Game Development

yeah, I've got the ASUS GTX570 (rev1) and it just barely squeezes into my case. My friend also got an ASUS GTX570, we have the same case, but his was a newer revision of the card and it no longer fits. It's too long AND it consumes 3! THREE slots on the back of the machine!

MindWorX

Three slots?! That's crazy. :P

John McDonald

12:40 AM

MindWorX

And you need like a 1kW PSU for it to run properly. :P

John McDonald

Insane

It is almost as big as my motherboard

MindWorX

People don't realize how much it costs to have their computer running. :P In Denmark, the current price for power is ~35cent/kW.

With a 1kW PSU and some heavy hardware, you're spending a few bucks every day. :P

Just to run your damn computer.

John McDonald

:/ yeah, wow

thedaian

hmmm, my current/old case is pretty biggish

MindWorX

12:45 AM

I dunno how it was where you grew up, but around here, there was a phase where everyone wanted hightower cases. For no reason except for it to be huge.

John McDonald

Well, do you have a card in there that you could compare 10.5 inches with?

MindWorX

You know what else is 10.5 inches?

John McDonald

let me guess

Your... graphics card!?

MindWorX

Exactly.

Nice guessing.

thedaian

a really badly made ruler?

Trevor Powell

12:51 AM

I wonder how many downvotes I'm going to get. :)

MindWorX

For what?

I'll downvote if you'd like.

I'm nice like that.

John McDonald

you mean upvotes on this?

1

A: Can I use copyrighted sprites for a demo?

The legal perspective: No, you cannot legally redistribute someone else's copyrighted work. This is international law. It is not debatable. It is not made okay by giving credit. It does not become okay by giving it away for free. By copying someone else's copyrighted work, you are violating...

I thought that was great

thedaian

same

Trevor Powell

:)

I'm so used to communities where people pointing out unpopular truths get rampantly downvoted.

thedaian

1:11 AM

nah, we're sensible here. you might get one downvote from the guy who asked the question, but most people know that "hey, you can't use copyrighted sprites"

John McDonald

or music, or models, or ..

MindWorX

"hey, you can't use copyrighted assets"

Trevor Powell

I stopped myself from finishing that answer with "Duh." :)

John McDonald

heh

ClassicThunder

Why are legal questions even allowed here?

John McDonald

1:14 AM

@ClassicThunder that's a good question

Create a meta topic (if there isn't one already)

Trevor Powell

10

Q: Proper solution for legal questions?

We get a question every few weeks that isn't really a question about game development, but a question about copyright or contract law. I really do not think such questions have a place here; by their nature they are specific to the person only. The only acceptable answer is "talk to a licensed p...

discussion

thedaian

pretty sure... there is, right there

MindWorX

Is it just me or is SlimDX really lacking documentation and tutorials?

Trevor Powell

Note that that's from about 18 months ago, and our general concepts of what's on-topic and what isn't has changed in that time, and our stance on moderation has become a lot more nuanced. It probably wouldn't hurt to bump that thread and re-open the conversation, in light of recent changes to the site's focus.

MindWorX

Gah

I really feel there should be a more efficient way to do my pixel shader. It seems all this rendertarget swapping and what not is unnecessary.

John McDonald

1:29 AM

all this legal talk made me go back and double triple check that it's ok to use (not to sell) models from the 3D warehouse and take a backup of the current TOS just in case

Trevor Powell

Yeah, you definitely want a local copy (preferably a hardcopy) of the license which gives you rights to distribute anythign to which you don't own *both* the copyright *and* the moral/author rights.

John McDonald

yeah, for sure

Trevor Powell

(And if you are not the original owner of either of those, then you want a hardcopy of the documents which transfer those rights to you)

(ie: employment contracts typically transfer moral/author rights to the employer, in countries where that transfer is legal)

John McDonald

Ok, I should do that with the music guy. We only really have some words, and some IM chat

Trevor Powell

Yeah, you totally need something in writing, with signatures.

John McDonald

1:33 AM

ok

MindWorX

I want to ask a question "What to do when my profiler is drunk?"

John McDonald

let me guess

MindWorX

John McDonald

you're the profiler?

MindWorX

No, I hired a profiler from the streets. Didn't go as well as expected.

He held a sign with the text: "WILL PROFILE 4 FOOD"

Thought it was a good deal.

thedaian

1:43 AM

look, adding 1 to an integer is complicated.

MindWorX

Must be. :P

And only every other SpriteBatch.End is complicated.

It's the whole odd/even thing.

Trevor Powell

If odd/even is complicated, that explains why adding one is expensive.

John McDonald

so you're drawing A to B, then B to A?

I know nothing about shaders

Trevor Powell

He's drawing a texture back and forth between two buffers, with a blurry-ish shader.

MindWorX

Yeah, I'm just swapping rendertargets to iterate it over and over on the same image with the results from the previous iteration.

Trevor Powell

1:47 AM

I still prefer a normal gaussian blur. Could do it with so many fewer passes. ;) (But it probably doesn't do the light transmission logic that MindWorX wants)

MindWorX

The thing I want is just the resistance layer part really.

So I can have tiles that block all light, all blue or some combination of the two.

Gives a great effect.

Trevor Powell

Yeah. Can't really do that with the usual gaussian approach, since it's propagating light across more than one pixel per operation. I guess you could have an extra "light propagation" texture that it could sample. But it'd be really inefficient.

ClassicThunder

menuetos.net

why?

user4704

Why not?

user4704

Some people, they are crazies.

user4704

1:58 AM

It is time to update my profile!

ClassicThunder

@JoshPetrie What goes into being a MS MVP?

user4704

Nothing much of note.

user4704

They send me emails I ignore because they are for PGIs I don't care about.

ClassicThunder

PGIs?

user4704

Product Interaction Groups.

user4704

2:08 AM

Boring stuff.

user4704

I get an MSDN subscription for free, that's pretty cool.

user4704

Er Product Group Interactions.

user4704

(otherwise it would be PIGs which they probably don't want)

Trevor Powell

And what goes into becoming an MS MVP?

Actually, I can just google for that, I'm sure.

ClassicThunder

@TrevorPowell "Of 100 million technical community participants worldwide, about 4,000 are MVPs. Outstanding technical community members are nominated by their peers, Microsoft employees, and MVPs. Each year a panel of Microsoft employees reviews the contributions of each nominee for quality, quantity, and level of impact on the technical community. Today's MVPs reflect Microsoft's global customer base and breadth of technologies."

Trevor Powell

2:17 AM

"The MVP Award recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their deep, real-world knowledge about Microsoft technologies with others. "

MindWorX

Oh yay

I did improve performance a bit.

Switched to SpriteSortMode.Immediate

So now it draws on the actual .Draw call instead of the .End call.

user4704

@ClassicThunder Wordswordswords.

user4704

Mostly I got it because of my work on SlimDX.

user4704

:D

thedaian

I got it because I paid Microsoft a few million dollars.

MindWorX

2:21 AM

Seems you could've put those dollars to better use

user4704

yea like giving them to me

thedaian

Probably, but now I can add "MVP" to my name

ClassicThunder

You can be a special member of the ClassicThunder List of Awesome People (LAP) if you pay me a few hundred :D

MindWorX

@Josh, Nah, I'm more promising, you're an old mainstream AAA rat. Indies are the real deal!

thedaian

/nick thedaian|MVP

user4704

2:22 AM

I'm not even that old :P

ClassicThunder

youtube.com/watch?v=w_skCXC9oVA 1:26

out of curiosity how old is everyone here?

MindWorX

I'm 24 :)

user4704

29.

thedaian

I believe 28

MindWorX

Ohh, you're old. Glad I'm a young sport!

ClassicThunder

2:25 AM

Wow so I'm the youngest at 21

thedaian

well, right now

i know a few younger people show up here on occasion

MindWorX

Didn't we have an Australian kid in here who was younger?

The one with the heartache. :P

ClassicThunder

@MindWorX What?

thedaian

yeah, but he hasn't really been back

MindWorX

Hehe

thedaian

2:27 AM

i want to say at least one person is younger than 21 and shows up on a somewhat regular basis

ClassicThunder

lol I just looked noticed my notifications and see you all spent half the morning discussing my state machine problem

user4704

yes

ClassicThunder

mind if I clarify because I have it working but its by no means perfect?

actually never mind. If I cant find something I like I'll ask an actual question later

MindWorX

2:42 AM

@John @thedaian You guys still around?

thedaian

heading to bed soon or something, but what?

MindWorX

Could you redownload the lighting demo, and tell me if performance improved? :)

thedaian

alright, link, because i'm too lazy to find it again?

MindWorX

I got a 25-30% increase in performance, which isn't too shabby.

legeria.net

thedaian

hmmm, still hovering around 72-74

MindWorX

2:49 AM

Hmm.

Would you mind sharing your computer specs? :)

thedaian

Processor AMD Turion(tm) II Dual-Core Mobile M500
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Graphics AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200
Gaming graphics 1918 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 122GB Free (281GB Total)

ClassicThunder

@MindWorX trying it out. what do the numbers in the top left mean?

MindWorX

That's just the frames per second.

Removed the fixed timestep to see how well people perform.

@thedaian, <3

thedaian

and now to kind of sleep

Trevor Powell

3:07 AM

kind of sleep?

MindWorX

Wait, @thedaian is 28?! That can't be right...

Trevor Powell

Why not?

MindWorX

Oh, just trying to mock him. :P

He's from Ohio.

tylerrrr07

3:57 AM

ooooo what did I miss? checks the chat

I'm 23 if thats any consolation :/

John McDonald

4:34 AM

@MindWorX worse, hovering in at the 1600 mark now

MindWorX

That's odd. :s

Should be better.

John McDonald

that sucks

even with my mouse completely off-screen, I'm only up to 1634

gl with that

Noctrine

7:32 AM

0

Q: Will there be legal issues to use cracked assets for internal development

I am developer, while the art work is completed, can I use cracked assets for internal prototyping or testing? I am not going publish anywhere outside my company. Does it attract any legal issues? Cracked assets here I mean, extracting embedded graphic assets like images and swfs from the cache ...

legal

ffs

Trevor Powell

7:57 AM

There were six minutes between that question being asked and your closing it.

I worked at the company which did this: cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2010/03/… See that clone trooper image in the middle? Legal issues from using assets during development that we didn't have the right to use (connected with that product), and that we didn't intend to ship with the game. "oops" is not strong enough a word.

tylerrrr07

12:30 PM

blargahghghg

Gajet

it was a tough day?

or is? or going to be?

tylerrrr07

12:42 PM

just really tired

badp

2:38 PM

Yo dudes

11

Q: Help us write an episode for Extra Credits

If you don't know of Extra Credits, you should go check them out: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits We had James Portnow on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he asked us to send him some ideas for an episode called "So you wanna be a developer". They've done two previous epi...

discussion

In the latest Extra Credits, Stack Exchange has been mentioned for their future "so you wanna be a game developer" episode.

They said "we're working with Stack Exchange" but that question hasn't been touched for two months...

I dunno if you have more resources than that meta question about EC but...

thedaian

frankly, the big answer there covers pretty much everything

badp

Frankly, the big answer could be read in like 60 seconds by the guys at EC, the average episode is like 5 minutes

(the mainly relevant bit is "For a developer")

thedaian

probably true, i'm just not sure what else to add

Jonathan Dickinson

What they should actually do is get a couple of willing developers on the show

badp

Well if you can't think of any further tips, perhaps you could expand on each. I dunno, I wish I could contribute myself.

Maybe tips on how to get noticed and employed by a gaming company?

Like, writing code for something that isn't games (because after all you need to be a developer before you can be a game developer)? Or writing mods for existing games (see the number of different examples at Valve)? Starting with your own indie game studio? I dunno.

I'm not a game dev, never have been one, so the above is likely worthless.

thedaian

2:48 PM

i guess i'm not entirely sure what else they want, or something?

badp

The question links to previous similar episodes

thedaian

Is developer here purely programming, or something else?

badp

The audience is mostly people who aren't in the industry and want in, though, from what I understand.

@thedaian That could be something else to expand on. What does even "game developer" mean?

thedaian

d'oh

badp

the EC guys probably don't want the episode written for them

but even just writing out these in a bullet form leaving it to them to make an episode out of that information would be terribly useful to them I think.

Whatever, all I wanted to do really is just bringing more attention back to that meta question.

I'm not qualified to give it direction or something.

thedaian

2:52 PM

it'd be useful if James or someone from EC showed up and commented on the question in question

to give people a bit more direction on "this is good, this isn't as good"

i mean, i can think of stuff to add, but feedback from the people writing the episode would go a long way to helping clarify what they're looking for, and making it more "legitimate"

tylerrrr07

@thedaian I've been silently paying attention and I agree with you. What more do we contribute without getting some feedback? At this point its a just a guess but who knows what they really want.

And at the same time, maybe Dave is still in contact with those guys and we just don't know it.

I don't see why they would say they are working with SE when they aren't actively working with SE

Noctrine

@TrevorPowell Should probably not be checking the stuff early in the morning on no sleep. Re-opened.

Noctrine

3:10 PM

@badp, I wonder if that is even valid anymore? David hasn't posted any updates, and no one else has come around for it.

thedaian

well, i hope it is, because I'm writing up an answer right now

tylerrrr07

@thedaian at the very least your answer will probably trigger the question to get its proper attention so that someone can address what needs to be done for it yet

MindWorX

3:31 PM

Why is it people keep thinking it's possible to make clientside logic cheat safe?

0

Q: Implementing cheat safe loot algorithm at clientside

I am developing a "city building" type of browser based flash/flex game. I was checking some of the implementation of existing one of the popular games in facebook using decompilers. I noticed they have implemented the loot algorithm the client side and sending the loot item to the server which I...

game-design browser-based-games security

Anything that runs on the client is susceptible to user manipulation.

I mean, you can't even be sure it's your own client program running. All you have is the data sent through the pipes.

And everything can be faked.

Jonathan Dickinson

@MindWorX exactly - but if you read my answer you will see that you can detect (in some cases) cheating; instead of prevent. Overall detection would probably be more expensive: defeating the purpose of doing stuff on the client.

MindWorX

Yeah I know you can employ some checks, like check if the user moves faster than his current max speed and things like that. But all those checks will end up more expensive than just doing it serverside.

Noctrine

The business models for those facebook games are a bit different. They don't loose out much if a person who was never going to buy items cheats to get them.

MindWorX

It isn't feasible to run sensitive logic clientside.

@Noctrine, Exactly. If you don't care about the cheat, handle it clientside, if you care about it, handle it serverside.

A popular game like World of Warcraft does position checking clientside, but item transactions serverside. This is because being able to teleport isn't really something that affects the game balance but getting infinite items is.

thedaian

the first web mmorpg thing i ever made had an infinite money cheat of sorts that people found pretty quickly (it had a million other problems, too, but...)

I only found out about it after people used it to gain tons of money

everything was serverside though

tylerrrr07

3:39 PM

But wait! What if they used something like the secure keys that blizzard gives out that generates a code that is basically unpredictable, but they implemented that logic into the data passed through the pipes which has to match server side! I suppose thats technically a server side check but you can do most of your logic client side then?

thedaian

....I'm not sure where I'm going with this

tylerrrr07

@thedaian The point is you are a CHEATER!

thedaian

wanders off remembering all the horrible code his first web game used

tylerrrr07

My first web game was email based...

My second one may have been forum based....

Noctrine

Those facebook games, atleast the ones by zynga, will quickly go out of sync if something seems off (like two windows to game it or something).

MindWorX

3:47 PM

I want to work at an office with stupid coworkers. I want to be able to send a fax to a guy claiming to be him from the future, and see him believe it.

"The Office" is a weird show, but it has it's moments.

tylerrrr07

I love that show

thedaian

@MindWorX It's all fun and games until you get annoyed at your co-workers for being so stupid :(

MindWorX

4:08 PM

I feel like answering this as it's simple

-2

Q: In Python, what does os.path.dirname(__file__) mean?

I recently downlaoded a game on pydev.org. The code below is the code that you run for the game to play. My question is does the likes of os.path.dirname(__file__) mean? I have created games in python before but i always made them in the one class. Where as in this game this is outside of the fol...

python

But it doesn't fit on our site.

user4704

I did answer it, and then I decided my response was too passive-aggressive and made it a comment :D

user4704

(also flagged for migration)

MindWorX

Haha, indeed. ;)

I thought it was pretty obvious, and I've never even used Python.

user4704

Yeah.

Jonathan Dickinson

haha. must resist the temptation to say "read each word in order and there's your answer"

user4704

4:18 PM

This question is pretty lame too: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/23221/…

Jonathan Dickinson

It could have been posed better: truth be told the only people who know how to use that stuff work at Microsoft - on that team. I remember trying to use DirectShow; what a fat mission.

user4704

I think it's bad because it's just asking for code to solve the whole problem.

tylerrrr07

Was a comment the right thing to do in this scenario or would an answer actually have been appropriate?

0

Q: Can't seem to get predictive collision detection workign correctly

I am sure this is an easy problem. And I doubt it has anything to do with the actual language or library I am using. I am trying to set up the collision detection on a basic 2d game, player clicks a button sprite moves one step int he corresponding direction. Currently all my sprites have the co...

xna c# 2d collision-detection

I suppose I could have posted the working code that came out of the question I asked... heh

user4704

Comment was probably fine; if the questions are similar enough the new one should be flagged as a duplicate (I didn't read in-depth enough to say)

tylerrrr07

The questions are different - he wanted to know how to keep track of old / current / new positions. My question was on how to make my player continue moving in the direction he's not colliding if not moving directly on an axis

The end result really ends up being the same collision detection / resolution implementation but the questions are indeed different

MindWorX

4:34 PM

I really should debug visually more often.

I keep doing it by simply looking at the code.

But visual is much faster to work with.

Incorporating my lighting system into the actual game.

tylerrrr07

Well there's your problem. Half of its black!

jk :D

MindWorX

Haha :P

user4704

4:52 PM

altdevblogaday resign is still pants

Tetrad

man that python guy

I tried to close as off topic and move to SO, but apparently he's suspended there for asking similarly low quality questions

Richard Gibbons

4 1

python python-2.6 delete deleting game-development

user4704

Oh.

user4704

Chuckle.

tylerrrr07

5:13 PM

Magic. That's the only answer. - loved that comment

chat is quiet today

user4704

It's no-pants Wednesday

MindWorX

Actually, it's no-chat Thursday. :P

user4704

...I actually just double-checked my calendar. :|

MindWorX

Haha

tylerrrr07

altdevblogaday - never heard of it before... looks like an awesome read though

user4704

5:24 PM

I don't like it much; it's got a really poor signal-to-noise ratio

user4704

In my experience, at least.

TreDubZedd

Some articles are pretty interesting/informative.

They're rare, though.

Jimmy

6:47 PM

yeah I dont' read it

i just looked at the top entry about fibonacci numbers

total BS

I agree with the first commenter that putting an artificial restriction on your design space can help clean it up and reduce bloat, but he's basically saying, "for numbers under 8, I don't really like 4, 6, and 7"

hmm I'm browsing around GPwiki

content.gpwiki.org/index.php/Picking_a_Language

tylerrrr07

Interesting

thedaian

That is a pretty good article.

Jimmy

C# and Python are great languages, I'm just kind of surprised that C++ is not recommended.

thedaian

I'd actually be surprised if C++ was recommended

Jimmy

but I guess for beginners who don't know what language to learn and want to get a game done, C++ isn't really the best choice

I was thinking more in terms of general CS education. I get antsy when professional developers tell me they don't know C/C++.

thedaian

6:57 PM

exactly. C++ is a bad/terrible choice for beginners who want to make games

user4704

I think it's a bad choice for a first language flat out

thedaian

Yeah, I agree

Noctrine

Because of how easy it is to develop very bad habits?

tylerrrr07

I just want to throw in that Visual Basic is a bad language flat out as well! :D

user4704

C++ is steeped in the culture of "the programmer is right."

user4704

7:00 PM

By definition, almost, a beginner is never right.

thedaian

Bad habits, fairly low level, easy to shoot yourself in the foot and do things wrong, too much "junk" before getting to the basics of programming

user4704

And the comma operator.

user4704

:D That was mostly a joke, but there are some nasty bits around sequence points, etc.

Jimmy

hmmm, I feel like the biggest problem for C++ for beginners is that it is intimidating.

user4704

They're just patently non-obvious and don't behave how you'd expect, and that's just more friction for a neophyte.

tylerrrr07

7:03 PM

I think C++ was my second language after VB.NET

After getting past syntax I really liked it

thedaian

i still maintain that python is the best language for learning programming. (maybe javascript or actionscript or even ruby as alternate options)

tylerrrr07

I need my brackets....

Jimmy

I maintain SICP is the best way to learn programming. Too bad it's only applicable to Scheme :P

Gajet

it was my second after pascal

I'm developing apps with it since say 8 years ago, and still every now and then I found a new use/misuse of compiler.

this language has no end

@thedaian I'm not sure about python but I've learn programming using pascal, and I'm quite please with that method.

tylerrrr07

Honestly VB.NET was a good way for me to get into programming. It made me realize I loved it and I liked how easy it was. I just look back in syntactical terror because it makes absolutely no sense.

thedaian

7:12 PM

most people tend to be perfectly fine with how they got into programming

Gajet

@JoshPetrie don't forget errors compilers generate. one does not simply understand what went bad.

thedaian

but i've worked with people who have trouble understanding programming

John McDonald

I grew up on VB, then I think it was Java and/or C++, then C#. I do think that C++ needs to be in the mix somewhere, but I would probably introduce it as a second, or a third language

thedaian

python has the least amount of pointless "junk" to get something up and running that i've seen

Jimmy

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

not as simple as python, but not too bad either eh?

John McDonald

7:14 PM

pointers and the heap are important concepts to learn at some point if you want to be a competent programmer imo

tylerrrr07

I think second is perfect. Give them something easy to learn the basics with - data types, looping constructs, etc. Then really nail them with OOP and to some extent, memory management and pointers with C++. Then lastly a good high level language like C#, Java, etc.

Gajet

basic will get really messy with huge project

user4704

@Gajet That is a problem with the tools; LLVM for example is quite clear, as is cl.exe

thedaian

yeah, BASIC also works. but no one uses BASIC anymore :P

Gajet

that's why I don't like it

user4704

7:15 PM

@JohnMcDonald They are, but a lot of outstanding literature misrepresents what pointers in C++ really are

Gajet

@JoshPetrie not always. I think it's mostly caused by syntax itself.

John McDonald

@JoshPetrie :/ yeah, that's not good

thedaian

@JohnMcDonald agreed, you need to learn that stuff eventually, but you don't teach kids algebra while they're learning addition and subtraction

user4704

(pretending they are some kind of really macine-level concept)

user4704

@Gajet I disagree.

John McDonald

7:16 PM

@thedaian That's why I was thinking second or third

user4704

Provide an example.

tylerrrr07

I really liked pointers when I used c++

Gajet

but they can be real misleading

tylerrrr07

Especially when it came to data structures

Gajet

you need to know what you are doing with them

thedaian

7:17 PM

(frankly, I think you could probably start teaching kids programming when they're in 4th/5th grade)

John McDonald

@thedaian and some do, but my Dad was a programmer, so that helped

tylerrrr07

I didn't do much outside of pointing... with them. Heh.

user4704

"pointers" in C++ basically just a way to provide referential semantics, which you can do perfectly well in other languages.

user4704

that's the important part -- not pointers, themselves.

tylerrrr07

@JoshPetrie this is true! C++ just makes it really explicit

Jimmy

7:19 PM

@tylerrrr07 not the way a lot of people teach it.

the problem is the first thing they teach you with pointers is how to implement strcpy.

user4704

so do most other languages, just in a different way (the explicitness is still there -- class/struct in C# for example), just seen in a different spot. sometimes more or less convienient.

thedaian

@JohnMcDonald yeah. I ended up getting a "teach yourself C++ in 30 days" book somewhere in middle school (8th or 9th grade, maybe?) or early high school. got a little way into it, then I tried to find tutorials on how to make a windows program (cause, I wanted to make games!), and got hopelessly lost....

tylerrrr07

@Jimmy My experience learning them was really good. Loved my programming teachers.

Jimmy

@thedaian that's because it took like 100 lines of HRESULT wndProc crap to get a blank window up.

thedaian

@Jimmy exactly! i even tried to write a "helper" function to make that easier, but discovered it wasn't really possible

John McDonald

7:21 PM

@thedaian yeah, I can see that

thedaian

I ended up using the TI-83 calculator BASIC thing and RPG Maker 2000 for a few years

learned PASCAL then C++ in high school (and the C++ class was 90% playing with SNES emulators and ROMs)

tylerrrr07

My first game was "Dodge the Goomba" using GameMaker. They had a visual scripter. Didn't program a thing.

thedaian

haha

tylerrrr07

I did try RPG Maker but none of the code I ever wrote actually worked. Tried to implement a fishing skill system.

That was many years ago

Noctrine

<3 RPGMaker

I'm sure I still have a copy of Don's game somewhere around.

user4704

7:23 PM

That really cool Gunpoint game was made in Gamemaker

user4704

(in the IGF finals)

thedaian

dunno if I have a copy of Don's game anywhere (probably, since I think it autoinstalled and I still have installers)

John McDonald

my first was a twisted version of Pong/Alleyway in VB1

thedaian

I made about 5 or 6 or 10 aborted projects in RPG Maker

John McDonald

Never did use a game maker to this day

thedaian

7:25 PM

a decent amount of "Professional Indie Games" were made in Game maker

John McDonald

Neat, I had no idea

thedaian

as well as The Demon Rush

Tetrad

7:54 PM

part of the problem with choosing C++ as a starting programming language is that it's too big

how are you going to explain to a newbie that you should be using boost::scoped_ptr when all they've been reading about is new/delete and malloc/free and all this other crap

not to mention data structures, arrays vs vectors vs lists vs ptr_vector vs rolling your own linked list a la CS101

TreDubZedd

We didn't do data structures until 200-level...

Tetrad

really? in my high school programming course they made us write a linked list

I think they even covered big-O

Transcript for