Game Development

there is going to be a world map, and each place you can farm will have a different map + different resources/different crops based on the location + climate

um

since April 18

and I have not gotten to work on it since the last commit

Serial

sounds cool!

Pip

thanks :)

I need to learn how to use the built in json module

Serial

Idk how to use it haha

Pip

lol

how did you store data, then?

Serial

In necro

Pip

12:22 AM

yeah

Serial

its stored in txt files

and xml files

Pip

how do you retrive the data from the text files?

Serial

you read them

open file

then read it

simple

Pip

and then how do you assign the correct info, then

you know what, I will go look

Serial

hahaha might be confusing in the code

Pip

12:24 AM

lol

"Today's Listening"

Hey hasherrrrrrrr

hey hash

Hi

ahhh @Serial I see what you did here....

github.com/linkey11/Necromonster/blob/master/mapeditor/…

Serial

12:31 AM

yup

That's for maps

you can see where it reads the files in mapLoader.py

Pip

yep

I may or may not steal that

kidding :P

but I am going to draw inspiration from that

@Serial what is ast? from ast import literal_eval

Serial

literal_eval is really useful

Vaughan Hilts

It's from pythons abstract syntax trees

eval is typically pretty evil, though..

Serial

yes ^

docs.python.org/2/library/ast.html

Vaughan Hilts

What are you using an evaluator for?

Pip

12:42 AM

thanks

for parsing data from text files

is it the same in Python 3?

Vaughan Hilts

o.O

Pip

?

Serial

>>> ast.literal_eval("1, 2, 3, 4")
(1, 2, 3, 4)

Pip

awesome

Icy Defiance

what's the text file look like?

Serial

12:43 AM

thats how its used

Pip

that is exactly what I am looking for :)

@IcyDefiance see: github.com/linkey11/Necromonster/blob/master/mapeditor/… and github.com/linkey11/Necromonster/blob/master/class/mapLoader.py

first one creates a text file with data, and the second loads the data

Icy Defiance

lol I'd rather not read through that much. is it comma delimited or something?

if so, see here: docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#str.split

much easier I'd think

Serial

yeah str.split works to

Pip

ooh, those look nice too

anyhow

Serial

its used somewhere in there

Pip

12:46 AM

@IcyDefiance the text file is made human readable, so that is why that is used

Serial

@IcyDefiance That is my beautiful code you better read every word of it ;P

Pip

:)

Icy Defiance

reading code is overrated. gimme docs instead.

Serial

haha

str.split can be used with any char

in the map files we used semi-colons so we used str.split(':')

Icy Defiance

looks like it can be used with any string, not just single characters

Pip

12:48 AM

yeah

it can

I am going to use ' = '

Serial

Yes thats what i meant

Pip

for the str.split string

yeha

Vaughan Hilts

Evaluating is usually pretty evil

All it takes is some crappy data to end up in there and BOOM

Pip

lol

Serial

yes

15

Q: Using python's eval() vs. ast.literal_eval()?

I have a situation with some code where eval() came up as a possible solution. Now I have never had to use eval() before but, I have come across plenty of information about the potential danger it can cause. That said, I'm very wary about using it. My situation is that I have input being given...

nedbatchelder.com/blog/201206/eval_really_is_dangerous.html

evil

Pip

12:49 AM

yeah

Vaughan Hilts

literal_eval is evil, too

Pip

lol

Vaughan Hilts

Never know what you're going to get >____<

Pip

:P

do you use Python?

Vaughan Hilts

Yes, for scripting.

Pip

12:51 AM

nice

Vaughan Hilts

And at work, time to time.

what do you do?

Make games.

what company?

You can probably find out if you crawl the web hard enough :)

Pip

12:52 AM

:P

Vaughan Hilts

I make HTML5 games, for the most part.

Pip

ah

I cannot be bothered to spend time looking you up :P

Vaughan Hilts

^^

Pip

cya later all, I have to go do homework then bed

Noctrine

1:07 AM

Yo

Check this out - create music by just doing stuff : patatap.com

BlueBug

pixel junk shooter has super neat fluid particle system. Damn pretty and super smooth. drools over

Icy Defiance

@Noctrine oh right, that link reminded me of this one I saw earlier: georgeandjonathan.com

BlueBug

►

dat fluid dynamic. Gosh I can marry this.

Icy Defiance

@BlueBug there's an example of a game that has to just feel amazing to play

looks like the controls and general flow of the whole game is great

hasherr

1:23 AM

Okay, so dumb question, but my web host sent my fcp credentials to me and my password is... in asterisks

How do I know my password for FCP access?

Noctrine

FCP?

FTP?

hasherr

FTP, lol

Can't type today

BlueBug

aye I love this game. I think this is perfect example of action/puzzle side scroller; it feels right, looks amazing, and gameplay so smooth.

Icy Defiance

FTP password is probably the same as your control panel password

at least until you change it

hasherr

Ohh

See, what confused me was that it sent me something like this

BlueBug

1:25 AM

Me will go get some food ttyl.

hasherr

*** File Upload Details ***
FTP Hostname: --------
FTP Username: --------
FTP Passsword: ****** <--- This

Wasn't the same digits

# of digits

But yeah, that worked

Icy Defiance

yeah, if any website does email you your password, run.

hasherr

It's a temporary, i'm just learning about PHP

For a school project

Noctrine

@IcyDefiance ++

Icy Defiance

being sent your password means it's being stored as plain text (or encrypted, which is almost as bad cough*Adobe*cough)

Vaughan Hilts

1:27 AM

Did someone ping me?

I swear I heard something

Icy Defiance

not I

Vaughan Hilts

Nevermind, room invitiation >____>

That's not true.

They have the password to send at POST time, for sure.

If they ever send it when request a reset, though..

Icy Defiance

perhaps, but they're still sending it over email, which is unwise anyway

Vaughan Hilts

Some usenet providers still do it

They kick it old school

hasherr

thisiscomputor.net16.net

^^ First website

Vaughan Hilts

1:30 AM

it's a trojan, run!

Icy Defiance

lol, and it still has analytics XD

hasherr

What?

Icy Defiance

ah probably automatically added

wtf stupid formatting

Vaughan Hilts

The web hoster he's using will inject that and ads into his page

Icy Defiance

ah come on, stupid link

Vaughan Hilts

1:31 AM

I've used em before

It's done by the web server

hasherr

Ah

Icy Defiance

just hit Ctrl+U on your webpage

hasherr

Well, it's not a permanent site

Icy Defiance

but yeah, it's the host

hasherr

It's strictly for testing purposes

Vaughan Hilts

1:31 AM

There's nothing wrong with collecting analytics

Icy Defiance

not if they're anonymous

I just found it amusing

hasherr

If I bring my laptop to school and log into their network, do they have the right to look through my browsing history?

Vaughan Hilts

If I wanted to be anon, I'm behind a VPN anyway at the very least

@hasherr That would depend on their terms of service.

If their terms of service (which it probably does) says they can login network traffic (almost a duh, yes), then yes, yes they do.

hasherr

They do it on the school computers*

They have tracking plugins on chrome

Vaughan Hilts

You would have signed an agreement at the beginning of the year anyway usually

Icy Defiance

1:33 AM

I wonder if they'd have that right even without ToS, since you're using their router, which they can configure however they want...

Vaughan Hilts

The traffic is tracked through more than one way, I'd imagine

hasherr

@VaughanHilts I didn't sign shit

Vaughan Hilts

Probably also at the firewall level

Your parents did, don't worry

hasherr

Shit

Vaughan Hilts

You're on their network, your traffics belong to them.

hasherr

1:34 AM

But does traffic from earlier belong to them?

Traffic that was executed on a prior network

Vaughan Hilts

Anything going through their network belongs to them.

hasherr

So can they snoop through my browsing history from 2 weeks prior and saw that I was viewing something that they may have not suitable?

Icy Defiance

if it was accessed on a different network, they can't access that without software on your computer

like they don't have the ability

Vaughan Hilts

If you're worried about them finding something on your PC, that's not so simple (but it's doable.. not lawfully,t hough)

Icy Defiance

wait, technically they might have the ability, if you use chrome and sync across computers, but I doubt they'd scan for something that niche

Vaughan Hilts

1:35 AM

Although, if you really have something like that easily accessible.. I ask you why it's in plain sight.

hasherr

I don't have anything I'm really ashmed of, I just don't like them seeing the hordes of Reddit I read.

Icy Defiance

yeah if it's done on a different network, they won't have any idea

hasherr

Okay, then

Vaughan Hilts

Use SSL if you're paranoid

hasherr

Nah, not worth it

Noctrine

1:36 AM

hasherr

I love that gif

thisiscomputor.net16.net

This needs CSS

Seth

@Noctrine That is hilarious.

Noctrine

getbootstrap.com

hasherr

I like Filezilla

But I should try out others too

But WinSCP fails to work on my machine :(

Vaughan Hilts

I just use FileZilla

It's not like you need hard-core FTP skills

hasherr

1:49 AM

Eh, I like to try out everything though.

I mean, I used to use Eclipse religiously.

If I hadn't started trying new things, I would still be

Vaughan Hilts

What are you using?

hasherr

I use IntelliJ now.

Much, much better

Vaughan Hilts

IntelliJ is done by JetBrains, it's quite nice.

hasherr

I really really like JetBrains and their products. I use Pycharm as well, and I believe they're coming out with a C++ IDE

Vaughan Hilts

Yep, JetBrains is good at what they do

hasherr

1:57 AM

Did anybody end up watching that Silicon Valley show?

Looks like HBO put the first ep. on youtube

►

It's very NSFW btw

hasherr

2:29 AM

Just finished it. I liked it, but I don't know about gen pop

GnomeSlice

3:13 AM

@hasherr bandcamp.sectionz.com/album/suave-cigar-bros

!!!

Lasse

5:02 AM

Morning

joapet99

6:21 AM

@Lasse oh no. Youre going behind the others

Alex M.

7:04 AM

> Congrats on becoming a Dropbox Guru! We've awarded you 23 GB of bonus space for the next 24 months. You now have 26.88 GB on Dropbox. To get even more space, check out our upgrade options.

Thanks again for supercharging your HTC device with Dropbox!

I'd be happy if I ever used more than 1.5GB of my Dropbox space

despite the fact that I use it everyday

I wish I was able to sell my dropbox space haha

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I used to have a 50 GB account, but that was purely to have unlimited public access. I never used more than a couple of GB.

Alex M.

right now I use 300MB

the only moments I ever got to 1.5GB were when I was backing up ars ignis on it

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Right now I'm at around 1GB

I switched to SkyDrive after having issue with DB

Something borked up with DB, and it refused to sync files, even after removing and reinstalling.

The only solution was to copy out all files and then use the web UI to delete all the files.

Apparently DB didn't like me using the folders for development with Visual Studio. The constant updating and changing of files made it cry.

Alex M.

7:23 AM

bundlestars.com/all-bundles/conquest-bundle/…

cossacks titles are great

american conquest is done on the same engine

xpand rally used to be the best rally game back in the day

Alex M.

7:47 AM

bahaha

that guy

Martin Sojka

Ah, I remember being this silly, a long long time ago. Though never on the internet. ;)

Alex M.

lol this is the result of the lack of smacking people choose to adopt nowadays

Martin Sojka

8:04 AM

... or maybe just a troll. ;) Ah well, we have some 7 billion people, some are bound to be entitled little bastards.

Kevin van der Velden

8:15 AM

Morning

Chris

8:40 AM

Hello

Kevin van der Velden

I didn't make a cave generator thingy =[

Had to go and play games with my friends instead

What a terrible thing =p

Chris

Shame, tut tut

user92578

9:21 AM

Good Day!

Chris

Hey hey

Kevin van der Velden

9:44 AM

Lo @Tyyppi_77

Blue

Mornin

user92578

@KevinvanderVelden Lo?

Blue

Short for hello.

Chris

'lo, 'ello, hello

Kevin van der Velden

What they said

user92578

9:51 AM

oh. thanks

Panda Pajama

10:15 AM

I have a small question regarding sprite drawing performance

I can think of three different ways to render sprites

(that is, quads that have a position, size and rotation)

1. Calculate the transform for each sprite on the CPU, and pass the transformed vertices to the GPU, Direct3D 9 style

Alex M.

woot

you don't see panda pajama on chat everyday

Kevin van der Velden

@AlexM. ssh, you're interrupting the question =p

Panda Pajama

2. Pass the position, size and rotation as elements of each vertex, and calculate the transform in the shader

Alex M.

lol as if that is the worst thing I'm usually doing :D

Panda Pajama

3. Pass the position, size and rotation as constants/uniforms, and calculate the transform in the shader

I would like to know which one conceptually has better performance (I know that the best way to do it is measuring it, but I want to know some opinions)

Option 1 minimizes bandwidth, but maximizes the calculations that I have to do on the CPU

Kevin van der Velden

10:21 AM

How many sprites are we talking about? From option 3 I'd guess one?

Panda Pajama

Option 2 has the worst bandwidth, but I should be able to group several sprites in a single call

while option 3 uses moderate bandwidth. However, each sprite will require a separate draw all

Kevin van der Velden

Option 3 will almost certainly be by far the slowest

Cause modern GPUs much prefer giant draw calls over many small ones

Panda Pajama

so all in all, I guess each approach has advantages depending on the type of drawing I'll be performing. The advantage of being able to group sprites is meaningless if each sprite comes uses a different texture -I would have to do a separate draw call for each sprite anyways

Kevin van der Velden

I'd also add in option 4, where you have a geometry shader that outputs the same vertices

@PandaPajama or you can put them in an atlas

Panda Pajama

Geometry shader: yes, definitely good -if available-. Not every platform supports gs though T_T

Atlas: yes. Intelligently atlasing the sprites should play well with option 2, which is the one I used for my last game

Alex M.

10:26 AM

@PandaPajama your game looks neat

voted

hopefully it gets out soon

steam needs more anime stuff

Kevin van der Velden

Hmm, directX 10/OpenGL 3.2 and up support geometry shaders

Panda Pajama

but I'm worried that the vram and bandwidth used (15 floats per vertex vs 6 for option 1) is not worth it

I'm talking especially about movile platforms in here (iOS, Android and PlayStation Mobile)

*mobile

Kevin van der Velden

Aaah yeah

That changes things a bit

No idea what mobile GPUs prefer for maximum speed

Panda Pajama

yeah, on PC you can do pretty much whatever you want and you will never even feel it performance-wise :D

@AlexM. Thanks. I hope we'll be able to sell it on Steam soon

Kevin van der Velden

Seems like an interesting concept =p

Panda Pajama

10:29 AM

Thanks

back to the sprites, my main concerns are

for option 1: if I know I won't need rotations (not all sprites need rotations, especially GUI and stuff), wouldn't option 1 be best? Just two additions and two multiplications per vertex are required

Kevin van der Velden

Pff, not sure, but it'll probably be the easiest to implement

So implement it that way and if performance is an issue and profiling tells you time can be saved there implement the more difficult way =p

Alex M.

Panda Pajama

and for option 3: will the GPU really stall for each draw call? it does seem the most flexible, and I don't think the GPU will stall for each call

Kevin van der Velden

@PandaPajama not sure, general wisdom is to batch things in as few draw calls as possible, but there is no way of knowing if there will be a bottleneck without actual profiling

Panda Pajama

I know....

Kevin van der Velden

10:36 AM

And even then there's still a question of if it's worth fixing

Panda Pajama

yes

my question is mostly "is it even worth profiling it?"

Kevin van der Velden

I'd say no, depending on the minimum hardware requirements you want to support

user92578

I just found JoshPetrie at GameDev.net...

Kevin van der Velden

Just try the easiest one and improve it if needed :)

Alex M.

@Tyyppi_77 ^

user92578

10:40 AM

@AlexM. :D

Alex M.

kickstarter.com/projects/vavel/…

$3,828
pledged of $2,000,000 goal
17
days to go

not even enough to buy a decent second hand car

Panda Pajama

Yeah. How I see it all three options have advantages and disadvantages, but there is not an obvious winner. Most likely it won't really make a difference, as the disadvantages of each will probably cancel out with those for the others

@AlexM. "We are a collection of independent game developers with over 75 years of combine" So that's about 50 developers with an average 2.5-year experience... That wouldn't be my salespoint... T_T

user92578

@AlexM. I like the fact that in the Team-section there is no programmers mentioned... I guess the game isn't programmed?

Alex M.

the whole thing is a mess

Panda Pajama

@Tyyppi_77 Why need programmers when you have Unity? </sarcasm>

user92578

10:49 AM

Right... Present me a MMO created in Unity without programming and I'll eat my hat?

Panda Pajama

@Tyyppi_77 Who knows? Unity games are supposed to program themselves! or that's what the Unity fad is supposed to be about...

Alex M.

really?

I always thought the unity fad was about it being cheap

Panda Pajama

nah, it's about convincing a huge amount of people that game making is so trivial that not even programming is required. Sell it for cheap and maximize your profits.

Alex M.

those people don't buy unity

they use it because it's free

user92578

^

Panda Pajama

10:59 AM

almost every friend I have who works for a game company that adopted Unity claims that they bought it because they can use it to make more games faster, cheaper and with less programmers

Transcript for