Game Development

mm?

is it time for LoL already?

I will not take it personally if you want to avoid my apparent LoL curse :)

but I'm going to play, and I'd like to have you as a partner

lol I don't take the game quite seriously enough to avoid a friend

I take it seriously enough to cuss out someone who seems to be trying to screw over the rest of the team... but no more than that

Q: What is GDSE stance on "recommendation" questions?

hahah ok :)

7Blue_Beast7

2:06 AM

Hi all!

I figured to get time away from Computer in order to straghten out my mess

So I am back and good as new

I need a nice Game Dev Professional name for my Acc here.

Anyone know any?

user4704

3:18 AM

@7Blue_Beast7 I don't even know what that means.

Stack Exchange

4:54 AM

0

On the main StackOverflow site there is a specific close reason: Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the prob...

discussion close-reasons

Stack Exchange

6:35 AM

0

Q: Can I post the same question on Stack Overflow and GameDev?

Is there any etiquette around posting the same question on two StackExchange sites? I have a question that is programming related, but involves a game I want to write in Cocos2d-X in Lua here, which could also be suitable for GameDev. Must I choose one site to post this question? Will it upset ...

discussion

user92578

10:22 AM

Looking at codebases with inconsistent naming conventions hurts my eyes so bad.

10:55 AM

@Tyyppi_77 get a job in web development to get really used to it

most code isn't any better

12:02 PM

Today I linked Gaffer's fix your timestep article again in an answer (gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep ) that must be the link I post most on gamedev.se :)

12:31 PM

Man I don't understand how Zoey Quinn can dodge overly generalized questions about harassment and give such a positive image of gaming, and the game industry, in an interview with MSBNBC. Even after all this harassment: youtube.com/watch?v=NAzo34c4eEE&app=desktop

I can understand people disliking Brianna Wu, but man we need more people like Zoey Quinn in the gamesindustry

And damn it! Even after all these years, I keep being Dutch, gluing words together!

12:45 PM

Of course the comments are filled with garbage

How she is a 'professional victim' etc...

Apparently they never visited her twitter profile. Man there is some garbage coming her way

But still, it seems like its all dying down a bit. I hope so. Lets continue to make games :)

1:20 PM

Maybe she gives such a positive image because she's not stupid and realizes that generalizing all all the haters into one large category is a horrible idea and blatantly wrong?

Or maybe it's a conspiracy :O

1:41 PM

:D

damned adobe flash installer cleared my IE tabs again

@RoyT. disliking her for what?

Q: Is "Needless to say" ever worth saying?

2:56 PM

12

I get a weird twinge in my stomach when ever I have the urge to write "Needless to say." If it's needless to say, it would seem stupid to say it. Am I right? Am I wrong?

phrases

"On sites with a minimum character requirement it can helpful if you're writing a short sentence."

hahaha

@Almo Needless to say, though obvious to anyone interested and quite commonly voiced, there's a possibility that it might indeed be claimed to be the case.

3:27 PM

Seems quiet. I'm gonna break the silence:

Not her best, I think. "Shatter Me" had more variation to it, and the "Skyrim" one with Peter Hollens is a real work of art.

I like phantom of the opera too

Ali.S

@MartinSojka but it really was nice, I mean one of her best works ...

It is, it just feels like she went "Ok, we have this piece, but it's way too short - let's repeat it whole, only louder. That'll do."

I didn't hear any repetition, only tunes I've heard real repetition in are from 90's techno era

3:49 PM

I can understand that for exaple this: youtube.com/watch?v=1OiAyGMPD80 might sound repetitive to some people, but I guess I'm listening to tunes in a very different way than most people. To me that is constantly changing and there's almost no spots that sound repetitive. Also it helps if you listen to the HQ version (not the youtube version) from a set of studio monitors, but still.

I like music that has some shape to it

Also I think that most music is ruined by having vocals in it :P

That's debatable but I can understand your point

There are some great music with vocals, but most of it is just crap I don't want to listen to

And THAT is a way that I listen to music differently than most people (I think). I tend to not hear the vocals / lyrics being sung but more listen to the melodies the vocals are singing.

3:52 PM

Yes, exactly what I do too

^^

I quite like vocals as an instrument but I will agree bad lyrics could completely ruin a song

for the most part I'm apathetic to lyrics though

I also enjoy lyrics that are fun to sing because of the way they sound regardless of the actual content / words being sung

A lot of that has more to do with rhythm than the actual words though

But obviously it's a mutual one will help the other sort of scenario

This is one of the rare ones that I like the vocals in: youtube.com/watch?v=QwhPOlIuSXM

They just fit so well with the music, as sounds

I don't even hear the lyrics as words, but as sound

That is a unique song.... lol

Not for me but I can see the appeal

Just heavier than I like but I really do like how the overall tone of the song keeps changing from section to section

Makes it fun

Yeah, it's one great piece of mixed music styles

4:08 PM

I actually like video game music as background music. There are some games with awesome soundtracks.

Peter Gabriel has some good examples for vocals as instruments, for example in Signal to Noise.

*many games with awesome soundtracks.
FTFY

I think this qualifies as "vocals as an instrument"

Yeah it does

hands down some of the best music ever in a videoe game

4:12 PM

I guess this does, too

lately the only thing I've liked in those AAA titles are the music

@snake5 Was that soundtrack heavily inspired by something else? I swear I've heard that melody a million times.

@Lokkij nothing I could think of

@Lasse lately being which years?

according to what sounds good by music theory, it's not that surprising that some music are starting to sound familiar like if you had heard it already somewhere

@snake5 Uhh, like, after Battlefield 2142

that was near end of 2006

4:19 PM

yeah, that's almost 10 years now of not liking AAA titles

surely there has been good music for games before that time

as for games themselves, well, I myself generally like two games a year on average, and the number is really growing lately

I said the only thing I've liked in those AAA titles is the music, of course there has been a lot good music in games before that too

after 2006 there have been lots of misdirected games though, I can agree to that

animators and other movie-making people had seized control of studios

gameplay was basically "get annoyed while watching all this cool stuff"

that seems to be all over now, though

if some music sounds similar to others, this is a really great example in my opinion:

listen to the first 1 min

and then compare to this:

the second one is in finnish, but the similarity comes in the melody, and the melody of the vocals

4:43 PM

Ugh my PC is dying :(

TUrns itself off, wont go back on

Suspect is the harddisk (strange). Since it turned on again after I disconnected it. Though once I reconnected it the PC still worked. It wouldn't turn on a second time, and again disconnecting the HD would let the PC boot, but again reconnecting the HD would still let the PC boot. WHAT IS THIS SOCERCY?

*sorcery

doesn't look like the hard drive

PC can easily work without one

maybe the PSU

True, but a broken one can mess up the power system

perhaps your PSU is dying

That was my first hunch as well, but I connected a multi-meter and the readings seem fine

@RoyT. how could that happen?

Ali Torabi

4:46 PM

@lasse I had this problem too when my cpu fan was stopped working

@snake5 maybe by creating a short circuit?

But yeah HD is a long shot

@RoyT. should just fail some tests and get disconnected

I've seen TWO acer desktops die because of bad capacitors on the motherboard

PCs are generally self-diagnostic unless vital parts are broken

Ali Torabi

@Lasse possible, I've seen too

4:47 PM

The motherboard has solid capacitors, so at least that isnt it, could be other motherboard stuff though

solid?

@snake5 I've been a sysadmin for a few years (student job). When there is a real hardware problem self-diagnostics often wont find it

@snake5 solid capacitors are pretty common these days

@RoyT. "real problem" being? from my experience, a PC could even notice that RAM wasn't properly connected (some dust in the connector)

google.fi/…

exactly those were the dead ones, the others were fine

@snake5 well a PSU with fluctuating current. A motherboard with a wiring error near one of the memory banks. Bad GPU memory. Those kind of things

user4704

4:50 PM

GTAT is going to sell their furnaces to try and cover their debt.

T?

5?

user4704

GT Advanced Technology.

oh :D

Hmm according to HD Tune my HD has no bad sectors, and SMART says everything is ok

argh

user4704

Sapphire glass manufacturer that went backrupt recently.

user4704

4:51 PM

I was reading a thread on an investment forum the other day filled with idiots who dumped their entire life savings (incl. retirement) into the stock.

It also tells me that the maximum write speed of my HD is 10MB/s wtf..

user4704

Which is now worth 50 cents a share and likely to be cancelled outright as part of backruptcy filings.

must be a nice feel to own a piece of large company

user4704

Worst was a post from some fellow a few days before the stock crashed, saying how he thought GTAT was awesome and had so much room to grow...

user4704

...he managed his mother's portfolio for her retirement accounts, and boasted of continually ignoring her requests to sell her shares of GTAT, which she had several hundred thousand dollars worth.

user4704

4:54 PM

Instead he moved the shares into accounts she didn't know about and hide them, supremely confident he was going to make tons of money.

*average sorry

@RoyT. PSU is generally impossible to diagnose because the diagnostic system itself depends on it, and same goes for the motherboard

user4704

Three days later it went from $15/share to worthless.

user4704

He lost his mother almost half a million dollars.

as for the GPU, it's basically left to the GPU and they have sloppy BIOSes

4:55 PM

@snake5 yeah thats true

@snake5 same goes for the CPU, but thats already all major components

my GPU once died spectacularly after many years of service

was glitching all over the place

there wasn't really even time to notice, it started and finished its death on the same day :D

(or was it a few days of minor bugs before..)

I prefer stuff outright dying

As it is now I cant trust any component

I don't

I'm lazy and busy, if it can die a bit longer, I have time to prepare a replacement plan

And then at least when you find the broken thing, and you replace it, you instantly knew what it was

@RoyT. always possible to attach the hdd to another PC

PSUs are cheap enough to try another one

these days I wouldn't bother, though

if I can't instantly see the issue, it's a waste of time to debug without proper tools and knowledge

5:04 PM

Though I'm definitely not poor, I only start my first real job next month (I'm in the Twilight zone between student and employee). So fixing it cheap is nice.

I also do not have great experience with experts, especially with these "it happens 5% of the time" issues.

Hmm

What to replace first :P

It seems so unlikely its the PSU when it doesnt crash instantly under max load (prime95 + furmark to get both the CPU and GPU at 100% load)

Memtest

Though your symptoms don't entirely match

but if we are basing it solely on how long it takes to crush under max load...

Sounds like nothings wrong with your computer ;)

Except for that it randomly turns of and then wont turn on, sometimes... :P

Oh wait I get what you said

mobo or psu

Guess I'll just have to keep it under max load forever :P

it should turn on and simply not post if it were anything else

5:16 PM

Hmmm

Well since the mobo is neigh impossible to replace, I should start with the PSU

Dont think they have motherboards for this CPU anymore :)

and at least a new PSU I can keep using after I upgrade the rest of my hardware

Though the one I have now provides ample power for a new rig (650w)

5:30 PM

The other thing that comes to mind is the overheat protection that is generally built in... my experience with that is only with CPUs not being seated right though

And your CPU seems fine under max load so I dunno

But it would make sense as to why it doesn't come back on for a bit (still too hot)

CPU max temp, now after 20 minutes of 100% load is 63C, guess thats not it

And it wont come on for several minutes, not directly

the GPU maxes out at 80C after 20 minutes

Man man man

I hate these kind of problems

If only one of the devices had a large blinking "Its me" led

5:48 PM

You cannot star your own messages

user4704

@Almo I can't even star my own messages. But I can pin them, which is amusing.

4

:D

6:24 PM

bunch of lockdowns in ottawa.. was a shooting

1 gunman killed.. 1 soldier killed

news are trying to say its a terrorist attack.. ugh.

well, it seems people want to be frieghtened about terrorists :(

1 guy, shooting up paliament hill.. probably mad at life, and politicians.

Back in my day, that was called a psychopath, not a terrorist.

given modern blame styles, it's not the bad guy who's at fault, it's the system's fault for letting the bad guy through, and if it's "terrorism" it sounds more organized and easier to blame on a group that could be stopped by the system.

a single psychopath is hard to stop, and leaves no room for blaming the system and feeling like it's fixed when ever more security measures are put in place.

.

right.. nothing could stop that guy from shooting john lennon

yeah

6:32 PM

wrote a starfield generator today, lol

I was like.. drawing one out.. then thought, wtf am I doing

wrote a star class, and starfield class.. and blam, just have to tweak some vars and got different sizes and shit

:D

I did a starfield for my old asteroids clone

just randomly placed white diamonds with randomly generated speeds

gave it a really nice depth

i have circles and diamonds randomly

cool

i played with different colors.. but that was kinda bad

:D

6:39 PM

I'd have to research star colors

u got something for us @Almo

what you mean?

screenies

unfortunately, no

it was written with REALbasic in about 1998, and that computer was stolen

I'm pretty sure I don't have the source anymore, either.

it was really, really fun

I played it quite a lot

damnit

vimeo.com/105788896

nice little animated short, ehehe

:)

6:50 PM

I liked the art style

this guy really likes to think he is some sort of messiah I think

7:06 PM

I think the world upsets me

woa

sqlfiddle.com

I don't like paying attention

@Almo pretty cool

yup! pretty cool :)

If only people wrote SQL statements anymore ;)

@SpartanDonut woah ... people still do that ?

7:18 PM

ikr

I thought that was only by computers these days

Anyone fancy working with me to build a mesh generator off my voxel code in unity

sounds like a job for someone who is not me

3

I'm thinking my next step is to put my unity project on to github

its got the noise stuff and my voxel stuff so far so im generating the voxel data but currently only have a shitty minecraft style mesh gen

its about time I did somethign with it but im a total geometry retard

7:31 PM

I totally build my SQL statements :(

For shame

Vektorweg

7:58 PM

blub

@Almo you sir are an abomination to programming

someone just that to me from IGN

lol

Vektorweg

8:23 PM

double blub.

@Almo same here

nearly anything built by an ORM, more complex than a one row read is quite worthless and time-wasting anyway, so not much of a choice there

feels strange though that I have to do all these things and get paid so little

being able to use 4 types of SQL servers, 3 and sometimes more programming languages and many other data/markup languages is pretty much a requirement

@snake5 say whut? why would you think that?

@Wardy because whenever I do happen to request something slightly complicated from an ORM, I regret it and have to write the query in SQL later

ORM's save a ton of time ... in our case we turn our db in to an OData endpoint that our js can basically walk in our apps ... no need for anyone to touch SQL code again

lots of needless joins occur

8:32 PM

if that's your case you're doing it wrong

for some reason SQL servers don't bother optimizing them

it often depends how you write your query on top

@Wardy I'm doing it the only way possible

hardly "wrong", I'd say

I can write linq against EF that is extremely messy then get the same result with half the generated SQL

@Wardy what query? I request an array of objects

8:33 PM

you can then further "alter" the excution plan by adding something as simple as an index

@snake5 "requesting an array of objects" is a query

@Wardy not in ORM world, it isn't :D

uh yeh it is ?

whats your distinction between the 2 ?

one being a direct request for abstract data and another being some automagic query weaving to bring me something I supposedly expect

ok in this case all we care about is getting a queryable collection of objects

anyway, I guess I hate myself, still lots of work to do and getting into conversations about semantics :(

have to finish my lightmap renderer ASAP

8:37 PM

in my case I have (for example) a complex dashboard that results in around 1200 lines of SQL being generated (in the worst case) all completely dynamic because of the options on the page ... how the hell would hand crank that ?

I still get a result in under a second

and im crawling about 15 tables for the result I want

that's in our old "slow code" ... the updated version we are modelling right now can do it in a fraction of the time that takes

@Wardy been there, done that, by hand, all very simple

dynamic SQL by hand ... so you basically would have had to write about 12,000 lines to account for just a small subsection of the variations to get an optimised useful implementation then write a ton of logic to pick the right sections of that SQL that you would need to create the correct query

I think not

Oooh... my SQL usage is way, way less complex than what you're talking about.

@Wardy not even close to 12000 lines

take two zeroes off, that'd be about right

picture this:
table that you can add rows to
each row you can add has the following options ...

exclude include
field selector
condition
value

you can add as many or few of these as you want

in my case I had to provide options for building a query against all of the fields in all of the 15 tables in scope

8:43 PM

no time for other pictures, got enough of my own

you need fewer tables

;)

there's no justifyable way that you can do that in a reasonable amount of time by hand cranking SQL IMO

played AAtrox today at lunch... wow. what a monster. kicked Kayle's ass top

I played with an Aatrox today at lunch... what a piece of trash

:(

8:44 PM

lol

haahah

@Almo we do but in this case if you have 1 table that is "contacts" and then another that is say ... subscriptions ... how would you reduce the number of tables when you have over 50 million contacts ... to combine would result in a rediculous cross join of combinations making the result unusable

Let me clarify... WHAT A PIECE OF TRASH

@SpartanDonut lol

aatrox kinda sucks as a champion, but he would beat kayle because of his counterpoke

8:45 PM

@Wardy ouch :(

yeh that's just 2 ... got another 13 to add yet

and we still get results in under a second

and I never wrote a single line of SQL

EF is op really

it can be ... but you have to be nice to it or it'll shit on you

it shit on me anyway :'(

its like any technology ... it lets you do some brutal stuff

8:47 PM

but I didn't have problems with speed. it just flat out didn't like to work.

but if you do ... be ready to get shat on

@IcyDefiance oh really? ... odd first time i ever heard that lol

what were you trying to do with it ?

Code first is a bit tricky to learn with db migrations and whatnot

yeh takes a bit of getting used to but its great working from the business domain out

++

too many techies think the db is the most important part and that you should start there

but often how something is stored is completely different to the business requirement for process

so starting with the business logic and entities makes sense

database structure is a side effect that can be heavily optimised in the most suprising ways

8:50 PM

well I'm sure I was using it wrong. it's just really weird about when it'll create a new table automatically or just complain about a table not existing, or if you change an attribute to nullable it'll go "OMFG I'M DIFFERENT I'M GONNA DIE"

sometimes I'd make changes that should have had an effect and they didn't, like it was doing some crazy caching and not updating or something

it was just one weird thing after another

I really like the concept of EF. I just couldn't get it to work in the short time I spent with it.

@SpartanDonut EF = ?

yeh you do have to learn to live with some oddities but once you know how to deal with those and fix them quickly you think nothing of it ...

Entity Framework

ok lookin that up thanks

for me these days it's a bit like when I get a missing semicolon in C# error I kick myself for being so dumb rather than sitting there going "well VS should have just added that for me".

EF is much the same for me ... oh it's complaining ... why did I do that again ... jeez

9:02 PM

yeah I guess anything gets like that after you use it long enough. I'm used to things "just making sense" and EF didn't, so that's most of my complaint.

exactly my thought with geometry

to me all this game dev stuff is totally backwards

lol

like Unity, as much as I hate on it, makes a whole lot of sense out of the box. Most of my points on the main site here are from answers on Unity questions, and I've only used the thing for maybe 30 minutes total.

yeh unity is pretty straightforward if you want to make something simple like a tower defense game of an FPS

890-something points, thank you very much >:(

I should answer more questions though, lol

eww tower defense. the only game genre I dislike as a whole with no exceptions.

MickLH

well at least you've got a chance then I feel like deleting this one but it's significantly less joking than the rest

9:07 PM

SERIOUSLY !!! WTF!!! ... our CTO has spent 6 months migrating just 50 users email boxes from exchange to gmail and today he put a posto n the corp netowrk which was basically "the first 16 mailboxes are being migrated now"

Jeez that guy bugs me

eh no need for that now is ther @MickLH

@IcyDefiance You know... LoL is a variant of tower defense.

I like what I call "good" tower defense games

no, in LoL you're defending the towers, you're not placing towers to defend

if you have to fine tune your play of a particular level down to single units built at specific times, then it's not good.

MickLH

7°7 sʎɐs sʎɐʍןɐ oɯןɐ@

3

Savage Moon is one of the good ones: you have 3 stats, defense, money collection from kills and damage. they're all 0

you can up to -1 any stat to +1 another

so you run +2 money, then if you've over pushed, you switch to have plus attack to take up the slack

or if your towers are getting killed due to not being upgraded enough, you temp add some defense

so the path you must navigate in the gamespace is a little wider because you can pfutz with the stats

in that game, if you ever thought "If I had killed that enemy i would have gotten the 100 cash I needed to build that one tower that would turned the tide", you're doing the level wrong.

so it had a nice strategic feel instead of being all nitpicky tactics.

I managed to complete all levels and take no base damage

in ordinary nitpicky TDs, I would never attempt such a thing :)

9:15 PM

Heh, weird. I watched a video today from this RagnarRox guy and now he's following me on twitter.