Game Development

Since this is the first full test run of my engine I keep finding issues left and right.

Like, the D-Pad navigation that doesn't check the hidden flag for GUI objects...

PearsonArtPhoto

Nice.

I'm probably going to have to do something that will at least lightly support D-Pad navigation to fix one of the issues someone pointed out to me.

Stephane Hockenhull

Screencast 2017 09 17 21:57:47

►

PearsonArtPhoto

Sigh, another instance of the compiled game build running different then when I run it in the editor...

Stephane Hockenhull

It's still placeholder graphics until I finish all the navigation and fix the remaining GUI issues.

Man, YouTube really butchers that red cursor in 480p videos.

I've just added the view-controller system this weekend to handle events from groups of UI objects.

So I can build menu screens, dialog boxes, etc.

PearsonArtPhoto

Nice.

I'm going to have to start doing that kind of stuff...

Stephane Hockenhull

1:10 AM

Just fixed an issue with UI element properties that they didn't copy over from UI templates.
It's a whole lot of little issues that I keep tripping over.

Minor thing but man is that tedious. Only thing that makes me happy about it is that after that they're fixed for good and next game should be much smoother sailing.

Chris McFarland

#justuithings

Stephane Hockenhull

One nice thing is I realized that the UI property system will make localization so much easier.

All I need to do is add "String ID" feature to the string property type and have it switch according to language. Properties can already be changed dynamically and all the UI elements updates.

I can add the same feature to the image property type

Chris McFarland

Very nice

I've spent like 2 weeks going through UI design work to try and figure out how I want my item system to be this time
Lots of trial and error but finally have settled I think

Stephane Hockenhull

The menu items are set to resize according to the string but there's also a maximum set at which point the text itself shrinks for those languages with unreasonably long words.

I'm looking at you Germany.

Chris McFarland

haha :)

PearsonArtPhoto

1:23 AM

Yeah, the little things are annoying...

I had to add in my own localization system...

Chris McFarland

Yep

This is what I'm going for atm

video: i.imgur.com/mkXobHd.mp4

PearsonArtPhoto

Figured out why the difference between the two modes, now fixing the issue might be a bit trickier...

Stephane Hockenhull

Nice. I still have to implement UI animations.

PearsonArtPhoto

Well, I've partially fixed it. I'm going to have to re-think my navigation some to resolve the issue... Sigh.

Chris McFarland

yeah, if it's boring, make it jiggle

re-thinking happens!

PearsonArtPhoto

1:38 AM

LOL.

I'm actually going to do that exact advice.

The Mattbat999

I have just been sitting there trying figure out how to add more vertexes to a plane in Maya for the past 5 minutes and now I am like "what the crap are you doing? Hit the thing that says 'Add more vertexes', idiot!!!!". Now, I figured it out. 😃

PearsonArtPhoto

LOL. We all have those moments.

Well, I think I'm done for now, so... Talk to you all later!

Stephane Hockenhull

I realized I never actually tested if the resize-button-within-limit worked...

Done.

@ChrisMcFarland GUI system is ready for languages that are paid by the letter. :P

Chris McFarland

2:04 AM

yes, charge customers based on how lengthy their dialect is

Stephane Hockenhull

@ChrisMcFarland is it intended that the /10 in the life bar is behind the red fill?

Chris McFarland

It's attempting to not be the highlight of what you're looking at

A part of me doesn't like it
In theory I could not have any numbers
But I want numbers
But I don't want them on the side
Nor above

Stephane Hockenhull

It doesn't match the rest of the numbers :(

Chris McFarland

mmmmmm :(

Stephane Hockenhull

I think roguelikes need numbers.

Chris McFarland

2:17 AM

yeah, the rawness of knowing how the system works, or where your stats are at, is good

Stephane Hockenhull

It's a very nerdy game style to start with

Otherwise, I dunno...

Chris McFarland

If there wasn't any leveling then I don't think it would matter

like in a 1v1 fighter, for example

Stephane Hockenhull

I think it'd remove from seeing the improvement from armors if it wasn't there.

Chris McFarland

yeah. numbers = trackable growth

Stephane Hockenhull

you can't really feel a 10% AC improvement otherwise

Chris McFarland

2:20 AM

and the player wants to grow and grow (without becoming so overpowered that it becomes too easy, mind)

Almo

trackable irrelevant growth if the monsters just scale with you :)

I know that's how RPGs work.

Stephane Hockenhull

shhhhhhhhh! don't tell the players that

Almo

I just find it odd how well it works. :)

Chris McFarland

Gotta throw in difficulty spikes

Almo

:)

Chris McFarland

2:21 AM

like in Diablo 2, you go from Normal to Nightmare, there's a considerable spike

Stephane Hockenhull

It's more the fun of going back to previous regions and kicking butt

But that's only for non-linear-travel games

Almo

@ChrisMcFarland yeah

Chris McFarland

I'm strongly considering having rooms that are "hard" just for the sake of feeling hard (eg every mob is stronger)

Stephane Hockenhull

phrasing

Chris McFarland

:p

That's where elite mobs come in too though

easy trash and then some difficult encounters

WoW flat out takes the cake in gating your progress though

"you can't enter the dungeon because your average item level is too low"

so you scurry around getting geared up enough, finally you can go in

it's tough but manageable, do some runs, acquire better gear, things feel easier
all the while trying to get your item levels higher to scale up to do the next dungeon that is also gated away

Stephane Hockenhull

2:28 AM

Hrm, I think there's should be a "enter anyway".
I get telling people who don't know and would stop playing coz they can't figure out their gear sucks but there's a lot of fun in going into a region you're nowhere near the level for.

Chris McFarland

mmmm, that's for the dungeon/raid finder anyway
I think you can still walk into the dungeons if you really wanted to, or with a group of friends

Stephane Hockenhull

Or beat everything using the starter stick of slight monster annoyance.

Chris McFarland

but eh, games like that, the end-game is sitting around waiting to try and find a party

rather than actually playing the whole time the client is open

over the past 2 weeks I really did consider not using a leveling system, just keep damage flat (well, randomly changing) and have modifiers change to spice things up... It could work, but I dunno, there is fun in levels and numbers forever increasing

even if you do have to have the game roughly follow along with you

do the lvl 99 korean grind

or something lol

Stephane Hockenhull

I just checked the question doppelgreener linked about PHP and non-deterministic evaluation of expressions.

That is terrible

That potentially makes floating point rounding issues even worse.

Chris McFarland

ah yikes

Almo

2:50 AM

yeah php is evil

Stephane Hockenhull

I'm using fixed points in my AIs for this game so that multiplayer can be completely deterministic, easy cheat checks.

and that PHP thing just made me twitch :P

it'd be a nightmare to debug.

I still have to implement the fixed point square root code. Right now I'm still using sqrt()

oh wait, nevermind. sqrt is supposed to be deterministic

But [CITATION NEEDED]

user92578

6:52 AM

HNQ potential here: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/148528/…

Chris McFarland

>After Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect, nobody cares about LGBT characters in RPGs anymore, unless they're horribly written.

haha

Bálint

10:51 AM

@ChrisMcFarland Dragon age inquisition had one too, didn't it?

And I think you could say that to literally every character

Chris McFarland

Dunno

Bálint

> No one cares about [character type] unless they're horribly written

If by horribly written you mean stereotypic

user92578

11:08 AM

user92578

Called it.

Chris McFarland

ahahaha

The Mattbat999

@Tyyppi_77 Just make sure the character has an Uzi if you fear not enough attention will be on them. Flying lead gets everyone's attention!

user92578

lol exactly, my uzis shoot two bullets just to make sure the focus is there

The Mattbat999

@Tyyppi_77 nononononono... they gotta lay waste to some medium-important character(s) or else no one cares. They just need to use a whole clip or 2... maybe 5? Idk

Chris McFarland

11:18 AM

2k rep
I can moderate the queue now
ahhh yea

>You need at least 3k reputation to review close votes.

;_; rip

The Mattbat999

@ChrisMcFarland good job on 2k rep, though

Chris McFarland

haha thanks

The Mattbat999

@ChrisMcFarland Of course, I am a low rep guy.... :(

Chris McFarland

Everyone starts at zero

The Mattbat999

@ChrisMcFarland actually 1, but thanks

Chris McFarland

11:24 AM

Oh true, nice

But yes, don't worry about your point score

Worry about making a game instead heh

user92578

^

Tom 'Blue' Piddock

Afternoon

tips hat

Mithrandir

Yeah, rep isn't important - focus on quality and it'll shoot up ;)

user92578

hey there

Chris McFarland

Greeetz @Tom'Blue'Piddock

The Mattbat999

11:29 AM

@ChrisMcFarland yeah.

Chris McFarland

RNG loot machine is underway

var rarity = game.RollRandomRarity(seedFactory_roomCreation);
var weaponPrefab = db.GetRandomWeaponPrefab(seedFactory_roomCreation);
var newModifiers = game.RollRandomModifiers(rarity, weaponPrefab);

I never even managed to code this last year :( but finally getting there now

PearsonArtPhoto

11:45 AM

Dev Blog- Colonial Sea Trader- Playtesting at District Arcade, UX improvements. colonialseatrader.com/blog/index.php/2017/09/18/…

Shaun Wild

Your website is blocked in my workplace.. Your game must be getting kinda popular :P

The Mattbat999

I felt stupid yesterday trying to add vertexes to an object in Maya... I figured it out, but why it took me so long was slightly embarrassing

PearsonArtPhoto

LOL, I really doubt that...

It must be tied to the words on the site.

The transparent signs don't change the color of the text. Does that seem reasonable?

user92578

I was just going to mention that, as I'd also fade the text

PearsonArtPhoto

Good to note. Will add it to my list.

user92578

12:03 PM

yup, makes the sign feel like one thing instead of background + overlay text

Bálint

@ShaunWild There's an easy workaround

Open translate.google.com

Set the from language to Chinese, the out to english, paste the url to the chinese side and click the outcome

It acts like a wrapper and nobody blocks google translate

PearsonArtPhoto

Fair enough.

That's bound to leave it as interesting...

Bálint

@PearsonArtPhoto Looks better this way

PearsonArtPhoto

Good to know:-)

I might get rid of the particles below the ship, haven't decided yet...

The Mattbat999

@PearsonArtPhoto I would remove it

user92578

12:12 PM

I like those, kinda look like water splashes caused by the boat

PearsonArtPhoto

I'll remove it for now, but I'll consider putting something in if I can come up with a better way to do water splashing.

The Mattbat999

@Tyyppi_77 I would make them tighter around the ship, because it looks like a big circle right now

PearsonArtPhoto

I'm going to have to come up with something interesting if I want to make it look live waves. As it is now, it's kind of boring.

I have a few ideas, but they all rely on custom shaders, and quite frankly that's a really low priority.

user92578

1:53 PM

argh glbinding only offers premade binaries for 64 bit...

user92578

I hate having to build stuff on my own

Steve's a D

I'm new to UE, and I have a question about blue prints. I'm using UE 4.17.

I have some stuff in the level blue print (like mouse event listeners) that just get tied up automatically when the level loads.But I don't want to put a ton of complex code in the level blue print, I want to break it up.

Is the "Game Mode Base" a base class I should use? player controller?

user92578

2:12 PM

I don't think we have a lot of active UE users here in chat.

Steve's a D

bummer

PearsonArtPhoto

Someday I'm going to learn UE...

Steve's a D

im liking it a lot so far

only real problem im running into is finding quality textures, i'm not very artistic-y

user92578

aight so looks like I'll have to abandon this nice C++ OpenGL wrapper thingy :(

user92578

it only supports 64-bit binaries and there's no way I'm reconfiguring everything just for this

Almo

2:20 PM

Isn't that like saying "the nice PHP object oriented programming wrapper"?

user92578

not exactly

user92578

like this added type safety to the OpenGL API as much as adding it is possible

Almo

:D

I mean that if it's C++ and OpenGL it can't be "nice"

Shaun Wild

Isn't that SDL?

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Tyyppi_77 That's seems a bit weird to me..

user92578

2:21 PM

oh yeah my bad, ARM is 32-bit too, right?

Kevin van der Velden

There's 32 bit ARM architectures and 64bit ARM architectures

user92578

naw ARM doesn't work either for me :(

Kevin van der Velden

Yes, unless you have a ARM processor in your desktop (you don't) you need an x86 or x64 build

user92578

I guess I'll try to ask CMake to build a x64 project file and then try to configure that manually

user92578

2:54 PM

aight so the game does run again

user92578

rendering does not work one bit though, I was kinda hoping that my fixed pipeline renderer would atleast work a little

user92578

It's something!

Kevin van der Velden

Getting rid of SDL to get shaders?

user92578

yup

user92578

3:09 PM

I've forgotten pretty much everything about the little I used to know about OpenGL

user92578

Heyyy, that's pretty good

user92578

(I'll try to limit my meaningless progress update images from now on)

user92578

I'm a little confused as to what is happening to the purple guy and the falling sprites

user4704

3:31 PM

@Steve'saD Those are both things you could use; you could also put functions in a freestanding Blueprint library. It mostly depends on what specific functionality you're dealing with. I'd put stuff dealing with input handing in the player controller, probably.

Steve's a D

3:44 PM

@JoshPetrie okay that helps a lot, thank you!

TLDR: if you're interested in knowing the specifics and providing feedback, if not no worries

it's a basic RTS setup i'm making, so i'm doing the character selection and walking stuff, i could see the walking code being in a separate base class so no matter what type of unit i make, it can have the ability to walk i guess?

then i'm thinking selection code in the player controller, with a flag for each character that says if it's selected or not so it can display a selected visual. Thoughts?

user4704

In an RTS, the "player" has agency over many units, I'd consider the "player controller" to essentially be controlling the camera and managing a selection.

user4704

Each unit should be able to handle its locomotion itself; mostly you should be able to use UE's built-in AI controllers and navigation for that.

Steve's a D

oh okay, i wasn't sure how to tie in the camera yet

yeah i have units walking and stuff, but i can only select one at a time, and most of the code is in level blue print :(

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Tyyppi_77 Game Coding Complete suggests a way to make a game editor like such: have your main game classes be inherited from once for the actual game, and once for the editor, and plug the editor classes as a dll that exports the functions, and use a c# program to edit the game. Did you do something like that?

user92578

Uuuh this a tough one to explain
Not really no, I feel like my editor doesn't have a whole lot of features that I actually needed from the main game
I have a few wrapper classes that make managing entities easier so that I don't need to remember to remove them from all the places an entity has to be removed and so on

user92578

3:57 PM

Oh and I guess a large difference that my editor is in-game, that approach sounds like it's made for a separate program

user4704

The DLL bit is, yeah.

user4704

It lets you build the UI in C#.

user4704

Unreal does the same thing, sans the DLL-and-C# stuff.

user92578

I'm having some trouble figuring out what the actual inheritance part accomplishes? Limited access to the data (more access for the editor?)?

user4704

It could accomplish nothing. :D

user4704

4:00 PM

(e.g., it could be bad OO).

user4704

Unreal uses it to virtualize some top-level functionality so that that functionality can be transacted in editor builds, or do other more complex bookkeeping.

user4704

It's a bit questionable in places.

user92578

It's been a while since I worked on my editor but I think the essence of it boils down to using the same pipeline that I use for loading entities from a level file, i.e. feeding a map of properties (loaded from an XML file when playing, built from a wrapper-entity map when in editor) to a factory method.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Tyyppi_77 Yeah, that approach has 2 different programs..

@Tyyppi_77 That sounds a bit like what I have in mind!

@JoshPetrie Do you think it's a bad approach?

user4704

@AlexandreVaillancourt In general, not necessarily.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

4:08 PM

I've been reader Game Engine Architecture too but the author does not seem to give pointers on how an editor could work, just what it could/should do ;)

user4704

4:29 PM

iirc it's pretty old at this point, and so might be pushing some out-of-vogue design ideas.

user4704

it presumably missed the whole "web based editor" trend that rose and fell a while back

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@JoshPetrie Are we talking about the same book? Released in 2014.

And "web based editor"? I've heard about using TCP/IP locally to communicate between the editor and the game being edited (instead of using an exported DLL as described above), but I'm not sure what a web based editor would look like..

user4704

Yes; didn't realize it had a second edition though.

user4704

Just like it sounds; using a web view to render the editor UI and stuff, building the editor GUI with HTML and JS and such.

user4704

Stingray uses it still.

user4704

4:39 PM

It's really a terrible idea, ime.

user4704

Unless perhaps your studio is very invested in building web-based stuff already. But in that case you probably aren't writing your own native engine either, so...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

It seems a great idea in theory, but yeah, terrible idea in practice.

Mainly because you don't have much control over the browser you'll be using "we must stick to Firefox 24, because 25 breaks everything."

Almo

5:34 PM

creating steam test accounts

if you use the same password for 5 accounts, it will disallow further use of that password

PearsonArtPhoto

6:03 PM

So I'm considering a fundamental change to how CST works, but really won't affect gameplay much in the end.

Right now you can go explore anywhere in the world. I'm toying with only being able to go between cities, but still keeping the map as it is at the moment.

I guess you could still "stop" somewhere in the middle of no where, if stopped, but only set a destination that is either a city, or some other noted landmark.

Bálint

6:18 PM

What the hell

I just searched for "spinner" on google

And instead of getting my profile picture I got a fidget spinner

Almo

:D

user4704

8:14 PM

Whoa, new top nav is here.

Stephane Hockenhull

9:46 PM

top nav?

Mithrandir

39

Q: New top bar is coming to the Stack Exchange network

Updated timeline: changes rolled out on meta.se and to Mods on all sites on Monday (9/18) Assuming no significant issues are discovered we will roll out to all sites within the next couple weeks I'm the new product manager for the DAG team. I’m excited to announce that the top ...

Stephane Hockenhull

neat ... I guess.

10

Q: How can I use the Kinect as a microphone in Linux?

I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and the Kinect camera has type Microsoft_Xbox_NUI_Sensor_043367545147-02-Sensor. I can access the Kinect's camera from a Linux program that I'm writing, but I'd also like to use its microphone for voice communication. How can I do that?

linux kinect voice

I was thinking this might belong better on Ubuntu or some generic Linux SE..
Checked the comments, sure enough people had that discussion

But Gnemlock deleted his comments so there's little context left to the discussion

I would have upvoted what I assume is his argument that it'd be better answered on another SE site. But I can only infer that from the remaining comments :P

dot_Sp0T

Hey folks, is there any reason to not have an ortho go from 0 to with (left to right), 0 to height (top to bottom)? I.e. would I ever have anything but 0 for the left/top edge of the screen?

Stephane Hockenhull

I do exactly that for my UI system

Only thing you gotta remember is that your triangles are now flipped from the de-facto 3D so you need to invert your triangle culling settings or turn it off.

dot_Sp0T

10:02 PM

yeah, I was just wondering because most ortho formulae seem to distinguish between left and right, so there must be a good reason for not using 0 and width instead I thought - so you come here I thought

Stephane Hockenhull

Only minor issue is that in theory you quadruple your float precision errors but that's not an issue in practice. You got 24 bits of precision so integers [0 .. 16777216] can be represented exactly.

And yes, [0..16777216] as opposed to [0..16777216) because floating point magic! :P

DukeZhou

@PearsonArtPhoto People either walked away from our table looking shell shocked (or inexplicably angry in one instance) or with a s*it-eating-grins on their faces.

Obviously the last case is the money, but I'm happy the reactions were powerful. (Ambivalence is the only negative result imo, from a marketing perspective. No publicity is bad publicity;) Reactions to great art should be powerfully affecting!

It was quite validating to have people come back to our table and give us the "best in show vote." You can never tell if people are being honest face-to-face, but no one had to walk back to our table to vote for us, so those reactions we can trust.

My marketing guy was watching the crowd (by contrast, I was talking to developers.) He noted that engagement time on most games was a few minutes, then move on. Of the people who played Mbrane, nearly all played multiple rounds.

!Warning: Mbrane may be addictive!

PearsonArtPhoto

10:30 PM

@DukeZhou Interesting.

I never did get any best of show, but, oh well.

DukeZhou

@PearsonArtPhoto but you're still earlier in development. Our game is just about ready to go live.

PearsonArtPhoto

Fair enough.

DukeZhou

(Sounded like there were definitely a number of people interested in Sea Trader!)

PearsonArtPhoto

It seems like I should be further with almost 2 years.

Yes, there was, which is good.

I had a school teacher who came up and was considering it for use in his class (Social studies)

DukeZhou

@PearsonArtPhoto and aren't you just developing in your free time? (MClass games is a team, but everyone is working for sweat equity, and we all still have day jobs or school. It's taken us a year just to get this very simple app into shape on iOS and Android.)

PearsonArtPhoto

10:33 PM

This is true enough, one person developing in limited free time.

DukeZhou

My developer had me watch "Indie Game: The Movie" on Netflix. It was worthwhile seeing the struggles of other indie developers, and the sacrifices they had to make, even where they had some funding.

PearsonArtPhoto

I need to do that.

Stephane Hockenhull

10:54 PM

Screencast 2017 09 18 19:47:50

►

testing palettized GUI recolor shader

Got that working :P

Better without the 2-color test checker pattern

Chris McFarland

@DukeZhou That's cool that your team has gotten so far, good luck on the next step! (what game is it if I might ask?)

DukeZhou

mbrane.rocks

(little bit of bragging to on that site to boost excitement;)

Stephane Hockenhull

:D

Nice, 2P Sudoku battle

Chris McFarland

Sweet

yea, validation from other people is always nice :)

Stephane Hockenhull

@DukeZhou Where did you just showcase it? I missed that part

DukeZhou

11:09 PM

Mbrane is the app. [M] is the set of games the apps will express: fundamentalcombinatronics.com/rules-of-m

PearsonArtPhoto

Local indie game event.

Both of us were there.

I should have worn my diamond cap, just for the fun of it.

DukeZhou

More info at mclassgames.com

@StephaneHockenhull District Arcade

Small event, but well attended

I'm hoping to "fly below the radar" for at least a year to avoid attention of deep-pocket players (app game companies) that may be inclined to try and clone

So we're happy to finally be getting it out there, but also sort of trying to keep it on the QT

PearsonArtPhoto

I got a bunch of good feedback for my game, and Duke got a lot of validation.

Stephane Hockenhull

Well, if you can afford it you should maybe do the opposite and go all out to get the market before the big company clone your game.

DukeZhou

@StephaneHockenhull no funding, unfortunately.

But we do have a patent pending, and based on some recent copyright cases (Tetris vs. Xiao and LolApps vs. SpryFox) I'm fairly confident Apple and Google are not going to want to take on potential liability by allowing clones.

No guarantees, but at least taking steps to avoid getting 2048'd

Stephane Hockenhull

11:15 PM

Good luck.

DukeZhou

@StephaneHockenhull Thanks. (Although the who point of the game is eliminating luck, I suspect we'll need a little bit!)

Stephane Hockenhull

I'm actually working on a clone of some other game right now :D
But it has improvements and the original has been mostly abandoned long time ago.

DukeZhou

@StephaneHockenhull I think that's totally fine, so long as the original developer is not trying to keep it proprietary. Improving mechanics is a worthy pursuit!

On this project, I'm just hoping we can get the space to develop ourselves, in a condition where we have no funding.

One of the complaints about the Tetris situation was that the clone apps were better software.

But we're also going to keep the basic game free, and only lightly try to monetize though in-app purchase of extensions.

That strategy worked like a charm for FlowFree

Stephane Hockenhull

I'm thinking about adding hats DLC

DukeZhou

You can never go wrong with hats!

We're also going to try to monetize themed version. The game and app kernel are so compact, we can just slap pictures over the integers (8=castle) and have a more Catan-ey feeling game, without the dice

then we can do WWI, WWII, Sci-fi, etc., but good art costs money, in my experience

But we're already had interest expressed in themed versions. I never thought the abstract game (integers only) would be a product, but when I started testing, a significant subset went crazy for it.

Good validation of the strength of the core mechanics: similar depth and emergent complexity to Chess and Go, but with less rules and no special conditions. ~10 min for the basic game, which is perfect for coffee breaks.

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