Game Development - 2021-01-19

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1:15 AM

@noobprogrammer Try one way, see how it feels, try the other, see if you like it better. Games have been successful with each, so you'll have to explore what's right for your game yourself.

3 hours later…

4:07 AM

You should make every hit one-hit-kill permadeath.

Then for Hard mode you make the enemies move faster and add a time limit.

6 hours later…

Free Internet Points

10:26 AM

2

Q: Creating Blender-like cavity shader

I'm trying to achieve in Godot something similar to cavity effect from Blender (this can be enabled in viewport options; cube on the left is displayed by viewport with this option enabled): How would you replicate this?

shaders fragment-shader godot

4 hours later…

2:51 PM

@DMGregory What is there to be fixed?

Oh, just the frustrations we chatted about a few weeks back. Lots of low-effort questions, relatively few that really use game development expertise.

Ah right, yes.

I think having one system that tries to simultaneously serve everyone from new learners to professionals might just not be the right model. A graduated system of some kind, with more hand-holding for the beginners (and maybe some kind of auto-filtering to lead them to existing answers) might work better.

Even if we decided to downvote every new questions, I think some gummybears would sympathy-reverse those downvotes.

Yes, we'd need a new stack "learningdev.stackexchange.com".

Yeah, and I'm not sure down-voting is even the right mechanism. For someone steeped in StackExchange practice, it says "you can and should make this question better" but to a new user it says "people here are mean. You should complain about it."

2:57 PM

("..and go away")

So, it doesn't really lead to the constructive behaviour we want. 😕

I heard a site here was something like that, was it biology? Where most of the people there are educated scholars who don't tolerate having layperson questions...

But imagine if the newbie question-asking experience was a bit more like a wizard, where the web page automatically walks them through the kinds of clarifying questions we usually end up posting manually in comments "Select what engine you're using..." "What line throws the error?"

No; also, I suspect "new dev" questions don't have their place in the model that we have here as the same topics, with slight variations, come over and over when learning. And as I've observed, new devs can't easily relate a solution that is pointed to them to their exact issue.

I think there is (was?) something like this on SO for new users.

With Unity in particular, so many common issues crop up that a lot of them could probably be filtered out by a questionnaire and directed to an in-depth tutorial explaining how to reason through the problem - something we really don't have the energy to offer each and every time it's asked.

3:05 PM

I'm not convinced people would read an in-depth tutorial.

I mean, they're coming here to read answers...

But by in-depth I don't really mean "long" so much as "well illustrated"

Are they? Or do they drop a quick question which they solved by themselves 5 minutes later?

This was recently dropped in the Q&A room:
*I've been given a task I don't really understand. It's about QT and network. I understand the basics; we use QNetworkReply class and it's method readAll. The task is:
if the mime type of the file (that we are getting through reply->header(QNetworkRequest::ContentTypeHeader) ) is textual, then we just write it to plainTextEdit. I've done that part. However, if the mime type isn't textual, we are supposed to download it through temporary file and that copy it into chosen file (I'm assuming he meant directory) from File Dialog. It says: "For generati…

I don't want to single them out in particular. My point is more that this is a normal workflow.

And SE is not at all equipped to handle that.

Well, that too. But hey, hopefully they hit that point before they get through the wizard rather than after posting the question. ;)

chat.SE on the other hand is equipped to handle that.

Don't we already have a suggestion wizard type thing?

3:09 PM

Maybe requiring people to ask in chat first is worth considering.

@Pikalek We have one on SO

user image

We have a suggested Q&A section, but its matches aren't great and I don't think it really gets read.

> and I don't think it really gets read.

I thought there was one here too, sort of. My recollection is that when you post, anything that might have been linked as a related question in the side bar shows up before your question gets it's final posting.

I think most issues come from there...

In general.

3:12 PM

@Vaillancourt Yes, I recall that as well. I think I had asked about & was told it was already there. And it was, but it was very miss-able.

That screenshot I'd describe as instructions, rather than a step-by-step wizard. I'm thinking of something where you literally cannot type a question until you've clicked through the steps (which is why it would need to be separated from the expert workflow)

I feel like making the "experts" go through the workflow is better.

Yeah okay :)

@DMGregory Yes, I'd say that's probably a better description.

huh, just started to post a question & got a pop-up I've never seen before.

Ooh?

3:14 PM

1 sec

@Pikalek "Please subscribe to the newsletter"? :P

user image

Yeah, I think that's a band-aid for what really needs to be a structural change.

Might be old news as I don't post questions often myself.

You have not posted any questions yet, that explains :)

3:18 PM

Not here anyway.

I wonder if SE has data about how long it takes for that popup to be closed.

Yes, I suspect this works on a "per site" basis.

Here's the thing I was recalling, when you type in the question title, it gives similar questions:

user image

Yep, it does that.

I'd still agree w/ @DMGregory - that's still not very wizardly compared to better systems

I think that screenshot demonstrates how little effect that has. 😉

3:20 PM

But again, some users don't bother to read, or they think their question is different and unique (❄).

Even if you do read, it's nice & all, but nowhere does it say - "yo, I think we already have that here - did you check these?"

i.e. there's no guidance about what the system is trying to give you or wants you to try to do yourself at that step

You're right, that's probably something that could be suggested on meta.stackexchange.

Off topic, you were two chars away from a winter time TIE fighter: (-❄-)

2

Yeah, some users might even take it as a licence. "What engine should I use?" "Here are a bunch of other questions asking that" "Oh! I guess that's a normal and accepted question to ask here! Great! [posts another one]"

@DMGregory If the are similar closed questions, the system should point that out as well.

3:25 PM

I feel like at that point laziness will work in our favor and they'll peek at answers of the other questions to save time.

And someone steeped in SE practice would know what that means, but a new user....

But yeah, I'd love to find a way to make the path of least resistance lead to reading/watching some basic tutorial material, to filter out the questions that boil down to "learn the language/engine", and use the Q&A for stuff that actually needs another human in the loop.

"A number of existing questions similar to your own have been closed - there's a good chance that your question may be considered off topic for this site. Click here to read more about what is accepted here." Or something like that.

But that is not useful. It just says "go away" without answering the question. And it doesn't offer an alternative either.

You at least need to say "In order for this question to be answerable you must specify your engine/language/compilable code/...." after which someone might reluctantly do the right thing.

Part of the issue with separating out the newb questions with the more nuanced professional ones, is the burnout on the newb ones is high and the people who can answer them well will abandon them quickly, especially if they can simply migrate to the better questions. Part of the reason this system kinda works is that it incentivises people to curate the low quality stuff and answer that too in an effort to occassionally get to the better tier stuff.

@nwp Wasn't intended to be a complete set of site text. I would assume there would be a proceed anyway option.

@brug I agree. That's why I'd like to see the system try to filter a bit more. The best use of computing is to do dull repetitive work or however the quote goes.

3:33 PM

Part of the problem with having an on-topic and off-topic is that for many people, if you tell them their question is off-topic, they want to go away anyway. After all, people want an answer to their question. Doesn't matter how nicely you say "I'm not answering that." it is still a rebuke.

I think trying to be as kind as possible is good, but if you are going to have a scope and enforce it, then you need to accept that people will take that as unwelcoming.

Agree w/ that too. We have chat & try to direct to that, but that doesn't always work either, some folks are already turned off w/ the first version of 'no' they get.

And there's the rep limit thing.

@DMGregory idea - possibly (probably) has problems: make a gentle canonical answer of "you need to learn the X engine" and have it link to a dedicated chat room about X engine w/ starred links at the side for tutorials. Could be better but I'm trying to stick to things already in place.

3:53 PM

@Pikalek Ideally you would never tell anyone 'no'. You would phrase it as "Go here and don't forget to include [info]". For the one asking the question that makes a world of difference.

Yes, I generally agree with that too.

1 hour later…

5:06 PM

That discussion we had earlier gave me one more way to find and delete bad questions :P

user image

5:21 PM

Hey, clever. :)

It confirms the fact that it appears to be "okay" to ask that type of question. Though it does not show closed questions, which is expected, fortunately.

0

Q: 2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web: We designed the Stack Exchange netw...

discussion moderation statistics

user92578

5:40 PM

So they do know we have a meta!

Yes, they know. We'll also see the "community promotion ads 2021" soon, I suppose.

5:54 PM

The fact that they include the operations by the community user into the community column makes this post less interesting than it could.

Doesn't the community user just enact what is voted on by the community?

Hmm, never mind, this data looks legit.

2 hours later…

7:37 PM

@KernelPanic hey what's up?

I have to be honest; I don't remember who you are. :( Sorry about that.

8:00 PM

User names always trip me up. There are so many of them, often several for the same person...

I have my Twitch viewers with different Twitch, Steam, and Discord names. :o

How can flags get handled if not by ♦'s?

Maybe "recommend closure" flags getting folded in with regular close votes? Or spam/offensive flags hitting the threshold where they're auto-handled?

I wonder if self-destruction of flagged content counts as a user handling the flag.

@Pikalek "Not an answer" flags can be handled by the community.

Ah. Okay, that all scans.

8:09 PM

Hi all, just thought I'd pop in and see if I recognized any faces...

DMGregory's face is hidden behind a wireframe.

Haha I can see that

It's been a long time since I've hung around here but @Almo and co were nice enough to the kid who probably shouldn't have been on the internet then

hahaha

Welcome back, then!

Hmm... maybe I should change my profile pic. I think that was from 2016...

@Almo I used to be around when Mick was active here. I also played some TF2 with you eons ago, or so it feels like.

I also hung around with IcyDefiance and jgallant too. Those are a few of the regulars that were around when I last left.

8:25 PM

TF2? I never played TF2 outside of work

I do remmeber Mick though

and Icy

:)

You were around by a different name, back then, though.

Probably Scootaloo or something like that.

Maybe it wasn't you who I played with but someone else from here did play TF2 with me.

8:38 PM

This place is busier in the morning, generally ;)

I was kind of surprised to see that the chat system was still even being used.

There are a few very active rooms, as I understand.

8:55 PM

C++ lounge >:)

Yes, the python room was quite active the last time I went there

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Jan '2119

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