Game Development

MickLH

16:00

@AlexM. well let's not get crazy now with words like "great"

Alex M.

shit, a wild micklh appears

think think

Jon

What was that game, where a developer added a chicken or something, that followed the character... and when he showed his manager, he said "I like it but lose the chicken"

Grey

throw a pokeball

Alex M.

writes "physics" on a piece of wood and throws it as far as possible

GO MICK

Grey

too bad mick was a super saiyan.

Alex M.

16:01

OH NOES

@Jon it was a duck dancing around a character

Jon

ah yes

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn’t, they weren’t adding value.

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen’s animations…

user92578

And what's the lesson of that story? Never add ducks?

MickLH

no, always add ducks

So that you don't have to make the queen ugly later

Jon

Give people false sense of control.

Almo

no. add a duck that you know the producer will want removed so you can protect the REAL features from unwanted changes.

very smart

MickLH

16:04

Any time you have a "boss" above you that rule applies

Jon

BAsically it gave something for the producer to focus on, so the rest wouldn't be picked at.

user92578

That's like my new motto. always add ducks

Alex M.

look at those motherfucking orbs

user92578

They're glorious

Jon

They don't look like orbs.

They look like marbles.

BlueBug

16:04

I think lesson is give a duck to provide false sense of controll. Just exactly how most governments act.

Icy Defiance

well marbles are orbs

Almo

they look like a collection of gradient ellipses overlapping

Jon

I see 4 circles and a ellilpse

Alex M.

I got them off opengameart

no idea

BlueBug

Whos the artist?

Jon

16:08

OrbMaster2000

user92578

opengameart.org/content/orbs

Alex M.

it has to lack a lot of unity's features I think but...

the engine's speed is amazing

everything loads so fast

there is no lag anywhere :\

BlueBug

He says he was attempting to make orbs cute. Such personalization what an abstract art. I cant comprehend the depth

Alex M.

and there is no installation required, you just download a 24MB .exe and execute it

Jon

Where the heck is REctangle in unity?

Alex M.

16:11

UnityEngine.Rect

BlueBug

Thid must be really cool artistic game. Could u tell me more about this project?

Alex M.

@BlueBug wut?

Jon

Rect, of course

tell us about your orbs!

BlueBug

@Alex M. Ur game, orbs.

Alex M.

uh, it's just something I do to see how I can move sprites around and capture user input in Godot

it is also just material for a new blog post

BlueBug

16:14

!!

Jon

lame.

Alex M.

well yeah what did you expect

a GOTY?

Jon

with orbs? too much apparently

Can you store mouse/keyboard states in unity?>

For like.. checking previous button states?

Alex M.

build your own stuff and you will be able to

some sort of input history singleton

BlueBug

If u build ur own stuff, then why unity?

Jon

16:16

its actually a lot easier..

GetKeyDown() checks if key is pressed once ... GetKey() checks if it is held down

Don't have that in monogame

BlueBug

*unity tons of plug ins

Jon

I'm just trying out Unity ... I'm not a fan of the DragDrop stuff

But I am a huge fan of the cross-platform compatibility

Alex M.

@Jon you'll like Godot then

it does what Unity does, for free, and even better

with the Linux compatibility

also Godot exports to HTML5, not to a web player

Jon

only no C#

i'm not a fan of lua

Alex M.

I have no idea why people say it's similar to Lua

BlueBug

16:20

Does linux compatibility have significant impact on sale?

Alex M.

it's Python :\

extends Node2D

var screen_size
var pad_size

func _ready():
	screen_size = get_viewport_rect().size
	pad_size = get_node("left").get_texture().get_size()
	set_process(true)

Jon

what about handheld devices?

Alex M.

this looks like Python to me

@Jon yeah it supports android, win8 and ios

also x360, ps3, wii and 3DS :)

Jon

and its open source.

Alex M.

eyup

Jon

16:21

I kinda just wanted to conform to smoething everyone is using

I like to have useful skills I guess.

Alex M.

well godot isn't released yet

so you're okay with unity

Jon

Unity also seems to be the direction microsoft is going for future game development on their platforms

They shut down XNA, and are silently pushing people towards unity

Alex M.

it's up to you man

I don't find it difficult to switch from one thing to another

Jon

Its not difficult... it just takes up some time.

I can express my idea incredibly fast in monogame/xna

Gonna take me a while to reach this level of aptitude in unity.

Alex M.

I guess

Jon

16:25

What would you do if you wanted to get your viewport x, y location?

Is it always 0,0?

Almo

Alex M.

in godot?

user92578

Gotta love when a Python module isn't updated to 3.x

Jon

naw, in Unity.

Alex M.

isn't the viewport dictated by the main camera?

it's not always 0,0, it depends on its position in world space

again, I have never worked with Unity 4.3's 2D stuff

Jon

16:27

Yeah, I guess I'm trying to figure out how to get the camera coordinates

Alex M.

I only worked with 4.2 with the Orthello 2D lib

but I'm figuring unity 4.3's 2d stuff is really just an ortho camera

and some editor adaptation to it

Jon

I'm just trying to figure out how to get the world space coordinates for the top/left point of the viewport.

Simple stuff like this is wasting my time.

Alex M.

suppose the camera's position is (Xc, Yc)

ToddersLegrande

docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/…

Alex M.

the top left would be (Xc - CameraWidth / 2, Yc - CameraHeight /2)

BlueBug

16:31

@Almo IMO ant had a rich storyline

Still one of my favorite. I like how the movie portraits the feagile community

*fragile

user92578

OMGOMGOMG MY TEXTURE LOADS

user92578

sorry caps

Almo

@BlueBug I liked that Antz gave them 6 legs. In Bug's Life, any bug they wanted us to identify with (with a few exceptions, like the caterpillar) had 4 legs.

user92578

Turns out, that PySDL is not very good in loading textures, but PyGame (that is based on SDL) is.

Almo

blue: use the edit thing

hit up arrow in the text box to change what you typed :D

Alex M.

16:57

the national agency for fiscal administration paid 2 mil euros for this logo

Pepsi only paid 1 mil for theirs

Grey

So many Unity questions.

Much happy. Very rejoice.

Alex M.

the london olympics logo was 625k eur in all

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING WITH OUR MONEY

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Ohh. There's a robotics hackathon in a few months.

Almo

You have to understand how graphic designers work before you can answer that question.

Grey

:v

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

16:58

About 20 EUR to enter.

Almo

that anaf logo has some balance to it that an untrained designer may not have gotten right.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

And I get to keep the robot I build.

Almo

this is not to say people never waste money on bad logos :)

like the germany world cup 2006 one :)

Alex M.

@Almo people

Almo

I can't comment on the London one; apparently it's a complex story.

Alex M.

16:59

this is the same as those 3 mil euro pools they wanted to make

Almo

heh

oop Tichu time

Alex M.

clearly started only to give some guy's friend money from the state budget

and make it look like it's legal

Almo

Logo design is actually really hard. If it's included with a complete corporate branding, then it gets even harder.

My only point is that good corporate branding is, and should be, expensive. But I admit that it is not always money well-spent. :)

ok talk to you guys later :)

Alex M.

I just hope people dig enough into this to find out which company did the logo

and if it's full of relatives of our politicians

can't blame them though

if I had a software company and my friend was the prime minister

I would ask for $100000 million for a web scraper too

the state has enough money, amirite

endrohat

17:23

yo

John McDonald

Hello

endrohat

wazaa

John McDonald

meh, not a lot. You?

endrohat

watching a series. the tomorrow people

Alex M.

17:38

how would you go about doing these sunrays

they're animated

is some sort of particle system appropriate?

Grey

Is that underwater?

John McDonald

(reminder: I know next to nothing about 3D)

My gut tells me it's just animated sprites

Alex M.

@Grey yes

@JohnMcDonald so basically sprites on quads that turn to always face you?

Grey

my hack: Get a plane, make it face cam at all times, no collision behavior,

Yes

@AlexM. yes yesyeysy

yes

John McDonald

@AlexM. Probably. Why not?

Alex M.

17:45

can't think of any reason

Grey

@ALEXM. IM A PRO AT 3d

John McDonald

It's cheap, and does what's required

radical

billboards..

Alex M.

another game that did something like this with grass was Chrome

Grey

@radical when you say it like that:

Alex M.

17:46

it looked really good when it was released

Grey

Make it rotate to the player on the y axis as well, but have it clamp at a certain point if you want it to look amazing - pro tips from gerry

ToddersLegrande

@AlexM. I don't know much about materials and lighting but perhaps a volume of some sort with a special material so that it does fancy stuffs

point lights up above perhaps

Grey

Volume Lighting /through/ Water = COMPLEX

Alex M.

the rays don't emit light

they're just for the show

Grey

Faux Light

@todders you've been fauxed

ToddersLegrande

17:49

Then yeah just color the volume so it looks like light

@Grey without more pictures, maybe a video, etc. its really impossible to tell whats being shown with 100% accuracy

Alex M.

nah, animated sprites seems to be the most legit solution

Grey

inb4 quad, billboard behavior, face player at all times. much cheap effect. Volumetric lighting probably isn't what it's doing.

Alex M.

it is probably what they used too

Grey

^

Yes

Alex M.

the game is freaking old anyway

(aquanox)

ToddersLegrande

17:51

Doesn't have to be light... just a volume with a semi transparent material

Grey

Okay.

sorry misunderstood you :v

ToddersLegrande

Have you never seen a cube of water? Why couldn't that have more volumes in it to get an effect? -_-

Alex M.

what do you mean by volumes though?

Grey

^

Because

quads a quad, a cube has volume , etc

\o/ the amount of space that a substance or object occupies, or that is enclosed within a container, esp. when great.

ToddersLegrande

@AlexM. essentially a mesh you can pass through

Alex M.

17:54

well you're suggesting essentially the same thing John and Grey did

:D

an animated sprite is still a quad with a transparent material applied

ToddersLegrande

Well I was implying it would instead be something you can approach, pass through, and look at from different angles

John McDonald

Yeah, most "sprites" will point toward the user on one or more axis

Grey

@ToddersLegrande Yes exactly what we were saying. We are in agreement.

John McDonald

Reminds me, Ever looked up from the base of a tree in Skyrim, then spun?

ToddersLegrande

@Grey Yeah I don't think we are

John McDonald

17:57

So trippy

Grey

@Todders o_O so what are you suggesting?

@John why not a static tree :p

Much overkill.

ToddersLegrande

Unless you guys are suggesting more advance than your typical billboards

Or maybe I don't know what we're talking about

Grey

I would do a typical billboard, with some rotation on the y axis relative to the players position, where it's clamped at a certain value.

"approach, pass through, and look at from different angles"

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