Game Development

Wardy

2:00 PM

made any good tunes yet?

Almo

@MickLH i gotta say I prefer your planetary gear icon :)

MickLH

I have about 1 minute of sound design that I need to stretch into 3 minutes of music now

user92578

@Hjorthenify My physics don't support anything like that at all!

user92578

otherwise a great idea

Hjorthenify

Make it happen!

MickLH

2:01 PM

@Almo I did too but I was long past due

Hjorthenify

How hard can it be to split up the tower and add a bit of gravity? :D

Almo

heh

Kevin van der Velden

@Tyyppi_77 well it could just be colliders that you hit a few times (texture changing in between?) and then particle effects falling

Wardy

I prefered the blizz conversation lol

MickLH

This was something I made as a joke like a month ago, I'll make new artwork soon

Kevin van der Velden

2:02 PM

Hmm, anyone know of a decent python matrix(3/4)/vector library?

Wardy

I think I may have a crack at converting my noise lib to compute shader code some time

MickLH

@KevinvanderVelden I don't use Python much at all but I've always run into NumPy and SymPy for that kind of stuff

Kevin van der Velden

@MickLH do they provide things like methods for generating perspective matrices?

Almo

numpy always looks like it's related to "lumpy" not NUMber PYthon

Kevin van der Velden

Cause that's really what I'm looking for, things like that

Wardy

2:04 PM

ROFL i love questions like this ...

-1

Q: Space Invaders (Help)

I have been going over a Space Invaders Tutorial using xna 4.0 c# on youtube. But for some reason the video tutorial ends without showing any way on how to make the aliens shoot. Could anyone help me or point me in a helpful direction to resolve this problem? I would like if they could shoot a...

Almo

that's pretty ridculous

Wardy

Maybe I should post something like "I saw a video of a planet renderer on youtube could you give me the code for it please?"

I won't even link you to the video

but I want the right code ok

Kevin van der Velden

Hmm I think this looks good: code.google.com/p/gameobjects

It's not been updated in ages but meh

Wardy

could still have value I spose

if nothing else its a toolbelt you can call on

Kevin van der Velden

Yeah, it's not like there's much to improve on matrix/vector math

MickLH

2:06 PM

A cursory google search shows that numpy does matrix transformations and perspective, but I have no idea if it's what you want at all. I've hit the end of my python knowledge lol

Kevin van der Velden

@MickLH yeah, numpy does a bunch of math stuff. But it's generic math stuff, I just want a simple library for game math

MickLH

But 7am rolled around, and I have to decide what job to go to... Does anyone know if the phase of the moon today favors programming or chemistry?

Kevin van der Velden

I don't care about functions that rotate matrices, or NxM matrices

Wardy

out of curiousity I would love to see a c# matrix and vector implementation ... I've literally never need to write either

Almo

@OliverSchöning hey nice game for your first! It's cute and playable. :)

Wardy

2:08 PM

in all cases its basically just a matter of asking the underlying API for them

Kevin van der Velden

Naah, it's quite possible that it's more efficient to just write it in the scripting language than to marshal it back and forth the C/Python barrier each time

Joe

good morning GDSE... uhh I mean "Mick & Wardys programmer fights chatroom"? did we rename it officially yet?

:D

MickLH

@Joe If you said that a bit earlier I'd have just left this room permanently lol

And now I need to find a great excuse to program all day today

Joe

I wanted to look for a fun and harmless way to bust both of your balls :)

user92578

I found this one again: if you want to use Python to create network-enabled graphics: ostatic.com/slut

user92578

2:11 PM

they named it "slut"

Joe

lol

user92578

took some courage to google "python slut"

user92578

actually im not sure if that even is a python thing

Kevin van der Velden

The actual website: slut.sourceforge.net

MickLH

@Joe I appreciate the playful spirits, but I must warn you that I'm still exactly as frustrated right now as I am "in the heat of the moment" about the ignorance and lack of cooperation / lack of benefit of the doubt.

Kevin van der Velden

2:12 PM

Yeah it's python (see Manual)

user92578

yup

Almo

who's doubting benefits?

Lokkij

@Tyyppi_77 Have you seen the name of libraries for LÖVE? AnAL, LUBE, HUMP

user92578

haha

Kevin van der Velden

@Lokkij nice?

Lokkij

2:13 PM

It's pretty terrible

Wardy

@Joe we don't fight ... im emotional ... apparently ... LOL

Joe

I will be completely honest, when i logged in this morning I had to click "load previous messages" 3 times to see anything that wasnt said by either of you LOL

Wardy

@MickLH why so frustrated?

Joe

and I opted not to read this book yet... its on my backlog though, I do not know what happened

MickLH

All I want is a space to completely convey an idea, so that it can be processed in its entirety without having small subsections of it rejected on fallacy faster than the fallacy can be debunked.

Kevin van der Velden

2:14 PM

Also, they replaced slut.sourceforge.net with a C++ framework called sx (no word that I could find on the pronunciation)

Wardy

@MickLH type faster then

MickLH

@Wardy Because spewing fallacy faster than any logical person could debunk it, does not make you the winner of any debate.

user92578

LOL THESE GUYS

Wardy

that's the trouble with chat rooms

Almo

@MickLH sounds like the Internet is not the place for you then. :)

MickLH

2:14 PM

The actual solution, is listen to people fully, before you start trying to rip their message apart.

Wardy

@MickLH wheres the fun in that

Kevin van der Velden

And yet you are the one who was having problems with waiting a few seconds for my second message?

Uuh what?

Almo

and that does actually win debates as debates are about discrediting the arguer, not his arguments, unfortunately. :(

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden yet more irony

this room should be named "Ironic Confusion"

MickLH

I mean nothing anyone said just now was valuable or even directly relevant.

What purpose did it serve in the real world?

Kevin van der Velden

2:15 PM

I mean, he literally just said that waiting a few seconds wasn't something he would do

MickLH

I want to have better communication.

I'm not trying to "win" anything here.

Wardy

@MickLH :O

MickLH

So enjoy misunderstanding, Enjoy being ignorant to my ideas.

Wardy

Whats the latest idea ?

Lokkij

Gosh, isn't it nice and pleasant in here

MickLH

2:17 PM

Well the one that started all "this" is that I wish you would try raycasting your voxels.

Almo

I'll raycast those voxels!!!

That'll teach them!

MickLH

I think your program could actually work, if you stop trying to solve an ill-conditioned problem numerically.

Wardy

@MickLH Yeh did I not explain why I was not using raycasting ?

GnomeSlice

He's gone for 30 minutes now.

Wardy

that actually creates an 0(n) problem

Kevin van der Velden

2:18 PM

@Lokkij I'm taking steps to make it more pleasant

Woosh less chat

Wardy

@MickLH i figured you were ahead of me on my thought process so often don't explain much to you

GnomeSlice

K, stop.

Whoever is doing that, stop.

Wardy

whoever is doing what ?

Lokkij

^

GnomeSlice

Flagging every message by @KevinvanderVelden

Kevin van der Velden

2:19 PM

... seriously mick?

Wardy

I thought we were having a polite conversation about raycasting voxels?

GnomeSlice

@KevinvanderVelden It's not him, he's suspended.

Kevin van der Velden

An assumption: true, but a founded one I believe

Wardy

did you guys temp ban mick during our chat?

dammit guys

user92578

Wardy

2:20 PM

That was actually productive for once!

Joe

Im thinking it too Ty

GnomeSlice

He was autobanned for his (rude) message about somebody boosting their ego

Kevin van der Velden

@Tyyppi_77 better idea: have this be the pleasant one

Wardy

@GnomeSlice ah ok

user92578

yeah, that was just the only meme I knew could be at least a tiny bit usable in this situation

Wardy

2:20 PM

anyone else wanna talk over raycasting voxel data?

Kevin van der Velden

Sure

Almo

i doubt i would be much help

Wardy

lol

user92578

@Wardy Did you solve the hash thing?

Wardy

So I have this volume which contains a gazillion voxels

GnomeSlice

2:21 PM

Stop it you nameless flag clown.

Wardy

@Tyyppi_77 yeh I did in the end

well actually @Veritas did

user92578

that's nice

Veritas

υο

fail

yo*

Kevin van der Velden

@GnomeSlice am I still being flagged or is someone else being flagged now?

@Veritas Lo

Veritas

damn layouts

Kevin van der Velden

2:22 PM

Also, up arrow is edit

Mooseman

This room was placed in timeout for 10 seconds; the topic of this room is "Game development and other polite discussion. Please don't star trivial messages." - conversation should be limited to that topic.

Kevin van der Velden

Ooh, mobile? That won't work then =p

Mooseman

Please stop the flags. Thanks.

GnomeSlice

@KevinvanderVelden Somebody is flagging every message of yours, including "Sure".

user92578

Wow Cool countdown timers!

Wardy

2:22 PM

my thinking is that a raycast would involve walking the volume in a direction until you hit something

Kevin van der Velden

I send a message after the timeout? :o MAGIC

Wardy

with such a large volume you'd be looping for a long time

Almo

sounds right to me, wardy

Lokkij

Weird how mods can't see the source of a flag.

GnomeSlice

Okay, stop it for fuck's sake.

Almo

2:23 PM

good how mods can't see the source of a flag

we've been through this

fredley

This room was placed in timeout for 6 seconds; the topic of this room is "Game development and other polite discussion. Please don't star trivial messages." - conversation should be limited to that topic.

ugh

GnomeSlice

@Almo Not in a situation like this it isn't.

Almo

hi fredley

fredley

This room was placed in timeout for 10 minutes; the topic of this room is "Game development and other polite discussion. Please don't star trivial messages." - conversation should be limited to that topic.

SpartanDonut

:(

fredley

2:23 PM

Let's everybody calm down.

Kevin van der Velden

It's alive!

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I was totally counting along in my head.

Almo

Aw

Wardy

Can I carry on now?

Almo

I was going to say "first"

user92578

2:33 PM

haha

Kevin van der Velden

@Wardy yes

Jon

my mom walked in and saw the channel locked down, and now i'm grounded

Almo

hahha

user92578

so mods really can't see who flagged?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Also, I think this is a record number of mods. Not a record to be proud of.

Kevin van der Velden

2:34 PM

@Wardy you can just put a max distance in it, after all, after X distance it's not really gonna matter what color that pixel is

(Also, fog! :D FOG ALL THE THINGS)

Wardy

ok so because the volume of voxels in this case is so big raycasting would actually be a very slow method of determining the output

user92578

@Jon this

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden fog ... so I would never render a planet from orbit ?

Kevin van der Velden

@Jon You are OLD (34 years OLD) to be specific, your mom does not ground you =p

Wardy

@Tyyppi_77 They should change that

Kevin van der Velden

2:35 PM

@Wardy tricky, but that's what LOD is for

Jon

online i can be however old I want

Almo

@William'MindWorX'Mariager yeah i see a "..." on the list of icons for people here

user92578

seems like we have found the soft spot of the SE network

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hehe, yeah.

user92578

flags

user92578

2:36 PM

or the nameless flagger found

Jon

who the hell are all these wannabee game devs?

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden right but the planet is still the same size its the sample resolution we change

Jon

LOD it

Wardy

@Jon was that rehtorical?

Jon

rhinoceros

Kevin van der Velden

2:37 PM

@Wardy points to mass mods in the user list. Waves

@Wardy yeah planets are tricky

Wardy

don't bring me in to that flag war

Undo

waves back

fredley

waves

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

A moderator named Undo is pretty terrifying ...

Kevin van der Velden

Cheat, you could render it to a billboard after a distance

Wardy

2:37 PM

might be a bit cheeky with may be 1 mod ... but a whole group is asking for trouble

@KevinvanderVelden Well i have a fractal noise function

Jon

We're here, we're queer, we don't want any more bears!!

Wardy

that I can give a location to

I give it 2 angles and I get back a radius distance ot the surface

user92578

decides to google LOD as that seems to be what all the fuzz is about these days

Jon

i did a LOD of my 2d generator

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

"these days"

Kevin van der Velden

2:39 PM

@Tyyppi_77 Level of detail, specifically the dynamic bit

TreDubZedd

RE: Rendering voxel planets from orbit: You could render a top-down view of the planet as a texture (occasionally, read "whenever there's enough change"), and apply that texture to a sphere.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

LOD is as old as Almo

Wardy

so my thinking was that if I took a sample at ever decreasing / increasing steps on the surface I could tune the detail dynamically

Jon

Kevin van der Velden

Allows you to go "Well, this is not gonna be more than 5 pixels large, why should I spend thousands of polys on it?"

Wardy

2:39 PM

base on distance to camera or something

TreDubZedd

get out far enough, change from voxel display to sphere

Wardy

@Jon you should build a weather system for that project

and have rain fill caves

Jon

yeah, if you zoom out -- you lower the details to allow it to render

i should @Wardy

Wardy

@Jon exactly what i was thinking

user92578

@KevinvanderVelden But deep in your brain the fact that you know it doesn't look perfect is drilling a deep hole

TreDubZedd

2:41 PM

@Jon Is that a polar bear?

Kevin van der Velden

@Tyyppi_77 nope, FPS sooth all hurts

Wardy

so the idea is that for a chunk i always ask for a set number of voxels

just the distance between them that varies

that way the same gen can be used from orbit to surface

Jon

nope @TreDubZedd

instead of voxels, try to convert it to a mesh when you zoom out

Lokkij

Huh, it does look a bit like a polar bear.

Wardy

@Veritas sounds workable right ?

TreDubZedd

2:42 PM

@Lokkij Now you can't unsee it.

user92578

@Lokkij true that

Wardy

@Jon That's essentially all i ever do tbh

Jon

Where do you see a polar bear? lol

Wardy

of sorts

Kevin van der Velden

When working with something on such dynamic scales, do the only thing you can do: Cheat, cheat like there is no tomorrow

Because if you don't, there wont' be, the game will still be rendering then

Wardy

2:42 PM

well thinking about it in the real world

Jon

or other parts of game dev really..

multiplayer is all just an illusion

Wardy

if you look at a photo of earth from the international space station you don't see roads

you see mountains

Lokkij

I did not realize most features that were pro-only in Unity 4 are now free. Awesome! :D

Kevin van der Velden

@Jon They're just poorly coded remote controlled robots that have their input broadcast

Wardy

@Lokkij I know right!!!

Jon

2:43 PM

yep... makes xamarin look like a pile of poop

Wardy

can't wait for .Net 4.0 in there too

Jon

Unity5/UE4/Source

user92578

Wasn't there a game with really realistic chat messages popping in

user92578

generated by bots

user92578

and you were alone

Jon

2:44 PM

there was a game that would text you on your real phone

jesus.exe

@Wardy This flavor of raycasting is a linear sweep, but it's not the only flavor of raycasting

Jon

2well, the killer in the game would text you in real life

Wardy

@jesus.exe its not really raycasting though

Kevin van der Velden

@Tyyppi_77 I think UT2004 was the one that story was about?

jesus.exe

You could do a binary search along the ray instead, then you're down to log(n)

Wardy

2:44 PM

raycasting involves walking through the volume following a ray

log(n) on a gazillion voxels just won't scale

jesus.exe

Raycasting involves computing the intersection of a ray...

I thought you wanted to find solutions

user92578

@KevinvanderVelden Nah, it was something like a 2d pong

jesus.exe

Sorry for assuming you were being honest earlier

Wardy

@jesus.exe i do

Jon

So , a collision point normal -- if I run a dot product against the "up" vector of my character -- it should give me the direction of the collision regardless of rotation right?

Wardy

2:46 PM

@jesus.exe huh ... i'm trying to explain why raycasting won't work

jesus.exe

Oh, well then why do you need to restrict yourself to arbitrary "True Facts"

user92578

eriksvedang.com/world-of-pong

Wardy

seriously?

Kevin van der Velden

@Tyyppi_77 oh, I recall an article about someone playing UT2004 with and thinking they were real

jesus.exe

Ok, and I'm explaining how you fix the problem you listed.

GnomeSlice

2:46 PM

indiedb.com/games/sword-scroll

4

jesus.exe

@Wardy Lets use problem solving :)

GnomeSlice

This guy posts so much of his development process

it's awesome

Wardy

maybe i misunderstood what you were saying

jesus.exe

There's too many voxels to process with an O(n) algorithm, or even an O(log(n))

Lokkij

@GnomeSlice Looks pretty

jesus.exe

2:47 PM

That's what I got from you

Wardy

@GnomeSlice love that!

@jesus.exe essentially yes

GnomeSlice

His progress reports are the shit indiedb.com/games/sword-scroll/news

jesus.exe

@Wardy Trick question! You only need to process the voxels along the ray you are looking at

That's view distance / voxel size, no matter what

Wardy

ah ok ... sounds like we are talking about a similar / same solution just hte terminology was different

so basically just argued that we agree

lol

GnomeSlice

Mick's suspension is up, but I see he's switched to a sock to evade it anyway.

jesus.exe

2:49 PM

It's not up

Wardy

yes basically the idea is to produce a scene with a fixed workload which basically boils down to screen resolution

GnomeSlice

Yes it is.

jesus.exe

So since you have N voxels in the direction you look in, you can just linearly scan them, sure, but binary search would be better

MickLH

Chat was glitching, had to reset cache

GnomeSlice

And just so you know, evading suspension with a sock can get you months of suspension.

Speaking from experience.

MickLH

2:50 PM

dgaf what would I lose?

stress.

Wardy

@jesus.exe I was thinking that even that would be too slow since I can't store that many in ram in a reasonable amount of time

Kevin van der Velden

@GnomeSlice those were sad days =[

MickLH

I'd lose stress.

@Wardy Right, this is getting to the real issue, culling

And streaming

Streaming kindof comes naturally with culling

Wardy

but my noise function would give me the exact point along the ray anyway so no need to search at all

user92578

I seriously thought that the jesus.exe you guys were talking about was similar to "nope.dat"

MickLH

2:51 PM

@Wardy This is even better, this is what I always wanted. I thought there was a problem with this though...............................

Almo

@William'MindWorX'Mariager I don't think it is, actually.

Wardy

@MickLH problem with what? the approach?

MickLH

Yes. I mean, I don't see a problem...... Just, you aggressively shut me down every time I suggested that.

Wardy

I'm thinking that a fractal based algo would gen the right meshing info

MickLH

I still don't understand how meshing is a win

Please enlighten me

Wardy

2:53 PM

and using the same data set I could gen everyhting from normal maps to textures to meshing

Kevin van der Velden

@jesus.exe how would you binary search the first non-empty voxel?

Wardy

@MickLH are you thinking of doing all this on the gpu ?

MickLH

@KevinvanderVelden Camera, view distance, compute median

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden its a good question ... more so when you consider that the "ray" might encompass say .... 10 million voxels

MickLH

@Wardy Yes the main benefit is getting all the computation in parallel

Wardy

2:54 PM

ah ok

i'm still working on the cpu at this point

I seriously think that a gpu based implementation is the likely the way to go though

Almo

how can I get an exception from java code... when it's not even running?

gcm.unregister();

Wardy

but I want to get my head round the logic whilst i understand the language i'm working in

Almo

has the red squiggly like it's wrong, but it says "unhandled exception"

Wardy

once I get the code right in a known tech i'll move over to gpu based

@Almo threaded code by any chance?

MickLH

@Almo maybe gcm.unregister states that it throws but the function you're calling it from does not state that it throws

Wardy

2:56 PM

I get that all the time when I stop unity then get an exception a few seconds later lol

Almo

so it didn't actually throw an exception, it's just telling me I need to handle them?

Kevin van der Velden

I poked someone who is gonna poke someone who could change the chat link colour! :D

MickLH

yes, I think IntelliJ does that

Almo

ok I'll check that thanks.

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden broswer add on perhaps?

Kevin van der Velden

2:58 PM

@Wardy I already made that

But no this is the someone who maintains chat at SE

Almo

That's the error you are getting :

java.io.IOException: MAIN_THREAD

It means you are calling the register method from the main thread, which is not allowed. You should call it from another thread.

Kevin van der Velden

I don't know who the someone is, I poked Jin who does site styling

Jon

YEAH!

I know jin

Wardy

@KevinvanderVelden cool

GnomeSlice

Want to know about indie game marketing? Check this one out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEQtMP2CuA with @IndieGameGirl

Tweeted by HolgEntertain on March 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM

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