Game Development

12:06 AM

your Great Depression books brought me to this

The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanking (Nanjing), the former capital of the Republic of China, on December 13, 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During this period, hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. Widespread rape and looting also occurred. Historians and witnesses have estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people were killed. Se...

don't ask how

for some reason, all articles lead to the Holocaust and then to WW2 and then to other wars for me, not to philosophy

I find the article above to be more horrid than the holocaust now that I mentioned it

especially since the overall opinion around here is how the Japanese are more civilized and <insert quality here> than most people

I wonder if there'll ever be a community of people not turning to savage animals after the rules limiting them are gone

Jimmy

It doesn't bother most Westerners because it occurs in Asia

There's still a huge cultural resentment in Asia over that

Alex M.

I wonder what such things the US army did, if any, and people didn't find out about

hell, I wonder what our soldiers did out there, if anything, that's comparable

Jimmy

it's very hard to cover up murdering 250,000 but there have of course been reports of smaller-scale atrocities in Vietnam and in Afghanistan

you mean, more exotic than drawing and quartering or gas chambers?

"People" in general have pretty creative ways to kill people, I'd say.

Alex M.

was going to say about gas chambers and how they're less painful than how people were killed in Nanking

I'd say that if we leave the deaths caused by lack of food and by diseases in extermination camps

as well as the medical experiments done on living humans

the Germans were quite quick in executing people

normally they'd go down shot, usually in the head

Jimmy

And I'd believe the majority if Chinese killed were shot

it's simply impractical to chase down a large number of people to run them through with bayonets

Alex M.

12:21 AM

this reminds me

Jimmy

business inefficiencies will not be tolerated

Alex M.

were the Yakuza the ones with people sliced and stored in briefcases?

Dave

12:44 AM

god damn i hate blender

Jimmy

what's wrong

Byte56

Flip the normals.

Alex M.

yeah, that should fix it

the only thing that's keeping me from doing anything useful for my game in Blender is UV mapping

I tried like 3 times but never invested enough time to actually learn how to do it

since I've now got an artist in my team, it's even harder for me to get to learn it

maybe tomorrow, yeah

Jimmy

easiest way is to mark seams and auto-unwrap

Dave

lol i cant get nice looking shadows they come out totally black

Jimmy

12:49 AM

and preview with a grid texture instead of the actual texture so you can see how the UVs line up

Alex M.

yeah I read something about seams in the example which used a sphere

en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/UV_Map_Basics

Jimmy

@Dave use ambient occlusion or area lamps

this is what I used

so dont use "sun"?

.... no.

12:52 AM

oh

Jimmy

well, you can use sun, but you have to add other lighting to get the soft shadows

Dave

ok ill just use lots of spots

Jimmy

if you're going to use lots of spots, use a hemisphere with dupliverts to dupe the spots

it's easier to control that way

wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Books/Essential_Blender/…

Dave

hmm interesting 2 spot lights opposite the object the less bright one is project shadows how odd

Jimmy

both should project shadows if you have shadows enabled for both of them

Dave

1:06 AM

this take some serious artistic eye

ill try hemi

Jimmy

easiest way is to hit the "ambient occlusion" button

that's like, a one-button solution

Dave

1:25 AM

ok

its amazing what some people can create

Byte56

@Dave Looking at my stuff?

Dave

did you post it ?

Byte56

I have no idea what you're talking about :p

Dave

ok i was bit slow there

Byte56

Well, I'm using my moderator powers to look at your screen. Yeah, that is amazing.

Dave

1:32 AM

lols

Byte56

Ha, I was using my moderator powers to watch you through your web cam. I know you didn't really lol.

Also, put a shirt on.

Dave

but its hotttt

Byte56

Put on a wet shirt. The state change of the water going from liquid to gas states takes energy, reducing your temperature.

Jimmy

he just wants to see your nipples

through a shirt, as opposed to unadulterated

Byte56

Make sure it's a white shirt.

'Cause other science says white shirts are better at that.

Jimmy

1:36 AM

I haven't done anything in Blender in like 8 years :<

did you guys ever see this starcraft mod for War3 called Project Revolution?

that dino skeleton is mine :>

Byte56

Nice work.

I don't do organic models well.

Hmm, seems like I'm going to need to update my profile image on this site.

Jimmy

I prefer organic models I think

mechanicals require some kind of precision I don't like dealing with

Byte56

Something with my face: gamedev.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

Ah, that's what I like about it.

I really liked my drafting classes in high school.

On paper

Jimmy

also, Blender doesn't have very good tools for joining different curved surfaces

Dave

well it is a free program :P

Jimmy

1:40 AM

like, making a ring around a cylinder intersecting with a 45-degree surface

Dave

was blender originally started by google?

Byte56

No

Jimmy

originally started by a company called NaN

Byte56

Sketch up was.

Jimmy

in the netherlands

Dave

1:41 AM

ok sketch up that was it

Jimmy

like, 15+ years ago

Byte56

It was an internal tool, which is why it has fairly funky controls

Dave

well blender is pretty impressive for its price

Jimmy

that's pretty faint praise

Byte56

Yeah.

Jimmy

1:41 AM

I had to learn Maya for a class. I have to say I prefer Blender

Byte56

I can barely see it.

Jimmy

until Modo came out the modeling for Blender was better than most commercial programs

Byte56

I used Cinema 4D for a while in school

I like Blender a lot though.

Dave

are the commercial versions that much better?

Byte56

Blender is pretty much on par with commercial apps.

Though it's been a while since I used a commercial app

Jimmy

1:43 AM

Blender is still used in commercial pipelines for certain things. No so much mesh modeling anymore now that Modo and mudbox/zbrush are out there, but it has a fairly powerful and accessible physics engine for example

Dave

is it used in the industry though ?

well dont you z-brush them import to blender etc so they kinda go together

Jimmy

for Spiderman 2, the previsualization team used Blender to mock out animated storyboards

@Dave I mean in the olden days you'd hear of studios modeling in blender then importing into a commercial program to unwrap, texture, and render in like, VRay or something

Dave

ah

Jimmy

I haven't tried out the new Cycles renderer so I don't know if it compares with commercial raytracers

Dave

i think cycles is only best if u know how to use the node editor well

i personally aint got a clue how to use it - i'm still learning alot of the terminology

Dave

1:59 AM

well my sprite looks average

had to photoshop the shadow instead

looks so blurry in my browser though

BlueBug

3:30 AM

How long do you guys usually work on one project, assuming it's small.

; how much time period spent would you call a small, small project.

user4704

Time spent isn't a good metric.

John McDonald

3:47 AM

(it's late, didn't read it right)

user4704

Hehe.

John McDonald

4:02 AM

But yeah, depends on what you mean. Completed polished, ready to sell? No matter how simple?

BlueBug

oh

John McDonald

Or something you can show to friends?

BlueBug

did not know u could remove.

anyway, um let me think. one sec.

sorry this is not my language takes me a sec to articulate.

more of proof of concept but polished to the point(just simple textured uis) you can show it to friends

not "completed ; ready to sell" degree of craftsmanship but more of look at this! type of "portfolio level" of work.

*of course the more experience you have fancier your portfolio you will have/able to make, but say we limit to college graduate programmer level.

John McDonald

right, it really does depend on a lot of factors: experience, education, personality, etc.

BlueBug

say an average level of programmer who wants to dig into his way into industry(me?). How long should a "small but sufficient level" of work that demonstrates his capacity should take to build.

* a work that demonstrates a point such as I can implement something from game X; an element such as very simple physics or puzzle game.

*puzzle game- > puzzle element.

oh LOOK AT MY REP!

John McDonald

4:12 AM

By "experience", I mean both programming xp, but also gamedev ex. From my experience, the two aren't always correlated

BlueBug

ITS 111!

i just noticed!

111!

I see.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

5:11 AM

@Jimmy, I didn't know you worked on Project Revolution. That's pretty cool. :P

Do you remember xttocs?

ToddersLegrande

@0xFFF1 Lol I have no clue what you are talking about

Jimmy

9:03 AM

that name rings a bell. I was under the impression he was active on a lot of projects at wc3c

Matt D

heh

Matt D

9:16 AM

wc3c? warcraft 3 c????

Jimmy

warcraft 3 campaigns

it was where all the wc3 modders hung out

Matt D

ah i see

Jimmy

wc3c.net

Matt D

ever play competitively?

or just mod?

Jimmy

I was pretty bad

although a friend and I got to like rank 13th 2v2 USEast for a little bit. Mainly demonstrating how no one played 2v2s on USEast

Matt D

9:21 AM

lol

im watching professional sc2 right now :) its funny how that works. im terrible at the game tho

Jimmy

hmm I played for like 6 months of WoL

quit because it was taking too much work

Matt D

hehe

yeah. sc2 isnt something you cna just play without effort

Jimmy

plus, my friends were Masters and I was a lowly Platinum

so it was a bit discouraging

Matt D

i hit platinum, but the amount of effort to get further was more than my guitar practice. so i went. meh.

Jimmy

yeah, it feels like work. Which is probably why strategy games are a niche market

Kikaimaru

9:48 AM

ah i dont know if i should make my rts tilebased

it would be much simpler for player to orient in such space, but it seems so limiting :)

and shooting cant ever be tilebased, but warcraft 1 worked like that so i guess its not a problem

Matt D

9:59 AM

you know

sc2 is technically "tile" based

unit position isnt though

its much easier to author, and do pathfinding with tiles tho

Alex M.

11:36 AM

if you watch video trailers of other Gameloft games, you get some ingame currency

you can watch the same video up to 3 or 4 times in case they haven't brainwashed you the first time lol

Matt D

11:48 AM

or, i could not

and not play gameloft games

Alex M.

that's one solution

also this is cool

@jeremyncole We've sent a replacement voucher, hopefully this one gets to you! As an apology we think @RoyalMail should draw you a chicken!

Tweeted by NandosUK on July 3, 2013 at 11:49 AM in reply to jeremyncole

check the replies

also x2, have you guys seen the new Destiny gameplay trailer?

►

looks cool & all

Alvar

12:15 PM

Hi all

How do i most easily an element of chance in a game made in php? Like what are my options, feels like this must have been asked before

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