Game Development

4:01 PM

On a lighter note... has anyone here ever used fixed-point math optimizations? There's a big thread about fixed-point for C++ in SG14

user4704

I have, but not recently, as the value of such dropped off dramatically a few years ago.

Matt Jens Jensen

Was it primarily console optimizations? I figured since GPUs became mainstream fixed-point hasn't been especially important for performance

user4704

Not just consoles, but yes.

user4704

The value of fixed point now (and I believe the motivation for the SG14 fixed_point proposal) is not speed, but accuracy.

user4704

Computers didn't always have dedicated FPUs, and consoles took even longer to get them.

Matt Jens Jensen

4:04 PM

Oh right, if your exponents match up perfectly you get perfect rational numbers

user4704

Without those, floating point math was slow.

user4704

Basically everything has an FPU now, so fixed point math can actually be slower.

user4704

But it will never suffer from the vexing precision and accuracy issues that can plague floating point.

Matt Jens Jensen

Interesting, but that's not so much an issue in games

or graphics anyway

Very few GPUs even have double precision support, so single precision floats seem to be working out well enough

user4704

For rendering.

user4704

4:08 PM

It's a problem with logic, though.

user4704

e.g., representing large space worlds

user4704

or large worlds in general

Matt Jens Jensen

Yes, but CPUs have doubles

user4704

Doubles just move the goalpost, they don't solve the problem.

user4704

There's still the catastrophic cancellation problems, the fuzzy rounding BS, all the unpleasant stuff about figuring out how to test for equality with varying-size epsilons based on the range of the values in question, etc.

Matt Jens Jensen

4:10 PM

Yeah, I understand you there. It'll take a while before any consumer CPUs have anything better though.

Game development is an extreme case of using floats.

Most consumer apps don't care that much about realtime performance and accuracy

user4704

Financial and medical stuff does, too.

Matt Jens Jensen

Yes, but those things either run slower or on better hardware, typically not on consumer hardware that the average gamer buys

user4704

Right, but SG14 is focused on addressing the needs of all three of those groups, really.

user4704

Regardless of the hardware they end up using.

Matt Jens Jensen

Oh absolutely, and SG14 is going to make C++ and everything that uses better

user4704

4:13 PM

(plus, floats are floats, the problem is that they are floats, not anything related to the hardware used to implement them)

user4704

You're never going to be able to work around the problems with representing an infinite set of values in a finite (small) amount of bits.

Matt Jens Jensen

Yeah, but it's unrealistic that CPUs are going to ship with an alternative to floats any time soon

user4704

We'll just eventually get to the scale where we've got 512-bit word sizes and it really practically cannot matter because the precision issues only come into play at values that would be smaller than subatomic or whatever

user4704

or somebody will come up with some fancy newfangled method of computing.

user4704

i dunno

Matt Jens Jensen

4:17 PM

Yeah, but I'm really curious how people who work on big worlds deal with such small precision in realtime, like Arma 3 is very impressive in how they handle such an expansive world and still have precised networked physics for bullets that respect wind and penetration velocities

user4704

Usually with multiple layers of coordinate system

user4704

So like, you have coordinates that represent the world cell that you're in, and then a whole new set of coordinates that represent position in that cell.

Matt Jens Jensen

I figured as much, but it's really hard to represent that and communicate that across clients and work with it in an intelligible way (I apologize for the constant stream of typos, I haven't slept in a couple of days)

user4704

It's just two floats instead of one, basically.

user4704

(or a float and an int)

Matt Jens Jensen

4:19 PM

It's something I'd love to experiment, so far the largest world I've ever had in my own engine has been 800x800m

Oh also, @JoshPetrie I was curious, when you have a flag that has been stuck on pending for a few days, does that mean the flag wasn't helpful and it just stays that way?

Jon

hey can anyone tell me something

Matt Jens Jensen

@Jon something

user4704

@MattJensJensen Uh, afaik that usually means nobody has seen it

user4704

Is it a flag on this site?

Matt Jens Jensen

I flagged gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/121684/… as unclear

user4704

4:22 PM

Ah. Yes, that means nobody has seen it.

Matt Jens Jensen

Usually my flags go through in a few minutes to an hour, it was just odd, I thought it was just unhelpful, but I've never had an unhelpful flag yet so I wasn't sure

user4704

Those flags (essentially flags for closure) are only reported as actioned when the question is closed or the close votes expire.

user4704

They'll appear as "declined" if they were marked as not-helpful

Matt Jens Jensen

Ah okay, thanks mate.

user4704

See what it says now, i closed the question

Matt Jens Jensen

4:25 PM

Awesome, 26/26 helpful flags now

Jon

Has anyone bought Overwatch?

user4704

Ugh, adding a file in the wrong location in an Unreal project is such a chore to fix

Matt Jens Jensen

@Jon bought yes, downloaded no

I'm looking forward to playing it at least to try it

Unreal was surprisingly full of issues when I tried to use it

I had massive performance issues in Unreal

Jon

4:44 PM

how does the store work?

do you need to install something on your pc to actually install the game?

Matt Jens Jensen

Battle.net DRM stuff

Sort of like playing stuff through Uplay

I made big mistake and bought Origins edition

Jon

meh

wellllll then, looks like i'm not gonna buy it, blarg

Matt Jens Jensen

As far as I can tell, I paid $20 to play as Tracer

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@MattJensJensen Or that ppl skipped it, I believe.

Matt Jens Jensen

Entirely understandable

Jon

5:06 PM

Showed my son the sfx Im adding in Gorb and he loves it up to now

Good sign

Good thing about him is he doesn't care about my feelings

Matt Jens Jensen

Ouch, young son?

I haven't upset my father since I was 16

P.S. Are you still working on Infinidrill?

Jon

yah he's like 8 or something

I'm not working on infinidrill actively no

Matt Jens Jensen

Old enough to enjoy games, not old enough to have a filter on what opinions would hurt a designers feelings.. I feel like more designers should be held up to that rigor

Jon

Yeah I actually quite enjoy getting his feedback

his three friends made me realize how much shit my tutorial was

Matt Jens Jensen

If eight year olds can't understand your tutorial, 50% of college educated twenty-somethings won't either

Jon

5:14 PM

they didn't give a shit about reading obviously

So I tried to write something a little more coherent if you just didn't read

Matt Jens Jensen

It also helps make your game easier for people without english skills to play

Jon

I would need to get the tutorial texts translated.

I might actually do that

I can easily do french

And Italian

Matt Jens Jensen

Oh yeah, but it can be costly

Jon

why?

Matt Jens Jensen

For languages you don't understand

Not the ones you can translate

Jon

5:18 PM

i would only support the ones that are not costly

ask for volunteers

Matt Jens Jensen

I usually do it when people ask instead of just going straight to it

People usually volunteer to translate your app into their language

Jon

I would post on reddit that I am asking for some volunteers in exchange for a copy of the game on release or something

Matt Jens Jensen

I accidentally left in a german translation file in an app from development completely filled with outrageous rambling and it took one million daily active users for someone to actually email me about it

Jon

The benefit is that they can play it in their language.

I guess there are people that do it for a living

But then you have to pay X number of people ...

That is just not viable

Matt Jens Jensen

The downside of volunteers is, you don't know if they actually speak their own language in the same way you wrote your copy

Jon

5:21 PM

yeah

make it a public wiki

tkausl

crowdin.com

Matt Jens Jensen

It's one of those things where, you'll really never know if their translation perfectly lines up with your dialog

Translation is hard

Jon

I'm just going to do what I can.

For now at least anyways

Matt Jens Jensen

Oh yeah, it's not a huge issue, especially because your game seems heavily based in intuitive mechanics

Jon

There is a lot of messages

Matt Jens Jensen

5:24 PM

Not dialog or a rich story (although I could be wrong about your direction with it)

Jon

after a level, it spews out a message based on your performance

Each level also has a name

all 168 of them

Matt Jens Jensen

Gut gemacht! Ausgezeichnet! Scheisse passiert! Was soll das!?

Almo

@Jon something

Matt Jens Jensen

I imagine it would be fun to translate for your game

I'll do German if you can't find anyone better hahah

Jon

It would be pretty straight forward.

Cool!

I'll get you to do German for sure

NaCl

5:26 PM

mother tongue?

Almo

raus mitt der clicking of rot

Matt Jens Jensen

No, my mother tongue was echo location

I wasn't exposed to humans until I was 6

NaCl

Gut zu wissen

tkausl

I'm native german

Could proofread or something

Matt Jens Jensen

Well Jon, it looks like you have three germans who would be willing to help with your translation

Almo

5:28 PM

My impression when I was in Germany was that in ordinary conversation germans don't interrupt each other. Is this due to better manners, or maybe that the verb is at the end of the sentence?

NaCl

@tkausl yo, same here

Matt Jens Jensen

Hahaha, it's just because you don't know them yet

NaCl

@Almo more manners

Almo

hahah ok :)

Matt Jens Jensen

Manners fade as you get closer to people in any culture

Almo

5:29 PM

heh

Matt Jens Jensen

but they have more initial manners

tkausl

But I hate the "Sie" in german

Matt Jens Jensen

At this point in my life, most of the german language I'm exposed to is just the music I listen to

Almo

:)

Matt Jens Jensen

Sie is so archaic

tkausl

5:30 PM

I feel more comfortable when i get called "du" in games or the internet

NaCl

@tkausl who doesn't?

PearsonArtPhoto

It can be fun if you stick the starred comments together in a sentence.

"Japan itself is really confusing, it's a loosely coupled pub sub model"

NaCl

"You can say you to me." - Helmut Kohl

tkausl

lol

Matt Jens Jensen

This is probably lost on english speakers

PearsonArtPhoto

5:31 PM

"Just put cognizer up on Kongregate, ran it through my forensic analysis image decyphering tool I wrote in the 90s"

NaCl

@MattJensJensen yeah, but that's the point

Matt Jens Jensen

The last time I ever used "Sie" was in the frankfurt airport when my flight got canceled and I was trying to be extra polite to get it fixed

Almo

:D

NaCl

The last time I used "Sie" was today in the supermarket

Sie

wat?

Matt Jens Jensen

5:34 PM

lololol

wat

Not you Sie

hahah

I just woke up. Too tired for this shit.

NaCl

@Sie sleep longer

Matt Jens Jensen

5:35 PM

I think I've used Sie two times, 1. airport. 2. girlfriend: wollen Sie mir blasen?

tkausl

The only thing i say in a supermarket is "danke, gleichfalls"

Matt Jens Jensen

Because I was official about it

NaCl

wtf

@tkausl I asked for the maple syrup

@MattJensJensen How can you officially ask your gf in a polite way to blow your dick?

Matt Jens Jensen

"Wollen Sie mir blasen... bitte?"

NaCl

+1

tkausl

5:39 PM

sounds more like a police officer

Matt Jens Jensen

"Ich werd von der Polizei festgenomm und Arrest bekomm"

They don't like it when you ask them for sexual favors, even politely

tkausl

but they might ask you to blow

Matt Jens Jensen

Jokes on you, I'm not allowed to drive in europe

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Please keep this room for a General audience.

Matt Jens Jensen

Sorry sorry, I sensed it getting a little too off topic

Almo

5:47 PM

alles was nicht angebunden

tkausl

+ ist

Matt Jens Jensen

Almo, you have a very wide taste in music

Almo

heh :)

but... how do you know

DH.

He knows everything

NaCl

Maybe he works at some secret agency

putting my tin foil hat on

Almo

5:51 PM

:D

man jackhammer sounds all day

fuckin driving me nuts

they renovating the floor below us

Matt Jens Jensen

heh construction is terrible

I mostly work at night, and my next door neighbor just moved in and has a hound that barks all night

Almo

:(

Sie

Anyone know if there is a noticeable difference in quality betweeen rca video and s-video? I'm upconverting some old VHS tapes to DVD today but I can't seem to find my s-video cable.

Matt Jens Jensen

I literally have soundproofing on my walls and noise reducing window blinds and I can still hear him clearly

Might want to just use RCA so it's not a hassle

Sie

I mean if I remember correctly s-video looked a tiny bit better but it was nothing amazing.

Matt Jens Jensen

5:56 PM

You won't regret using RCA over Svideo

Almo

@Sie I don't recall; I don't think I've seen Svideo output.

Sie

These tapes are pretty ancient. One of them was converted from an 8 track tape to a VHS. It looks fairly obliterated but still decent enough. Trying to hunt down the original 8 track tape from the family but it may be long gone.

I want to get them digitized before they become any worse.

Matt Jens Jensen

It's just a Y / C setup instead of the single chanel

Sie

Only thing I'm not entirely happy with is the VCR I picked up only has mono audio. I can just force it through stereo. I doubt anyone will care but still.

Almo

which chanel? No. 5 or No. 19?

My wife likes No. 19.

apparently my grandma used 19 as well

Matt Jens Jensen

6:00 PM

wut

Almo

you meant "channel", I'm making a joke about perfume from Chanel.

Sie

The good old days. Cartoons were on channel 30-something iirc.

Almo

:D

Matt Jens Jensen

no no, you're correct, I meant chanel purfume

Almo

OH ok :)

Matt Jens Jensen

6:01 PM

Chanel handbags are especially great for composite video

Sie

I think it may be time to fix my laser printer. Whenever I turn it on the lights flicker for a few minutes and then it starts to blow small plumes of smoke out of the vents as it prints.

That's normal right?

Byte56

It's becoming intelligent and it's discovered fire.

Almo

o hai byte

not seen you around for a while

Matt Jens Jensen

Soon it will begin cooking foot

and invent religion

Almo

I think I may have figured out where the bad reviews on cognizer are coming from on kongregate...

old browsers that webgl doesn't work on

DH.

6:04 PM

It's totally possible

Almo

IE 5 hits my game website more than 6 or 7

o_0

people at kong expect flash games, not webgl games

Sie

Ok now it's making this horrible beeping noise. CHANGE FUSOR, ORDER BELT, and then just DATA. Whiny bastard.

DH.

Since it's really common to see people with old computers

Almo

I didn't upload a WebPlayer version for the older browsers

MickLH

6:16 PM

fuck sleeping is so much work

How the hell am I supposed to just lay there when literally everything needs to get done

What kind of torture is this?

DH.

When your mind says "Hey I can't do shit, just sleep, now" is a good time to lay down

MickLH

I never get to that point, seriously ever

My response time and error rates just climb slowly

DH.

Well I was already awake for 36h non stop, but when I slept... God, it was wonderful

MickLH

Lucky. When I'm awake for 36h I sleep for like 3 - 4 hours and my eyes still hurt but I want to work for 36h again and I feel really angry and depressed that I basically can't just do that back to back forever and minimize the sleeping time to preferably about 10 minutes.

I would sacrifice babies to fix this ok...

Sie

6:33 PM

God I'm starting to remember how much I hated VHS tapes.

DH.

Because you had to rewind before returning it?

Sie

Just generally slow and not very responsive. Going from a lightning fast SSD to a VHS is killing me.

DH.

Why the fuck you're using a VHS? Do you know we are at 2016 right?

Sie

41 mins ago, by Sie

Anyone know if there is a noticeable difference in quality betweeen rca video and s-video? I'm upconverting some old VHS tapes to DVD today but I can't seem to find my s-video cable.

Upconversion.

MickLH

How many sampling passes are you doing?

Because if you're doing exactly one sampling pass, that's transcoding not upconversion :P

Sie

6:38 PM

Transcoding then.

MickLH

(Unless of course, you know some analytic details about the source, and can extrapolate information beyond the native decoding, and then encode that additional data into your new medium)

Aka play it back a bunch of times and average out the fuzz :P

Sie

That sounds like a massive pain in the ass.

For a tape that is older than me some of these tapes quality (relative to the time) look very good.

MickLH

Also even though it sounds like a pain... it's actually more complicated and painful than it sounds

If you don't use highly resistant statistics, you'll just end up with more noise

You probably want some kind of median filter that is both spatially and temporally aware

Alexandre Vaillancourt

7:48 PM

Ah, the innocence of young game designers...!

Leggy7

what's happening?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

You've already commented on that question on hold (I wanna sell my idea) :)

Leggy7

ahh rofl :)

cute :)

DH.

8:07 PM

They aren't young game designers, they think they are

Jon

with their tony danza attitude

Leggy7

ahahahaha

this new one is LOVELY

Sie

@AlexandreVaillancourt Why does nobody new to game dev. realize the idea behind the game is like 1% of the entire game makeup and the rest is implementation and polish?

Leggy7

holy christ, holy truth

Jon

it is because the idea is 95% of the game

in their mind, a game is like a fart, its easy to push out

It's more like hardened impacted shit

You have to surgically go in and remove it . Noobs don't understand this shit

user4704

8:21 PM

@Sie Why does nobody <new to topic> not realize <anything about topic>?

user4704

Because they are new to it.

Jon

I hate similes lol

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Bah, I think it's also because they see dudes like the one who created Mario, guys like that double fine production one, the John Carmak of this world and such... One man armies can do great things!

NOT

Jon

I always make fun of them

When someone uses a simile to explain something they don't know what they are talking about

tkausl

like this?

"gamedev is fun :D"

Alexandre Vaillancourt

8:24 PM

Is it fun?

tkausl

no its not, i wanna shot myself..

Sie

@JoshPetrie If only there were a tool capable of searching nearly any region of the internet. Maybe that is something that we won't see in our lifetime.

user4704

The thing with Miyamoto, Carmack, et cetera.

user4704

They are not actually singularly resposible for everything they are credited with, usually.

user4704

Especially these days, it's very often the case that figurehead developers get associated with "the creation of" a game. Often by the press (who are generally ignorant of reality).

Alexandre Vaillancourt

8:26 PM

Yeah, exactly; sure you can drive the project, but you can't do everything...

user4704

And that carries forward to the players.

user4704

They absorb that understanding as truth.

user4704

And that leads to e.g., r/neverbegameover

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Sie

@JoshPetrie True. I see these overly edited videos and the making of videos but they never show all the grueling work.

I guess a neck beard fixing net code bugs isn't exactly good montage material.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

8:29 PM

@Sie And at the same time, artists are exposed like zoo animals.

Jon

8:56 PM

artists are expected to work for free

Sie

@Jon "What do you mean you don't work for compliments?!"

Jon

can't pay strippers with compliments

Almo

The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations

accurate.

very

9:03 PM

> acriate

vine.co/v/eYnT0HewmLV

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Jon The only exception is if you date one :P

Dave

9:20 PM

Evening all

tkausl

hello

Jon

goooood evening

Almo

goooooooooood evening jf!

(what movie is that from)

everybody probly too young here to have seen it

thinkin movies from the 80s are old and shit

movies from the 50s are old!

movies from the 30s are ancient.

Jon

you are old

Almo

but I still recommend M, from 1931.

that's some good shit.

German movie about serial murderer.

Leggy7

9:26 PM

m?

dusseldhorf?

Almo

directed by Fritz Lang, his first movie with audio

not some noob gabby-hollywood talking shit.

Leggy7

the movie on the true story of the pedophile?

Almo

true story?

I didn't know that.

Leggy7

wasnt it?

I just checked for confirmation

Jon

Sounds gross

Leggy7

9:28 PM

it appears to be inspired by the delicts of 2 ppl

Almo

It's not gross. It's really well-made. You do have to take into account that it's made in 1931, but it feels more like a movie from the 50s than the 30s. very ahead of its time

Leggy7

but the film is fuckingly beautiful

Almo

has a couple weird highlander edits in it

and doesn't treat the murderer in super simplistic terms.

definitely a good movie.

Leggy7

agree

since we are on topic

if some of you missed it

you should see harakiri

Almo

I was honestly amazed by it. I was expecting some klunky old thing that was just good at the time. It must have been stunning to its audiences.

Leggy7

9:30 PM

from kobayashi

Almo

not seen that

Leggy7

holy jesus, if you take into account old shit could be good shit, watch it

Almo

i'll look for that

NaCl

gofundme.com/h3h3defensefund

Icy Defiance

9:45 PM

lol it's not like h3h3 really needs that money. I'm sure they make quite a bit from youtube, plus it's obviously a frivolous lawsuit and they can counter-sue for legal costs.

but I guess people like him and they're angry so they want to help anyway

NaCl

Hey, they got 10000000$ for that hat

user4704

9:57 PM

So apparently there is a new Mighty No 9 trailer, and it makes the game look even worse than it has been looking so far.

user4704

It's got some serious Programmer's First Perlin Noise explosions going on, geez.

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