Game Development

1:02 AM

It's troubling see how many seem to think you can take down a game due to similar (or near exact mechanics): reddit.com/r/fivenightsatfreddys/comments/4lb1fe/…

1:13 AM

Depend on the country I guess. Not gonna happen in the USA tho.

Good ol' Karate Championship case

@PearsonArtPhoto Yeah I've got a couple other game ideas I'd like to explore. Future goals to pursue after finishing current goal :)

PearsonArtPhoto

Unfortunately I'm noticing my desire to keep going with my current project is going down with time...

Can always take a break
or just abandon, it's okay
just keep in mind you might end up feeling the same about a different project at some point

Dev fatigue is a bitch

Take a break. If you keep on pushing yourself the longer the burnout gets.

1:22 AM

I prefer to do everything-but-the-game first. Keep the fun part for last.
Carrot on a stick.

I kind of forgot my whole world of paper theme lol. I'm going to have to redesign a few things. I'm thinking like walls made of cardboard, same for enemies, paper mache water, and paper lights. What do you guys think? Could look nice.

Sounds highly flamable

I am working on sort of a story line. Maybe like a darker purpose behind all the cute paper stuff?

I don't know. I guess not every game needs a big intricate story behind it.

Like this?

Sort of but maybe less color vomit.

1:25 AM

The story in Project S-11 was very intricate

Aliens are attacking, go kill them.

@StephaneHockenhull Check out the bottom of this blog post. That is the first level. I'm going for a theme similar to that.

And big thumb up at the end.

Of the album? Oh that is the vertex being stretched out. Eventually I need to make it a bit less ugly. Kind of like the way World of Goo does it when you reach your limit.

No, I meant Prj S-11's storyline

That's an interesting concept

ah.

1:32 AM

making bridges by stretching cubes...

More to it than just that. There are puzzles where you build rafts, create tools, and all sorts of machines.

neat

4:03 AM

does any one know if a nav mesh is a good choice for tablets/phones compared to using a standard grid for performance and stuff?

It's probably fine for fast hardware

i can't work out if its beneficial over a grid system

never done a nav mesh before

What do you want the AI to do?

its not AI in this case the user clicks to go to a specific place think like most MOBAs

so pathfinding, really

4:18 AM

yeah

but because the floor plan is a bunch of rooms

you got terrain effects like slow in swamp fast on roads?

its kinda complicated because each room has its own grid collisions but they don't know where they are in the world if that makes sense

if you think of the sims

sounds like the doors are off-mesh links

I personally use Breadcrumbs AI which offers dynamic path finding (no navmesh required). It's older and no longer being updated. However it offers way points, jumping, edge avoidance and a few other things.

whats that mean ? @Almo

4:19 AM

nav meshes cover contiguous bodies of ground

if there's a gap, like a river, agents cant path over it

but if there's a bridge, you can make it an off-mesh link

well it is technically a continous floor, seperated by walls and doors

tells agent he can get from one mesh to the other by going to the link

I implemented that for Unity 3.5

so you think itll be easier if i go to the nav mesh route rather than a grid ?

was working for a small company contracted to help unity with recast/detour implementation

which engine you using

unity

4:21 AM

probably nav mesh then

I'm not that well-informed about it htough

does games like league use grid or nav?

it feels like grid to me but spells don't seem to be grid locked of which involve moving position

Why would they need to be?

such as flash you can go any where it doesn't round you to the nearest grid

well it has to know if your on a collision tile etc

so i presume it uses nav mesh

cos i would see no point in a huge grid at that point

ah its a nav mesh

just googled it :P

@Dave LoL looks like nav to me

yeh it is

reading their blog

4:27 AM

Speaking of LoL I wonder if they ever updated some of that "coded as minions" shit.

I remember learning how Jarvans ult was actually a bunch of re-skinned minions lol.

can a nav mesh be changed on the fly or is it static? wondering if something like a locked door to prevent room access causes issues with a nav mesh

I think you can add exceptions but I'm pretty sure you can't (or at least not without a ton of head ache) make the nav mesh update in real time.

last I heard, much is still re-skinned minions

like anivia's wall

Is that too really? I wonder why they are being so lazy about it.

you work with what you have

much of the game was built prior to it being huge

4:29 AM

the current game mode is dull

based on the framework of the W3 mod

"definately not dominion"

I played tons of dominion

more like "definitely dull"

I liked it

4:29 AM

It's not like it's such a huge task. Generate a wall that blocks player movements and then disappear on a cd timer.

i prefer ascension

or urf :P

@Sie you have not worked in a video game company's production code, if you say something like that

@Dave If you ever hit a wall with Unity's navmesh stuff, try Aron Granberg's A* plugin: arongranberg.com/astar free version has worked well for me before

@Almo I haven't. It just sounds like LoL's code base must be quite the rats nest.

it was

they've complained about it on their dev blog

4:31 AM

ive got my own a* code already using heap stuff

they're doing massive cleanups

ah yup

i was going to implement multi threading for it

but lost motivation xD

engineering.riotgames.com/news/…

read that

very interesting

@Almo I get the feeling they didn't think LoL would take off as big as it did. Perhaps thats where some of their issues stem from.

4:32 AM

even if they did, they didn't have the money to fund super-careful development at the start

Ya. Now they are probably just doing it as they go and don't see the point in rewriting everything just yet.

but they're rewriting things in chunks

they have an ongoing userbase of 67 million monthly users

League have had plenty time to update it xD

cannot break the game temporarily to fix things

and enough money too

4:33 AM

again sounds like something you'd say having not worked on real games in a production environment

I'm not trying to be insulting deliberately

games are hard

but these things really look different from the inside

theres no feature thats so flawed that you couldn't overhaul it

just don't release it until its heavily tested

I'm a filthy casual. You caught me @Almo. :P.

:D

4:35 AM

I tried Valve's Dota 2 Vulkan implementation last night on a few games, runs smooth as butter

@Dave you haven't seen production code man. Like Sony "players cannot change username because of how our DB is built"

I believe that.

@Almo and I'm not even sure who that was aimed at. Dave was the one who said they've had plenty of time to update it not me lol.

and your saying that couldn't make a new db entirely, nothing is impossible its whether its worth the time and effort at all

plus they'd have to be super careful porting to a new db

but its not impossible

I'm saying that it's not worth it for that feature given the risk

well yeah it might not be worth it

4:36 AM

PSN goes down for a day, they lose a ton of money

but time and money is not a valid excuse for riot now was my point

This is new. This is the most feisty I've ever seen Almo. Usually you're very laid back.

one of Ubisoft's big games had a patch to fix shit, but Sony charges to deliver patches, and they decided it wasn't worth it.

watch dogs?

no

though it might have had that problem

I just wasn't there anymore to know ;)

4:37 AM

tbh i quite like the concept of charging for delivering patches

it forces them to not cut corners

I think the charge is for download bandwidth, though I could be wrong

probably yeh but it has a knock on effect that they have to think about fixing it before hand

for little devs making a mistake

One theme I've noticed with LoL is a lot of the champions are fun but you'll notice [especially nowadays] how similar a lot of champions are. Just with reskinned abilities and mixed values/placement.

would just not be financially feasible
Microsoft used to be like that for their Xbox 360 thing

4:38 AM

@Sie don't change a winning formula i guess :P

until they got called out

It's been awhile since I've seen a truly unique champion.

Bard

pretty unique

^

im also totally shit at using his ult its shocking

im fairly sure 99% of my bard ults result in my team dying

4:39 AM

tahliya seems different

Meh. Bard's kit is pretty cool but not terribly unique.

Q - Seen it.
W - Shroom with different effects.
E - Ok this one is pretty cool.
R - A bit different.

R is same as what

big huge long wall, she follows it

wall remains quite a long time

and is bigger than the size of the screen

What? I'm talking about Bard's kit.

bard's R is like nothing else. AOE untargetable?

includes towers

Zyra ult.

4:42 AM

his healing thing has no end

you can still target stuff in zyra ult

that's a popup

bard ult targets don't exist

Oh it is? I thought it brings them towards the center.

Haven't seen her in awhile.

and his passive, the charms

so he wanders to get them.

few heroes are so encouraged to run all over the map

Sort of like Thresh's passive. I'm not trying to say it's bad they reuse this stuff (I mean it would be stupid not to) but I just find it interesting to see what is what.

one way you can tell bard is different is by looking at his learning curve on champion.gg

thresh passive comes from dying minons, so he has to be nearby for it to happen, and it just happens where the minions are

bard charms are scattered quite widely

Q: What will happen if i sell my game that was made with a cracked engine

0

I have a cracked version of gamemaker studio cuz i cant afford 74$ for the pro cuz i am just 13. what will happen if i put my game on a website like gamejolt or even steam will something happen to me?

engine

4:45 AM

Ashe is still my favourite, shes nothing fancy but shes still fun to play

@tkausl lol what a dumb ass

I like the ashe rework

very classy

more active

@Almo How big is the studio you work at anyway? I would like to still try to work in the industry but the big fish just seem so terrible.

about 200, I think

teams on the order of 5 to 30

Is that fairly big or is that average?

For a game development studio.

4:48 AM

i used a trump quote in my response to that Q

i think it will help him

He's using GM he's already doomed sadly.

Why do you say that?

A GM ? what is that

@Sie hmm not sure

genetically modified?

4:49 AM

I swear nobody in this room understand sarcasm.

course not we're programmers

ATD was 75, Ubisoft is 6000 worldwide or something, 2500 at MTL office. Gamesworks was 10, Grip was 5

The only thing we join together to shit on in here is Java

oh and the rest...

haha

4:50 AM

@ChrisMcFarland and Unity occasionally.

unity is decent now

unity gives us lone devs the opportunity to make a living from games if we are lucky

@Almo Well do you like it? I'm perusing engineering currently but I'm not going to pigeon hole myself.

engineering.riotgames.com/sites/default/files/ashe-hexagon.gif i like this

I would prefer being creative director, or having a gameplay programming position

where I am, we don't ahve programmers that have super-specific roles like that

So what do you? Just whatever is up next or debugging or what?

4:53 AM

i hear star citizen needs employees with their game

I build semi-large systems for the games at times, or UI implelemtation

The latter of that statement is giving me cancer just by reading it.

@Almo wouldn't want to do my elevator system by any chance :P

I hate anything UI with a passion.

hehehe I have too many of my own concepts that need to be done

crystal shuffle redo, lane blaster, clixxor mobile, match-m, strategy football (turn-based soccer)

4:55 AM

oh i did a strategy football thing in javascript it was a browser game

I wish I had a employee just to do the grunt work. Like respawn systems, save systems, and all that other monotonous crap while I do the fun stuff.

> javascript

GET' EM BOYS!!!

problem was can't use real footballer names

EA has the sole rights the bastards

Just rename them or parody them.

fifa are the bastards who sold them the rights

it's one thing to ask for something like that, it's another to sell it.

i was using APIs on the players

so it was based on real matches

4:56 AM

guess i better go sleep

it's 1 am

night

wait one more question please

Just curious. What type of state are game designers in? I'd imagine it's not very good or at least very limited.

really depends on the company and type of game

but they're not paid very well, as many game designers don't have technical skills like programming

@Almo night!

if you can program, then they want you to program and not design becasue programmers are always in short supply

@AlexandreVaillancourt bye :)

4:59 AM

That's a shame.

programmers are in short supply?

Anyway well ttyl night. @Almo

i guess its cos they ask for so much experience

that no one applies

it's because programmers who are willing to work for low game-industry wages and do OT are not as common as you might think

Typically, game programmers get burned in the game industry 5 years after they start.

5:00 AM

I've seen interns who seem ready to sell their solves to EA in a heart beat.

Poor bastards.

These devs gtfo and find a job in other fields.

why to EA?

Because of all the cool games they make

oh i thought it was more to do with how they were treated

@AlexandreVaillancourt Makes sense tbh. Make money doing something on the side and do the fun game dev in free time.

5:01 AM

im still at university anyway :P

don't have to worry yet

@Dave What do you intend to do after?

I want to go work at CERN

either on the ITER project or the LHC

I don't have a clue what you're talking about :D

ITER is a nuclear fusion project

LHC is the machine that discovered the higgs boson not long ago

Oh, ok, so it's not game dev :P

5:04 AM

lol nah game dev is hobbie

Hehe kk, no worries :)

Q: What will happen if i sell my game that was made with a cracked engine

0

I have a cracked version of gamemaker studio cuz i cant afford 74$ for the pro cuz i am just 13. what will happen if i put my game on a website like gamejolt or even steam will something happen to me?

engine

SpaceX is interesting but i kinda want to remain in europe

That guy just asked for the sake of arguing I guess lol.

if hes 13 isn't he underage for this site?

can a nav mesh be used even for modular maps?

for example if you swap sections of the layout around

or do they have to be static from the start

5:14 AM

this inflationary use of "cuz" pisses me off

tbh

its been around for a decade

@Dave I think 13 is the minimum.

fair enough

@Sie I don't think he has a way to understand that joke :P

@Dave FYI I don't think police will go visit him. Ever. It's not being illegal to use a cracked engine, it's just that it allows the owner of the company to take legal actions against him.

it is illegal to steal

legal action is more regarding if he makes a profit

on their cracked engine which is a second issue

but of course its impractical that they would storm his house

even in the western world its impractical

but maybe itll wake him up a bit :P plenty of good free engines out there if he googles

5:21 AM

He'll probably just receive a letter from a lawyer. In any case, I would try to avoid the unpleasant situation ;)

he won't get anything hes in Egypt

course theres no guarentee in the future laws improve, egypt co-operates with the west more, then hes in trouble if he made 100k on a game on a cracked engine

No, he won't... but if game publishers get enough complaints from third parties, they'll simply ban game devs from these countries altogether :P

egypt might already be on that banned list for steam i dunno xD

Yeah; but I can understand the struggle, being 13, not having a credit card, and not having money.

hes 13 he should learn to make games on it - but not distribute

at 13 does he even have a bank account of his own for steam to pay him xD

5:24 AM

Their way of thinking must be very different from yours and mine...

Yeah, not sure how they pay in this situation...

Steam credits?

if he just waits until hes older with a job $74 will not be an issue for him

Does this even exist?

i assume its RPG Maker given that price

gamemaker studio

He had to pay steam dev somehow

5:26 AM

i hope he didnt ask the same question on their own forums xD

at least

steam greenlight access or how its called

Ah, yeah, there is an entry fee there, right?

yeah

100$ iirc

I don't pirate anymore but I wonder if Unity can tell if you use a pirated copy. I'd imagine there is some sort of ghost signature somewhere.

That's not much if you want to make money; or you have a regular day job...

5:34 AM

they can

on compile itll have your licence id some where and they can check it on their database

if you make 100k you can be sure they will check :P

though i think they might remove the licence one day

cry engine is royalty free in its entirely now so unity has competition should be interesting to see what occurs in the next few years

But I read it was crappy :P

well, sleep time for me night all o/

Night!

yeh it is crappy but in a few years of improvements etc who knows

That's possible :)

5:38 AM

What is crappy? That model? Why?

No, I read Cry Engine was crappy.

Oh ya. I mean I hear it's not crappy but just a real PITA to use and it has other sorts of problems.

It's funny all this stuff about game engines; I don't have a clue about them :P

Just read stuff here and there.... mainly here!

That alcohol is hitting hard :/

Don't drink and dev

Mother of christ.

5:47 AM

No, it's borderline now :P

This ramen is killing me. It's so fucking nhot.

I think ramen is one of the best crappy food. I ate so much of that when I was younger...

ramen is life

he says as he coughs hot smoke from this shit

You'll re-consider when you get older :P

But yeah, ramen is life, for you, for now :) Enjoy it :)

How old are you if you don't mind me asking?

5:50 AM

Shit, I'm becoming an old fart :P

I'm 34 :P

Turning 35 this summer

Any mid or quarter life crisis yet?

Not yet :P

I think ;)

oh wow

I feel like I'm one of the youngest in here

I guess..

I don't think it matters :P

It doesn't.

I'm 21. 22 in October.

5:58 AM

Once you're above the 21 yo threshold, really, you start forgetting your age :P

At least, it was that for me...

Going to bed now :) Night all! (@tkausl and morning to you hehe :P)

Peter David Carter-Poulsen

Good night

9:04 AM

gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=featured has a bounty ending in a half hour -- has a partial answer, just needs some code/pseudo-code

Peter David Carter-Poulsen

> would you be so kind as write some type of sudo code?

it's beyond my abilities, unfortunately. I put a bounty on in because I'm only a beginner game dev -- at the moment I can barely do text-based web adventure

but there's 50 rep disappearing soon if people want to shoot for it

the correct form when asking someone to write pseudocode for your game is, of course, "Would you kindly?"

Peter David Carter-Poulsen

9:22 AM

I was laughing because of the "sudo"

For a long time I thought they say "sudo-code" when I was watching talks

Didn't understand what they're talking about

oh! I didn't even notice!

user@user:$ sudo <code>

Jon

11:42 AM

Whoever wanted a 1080 fucken scalpers popping up on eBay

Raising the price significantly

Jon

12:00 PM

do a ebay search, and look at how many

its disgusting

Pip

12:11 PM

Wow yeah

EVGA and MSI and such will have theirs out soon so I really wouldn't bother at this point

I'm also waiting to see what comes with Polaris

Jon

1:11 PM

Seriously best to wait and get 2 at that price

Q: std::vector clears after every frame?

1:45 PM

0

Not a question, but a bug I've been handling for a few days. Thought I'd share the solution since it was so obvious. The stack gets cleared after every function call. So if you are accessing a vector shorthand, do not use std::vector& variable, rather std::vector variable. //don't do this on a ...

engine architecture data-structure

am i wrong?

seriously, I can not reproduce this kind of behavior: cpp.sh/3j5q5

user92578

seems odd