Game Development

MrPlow

21:00

Yeah, well fuck that :P

I'd rather be honest and fail then succeed and feel guilty

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Good attitude. <3

Wardy

I couldn't figure out how to use noise right to do what i wanted

MrPlow

Yeah, well... can't say it took me far, but hey.... It'll pay off eventually

Wardy

so i took a different approach

but i would love to use noise

MrPlow

What approach was that?

Wardy

21:01

i think i could get better shaping with it

blog.ccoder.co.uk

take a look

its some custom code

MrPlow

looks cool

Wardy

needless to say ... when i tried this with noise on my cpu it took 3 minutes to build 1 island

my current code takes less than 1 second

I was using simplex too rather than perlin

@MrPlow that's my game :)

MrPlow

well since my world is 2D I don't think I'll have too much problems

Wardy

I'm just hooking up the server code to it now

There is a basic client only first pass on that page if you fancy trying it out

but the controls are a bit glitchy in that version

I've already tidied that up a bit in the current code

But if anyone here has any ideas on how I might produce something like that using noise I would love to hear it

I need a way to generate the data for an island on its own given only a seed

so it needs to be quite controllable

i did work on a way using noise to generate a x,z plane bounds then more noise for the y values within those bounds

but couldn't get it how I wanted it

was being annoying

MrPlow

@Wardy Just tried it.... It's quite beautiful

Wardy

21:07

its the most basic first ever build sample of my world

imagine this on a huge scale

MMO

thousands of islands

MrPlow

damn

Wardy

bridges

and insane battles

im thinking steampunk type theme

that's where its slowly going

the next posting on that blog o mine will be a server driven demo

so people can jump on there and run about with friends

Noctrine

Congrats on the first playable build, I'll check it out when I get home.

Wardy

it definately not much but consider this an open invite to all to keep an eye out and grab the lastest version on my blog at any time

every programmer wants free testers after all :)

MrPlow

bookmarked :P

Noctrine

21:10

Keeps you motivated, other people are doing stuff!! I need to do stuff too!

Wardy

Its a project i've had in my head for about 5 years or so

but never had the balls to try it

i started it in XNA and microsoft then announced they were dumping support for it

so i switched to unity ... which blows at times

crashes a lot but has some neat stuff in it

MrPlow

hmm when I create a dll If I want to use it I still have to provide the include files?

Wardy

shouldnt have to

it should be a self contained assembly

MrPlow

oh

Wardy

simply refer to it and start calling up its types

although i could be wrong

not really a C boff

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

21:15

Either you need to write out an include or link it.

Linking is usually more maintainable but can be a bit daunting at first.

Wardy

C# my thing ... no such thing as an include file lol

MrPlow

I mean I've gotten used to using other libraries and they all need include files

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy Don't underestimate C#. :P It can do some impressive things.

Wardy

Absolutely

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, not C#, but .NET.

So in Unity, not so much.

user4704

21:17

@MrPlow In C++? Yes.

Wardy

@William'MindWorX'Mariager im looking in to using expression trees based on L systems to create a rule system that learns at the mo

MrPlow

@JoshPetrie thought so. thanks

user4704

Remember what we talked about before: C++ compiles every TU in isolation.

Wardy

the idea being things like my world eventing system and smarter AI coming out the other side

user4704

And you can't call or refer to a thing that isn't at least declared previously in that TU.

user4704

21:18

So you need to provide some method of declaring the symbols in your DLL, even if the linkage to them is ultimately deferred until later.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy Sounds complex.

MrPlow

@JoshPetrie yeah I didn't think to link(no pun intended) that convo with this situation.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Right, listen to jpetrie, my C++ is a bit rusty.

Wardy

@William'MindWorX'Mariager it tends to be because of the whole "code that writesw code" thing it has going on

but the power is nuts

Miguel talks about it a lot on his blog (this sort of thing anyway)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Sounds interesting.

Wardy

21:21

procworld.blogspot.co.uk

looks like his latest is all about everquest next running on his voxelfarm engine

my code isn't too dis similar

a crap ton simpler though

that guys a friggin genius

MrPlow

@JoshPetrie would you know where I could get some C++ code review for a bit larger project? I've created the first version of my ECS and I'd like to know what technical mistakes I've made and how to fix them

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy, Just remember, unless it's necessary to progress, consider if now is when you need to add it. You'll easily lose momentum with difficult unnecessary features. :)

A Need/Want/Nice list is a great tool to help prevent that.

Wardy

i have a crap ton of stuff going on it all ends up in trello though for the "to think about later" stack of things

right now my focus is purely on rendering a nice world that i can basically just run about in endlessly

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Sounds good.

Wardy

after that i'll start looking at my basic player tools

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

21:25

That's how far I've gotten with my game. Been narrowing down my focus to get back to it.

Wardy

then my world eventing system (im planning to have things like wind move the islands about)

user4704

@MrPlow You can pastebin the files here.

Wardy

@William'MindWorX'Mariager try trello its really helped me

trello.com

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy Yeah, @John promotes it constantly. :P

user4704

I find it too distracting.

John McDonald

21:26

heh

Distracting, eh?

Wardy

well @JohnMcDonald is right to do so !!! its an epic little tool

user4704

It's decent looking.

user4704

But having to remember to context-switch to my browser and load it is too much.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I've mostly just been keeping a txt document in my solution folders with things.

user4704

That's what I mean by distracting.

MrPlow

21:26

@JoshPetrie I've pushed them to github, Though they're uncommented and I'm writing coments as we speak

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Lots of brainstorming and then a bit of sorted stuff.

user4704

@MrPlow Don't write comments after the fact.

user4704

And don't comment "just because"

user4704

Comment the why of a decision, not the what.

Wardy

I have a source control folder full of docs on features to be in future versions

user4704

21:27

I keep scratch text files and handle my to-do list that way.

user4704

:e .scr in vim and call it good

Wardy

what source control do you guys use?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Since VS2012 I've been using git.

user4704

git, hg, p4 mostly

Wardy

i setup a TFS box ... just makes sense when ur writing in Visual Studio

user4704

21:28

TFS is horrid.

Wardy

Me and git fell out

user4704

And I hate IDE-integrated source control, especially in VS.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy You can use git with Visual Studio.

It's easy and straight forward.

Wardy

TFS is great ... i can tell it to build and push my code to my test box

nightly

RhysW

@JoshPetrie oh?

Wardy

21:29

and i like the way it works

but 2012 went a bit off with me

tooling seems more complex now for some reason

MrPlow

@JoshPetrie Right... I'm not particularly good at writing comments, I find it hard to explain things plainly so I always write too much.

Wardy

going more git like

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@MrPlow Learn to write self documenting code.

Wardy

+1 to that

my code basically reads like a page from a specification doc

RhysW

agreed thats a life saver

MrPlow

21:31

Well that's hard when everything I've written makes sense to me but I'm not sure if it makes sense to anyone else

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Wardy Same. :P

I have helper properties just to have it read. The compiler will inline simple things anyways.

RhysW

@MrPlow ive already told you that i can read your code :(

Wardy

and it friggin bugs the shit out of me when others dont

or when they dont follow basic rules like SRP and i have to go behind them and start refactoring crap code

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So things like if(this.IsMovingLeft) { ... } rather than if(this.velocity.X < 0) { ... }

MrPlow

@RhysW well I've written the basic interface to be as easy to use as possible, but I'm unsure if the underlying code is easy enough to understand

RhysW

21:32

@MrPlow throw up a link, one easy way to find out :D

Wardy

@William'MindWorX'Mariager +1 to that too !!!

MrPlow

@RhysW It's up there: Link

and here's how my commenting looks like: Link

RhysW

@MrPlow i understand this might be a matter of preference but i prefer full words rather than shortened ones for variable names, e.g position is clearer than pos especially in large systems where you might be far away from the declaration, but that might just be me

MrPlow

@RhysW right and I do use full words almost everywhere. The only place I didn't use full words are in the example main.cpp and for velocity component

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@RhysW I'm the same on that regard.

RhysW

21:37

@MrPlow ah i might have picked both of those as my examples by chance xD

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Using abbreviation is a leftover from before IDE's and autocomplete.

MrPlow

@RhysW take a look at world and system classes

they're full of words :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I do use it in canonical cases though, like i, j and k when iterating.

MrPlow

I use small words or letters for iterating as well as for small Ideone.com examples since it doesn't have autocomplete

user4704

I really hate using short variables for indexers, etc. i and j and the like. :|

Noctrine

21:42

What do you use?

RhysW

i use what they represent

MrPlow

@JoshPetrie what do you suggest instead?

RhysW

like index ect

user4704

"fooIndex" or "barIndex" or whatever else is more appropriate.

Noctrine

So users[userIndex]?

user4704

21:43

I've seen i and j cause too many stupid bugs to keep using them.

Wardy

i prefer my linq based collection

MrPlow

Now that I'm using C++11 and range based for loops I use what the objects I'm iterating over are supposed to represent as names

Wardy

var user = users.First(u => u.Name == "Foo")

:)

RhysW

i saw an open souce project today that prohibited the use of LINQ atall, i never did figure out why

Wardy

haha

that's just dumb

user4704

21:44

Most of it is evil.

user4704

It's not dumb if they have a good reason for it.

RhysW

yup its silly, sure, ban poeple who cant use it right, but dont ban it outright xD

thats like saying i dont like strings, no body can use strings

user4704

And there are good reasons to not want to use various interpretations of what LINQ is.

Noctrine

@RhysW PHP?

Wardy

linq ??? evil ??? @JoshPetrie what are you on?

user4704

21:45

LINQ is not what you typed above.

RhysW

@Noctrine C#

Noctrine

No I mean. Ban the people who can't use it right but not it outright :p

Wardy

uh yeh it is @JoshPetrie

user4704

No.

RhysW

@Noctrine OH

my mistake!

user4704

21:46

Those are just extension methods to IEnumerable.

user4704

They were added as part of the supporting infrastructure to LINQ.

user4704

And unfortunately exist in the System.Linq namespace

user4704

But LINQ is "from item in container select x where y;"

Wardy

that was a simple linq query I use all the time (a lambda on an IQueryable<User> )

user4704

That's what LI means.

user4704

21:47

Language integrated.

RhysW

@JoshPetrie whats wrong with that though?

user4704

Extension methods are library features

Wardy

in .net the extension methods are simply a wrapper around linq

user4704

...no they are not.

user4704

The extension methods are the mechanism used to implement LINQ-To-Objects.

Wardy

21:48

ok let me rephrase that

linq to entities ... which i mostly use at work is

but linq to objects is perfectly good for game code

if used correctly

user4704

The actual LINQ syntax is needlessly cumbersome and cannot even express the full functionality of the extension methods and constructed underlying query expression trees.

user4704

There's no reason to use it. Ever.

Wardy

meh ... ur loss

i find it reads well and produces good fast results

RhysW

@JoshPetrie dont be silly, you cant write off an entire feature of .NET just for that, there can be good reasons to use it, readability is one, its very simple to see what it is doing

coding is about more than optimising for the computer, its about optimising for the people too

user4704

@RhysW I would argue exactly the opposite.

user4704

21:51

That's why I would say never to use LINQ syntax, because the extension methods are regular old function call syntax that most programmers are more familiar with.

RhysW

@JoshPetrie and thats exactly why the feature exists, one suits you and one suits me :)

Wardy

the compiler is about optimising for the computer

the language is about optimising for the developer

user4704

I don't think either of you are grasping what I am saying. None of you have demonstrated examples of LINQ syntax, only extension methods.

RhysW

@JoshPetrie i havent even tried

Jimmy

I don't mind the integrated syntax, other than the fact that it's non-c#-ish.

user4704

21:52

@RhysW Then why are you arguing with me?

Wardy

yeh i get it josh ur thinking something more "sql esq" in style ... raw linq syntax

user4704

@Wardy Yes. That is a useless abomination.

RhysW

@JoshPetrie in mot arguing, im simply stating that it has its uses

Wardy

from bla in foo select bla.Name

that's linq

user4704

@RhysW None of which I would consider legitimate, because it is both less expressive than the alternative and vastly different from the syntax of the rest of the language.

RhysW

21:53

@JoshPetrie honestly i dont care if you consider it legitimate, im not out to appease you, im simply giving you my opinion, do with it what you will

MrPlow

What exactly is LINQ and what's it's main purpose? I was forced to use .NET 2.0 so I've never got a chance to use it

Wardy

my point was simply that linq as most .net devs use it (by calling the extension methods) is still a use of linq under the bonnet even if not directly

@MrPlow linq is a kinda SQL for objects

ish

user4704

@MrPlow It's a means of providing query expressions against arbitrary collections of data.

MrPlow

Oh. I see

Wardy

you can do some neat stuff

RhysW

21:55

i personally find it gives me a little more control over what im doing with the object, it gels with the way i think and therefore i like it

Wardy

var query = from foo in someRepository.GetAll() where foo.Bar == "bla" select foo.Munchkins;

then you can simply iterate over it

foreach(var f in query) { ... }

neat way to query a db imo

when combined with EF

RhysW

@JoshPetrie im not going to try and force you to change your opinions on it, if you dont like it thats fine, im just trying to say that other people do like it and do find it useful, i hope you dont take my statements as hostilities towards you

user4704

@RhysW I just don't get the impression that you even understood what I was saying.

RhysW

@JoshPetrie maybe i dont, im not going to lie im not the best coder there is, im still really new at it

user4704

And I don't want to have a discussion at cross-purposes.

Wardy

21:57

ive done some rediculous business solutions on it ... stuf that would have taken a lot longer and ultimately be a ton harder to maintain without linq

Shotgun Ninja

adios folks

RhysW

@ShotgunNinja cya!

Wardy

later @ShotgunNinja

user4704

We used a LINQ-to-SQL-backed system here for a while.

user4704

It was horribly slow and unreliable.

Wardy

21:59

@JoshPetrie im with you ... most people feel that generalising the whole "extension methods are linq" is just an accepted thing that's understood

RhysW

i dont want you to take this the wrong way, but things that get that bad, arent generally down to a single feature

Noctrine

Hmmm, so let me see if I'm understanding this correctly.

Wardy

despite not actually being linq ... its still refered to as linq

Noctrine

LINQ is like sql for objects. It has library extensions which are sane, but it's actual syntax is a lot like SQL and is really foolish?

user4704

@RhysW It was, the LINQ-to-SQL backend was (is?) completely immature and did the most inefficient things with the constructed queries.

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