## MMO-Champion Miscellaneous Work

### WoWDB Design

I was the only active developper on db.mmo-champion.com and since I was no longer working at Curse, they decided to restart a database project, WoWDB.com, on the shiny Cobalt platform that powers and databases. Just like a person needs a home, each new website needs its own cozy space on a server to exist and be accessible to users. This space is usually provided by web hosts. If your wait time is anything over 3 seconds, people are going to do business with a competitor using more optimal hosting services. Luckily for you, such website hosting canada are out there, and plenty of them are inexpensive, too.

The release of Mist of Pandaria beta being close (less than 24 hours away) and the website without any CSS, I've been asked to come up with a design. 3 hours later, here's the result of the seo for medical websites.

As you can see, I borrowed a lot of design elements and CSS from the original MMO-Champion website. I really like the end result. Often database websites are on black backgrounds, making it with a light one gives a fresh look.

### Countdown

MMO-Champion uses countdown to make hype around certain events. I've had the pleasure to do two of them, one for each expansion.

#### Cataclysm

28Hours
56Minutes
43Seconds
23Hours
56Minutes
43Seconds

That's my first one. The hardest part was to find a good font that doesn't suck with a big font-size. (Note: the times here are placeholders!)

#### Mist of Pandarian

051648

As you can see, my Photoshop skills have improved a lot since the first one 🙂 I've been able to steal design elements from Blizzard website to make the artwork look better.

You can notice that each digit of numbers is absolutely positioned, therefore it doens't constantly move when the number changes.

I also use a a custom Google Web Font and text-stroke to help with anti-aliasing.

## Javascript Ray Tracer

Here is a report of the Ray Tracer written by myself Christopher Chedeau. I've taken the file format and most of the examples from the Ray Tracer of our friends Maxime Mouial and Clément Bœsch. The source is available on Github.

It is powered by Open Source technologies: glMatrix, CodeMirror, CoffeeScript, Twitter Bootstrap, jQuery and Web Workers.

Check out the demo, or click on any of the images.

### Objects

Our Ray Tracer supports 4 object types: Plane, Sphere, Cylinder and Cone.

The core idea of the Ray Tracer is to send rays that will be reflected on items. Given a ray (origin and direction), we need to know if it intersect an object on the scene, and if it does, how to get a ray' that will be reflected on the object.

Knowing that, we open up our high school math book and come up with all the following formulas.

Legend: Ray Origin $$O$$, Ray Direction $$D$$, Intersection Position $$O'$$, Intersection Normal $$N$$ and Item Radius $$r$$.

Intersection Normal
Plane $t = \frac{O_z}{D_z}$ $N = \left\{ \begin{array}{l} x = 0 \\ y = 0 \\ z = -sign(D_z) \end{array} \right.$
Sphere $\begin{array}{l l l} & t^2 & (O \cdot O) \\ + & 2t & (O \cdot D) \\ + & & (O \cdot O) - r^2 \end{array} = 0$
$N = \left\{ \begin{array}{l} x = O'_x \\ y = O'_y \\ z = O'_z \end{array} \right.$
Cylinder $\begin{array}{l l l} & t^2 & (D_x D_x + D_y D_y) \\ + & 2t & (O_x D_x + O_y D_y) \\ + & & (O_x O_x + O_y O_y - r^2) \end{array} = 0$
$N = \left\{ \begin{array}{l} x = O'_x \\ y = O'_y \\ z = 0 \end{array} \right.$
Cone $\begin{array}{l l l} & t^2 & (D_x D_x + D_y D_y - r^2 D_z D_z) \\ + & 2t & (O_x D_x + O_y D_y - r^2 O_z D_z) \\ + & & (O_x O_x + O_y O_y - r^2 O_z O_z) \end{array} = 0$
$N = \left\{ \begin{array}{l} x = O'_x \\ y = O'_y \\ z = - O'_z * tan(r^2) \end{array} \right.$

In order to solve the equation $$at^2 + bt + c = 0$$, we use
$\Delta = b^2 - 4ac$$\begin{array}{c c c} \Delta \geq 0 & t_1 = \frac{-b - \sqrt{\Delta}}{2a} & t_2 = \frac{-b + \sqrt{\Delta}}{2a} \end{array}$

And here is the formula for the reflected ray:

$\left\{ \begin{array}{l} O' = O + tD + \varepsilon D' \\ D' = D - 2 (D \cdot N) * N \end{array} \right.$

In order to fight numerical precision errors, we are going to move the origin of the reflected point a little bit in the direction of the reflected ray ($$\varepsilon D'$$). It will avoid to falsely detect a collision with the current object.

### Coordinates, Groups and Rotations

We want to move and rotate objects. In order to do that, we compute a transformation matrix (and it's inverse) for each object in the scene using the following code:

$T = \begin{array}{l} (Identity * Translate_g * RotateX_g * RotateY_g * RotateZ_g) * \\ (Identity * Translate_i * RotateX_i * RotateY_i * RotateZ_i) \end{array}$$I = T^{-1}$

 $Translate(x, y, z) = \left(\begin{array}{c c c c} 1 & 0 & 0 & x \\ 0 & 1 & 0 & y \\ 0 & 0 & 1 & z \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{array}\right)$ $RotateX(\alpha) = \left(\begin{array}{c c c c} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & cos(\alpha) & -sin(\alpha) & 0 \\ 0 & sin(\alpha) & cos(\alpha) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{array}\right)$ $RotateY(\alpha) = \left(\begin{array}{c c c c} cos(\alpha) & 0 & sin(\alpha) & 0 \\ 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \\ -sin(\alpha) & 0 & cos(\alpha) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{array}\right)$ $RotateZ(\alpha) = \left(\begin{array}{c c c c} cos(\alpha) & -sin(\alpha) & 0 & 0 \\ sin(\alpha) & cos(\alpha) & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 1 \end{array}\right)$

We have written the intersection and normal calculations in the object's coordinate system instead of the world's coordinate system. It makes them easier to write. We use the transformation matrix to do object -> world and the inverse matrix to do world -> object.

 $\left\{\begin{array}{l} O_{world} = T * O_{object} \\ D_{world} = (T * D_{object}) - (T * 0_4) \end{array}\right.$ $\left\{\begin{array}{l} O_{object} = I * O_{world} \\ D_{object} = (I * D_{world}) - (I * 0_4) \end{array}\right.$ $0_4 = \left(\begin{array}{c} 0 \\ 0 \\ 0 \\ 1 \end{array}\right)$

### Bounding Box

The previous equations give us objects with infinite dimensions (except for the sphere) whereas objects in real life have finite dimensions. To simulate this, it is possible to provide two points that will form a bounding box around the object. On the intersection test, we are going to use the nearest point that is inside the bounding box.

This gives us the ability to do various objects such as mirrors, table surface and legs, light bubbles and even a Pokeball!

### Light

An object is composed of an Intensity $$I_o$$, a Color $$C_o$$ and a Brightness $$B_o$$. Each light has a Color $$C_l$$ and there is an ambient color $$C_a$$. Using all those properties, we can calculate the color of a point using the following formula:

$I_o * (C_o + B_o) * \left(C_a + \sum_{l}{(N \cdot D) * C_l}\right)$

Only the lights visible from the intersection point are used in the sum. In order to check this, we send a shadow ray from the intersection point to the light and see if it intersects any object.

The following images are examples to demonstrate the lights.

### Textures

In order to put a texture on an object, we need to map a point $$(x, y, z)$$ in the object's coordinate system into a point $$(x, y)$$ in the texture's coordinate system. For planes, it is straightforward, we just the $$z$$ coordinate (which is equal to zero anyway). For spheres, cylinders and cones it is a bit more involved. Here is the formula where $$w$$ and $$h$$ are the width and height of the texture.

$\begin{array}{c c} \phi = acos(\frac{O'_y}{r}) & \theta = \frac{acos\left(\frac{O'_x}{r * sin(\phi)}\right)}{2\pi} \end{array}$$\begin{array}{c c} x = w * \left\{\begin{array}{l l} \theta & \text{if } O'_x < 0 \\ 1 - \theta & \text{else}\end{array}\right. & y = h * \frac{\phi}{\pi} \end{array}$ Once we have the texture coordinates, we can easily create a checkerboard or put a texture. We added options such as scaling and repeat in order to control how the texture is placed.

We also support the alpha mask in order to make a color from a texture transparent.

### Progressive Rendering

Ray tracing is a slow technique. At first, I generated pixels line by line, but I found out that the first few lines do not hold much information.

Instead, what we want to do is to have a fast overview of the scene and then improve on the details. In order to do that, during the first iteration we are only generating 1 pixel for a 32x32 square. Then we generate 1 pixel for a 16x16 square and so on ... We generate the top-left pixel and fill all the unknown pixels with it.

In order not to regenerate pixels we already seen, I came up with a condition to know if a pixel has already been generated. $$size$$ is the current square size (32, 16, ...).

$\left\{\begin{array}{l} x \equiv 0 \pmod{size * 2}\\ y \equiv 0 \pmod{size * 2} \end{array}\right.$

### Supersampling

Aliasing is a problem with Ray Tracing and we solve this issue using supersampling. Basically, we send more than one ray for each pixel. We have to chose representative points from a square. There are multiple strategies: in the middle, in a grid or random. Check the result of various combinations in the following image:

### Perlin Noise

We can generate random textures using Perlin Noise. We can control several parameters such as $$octaves$$, the number of basic noise, the initial scale $$f$$ and the factor of contribution $$p$$ of the high frequency noises.

$noise(x, y, z) = \sum_{i = 0}^{octaves}{p^i * PerlinNoise(\frac{2^i}{f}x, \frac{2^i}{f}y, \frac{2^i}{f}z)}$

 $noise$ $noise * 20 - \lfloor noise * 20 \rfloor$ $\frac{cos(noise) + 1}{2}$

As seen in the example, we can apply additional functions after the noise has been generated to make interesting effects.

### Portal

Last but not least, Portals from the self-titled game. They are easy to reproduce in a Ray Tracer and yet, I haven't seen any done.

If a ray enters portal A, it will go out from portal B. It is trivial to implement it, it is just a coordinates system transformation. Like we did for world and object transformation, we do it between A and B using their transformation matrix.

 $\left\{\begin{array}{l} O_{a}' = T * O_{b} \\ D_{a}' = (T * D_{b}) - (T * 0_4) \end{array}\right.$ $\left\{\begin{array}{l} O_{b}' = T * O_{a} \\ D_{b}' = (T * D_{a}) - (T * 0_4) \end{array}\right.$

### Scene Editor

In order to create scenes more easily, we have defined a scene description language. We developed a basic CodeMirror syntax highlighting script. Just enter write your scene down and press Ray Trace 🙂

## Diablofans Theme Improvement

Diablofans.com needed a bit of love. It is really gratifying to be able to visually improve a website by an order of magnitude just by changing some colors and fixing broken layout 🙂

Here are some of the changes I made:

## Simulated Annealing Project

For a school project, I have to implement Simulated Annealing meta heuristic.

Thanks to many open source web tools, I've been able to quickly do the project and have a pretty display. CoffeeScript, Raphael, Highcharts, Three.js, Twitter Bootstrap, jQuery and Web Workers.

### 2D Demo

You have a shuffled grid and you have to find the original grid. The only operation available is to swap 2 random elements. The cost function is the distance of the point with their original neighbors.

### 3D Demo

On this one, we are given many functions and we have to find the global minimum. The challenge was to be able to display the evolution of the algorithm, as it traverses 200k points per second.

### CoffeeScript Sexyness

I've written the project in CoffeeScript and I don't regret it. I find myself writing code a lot faster because I have a lot less to type. Most of the Javascript syntax is either shortened (function to ->) or optional (parenthesis, curly brackets ...) in CoffeeScript. There are also handy features such as splats, generators ...

#### Destructuring Assignment

worker.onmessage = (data: [id, rest...]) -> switch id when 'update' [cost, temperature, accepted, tried, data, force] = rest

#### Trimmed JSON

chart = new Highcharts.Chart chart: renderTo: 'container' yAxis: [ title: text: 'Cost' ] tooltip: formatter: -> this.series.name + ': ' + this.y

### Report

Felix Abecassis wrote a report that explains everything 🙂 It's in French, sorry!

## World of Warcraft HTML Tooltip Diff

MMO-Champion is a World of Warcraft news website. When a new patch is released, we want to show what has changed in the game (Post Example). An english summary of each spell change is hand written, but we want to show the exact tooltip changes.

### Generate Tooltips

First, we use the database application to generate the tooltips in HTML form.

 Chestguard of Nature's Fury Epic Binds when equipped Armor Chest 1669 Armor +341 Intellect +512 Stamina Requires Level 85 Item Level 359 Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205. Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241. Chestguard of Nature's Fury Epic Binds when equipped Armor Chest 1669 Armor +321 Intellect +512 Stamina Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating Requires Level 85 Item Level 359 Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205. Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 221.

### Tokenize

We are not going to do a full HTML diff which is really difficult. Instead, the trick is to parse the HTML and extract only text nodes. We split them by space to generate a token stream.

 ChestguardofNature'sFuryBindswhenequippedChest1669Armor+341Intellect+512StaminaRequiresLevel85Equip:Improvescriticalstrikeratingby205.Equip:Increasesyourmasteryratingby241. ChestguardofNature'sFuryBindswhenequippedChest1669Armor+321Intellect+512StaminaRedSocketSocketBonus:+10HasteRatingRequiresLevel85Equip:Improvescriticalstrikeratingby205.Equip:Increasesyourmasteryratingby221.

### Diff

Paul Butler SimpleDiff algorithm is used on the two token streams to label each token with old, new or both.

 ChestguardofNature'sFuryBindswhenequippedChest1669Armor+341Intellect+512StaminaRequiresLevel85Equip:Improvescriticalstrikeratingby205.Equip:Increasesyourmasteryratingby241. ChestguardofNature'sFuryBindswhenequippedChest1669Armor+321Intellect+512StaminaRedSocketSocketBonus:+10HasteRatingRequiresLevel85Equip:Improvescriticalstrikeratingby205.Equip:Increasesyourmasteryratingby221.

### Combine

We parse the HTML again. This time we pretty-print the HTML while traversing it. As we parse text nodes, we add <ins> tags where we need to. We just make sure to group contiguous insertions.

 Chestguard of Nature's Fury Epic Binds when equipped Armor Chest 1669 Armor +341 Intellect +512 Stamina Requires Level 85 Item Level 359 Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205. Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241. Chestguard of Nature's Fury Epic Binds when equipped Armor Chest 1669 Armor +321 Intellect +512 Stamina Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating Requires Level 85 Item Level 359 Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205. Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 221.

### Text Diff

We would also like to get a text-based diff we can insert in a Patch Note. We combine both token streams into one.

Chestguard of Nature's Fury
Binds when equipped
Chest
1669 Armor
+341+321 Intellect
+512 Stamina
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating
Requires Level 85
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205.
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241.221.

Chestguard of Nature's Fury Binds when equipped Chest 1669 Armor +341+321 Intellect +512 Stamina Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating Requires Level 85 Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 205. Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241.221.

However, the result isn't that readable. There is too much noise. We want to show only the information that has changed! In order to do that, we are going to keep only the lines that contain changes.

+341+321 Intellect
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241.221.

+341+321 Intellect Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Haste Rating Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241.221.

And it works a lot better 🙂

### Conclusion

This approach is working really well with the World of Warcraft tooltips. After many patches and hundreds of changes, I haven't seen any weird behavior. They were common before using this technique. The only downside: non textual changes such as icons or colors will be completly ignored.