Game Development

Grey

18:02

Who wants to see greys screensaver

RAISE THINE HAND

2/4 of it is done

Why does this take so long ; _ ;

such load.

yes

et is done

PLS ADD VINE CAPABILITYES to chat

okay bye

Jon

18:26

How's this for a speedtest result:

Almo

hahaha

Grey

@Jon lol

Noctrine

Grey

ohsnap

Jon

I'm at work :)

Need better network here, it is ridiculous

Noctrine

18:28

Wish I could have downloaded the ESO files from here :p

Grey

I'm pro

super ro

UVERSE

lol

Noctrine

Be happy that your parents let you have that :p

You could be on DSL :p

Grey

hue

It suits my needs.

Noctrine

Though, I guess UVERSE is just DSL

ToddersLegrande

I'm on DSL.... :(

Speed is about the same as Grey's and I don't have any options for faster

Grey

18:33

:(

ToddersLegrande

Well I shouldn't say I don't have any options... I have the option to move.... yet not really at the same time

Almo

hahaha

Grey

u think this is a game @Almo ?

Jon

☉_☉

Grey

@jon

Almo

18:43

:o

Jon

☉ₒ☉

Grey

[removed]

Icy Defiance

dang, Noctrine, that kind of speed through AT&T has gotta break the bank

unless you're at work or something

Shotgun Ninja

Work internet

I answered you before you asked, my internet is THAT FAST

Quantum entanglement and shit

also ESP and mind-reading

Grey

k

Icy Defiance

18:53

home internet. not sure why it went to chicago, but meh.

Grey

icy lives on the border between chicago and <where he lives>

its the only xplanation

Noctrine

@IcyDefiance I'm at work, yes the connection is ridiculous.

@ShotgunNinja That's some nice upload there.

Where do you work Mr Ninja

Or at least, what is the core business/producttype/thingie

Shotgun Ninja

Milwaukee/Wauwatosa, WI

We sell sheet music

ToddersLegrande

Do you have a Madison branch by chance? A sheet music website leadership guy added me on LinkedIn recently but it looked like it was based out of Madison.

Shotgun Ninja

Nope; just west Milwaukee and somewhere in Minnesota

Almo

19:05

0

Q: How do I avoid A* pathfinding lists exploding?

I'm attempting to implement A* pathfinding in my game, and it works for most of the iterations I've tested it with, but I've hit a few random cases where it never stops loading items into the Closed and Open lists, making me think I have a leak in my logic somewhere. I think it's caused when ther...

c# path-finding

that's a "debug my code" question.

not sure how I feel about that one.

also seems more like an SO question

Noctrine

Its a debug code I pulled together from around the internet.

You should consider flagging it, maybe leaving a comment :p

Jon

I saw a 2d polygon based a* pathfinder

Now I want to make one.

david-gouveia.com/portfolio/pathfinding-on-a-2d-polygonal-map

Noctrine

Hey, he's a member here :D

Jon

Yeah

smart guy

ToddersLegrande

That demo video is pretty slick

Jon

19:14

The concept is pretty simple

You just check your polygon corners basically.

Draw lines to the corners until you get a path

Even with concave shapes, you just add your points where lines intersect, and it is able to calculate the paths

Icy Defiance

19:31

ooh, Bill Gates is doing an AMA: reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1xj56q/…

Almo

that's pretty cool

one of my favorite clips of Bill:

►

Grey

19:44

@IcyDefiance I can't really think of anything to ask him lol

Almo

I might ask why he's always been such a great supporter of BASIC as a language.

Grey

"BECAUSE I MADE IT"

Almo

I personally like working in BASIC for some tasks

Grey

is his answer

Almo

I prototyped a network word game in Visual BASIC for Ubisoft

that was pretty cool

nintendo.com/games/detail/RVmp9cDcCZEaHPXMDjriFP-90ytvsaJ2

went into that game

Grey

19:47

for ubisoft?

wow

Almo

I was there for 6 years

worked on a lot of different projects

Grey

!!!!!

AC ?

:DDDDDDDDDD

Any major titles?

Almo

I turned down camera/control programming on AC 2 to work on Hyperquest, which eventually became The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot.

I did some exotic gameplay prototyping for AC 3

Shotgun Ninja

@Grey Bill Gates didn't make BASIC. That distinction goes to John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz of Dartmouth.

Almo

biggest seller I worked on was "My Word Coach DS" which sold about a million.

Grey

19:50

@ShotgunNinja woopsies

@Almo OMG

Hammer Engine and stuff?

BlueBug

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. is a fun good game except its time gate barriers.

Almo

Also worked on: Splinter Cell PSP, Star Wars Lethal Alliance PSP, My Word Coach, My SAT Coach, a cancelled project, Hyper Quest, Crystal Shuffle (iPhone game I designed)

Best thing I worked on was My Word Coach. I designed and tuned the falling-block spelling game.

Shotgun Ninja

Altair BASIC was Bill Gates/Paul Allen's project.

Almo

the creative director said if his Grandma could finish Easy, Hard could be as tough as I wanted it.

I completed it on Hard twice, proving it is in fact possible. :)

Grey

@Almo wow

How was the workflow

Almo

19:51

no need to ping me if I'm right here.

:)

Grey

;-;sorryexcited

Almo

some projects went smoothly

some did not

overall, my experience at Ubi was pretty good. I didn't get on any of the hardcore overtime projects

Grey

:(

Almo

or any of the super train-wrecks, like FarCry III or Rainbow 6 Six

Grey

:D that's pretty cool though. Ubisoft is a great company

Almo

19:53

FCIII was redesigned from the ground up at least once

R66 maybe 3 times.

Like, R66 still isn't out. They were working on that when I was still there in 2011

Grey

What studio did you work at? Montreal?

Almo

yeah

Grey

o m g

Almo

Ubisoft does certain things very well; mainly art. They don't always get how to make something "fun".

Grey

they do all the big titles :V

Icy Defiance

19:54

they're big because they're fun, I thought... :P

Almo

hahaha

Grey

@Almo You worked as Gameplay Programmer/ Designer?

Almo

depends on the project

Grey

sorry for the ping lol. Argh bad habit

Almo

some were Gameplay Programmer, some Generalist Programmer, some as both programmer/designer.

Grey

19:55

LOL generalist programmer?

Almo

yeah

Grey

You work on everything?

if your a generalist?

Almo

people who aren't afraid to do anything.

Grey

:o

Almo

like I was the one who supported GCC compiler for Star Wars PSP.

that was a bitch

had to rewrite some assembly cause the SN compiler accepted C symbols in the assembly whereas GCC doesn't.

in the end, we didn't use the GCC version

but it worked which took me 5 months to accomplish

Jon

19:57

"It's crap, trash it, fire him"

Almo

had one linker error for 2.5 weeks. that sucked

Grey

That sucks!

I think I've had errors/bugs for longer

Almo

The producer (i think) wasn't happy, and I ended up with a bad eval that period

Jon

i worked on a massive core system bug for 2 months

Almo

wasn't my fault we didn't get a result

long bugs suck man

Grey

19:58

How does evaluation stuff go?

Jon

I dreamt of this bug

Almo

depends on the company a great deal

Jon

It was tearing me apart inside

Grey

Your work output, I'd imagine? and maybe how you interact with the other team members?

Almo

hhaha

Grey

19:58

@jon lol

Two Game Companies I'd love to work with: TTG and TGC

preferably TTG

Almo

in the end, the linker bug was due to a badly formed == operator comparing with NULL incorrectly and generating bad assembly.

and only in optimised compilation

Grey

No wonder it took so long to track down :v

Almo

wrote a script to link the exe with 1 .o file out of 117 optimized at a time.

in the morning, I knew which file it was in

comment half, compile. comment remaining half, compile

binary searched it until I had THE LINE.

Jon

My big bug was related to a word DOC parser

Almo

then it was like
if(someObject == NULL)

like WTF. that should work.

ooh boy parsers :)

Jon

20:01

We were trying to code around a XML tag issue, where microsoft was forced to remove special XML tags by court order

some XML patent trolls

Almo

ouch

Jon

We stored the raw data in the DB, and rebuilt the files in word, which was embedded in a application (you are not suppose to be able to do that)

well, i say we... I didn't design this crap

Almo

hahah

Jon

I came in to fix the mess.

Solution is simple. drop word.

But they don't want to.

quit the project.

bad direction

Grey

If these are the sorts of bugs you guys deal with lol.... then I've never solved a real bug before :p

Almo

20:03

wow

no, you have

size of the bug is relative to your experience. :)

Jon

Yeah, we had other guys working on translation bugs, and stuff like that, lol

I don't touch those, its below me now

Grey

such insult
                  very cry
        much true

Jon

If i get assigned translation bugs, I send them off to the student

no need to waste my time on that

Almo

what you mean "translation bugs"

just incorrect words due to translation errors?

Jon

well, translation errors .. requires a translation file fix

basically just data entry

stuff like that

Almo

20:06

ah ok

Jon

stuff that would take me 5 to 10 minutes

gotta give easy stuff to the learners

The student we got right now is pretty damn good too

Almo

The guy who ended up doing camera/control on AC2 was someone who was an intern a couple years before

he's still there

great gameplay programmer

Shotgun Ninja

Nice!

Jon

how long did you work there @Almo

Almo

had a working aim system on PSP Far Cry

project never got finished though

six years.

Jon

20:10

ah wow

wanna be my mentor?

Almo

heh

I'll answer questions if you have them

Jon

i have your email now

Alex M.

yahoo mail gets me into a redirect loop

on things as important as a global webmail system

punishment for bad programming should be torture

Almo

hahah

Alex M.

I am serious

I may also say this just because I'm angry right now

but nevertheless serious

Jon

20:15

if it affects a general population of at least 100,000 people, then yes, torture.

over a million, death penalty

human error will be eliminated, literally

Alex M.

godot has been released officially: godotengine.org

please give it a try

Almo

so we're not waiting for it anymore eh?

:)

Alex M.

it's completely free, open source, and exports to HTML5, not a lame unity player, as well as most consoles

Jon

i can't give it a try now

Alex M.

it runs on linux, and builds for linux

Almo

20:17

linux. :(

Alex M.

it has so much potential and I would be sad to see people still clinging to unity

when such an alternative exists

I would also ask that (if you wish of course) someone stars the link

Jon

page is not loading.

Alex M.

it's slow for me too yes

Jon

unity page loads pretty fast

ToddersLegrande

So since its not loading... I'll just ask questions.

Does it have a toolset like Unity?

I mean... what is it?

Alex M.

20:20

@Jon I can't argue with that

Jon

you can create animations

Alex M.

I will argue whether or not it's relevant to the quality of the engine

Jon

looks like it has a lot of features

Alex M.

and say it isn't

@ToddersLegrande it has an editor

a built in scripting system

native 3D and 2D workflow support

Jon

Create complex 2D games with the fully dedicated 2D engine (no need for 3D over 2D), using pixel coordinates and a wide array of tools.

ToddersLegrande

20:21

Damnit I was just getting used to Unity 2D tools :(

Alex M.

and it is extensible via C++

ToddersLegrande

Won't I have to worry about cross browser compatibility with such a tool?

I mean... is HTML 5 finally to a point where we can "trust it"

I've not investigated this for a while

Jon

Yeah, not all browsers are the same

HTML5 is still kinda sketchy if you ask me

Alex M.

if it's not finally at the point where we can trust it, there is no dependable way to develop in html5 then

so there's no way for godot to provide any better :)

BlueBug

this is what I do for school weeeee done.

Jon

20:22

Chain physics

ToddersLegrande

@AlexM. Well for example back... maybe a year or two ago I tried the HTML exporter of GameMaker which worked pretty slick but slightly differently in different browsers, usually with Audio.

Alex M.

in any case, I'd say the fact that you get unity pro equivalent features for free makes it worth trying

the team behind godot used the engine to develop console games throughout their lifetime

Icy Defiance

starting with IE9, and really with IE10 and up, the browsers are close enough to the same to not worry about it. most people making HTML5 games still say to just play in Chrome, though, mainly because that does the best hardware acceleration.

Alex M.

right now they're using it to develop a game in partnership with square enix

Jon

Alex M.

20:24

so I'd say they're not really hobbyists

Almo

I really like that kind of physics shit. I did some of that on the Wii

was you holding a toy on a rope for a dog to jump at and try to catch

ToddersLegrande

Scripting language JS? That's kind of obnoxious for me. I just don't like working with the language :(

Almo

that's cool Jon

Alex M.

@ToddersLegrande who did you reply to with this? :D

ToddersLegrande

I guess it was a general Godot question

Alex M.

20:25

GDScript is Python-esque in nature

no JS there

Jon

It looks pretty damn good

so it is completely free?

Alex M.

yes

BlueBug

@Jon red worm!

Jon

heh

BlueBug

sick physics.

Jon

20:30

its nothing fancy

the hard part would be to connect a mass at the end, and calculate the pendulum physics with a rope style swing

The easier thing to do, is a worms style rope, that is rigid

BlueBug

@Pic I just realized since you had changed your name from Programm3r to Pic, did you have any other name than Programm3r previously as well?

Alex M.

Pic lol

Jon

20:47

ok

so like, source control with unity

Its pretty much shit no matter what?

Alex M.

godot uses 0 binary files afaik, one second

yup

scenes are human readable XML files

BlueBug

why? github magic, no?

Alex M.

so that's another plus for godot :D

everything is diff-able

Jon

hmmm

Pip

heyo

Almo

20:49

C++: "It gives a false impression of safety and "high levelness", which is very dangerous (at least with C you always know that you're walking in a minefield and that keeps you alert)."

Alex M.

hi there PIC

Pip

@BlueBug pip

not pic

BlueBug

I have to work on Unity with three other people. Why is it shit? U scare me.

Jon

i was just asking

Pip

@BlueBug My first name was PythonInProgress, that's where Pip came from

BlueBug

20:50

I c.

Jon

I read that the large files make it really slow

since git wasn't designed for it

BlueBug

:(... true...

Jon

so basically, scheduled backups to disk is the way to go

then weekly uploads offsite

lol

kalina

2014 Elections: Ask Ubuntu | Stack Overflow

hasherr

Hello.

Pip

20:58

nice @kalina

hasherr

Do we have an election?

Pip

I don't think so, right now

I remember us having one a while ago

hasherr

I'm fine with the moderators now, they all do a good job.

I'm bored, so I'm going to clone flappy bird :P

Shotgun Ninja

Just like everyone else

hasherr

Yep.

Pip

21:19

lol

Alex did a good job on it

hasherr

He never actually played the game, haha

John McDonald

heh, how to beat Flappy Bird: youtube.com/watch?v=gD-nzHy2DdU

hasherr

Glitch Mob's new album comes out tomorrow.

I might shit my pants.

Pip

@JohnMcDonald nice

Alex M.

21:58

horrible almost satirical music drop

►

worse than chinese food

and rebecca black

hasherr

No way it's worse than Chinese food.

Alex M.

give it a try

hasherr

Trying

Wardy

lols @JohnMcDonald epic way to beat flappy bird

dang i didn't get it before they pulled it off the store :(

hasherr

I don't know how to install device driver software on my Nexus. :(

@AlexM. ...

Alex M.

22:01

eh?

hasherr

Are you... Are you sure this isn't comedy

Alex M.

he's legit

hasherr

Hot damn...

►

ELECTROOO

Stack Exchange

0

Q: What counts as a "debug my code" type of question?

We currently close questions as off-topic when those questions are asking, essentially, for the community to debug the asker's project. When this close reason is applicable is a little unclear at the moment, so I am putting this post out there to solicit feedback and clarification on the exact ci...

discussion close-reasons

Wardy

ouch hasher

im gonna have trouble hearing for weeks now

hasherr

22:06

Head bops

BOP IT BOP IT

Wardy

that one is pretty cool though

good game tune that

omg it bounces round the room

i forgot i had the surround on

~ROFL it gets all MArio on ur ass !!!

hasherr

Dude, tomorrow I'm going to go insane.

GlERTCH MOB

Wardy

sup?

dam this is one epic tune

jeez this guy only does epic tunes !!!

hasherr

I have more for you, my friend.

Wardy

@hasher you just bacame my best friend :)

hasherr

22:11

This guy?

@Wardy TRY THIS ONE FIRST ONES FREE

►

Wardy

rofl

i wa listening to this ...

youtube.com/user/MonstercatMedia?feature=watch

kalina

night all!

hasherr

NOIGHT

Wardy

noight lol

omg i still have the code for this

blog.ccoder.co.uk/?page=6

why the hell cant i get 1 bloody triangle on screen any more

sheesh

i get sucked in to these technical rabbit holes and lost

user4704

0

Q: What counts as a "debug my code" type of question?

We currently close questions as off-topic when those questions are asking, essentially, for the community to debug the asker's project. When this close reason is applicable is a little unclear at the moment, so I am putting this post out there to solicit feedback and clarification on the exact ci...

discussion close-reasons

hasherr

22:20

Hello, Josh.

user4704

Please provide your input on how we should define "debug my code" questions here!

5

concept3d

22:39

wwow, was just going to ask sth similar on meta

Wardy

@JoshPetrie that;s my 2 pence

prob wrong, but it's sort of how i would interpret the nature of a question

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