Game Development

Chris Okyen

12:04 AM

yooo

Corgi here woof

Hey @Tyyppi_77 @Tyyppi_77 @TheMuffinCoder @Jon @JoshPetrie

@ton.yeung

Jon

Die

You dead?

Chris Okyen

So my arm wrestling programs going good .

But, i have yet to find an accurste way of pulling the pixels per inch using js. I dont think browser scripting languages alow acces to this inflrmation about the computer. Ive done reseaech on SE / SO pages and they do not accurately get the ppi

I wrote a program that lets you change the width of a rectngle untill you can put a ruller to it and it is 2 inches wide and it will prompt you the pixels per inch

Will this make most people not want to mess with the program all together

Jon

12:27 AM

Hehe

That is pretty funny

Chris Okyen

12:40 AM

Ppi?

Chris Okyen

1:04 AM

@ton.yeung your asking why inwant poi

?

@ton.yeung

Chris Okyen

1:48 AM

Anyone not AFK ?

Chris Okyen

2:00 AM

:(

Jon

2:14 AM

it sounds like it would suck to have to calibrate in such a way

However, if you are providing a tool that does what you say it does -- it would be acceptable to have to do

IMO

I mean, the number of people that will be using this is going to be pretty low

Chris Okyen

True

can it be done with browser code?

Ie in a browset

browser

@Jon

Jon

2:33 AM

I don't know

user4704

3:39 AM

@ChrisOkyen Please do not ping everybody unless there is a reason. It's rude.

Stack Exchange

4:29 AM

0

Q: Do we still consider programming questions off topic if the context is game-dev related, but the problem turned out to be generic?

I was aware that we do not accept generic programming questions, but does this include questions where the problem was encountered in game developing but turns out to be generic? I came across this question, today, where a user was asking about a Unity error. A user voted to close the question a...

user92578

6:30 AM

@ChrisOkyen Seriously, no need to ping me.

user92578

7:47 AM

This was a cool question: gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/130453/35344

user92578

I hope my answer makes sense & does what he wants

Chris McFarland

I'd take out the "This is actually pretty simple." sentence

Might not be simple to someone!

user92578

good call!

Chris McFarland

replace it with "ez"

user92578

I was mainly thinking "not very hard, as this involves no hacking and no shaders (cause SDL doesn't have any)"

user92578

7:59 AM

back to drawing pillars... damn shading is hard

Chris McFarland

Fun

I am sorting out the last of this Russian stuff

user92578

oh fuck right I gotta do that translation stuff too

Chris McFarland

haha

user92578

I think I'm at like 20% done or something like that, so it's not like I haven't done anything

Chris McFarland

Sweet

user92578

8:07 AM

but now that my final is over I'm sure I'll find time for that

user92578

fuck I also just noticed that there have been spreadsheet changes

Chris McFarland

Recently I've been appending rows to the bottom
I am sorry lol

user92578

oh no worries

user92578

I thought you added stuff to the middle and such

Chris McFarland

I did for the first handful of updates? but then realised that was rather inconvenient

for T2 I will make a website-based translation system so it's more streamlined

user92578

8:10 AM

okay yeah I'm lost

Chris McFarland

Which bit(s)

user92578

oh nvm, I already had some stuff I thought I didn't have

user92578

so I just copied the stuff from Beta 2 and down to my spreadsheet

user92578

anything else I need to worry about?

Chris McFarland

there's some Beta 3 strings in the middle of // Languages section near the top, but that's it

user92578

8:14 AM

The row number's don't matter do they?

Chris McFarland

Nah, doesn't matter

user92578

you've done a hell of a work with assembling this stuff together though

Chris McFarland

Thanks, I've tried to make do
I regret having the _Caps versions for some of the menu strings but ah well
I am also regretting having a combat log lol

user92578

lol

user92578

yeah from a translator perspective I feel like I'm typing the same strings after each other, with different words capitalized or with three dots at the end :)

Chris McFarland

8:24 AM

or at least, trying to be fun with it with different verbs for actions
just annoying heh

Yeah, that's just me with my grammar styles

user92578

all this stuff also sounds so awkward in finnish

Chris McFarland

haha

user92578

especially the enemies were super tricky

user92578

I probably gotta return to those

user92578

what's the difference between Rumble & Controller Vibration?

Chris McFarland

8:29 AM

For the Wii U, had to use the word "rumble"

user92578

oh

user92578

now do I need to translate those differently?

Kevin van der Velden

So I'm listing challenges for a game I'm making I'm calling "Graveyard wars". One challenge is "Search & Rescue", another is "Search & Eat"

Chris McFarland

@Tyyppi_77 I don't see any official support from Nintendo for Finnish so wouldn't worry about it, just use Vibration probably

user92578

aight so the lines can be equal?

Chris McFarland

8:32 AM

@KevinvanderVelden nice

@Tyyppi_77 Yeah should be okay. I don't even know if Nintendo allows Finnish as a language or not heh

user92578

aight :P

Kevin van der Velden

It's a parody of junkyard wars where you play a team of necromancers and build a zombie to compete in challenges and such

Chris McFarland

braaaaaaaaaains

user92578

sounds cool

Kevin van der Velden

I also have a section where you go through a graveyard to find bits to build your zombie out of, if you find a firefighter your zombie gets fire resistance

That kind of awfull stuff :D

Or old people who have fake hips which are sturdier, while young people are faster and have more health

Chris McFarland

8:36 AM

haha

user92578

tbh there's no way my translations would fullfill any sorts of accessibility guidelines :P

Chris McFarland

Hmm, like how so

If I get a bunch of angry users going "the Finnish translation is horrible", I don't know what I'd do lol

user92578

like I feel like there aren't proper translations for certain crucial controller parts or something

user92578

then you'd let me know and I'd fix that I guess :P

Chris McFarland

Yeah

user92578

8:39 AM

Like it's not awful and WIP

Chris McFarland

controller stuff, eh, I kind of assume some stuff is very English-oriented

user92578

yeah, I just use the terms "D-Pad" and "Thumbstick"

Chris McFarland

Looks like Xbox supports suomi

xbox.com/fi-FI

user92578

oh

Chris McFarland

support.xbox.com/fi-FI/xbox-one/accessories/…

user92578

8:42 AM

ooh thanks a lot

Chris McFarland

:D

user92578

So thumbstick == 1 in the image, right?

Chris McFarland

Yeah

user92578

8:59 AM

I think that instead of a web-based translator for Tallowmere 2 you should spend years building an in-game translator tool :)

user92578

(I feel like I translate the best when I look at the text's in-game)

Chris McFarland

Sounds like a good idea at first thought
but wouldn't really work for variables, and having to place them in certain sentence order
and all that kind of hard stuff lol

The ability to have a mouseover tooltip for the stringID to show might be kind of cool though maybe

user92578

yeah it would be suuper hard

user92578

but very cool for translators, just being able to click on labels and edit them

user92578

11:17 AM

Chris McFarland

It's true

aww you deleted lol

Unity is very barebones

but - it handles most of the annoying stuff good enough for you, cameras, physics, sprites, 3D rendering, playing audio, and the latest UI stuff is mostly okay

user92578

lol idk I guess I realized I was looking at things just from a different perspective

Chris McFarland

on the other hand, when Unity tries to implement its own "handy" features:
- Its networking sucks
- Its pathfinding sucks, and doesn't even work with 2D
- Its input/controller management sucks

user92578

Why is controller management an issue?

user92578

Like are they literally trying to do it themselves? Using directly some driver stuff or something?

Chris McFarland

11:27 AM

It doesn't support every controller out of the box, I guess, which is the biggest kicker

user92578

Like I use SDL's controller management stuff and I don't think I've ever seen anyone anywhere complain that it doesn't work

Chris McFarland

SDL has a big database of controllers, yeah?

you can open up the different profiles and see the button IDs yeah?

Unity has none of that

user92578

~150 controllers I think, so yeah

Chris McFarland

yeah, unity has zero

user92578

Makes me wonder why Unity just doesn't use SDL under the hood...

Chris McFarland

11:28 AM

so I use this InControl plugin which has all that info and jazz

user92578

Or something similar, I'm sure SDL isn't the only thing that does this "properly"

Chris McFarland

Unity's editor shines for me the most though

the ability to click anything and inspect everything in real-time, pause, move the camera around, move things, without me having to code any of that myself, it's such a time-saver

I remember trying out XNA and Flash, and I was like, uh.........

user92578

Yeah that's basically what I've lately felt like I'm lacking

user92578

So back earlier I was doing a little translating, and decided to check what the stuff looked like in-game, and totally just dropped the translating and had a blast playing

user92578

I felt that I too easily started to feel like I was invincible

user92578

11:31 AM

Then got killed the next moment

Chris McFarland

lol :) yeah that's the low-health aspect of the main game, until you manage to find some super gear

and to me, it's such a fun gameplay mechanic, feeling invincible if your shield is up, yet feeling extremely vulnerable when it's down

rather than feeling fragile all the time (or too tanky all the time, as some games tend to be, having the player act as a bullet sponge)

user92578

11:52 AM

yeah. such a great game :)

user92578

hmm, I feel like adding cool features but I also need to make more levels for the desert stuff... hmm

user92578

I think I'll pick the features :)

Chris McFarland

Features are fun

user92578

Yeah they are :)

user92578

And it's not like this is the feature creep, the game desperately needs more content variance

Chris McFarland

11:56 AM

gogogogo

I suppse your game has to try and stay semi-realistic?

user92578

That kinda depends

Chris McFarland

not like Mario where you can have enemies in bouncing boots or have the sun shoot fireballs at you

user92578

I like to define it as "cartoony mechanics"

Chris McFarland

:P

I didn't play BroForce for too long, but that certainly was just different guns, grenades, barrels, helicopters eh, very military and that's it

user92578

well that's basically where GunHero steps in

user92578

12:08 PM

The goal is to be more a traditional platformer with cool and awesome obstacles

user92578

And combine that with guns and grenades of Broforce

user92578

I've only played the Expendabros actually

user92578

Which according to greenlight people I should not have done :P

Chris McFarland

of course
:p

how dare you

but ah yep, that's cool then!

Tallowmere has like, no traditional platforming elements despite being a platformer

no ladders, no lifts, no bottomless pits lol

infinite jumping, wat

user92578

Yeah that's really nice actually

user92578

12:11 PM

I love the jumping mechanic

user92578

It opens up stuff so much, but then also makes movement a lot harder to master

user92578

> Just sneaking around a little. It's amazing what amount of information you can find on certain users. Maybe even find out that Tyyppi_77 owns The Expendabros...

user92578

one of my favorite quotes in the world tbh

Chris McFarland

rofl

that is excellent

user92578

makes me laugh every freaking time

user92578

12:12 PM

simply hilarious

Chris McFarland

there was one comment on my greenlight

something like, "I don't like the font"

user92578

lol

Chris McFarland

I originally was trying out pixellated fonts, cuz hey, pixel art, pixel fonts, right?

but I just did not like them :s

user92578

yeah fonts are hard

user92578

I think I'm using something between pixellated and smooth

user92578

12:16 PM

(No aliasing, but not rendered at the scale everything else is)

user92578

> Maybe I can mod my own typeface into the game?

Other people might really like it, but for such a unique and brilliant fantasy game, a default MS Word typeface looks bland, cheap and lazy.

Chris McFarland

It's crazy how much feeling a font can give off

user92578

yeah that's very true

user92578

a while ago I realized that the font I was using wasn't free

user92578

So I spent like a weekend trying to find a matching font from Google Fonts

user92578

12:18 PM

Luckily I found one

Chris McFarland

my latest font fetish is Roboto: fontsquirrel.com/fonts/roboto

see it more and more on the Web
Destiny uses it in-game
I tried it out, it's quite nice

user92578

looks nice

user92578

Pretty sure I use this one: fonts.google.com/specimen/Russo+One

user92578

Except that to create a desired style effect, I ask SDL to weirdly "bold" that

Chris McFarland

cool
at a glance I'd attribute it to a space theme

user92578

12:27 PM

yeah, that's not a bad glance feel :)

user92578

basically having looked at one font for like two years I knew I had to find one with a similar feel

Chris McFarland

lol :)

user92578

So the pipeline for new entities consists of creating a new line in an excel table, creating the entity class and then adding an if-clause to the factory method

user92578

like 80% of the time I forget to add the factory part

Chris McFarland

What does your factory code look like, if you don't mind sharing?

Because I ran into this problem a lot with T1

user92578

12:31 PM

It's a 400 lines long method

user92578

I'll cut a part for you

Chris McFarland

and my solution for T2, is to just get the thing I'm creating, and lookup its definition which is elsewhere outside of my spaghetti code

(certainly for new features you'd still have to code in the check though)

user92578

So it's basically 400 lines of this: pastebin.com/x4n3EUst

user92578

I have a dynamic property system built to the level editor

user92578

"dynamic"

Chris McFarland

12:33 PM

but I use to go like
if monster is archer, do X
if monster is fire mage, do Y

but now for T2, I go more like
if monster.hasPropertyX, do X
if monster.hasPropertyY, do Y

user92578

yeah that sounds smarter

Chris McFarland

something something reusable generics can go a long way if coded correctly I'd say
still, for particular mechanics like blade spinning, perhaps that needs to be a single check, even if it's only ever used for the one thing

user92578

yeah basically this is a custom implementation of "generics"

Chris McFarland

maybe not have a "blade spinner" per se? just a "spinner", and the spinner has a "blade" attached in this case
opening up the "spinner" to be repurposed to spin other things

user92578

attaching key-value pairs to entities in the editor and then checking for specific properties for specific entities

Chris McFarland

12:37 PM

yeah

user92578

Yeah, the trick is though that my editor doesn't support entity "nesting"

Chris McFarland

Potentially, I kind of feel that a lot of objects in the game can then be extremely multi-purposed

mmmm right

user92578

So it would be more like <Entity type="Spinner"><Property name="Type" value="Blade"/></Entity>

user92578

Which I do use for some entities, like cannons have a Type property that can be attached to them

user92578

Not the best system really, but something that younger me thought was a good idea

Chris McFarland

12:39 PM

I mean there's nothing wrong with "here's a thing, it does one thing and only one thing"
which is fine, cuz it gets the job done
just becomes annoying later on when there's so many things you want to add, and you're forever looping through each entity type all annoyingly

user92578

yeah

user92578

but it's a little different when I can't just drag a GameObject to a slot in a property editor window

Chris McFarland

right, yeah

user92578

that would be awesome

user92578

just creating a spinner object, and creating a blade object, and attaching those to each other

user92578

12:41 PM

That seems to be kinda how that Mario Maker thingy works

Chris McFarland

There's that sense of reusable components where in theory you just add a component to an object and voila, it dons a new behaviour (though it becomes annoying having to link the components to each other on the single object)

but, depending on how your code is structured, just have a checkbox for each thing you want to enable, so it might feel bloated but as a tradeoff might feel easier to enable things

yeah, here's a sprite, it does X Y and Z and looks like A

from reading Derek Yu's Spelunky book

user92578

Code-wise the BladeSpinner entity creates a regular Blade entity and moves that in a circle path

Chris McFarland

pretty sure he said he made his blocks-that-shoot-darts traps just be a monster, but ticked to say it never moves and has the dart-shooting mechanic

user92578

So in theory if one day I want to spin a barrel on an arm in a circle, I could separate the spinning code to a separate class

Chris McFarland

(I could be wrong, been a while since I read, but he had a couple clever reusability tricks like that up his sleeve!)

Right, yeah

user92578

12:44 PM

But that would basically clean a little the factory code, and nothing else really

Chris McFarland

it's that kind of generic thinking that feels like a pain but might save you time later on

lol yeah

user92578

So instead of return new CEntityBladeSpinner();, I would do return new CEntitySpinner(new CEntityBlade());

user92578

That's basically what I do when I need a second spinner type

Chris McFarland

yeah
the code still has to go somewhere
what code, how much code or how little code, still have to have some

user92578

I have a bad habbit of not doing this on the first object

user92578

12:46 PM

Oh man I've been meaning to get the Spelunky book

Chris McFarland

It's not a super technical book, but it has little cool insights, it's a good story too of how things came to be

user92578

hmm yeah, I kinda promised my mom that I would read a book in English in preparation for my English final

Chris McFarland

oooooo :D

user92578

And I bet she wouldn't complain if I said "mom, I want to buy a book online" :P

Chris McFarland

here's a slide I made for my gamedev talk recently: http://www.tallowmere2.com/nzgdc2016/12.html
looks at Bungie's way of reusability for monsters
and then I show my examples over the next couple slides
it's this kind of thinking that makes adding new things easier in theory, imo (compared to how I used to do things anyway)

hah :)

user92578

12:49 PM

yeah

user92578

I feel like we might be talking a little about different things, but that might just be me

Chris McFarland

I'm just babbling about reusing stuff where possible lol

It's on my mind lately haha

but yeah
implementing something new

and you run it

and then ohhhhhhhhhhh that's right, that class over there needs an entry for this new thing I just made

every time :D

user92578

actually I have an assert at the end of the factory method

Chris McFarland

if it doesn't exist, throw an error?

user92578

So basically I make the test level, then open the entity list box, select the new entity, and crash

Chris McFarland

12:52 PM

there ya go

user92578

that's my reminder to add the code to the factor method :)

Chris McFarland

yup same lol

which is kind of sad in a way hahahaha

user92578

yup :P

user92578

I just realized that because it's exam week and my senior year (very few courses), next time I need to go to school is on wednesday

Chris McFarland

nice

Are your parents still letting you use the computer every day?

user92578

12:55 PM

surely I got some studying to do, but it's nice to get a little break after that Swedish final

user92578

Yeah they are now

Chris McFarland

:D

user92578

I'm doing great at school and I've got a game greenlit so there isn't really anything they could be complaining about :)

Chris McFarland

Keep it up :)

user92578

I will :)

user92578

1:03 PM

user92578

Not quite what I was looking for :P

user92578

Supposed to be one of those spinning laser things

user92578

I think I'll change approach

Chris McFarland

The fireballs look very defined

like, they're not wild and flamey

(assuming they're trying to be fireballs lol)

user92578

It's kinda supposed to be a laser beam

user92578

1:05 PM

This is kinda how my prison boss emits its huge laser beam

user92578

But I don't think this particle-based approach is going to work anyways

Chris McFarland

ah yeah
Well, it looks dangerous in any case :)

Chris McFarland

1:29 PM

bedtime, 2am, lates!

user92578

sleep well!

Jon

Chris sleeps while I work. What a lazy guy

user92578

HAHA :P

user92578

fucking unit circle, rotating the wrong way

user92578

you try positioning shit with that

Jon

2:08 PM

i am pretty good at positioning shit

user92578

fuck I had set my rotation origin wrong

user92578

sigh

Jon

Le. Sigh.

Looks cool though

user92578

lol a spinning laser on the works

user92578

2:20 PM

been fighting with those beams for a while

Jon

2 years in the making

user92578

I should probably take a break and write my weekly blog post

Jon

Spend 3 years making a game. Have people take 10 seconds to write a comment telling you it sucks. Priceless.

user92578

lol

user92578

2:38 PM

Weekly Update: gunherogame.com/blog.html#WeeklyUpdate29

user92578

Finally!

Jon

sweet

user92578

just gotta add particles at the edges, and damaging

Chris Okyen

3:02 PM

@Tyyppi_77 your in hoghschool and doing that game wow

user92578

:)

Chris Okyen

How old r u

user92578

18

Chris Okyen

good deal ur going toncollege?

user92578

that's basically a must here, as I chose to go to high school

Chris Okyen

3:04 PM

what will be ur major?

user92578

probably computer science

Chris Okyen

nice

is finland much like other scandinavian countries

user92578

when it comes to..?

Chris Okyen

descentendant

ancestry history

culture language

user92578

umm yeah I guess

user92578

3:06 PM

language belongs to a different language group though

Chris Okyen

slavic?

user92578

Finno-Ugric

Chris Okyen

What is urgic

Like slavic

user92578

IDK, but for an example Finnish and Hungarian are related

Chris Okyen

Ahhhh

user92578

3:07 PM

Finno-Ugric languages

Finno-Ugric (/ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːɡrɪk/ or /ˌfɪnoʊˈuːɡrɪk/), Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th-century and is often criticized by contemporary linguists. The three most-spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric. Linguistic roots common to both branches of the traditional Finno-Ugric language tree (Finno-Permic and Ugric) are distant. About 200 words with common roots...

Chris Okyen

Hungary has a wayyy different oriigin than other european inheard

they have like more asian or aomethkng

Can you understand slavic languages then

user92578

no

Chris Okyen

Ah

can u understand some swedish or norwegian

user92578

I can speak Swedish

user92578

It's our second national language, everyone is taught Swedish here

Chris Okyen

3:16 PM

Ahh

Cool

So @Jon you said it may work for my lrogram to calibrate the ppi by having rhenuser resize the widthbof a rectangle untill they can put a ruler up to it and it is 2 inches long..

user92578

why does that actually matter?

Chris Okyen

What @Tyyppi_77

user92578

PPI calibration

Chris Okyen

1. Cant get it in browser program

user92578

yeah but why do you need it?

Chris Okyen

3:21 PM