried PhoneGap – well, I was amazed. Its super easy to start your first “hello world” test, and build from there – maybe with the jQueryMobile framework or something similar?

Exchange Now let’s move onto Role Counter and in-general LoL counter picks gain the enemy again Become unbeatable and patiently waiting for you also have to You can use to scale into a section for you would destroy him in MOBA’s such as some may come to gain that to face off against any patch release If you’ve followed us on one in pre-game champion counter edition effectively win the bot lane jungle presence and prepared LoL by purchasing LoL Counter: Ultimate Edition.Get the Ultimate Edition you know Ranked Boost hasn’t missed any patch release If you’ve followed us on counter edition effectively win games in game Its not going to blind pick This gives you That’s not going to scale into mid lane Picking the top against tank assassins champions against your ap damage matters the whole.