Game Development

Hey everybody, I have a bit of a general programming question. It may not really be appropriate for the Game Development chat room, however I don't have privileges to the Programmers chat room, and I figured you guys could come up with some opinion. :P

Kevin van der Velden

@Sparky Reputation is network wide so you can chat in any room if you can chat in one =p (Unless it's silenced or something? But I don't know if that's done)

Veritas

cool story bro

Kevin van der Velden

But fire away :)

Though I'm gonna head to bed

It's 2 am

I am tired

Sparky

Wait, really? D: Huh.

Veritas

gl kevin and nice job!

Sparky

1:01 AM

Okay, well thanks, you do that! haha

Kevin van der Velden

And spam protection doesn't like me anymore :(

Veritas

gn*

Kevin van der Velden

Night

@Veritas thanks :)

Veritas

sparky 'sup?

Sparky

Anybody here use C++ as a main language?

Veritas

1:01 AM

yep

Sparky

Okay, so, when I first learned the basics of C++ several years ago, I used Sams teach yourself C++ in 24 hours, and have since learned that pretty much every decent C++ programmer despises that book.

MickLH

@Sparky I will be for a while longer until I switch to my own langauge

Sparky

I'm now on a quest to try to learn C++ more in depth, I'm going to read Effective C++, and perhaps Effective STL. Should I start by relearning the basics and reading C++ Primer?

Veritas

C++ primer 5th edition is a beast on details

MickLH

Lol man it's a good thing you ran into me

Veritas

1:03 AM

but a great book for learning c++

best introductory book imo if you want to learn c++ seriously

Sparky

Yeah, I can get around C++ pretty well, I'm definitely no beginner, but I was considering it just to make sure any bad practices are fixed before I move on.

Veritas

you can pick up the STL fast enough if you over primer and use it a few projects, otherwise Effective STL is also great

MickLH

@Sparky sorry actually I've got company, no time to explain and I'd feel guilty if I only did the trolling and didn't bring it full circle

Sparky

@MickLH Hah. Thanks anyways. Maybe I could come back another time and you could give me the whole deal.

Veritas

Meyers' book is awesome.

Sparky

1:07 AM

So... If I were to buy 2 C++ books tonight, which two would get me the furthest?

Considering my not-too-bright start with Sams teach yourself.

Almo

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/computers-software/programming/cplusplus.html

maybe? Not saying you're a dummy, but it should be a good introduction.

haven't actually seen it myself, but this series has a good reputation

Veritas

C++ Primer 5th ed for the language

Sparky

@Veritas added to cart.

Veritas

now if you want to get into advanced parts of the language, Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design is incredible albeit some things have become absolute with C++11

Sparky

@Almo Haha. Thanks for the recommendation, I think I looked at that book and didn't find anything notably special about it. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it, but I have some decent C++ experience SAMS aside.

Almo

1:10 AM

ok :)

Veritas

after C++ Primer it's really mostly idioms, best practices and language specific patterns

it's a very detailed book and there is a reason for the 1000+ pages

Sparky

@Veritas If not a C++ book is there some other MUST READ for programming practices, structures or otherwise?

I'm trying to take programming from a hobby to a career, so I want to make sure I have an idea of what I'm talking about when it comes to C++. I'm currently in school for CS, and I've had plenty of general programming experience, I'm just trying to polish things, you know?

Veritas

Then also get alexandrescu's book and get serious about template metaprogramming.

Sparky

So the 2 books I should get tonight - in your opinion - would be C++ Primer 5th, and Effective STL?

Veritas

Not sure if you are going to need Effective STL. I would say get through the Primer first and you will have a general direction after that. Just make sure to also read on template metaprogramming and the C++11 features

Sparky

1:18 AM

@Veritas alright, nice, I'll take your advice on Primer.

Veritas

the Primer expands on C++11 features a lot but template metaprogramming is a large subject that needs a seperate book imo.

guys I'm off, 3 am here

Sparky

@Veritas Goodnight! Thanks for all your help.

Veritas

np! later everyone

Icy Defiance

1:34 AM

@Almo okay I won that game if you still want to play

Almo

ok after this hots

done soon

Icy Defiance

aight

Almo

holy SHIT tyreal is bad this game

user4704

2:11 AM

@Sparky Practice is going to be far more useful than books.

user4704

The problem with a book is, even if you get a good one, it will only generally show you what to do. Why is also important, including why you chose some particular (good) technique over another (good) technique.

user4704

And it's easy to ferret out candidates who, for example, have focused too much time on book learning because they can't usually answer that kind of question well.

user4704

Whereas if you practice writing programs, that forces you actually make those decisions and thus you have real-world experience and examples to turn to when explaining yourself.

MickLH

3:49 AM

josh just fucking relentlessly delivers

I'd like to also mention big O notation, I think it's worthwhile to get a solid grasp on it.

@Sparky

Joe

4:29 AM

updated build with some new animations fixed logic

josephjaniga.com/2dpp

Sword

Demo is displaying the controls..

mike eustace

Hello, I was told to come here to ask a question. It's java (processing.org) code.

I have the following code. I want the tree growth to be animated. eg. like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRFCSIzej0

My code is pastebin.com/0JUDWmg8

Thanks for any help

Icy Defiance

4:55 AM

@mikeeustace judging by how you're using the opengl's fixed function pipeline, and loading/playing a music file in your draw function...you'll probably need to learn a bit more about game programming before trying to do that kind of animation

at least, I think you're using the fixed function pipeline?

anyway, with the state that code is in now, it would take a lot of work to get the animation

mike eustace

@IcyDefiance need to learn a LOT more! I've had half a term (6 weeks) of coding lessons!

I was given the code hint:

drawFractalTree (currentLength, currentAngle, rules, frameCount%rules.length())

I'm fuming. Another student has produced this code
http://sketchpad.cc/megyShb6O4
However, I helped her 24 hours ago explaining the difference between int, float, string etc!

Think she might have had 'help'?!?

@sword

how about the new tree fading in instead of appearing immediately?

Sword

no idea

Ask it on the site

mike eustace

5:12 AM

Alright. Thanks. Have a nice weekend!

Icy Defiance

5:24 AM

@mikeeustace ohh I see, it's not using opengl at all. that explains a couple things. because you're using that sketchpad thing, that puts us both more or less in the same spot. just need to read through the working example, line by line, and figure out what is happening there.

and tbh, I'm too lazy to put that much work into it. :P

at least not tonight

mike eustace

Thanks.

I'm teaching myself so am up to the point where I understand everything I've written, but no more :)

Taking it to the next level is tough.

Thanks anyway @IcyDefiance

Sword

5:52 AM

GTA 5 troll

SHOCKING Interview with Rockstar Developer from GTA, Heists Confirmed

►

@Chris he did mention unity :P

Chris

I am too busy to watch that sorry lol

Icy Defiance

lol I saw a version of that video for league

Chris

6:11 AM

wheel so far: gfycat.com/TepidWideAlpineroadguidetigerbeetle

middle mouse down, move around, release

Icy Defiance

ooh pretty

user92578

7:41 AM

Morning

Ali.S

morn

user92578

ugh of course visual studio has to load the symbol files again after a windows update

user92578

and that aint fast

Ali.S

@Tyyppi_77 load symbol files for what?

user92578

windows stuff I guess

user92578

7:46 AM

I don't know what symbol files VS loads by default

Ali.S

I don't know why, but I kinda feel like it doesn't load anything, unless you tell it to

user92578

well I definitely did not tell it to load anything

user92578

but whatever, the situation is gone now :)

Ali.S

is it loading them, when you start a debugging session?

user92578

only for the first time

Ali.S

7:52 AM

I think I never saw it...

Icy Defiance

symbol files are what visual studio uses to "attach" to an exe or dll for debugging tools to work

they're loaded every time you compile and run a program

no idea why a windows update would make that take any longer than normal :/

user92578

well it doesnt load symbols everytime i compile and run

user92578

just for the first time

toby

I remember it happening too, debugging used to happen instantly before some point in time, after which it took like 30 seconds on a fresh restart of visual studio, then 5-10 seconds before each subsequent debugging

user92578

like to loads them everytime I run and outputs "loaded" stuff into the output view

user92578

7:59 AM

but for the first run it opened a dialog showing the loading process

toby

exactly

Icy Defiance

well every time you compile a change to your program it has to generate and load new symbol files

things that don't get recompiled might stay loaded. I'm not sure.

Ali.S

@IcyDefiance I think, updating windows, resulted in changes in some system dlls. Which means to load symbols for those files, vs had to update it's symbol cache

user92578

^

Icy Defiance

it's possible

Ali.S

8:02 AM

and it took a while to download the new symbol files

but still, you can turn that feature off, telling vs not to load symbols for anything but your project

user92578

8:45 AM

Very basic HUD but I kinda like it:

user92578

I might actually want to center those

Chris

lookin good, good progress!

Wardy

@Tyyppi_77 wow dude coming along great!!

user92578

thanks!

Wardy

8:52 AM

i love the pixelated theme you have going on

so retro :)

are you hand crafting every pixel?

your maps / levels look manually put together or a really cool generation algo!

user92578

manual level creation

Wardy

I am tempted to build a game dedicated to the late Terry Pratchett

build something based on discworld

user92578

9:35 AM

I think this is a tad better:

user92578

Chris

more

more humans

Lasse

more cowbell, don't forget the cowbell!

user92578

@Lasse lol

Sword

10:18 AM

I want to use a couple of boolean variables that are accessible to all other classes. Will declaring them as public static boolean be sufficient??

Kevin van der Velden

Yes

In any language I know of

Sword

so modifying it anywhere in any class will modify the value in other classes as well?

Kevin van der Velden

Yeah

There will only be one of it, that is the meaning of static

Sword

cool.. and what if I initialize it in a class as this.mybooleanvariable = true?

Kevin van der Velden

Depends on the language

Sword

10:20 AM

java 7

Kevin van der Velden

(All of it does, but to my knowledge all the questions so far have the same answer for any language)

Hmm don't know java all that well. Don't you have to set the variable statically as well?

Sword

it has been declared as static..

Kevin van der Velden

I also don't know if it will allow access to static variables via an instance (so you'd need to do ClassName.mybool =t true)

@Sword different thing

Sword

strange.. It is initiated to true in one class 'a' and I see that the changes aren't reflected in the other class 'B' unless i assign it true in 'B' itself.. All declarations are public static..

does that mean i should access it via a.boolvariable??

yes , that worked..

Lasse

if you only want to access the static variable inside the class it does not have to be public, but only if you want to access it also outside of the class then it needs to be public

Sword

10:34 AM

Roger..

and should be accessed via Classname.variablename..

Lessons learnt.

Wardy

class foo { public static bool bar = true;  }
var b1 = foo.bar;
var b2 = new foo().bar;

same thing

there's still only 1 bar

b1 and b2 should both be true

@Sword i believe java and C# behave pretty much the same way with regards to static vars

I could be wrong though

Sword

yes ,looks pretty much the same (though i know nil about C# )

Wardy

i have used java in the past but i prefer c#

it feels more advanced to me for some reason ... cleaner

I recall when a friend of mine was doing his uni work in java it took about 30 lines of code to do what I could achieve in about 3 at the time

i'm sure both languages have improved though

java got lambdas yet?

Sword

haven't got much idea... python has it though..

is C# somewhat similar to C++ ?

Wardy

im tempted to learn python

Kevin van der Velden

10:45 AM

Python is pretty awesome

Wardy

C++ is much lower level than C#

in terms of syntax anyway

most c++ coders are happy reading chunks of 2 char variables based code

C# devs tend to write more readable code

almost to the point where some lines basically read as sentences

user92578

but you can write readable and quite high level code in C++ too

Sword

a shabby game by me in python : codeskulptor.org/#user33_SI1Z3fqlN7_2.py

Wardy

you can but it appears to be rare

user92578

I find that my code is quite highlevel

user92578

10:47 AM

not as highlevel as C# code, but almost

Wardy

thats awesome

I'm building generated planets at the moment using unity and C#

user92578

pics?

Wardy

yeh should have a few here somewhere

that was attempt number 1

user92578

looks awesome

Wardy

at this point i was just using unity spheres and texturing them

the texture is generated but the mesh isn't

had some interesting fails along the way

getting the generation algo right was fun

user92578

10:51 AM

who doesn't? :)

Wardy

user92578

wow

Wardy

here's where I stopped looking at the texture gen

I started to match up the colours from a texture of earth

so it looked a bit more real

Sword

wow so many earths.. o_O

Wardy

lol

at this point i figured I had the texturing about right

so then i started on meshing

instead of using the built in unity spheres the idea was to dynamically generate the planet meshes in chunks

Sword

10:53 AM

the texture is equivalent to that of PS2/XBOX..

Wardy

and since the textures were all generated I could use the gen in portions

this is all threaded too

so its crazy fast

takes about 10 seconds to gen something about the size of our moon

the meshing code really hurt but got some really funky mesh ups

I then got something working

but this wasn't right

I have some issues around the uv code at the moment

can't seem to get the uv's the same as unity did

this was interesting

that was early test (to scale)

before i sorted the colouring obviously

JohnPoison

@Wardy what's so "low level" about C++'s syntax?

Wardy

I'm currently happy with the meshing code .. need to fix some odd seems in the uv code

@JohnPoison typically c++ is used to solve lower level problems

the mentality of a c++ developer is usually at a lower level too

for example

Kevin van der Velden

@JohnPoison void*(*CanYouGuessWhatIam)(int)

Wardy

you might build a AAA game in c++ but typically you would build a AAA website with c#

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