Game Development

Alex M.

12:01

probably

Matt D

lo

Alex M.

sup

Matt D

not much

you?

Alex M.

the usual

Alex M.

12:21

deadline is drawing near and I have taken a look at the todos I left in the project lol

although on some it might not be obvious, everything derives from ugly code that can break

Jon

lol

ugly code doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be fixed.

Alex M.

unless you have to return to it a month later and build upon it

if you fix it you'll thank yourself

had to have something nice to show at the conference so instead of building what was required upon the level's state machine I decided to use a fucking lamp to find the current state of the level

because the lamp can only show up in a particular state

lol

that definitely needs to be fixed

TheProgramm3r

good morning

Jon

Yeah, depends on the code :)

A newbie showed me his code... Instead of storing properties in his objects, he would create arrays, loop through them, and grab data based on the ID he had setup for his objects.

If that makes sense.

TheProgramm3r

@AlexM. changed his avatar!?!!?!!

cool

Matt D

12:31

@Jon it makes sense in some universe

Jon

So you want to know the Count of ObjectA? Take a look at the CountArray[id]

lol, yeah, well I told him it was unmanageable

He didn't seem to understand why.

Alex M.

@Jon yeah, I am also responsible for guiding the activity of an intern. I kinda feel like an hypocrite when I teach him how to do things properly

and then I go back to my code where I have to rush and hack things

Jon

hahaha

As long as you eventually refactor :P

Alex M.

well yeah

I always take my time for that

Jon

I did 2 hours worth yesterday myself... I was neck deep in errors.

Now my code is glorious.

TheProgramm3r

12:32

lol

i did a whole day's worth work yesterday @Jon

And accomplished virtually nothing

Jon

Hhahahahaha, I know that feeling :)

TheProgramm3r

only 300 lines of ccode

and a few images

Alex M.

@TheProgramm3r yup

Jon

I once spent about a month on the same issue

This internal application we had... dear lord.

TheProgramm3r

lol

Jon

12:34

I suggested they recoded the module.

It was a Word generator, that was not compatible with latest Word

But they hacked it to be

TheProgramm3r

LOL

Jon

I quit after my suggestion.

lol

Well, I said I was moving on to something else.

TheProgramm3r

:)

Jon

Its funny because, it is now 2 years later.

And they are still hacking at it.

Still haven't released anything.

Glad I left :)

Alex M.

that module must mean everything to them lol

Jon

12:37

Well the thing is, Microsoft was sued over these XML tags

So they had to stop using them in newer versions of Word

They decided to keep the tags... but now newer versions of word strips out the tags as soon as you open the document, without asking.

So they devised this workaround, where the tags where replaced with placeholders (in code) before it was opened in word.. .then when you saved the document, it would process the tags back in, and save to the DB.

You can just imagine the shitstorm that created.

TheProgramm3r

lol

Jon

My advice, if you see yourself in a shit project, leave, before it eats you alive.

TheProgramm3r

other than my own shit projects?

Jon

hahahaha

naw, your own shit projects are cool

TheProgramm3r

:P

Jon

12:42

What have you been working on lately?

TheProgramm3r

hold on, ill get a link

Jon

ah, your that child prodigy

TheProgramm3r

?

Jon

I remember you

I used to come chat in here a lot before my accident

TheProgramm3r

ah

CodeAssassin is like this too :P

or.... @Grey

Jon

12:44

Ah, might of been him

TheProgramm3r

idk

github.com/TheProgramm3r/ShipGame

that ^

Jon

Looks like a good start to a tile engine

TheProgramm3r

thanks

working on it :D

only 285 lines D:

I am going to work on it more today

Jon

yeah thats weak, lol, jk

TheProgramm3r

it is weak.......

Jon

12:48

for 20 hours?

which probably included sleep

TheProgramm3r

true

I spent 9 hours sleeping

a few breaks to eat...

still

i only wrote 285 lines.... that's tiny

Jon

i got about 3400 lines in my current project

part time, 2 months in

BlueBug

wow

TheProgramm3r

wow

hey BlueBug

BlueBug

dat hat. Blue will cry.

hey ; )

TheProgramm3r

12:50

no he wont

Jon

its a better hat.

TheProgramm3r

Blue made it for me <3

Jon

He might get jealous.

ohhhh

lucky

TheProgramm3r

<3

Jon

that's it, i'm making a new av

BlueBug

12:51

oh. you are the his secret lover everyone was talking about...

I am so jelly I wanted his attention/hat as well.

TheProgramm3r

/me looks around furtively No one was supposed to know

lol

you can't have it, it's my company logo

Jon

my company logo is helvetica

:(

TheProgramm3r

@BlueBug

@Jon helvetica?

BlueBug

;_; no fancy hat for me.

TheProgramm3r

lol

Jon

12:54

yeah

TheProgramm3r

what's that?

Jon

TheProgramm3r

umm......

?

Jon

that's my logo

lol

TheProgramm3r

ah

there's mine

Jon

12:55

i haven't named my gaming branch yet

TheProgramm3r

ah

Jon

i figure it will be jgallant Games

TheProgramm3r

:D

Jon

heh

I found this in google searches

perfect.

Almo

www.maniac-games.com this is mine

Alex M.

13:10

bow before the amazing Vanilla logo, newbs

it totally says

first person RPG taking place under the ground-maker

in case anyone wonders why it doesn't look good

it's because I made it :\

Jon

maniac games! love it

haha

Kevin van der Velden

@AlexM. that is an awesome logo and now I want icecream

BlueBug

Jon

Make one

BlueBug

But I fingers can move in very restricted motions only. I can't use a mouse to draw.

Wardy

13:35

yo

hey all

i need some advice from a gpu guru

someone that understands either CG programs or HLSL in depth

Almo

that's not me

;)

Wardy

anyone here like that?

Jon

I'm a beginner hlsl programmer.

Wardy

i've had a really bonkers idea and i need to know where i can get the knowledge i need to implement it

i need to do some really massive scale voxel engine stuff

im talking about taking things like 2 chunks of terrain with waterfalls come off the sides of them and smashing them together

all on the gpu and having it render the animation

realtime

i have an idea about how i might be able to do this but i need to find out a few things

Jon

I'd suggest you hang here until some more experienced individuals stumble in

If you are looking to talk nerd about HLSL, you will get that opportunity

Wardy

13:41

k

im pretty sure theres a few HLSL geeks in here somewhere

Jon

well

I can find you one

Wardy

im not even convinced the underlying game engine im using (unity) can handle this

might have to drop back to raw opengl or use xna or something

Jon

Voxels you say?

Wardy

yeh on a huge scale

i have a 5 man dev team

Jon

Have you checked out Polyvox?

Wardy

13:43

never heard of it

Jon

I'm not sure how far in your engine is.. but they have open sourced their voxel engine that works with Unity

Wardy

hmmmm

Jon

volumesoffun.com/cubiquity-progress-update-nov-2013

sorry, its called cubiquity

Wardy

the underlying voxel component i have at the moment is working but is easily rip out able

here's what im using atm

assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9180

it looks pretty good

but the performance is balls when you start scaling it

mainly because its a cpu implementation

Jon

Hi Neil, increasing the terrain size - is the main direction of improvement. In a couple of weeks I will release a new version that can handle 1000*1000*250 blocks data and more (with a dynamic chunk building). But sure I can ask Unity for refund - just send me your transaction number.

from the developer.

that was posted in september.

Wardy

13:48

yeh i need double that

and i need about 50 of them in ascene

Jon

sounds like you have a very ambitious project.

Wardy

then i need to render waterfalls trailing off them

then i need to apply physics to them

Jon

fully destructable world?

Wardy

yup

unlike any you will have seen before

Jon

haha, i like your ambition

Wardy

13:52

here's the sort of thing i have so far

this is my cpu based implementation

Alex M.

@KevinvanderVelden aww

Wardy

these islands can move

Alex M.

I'd ice cream too but it's too cold here

Jon

I've seen those before :P

Alex M.

@Jon it's the same screen

Wardy

13:53

and people can build on them and such :)

Jon

ohhh, so what are you some kind of spaceship?

Wardy

its basically my game concept

a broken world

think nuclear war ... breaks up a planet and all the bits float about near each other

the war rages on

now its a serious land grab

Jon

so you can build your little island up, and then others can come and destroy it all

If its multiplayer, i'll be Jon, Destroyer of Worlds.

Wardy

yup thats the idea

but mmo

i have the bulk of the server side figured out already

just need to clean it up

its this client side stuff thats killing me

lack of gpu knowledge

i need to know where i can learn how to use a gpu properly

Jon

that my friend, is a journey

Wardy

13:57

i know tiny amounts of HLSL but i want to really understand it

i cant even find the stuff to begin learning it

i can get this to work with very un impressive collisions and stuff purely on the cpu (already have that)

now i want to nuclear on this code and really turn it up

the voxelfarm engine would prob solve this for me but they wont talk licencing costs with me because im well ... an indie dev ... the age old problem

Almo

14:15

@Wardy So the atmosphere will be gone if the planet is broken up.

Wardy

not quite

im spinning this so that its based on a very large planet and there are enough component parts to keep a reasonable level of the stmosphere around

its not totally believable but neither is avatar

lol

Almo

:D

Wardy

its also a concept in the works

im still growing the back story and dont want to give too much away yet

but think kinda ... first person, mmo style starcraft in this environment

if it ever gets finished

Jon

It sounds really good to me. Just hope you don't get overly ambitious.

Wardy

its an idea i have been working on for years

ive been waiting for the tech to catch me up

i think i can now implement most of it

might have to wait a few more years for some finishing touches though

Jon

14:24

Do not be duke nukem 4.

Wardy

thats my biggest worry

im setting the bar high

Almo

Duke Nuke' em Forever.

DNF

Wardy

but i wont be happy unless i meet that level

Almo

Did Not Finish

Wardy

so itll either be awesome when i release it or never be released

Alex M.

14:35

1

Q: Flixel text causing memmory leak (FlxText) - AS3

I am calling kill() and destroy() on flxText when i dont need it anymore, how come its still using the memmory it let the game run for a while it went up to 1,5 gig of ram, then i commented it out the code where flxText is made and got this http://shrani.najdi.si/?3u/x6/1MkFPi08/fac.png (using on...

of course flixel text causes a memory leak

flixel is fucking gay

MickLH

@AlexM. ++

Jon

flixel can't write to video memory

MickLH

lol not my star

Wardy

:)

MickLH

I fixed my depth buffer bug today

that shit was bothering me real bad, it only applied to excessively large render targets, but still it's a nice feature to have

sometimes you legitamitely want a 2048 cube-shadow map you know

Wardy

14:46

Mick how are you with hlsl

Where do i get the day 1 beginners guide to writing shaders?

something that actually tells me how it works rather than "here's a sample go play"

MickLH

I am a GLSL guy

I refuse to support microsoft / directx

Kevin van der Velden

@Wardy GLSL okay? nehe.gamedev.net/article/glsl_an_introduction/25007

Wardy

can i use that in unity ?

MickLH

If you have questions about algorithms then shoot

but I'll answer in GLSL which means you have to do find and replace vec4 with float4 :P

Wardy

i need to write some compute and geometry shader code

need to figure out how its done

MickLH

14:50

I don't use unity anyways, sorry

Setting up shaders is different from writing them

Setup is engine specific

Wardy

hmm

MickLH

I mean I'll still give you what I know if you ask something specific, but I'm more useful for the mathy stuff

algorithms fetishist

hasherr

Hey, guys.

MickLH

sup hash-deezy

Kevin van der Velden

@MickLH is it relevant XKCD day?

They eventually resolved this self-reference, but Cantor's 'everything-in-the-fetish-book-twice' parties finally sunk the idea.

hasherr

14:57

Lol, everyone has their own nickname for me

MickLH

@KevinvanderVelden ++

it's always relevant XKCD day

hasherr

xamarin.com/faq#q32

I'm confused about this

MickLH

pssh fuck that

pay us to get yourself locked into our highly restricted system

hasherr

Lol

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