Game Development

11:00 AM

After there's enough current, it'll force your muscles (including your heart) to severely tense up, which is something you can survive. It's actually more dangerous to get a high current shock that's below that threshold, because it causes fibrillation instead of clamping

Bálint

So you should lick high current transformators

jgallant

open up an old tube tv

and just play around with the connections inside there

mainly around the tube

super fun

MickLH

@Bálint No lol, because it's only really a decent chance of survival if it's only a split second

Bálint

Open up a microwave and hit it with screwdrivers

jgallant

Bálint

11:02 AM

It can even kill you, if it's not plugged in

jgallant

touch this pad thing here

MickLH

I took a 300V pulse discharge of several amps, from arm to leg right across my heart. It felt like getting punched harder than you can imagine in every part of the body at once lol but I survived

I had a chance because it wasn't a very big capacitor and there was no persistent power source so it was just a millisecond pulse

jgallant

i took 120 a couple times

well like 20 times probably lol

MickLH

Were you grounded or ungrounded?

jgallant

both

MickLH

11:04 AM

Grounded fucking hurts lol

jgallant

travels up your limb really fast

has a magnetic effect

I imagine at higher currents you would not even be able to let go

MickLH

AC shocks are extra nasty because instead of forcing your muscles to clamp, it forces them to vibrate at 60hz and blocks your own control over them

Bálint

This is amazing

MickLH

@jgallant I've never got "stuck" but I've seen it happen and had to shove someone to break them off the circuit

Chris McFarland

Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2017: stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017

MickLH

11:13 AM

god damnit why are there 5 genders... there's effectively only 96.2% of the sample accounted for because of that

Bálint

I don't want to be rude, but how does someone, who is unable to type code?

Chris McFarland

with assistance?

What in the world are all these: stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017/…

methodologies. I haven't heard of half of them

MickLH

Those are the standard lines of bullshit for managerial purposes

Bálint

> Not a methodology! The Agile movement seeks alternatives to traditional project management. Agile approaches help teams respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences and empirical feedback. Agilists propose alternatives to waterfall, or traditional sequential development.

Some bullshit you can argue about

Blue Bug

oh... I get it hahaha... you are an ash puncture #Bálint lol

Bálint

11:19 AM

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

That's not even half of it

MickLH

Basically if you think you need one of those "methodologies" then actually your team just sucks and their manager is also bad, but conveniently enforcing the "methodology" is a good punishment for them too so it works out

Bálint

I love how there's a section about how you pronounce gif

MickLH

@Bálint Me too, I'm glad the correct way won also, and not the stupid way the designers intended

Bálint

And somehow every diagram about experience has a strange bias towards 20 years or more

stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017/…

I'm mad about the tabs vs spaces question, how did the tab win?

MickLH

I'm mad that you would make such an offensive joke.

Chris McFarland

11:24 AM

I was surprised spaces had that many!

MickLH

Using spaces instead of tabs is an unforgivable thought crime

(Unless you strictly use one space only)

Here's option A: The tool built exactly for the purpose of indenting text, with its own dedicated key.

Here's option B: Hack a totally different tool by using it several times, to poorly emulate the behavior of option A.

Chris McFarland

lol

Bálint

Why would tabs be better?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@MickLH It's because you misconfigured your meta tool, i.e. your editor :P

MickLH

Because it's "the right tool for the job"

Tabs are literally meant to indent. Spaces are not.

Using spaces is a HACK. Objectively.

Chris McFarland

11:28 AM

good IDEs, you can set the tab's width

MickLH

Even with bad IDEs! The default text editor on Ubuntu even has tab width up front in the settings

Bálint

Spaces look uniform everywhere

SO's tabs are 8 spaces long

MickLH

That fallacy is even worse than my fallacy!

Mine was just an appeal to authority

That one is based on the idea that the width of indentation is so important that it's worth turning nearly every line of code into something hacked up

And further, the tab width being adjustable makes that ineffective, even if it were "worth it"

Because once you use a specific number of spaces, it's locked in, while you can adjust the tab width without modifying the document

It's easy to reliably convert tabs to spaces: Just replace "\t" with " "

The inverse transformation occasionally screws something up

Bálint

Ok, I hate tabs, you love tabs, let's keep it like that

MickLH

People sometimes say: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." but I think that actually you can just inject water into it correctly and effectively force it to drink

jgallant

11:40 AM

I imagine if you didn't let it drink for a few days it would eventually drink on command

MickLH

Ok so I've got 3 game modes so far: GunGame, Scrimmage, and Deathmatch

You already know what Deathmatch is, also there's the teams option

If you haven't played GunGame, everyone starts with a shit gun and each kill gets you a better gun, first person to use every gun wins. (Or it can be in reverse, start with the best gun and progress through shittier guns)

Scrimmage is where everyone starts with shit guns and there's no respawn, and at the end of each round your team's weapon funding is determined by how you did last round and how much extra funds you saved last round

Chris McFarland

King of the Hill
Steal the Bacon

what was that old CS mode, assassination? where you gotta escort the VIP

MickLH

hm I guess I could design some King of the Hill maps, I totally forgot about that game mode. I don't remember very many games having it

Chris McFarland

halo.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Halo:_Reach_Multiplayer_Game_Types

MickLH

11:59 AM

I think I want to combine King of the Hill and Steal the Bacon lol

Chris McFarland

That could be interesting

MickLH

I'm thinking of it having a main hill but also flag sites. You capture the flags and bring them to the main hill, and you score based on how much time you spend with how many flags inside the hill area

I think it's worth prototyping to see if it can be tuned :P

I'm not sure if the secondary sites should be required or optional, or optional but so powerful that it's basically required

I think I'll try it with score per second as a linear function of the number of flags you're carrying, and as an exponential function. I guess it's time to round up the playtesters again lol

...in a few hours, it's 5AM on a wednesday lol

John Hamilton

King of the Hill in Soldat was fun :o

Chris McFarland

@MickLH just zap yourself with some electricity

John Hamilton

There was also the Rambo mode where you'd get the bow and arrow if you picked the flag up

Chris McFarland

12:08 PM

need a blue shell drone you throw into the air that hunts down the lead player

MickLH

btw thanks for bringing that up chris

I think that'll lead to a fun game mode

John Hamilton

@MickLH be careful not to introduce too many game modes though, sometimes there's just not enough people to play with and they get abandoned or worse divide the playerbase too much and make queues longer on other modes

MickLH

well I was thinking of only having matchmaking for 2 main game modes, and the rest would just be for custom games

basically pick the best FFA and the best team mode

John Hamilton

yeah makes sense

Chris McFarland

I prefer Bungie's old days of Myth where you would join a host's room into a mini pre-game lobby, where you could actually chat, and the host would just choose a game mode and players would click their Ready button

rather than today's methods of being funneled into choosing one gametype and hoping there's enough other people searching for the same type as you

John Hamilton

12:13 PM

ShellShock Live is one of those games and it's pretty recent @ChrisMcFarland

Chris McFarland

Rocket League kind of gets it right where you can search for multiple game types at once

@JohnHamilton lemme look

DH.

Shellshock live is actually old, but 2 it's not that old :P

MickLH

I prefer server browser style too, but I really want to push one specific mode as "the competitive" mode and have ranked matchmaking with it

Chris McFarland

ah cool stuff. ShellShock Live looks full of fun

John Hamilton

it has been in development for almost two years and it's almost out of early access :D

DH.

12:14 PM

But they certainly got that from the most famous game of the genre back in the day, Gunbound

Chris McFarland

is that still around?

DH.

Gunbound is no more AFAIK

John Hamilton

gunbound tried to gamify the system too much

MickLH

man gunbound... I kinda forgot about that one until now

John Hamilton

to be fair anything softnyx has made was like that

DH.

12:18 PM

Man, but Gunbound was the best game around in it's time

It was tons of fun

John Hamilton

yeah of its kind it was

what was the original game of this genre

DH.

Worms?

John Hamilton

naw naw

DH.

I mean, I know there was a similar game before worms, but the first really famous of turn based mayhem was Worms

John Hamilton

I can't seem to remember it but it was much earlier than that

2d tanks and it was like windows 95 stuff before worms was even a thing

If I'm not wrong tho, I was a kid at that time

oh boy, scorched earth

that was it

DH.

12:21 PM

But the first worms was for W95 lol

Ah yeah, that was the one

MickLH

I liked LIERO which was a similar gameplay but in real-time

John Hamilton

ooh liero was the game me and my cousin would always play for hours

I gotta make a game like liero, update the interface etc. but not the gameplay LieroX is what it shouldn't have been imho

MickLH

I guess they sortof expanded the world from 1D to 2D also

John Hamilton

ah they already made openlieroX lol

we used to play a "game mode" we called the rabbit hunt

only the missile can be used

you have to take turns using the weapon

and you have 20hp which would mean 1 shot death or 2 particle hits death

fun times when you can actually make your own game modes lol

DH.

There's even a open worms armageddon too, but since Worms is still a thing, they made new sprites using hedgehogs, it's called hedgewars

PearsonArtPhoto

12:28 PM

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists

►

It's a really interesting talk actually.

MickLH

I keep having a recurring thought: CS with 3 teams

Chris McFarland

@PearsonArtPhoto Create what you love is very true

all good points though

@MickLH Why stop at 3?

MickLH

Well I'd want to pick a specific number so I can design the maps well

Chris McFarland

different maps for different team sizes

PearsonArtPhoto

One of the really interesting things is that great artists seek and listen to criticism.

MickLH

12:37 PM

I always thought that was just common sense to not be too full of yourself :P

Chris McFarland

If someone has critical feedback about something, it's usually worthwhile and true (unless they're totally wrong)

PearsonArtPhoto

Common sense isn't that common, remember.

MickLH

it is a very misleading name

Chris McFarland

the customer/critic is usually right. gotta attempt to appease them

but not always!

MickLH

man @ChrisMcFarland you've been especially inspiring tonight

I just realized I can have a "world" that just means the art theme, and then the actual map is the version of that world for however many players

Technically they would be different maps, but designed exactly the same just with a different number of teams

Chris McFarland

12:41 PM

@MickLH you can thank my alcohol-fuelled refactoring session

but I better sleep, almost 2am, gnite

MickLH

night

wow it's almost 6am here, I should probably be asleep already but I feel awake lol

PearsonArtPhoto

One thing that is important is to know who your audience is, but if the person is in your audience, they have a good chance of being right.

Chris McFarland

It's good to seek feedback from pros, casuals, devs, non-devs - but certainly the person needs to have a slight interest at the very least

and you actually have to have something to show off :(

PearsonArtPhoto

True enough. While I can provide some feedback to some projects as a gamedev, I certainly can't give good feedback to something I'm not interested in.

At least, not all of my feeback will be good in such an area.

MickLH

12:58 PM

@JoshPetrie (or anyone) What's the right version of Visual C++ these days?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@MickLH What's the intention?

I'd say VS2015

MickLH

@AlexandreVaillancourt I set up a windows machine for building code that I am maintaining, and I could use whatever version, but I don't really use VS very much and so I don't know if there's some version I should use for compatibility or w/e

Ideally I'd like to open source the code eventually but even if not I like to present a nice experience to whoever gets it next

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Oh, I think VS2015 has some issues with some older methods with cause security errors.

It depends what features you need: if you need more recent c++ stuff, you'll have to go with VS2015 (like constexpr), but aside from that, I guess VS2013 would probably be what you need.

MickLH

I guess I'll use 2015 because all the recently added code has been C++11 ;)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Most of the c++11 are in 2013, though. You don't have the info as to what they used to write the code, I assume?

MickLH

1:14 PM

I think it's a safe bet that it's mostly just code involving auto and APIs like std::thread

no extreme template nonsense ;]

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Ok, well you'll see in the first compilation if the code is using windows api, it'll break :P

But otherwise, VS2015 is nice to use, IMHO.

jgallant

1:57 PM

kickstarter? more like shitstarter

amirite?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I guess it depends on the project?

DH.

There were some projects that were really successful and are really good that came from KS

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Oculus rift? :P

DH.

2:13 PM

No, I said good things

user92578

2:28 PM

Why isn't VS2017 even discussed @MickLH @AlexandreVaillancourt? Is there like a loop I'm totally out of about 2017?

user4704

Yeah I'd say the one you want is the newest that will run where you need it. 2017 if possible, 2015 otherwise.

user4704

2013 is starting to push it.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

2:49 PM

@Tyyppi_77 Ah, well I was not aware it was out :)

user92578

I just got home from my math final, I had to do a statistics problem :(

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@JoshPetrie We're having issues finding 3rd pary libraries that compile for the newest compilers... we're still with vs2013 :(

user92578

Other 9 problems were pretty easy but that one was just overly vague and seemed too easy

Stephane Hockenhull

I barely started using some C++11 features in my engine because VC see, to always be so behind :(

user92578

I don't think it really is anymore

Stephane Hockenhull

2:52 PM

And then (if) you have to deal with consoles with old compilers ...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@StephaneHockenhull #ifdef? :P

j/k

Stephane Hockenhull

oh god, you had me disgusted for a moment there :)

@Tyyppi_77 I dunno, haven't used it in a while. gcc can cross-compile to windows so I have been spared :P

@AlexandreVaillancourt I try to minimize the #ifdefs as much as possible. I already have too many for my taste to support OpenGL and OpenGL ES in the same code base.

I can understand where they simplified the API but

hrm ...lemme look up the constant...

Okay this is dumb. They improved KDevelop by making it load projects in the sessions in a background thread but if you close it before it's done loading the project it'll save the session and restore it without the projects it didn't have time to load.

Okay. So things like OpenGL removing the GL_RGBA8 macro in ES < 3.0

it's an INTERNAL storage format option

It'll cost 32 bytes of code space to map it to whatever RGBA internal format the implementation supports

Because OpenGL ES still has to support 32bpp RGBA as an input format anyway.

#if defined(X_OPENGL_ES) && (X_OPENGL_ES < 300)
{GE(RGBA8888), "RGBA8888", GL_RGBA, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 4, 0},
{GE(RGB888), "RGB888", GL_RGB, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 3, 0, 0},
...
#else
{GE(RGBA8888), "RGBA8888", GL_RGBA8, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 4, 0},
{GE(RGB888), "RGB888", GL_RGB8, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 3, 0, swizzleMask_RGB},
...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

3:11 PM

Yep, ugly code FTW with #ifdefs!

Stephane Hockenhull

They really went overboard when gutting OpenGL into ES

user4704

@AlexandreVaillancourt What libraries are you looking at? And what issues do you see with them? I haven't had any trouble with 2017 compatibility so far

user4704

Since 2013, especially in 2015 and 2017, VS has been very good at covering new C++ stuff, even stuff that isn't formally standardized yet

Stephane Hockenhull

And then decided to remove GL_LUMINANCE_ALPHA when it's so easy to still map it

{GE(LA88), "LA88", GL_RG8, GL_RG, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 2, 0, swizzleMask_LA},

In fact I do just that myself right there

@JoshPetrie oh, thats a relief. \o/

I still have nightmare from my GBA days being stuck with gcc 2.95.
But in their defense, gcc 3.x was a disaster...

jgallant

Man, the kerning pair adjustment options in text mesh pro are pimp af

Alexandre Vaillancourt

3:19 PM

@JoshPetrie I'm not the one who takes care of that here, but from what I understand, we have trouble getting all the dependencies that the open source projects we use require. For instance (not necessarily these): libpng, zlib, and some more obscure ones,

user4704

Do you need prebuilt binaries for them?

user4704

I could understand that, but I'm surprised some of those won't compile from source.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, I guess upper management prefers to wait that they get released than paying someone to maintain them internally...

And maybe there are a couple of these that we need prebuilt ones. As I said, I'm not taking care of that part here, so I don't have the whole picture..

user4704

That's fair, maintainence on certain OSS projects... especially the old ones who are still all "AOMG AUTOTOLLS TAH BEST" about their build chain is a pain

Alexandre Vaillancourt

We're just about to switch to vs2015 :P

yahoo5000

3:26 PM

guys why is that ? as far as i know VS doent care about space or new lines and its reads till ; ?

Stephane Hockenhull

You can't break a string with open quotes

mysql.PewrteQuery("INSERT INTO characters "
    "(userid, ) "
    "VALUES "

yahoo5000

okay tnx

Stephane Hockenhull

You need quotes on each line

DH.

Can't remember a language that supports reading a string with line breaks

Stephane Hockenhull

two strings that follow another will get merged "abc" "123" will give "abc123" but you can't have line breaks inside a string.

yahoo5000

3:29 PM

dont i need "abc" + "123" ?

Stephane Hockenhull

not in C/C++

yahoo5000

i always was doing "String " + "Another string " . so far

Stephane Hockenhull

std::string will handle the + operator, not literal strings

yahoo5000

oh yea + is for variables right ?

std::string draw = title + " " + std::to_string(currentval);

user92578

it's for std::strings

yahoo5000

3:32 PM

ah okay tnx

Stephane Hockenhull

title is an std::string so it supports the + operator. but
std::string draw = "abc" + "123";
will not work

yahoo5000

okay got you

Stephane Hockenhull

And if you do `std::string draw = "abc" + 1;` you will get `draw = "bc"`

string literals are actually (const char *)

jgallant

My hacked up unity mesh text rendering at the top -- tmp at the bottom

yahoo5000

And if you do `std::string draw = "abc" + 1;` you will get `draw = "bc"`

whys is that ?

PearsonArtPhoto

3:35 PM

You could even add more drop shadow if you wished.

yahoo5000

if its pointer should it be "adb " or soem randomg shit

Stephane Hockenhull

Because a string literal is just a (const char * const) to that null-terminated string.

adding 1 to it makes it point 1 character further

@yahoo5000 You can do
int i = 3;
char c = "0123456789"[i % 10];

yahoo5000

oh yea sorr missed that

for some reason was thinking it will add one to pointer and also increase strng size , but it will just increase pointer to so he wont be holding the first element

Stephane Hockenhull

Now, I don't recommend doing that char c = "0123456789"[i % 10]; because it's a bit ugly but it's something valid in C/C++

yahoo5000

@Tyyppi_77 not sure if i have asked you yet but what are you using for your game ? i mean you coding in Unity or some other game engine ?

user4704

3:41 PM

He's using C++, afaik. And SDL or SFML, one of those.

yahoo5000

actually was looking at SFML today , was wondering whats your opinion on that thing

user92578

SDL2

user92578

it's a little more barebones than SFML

user92578

I really like SDL, just a few shortcomings in the renderer, that's pretty much all I have to complain. And well, thread safety but that's also kinda my fault

yahoo5000

i might get them both and take a look later

user92578

3:50 PM

what are you looking for in a library?

yahoo5000

text rendering

DukeZhou

My marketing guy is telling me you now need marketing funds to launch a campaign to promote your kickstarter

PearsonArtPhoto

It doesn't hurt.

If you really want to get money from it, then that's the way to do it.

user4704

Yup.

DukeZhou

I can't argue with the logic

"gotta spend money to make money"

Blue Bug

4:00 PM

so far this is my best debugging method when it comes to shader; print out cyan and purple at pixels that are getting errors.

I wish I could have console log or std::cout blocks or just... something...

user4704

Or use a GPU debugger.

Blue Bug

I just googled GPU debugger... if this does what I think it does...

MIND == BLOWN

user4704

VS has one, it's okay. PIX is great too, if it's applicable to you.

user4704

The Xcode one is awesome if you use Metal, although the bug where it breaks watch window rendering is a bit sad

Stephane Hockenhull

And in Linux you're SOL. Gotta debug using pixel colors

Blue Bug

4:13 PM

I ma gona check that debug tool so hard when I go back to home and get my hands on more comforting enviornment; atm I am working with my small laptop.

If I can finally call debug stuff during GPU dang... it will be so badass.

Stephane Hockenhull

oh shit, scratch what I said

developer.nvidia.com/linux-graphics-debugger

"Version 2.0 requires Linux driver version 370.23 or newer"
goddamnit

also "Membership Required" I hate those

Blue Bug

There used to be times when Unity required membership to do (almost)anything GPU related

They still kinda do for higher advanced features... because it is "pro only"

Stephane Hockenhull

4:32 PM

"Frame debugging and profiling can be done on the latest Pascal family of GPUs"

Well, poop.

Maybe V1.0 supports my GPU

jgallant

it puts the PU in GPU

Stephane Hockenhull

I guess I could just write my own shader debugger...

jgallant

hehe that is going to be awesome

There is this app called ICU where you can access live memory of a running emulated c64 game

C64: Boulder Dash / ICU64: Custom Display

►

@ around 1minute he shows a custom video memory display he wrote

where it displays the entire map instead of the restricted viewport of the original game

Just thought this was cool

Stephane Hockenhull

All my draw calls are already wrapped and I have a shader generator with a preprocessor... I could just add macros that compile a special version of the shader to capture variable values.

Redirect the render call to a float frame buffer and dump values.

Bálint

5:34 PM

Is the GBP still going up, or is it stabilized now?

Kevin van der Velden

5:46 PM

Wait when did the GBP go up?

Huh about a month ago

yahoo5000

6:57 PM

need help on mysql query

mysql.PstmtQuery("INSERT INTO characters"
					"(userid,firsttimelogin,Name,Surname,Gender,Reputation,Money,Strength,Inteligence,Luck)"
					"VALUES"
					"(?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?) SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID()");

what ever i tried it aslways gives me syntax error

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