Game Development - 2018-01-25

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5:34 AM

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Q: How to ask this question, which has a 7-year-old duplicate?

I want to post a question about creating a "game UI" with javascript and HTML5 canvas. I'm not sure how to keep it on topic because It's basically a recommendation question, It's already been asked and answered here. The existing question was asked 7 years ago (active 4 years ago) and the w...

3 hours later…

8:47 AM

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5 hours later…

user92578

1:26 PM

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user92578

Had to be done

user92578

Should probably add some waves or something while it's transitioning

Looks pretty good.

It is an opportunity to make speedrunners happy or unhappy, if you care about that.

Although I wouldn't know if a cycle that you can barely make or a cycle where you can relax for a second would make them happy or unhappy.

I think the first would make them happy because it lets them show off their skill while the second is just safe and boring.

user92578

Yeah I try to design levels so that if the player plays well, they can catch some cycles

user92578

I do believe there are some levels in the desert area where that's not the case though

1:36 PM

@Tyyppi_77 fantastic!

@Tyyppi_77 speedrunners will figure out how to break it

1 hour later…

PearsonArtPhoto

2:48 PM

Played with mining a few cryptocurrencies, it really isn't worth it...

But I am playing now with Folding@home, which at least if I don't get anything, I know that I'm helping to do research with it.

3:23 PM

@PearsonArtPhoto yup, really not worth it. Unless you find a new one before the difficulty goes up AND you get lucky and it survives long enough for hte price to go up.

PearsonArtPhoto

Yeah, I'm really realizing that.

The thing that kills me is I joined a pool to look for VCash, and I actually found 6 blocks.

But I haven't been able to cash in because I didn't hit the min balance.

And the difficulty has spiked since I started by a factor of ~100 or so...

3:45 PM

:D

your best bet on VCash is staking or incentives, but one is 0.7% annual and the other requires you hold at least 10k

I think RDD stakes at 5% and there is no more mining, so you could try to buy some of that cheap and stake it. Plus RDD stakes based on how long it's been since your coins have staked, not how long the client has been running. so you can run the client for a few hours once every two weeks and get your coins.

Beware anyone in crytpo who is too gung-ho. they're probably invested, underwater, and desperately trying to get others in to help increase the price.

"DASH could go 100x in the next month!" shit like that

PearsonArtPhoto

Yeah.

CURE has a 4% stake, so...

I think I'll just use a bit of real cash and buy a few things.

I guess as long as you see it as a learning opportunity with some amusement it's fine. Just don't see it as an investment.

PearsonArtPhoto

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm doing.

With Folding@home I'm lending my computer to do Alzheimer's research, and making a bit of digital currency to boot.

And I wouldn't put any "real" money into it, just some Christmas cash that I don't know what to do.

Did you buy subnautica and slay the spire yet?

I bet they have a much higher fun/money ratio than crypto currencies.

PearsonArtPhoto

LOL

I have a huge backlog of games to play already, so...

4:00 PM

:D

1 hour later…

Alexandre Vaillancourt

5:26 PM

Anyone knows what's the use of a lock-free atomic variable as opposed to a non-lock-free in c++?

PearsonArtPhoto

Thread safe nature?

21

A: Lock-free multithreaded programming?

The key in lock-free programming is to use hardware-intrinsic atomic operations. As a matter of fact, even locks themselves must use those atomic operations! But the difference between locked and lock-free programming is that a lock-free program can never be stalled entirely by any single threa...

They are both thread-safe. The difference is in performance, progress guarantees and implementation difficulty, but I'm fuzzy on the specifics.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@nwp Thanks!

I guess in my situation I can use either of these. 2 threads, read/written to once per frame..

or something like that.

I can tell you that you definitely don't want to implement this yourself. Supposedly even the great experts figure out after 5 years that their lock-free algorithm was never correct.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Oh, no, don't worry, it's for a BOOL/bool :P

5:37 PM

I think facebook has implementations worth looking at.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

So I'll use std::atomic_flag

Just use std::atomic<bool>.

Should be the same thing but more expressive and consistent with other types.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@nwp The implementation is lock-free then?

It should be for any reasonable platform.

I don't think any implementation actually uses mutexes for std::atomics even though they should.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I gathered that they use underlying OS method calls for that instead..

5:43 PM

No, they are simple assembler instructions. And there is a high chance that you are on an x86-compatible machine where you get so many guarantees it doesn't even matter much if you use atomic<T> or T.

Check godbolt.org if you are curious what it compiles to. You should be pleasantly surprised.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Ah, yeah, ok. Well for the sake of documentation, using atomic<bool> seems the way to go, even if it doesn't have much impact on the code execution per se.

They don't have visual studio :P

They do.

Just need to figure out which year corresponds to which compiler version.

Wait, I swear they do.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Ah, yeah, didn't realize it was under the name 'cl'

(sorry, wrong textbox o_o)

3

x86 MSVC 19 2017 is probably the right one.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

5:51 PM

Yep, latest version of visual studio.

@nwp godbolt.org/g/2GewgH

My asm is old and rusty, but the atomic version still seems to have more stuff going on.

-O3 or it doesn't count.

/O2 for VS

Alexandre Vaillancourt

That's optimization?

Arg

hold on

Yeah. Looking at performance of unoptimized code is not useful.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, I changed browser and forgot to update that

Lol, func2 is just obliterated :P

@AlexandreVaillancourt You can mouse over an instruction to get an explanation of what it does.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

6:05 PM

Sweet!

Your functions don't return a value which might make the compiler go "It's UB anyways, may as well throw the code away".

You can use -O3 -Wall -Werror -pedantic to catch most of that.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, that's most likely what happens.

Then again sometimes C++ compilers do some impressive valid optimizations.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yes. That's why it's no longer worth it to try and outsmart the compiler. ("I'll ++i this loop index instead of i++ it.")

I guess I'll have to try an actual implementation to see the difference!

6:23 PM

anyone here work with android emulators?

mine started crashing if I don't use software rendering, and that's fucking slow

I didn't change anything; it just stopped working one day

PearsonArtPhoto

The default Android emulator is pretty poor.

Genymotion is a good choice, but it might not work well for games.

I think there might be i86 emulators you can use that might be a bit faster too.

You can always delete the emulator and start a new one, it might fix the issue.

ok i'll try that

this is an x86 emu

making a new one still doesn't work

must be some video card driver shit

man i hate PCs

the android 8 one fails, too (the other one is 7.1.1

PearsonArtPhoto

6:40 PM

Genymotion is my biggest suggestion for Android emulators.

ok i'll look into that, thanks

I don't think I can use it; this is at work and they'd have to buy a license

looks good though

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Almo Heh.. some companies can't do math.

How much will it cost to buy the license? 100$. How much will it cost for our dev to wait for the thing to run? At least 200$.

(I'm just pulling numbers out of my head here.)

PearsonArtPhoto

That's right, I've always used the free version...

But seriously, it's worth the license. Talk to your manager.

@AlexandreVaillancourt yeah

Failed on eglChooseConfig
Could not initialize emulated framebuffer
emulator: ERROR: Could not initialize OpenglES emulation, use '-gpu off' to disable it.

What makes me so mad is this was working last week

PearsonArtPhoto

6:55 PM

How big is the company you work for?

around 400

PearsonArtPhoto

$400 a year then for Genymotion. A bit pricey, but still...

i use it so seldom it wouldn't be worth

i can get by with the software rendering, it's just annoying

PearsonArtPhoto

Yeah, that is true...

Android is really finicky, to say the least...

hahahah

to say the least

PearsonArtPhoto

6:59 PM

I haven't played much with it recently, but I did a bunch with the early days.

It used to be a lot worse...

I'm not fully sold on Android Studio yet, but I suppose I haven't really given it a chance.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

IGDA Developer Satisfaction Survey 2017 -- Summary Report (PDF): bit.ly/2017IGDADSSResults

4

7:38 PM

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Q: How should we handle questions asking for specific legal advice?

While questions that touch on the law are generally on-topic here at Game Development, there are subsets of that topic that I think we should clarify our position on. In this case, I'd like to discuss questions that ask for specific legal advice. By that, I mean questions that lay out an asker's...

0

Q: Should we remap the "legal" tag?

Continuing the trend of law-related meta questions... is there anything we can do to the legal tag to provide better guidance as to its use and the kinds of law-related questions that are acceptable here? Or is it fine as it is?

discussion tags

@DukaZhou where art thou?

8:21 PM

@TheMattbat999 lololol (re: software developer)

@TheMattbat999 busy these days trying to work out the basic [M] game trees, demonstrate the 2x2(2x2) solution, and show how that solution applies to mxn(jxk) for all even m, so if you don't ping me directly, I may not come.

@DukeZhou it is true though. At least for me.

Are you a cannibal coder, like myself?

@DukeZhou I have been working on an DOS styled RPG lately. It is actually coming along pretty good for the progress I have made.

PS-- have you downloaded the Mbrane app yet? I'd really like to know what you think. People are saying either (a) the game is too hard, or (b) the game is too easy

(this makes me happier than I can say;)

@TheMattbat999 when you say "DOS styled", what do you mean specifically?

@DukeZhou pixeled and the overuse of billboarding.

8:45 PM

ic. sounds good!

8:56 PM

@DukeZhou Also will includes alot of content we planned for Dark Dungeon.

I'll definitely play it when it's ready, assuming it will run on Mac...

definitely interested to see how you're implementing the ideas

9:08 PM

@DukeZhou not much yet, but I don't think I will have the planned world size.

9:19 PM

Definitely a good idea to keep the scope as narrow as possible at first, to facilitate project completion.

What do you mean project completion? What is that? I've never done that ...

@TheMattbat999 (PS- you don't have to ping me once I'm actually on the chat--was just meaning to say I haven't been checking in regularly lately.)

@npw lolol

9:58 PM

Ok.

10:45 PM

Hello :) Who invited me to chat? :)

Destiny

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