Bah, I've gone days without working on my game... T~T

Stupid cold

I had to concentrate on my contracts and not work on my game for a while

but it is okay, I need to get some assets before I can continue anything

That's been my problem :\ character control stuff without an animated dummy at least is really boring

I need another opinion

my (3D) artist does a great job at a placeholder level, but it is no secret his work is well under the level of what you can find for free on sites like opengameart (the greatest advantage is that the assets are our own and I can get custom things done)

as time goes by, I will be forced to make a move to improve the quality

he is also responsible for the story part, so not allowing him to work on 3D art anymore and hiring someone to do it would be not as painful as if he was working only on 3D art

but I was also thinking about hiring someone who really knows his way around Blender for a short time to teach him what he doesn't know

but I'm not sure if this would be better than the first option

Oooh, hiring someone to teach him Blender sounds like a win-win

technically, it would be cheaper

You get another person who can work on stuff, you get the first guy more well-educated, and you don't break any hearts.

but if the results are not satisfactory enough, hiring someone to do the art would be more profitable

The only downside is cost.

You're also assuming whoever you hire will be capable of doing a satisfactory job on artwork.

I can assume that I will find someone who can prove they know what they're doing

I'm not going to hire the first guy who comes saying "dude I know blender hire me"

If only there were some way to get myself established like this.

I could do the initial hire, and pay the guy extra to teach my artist for a while

and see how things go

I'm confident in my ability to do decent work on my own part, but being in charge of a company of my own investitures is not something I'm willing to risk, especially considering my large amount of college debt.

hah, risk is scary

but you only give it your all when the risk is high

There's also nothing profitable in game development that's active in this area, so there's nowhere to join up with to learn.

If I am ever fired from my cushy, boring, Web software development job, I'll think about starting my own studio. And taking out some serious bank loans to keep paying my college debts.

OR I'll just give up on that and find another equally boring and cushy software job, letting my dream of making games fall yet again by the wayside.

Fucking college debt.

a loan is the last thing I'm considering

then again, I'm the guy who dismisses kickstarters because they seem like begging or a way to get out of a challenge without much work

My tuition is going to cost about $150,000 by the time I graduate, and with interest, that'll be huge.

unless you're a well known studio, then it's just business under a nice cover

$150.000 is a ton of money lol

Yep, and I've worked myself to the bone to try to keep going there.

I'm going to get some leeway when I move into my next place, and start paying $200 less per month on rent.

Then I can start actually having savings.

Or eating properly.

Or not begging my parents for rent money.

I swear to God, I will make a fucking decent video game if it kills me.

that's the spirit

I just have to make sure it doesn't kill me first.

See, that's the value of my school. It bends you backwards and fucks you in the ass, so nothing else comes close in your career once you get out.

don't let money feel like that much of a problem, and learn to manage them properly

I do not want to have large sums of money available right now

I keep on finding more and more things you can do with $20

$20? Try $10.

I don't think I'm yet able to spend a large amount of money wisely

you can get some things done with $5 too :D

If I'm careful, I can eat for five days on $10.

hmmm

I mentioned earlier a bread costs like $0.5 here

a tube of spreadable cheese is $0.5 too

I can feed myself for 10 days with $10

As in, half a dollar?

yeah

~2 RON each

a dollar is around 3.2 RON

sometimes it goes up to 3.6

I can get decent soups, a loaf of bread, and some lunch meat for $10, and it'll last me five days while still being somewhat healthy.

This is only after getting shingles Junior year for being on a terrible diet and getting very little sleep between work, school, and subsequent lack of employment.

I made a vow to lighten my course load, get more sleep, and eat better.

with $10 you can eat two menus at McDonald's here

The only problem is, it's ruining my ability to graduate on time, which is causing all sorts of undue stress.

hmm

also why the hell did you go to such an expensive college wtf

Because it was close by, and had a good software engineering program.

I had no idea it was so expensive.

the USA needs some communism, pronto

Yeah, we pretty much do. Especially where MSOE is concerned.

if MSOE is $150k

Half of the money goes toward putting on events for the ancient farts who run the school, and none of it goes toward improving student life.

how much does MIT or Stanford cost

It's only $150k because I'm going for 4 2/3 years.

It's about $30k a year, on par with Stanford and Yale.

such a price to pay for knowledge :'(

Actually, Stanford is $13k and change per quarter, with three quarters a year.

Mine is $10,640 a quarter, three quarters a year.

which college is the most expensive of all?

no idea

hi code

herro

Learning obj-c

usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/…

I wonder how expensive they are practically. A lot of private schools have quite generous scholarships for the type of people they want to attract.

NYU in New York costs about $62k a year (source)

we don't have those I think

cheerleaders?

yes

or maybe we keep them hidden

lol

is kinda an american football thing

We have 'em: msoe.edu/athletics/stunt_squad.shtml

I assume because there is so much down time people get would get bored otherwise

@ClassicThunder No, it's because we're chauvinists.

oh, they chose the prettiest to be the one in the picture

nice

well that would lead to the argument that everyone else isn't chauvinistic

which I dont think is true lol

Both in the jingoist sense and the male chauvinist sense.

But as soon as I get the hell out of MSOE, I feel like I'll be able to finally devote some time to prototyping game concepts and systems like I used to in high school.

MSOE?

his college

Milwaukee School of Engineering.

ahhh

msoe.edu/athletics/stunt_squad.shtml

lol nope doesn't work like that

Yeah, I figured. But if I continue at my current job, if this summer is any indication, at least I'll have weekends to dick around with stuff.

They've already offered to hire me after graduation.

The only thing is, I'm using next to none of what I've learned in school, other than my programming abilities.

you'll find a way

When I started working, I found that I had so much more free time (and money) than when I was in school

people didn't start studios and projects because there was someone there to pay their bills

I kind of hate the company I work for now, not because it's a bad place to work, but because it tries to pass off programming as software engineering.

There's no real team cohesion, and a very sloppy process and toolset that we work with.

the closest thing to Cormen's that was written by a group of Romanian university teachers mentioned these two categories:

- software engineers and software technicians

Nothing new is ever made, just endless cycles of improvement on shitty old codebases.

software technicians are able to implement given solutions according to the required parameters

software engineers perform research to find solutions, and prove that they're correct

@AlexM. Yep, that's exactly what I do.

it is not the only definition though

just mentioned what the book said

That's how I've been told to work, as per my boss.

I want to actually be a software engineer.

And the software I'd like to develop is game software.

@JohnMcDonald I find 8-10h a day + social obligations to be almost all my time

1. learn html5 and javascript

2. get hired at rockstar

@AlexM. I already am...

3. make GTA VI

4. ???

5. PROFIT

Atleast enough to prevent a meaning full amount of work done

Is GTA VI actually being done in HTML5?

Or is this a running gag?

it's my trademark joke

It's not really that funny.

GTA VI will be done in whatever the consoles will support

@ClassicThunder :/ great. I live close to work for one, and I guess I don't have very many social obligations

@ShotgunNinja few jokes truly are

@AlexM. Except for the two hunters joke.

I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.

lol

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who don't know ternary, those that do, and the Nazis.

Fuck the Nazis.

nazis existed so that people could make money off games about them

and movies

the holocaust was just a media conspiracy

BANG, now you know the truth

This is a comment to the admin. Your website is missing out on at least 300 visitors per day. I have found a company which offers to dramatically increase your traffic to your website: They offer 1,000 free visitors during their free trial period and I managed to get over 30,000 visitors per month using their services, you could also get lot more targeted visitors than you have now. Hope this helps :) Take care.

what a nice spambot

"More visitors?"

"I should totally pay for this."

anyone interested in the new Zelda-like game?

gog.com/gamecard/ittle_dew

me neither

Meh, it looks interesting.

you asked me why I don't consider myself part of the MLP fandom

or something like that

and I told you about the romanian bronies and their trips to public places

here's another reason

challenge: attempt to look at it and make sure your first reaction isn't "wat"

heh, I thought there were 2 people on the bed for a sec

impossible, he's a brony

HAHAHAHAHAH

get it?

... no?

okay.

I've never watched the show

I think whats implied are that bronies are forever alone

Todders is right

Ah. I guess I need the forever alone face to trigger that for me

but I did not forget about your duties, Todders.

you've still got to write at least the unit test for that function.

I have duties?

oh snap

I've never written a unit test. I don't know if that function is a good place to start

it's okay, we're here to help

you first need to write a function that tests your function

and then you need to write a function that tests the function that tests your function

and then you need to write a function that tests the function that tests the function that tests your function

repeat until sufficient testing has been done

once you're done, it will be time to make it relevant for today's technologies and workflow

so you will need to wrap it up nicely and make it available via a cloud service

...you're trying to make a joke!

yeah but I'm not good at it :(

huh huh, yayyyy

I figgered it out

Hi all, how are you?

I read that as "I fingered it out" facepalm

@MarkR quite fine

and you?

Fine thank you

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/…

So it only has 2 general-purpose cores

yeah, they kinda added up all of the cores they could find in that phone

it would've been 9 cores if they had this preinstalled: play.google.com/store/apps/…

Oh snap(dragon)

Still waiting for the new iPhone running on the Applecore processor

why haven't they done that yet is it too obvious

I thought some phones really do have 8 cores

but only with big.little architecture

am I the only one who thinks this is a very beautiful phone?

it was my first smartphone and I can't possibly find a new one for me to like the design as I liked this one's

You mean the screen layout?

the phone as a whole

it was really solid, and the shape was nice

sort of tablet-y

it also had a stylus

I don't personally make a big distinction on the phone shape itself

it's so plain it's actually awesome

since mostly it's a difference of a mm here and there

I mean, almost all phones are pretty minimal no?

yeah but their designs are fundamentally different

the design of what? the differences are things like, "how round are the edges" or "do we have a back button" or "is the home button a real button or not"

I don't really care about these things I guess

the three lit buttons for menu and call functions, first of all

then, I think the speaker hole thingies are adding to it too

of the newer phones, I like the Xperia Ion

Following reports this morning that Microsoft would revise its stance on independent development for Xbox One, the company has confirmed that, yes, self-publishing will be an option on the platform. Either they're listening, or they just plain don't have this messaging thing down. A statement from Xbox corporate VP Marc Whitten provided to Engadget breaks the good news:

destructoid.com/…

hey, anyone with directx9 in C# experience here?

I need help setting up a depth buffer (I think...)

I've asked the question stackoverflow.com/questions/17824265/… if anyone is interested...

@Jeff I had the same problem with DirectX 11.1 in C++, and the problem was not initializing the depth stencil correctly, but from my google searches it seems it can be just about anything with the depth buffer or stencil. or maybe even with setting the near plane of the camera to a number too small (according to just one result, which may have just been crazy)

I'm not that experienced with DirectX though, so that's about all the help I got.

polygon.com/2013/3/28/4157884/…

Anyone see this?

@IcyDefiance thanks, I'll google a bit more into that. I have my near plane set to 1 and far to 200, so I don't think those values are wild at all. I'll just have to keep on googling I guess

nah that's not bad. I usually set mine to something like 0.1 and 500.

and that just causes the model to disappear...

@ShotgunNinja yeah, I think I posted a link to the ars technica article a while back

the news is at least 2 mos old though

I know

Still new to me.

does this color tint suggest night time to you too?

I dont' know if our gamma settings are different but all your screenshots look super dark to me

yeah it's really dark, but the slight bit of blue means night

yeah, thought so too

inside a cave would be a more pure black

or so I would think

yeah

I wonder if it wouldn't be better to drop the whole always-underground idea

and take most of the action on the outside

the point of always-underground is that you have more of an excuse for good level design

nah, just thinking out loud

it would be hard to integrate the story anyway

I'll discuss it with the rest of the team at the next conference

I feel that with caves only, it will be difficult to get a combat system that's as dynamic as I had and still have in mind

there's very little space for things such as summons

the story we came up with so far is told in very broad lines, and it seems short this way

we can easily include it as a sidestory

why not large caves?

you'd need huge caves to compete with the environment at the surface

and to not limit the player's choices, they'd have to be predominant

how do we explain, lore-wise, long chains of humongous caves

we're outside and using default assets lol

unity's night skybox isn't saying night that much though

in the meantime, I'll finally remove the biggest pieces of artwork that were not made by us

@Gajoo a long time ago I needed a parchment in the game, and I wanted it to have some text that's not that readable on it; I think I put some Persian writing in it

it's all random typing I think though

Is that your game?

the paper's all like "it's dangerous to go alone. take this."

@AlexM. it's not persian

mattrhodesart.blogspot.ca/2013/07/…

it's arabic, but we do share similar transcript

@AlexM. the first line is meaningful but the rest is pure random.

by the way, did I use a correct word? I'm referring to "transcript" and I meant "writing system".

@IcyDefiance I figured out my problem, I wasn't clearing the depth buffer in device.Clear >_<. This is all I needed to do: device.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.SlateGray, 1.0f, 0);