Game Development - 2017-06-05

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12:01 AM

Anyone have any advice on a quick and easy EULA for the App Stores? (We're not monetizing yet, so no in-app purchases to cover, and not data mining, so the scope of the app currently is just a self contained, solo-game.)

Found this site, which looks pretty solid: simpleeulas.weebly.com/fair-eulas.html

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@DukeZhou Could you hire a legal person to do that?

Because if you have a website for the app, most likely some data will be saved on the user machine (e.g. cookies)...

We will, but it's specialized and not worth it until we determine if people are actually going to be interested enough in the game

We're collecting nothing at first to reduce our exposure

(it's only worth doing if we're popular)

Initially it going to be limited to email addresses only, with some basic demographic info, and right now, this only for our closed beta

The app has no networking and libGDX is the only 3rd party code

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Oh, ok!

I can't suggest anything sorry!

:)

No worries. I know a fair amount about contract law, and that "fair Eula" seems to be sufficient for now

But I figured I'd ping here on chat to see if anyone has any thoughts on the matter

10 hours later…

Free Internet Points

10:18 AM

1

Q: Mono Develop unable to load plugins or editor

When I load up MonoDevelop, it gives me an error, saying how it could not load the C# editor and plugins for my project. I have had this problem for as long as I can remember, and I can still use MonoDevelop to create scripts. However, MonoDevelop no longer acts like an IDE, more like Notepad+. ...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

11:10 AM

@JoshPetrie Should this be a candidate for a community wiki:

2

Q: NullReferenceException in Unity

Since many users are facing the NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object error in Unity, I thought that it would be a good idea to gather from multiple source some explanation and ways to fix this error. Symptoms I am getting the error below appearing in...

unity exceptions

I think the intention was to have a go-to answer for the nullRef exception, but it was not posted as such..

Is there any benefit to making it community wiki?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I don't know :)

@doppelgreener You want more answers on that question, is that it?

> One or more of the answers is exemplary and worthy of an additional bounty.

I'm not asking for extra answers, just giving a +100 to Gnemlock's answer.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Can't you award it directly?

user image

Bounties can't be awarded during the first 24 hours.

I figure that gives someone the chance to post an answer that beats the pants off of the other one.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

11:21 AM

Ah, ok, the 7 day delay got me confused..

That's just standard also. :)

You'll probably see me posting other bounties for sub-10k users for nice answers.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah

PearsonArtPhoto

11:50 AM

Dev Blog- Colonial Sea Trader- More dialog polishing! kd7uiy.com/2017/06/dev-blog-colonial-sea-trader-improving.html

12:19 PM

@PearsonArtPhoto looking good

PearsonArtPhoto

Thanks!

I'm almost done with my polishing streak, now I'm more of doing polishing bad UI that shows up occasionally.

Nice, hopefully you make good progress on that.

12:51 PM

Finding Motivation

Folding Ideas on motivation & completing projects. (youtube.com/watch?v=AIr9GeVzHRw)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I forgot my headphones at home today :(

@AlexandreVaillancourt those are such a vital survival tool for me that I have to have a separate work-only headset so that i'll never leave it at home.

PearsonArtPhoto

1:15 PM

I learned many years ago that having a set of headphones at work was a good idea. And not the earbud kind that break easily, a decent over the ear kind. I've never regretted it, and still have the same ~$25 pair I bought some 8 years ago.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@doppelgreener Yeah; I usually carry them with me but I left in a hurry this morning and I forgot to pick them up. They're noise cancelling so I usually just put them on and turn them on in the bus, without even listening to music...

@PearsonArtPhoto I have the predecessor to these; used to have on-ear headphones but then I had a manager that insisted nobody should be wearing big headphones. (They never noticed anyone using earbuds though.)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@PearsonArtPhoto Yeah, that's the kind I have, earbud kind tend to hurt after a couple of hour..

@AlexandreVaillancourt oh noooo!

PearsonArtPhoto

I hate in ear headphones...

1:24 PM

I didn't used to like them but these are super nice.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

2:08 PM

To learn network programming, should I use an existing engine like UE but re-write the network code?

user4704

No.

user4704

If you want to start learning sockets, et cetera, I'd suggest just starting with a simple console chat type program or something; just opening sockets and sending data around between two processes.

user4704

Trying to work on that from within the framework of UE might be prohibitively tedious as you try to work around all UE's networking assumptions and specific design decisions.

PearsonArtPhoto

I did something similar with bluetooth.

Which really is just another socket. I opened up two clients on different phones and had them pass back and forth a bit of data.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Ah, right; and if I eventually want to make a game over that, I could build the network layer using another set of engines (Ogre, BulletPhysics at al)?

Free Internet Points

2:28 PM

1

Q: How can I set the duration of a splash screen?

I am using Unity Pro, so I have all Splash Screen Tools available. I have a full screen image which I want to use as my splash screen. I want my splash screen to remain on the screen for n seconds. I want the splash screen to be cropped if it is not a perfect fit to the device's screen size. ...

unity timing fullscreen splash-screen

Next music review is up.

almosmusicblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/…

I agree that you should absolutely definitely start small learning network programming.

networking for a game is the opposite of that.

very true doppel

my first-semester networking projects involved learning about the structure of IP addresses and subnet masks, the OSI model layers of networking, the role of routers/modems/switches/repeaters, the structure of TCP/IP and UDP packets, and setting up a small simulated office network using a CISCO network simulator into which we could add & configure virtual computers and routers and switches and so on.

that was ostensibly in the context of training us to be network technicians in the business world, but that goes to show how small the foundations get.

2:44 PM

yeah

Ah well you don't need all of that OSI and IP knowledge to write working software that does networking. You need to understand the difference between TCP & UDP and need to have some knowledge about bytes & buffers. The rest is handled by your library.

i agree, some of that learning would be unnecessary for games.

i think learning about the OSI model would still be helpful to understand the context you're working in -- and to understand when something might not be because of your code, because there's other factors involved.

I mean it's good to understand. But it's like that with most subjects. E.g. you don't need to understand how a Classloader works in Java, but you should understand what it does.

Oh knowing the basics about the OSI model is definitely something helpful. But again, already knowing that there is something called OSI model and OSI layers is a good start. And it really becomes only important when you go down to the level of tracing packages or meddling with firewall rules - which is a fun subject on its own :D

that's all true \o/

Oh now I wanna go do some packet tracing at the park

Alexandre Vaillancourt

2:56 PM

As long as it's not packet stalking.. :P

Second populist badge..

in 5 days.

user image

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah; I like it (moar rep -> closer to the mod tools), but I'm not that proud of it. That's a thing of being at the right place at the right time...

It's a little bit ridiculous, actually...

user4704

Yep.

user4704

Most of my rep-caps came from getting lucky and getting answers on questions that hit the supercollider, I think.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

But.... that's how you get a badge...

user4704

3:08 PM

Maybe some of the earlier ones came from actually answering a large volume of questions in a day.

user4704

But I don't tend to do that anymore.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

"older" users of the site have a lot of rep, I wonder if the site was more active before...

My memory of the site might be mistaken because of rose-tinted lenses, but I recall much earlier on there were less "help my code doesn't work why"-type questions, so it was more engaging theorywork and the programming questions were more interesting and generally helpful. Then I felt like we were becoming Stack Overflow #2, with all the low-quality poorly-articulated questions that comes with which nobody really wants to read because there is genuinely no benefit.

Around that time I couldn't really find questions I was interested in engaging with, and stopped being active.

I became active on Role-playing Games which I became a diamond moderator of last month and eventually became its second most prolific editor (I have more edits than the next three most prolific editors combined) and I'm going to turn a bit of that energy this way.

There might be a lot of crap poorly-written questions, but as long as they're comprehensible I can increase the visible quality of them and make them more pleasant to read & parse.

90

Q: My wife wants a homosexual child

We are planning to have our first child in about a year. My wife is very much into raising them genderless (or "post-gender" style) while my take on it is that we should raise them in a non-stereotypical manner, keeping an open mind for all there is. I even have problems defining how raising a ch...

parents relationships lgbtq

The sidebar doesn't disappoint me as usual

@Bálint speaking as an LGBT individual, that user's wife has some issues they need to sort out.

3:30 PM

@doppelgreener Yeah, she does

This is why I don't like the concept of the sidebar

If we jut change the perspective of this question, and write it from the mother's view, then I don't think it would get this much or any upvotes

But to be honest, this would be a reason for breaking up for me if no agreement can be made.

I was raised pretty gender-neutral

They let me play with whatever I wanted regardless of wehther it "fit my gender" or not

I turned out pretty normal in terms of gender identity, but without all the usual American-male masculinity paranoia BS

You can leave out the american part, it's pretty much the same everywhere

yeah, I guess so. :)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

3:47 PM

@doppelgreener SO #2, GameDev edition.

"See! I'm sooo LGBT friendly that even my child is LGBT!"

it's just the usual pendulum swing. eventually all this will be normal and people will get on with their lives. It used to be everyone freaked out if a black guy married a white woman. Today, it's not such a big deal.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Raising a kid in "gender neutrality" can be challenging: at least for babies, "gender neutral" clothes can be hard to find, and you'll always have someone to give you "I like to dig with my bulldozer" shirts for boys and "Pretty girl bling bling" stuff for girls...

@AlexandreVaillancourt What?

Nevermind I saw the post

@AlexandreVaillancourt very

She got issues :/

Alexandre Vaillancourt

3:59 PM

@Almo I'd say it's less of a deal, but I'm sure it still is a deal for some people...

yeah

Quick question, do you computer lighting on the gpu as well as render it?

@AlexandreVaillancourt I'm actually terrified how right you are amazon.com/s/…

wow

@ShaunWild Yes, lighting usually happens on the GPU

Sometimes people make it faster by only doing lighting as a post-processing effect, it's called deferred rendering

Alexandre Vaillancourt

4:03 PM

@Bálint Yes, that hurts. I think one of the reasons for this is that is that new-born and baby boys and girl have similar facial traits so it can be hard to tell if the baby is a boy or a girls. The way to 'show' it for a parent is to dress the baby as such...

yeah you're right

hadn't thought of that

This is off-topic, but my god, the Switch is cheaper here than in America

where is "here"

Center-Europe

@JoshPetrie I found a use case for community wiki.

4:06 PM

Everywhere amazon.de ships to

(and revived the request for MathJax)

@doppelgreener in agreement

@Bálint neat :)

370 dollars on Amazon.de, 400 on Amazon.com

It is

The shortage is basically non-existent here

user4704

Still a CW answer though :P

user92578

also on meta

4:08 PM

@JoshPetrie Oh, yeah. CW questions are junk.

user4704

:D

Can't imagine for the life of me a use case I'd ever make a question CW.

user92578

So I don't mean to just bring on hate, but what's the purpose of that meta-question? Is it to compile a list of math-related questions that could benefit from math rendering? Or is it to discuss the need for math rendering?

user4704

The first.

@Tyyppi_77 It's to get a clean slate on the discussion since the one from six years ago, make a fresh request, and compile the list of math-related posts. I feel that doing that last thing inside the request from forever ago wouldn't be as beenficial.

user4704

4:10 PM

Since SE won't turn on MathJax without proof there's a good use for it on a site.

user92578

So should there be a separate discussion on if the community wants that?

user92578

Or do we just assume "yes" since I don't imagine it has any drawbacks?

user4704

The previous question already established that people want it, I think, plus there's been requested for it here in the chat. It's not invasive so I don't see a reason to rehash that discussion.

[checks] RPG.SE established a solid use case with a list of 43 questions, and I've got 22 just from one sitting going through one page of one math-related tag (mathematics) plus the originally raised few questions in previous meta posts.

user92578

All right. To be fair, the initial question is from 2011 but I'm definitely pro-MathJax, just wanted to check.

4:14 PM

Building a use case will consume a bit of time but be ezpz.

We already asked for similar stuff

And it was turned down on other sites

213

Q: LaTeX on Stack Overflow?

MathOverflow has an awesome engine where you can embed LaTeX in questions, answers, and comments. Can we get something like this going on Stack Overflow? I think it’d be appropriate as I at least pretty often want to write something like n^2 and would benefit greatly from prettier markup.

feature-request status-declined markdown latex

2

Q: Can we enable MathJax on GDSE (revisited)?

This has been discussed before in math markdown on this site, but I'd like to have some fresh discussion of this matter. Circumstances have changed in the meantime. The discussion of 2011 seems to consider it a foregone conclusion GDSE can't & won't get MathJax, but sites such as RPG Stack Exchan...

feature-request formatting

@doppelgreener Heh, one of my answers is there

@Bálint Yup! :D

Ten minutes later the list is equal in size to RPG.SE's list and that's only mathematics page 2.

> This is implemented on math.stackexchange.com -- you can check it out there. It will never be on Stack Overflow, though, as it is an extremely heavy dependency. (See also Nick's investigations about impact in November 2013.)

This is from the meta answer above

BTW, I could write an image service, that generates images dynamically

You could create links like http://my-image-service.com/latex/<your latex here> and it sends you an image with the interpreted LaTex

user92578

4:29 PM

@Bálint This was in 2010 though

However it has to have a pretty good hosting to keep up with the demand

And I don't have the money to do that

@Bálint I probably should mention that — in the past few years MathJax became much lighter client side at least.

I remember in around 2011, visiting a page with MathJax would freeze the page for a couple of seconds so it could load. (Like, totally nonresponsive.) That is no longer the case.

@Bálint More recently, RPG.SE and Code Review both received MathJax.

"It was turned down on other sites so we won't get it" is ancient history at this point.

Code review?

Yeah.

21

Q: MathJax on CodeReview

Several times I had the need to write mathematical formulas in my answers on CodeReview.SE. Sometimes, this can be simulated by sup and/or sub HTML tags, as I realized when syb0rg edited my answer here. However, sometimes it is not as easy, for example here, where I had to use code block for one ...

feature-request status-completed formatting mathjax

Why do they need it? They review code, not algorithms

4:41 PM

status-completed

@Bálint Code implements algorithms. To discuss the code and what's going on in it, they often need to talk about the algorithms being implemented.

@doppelgreener I start looking from the end of the math questions

5

A: How can I find a point on a line when I have only two other points?

P = t * (B-A) + A Px = t * (Bx-Ax) + Ax Py = t * (By-Ay) + Ay Px - Ax Py - Ay ------- = ------- (Bx-Ax) (By-Ay) (By - Ay) Py = (Px - Ax) * --------- + Ay (Bx - Ax) (5 - -1) 6 Py = (Px - 2) * ----...

This is a strong one

Alexandre Vaillancourt

4:57 PM

@doppelgreener (can't get used to your name having 2p's) You should probably use 0. instead of * for that list, we'd have an easier way to know how many there are :P

@Bálint thanks :)

@Bálint i just made an edit, accidentally collided with your addition but put them back

@AlexandreVaillancourt oh yeah. done!

Alexandre Vaillancourt

(y)

@Bálint use 0. foo now for list items instead of * foo

Btw, @Bálint are you adding that one you just linked? (It's definitely a strong one.)

ah, it's already in there :D

0

Q: What is the best way to correct a user's reversing of an edit?

Here's the specific question's revisions. https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/posts/135626/revisions Just putting in another edit isn't going to help the user know that the game-design tag isn't right and why. But I feel like this would muddy the comments section of the question to explain there. ...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

5:29 PM

Err what?

0

Q: Unity 3D game keyboard setup

I started to learn Unity 3D games.How could I use models to move through keyboard button?

unclear waht you're asking if I ever saw one

5:44 PM

@Almo hmmm... I used up all my votes for the day and can't vote on that one. D':

I wanna give it a downdoot

:D

@doppelgreener done, we need to help each other out wherever we can

@dot_Sp0T haha, thank you.

I sometimes forget that downvotes are an actual thing

Alexandre Vaillancourt

And it's free on questions :)

5:51 PM

yeah

i don't downvote many answers because it costs

I have to really think it's a bad answer to downvote

@Almo or you really need that one upvote more on yours so it is displayed first

hahahaha

Alexandre Vaillancourt

6:20 PM

@Almo It's time to answer more questions :P

:D

6:53 PM

phew. the list of mathjax examples just passed 100, and i'm giving that a break for now.

i figure 100 is the point where they'll go "oh. yeah. that's substantial. ok. let's turn on mathjax."

7:32 PM

@PearsonArtPhoto You here?

PearsonArtPhoto

8:18 PM

@ShaunWild What's up?

8:41 PM

@doppelgreener what's the downside of enabling mathjax? isn't that just client side?

we want everyone who visits the site to see the math without having to mess with their browsers

I'm asking the downside, like what is a reason or reasons to not enable it

@PearsonArtPhoto Do you store your game bitmap as the RGB image or do you parse it into another form??

PearsonArtPhoto

9:07 PM

PNG

9:19 PM

@JohnHamilton If you want to consider everything, it won't be available if you use Tor or a very old IE or you disabled JavaScript.

Honestly, the last reason is probably really rare. You have to know exactly what you want to do.

9:33 PM

@JohnHamilton Basically nothing nowadays.

I know of no reason at all not to enable it.

There were reasons in the past -- it slowed down page load majorly -- but I am not aware of that being a current concern. MathJax and browsers have both improved a lot since then.

2 hours later…

11:30 PM

Oh okay

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