Game Development

Christian Careaga

04:11

Whatss the best way to detect collision and determine if the surface that the object is colliding with is horizontal or vertical

Matt D

how do you determine something is horizontal or vertical?

Icy Defiance

04:41

hmm, my first thought is:

if ((intersection.X / velocity.X) > (intersection.Y / velocity.Y))
    //horizontal collision
else
    //vertical collision

haven't tried it though

of course you have to find the intersection yourself, but that's much more straightforward

many libraries have a function for it

oh right, and it would be width and height of the intersection rectangle, not x and y

Matt D

well the real point was... "vertical" is usually relative to something

its like saying "north"

well thats handy

Icy Defiance

yeah, but I'm pretty sure he's doing 2D, so vertical can be assumed to be Y, I think

Matt D

it doesnt actually describe anything

assume

what happens if its a L/R scrolling game

or some kind of weird top down thing

CC Inc

Up and down are relative you mean? So naturally the only way to truely know if something is vertical is to have a point of reference to refer to (I think, it's late at night)

Matt D

yes, that was my point :)

CC Inc

04:50

Indeed.. so can't you not tell if something is vertical at all? :D

Matt D

(and also my point to the Original asker. that determining if a collision is vertical or not is a relative question to ask)

CC Inc

Ah, you were referring to another question. Sorry

So I've been sitting here hiding for enough time now. What do most of you develop for? What engine do you use?

Matt D

im ex professional game dev

these days i do mostly web stuff. nothing to exciting.

CC Inc

What kind of backend did you in when you were in the game dev field? Was it mainly pure directx or opengl coding, or did you usually use an engine?

user4704

I work on Halo. I don't really make games in my spare time, but if I did I would use the "engine" I wrote myself over the last fifteen years of my programming career.

Matt D

04:54

my background is mostly as lead ui code. although i've done some gameplay too.

mostly with custom engines written by the game teams i've worked on. and i've not had to write bare opengl or directx for a long time ;)

CC Inc

Ah, that's interesting

Matt D

im more of an architecture kinda guy

i like building systems for other people to play in

CC Inc

@JoshPetrie I know it's a noob question, but I'm guessing you had to do a lot of C++ and such on the backend and work directly with graphics?

Matt D

sometimes toolchains are c#

but there's usually a lot of c++

user4704

No, I work on the infrastructure tools.

user4704

04:55

It's almost all C#.

user4704

The game itself has a lot of C++ though.

user4704

Most games usually do.

user4704

Sadly.

Matt D

hehe

CC Inc

Ah, I see. Hmm...

Matt D

04:57

toolchains are often way more complicated than the game itself

user4704

Yes.

CC Inc

Huh. Any good open source resources on the complete workflow of game development and some code examples?

user4704

No.

CC Inc

Ah. Any hope for an enthusiast like me to get familiar with this stuff? I'm a C# regular and do a bit of C++ as well.

Matt D

XNA is probably the closest you're going to get to a toolchain

user4704

04:58

First off, the "complete workflow" varies wildly and the amount of code necessary to show you a complete workflow would be enormous.

user4704

Some box-diagrams maybe, but code? No.

user4704

Second, open source projects typically pale in comparison to the pipeline of a commercial game, or are just plain horrid.

user4704

Third, code is a pretty bad learning resource on its own; code is not documentation.

user4704

Fourth, the way that a professional game developer does something is due to particular decisions made for their project that do not pertain to you. Trying to mimic those decisions is naive and/or foolish.

Matt D

and often toolchains are held together with duct tape and chewing gum

user4704

05:00

@CCInc What "stuff" do you want to "get familiar with?"

CC Inc

This sounds like I should start writing my own OS in all assembly...

user4704

No, precisely the opposite.

user4704

You should see that making informed decisions based on actual practical problems you face is important. Perhaps the most important thing.

user4704

I write software that manages a build farm of hundreds and hundreds of agent machines to do asset processing, compilation, et cetera.

user4704

Will that code help you write your game?

user4704

05:02

Certainly not. You don't need a 800-machine build farm. You have an entire different problem to solve.

CC Inc

If I were to work on a project, I would most likely be lead programmer. I've examined a lot of the most popular engines already out there. Developing my own would certainly give me experience as a software developer. I know that I won't exactly make a AAA engine for Crysis, but..

Matt D

how much programming experience do you have?

i think you should worry less about what title you'd have, and start making stuff ;)

CC Inc

I'm very experienced in C#, and okay at C++.

Matt D

basically, the mantra is "if you want to make games, write games, if you want to write tools, write tools. dont try and make games by writing tools, as you'll never finish either"

2

user4704

@MattD Yes, definitely.

user4704

05:13

What does "very experienced" mean? How many titles have you shipped? How many people have you managed?

Matt D

@JoshPetrie this is where i feel very very old ;)

user4704

How many years of professional experience do you have?

user4704

:P

user4704

You can call yourself the "lead programmer" of your own projects accurately, but being a lead in a professional setting is a very different thing. And your title is irrelevant against what you've actually done.

CC Inc

If I were to actually pursue this, it would certainly not be in the professional capacity.

Matt D

05:15

hell, im basically a lead, not the lead.. after 7 years in games and 15 in IT ;)

user4704

@CCInc What exactly is "this?"

CC Inc

Game development with a relatively small team.

#noob maybe I'll crawl back into my desktop development hole

user4704

Why a team?

user4704

(it adds a fair bit of complexity)

Matt D

dont need no team to write pong baby!

CC Inc

05:25

lol

Well.. I cannot do 3d artistry, and I'm not the best at level design (prolly what the 'team' would help on)

Matt D

make somethign with cubes

buy art from the internet

CC Inc

And also, I have very few good game ideas and stories and storylines and all that

Well.. I have some ideas, but they're soo complex

And they are most likely something only I would want to play.

Matt D

do 48hr competitions, like ludum dare next weekend (or soon anyway)

thatll teach you how to get to the core of your idea

CC Inc

Wow.. never heard of it. That seems interesting, I'll try it out this weekend

Looks like it'd help

Thanks y'all for your help!

user4704

05:48

np

Grey

06:05

GAME DEV . SE GAME JAM

2

WINTER THEME

go.

Alex M.

08:30

not quite yet gruy

hold your ponies

Jovito

10:09

CANT SLEEP

NEED TO FINISH STUFF

Alex M.

don't sleep

and finish stuff?

Wardy

morning all

Jovito

11:27

morning @Wardy

good morning to you too @Alex

actually, I don't think its morning there

is it?

Wardy

12:00

@Jovito where is there?

Jovito

@Wardy Romenia, I think

Wardy

yeh i think they are a few hours ahead of here

so its prob afternoon there

why do people keep up voting this question but no1 answers it ...

3

Q: How can I render from a buffer that exists and was created on on the GPU?

I'm looking for a unity API or function call to allow me to do the following ... I wrote some really complex functions that are compute shaders. These compute shaders manage a huge compute buffer containing voxel information. I then take portions of (or the entire) voxel buffer in another compu...

frustrating

Jovito

@Wardy that happens more often than you think

Wardy

hmmm

usually i find it happens after the Q has been asnwered

maybe my questions are getting more complex

less people know the answers

unity support forums are just as bad

forum.unity3d.com/threads/…

its like no1 exists over there

Jovito

anyone with rep >= 1k is a genius to me

ok kidding, 5k

Wardy

12:07

well im half way there

but thats coz i dont hang around stack much other than to ask stuff

Jovito

you're in finland, right?

Wardy

na England

I think there's a few fins and swedes in here though

regulars i mean

Jovito

oh...

Wardy

who are they?

Jovito

school of rock's cast 10 years later

Wardy

12:17

oh right

Jovito

I love this movie

radical

+1

Jovito

I remember everyone's faces except the dude rightmost at the bottom

daddy's little girl ain't a girl no more

Wardy

mmmm

Almo

12:59

@CCInc start by writing a game using C#. that's a good way to start. Use tools you know to make a game.

concept3d

13:17

hey guys, what do you think successful moderation (forum moderation) is about? is it about being pragmatic ?

Wardy

yup

knowing when to say / do nothing helps a lot

and when you do get involved its about fairness in resolution of issues

generally speaking you shouldn't have to do much more than "admin" moving threads to the right place ect

concept3d

yes

but sometimes I feel some questions are closed unfairly

do you think it's because of being too pragmatic

@JoshPetrie what do you think successful moderation (forum moderation) is about? is it about being pragmatic ?

Wardy

13:36

it depends what you consider unfairly ?

Almo

forum moderation is about getting the environment such that A) the mission of the forum is met B) the kind of people you want on the forum feel welcome.

Wardy

is it genuinely unfair or you just felt that it wasn't the outcome you would have gone with?

Almo

14:08

unstuck

for some reason, the components in my new object were not allowing the panning

so I wrote a function you call on the object, pass in the PanPane from the outside, and it registers its components in the PanPane.

still indicates there's something I don't understand about how PanPanes work.

Wardy

is there a silver bullet for handling cross platform support when writing games?

its one of the things i like about unity

but if i was to drop back to raw DX or openGL libs i'd lose all that wouldn't i ?

Almo

If you want cross platform, I'd stick with something like Unity, yes.

Wardy

hmmm

concept3d

14:29

Yes

it's much easier with unity

Wardy

yeh but managing voxels isnt

i cant win it seems

Almo

My strategy in this case: forget cross-platform

cross-platform is a bonus in my opinion

get the game done where you can get it done

Wardy

well my thinking is that my main target for this will be pc gamers

xbox one is basically a pc so should n't be too hard to port to

and linux based systems (if i use something like monogame)

so all unity really gives me on top is a bunch of platforms I don't intend to support anyway

unless mac is majorly different to linux

im going with hopefully no atm

Almo

developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/porting/…

that's what Apple has to say about porting Linux apps to OS X

Jon

14:46

my lip is cut, and it hurts.

Almo

:(

Who the fuck is Dodd?

Wardy

oh @Almo well if they need to put that much effort in documenting the process i probably wont't bother at all if i ditch unity

apple ... joke not an IT company

Almo

When you've developed on iOS as long as I have, you appreciate what they do

given a personal choice, I would never support another OS.

not worth the hassle

made several games under the old OS as well, from System 7 through mac os 9

that was also generally a good experience

Wardy

hmmm

Almo

not to say you should support os x. it's probably not worth it for you since your main target is PC.

My point is only that Apple is not a joke. :)

Jon

15:00

not anymore

That, however, was a joke.

Almo

the millions who bought them didn't think so.

5 (maybe 6) simple steps and you were on the internet

Jon

I am biased because i used to go by the online nick "g3"

Almo

compared to configuring a windows machine at the time, it was much easier for a "normal" person to get internet access

Jon

when these came out, my nick was taken over

Almo

granted, configuring windows for internet wasn't hard for people like us

gotta hate losing your nick :(

Jon

15:04

you had to idle to keep your nick back then

irc that is

Almo

:D

yeah figured ;)

can't get the layout system to center something :(

Jon

ScreenWidth / 2 - ObjWidth / 2

Almo

not that simple

everything goes in a FlowContainer

which does the vertical spacing for you

ordinarily, you tell it to center everything, and it works

I have one object that is extra wide, and it's thowing it off for some reason

Jon

ah

typically, it will be where it tries to do a endline

you need to have some sort of delimiter

Almo

this is with tiles and buttons and objects composed of tiles and buttons

Jon

15:15

probably full

Almo

so there's a vertical flow container

one of the items in it is a horizontal flow container

that seems to be what's throwing it off

one thing that worries me is I wrote the horizontal container since it didn't exist in the engine

but i just copied the vertical one, and swapped width for height

Jon

hmmm, what engine?

Almo

Force

it's the proprietary engine developed by Cat In A Box

so there are only two developers on the planet who really know how it works :)

very nice in most places

just a few odd things I don't get

Jon

i bet

Almo

horizontal looks good.

odd thing, looks like it's setting the items in there not centered

(*iter)->SetPosition(AnchoredPosition(Vector2(width, 0.0f), Anchor::TopLeft));

I would have expected Anchor::Centre

but I tell the items when adding them to center, and they do

so now I'm confused

oh well more digging

biggest WTF is this:

		void Invoke( typename Impl::param1_t p1, typename Impl::param2_t p2, typename Impl::param3_t p3 ) { if( actions == 0 ) return; std::size_t* list = new std::size_t[actions->size()]; std::size_t* iend = list; typename ActionImplSet::iterator iter; for( iter = actions->begin(); iter != actions->end(); ++iter ) (*iend++) = iter->first; for( std::size_t* iter = list; iter < iend; ++iter ) { if( actions->find(*iter) != actions->end() ) (*actions)[*iter]( p1, p2, p3 ); } delete[] list; }

yes, that's on one line for some reason

Jon

15:22

ahahahaha

Almo

some kind of action-dispatching magic

Jon

Well at least you are not starting from scratch

Almo

templates and shit

yeah

Jon

what was the licensing costs involved?

Almo

I don't actually know

the boss handles that stuff

got it

was registering the panpane in the vertical flow container BEFORE filling it up

it had the wrong impression of its size

I thought adding more stuff after would rejig the layout as it went; guess not

Jon

15:27

good job

Almo

heh thanks

I'll tell you what I'm working on once we announce it

Jon

another small step towards a long journey

Almo

maybe a month or so

:)

Jon

yeah

you better

Almo

or not. :( Had forgotten to reset the width of the panpane to the problematic width

:(

BTTDB

it does redo the layout as you add things to it

Jon

15:40

sounds like you could use that

Almo

oh

just noticed everything in the container is set to the same width

so the items are responsible for centering themselves; the container doesn't do that

ok makes sense now

ok made a version of the VerticalFlowContainer constructor that takes an extra argument for centering.

Almo

16:04

Microsoft just called

they want to know why our apps are not on Windows Phone, and want to help us do that.

Icy Defiance

put them on the Zune HD :D

Almo

lol

user4704

16:21

@concept3d Remember this site is note a forum. But the same general concepts apply: be civil and help maintain the community as a civil place, obey and enforce the rules and community consensus (even if you don't personally agree with all of it), help the site grow and act as a representative for the site's userbase.

user4704

On the specific issue of closure, remember that it is not a punishment to have a question closed. And SE is not trying to be everything for everyone. If the question isn't good, it should be closed. It's not about being "nice" to the user (although you should close the question politely).

user4704

I firmly believe in a policy of "close first, ask questions later," especially as of the on-hold changes.

user4704

Users are more likely to answer a question, even a bad one, than they are to edit or improve the question itself.

user4704

When that happens, you end up with the appearance that bad questions are okay or acceptable, you devalue the site as a whole and take a step away from the goal of an SE site.

concept3d

@JoshPetrie would you consider this a duplicate? my initial judge yes, but then I thought otherwise gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/67083/…

user4704

16:25

You also make it that much harder to turn the question back into a good one, because now you have to craft your edits so that you don't completely invalidate the posted answers, else you can completely ruin any value the question had.

concept3d

good points there.

user4704

@concept3d Possibly not. I do think that it's not a very useful long-term question (which is why I haven't voted to reopen it) because it's basically a code dump asking for debugging.

concept3d

ya I do think it's asking for debugging too

user4704

Fundamentally the answer is (assuming the implementation is not completely off-base) "change line X to foo.bar = baz."

concept3d

yes

user4704

16:28

That's not that helpful; "What is the Strauss model and how would I implement it?" is a better question that is likely to serve more users long-term.

concept3d

yes, for people searching for that model. Other than here is my implementation debug it for me.

what if the asker is asking for sth that lack details, for example this one gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/33506/… unless you know what 3ds max material he is talking about it's really not clear question.

user4704

For that question, if it was new, I would have prompted the asker to show a screenshot of the Max effect he was trying to achieve.

user4704

Since it's old I bet he wouldn't ever respond to the comment, but it might be worth trying.

user4704

However, it seems reasonable to me that somebody who has had a lot of experience with Max would know about that effect, so the question would be clear enough to somebody with the requisite experience.

concept3d

I notice alot of users don't come back

I know we can't force them

:D

user4704

16:34

Similarly, questions asking about quaternion interpolations are likely incomprehensible to a lot of the hobby developers that frequent this site -- that doesn't mean each question about quaternions should include a full primer on the subject.

concept3d

but I would like to see more people come back

Almo

We don't want users to come back if they will not make the site better.

user4704

(oh, he does have a screenshot of the desired effect, nevermind)

user4704

@Almo That's not true.

user4704

We don't want users to come back if they will make the site worse.

user4704

16:35

If they make it better, awesome.

user4704

If they impart no net change either way, that's fine too.

user4704

Most users will be in that middle ground, really.

concept3d

yes I agree.

Icy Defiance

eh, there's a kind of ratio among web devs. if I remember right, 90% of visitors never participate, 9% participate once or twice and that's it, and 1% become regulars.

I wouldn't be too worried about a lot of people not coming back

not until I see some real statistics

user92578

I'd like to add transitions between game states to my game. Should this transition effect (like a fade) be a separate game state or something else?

user4704

16:35

They'll post a few questions, usually questions that need some cleanup or editing, but never really answer.

concept3d

to be honest I would like to see more questions. Alot of the good questions are on SO

user4704

@Tyyppi_77 If you have a state machine implementation, you'd generally hook up the transition visuals to the transitions in the state machine.

concept3d

good gamedev questions*

user4704

If the transitions you want are always simple visual things, you can probably make a them distinct, non-state objects.

Almo

@JoshPetrie that's sort of what I meant; good to clarify

user4704

16:37

If however you want really complex transitions, you are maybe better off making a new state and pretending that is a transition.

user92578

Thanks, I think it'll be easier to just use the gamestates, I think that I want some awesome transitions :D

concept3d

@JoshPetrie regarding that 3Ds max question he has a screenshot, yet it's too generic to be of any use.

Alex M.

17:20

WestJet Santa Asks Passengers What They Want For Christmas, Airline Gives Gifts Upon Arrival consumerist.com/2013/12/10/…

I guess it's freaking obvious this happened in Canada

Alex M.

17:46

windowsreallygoodedition.com

Grey

yar

installing c-- on this os

yar

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    public struct CGameUIPtr
    {
        private IntPtr pointer;

        unsafe public CGameUI* ToCGameUI()
        {
            return (CGameUI*)this.pointer;
        }
    }

What's a better name alternative to "ToCGameUI".

user4704

AsCGameUI.

user4704

"To" implies a conversion (as in ToString).

user4704

As implies an alternative view (as in "as cast" or "as in").

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

17:52

Perfect! That was exactly what I wanted, since it isn't a conversion.

user4704

You could also call it "GetUnsafePointer"

user4704

Since the containing class is a "safe pointer" based on its name.

Lasse

@AlexM. That is indeed better windows. So nice startup time.

Alex M.

ikr

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JoshPetrie Hmm. I was looking for something shorter.

Would it be horrible if I called it "AsRef()" and on the "ref" struct, I'll have an "AsPtr()". This allows me to easily move between the two struct types.

Here's the idea: pastebin.com/96k71Kgb

user4704

18:05

But ToCGameUI returns a CGameUI* -- why would you rename that "ToRef()"?

user4704

A pointer isn't a reference or reference type, so that's a bit misleading.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

That's true.

user4704

Why does it matter that the function name be short?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, readability for one. But misleading is worse for readability than long names.

I'll name them AsSafePtr and AsUnsafePtr.

user4704

Seems good.

Alex M.

18:16

@IcyDefiance youtube.com/watch?v=y6-TOZat-wo

what were you saying about google being the archangel of companies?

neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=732355

ToddersLegrande

Open C# File -> Google Question -> Open 15 tabs -> write 5 lines of code -> Close all tabs -> Browse reddit -> Repeat #gamedev

Tweeted by MsMinotaur on December 10, 2013 at 3:59 PM

Almo

hahah yeah

John McDonald

Yup. Pretty much, :p

Icy Defiance

never said google is any kiind of archangel. I was just comparing them to other companies.

Alex M.

well

read all of that

and check out the video too

also dig for my other message that I posted a while back

where an ex-google employee tells people why he left google

after it turned into an ads-first company

trying to compete with facebook

how can you say google is better than other companies (e.g. facebook)

when google is striving to become like facebook

I don't blame them though

what is the point of having great power if you can't use it

granted, you can use it for 'good', but you still need someone using it for bad to balance everything out and make it worthwhile

user4704

18:32

I don't blame them for trying to make money. I just don't want to contribute to it.

Almo

It'll be hilarious the first few times this happens.

very relevant to the discussion

I dislike supporting both portrait and landscape orientation

users seem to love it though

joapet99

Hello

user4704

Hi.

Almo

HEY DUDE! WHAT UP

Alex M.

WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING

Almo

18:46

no particular reason

Wardy

o .... k ....

joapet99

@Almo nothing special except that I have made a survey for my website

Almo

Surveys are boss

joapet99

boss? Is that good or bad

Almo

it means they rule, yo

joapet99

18:58

ok

Do you want link?

Transcript for