Game Development

7:02 PM

what is an Anchorman? (Brazilian here)

An incredibly stupid yet somehow funny movie

They are talking about love and one of the guys just starts listing off things in the room... "I love... desk. I love... carpet... I love...lamp" (or something like that)

thelinuxlich

Ah, I've watched this one ehhehehe

tylerrrr07

and the main character says "Do you actually love the lamp or are you just saying it because you saw it?"

I love lamp! I love lamp...

Dave

@Gajet you there?

Gajet

@Dave now I'm here

Dave

7:10 PM

the path finder has an error

Gajet

do tell

Dave

Cannot read property 'x' of undefined is the error

it occurs when i deleted all the paths

Gajet

where?

Dave

var sdata = {"9":{"9":["68","7","2","2","0","32"]}}; is the new info

Gajet

you mean where there is not path from start point to end point?

Dave

7:11 PM

that and there is not end building to be found either

let me give u the precise line

tylerrrr07

Sounds like before the line you just need to check for those conditions and handle it however you please

Dave

@Gajet var minHur =Math.abs(start.x - endObjs[0].x) + Math.abs(start.y - endObjs[0].y);

Gajet

seems you are tight

Dave

im worried to edit it tho encase i break it :P

John McDonald

Back it up

tylerrrr07

7:13 PM

Under those conditions there would be no path to find so you would handle it the way you want the "no path found" condition to be handled

John McDonald

(or just use version control to do that for you among other benefits)

Gajet

that line should generate error only if there is no endpoint

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JohnMcDonald Version control has other benefits?

Gajet

and it's pretty obvious why, the whole reason behind using "endObjs[0]" is I'm sure there is at least one end point

John McDonald

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Who knew?

Dave

7:14 PM

so if there is an end point but no paths .. will it also error?

tylerrrr07

lol

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07 I actually love it. :P

Gajet

not that line

but there has to be an error somewhere else, I'm looking for it.

tylerrrr07

I'm sure if I ever start using them I will love it too

thelinuxlich

@WilliamMindWorXMariager, well I for one, like version control also for smashing bugs with "git bisect" sometimes

Dave

7:15 PM

so if there is no end point endObjs[0] = undefined?

Gajet

found it : document, write("hehe<br>");

Dave

i removed that a while back

Gajet

@Dave yep that's exactly the problem.

Dave

i need to keep it ?

Gajet

if there is no endpoint, endObjs[0] is undefined.

Dave

7:16 PM

oh ok

Gajet

@Dave nope, it was showing there is no way to reach an endpoint

Dave

if theres no path have u included the check already?

or will that likely error too

Damir

@Gajet, still looking for a server?

Gajet

@Damir yep

Damir

What do you need?

Gajet

7:19 PM

a simple page to upload news

I guess a simple blog page should be enough, but with an option to add files to download occasionally.

@Dave did you fix every thing there?

Dave

doing it now :) hold

Damir

I'll set you up in a few days.

When I put up my blog.

Gajet

good.

now I've got more reason to complete my game.

Damir

No more excuses :P

Gajet

there still are too many excuses.

Dave

7:22 PM

wat game u making

@Gajet still gettting the error with the undefined check : jsfiddle.net/JTYRG/1

Gajet

the basic idea is something like pacman, or at least everyone says soething like that

@dave, now it seems I alck some information about javascript

Dave

after the for (var X in sdata) { loops i put a undefined check

Gajet

I think it's more suited to check if(endObjs.length == 0){

and it seems to solve the problem

Dave

ah i did if(!endObjs[0]){

strange how that works yet the undefined doesn't

even tho if u echo it it says undefined lol

Gajet

I was telling the game idea, there are multiple circles in classic version. each one should try catch next circle.

for example they create a circle like this : red->blue->green->yellow->red

Dave

7:27 PM

wat?

Gajet

it's the game I'm working on right now.

u doing it c++ ?

yes

cool

I can't trust any computer generated code,

so I develop using a language computer itself can't generate anything with it...

Dave

7:31 PM

ive not learnt c++

TreDubZedd

@Gajet If you can't trust any computer-generated code, you need to get down to the bit-level. None of this assembler high-level crap.

Gajet

@Dave I don't blame you

tylerrrr07

I kind of want to get a bunch of people together to purchase some VPS hosting

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 I won't be able to pay so easily

tylerrrr07

Yeah you are quite the special case here

Dave

7:33 PM

i got a vps server

Gajet

though I'll pay my share by doing all the software maintenance.

Dave

whats the hosting needed for

tylerrrr07

@Dave Linux or Windows?

Dave

linux obviously :P

tylerrrr07

Well sad

I want Windows hosting

Gajet

7:34 PM

@tylerrrr07 I still can do all the maintenance, but it'll be a little bit harder

tylerrrr07

All I need is web hosting but I'd like to be able to have complete control over it all (IIS, the GAC, etc.) so that if I really wanted to I could install SharePoint or anything else ridiculous onto it

Gajet

and why don't you want to go with linux?

tylerrrr07

I'm a .NET guy

Dave

from my experience of windows servers

tylerrrr07

It's what I'm good at, have the tools for, and enjoy developing for

Dave

7:37 PM

they were always crashing for me

tylerrrr07

My OS is Windows Server 2008 R2

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@thelinuxlich Hehe, I was actually joking with @John, because I've never used version control for anything but fancy backup. :P

tylerrrr07

I run out of RAM all the time mostly because I'm single boxing SQL and SharePoint together with only 4GB of RAM but otherwise this thing is super stable

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager so it really does have other uses,

tylerrrr07

Only have to reboot when I feel my RAM has caused too many problems that simply closing applications most likely wouldn't fix

Gajet

7:39 PM

I was always wondering when you can copy your project folder why should you use version control?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Haha :P

I have 8 Legeria folders. :P

Gajet

I once worked on the project, which resulted in 4-5 folders

the funny part was naming, "game project" "gameproject 2" "game project 3" "clean project"

the whole reason behind naming last one was the whole cleaning I've did in last code. (though it still was really messy)

@WilliamMindWorXMariager any luck with legeria? can I play the complete game now?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

You can't. Everyone else can, but you can't. You bailed, and I've now decide not to support iranian internet connections.

Gajet

:D

I can play other game, so it's your game that sucks

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I mucked around and made this fancy WPF on top of XNA thingy.

Gajet

7:43 PM

eg. I could play runescape, around 10 years ago.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Works and looks alright, no transparency, but that's acceptable.

Until I just found out that XNA consumes input, so I can't have any TextBox'es in the forms. :P

Gajet

at that time we only had dial-up connectinos.

tylerrrr07

@WilliamMindWorXMariager can you elaborate on this fancy WPF on top of XNA thingy?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07, It's very hacky, and not really worth the effort. Just did it as an experiment.

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager I believe you can but it's a little bit tricky,

tylerrrr07

7:45 PM

But what did it... do

Gajet

you need too many modifications there, to make them both work together

tylerrrr07

Had WPF controls within an XNA screen?

versus around like in a level editor?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07 This.

Gajet

If I'm not wrong, create an WPF window, and make your whole game look like a widget.

then add your game to the WPF window, and everything will be fixed,

tylerrrr07

@WilliamMindWorXMariager do you have text boxes in your game? I was researching it a bit and I was reading using XNAs input is bad because its limited by frame rate - is this your experience?

Gajet

7:47 PM

whenever you click on a textbox or any other widget, xna will loose focus and let other widgets work

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07 The login screen of my game handles all type of input, however, it's still limited by the framerate yes.

Gajet

or something like that

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07, Here's the XNA WPF test I made if you want to see: dl.dropbox.com/u/992656/mindworx.xnawpf.zip

tylerrrr07

How well do you feel it works? Good enough? Could be better? Think it would be bad for a chat system?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07, You say it like there's an alternative? You can't update what's shown on screen faster than the framerate.

John McDonald

7:49 PM

Hmm, I've never had trouble with my custom text field. I wonder if that's because I have turned off the fixedTimeStep

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager check this :blogs.msdn.com/b/nicgrave/archive/2010/07/25/…

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

If you're referring to bad input detection, then there's no issues with neither my way or the builtin input. All events are just queued and waiting until the next update happens.

tylerrrr07

Yeah I was more worried about input detection. I've seen some complicated ties into win32 or something like that (I just briefed over it) and couldn't decide if it was worth the effort or if XNAs keyboard state was good enough

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Gajet I've seen that one. As far as I remember, performance was bad because it had to copy the buffer each frame.

tylerrrr07

Like if you type in bursts it could exceed the frame rate and miss keys that you type

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:51 PM

@tylerrrr07 You have to remember you get keyboard codes in XNA, not character codes.

XNA doesn't handle special characters very well. You need to translate them.

I have a simple InputComponent that handles all types of input.

Gajet

I know there are some better ways than doing that, or there should be

tylerrrr07

Yeah all of that sounds fine. Like I said it was just people saying some people burst type that exceed the frame rate and would complain.

or something silly

Gajet

I've done same combinations (dx + Qt) (OpenGL + Qt) (dx + windows forms) in c++

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, those are more simple, the problem lies in WPF doing something funky AFAIK.

John McDonald

@tylerrrr07 yeah, I guess if you can type faster than the fps, you could press and release a key before XNA realizes it was pressed

Gajet

7:53 PM

if I remember correctly every widget has a handler, and you simply ask dx or OpenGL to initialize with an specific widget handler

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Because WPF is also using a DirectX device.

@JohnMcDonald That's very likely to happen.

tylerrrr07

I wanted to get into simple network game programming and thought a simple chat might be a fun place to start as I could then also implement a command line as well - this is my reason for all the questions. I'm very curious about it right now :)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Handling input on a separate thread is preferable, and then just queue the input.

John McDonald

You're telling me that you can physically press and release a key in less than 16ms? (1000ms / 60fps = 16ms)

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 you can always count on my connection to be the last boss to defeat.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:54 PM

No no, but imagine that there's a hickup, or something causing fps drops.

tylerrrr07

Or two keys "at once" within the 16ms

when really they are just a few ms apart

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 that's much more likely but won't cause a problem

I guess all the keys are queued no matter what the fps is

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Gajet Not in XNA.

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager that's for OS or keyboard buffer to handle

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

In XNA you'd do stuff like Keyboard.GetState() which returns the state at that frame.

tylerrrr07

7:56 PM

In XNA its keyboard state on the frame

So if they were ms apart for that frame you would have no clue which key was actually typed first

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So if you do Keyboard.GetState() after the player has released, you'll get input like he has never touched the keyboard.

TreDubZedd

However, XNA doesn't stop you from using the OS input buffers.

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager that's what you do anywhere

John McDonald

Whoa, crazy. In windows, I thought only 1 key would work at a time, but not so. I can press K followed by L and it will type: kllllllllllll (duh). But if I simultaniously press both k & l, it types: klklklklklklklklklkl

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@TreDubZedd Exactly, which is how I handle input.

tylerrrr07

7:57 PM

@TreDubZedd correct - which is where my quizzing came from. I'm curious if using just XNA is good enough or if I should go through the effort to use the OS input buffers

Gajet

don't you have flags like "Keyboard.ispressed"?

tylerrrr07

@WilliamMindWorXMariager well now you tell me :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, I handle it by hooking WndProc.

TreDubZedd

@tylerrrr07 If you want correctness, I don't think the OS input buffer route is a whole lot more effort.

I seem to remember reading some article or tutorial about it a few months ago, but I don't recall how to do it, myself.

tylerrrr07

Sounds like thats the route I'll be going - especially if @WilliamMindWorXMariager will share his input component :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

7:59 PM

My game is entirely closed source! >:(

tylerrrr07

:O

John McDonald

I'm curious to see if I can get my input field to fail

Or.. maybe you guys want to break it?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07 pastie.org/3818774

That's my InputComponent.

You need a bit more for the pinvokes.

tylerrrr07

@JohnMcDonald are you using the XNA keyboard state?

John McDonald

Yup

tylerrrr07

8:00 PM

@JohnMcDonald also I might have heard a rumor you play the new SSX?

TreDubZedd

@tylerrrr07 See stackoverflow.com/a/647273/332635

John McDonald

@tylerrrr07 Nope

tylerrrr07

Blast... I heard wrong :(

I need rivals on that game to make it more interesting

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@tylerrrr07, And here's the pinvokes: pastie.org/3818787

Should do the trick.

John McDonald

@tylerrrr07 I don't own a console other than the N64 at my parents place, collecting dust

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

8:01 PM

Just create a new InputComponent, add it to the Component collection, and use the events exposed by InputComponent as you need.

John McDonald

and the DS

tylerrrr07

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Fantastic! Thanks.

@JohnMcDonald there was a guy in the bridge that said his brother played and while i forget the first name his username was SomenameMcDonald as well

John McDonald

:p

tylerrrr07

@TreDubZedd thanks for that too! I'll check em both out and compare and see what suits me best when I get a chance.

John McDonald

Do you know how common the McDonald name is? It's like Wong, except originating in Scotland

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

8:03 PM

Haha, Wong.

John McDonald

And then there's my first name: John. Awesomely common combo

TreDubZedd

@JohnMcDonald I bet that makes it easier to hide your social networking habits from potential employers

John McDonald

Yeah, pretty much

:p

Aidan Mueller

is this any good?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

It doesn't appear to load.

TreDubZedd

8:06 PM

A Google search of my name returns an entire page of my social network activities.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So initial reactions, not good.

Aidan Mueller

it seems to have problems for me too

is there something wrong with the page?

looking at the source

tylerrrr07

I'm not sure if it loaded for me or not. Stuff draws on the screen I just don't know if I can do anything?

Aidan Mueller

did I write the applet tag wrong?

wasd to move

tylerrrr07

I don't think I'm seeing the applet now that I look at the source

I think I just see the site images

Aidan Mueller

8:08 PM

hmm

do you have java

tylerrrr07

And its been too long since I've done a Java applet (though I did make asteroids!) to know if the tag is right

Aidan Mueller

?

tylerrrr07

I should...

John McDonald

@TreDubZedd Looking up my name in Google, and I'm awesome! I take some mean photographs and am a Politician, ML Baseball Player, and Professor of Psychology. Boo yeah

Aidan Mueller

It seems to load sometimes

tylerrrr07

8:14 PM

Does dropbox actually work like a web server like that?

Aidan Mueller

sorta

tylerrrr07

For example, if you put all the files on your pc does it work?

Aidan Mueller

maybe thats the problem

tylerrrr07

Could be - I'd test it out

Aidan Mueller

I think so

the applet worked a few times

Where else to host?

tylerrrr07

8:17 PM

Been so long since I've used free hosting I don't know whats good / popular anymore.

Pretty much anything you get for free will be ad supported though

Aidan Mueller

I think I know how to fix it

Gajet

@WilliamMindWorXMariager try obfuscation, and let it be open source.

Aidan Mueller

I need to do destroy(){System.exit(0)} I think

John McDonald

@Gajet hah, yeah... don't do that

Gajet

this way you'll get benefit from both boasting about working on an opensource project, and no one can still your ideas!

tylerrrr07

8:19 PM

@Gajet Oh... you...

Gajet

@JohnMcDonald I try not to, but other people tend to call my codes obfuscated.

Aidan Mueller

because when I ended java process, it worked!

Gajet

it's not my problem they can't understand my code. I'll be pleased if only compiler could understand my code correctly.

John McDonald

lol

thelinuxlich

if it's perl, it's already write-only

4

Gajet

8:20 PM

@thelinuxlich it's c++

John McDonald

@thelinuxlich hah, Nice one

thelinuxlich

@JoshPetrie stop violating public signs! i.imgur.com/CQbdQ.jpg

tylerrrr07

@Gajet that philosophy will never work if you are on a team

Gajet

my team, can understand codes as good as me.

so we literary don't have any problems, with each other's code.

Damir

Until dementia kicks in :D

Code Assasssin

8:24 PM

XD

Damir

@Gajet How do you introduce new people to your code?

Gajet

unless it's about whole code structure.

tylerrrr07

Its really not a matter of "can you understand the code" its how much effort do I have to put into trying to understand what your code is trying to accomplish

thelinuxlich

@Damir he drugs the newcomers

Gajet

@Damir this is my code, you can join the team if you understand it!

Code Assasssin

8:25 PM

o-o

tylerrrr07

lol

thelinuxlich

Spaghetti Oriented Programming

Gajet

I never forget, my first game ever, was a pascal program.

Aidan Mueller

@thelinuxlich haha

Gajet

400 lines of code, no indenting, all variables named using a,b,c, ... and almost no array

TreDubZedd

8:27 PM

If your source code doubles as an interview question, you're probably not doing either right.

Code Assasssin

@Gajet Fail >_>

tylerrrr07

Alphabits Oriented Programming? Grab a handful and whatever you pull out you name your variables with?

Aidan Mueller

I'm learning c++ and it emphasizes understandability

thelinuxlich

yeah, those variable names are expensive!

TreDubZedd

I've sometimes wondered why the registry-style GUID isn't valid for variable names...

Gajet

8:30 PM

does anyone here remember `#define not !

tylerrrr07

@Gajet why do you "like" programming the way you do?

thelinuxlich

@Gajet, this sounds like a Borat feature

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 there are multiple reasons

tylerrrr07

I'm just curious. I personally don't think I'd like looking at my code all day if I were you but I'm sure you have your reasons :)

Gajet

first: I tend to write short codes, for me shorter usually (not always) means faster to understand

tylerrrr07

8:32 PM

Ok time out

Gajet

second: I try to optimize my codes as much as I can, it doesn't necessary mean they'll be easy to understand by anyone other than me and compiler.

tylerrrr07

trying to think of a good example...

thelinuxlich

the thing is, he has a intimate bond with his compiler

they are almost as one

tylerrrr07

for the simplist example...

Gamer

hi all....... how to dsable multitouch in cocos2d

thelinuxlich

8:34 PM

or...he likes a good code golf

Gajet

@Gamer it's disabled by default, you need to enable it, if you need

Aidan Mueller

"dsable"?

I know I know, disable

Gamer

disble

Code Assasssin

@thelinuxlich Meant to ask this earlier, but what is Code Golf? o-o

thelinuxlich

@AidanMueller able for DS

tylerrrr07

8:35 PM

I don't know how string s; would be simpler to understand stand than string meaningfulStringName;

Gamer

disable

thelinuxlich

Code it is a skill developed by Perl Monks somewhere in Tibet

Gajet

@CodeAssasssin to write a code, as short as possible

Code Assasssin

@thelinuxlich For reals XD

@Gajet Ah, sounds fun :D

thelinuxlich

@Code it's exactly what Gajet said

Gajet

8:36 PM

@tylerrrr07 if there is only one string in the algorithm, and you know what it should do, "string" itself would be enough.

s is only for compiler to understand.

Gamer

@gajet, i know its disable by default.. but its working.. when i touched with multi finger its fired several touches began method and added image but not removing... am removing those images in touches eneded. so some tmes images are in the screen itself not removng.. bcoz of this multituch gesture

tylerrrr07

I know one time when this came about though your function name was "process" or something like that

Gajet

and if there are multiple strings used. I can find out what each of them do as soon as I see them

tylerrrr07

which means I don't know what it should do

thelinuxlich

Gajet do you comment your code?

tylerrrr07

8:38 PM

So how is Process faster to understand than DoThisToTheString

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 yeah, but it was not going to be used in an actual project.

it was just a simple app to calculate result of a given string with only one function.

so process is as good name as any.

Aidan Mueller

@tylerrrr07 Fixed :) here

Gajet

@thelinuxlich only if I want other people to know what I did there, or I think I'll forget what I've written there sometime later. (which is rare)

tylerrrr07

public string DoThisToTheString(string baseString)
{
    string newString = baseString.Whatever("someFormatParameters") //etc...
    return newString;
}

vs

public string Process(string s)
{
    string t = baseString.Whatever("someFormatParameters") //etc...
    return t;
}

thelinuxlich

@Gajet you have eidetic memory, dude

Gamer

8:40 PM

@G

thelinuxlich

@ty

Gamer

@Gajet, i know its disable by default.. but its working.. when i touched with multi finger its fired several touches began method and added image but not removing... am removing those images in touches eneded. so some tmes images are in the screen itself not removng.. bcoz of this multituch gesture

Gajet

another reason is I forget name real quickly, so more complicated names, means more hard time while coding.

thelinuxlich

@tylerrrr07 don't you notice how many bytes you just saved on the second code snippet?

Gajet

@Gamer seems like exact copy

Aidan Mueller

8:41 PM

bye

Gajet

to be honest I need to search for that.

but it should be the same way you enable it

tylerrrr07

while (performanceBenefit <= trivial)
{
        MaintainabilityAndReadability > Speed;
}

Not valid code by any means but it gets the point across :P

Damir

@tylerrrr07 Trivial has different meaning for different people...

tylerrrr07

MaintainabilityAndReadability > Speed; is obviously not a valid statement

as in it won't compile

@Damir Sure. But I am willing to bet you anything Gajet is programming is going to run on a PC where long function and variable names give you no real benefit

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 I can produce clean code with lots of comments if I ever needed to codepaste.net/okx54w

tylerrrr07

8:46 PM

@Gajet This is a meaningless comment...

disconnect(); // Disconnect from connection if the class is Still Connected

Code Assasssin

Grilled :3

Gajet

it's mostly explaining if expression above that line

tylerrrr07

@Gajet However - this code is significantly better than what I saw the other day (week, month, whatever it was)

And I have no major complaints about it :)

Gajet

it's better than most of my codes.

but I really have a hard time producing and maintaining such kind of codes

tylerrrr07

And thats a statement that I don't understand

thelinuxlich

8:49 PM

he likes to review his code, no prob, leave brit alone!

tylerrrr07

lol

As long as I don't work with him I don't care how he writes his code. As I said I'm curious to what he finds better about it is all.

Gajet

and just to clarify, there are rare times when I don't understand a code. not that I can't understand how it's working, but why I implement it that way.

in those rare cases I use "ctrl+A->delete"

thelinuxlich

it's all about comfort zone

Gajet

I guess that's the only times I use recoding instead of refractoring.

Code Assasssin

~Will be back later, going to implement caves O:

Damir

8:53 PM

I hope he doesn't get eaten by a grue.

thelinuxlich

@Code see ya, noble dwarf