Game Development

SpartanDonut

7:01 PM

> You're a honey badger!

Your true friends know they always can call on you to scare away lions or fight a king cobra.

Damn straight!

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

> You're coral!
>
> Your hidden beauty attracts many suitors. Also, did you know you were an animal?!

Damn what ...

SpartanDonut

lol

At least you have hidden beauty?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

How is it hidden but still attracts suitors?

Lokkij

I appear to be a mantis shrimp

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

You see all the colors :O

Lokkij

7:04 PM

> You're a mantis shrimp! Mysterious and beautiful, you’re not afraid to use your powerful claws to attack, stun and dismember prey.

Jon

SpartanDonut

JON CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL!!!!

Jovito

So guys, me and a couple of friends had the great idea to join our creative forces as a artistic collective of some sort. None of us are professionals and is not our concert atm to appear that way to the world. We're mainly focused on getting out there and learning how stuff works as we go along. And so we need a website, and we need to host it somewhere.

I've already done some research into it and found out we can't (and really don't need to right now) pay for a dedicated server. A shared solution is also not an option as I found out the hard way that most companies don't offer fcgi/wsgi support in this configuration. So the remaining options are a VSP and cloud server. The website's content is gonna be all over the place. Games, comics, music, podcast.

Noctrine

What does your website need? Or, what's the point of it?

Jovito

So any suggestions?

SpartanDonut

7:10 PM

What drives the fcgi/wsgi requirement?

Jovito

Flask for back-end :P

Noctrine

Why does an artist collective need flask?

Jovito

I really don't want to learn Django right now.

SpartanDonut

Have you considered a different back end?

Noctrine

More specifically

SpartanDonut

7:11 PM

.NET or PHP for example

Noctrine

why do you need to build anything for a backend for an artist collective?

Almo

I'm with the donut on this one

Jon

Yeah

Change your requirement

Jovito

@Noctrine Say I need to get a list of resource files on the server.

Noctrine

Why?

SpartanDonut

7:13 PM

I mean really your options are: Find a host that supports Flask or change your back end. And if currently if you find you are needing VPS and don't want to pay for VPS (because they are EXPENSIVE) then your option is to change your back end or search even harder for a host

Jovito

And retrieve that on the client to load images/sounds/etc

Jon

you can do that with wordpress

Jovito

@Noctrine what if I want to save game state?

Noctrine

Oh the site is for hosting a game?

Why not use an AWS micro instance?

Jovito

@Jon what?

@Noctrine awt? you mean java's awt?

Noctrine

7:15 PM

No, AWS.

Jovito

oh, sorry

I misread that

what is it?

Noctrine

aws.amazon.com/free

SpartanDonut

So let's get this straight... we don't need a web site... we need a game server?

Or we need a web site that hosts a game and ideally also serves as a game server?

Jovito

@SpartanDonut Like I said, we're planning in doing much more than games.

Noctrine

The point is you don't have to have a dedicated server

for most of your uses

Jovito

7:17 PM

Yeah, I got that, I said it myself.

Noctrine

So you just need a server

to fill your server needs

AWS Micro instance ftw

Kevin van der Velden

I think your main thing is: You want some dynamic content, and you want to use Python, though not many hosting providers provide that. Am I correct?

SpartanDonut

I'm not sure what's happening anymore. Oh well.

Jovito

@Noctrine So is aws like digitalocean cloud servers?

Noctrine

Yes

DigitalOcean's 5/mo is a pretty good value

But Amazon offers a free year on their smallest boxes

Jovito

7:20 PM

I thought VSP servers were cheaper than dedicated ones.

Noctrine

VPS servers are

because instead of having a whole box you have a fraction of a box

SpartanDonut

Depends on what is meant by "dedicated ones"

Noctrine

And also usually don't have all the work of mantaining the box

Jovito

@KevinvanderVelden Many hosting providers don't support the wsgi/fcgi.

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito yeah, but you just want some dynamic content and python, right?

SpartanDonut

7:22 PM

In web hosting there are two common models: Shared and Dedicated - the difference is how many sites are being run on the operating server. Whether or not the operating server is virtual or physical might require further investigation

This day and age odds are a dedicated web host is just a dedicated virtual server that you don't have remote access too

Almo

I recommend going with one of the ~$5/month things like Digital Ocean.

Kevin van der Velden

Then yeah something like amazon is pretty cheap, I've had some experience with openshift and found it pretty good to work with (I won second place in a contest!)

Almo

I'd be honestly surprised if you can't come up with $5 a month between you

Jovito

Yeah, the price is not a problem there.

Kevin van der Velden

Oh also: Openshift's free offer doesn't expire

Jovito

7:24 PM

@KevinvanderVelden I also want to be able to have root access to install python modules as needed.

Noctrine

Gonna have to look into Openshift

Like a new Cloud provider every week

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito you can do that with openshift, or at the very least install python modules, not 100% sure about how root access works

Jovito

@SpartanDonut So why did you say vps servers are expensive? Are they really?

Kevin van der Velden

I think you get your own virtual server

SpartanDonut

@Jovito depends on your needs

I can tend to forget how cheap Linux and OSS can make things :P

Linux VPS is fairly reasonable. Windows VPS is expensive

Expensive enough where I turn off my azure VMs when they aren't in use

Noctrine

7:26 PM

So expensive.

Jovito

why would you want a windows vps?

SpartanDonut

Because I'm a Windows developer?

that's sad

lol

lol

7:26 PM

I disagree but ok

Noctrine

Windows stack = all the monies.

So I am happy that a lot of developers don't want to do it :p

Kevin van der Velden

Heh, I do it, I don't like it but I do it =p

SpartanDonut

MS is good to developers

It's convincing customers to pay for it that is the challenge

Noctrine

We get around it by having a lot of customers with legacy stuff on it :p

Kevin van der Velden

We get around it by being pretty good =p

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:29 PM

Alright

Kevin van der Velden

(We sell a product (software for selling tickets, i.e. box office and online, managing shows, reports etc), not a website per se)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Time to see if I can fix this stuff.

Jovito

@KevinvanderVelden never used redhat though.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

The red and green tint is calculated by analyzing the white area.

Noctrine

Professional Services / Consulting. At some point I hope to develop products again though.

SpartanDonut

7:30 PM

@KevinvanderVelden yeah I'm more talking MS enterprise application licensing. Not home brewed stuff

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

The red should really mirror to the other side.

Same with the green.

I don't know why this isn't the case.

SpartanDonut

Windows Server and SQL most people will pay for. Once we're talking CRM and SharePoint licensing which is what I do, people start to get nervous

Jon

Sharepoint... ewwww

That is poopy

SpartanDonut

SharePoint is as good as it's implemented. Most people don't want to pay for a good implementation

Jon

SharePoint is great for forms. that is all.

Some people try to create full blown system in sharepoint

SpartanDonut

7:31 PM

It's a jack of all trades master of none really

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito meh, you don't have to/can't manage most off the stuff so it makes no difference

SpartanDonut

It does have a capacity issue yeah

Jon

To me, sharepoint is the Access of programming interfaces

SpartanDonut

Without proper planning you won't want a list over 5000 items

Jovito

@KevinvanderVelden I'm confused.

SpartanDonut

7:32 PM

@Jon It can be

People just make it up and put together shit that barely holds itself together all the time

Then I get payed to come in and fix said shit

Jon

Oh, I've seen a lot of said shit

That I was asked to help fix, I avoided said shit.

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito there's a web interface where you say "Install for me python and flask on this vm" and then it goes and does that, then you get ssh access to the server if you want

Jon

there was a layer of javascript hacks written by someone that didn't know how to write javascript or program in sharepoint

SpartanDonut

SharePoint is the PHP of enterprise applications is probably a better analogy (Just like Unity is the PHP of game development? See what I'm doing? :P)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Better, but still seems shifted up/left.

Kevin van der Velden

7:33 PM

Or you can clone a git repository on that server and if you push to it the server automatically reloads all the needed stuff

@William'MindWorX'Mariager what are you making anyway? I see fancy light effects but no clue beyond that

Jon

yah man, you gotta gif it

Jovito

@KevinvanderVelden so what exactly would I be unable to manage?

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito network settings, that kind of stuff

I haven't looked to much in to it

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@KevinvanderVelden normal+specular lighting from a cellular light system.

Kevin van der Velden

It mostly just did the right thing and I was happy with it

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:35 PM

The cellular light system is basically just a bunch of pixels with a color. I analyze a 3x3 area, to estimate a source for the light at each pixel.

Once I have that, I can apply normal+specular.

But my calculations are still off.

Kevin van der Velden

Seems, complex. Why not use something standard like deferred shading? Wanna try something new or?

Lokkij

> There's Crazy Yiuf, a unique gnoll who wields a quarterstaff of chaos and speaks only in gibberish. Interestingly, if you hit him with the confusion status, his dialog becomes normal. Even more interesting, if you worship Xom, the god of chaos, you can understand Yiuf's dialog and all of his lines become shout outs to famous philosophers and scientists.

Very cool.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

The cellular lighting has support for different densities in spread, which looks great for 2d tile games.

This would be complex to achieve using point lights.

Jovito

@KevinvanderVelden so it is just a regular cloud server with a cooler interface? I apologize beforehand for this almost certainly dumb question.

Kevin van der Velden

Aah nice

@Jovito pretty much yeah, think so

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:38 PM

Notice how the green doesn't penetrate the dirt on the left as much as it does in free air.

That's the cellular part, which is perfect.

Jovito

Ok, so as I understand it, you guys are saying forget about vps and go with the cloud.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Now I want to see if I could get normal+specular on top of it. :P

Kevin van der Velden

@Jovito I don't know, VPS are much easier to use, if you can find one which offers python though =p

That's the benefit of cloud things: Most of them offer a lot more options than a VPS

Or... wait no

I'M CONFUSING STUFF

Jovito

o_o

Kevin van der Velden

VPS is the full OS, I was thinking about shared hosting >.>

SpartanDonut

7:41 PM

I was about to jump in lol

Virtual Private Server

Basically "VM in the Cloud"

Jon

yesssssss.. put your personal data in the cloud..... trust the cloud... the cloud is your friend

Jovito

hahaha

TheMuffinCoder

sorry but the cloud is now offline

SpartanDonut

Dedicated / Shared web hosting are significantly more restrictive such that you can really only do web hosting / web hosting related things. Generally one of the most advanced things you can do is run a script on a set schedule (CRON jobs, for example)

TheMuffinCoder

connecting to a old archive

SpartanDonut

7:43 PM

Otherwise you are pretty much stuck with whatever your host says it supports out of the box

Noctrine

Cloud Servers are essentially VPS servers with a bit of buzzword thrown in for effect (and usually a few other things but yeah)

Kevin van der Velden

Yeah that

Jon

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cg_Programming/Unity

This is pretty legit.

SpartanDonut

Honestly today is the first time I've heard the term cloud server

Noctrine

Makes for fun times, people wanting "The Cloud"

Without knowing or wanting to understand what it means.

Kevin van der Velden

7:44 PM

"You want the cloud? Here's a net, go catch one"

Jon

Yeah, lol, I had gone to these profesional development seminars

A few years back, "the cloud" was the big buzzword, and every presenter talked at least briefly about it

Jovito

@Noctrine so why the difference in price? misleading marketing?

Jon

Essentially all it has been, is this giant push by big corps for you to store data on their servers

Noctrine

@Jovito No, not really.

So, the thing that most cloud servers have in common is that you can select them, provision them and turn them on and off really quickly.

Jon

And you see it in everything.. look at the size of mobile memory -- shrinking. the omissions of SD card slots for expansion.

Noctrine

7:46 PM

So, with a dedicated server. I'll pay for a year (or more) in a datacenter.

My server is that server, it doesn't change it stays there. If I need more space, I buy more servers.

Jon

But the catch is, once you start using a service, you are essentially locked in

and if you stop paying you lose all your data

Noctrine

With a lot of cloud providers, you get something similar to the level of functionality of that dedicated server - but the added option to expand the server when you need it expanded or to turn it off when you don't want it.

Jon

And your phone can't just download all the data back -- it doesn't have enough storage space to do that.

That is why my phone has a expandable 128GB SD slot

Noctrine

That adds to the cost in a lot of cases, because the place hosting can't count on that recurring contracted amount.

A lot of them have gotten pretty cheap though, because with the volume of the people it's not terribly difficult to re-assign resources.

Which is how you get to places like amazon, where if you turn off an instance and it comes back up any data on it will be gone - it'll have completely different addresses and other things.

Essentially you pay a bit extra for scalability (in some cases), though most people don't really need to be scalable like that.

Jon

ideally i'd have a at home san

Noctrine

7:49 PM

But there is this ever-present fear that your stuff'll hti the front page at HN or reddit and your server will go offline. Unless you're in the cloud.

Jon

your personal files?

man i am hungry, been coding all day

Noctrine

I meant in terms of people hosting content for public consumption - not storing personal files.

Jovito

Ok, so vps and 'cloud services' are essentialy the same thing. Only one is more secure than the other.

Noctrine

Yes, No

Jovito

omg

Noctrine

7:54 PM

At the end of the day, in both cases, you have a virtual slice of some box sitting in a datacenter somewhere.

In both cases you are (pretty much) free to do whatever you want on the box (subject to the terms of your contract and the law - and the like)

So, whether Digital Ocean, Linode, Rackspace, AWS, Google Cloud Compute, Azure, etc, etc etc

You should be able to run flask and all that

Jovito

Got it.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Digital Ocean

Wooo!

Noctrine

Yeah, I quite like digital ocean.

Jovito

In any case I'm going to read more into this.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

throws droplets @Noctrine

SpartanDonut

7:56 PM

Digital Ocean is nice for non MS stuff lol

Otherwise I like Azure

Noctrine

It has an added bonus of not being a pain in the ass to set up.

SpartanDonut

But I get $100 "free" a month through MSDN

Noctrine

Me: I want a server.
Digital Ocean: Awesome, what kind?
Me: This kind.
DO: Here!

SpartanDonut

It's actually even better than that

Jovito

@Noctrine but they don't set up a administration panel out of the box right? you have to install that after the fact

if you want to, of course

Noctrine

7:58 PM

They have droplets that let you set up a variety of things with no prior knowledge

But for the most part no

digitalocean.com/features/one-click-apps

Jovito

:)

Noctrine

List of things you can install without any work

Jovito

Yeah, I'm going to check that out. You guys were really helpful. Thanks!

SpartanDonut

Yeah I think those are pretty great

Hardest part of setting those up is DNS xD

SpartanDonut

8:22 PM

Only 30GB of GTA V left to download assuming there isn't some second launcher that will install jiggabytes of patches after this initial 60GB

Almo

hahaha

Jon

how???

docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-Blend.html

the sample code fails to compile

Almo

how what

oooh

Jon

oh n/m

SpartanDonut

you doing it wrong?

That's usually why my code doesn't compile

Jon

8:25 PM

i had it outside the bracket

SpartanDonut

tsk. tsk.

Lokkij

Elevator.js is pretty funny

12

Icy Defiance

lol that's awesome

Almo

hahaha

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Lokkij I was not ready for the music :P

Lokkij

8:37 PM

:D

I maaay just have gotten close to a solution by a misplaced copy-paste I did. :P

Copy something -> paste it in the wrong place -> see unexpected but promising results

Almo

hahah

Christoph

just tried it in hardware init code - no luck

Lokkij

Aww

Christoph

I showed the chicken hunt gif to my gf. reaction: "What ancient crap is that!?"

guess she'll never understand the awesomeness of being hunted to death by a herd of chicken

user146722

8:58 PM

Surely there is something easier when I'm really not trying to do anything special?

Icy Defiance

doing nothing is usually easy

user146722

yeah :)

inertia comes to mind without even looking

Noctrine

@Christoph Wait what?

Jovito

9:03 PM

that's newton's postemortem 4th law for ya

Christoph

kinda hard for me to explain it in english, but I'd think what's holding the wheel in its place is the same effect that keeps you upright when you're riding a bicycle

angular momentum is conserved - if something is spinning on an axis, it likes to stay that way

Almo

watch the whole thing, click an answer at the end and you get a clear explanation

very cool

added to my Physics playlist

user146722

they figured out how bicycles stay up?

Almo

you're not getting the point if you think that

lifting this wheel while it's spinning, it feels much lighter than when it's not.

the reason why is subtle.

user146722

I didn't mean it in connection to the video, sorry

Almo

9:09 PM

hahah :)

Hi Serial

what's up

Kevin van der Velden

He has a point, we're still not 100% sure how bicycles stay up. We do know it's not to do with the inertia =p

Almo

bicycles stay up because of the bend in the fork

user146722

haha, what do you type when you literally laughed?

Almo

puts it in a stable equlibrium with regard to torque and precession

Icy Defiance

not really. arstechnica.com/science/2011/04/…

best guess right now is the bike's ability to "steer into a fall" when it leans one way or the other

can't steer when not moving

Almo

9:14 PM

Interesting article. the picture is what we were told in college physics, I think.

(This is why science beats religion)

Presented with evidence you say "oh. ok, we were wrong."

It's fun when you get good at it. :)

Kevin van der Velden

@Almo now, I haven't studied physics in a while but, that should have influence what so ever on the entire system, excepting if it broke

Icy Defiance

I don't think you're entirely wrong, Almo

how to word it...

like if you angled the fork straight down or backward, it would screw up the steering and make the bike less stable

user146722

Bikes are stable because I used to ride them a lot and didn't want to bother holding the handlebars all the time, obviously.

Icy Defiance

but I wouldn't call that an explanation. I'd call that a symptom.

Almo

.

Icy Defiance

9:17 PM

given, it seems physics comes in layers, and pretty much every explanation is just a symptom of an explanation at a lower level

Almo

the idea was this

moving the "Trail" in that diagram changes how the torque due to the ground pushing back up on the bike modified the stability

the Ars article says they accounted for that in their models

Icy Defiance

ah right...interesting

Almo

So I'm not really sure any more.

Icy Defiance

kind of amusing that something so simple is so hard to solve, lol

Almo

heheh yeah

that flywheel vid I just posted is very indicative of how deceptive these things can be

user146722

9:21 PM

Lol math taught me not to try to solve anything except what's in front of your face

user146722

Well, I'm fucking procrastinating again.

Almo

hehe

user146722

You guys were supposed to help me get one of these programs to fucking work

Christoph

that's better than procrastinating fucking again

Almo

hahah

user146722

9:24 PM

christopher be careful generalizing thoughts on axes like that

Icy Defiance

one more class tomorrow, then I'll finally be able to avoid working on personal projects without a good excuse

so excited

user146722

Who was gonna give me that free unity project earlier?

user146722

Sorry for getting distracted, I seriously could use that

Lokkij

@SelflessPsychopath Might the survival shootere here fit your needs?

user146722

It's not the right type, I was trying to get the first person view

Lokkij

9:34 PM

This one maybe? It's from this video tutorial.

user146722

lol in the comments on that video: "I wanna make the best game of history. I have no idea of coding, design, modelling or composing, but I usually have good ideas B)

I'm looking for a team of 40 people with A++ skills to do everything while I sit back and have cool ideas. I will not pay you."

-Every kid in the comments below.

SpartanDonut

I personally would go Unreal for an FPS

Depending on how crazy your gameplay is going to be

user146722

lol oh come on dude I'm like 3.5 hours of video tutorial in now

user146722

and this guys mother fucking voice....

Icy Defiance

lol tutorial voices are always horrible. that's reason #2 why I hate video tutorials.

user146722

9:46 PM

I guess it's only been 9 minutes

user146722

@SpartanDonut lets see the unreal template lol

Icy Defiance

reason #1 is that I can't skim through it or ctrl+f for things

user146722

you can skim through videos, it's called skip

user146722

mouse over the time until you see a pretty picture, FIRE!

Icy Defiance

that's not skimming, that's missing everything, and good luck finding the single sentence with the relevant information by using skip

user146722

9:47 PM

lol well I'm here with a whole FPS on unity so...

SpartanDonut

I actually do what he does all the time =/

Icy Defiance

give me a text tutorial, I'll jump to the first example, copy/paste a function name into google, and get all the information I need. 20 seconds and I'm good.

give me a video tutorial and I'll sit through 30 minutes of useless shit before I finally find the one relevant thing I need, and then I can't copy/paste it

user146722

Well I'm on video 8 and Unity is starting to look like just a graphical database to me

SpartanDonut

That wasn't the argument you were making @IcyDefiance

Icy Defiance

unity pretty much is a graphical database. I mean, not a relational database, but close enough.

user146722

9:50 PM

Can I have the grandoise thoughts about how I could easily slap my own database together and glue a model viewer on top yet?

Icy Defiance

sure, but it'll take you a few years of development :P

user146722

noooo, drawbacks in general! my weakness

Icy Defiance

and even then you won't have all the individual tools that Unity does...or even close to all of them...

probably will be less optimized too

user146722

I just want to make a damn generic FPS lol why does this require so much effort?

Icy Defiance

haven't seen Mick in this chat in a while, but he's spent...I dunno, close to a decade? researching, designing game frameworks, disliking his designs, starting over, researching more...

he's done so much research though, that guy's knowledge is insane

user146722

9:53 PM

I just would think that I'm not the first to want to do a simple FPS

Icy Defiance

oh yeah, I'm just talking about the framework/engine side of things

making an FPS with Unity should be a lot easier

at least once you understand it

user146722

I'm not really even sure if FPS Creator was actually "lame garbage" anymore or if I'm just way outta wack about it

Icy Defiance

Unity's not my thing, but the general process I'd look for is to (1) parent the camera to the player model, (2) make the keyboard/mouse move the player model, (3) spawn objects with a forward velocity when the mouse is clicked, (4) check for collision between spawned objects and targets

Jon

man

Kevin van der Velden

@IcyDefiance 30 day ban and such =p

Icy Defiance

9:57 PM

wait, really? why?

Jon

I want to create an fps, why is that so hard... you are asking this question.

Icy Defiance

someone report him for saying a bad word again or something?

Kevin van der Velden