Game Development

12:08 AM

@StephaneHockenhull thanks for the additional information :)

12:19 AM

Another thing you want to be careful is cleanup time: If every game entity is made up of 100+ allocated objects that's a lot of stuff to delete all at once when you change levels.
I've seen a few games hit this issue and end up with much longer unload/delete time than load time between levels.

But that's only an issue for fairly large games.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

1:12 AM

@StephaneHockenhull Yeah, the scope of the content is not yet that big, but I think one of the plans was to use this system to manage particles; there is also not a lot of objects loaded during the execution, most of stuff is loaded at the beginning of the level

Sie

1:54 AM

So I'm thinking about putting an alpha watermark on dev life just in case.

What do you guys think? Just as a way to make it clear to outsiders.

Pip

2:08 AM

It's not a horrendous idea

Stephane Hockenhull

dev life?

What is this life you speak of?

Devs don't have lives. That's for normal people :D

Sie

dev life? oh lol I was on my phone.

Stupid phone auto corrects normal words to weird shit somestimes.

Meant dev log.

Stephane Hockenhull

oooh

Bálint

4:21 AM

@DH. Start working on the actualy game and not the sprites/models. Remember, "Make game, not art"

Sie

Make code, not farts.

Bálint

4:33 AM

@Sie What're you doing? Stealing Jon's life?

Uri Popov

7:42 AM

morning nerds

Leggy7

8:04 AM

MOOOOURNING NERDS

MY GAME IS FUCKING ON STEAM

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731795247

holy crap, sorry, didnt kow why I lied a so terribly joke about this garbage someone uploaded on greenlight

I'm a bad person, making fun of this

War

wtf lol

Uri Popov

8:59 AM

BandiCam

ITS ALWAYS FUCKING BANDICAM

why

Jon

Wow that game looks amazing

If it was made by an 8 year old

Leggy7

9:18 AM

you sure? I bet you would hit your son if he produced garbage like that :)

people in the comments say that it is garbage also for a 5yo

Uri Popov

If I had a son and he maded this I would sit down with him and make it better lol not hit him

Leggy7

I'm joking uri :)

Uri Popov

I know I know for some reason I decided to "take the bait"

Martin Sojka

At least it wasn't jailbait.

Jon

at least lol

i love that show, how to catch a predator

nothing like destroying the life of someone that is gonna screw a 13 year old

on television

Who needs a legal system when you can just martyr people without a trial, while making money

Uri Popov

9:41 AM

I've always wondered how can a show like that work. In a more social country like mine it would be considered unconstitutional

William Mariager

I live in Denmark, which is pretty damn social, and we have shows like that as well.

There's a famous one with a guy that was supposed to be a internet guidance counselor who taught kids how to stay safe online, but he was a pedophile himself. Crazy stuff.

Chris McFarland

:(

I'm currently refactoring my language string stuff whilst drunk
need to use dictionaries

William Mariager

lol

Uri Popov

Our government also lays online traps for pedos but unfortunately its not turned into a show.

Chris McFarland

@Leggy7 you might wanna remove your "my game" comments unless you wanna falsely take credit for that lol

William Mariager

9:55 AM

@ChrisMcFarland Unity Dictionaries?

Chris McFarland

nah just C# generic Dictionary

William Mariager

Well, the old ones I assume? :P

Chris McFarland

I was storing everything in a generic class with lots of public string foo vars

William Mariager

Do you have the .TryGet method?

Chris McFarland

I haven't even declared the Dictionary yet, not that far yet :P

but I have a need to store a stringID as a string for something
and don't wanna do a giant switch statement

have like 500 public string foo; vars

might turn them into public const string foo

and then store the actual data in the dictionary

William Mariager

9:58 AM

string Localize(string unlocalized) {
    string localized;
    Dictionary<string, string> localizations;

    if (!localizations.TryGetValue(unlocalized, out localized))
        localized = unlocalized;
    return localized;
}

Chris McFarland

right, yeah

William Mariager

That's a pretty straight forward way to have a dictionary for localizing strings :)

Obviously localizations would be some more accessible place :P

Chris McFarland

yeah, trick is to just have the stringIDs and localised strings be in their own data file
and then at runtime parse it into the dictionary

good thing compilers don't get drunk

William Mariager

For me, I have a dictionary of dictionaries, to support different languages.

Chris McFarland

ah yeah

William Mariager

10:01 AM

Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> localizations

Chris McFarland

currently I just have an enum, English = 0, Spanish = 1, etc
and then you'd choose the enum and tell a method to parse a file, will probably overwrite the dictionary

no need to load all the languages at the same time

William Mariager

localizations["eng"] = new Dictionary<string, string>()
localizations["dan"] = new Dictionary<string, string>()
etc

Yeah, enums work too.

I just have to work with iso standards, so strings it is :P

Chris McFarland

I don't like Dictionaries cuz I can't inspect them in Unity
though I do see that there's a paid asset plugin that lets it happen

yeah fair enough, I'm lazy so just use plain english for the moment

was converting my spreadsheet into json but I think I'll just make a crude file format

so many runtime parsers that seem to cause hiccups with various platforms

relying on libraries that can't be used or something

William Mariager

INI is perfect for localizations :P

Chris McFarland

hah, ooooooo

William Mariager

10:07 AM

[English]
UNIT=Unit
ABILITY=Ability

[Danish]
UNIT=Enhed
ABILITY=Evne

Chris McFarland

what are the [foo] tags for again? just human readability?

or are those typically parsed too

William Mariager

Parsed, they're categories.

[Category]
Key=Value

Jon

I pity the foo

Chris McFarland

right, thx

William Mariager

Very easy format to parse :P

Read a line. If it starts with [ you create a new dictionary with the name. If it is empty, skip it. If it contains a =, read it out as a keyvalue pair and load it in the last dictionary created.

Chris McFarland

10:11 AM

aye

Martin Sojka

10:28 AM

@WilliamMariager Starts with an '[', ends with an ']' and if you don't like "empty" category names, has something between them too.

William Mariager

10:40 AM

@MartinSojka Don't get clever you.

Visual Studio is being annoying.

Chris McFarland

:(

William Mariager

Close All Documents closes all open files, even ones in different windows. Close All But This only closes files in the same window.

Chris McFarland

much rage

William Mariager

547% zoom ... thanks Visual Studio, real helpful.

Leggy7

10:57 AM

@WilliamMariager and there is still people throwing hatred to MS :)

William Mariager

Hehe, I love MS and all their products :P I even own an actual Microsoft phone. :P

However, sometimes things get annoying. :D

user92578

11:29 AM

@Leggy7 I can recognize some haters from the comments :P

user92578

"What's your hobby?" "Oh, I shittalk on Greenlight"

Chris McFarland

hahaha

user92578

I mean for real

Chris McFarland

I don't doubt it

user92578

I bet they are some bitter non succeeding devs

Chris McFarland

11:34 AM

Eh, one of my companies I worked at, we had a forum for our customers, and yeah, some of the customers created a forum elsewhere
and all they did was talk shit about us employees

whatever floats your boat lol

user92578

lol yeah

Chris McFarland

haters gonna hate

user92578

Sadly, exactly

user92578

I also got some hate for accepting that "haters gonna hate"

user92578

Like, "dont believe in that, your game just sucks"

Chris McFarland

11:37 AM

lol

user92578

"You are protecting yourself"

Chris McFarland

There's no point arguing

endless rebuttals

user92578

lol yeah

Jon

Haha haha yeah. Butt.

Chris McFarland

Good one

user92578

12:00 PM

yes

Uri Popov

butts

DH.

Don't you guys start anything unwanted, let's keep the puns only on farts to not get flagged

Chris McFarland

butts to that

okay, so I'm refactoring from strings that used to be accessed like:

string foo = LanguageManager.Data.WindowTitle_Inventory;

into

string foo = LanguageManager.GetString(StringID.WindowTitle_Inventory);

super fun

Martin Sojka

Sounds like a case for a global regexp-based search & replace.

DH.

Regex to the rescue!

Chris McFarland

12:15 PM

my fingers need the excercise

William Mariager

Holy nesting Batman!

I'll worry about user friendliness later :P

Chris McFarland

I heard you like information

William Mariager

Atm the interface is pretty much just 1:1 with the model. :P

Uri Popov

what are you making exactly ?

William Mariager

A tool for publishing information about goods in several places at once :)

It has a rather convoluted data structure :P

My current plan is to just get it working first, and then start working on the user friendliness.

Nesty McNestington.

Uri Popov

12:37 PM

good plan

user92578

fucking github

user92578

apparently I want to follow every repository that someone forks from unreal engine

Almo

well obviously

duh I could have told you that

William Mariager

You'd think he'd know he want to follow them himself.

user92578

but I guess that's what software is for

Chris McFarland

12:56 PM

okay, wrote a little INI parser and it does the trick. thx for the suggestion @WilliamMariager

user92578

Little weird? (I'm asking about the recoil)

Chris McFarland

@Tyyppi_77 The cannon itself needs some smoke or flame particles when it shoots imo

user92578

Ooooh great idea

Chris McFarland

Recoil is fine, it's a game :)

William Mariager

12:57 PM

@ChrisMcFarland I'm the helpful Dane.

Chris McFarland

@WilliamMariager I'll take you out on that date soon enough

William Mariager

Thx bb

Chris McFarland

lmao

@Tyyppi_77 I try to always create particles (and sound effects) when something is created, and when something collides with something

user92578

Yeah it's a great thing to do, I've tried to follow that myself but I very easily forget that

Sie

So is there a reasonable expectation of privacy when you ask a company about their engine choice even though the information is publicly available?

Chris McFarland

1:13 PM

eh?

user92578

what?

Uri Popov

1:37 PM

huh ?

Almo

I had someone on a starwars game get the recoil backward. I had to show them footage from the movie to convince them they had it wrong o_0

Alexandre Vaillancourt

While you worked on the game?

user92578

@Almo what? you mean that the weapon pulled forward?

Sie

I wonder if there is like lojack for cats.

Almo

yeah, it pulled forward on its shots

I said "dude these are based on world war 2 naval guns"

he just looked at me blankly and said he didn't beleive me that they kicked the other way

so I got out some vid, and he then agreed and they fixed it

Sie

1:45 PM

@ChrisMcFarland Basically I was asking if it'd be ok to talk about the contents of an e-mail I got from a game developer. All of the information is publicly available online so I don't see why not.

Almo

he was one of the "BSing game designers" who seem to get great gigs, design bad games, and get asked to design more big games.

I don't get it.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, good! Otherwise George would have called. And you don't want to have George call you, right? :P

Almo

haha

Lucasarts wouldn't let us publish the game, it was so bad

Yves Guillmot (I heard) had to call them and ask for another chance.

Sie

@Almo That's why I'm always interested in full sail and the likes. I mean I know they are degree mills but then again it seems to help you make connections a lot easier.

Almo

redesigned large bits of it. Still sucked.

but at least they let us publish it

user92578

1:48 PM

user92578

Sorry for the gif spam, particles in place now

Almo

We don't mind man

it's actual game dev

lookin good

Uri Popov

needs a fuse burning down before each shot

Almo

hahah :)

AND SOMEONE LIGHTING SAID FUSE

Uri Popov

nah nah

Almo

1:49 PM

AND SOMEONE GIVING HIM THE ORDER TO LIGHT SAID FUSE

Uri Popov

just a fuse

Sie

@Tyyppi_77 Looks really good so far dude. Only thing is that it kind of looks like the projectile sort of pops in but doesn't come out of the cannon.

user92578

Yeah TBH I can't really do much about that

Sie

This is all the frames and you can see what I mean: gif-explode.com/?explode=https://i.stack.imgur.com/LxBeP.gif

Almo

it's because the shot appears right when it kicks

user92578

1:50 PM

I could try some sort of scale tween / fading in, but otherwise there isn't really anything I can do

Almo

you expect the kick, then a little travel time before the projectile leaves the muzzle

looks like the shot is loaded at the mouth, not at the back where the explosive force is

this is nitpicking though, I'm not saying it looks bad

Sie

Ya.

user92578

@Almo I'll try changing the spawning code to a different spot

user92578

Now spawns at the end of the recoil animation

user92578

1:54 PM

I think it actually looks a lot better

Ali.S

2:06 PM

this answer... it sure shows a big disagreement between users of community

0

A: C++ GameState management

The most common approch to GameState algorithm is to have some game states and program can freely choose to run any one of them, this means there is a GameDirector which has a pointer to current running state, and in each update cycle it'll call 'currentState->run()`. in this approch GameDirector...

user92578

BTW There's a bug in GetDirector(), nothing is ever returned

Almo

@Tyyppi_77 looks good dude

Ali.S

@Tyyppi_77 lol... so true...

user92578

anyways that's a pretty good answer

Ali.S

so many people started flaming about singleton pattern that they actually forgot there is an actual bug in the code

user92578

2:11 PM

My state handler is not a singleton, instead I pass an instance of it to every state

user92578

But the singleton aspect is not the most important part in your code

Ali.S

that's for pointing that out

user92578

I think the most important part is that your states are actually objects

user92578

The accepted answer uses enums... ugh

Ali.S

@Tyyppi_77 well.. that's the way others say it should be handled too

give a pointer to what ever needed to all the objects

but that's a lot of extra baggage for every object

user92578

2:14 PM

Yeah that's true, however I only have very few states

user92578

But I agree that some things should be singletons

Ali.S

like if you accept giving each object a pointer to director and not to specific systems that object needs that's like 4 extra byte for every object in your code

user92578

Like my ContentLoader is a singleton, it would be pain to have to pass it to every entity

Ali.S

many people argue "singleton is not global pointer"

Almo

looking back on crystal shuffle, the main object with the game parameters and logic was passed around to everything as a pointer... would not do that again. Would use singleton. In fact, I think I did in Cognizer. :)

Ali.S

2:15 PM

global pointer is needed, singleton is not

Almo

sure whatever

just meaning a single location everyone has access to :)

which is frowned upon, however it's implemented

Ali.S

my point...

@Almo I had long talks with josh and mick about singletons... they don't actually argue about it being global. they dislike the idea that it's single

a second instance can not be created

Almo

why does that matter

user92578

I think test mocking is the use case

Almo

ok

user4704

2:58 PM

@Tyyppi_77 Nice.

user92578

Thanks!

DH.

2 stripes are looking better than 3

And the animation is cool

Noctrine

3:25 PM

@Tyyppi_77 Unwatch teardemon/UnrealEngine and the nightmare should stop.

You may also have to turn off automatic watching

user92578

Yeah I just did that, and manually unwatched the repositories

user4704

Are you talking about GitHub notifications?

user4704

They are annoying.

user92578

I just got like 20 emails that I've automatically followed some UE forks

user4704

Yeah.

user4704

3:28 PM

I turned off almost everything notification related.

user4704

I still get emails for issues I've participated in, but I'm think about killing even that.

user92578

I don't really visit GitHub anymore, (as I'm not really active there)

user4704

Do you use BitBucket or something else?

PearsonArtPhoto

I use BitBucket plenty.

user4704

I really don't like it.

user92578

3:31 PM

I use BitBucket because it offers free private repositories. I applied for GitHub's student program before switching to BB, but they didn't accept my application and never responded to my complaint about it.

PearsonArtPhoto

It's a bit of a pain to set up, but once it is set up, it's pretty easy to use.

Same here.

user92578

But to be honest, my usage is basically looking at the commit list when I'm building my weekly update's changelist.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I use bitbucket also for their private repo..

user4704

Yeah, the free private repositories were why I initially started using it, but I find its UI to be inferior in every way to GitHub. I will probably move everything over to GitHub since they changed their private repository pricing model.

user92578

And occasionally checking a previous state of the source ("oh man, how did I do this before?")

Noctrine

3:33 PM

Bitbucket and a self hosted gitlab.

user92578

@JoshPetrie Yeah, GitHub definitely wins in UI

user4704

I basically never use BitBucket's issues, etc, because I can't stand the UX.

user4704

So why bother?

user4704

I should just move to GitHub or not bother with either and just push to Dropbox or whatever.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Data is counted in dropbox, though..

user4704

3:34 PM

I have plenty of that.

PearsonArtPhoto

I almost never use BitBucket's UX though.

user92578

I really only need some external place to copy my code to. Currently I VC just to have backups, but perhaps once I start porting the game to Linux having VC setup will allow some easier setup or something.

user4704

Could host it on a Transporter cloud too if it came to that.

user4704

@Tyyppi_77 Certainly it would be easier to move the changes from one platform to another.

PearsonArtPhoto

Really I just have a graphic git client that I use. I only have to use BitBucket's pages to set up initially, and occasionally to look over some old version of a file.

user92578

3:36 PM

I've been thinking about starting a GH repository for my website, I think I read about Surge integration using GitHub, so basically it would automatically upload the website after I push to the repo

user4704

I usually just use command-line git stuff, or whatever is Xcode integrated. Occasionally I'll use Tower for complicated BS that sucks on the command-line.

user4704

But I really like using issues as to-do lists instead of like, TODO.txt in the repo.

Noctrine

Continuous deployment is nice.

user4704

So I always end up losing track of what to work on in my BitBucket projects.

Noctrine

I've liked Gitlab's issues - but all of our tooling around building tools is so spread out that we are considering moving to Phabricator.

user4704

3:39 PM

I only have minimal experience with Phabricator from when I patched some regex bugs in LLVM. It seemed okay, if a bit overly complex for my needs.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@JoshPetrie Now you got me considering dropping my dropbox account to only use google drive... :P

Noctrine

That's my current fight, ideally I want all of this stuff to get easier.

Sie

3:58 PM

I'm working on a little series where I take a look at older games, their engine, and give some background on the developer. Think I could post here for some feedback? It's aimed at developers mainly.

user92578

Sure

user92578

4:17 PM

aww man they've lit a bunch of games again

user92578

#84

Leggy7

what is 84? your percentage to to top?

I saw they lit flat heroes, that fucking deserved it

lol, this shit have surely been boosted

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731065461

I downvoted it, so fuken horribad

my comment to this shit was:

Honestly Ii'm pushed to write down a non constructive comment because this VR thrend is annoying, close to offensive.

Just because VR is the flavor of this period it does not mean that everyone should build some shit (and try to sell it) just because it uses VR.

Truth to be told, what do you think this game has to offer? Because I can't see anything but a bad rendered scene I've seen already in a movie.

Free Internet Points

4:36 PM

3

Q: How can I implement smooth tile-based lighting?

I have been working on a 2D tile game and I have implemented hard-edged lighting: I want it to be smoothed out a bit. I don't need shadows or anything, just simple lighting. I'd like it to look more like this: My current system uses light levels for each tile in the world and they are recal...

user4704

@Leggy7 "Exposed in the primeval forest, the players do not know that an ancient behemoth is coming."

user4704

Except you just told me.

Sie

@JoshPetrie That's what the "Easy Amnesia" trope is for.

DH.

lol

Leggy7

ahahah :)

Sie

4:51 PM

More programs need this feature...

Leggy7

looking at the trailer I expected a visual novel not an adventure game liek that tag said. that disappointed me a lot. gave me the impression that a lot of people is trying to surf the VR thrend building a real garbage collection

Almo

damn rokit leeg is fun

William Mariager

5:07 PM

I probably need to draw it to an FBO and create some GLSL shader to smooth out the light. Thats the problem, I don't know much about GLSL and need an explanation. — ProRed 2 days ago

Way to overcomplicate linear interpolation ... :P

@Jon :P

Jon

That guy is looking for something he doesn't even know what it is

user4704

He could do it by treating the lighting like tiles and applying the same kind of technique you use to "smooth" tile transitions.

user4704

But that ends up looking almost exactly the same.

user4704

And is a lot more fiddly.

user4704

I feel like light blocking thing could be addressed by dimming some of the pixels in the lightmap.

user4704

5:17 PM

shrug

Jon

He doesn't elaborate

I am assuming he is arrogant and can't be wrong

Like me.

Almo

6:20 PM

insnatchers of the body vasion!

Jon

boobadees

Jon

6:37 PM

Is arrogance is programmer trait?

Uri Popov

guys my dad just asked me this. Why do we almost always name the variable in a for loop i and then j and so on. Like where did this come from for(int i etc.

Noctrine

index

Jon

next question?

Uri Popov

I think it comes from iterator not index. He claims it comes from some obscure fortran bullshit

DH.

Nah lol

For me it's index

Jon

6:42 PM

i always thought it was because it was for the index

DH.

But iterator is OK too

Jon

iterator makes more sense

Uri Popov

hmm this is not concrete enough everyone seems to have their own idea but it must have originated from somewhere

Jon

i have been using n lately though

Uri Popov

HERESY

Jon

6:44 PM

I have... x and y as well

extensively

i typically use x,y or i,j depending

then n for single loops

Noctrine

I always think of it as an index in a for loop. Only ever heard iterator used when discussing recursive functions.

Uri Popov

for nested loops i always go for i j k l and so on dont know why

Jon

it is the index

Noctrine

and I try to always be explicit about what it's for. customerIndex, appleIndex, etc.

Jon

i don't go that far

but it would make it more legible i guess

Noctrine

6:47 PM

I've been doing a lot of javascript, and in a lot of cases reuse of "i, j, k" that isn't properly scooped leads to bad times.

Uri Popov

#dangersofjs

Noctrine

The amount of programs that I've fixed by just being more explicit is too high.

Jon

some code snipers don't know how to use their scopes

Almo

hoisting for the win!!

@UriPopov mathematicians use i, j, k as iterators in series expressions.

Uri Popov

But why ?

where did it come from

Almo

6:54 PM

I was answering "why programmers do it"

Noctrine

Loops predate computing.

Almo

I don't know why mathematicians do it. :)

Uri Popov

damn mathematicians... making things complicated again

Jon

its so long to say too, mathematicians

why not mathman

seriously.

Almo

because they do "mathematics"

not that hard man :)

Uri Popov

6:57 PM

oh btw on the Collatz conjecture me and my friend proved that there is no loop other than 4 2 1. Now we have to prove that there is no integer that has no loop.

Almo

this is one of the big prize problems, isn't it?

Uri Popov

big no

Jon

just 1 mill

Uri Popov

maybe someone will fork over some cash for it

Almo

quora.com/…

Collatz is a big one

I have a friend who's a phd in math, if you'd like to run it by him.

completely trustworthy as well

Uri Popov

7:01 PM

suuuure

Almo

these kinds of problems interest him quite a lot

Uri Popov

btw I cant seen where it says you get 1 mill

Almo

185

A: What is the importance of the Collatz conjecture?

Most of the answers so far have been along the general lines of 'Why hard problems are important', rather than 'Why the Collatz conjecture is important'; I will try to address the latter. I think the basic question being touched on is: In what ways does the prime factorization of $a$ affect ...

"I think it is for reasons like this that mathematicians suspect that a solution of the Collatz conjecture will open new horizons and develop new and important techniques in number theory."

It's big in terms of its theoretical impact.

If you really do come up with a solution, it will be important to a lot of people

math guys have a fuckin rigorous standard for what constitutes proof in these cases.

Uri Popov

that I know. However it does not = 1 million bucks

Also I'm sure someone will debunk our proof but it still might be something

Almo

:)

Uri Popov

7:07 PM

anyway we might not even be able to tackle the second part of the problem

Almo

wow this answer is really interesting:

62

A: What is the importance of the Collatz conjecture?

The Collatz conjecture is the simplest open problem in mathematics. You can explain it to all your non-mathematical friends, and even to small children who have just learned to divide by 2. It doesn't require understanding divisibility, just evenness. The lack of connections between this conje...

Uri Popov

neat

Almo

7:27 PM

and of course

The Strong Collatz Conjecture states that this holds for any set of obsessively-hand-applied rules.

DH.

lol

Chris McFarland

8:27 PM

@Sie If they've shared info with you and you haven't signed an NDA, is probably okay to share. Up to you and your judgement though

PearsonArtPhoto

9:40 PM

Let's see if I can knock something off of my list...

Jon

9:53 PM

Knocking is for wood

user92578

10:22 PM

@Leggy7 I'm 84th in GL

PearsonArtPhoto

10:44 PM

Well, I managed to get all of the easy things on my to-do list done.

The next task- start working on an AI system...

Except I now realize I have a few pre-reqs for that that I haven't done yet... Sigh...

Guess I'll get some exercise in the meanwhile.

Sie

11:30 PM

@ChrisMcFarland I haven't but it's more of a common courtesy type thing. So I shot them an e-mail if I don't hear back by the end of the week I'll upload it and past that if they have an issue I'll take it from there but I doubt they will.

Chris McFarland

:)

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