Game Development

Christoph

17:00

I've never played it, so I can pick a combo for you based on how fun it sounds, ok?

Lokkij

Too late! I picked Gargoyle Earth Elementalist.

Chances are I'm dead in a few minutes though

Christoph

where can I see a list of choices?

ah

Lokkij

Races and classes

Christoph

octopode warper.

Lokkij

Oh dear

Noted.

Warper is an okay class, but octopodes are weird and difficult

Christoph

17:08

it might be that surprisingly imba thing!

Hjorthenify

@Jon Are you here?

Jon

depends

Hjorthenify

Care to help me with SQL? :D

Jon

sure

Hjorthenify

I'm not sure if I can use a subquery for this:

I have a sql table containing the player inventory items

Where one of the columns contains the ID from another database which refers to the item

Should I use a subquery such as select * from items where ID=(select ID from player_items)

Jon

17:15

You have a player table, and a items table... then you have a playerItems table?

You are going to want to use a JOIN

Hjorthenify

Exactly, how?

Jon

ok, so first you define what you want for your output

Select character.name, item.price, character.whatevs

then join the two tables

SpartanDonut

I think he understands that. It's the cross database stuff he's not getting I assume.

Jon

lol, ok well my sql skills are lacking now i haven't done any in a while

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa213227%28v=sql.80%29.aspx

58

Q: SQL Inner-join with 3 tables?

I'm trying to join 3 tables in a view; here is the situation: I have a table that contains information of students who are applying to live on this College Campus. I have another table that lists the Hall Preferences (3 of them) for each Student. But each of these preferences are merely an ID Nu...

Lokkij

17:43

sigh I died again. It was such a promising run! :(

Ah well. Octopode Warper, here we go!

Christoph

cool i can watch that!

Lokkij

Yeah online play is fun :)

Also, the character is way stronger than I expected it to be

Defeating a band of orcs on D:1 is no small feat

Shit. Dead once again.

Hjorthenify

@Jon Sorry ill look at it now :)

Christoph

18:04

@Lokkij but did you have fun?

Lokkij

I did! :D

Octopodes are surprinsingly fun

Jon

cool

Lokkij

I just realized I worship a god who gives me lots of weapons and armour.. as a race that cannot wear armour and a class that uses lots of unarmed attacks. :/

Jon

kill him

become the new god

Christoph

yeah it will broaden your horizon

Lokkij

18:09

Hahaha

I don't think I can survive his wrath :P

Also his other abilities are pretty sweet

Jon

jgallant.com/WorldTest/WorldTest.html

Christoph

@Jon I can only see a white screen

Jon

if you have an old player it might not work

Christoph

which player?

Jon

unity player

Lokkij

18:12

Looks good @Jon

Jon

Thanks, its pretty cool that it will be playable in a web browser

quite frankly I never expected it to be, haha

Christoph

ah I see...not for linux

Kevin van der Velden

Not on chrome either =p

Christoph

18:26

I'd like to see something like the wii u gamepad as a hardware development platform

Lokkij

@Christoph Your suggestion of Octopode Warper actually broadened my horizon! :D Not only did I realize octopodes are more fun than they sound, I also about know the immense power of rods now.

Christoph

cool!

they sell a broken wii u on ebay for €200 !?

Kevin van der Velden

Sure

It might not be bought but that's not a reason to not put it online for that price

Christoph

i can get a working one for less Oo

Deep

Hey guys!

Christoph

18:42

we're sleeping

SpartanDonut

Shhhhh

Deep

o...k...

Where are you guys?

I swear its still afternoon in the US

http://chillibyte.github.io/GameDev/pokemon
how would I detect whether there's a wall(black) in the way of the player (red)?

I'm using a 2d array to store all of the level data

John McDonald

@Deep It's also Sunday in the US

Deep

You've lost me. Should I come back later?

John McDonald

You could try to figure out the colour of the grid space you are moving to and do some other stuff, but the real solution is make the graphics simply a representation of the game, and have the game run regardless of how it's being displayed.

I wrote an answer to someone else's question to that effect here:

21

A: Isometric Collision Detection

I'll come straight out and say that I don't know how to solve the problem you have described in the question (collision detection between iso-tile-shaped rectangles), but I can tell you how others have solved it in the past: The way it's done in other games is to separate the game world from the...

Basically: you know where the player is [x, y], and you know where all the walls are (array of [x,y]). See if the proposed new location for the player matches a wall or not

@Deep (and it's just that Sundays are slower. Chat away!)

Jon

19:21

if (Color.Black) { return wall; }

else { return notwall; }

in a situation like this, just check before you move

if the place you want to move to is a wall -- don't move.

John McDonald

My first game (ever) checked the colour of the pixel I was moving toward. Not highly recommended

Jon

lol

I tried doing pixel perfect collision once

I realized that was ridiculous

John McDonald

lil' bit

Christoph

in quite many disciplines one of the first and most important lessons is that you should accept "close enough" when more is not necessary

Deep

internet back up

alright, that sounds reasonably easy to do. Thank you.

Christoph

19:42

googled mass effect 3 - accidentally didn't type the "m"

7

OMGtechy

ahaha

Hjorthenify

Oh wow..

@Jon The join worked :)
Can't seem to add foreign keys to SQLite though...

Jon

make em

Hjorthenify

ALTER TABLE player_inventory
add foreign key(id) references Items(id);

Should that work?

Jon

yeah, a foreign key doesn't technically need to be formally declared

Hjorthenify

19:48

Hm?

Jon

i don't know what sqlite supports

Hjorthenify

My sql version might be out of date, btw

Because I found an official site where it states that foregin keys are supported

Jon

you can model your DB in a gui

John McDonald

Yeah, I thought SQLite didn't support foreign keys

hmm

Jon

addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager

i used to use this

its decent

John McDonald

19:50

Oh nice, Foreign Keys were introduced in SQLite 3.6.19

Hjorthenify

My GUI doesn't support foreign keys, but the command marks as existent:
@JohnMcDonald https://www.sqlite.org/foreignkeys.html

Yeah

John McDonald

:) been a while

Like... a long while actually. damn, 10 years maybe?

heh, why do I remember useless facts for that long? lol

OMGtechy

Many of us do. This is more useful than most though.

Hjorthenify

Because you were furious it didn't work? :P
@Jon I use this: http://sqlitebrowser.org/

Jon

looks nice

Hjorthenify

19:54

I'm running version 3.8 and still gets a syntax error...

John McDonald

@Hjorthenify :p Probably. I was more furious that they didn't allow you to drop columns though

Hjorthenify

O_O Yeah.. That's kinda weird :P

John McDonald

It is: sqlite.org/faq.html#q11

So... get it right the first time!

Jon

sqlite is awesome for games

that is all

OMGtechy

Why are people so pissed about this paid mods for Skyrim thing?

John McDonald

19:57

I used it for a local tool, and I needed a local database that didn't reuire installing a 200mb package

Jon

they are saying that bethesda is taking 35% of every sale

John McDonald

@OMGtechy Partially because this means the end of awesome free mods, and partially because the creators of said mods only get 25%

Jon

without having any responsibility for anything

Hjorthenify

@JohnMcDonald Thank you! That actually fixed my problem :D

John McDonald

wut?

Oh, the faq

OMGtechy

19:58

@JohnMcDonald well the 25% I don't like, but it's silly.

Hjorthenify

"SQLite has limited ALTER TABLE support"

OMGtechy

If you don't want to pay for mods...don't pay for mods D:

Hjorthenify

Made me think: Perhaps I need to recreate the table?

And that worked

John McDonald

hah, ic

Hjorthenify

I think..

Isn't it supposed to stop me if I try to index something which doesn't exists in the other table?

John McDonald

19:59

@OMGtechy yeah, but this is also the end of a golden age. You have to admit, there are some awesome free mods out there. This is probably the end of that, or... nearing the end of that. On the other hand... these mod creators (us) might be able to make a buck

Almo

3Wave is the only proper way to play Q3 and it was free.

oop game starting

OMGtechy

I suppose. I personally think that this will encourage more modders to appear, and more companies to think about making their games "moddable" if they can take a cut.

John McDonald

perhaps, but maybe our favourite mods wouldn't have become as popular if they had charged a buck. (counter-strike, day of defeat, natural selection, red orchestra, firearms, pirates vikings and knights, vampire slayer, etc.)

But... I guess this is leaving the choice in the modder's hands

I hope it convinces people to make extra awesome mods, but does money really motivate?

Christoph

now that people are more used to paying little amounts of money for mobile games I think charging similar amount for a mod won't change the world

John McDonald

Not to mention the issue of policing the mods. Who actually made it? Did you just rip someone's free mod from some other source and re-package it for a buck?

Christoph

20:07

there will be a lot of crap around, but that's nothing new

Hjorthenify

PRAGMA foreign_keys; gets set to false after I set it to true...

Christoph

re-packaging open source work and trying to sell it can probably only be defeated by rigorous reviews

John McDonald

@Christoph yeah, I feel that'll be commonplace, at least at the start

OMGtechy

@BlueBug now I really wanna have a go ...

Christoph

hardware dev board developers face a similar problem with cheap ripoffs from china, but still make good money

also, we're not talking about new laws here - if they don't work as desired, paid mods will disappear

John McDonald

20:15

yeah

I think it was a necessary move, and only time will tell if spells the beginning or end of amazing mods

hmm, what if Portal 2 opens up charging for maps? If Mevious were to charge, he'd be swimming, and I'd probably pay

That guy makes some amazing maps

So simple looking, no tricks, just pure logic, but damn hard

So, yeah, I'd pay for that

For any of you Portal 2 lovers out there. Try Push from Mevious, and you'll see what I mean. So awesome.

SpartanDonut

My least favorite argument against this so far has been "modding is supposed to be free"

Christoph

that is not even an argument (or is it?)

SpartanDonut

I don't know

Christoph

if modding is (by definition, so to say) free, they're simply selling something different. they could add two dots to the product and call it möd

John McDonald

Well, originally there was a bit of a grey area if you tried charging for your mod because the game designer could come after you, and that's why mods have traditionally been free. But now that the company has to be on-board with charging for mods, everything is game

SpartanDonut

20:28

I think people are upset about getting more bang for their buck when a game they buy supports mods which have historically been free... and now it's going to be like paid DLC from amateurs

John McDonald

:( yeah

There are a handful of unresolved issues too, like if I buy a mod, then the mod no longer works after a game update, what do I do?

Happens all the time with mods

Not to mention paid mods for early access games.

lol

SpartanDonut

Yeah. What I would like to believe is going to happen is that this is going to increase first party support for mods and subsequently proper upgrade paths and standards should be put into place, etc. making the whole mod thing significantly more accessible than it has been in the past

Steam Works has already helped with the accessibility standpoint

Monetization for the first parties should aid in first parties having proper mod support from the get go

If mods follow the standards there should be some sort of guarantee saying that a mod is guaranteed support through version X

This is all just wishful thinking I'm sure but I think that it's possible this is where things could be headed

It's kind of like leveraging a third party REST API

John McDonald

@SpartanDonut But as my dad and I know all too well, if the game is on version X+1, there's no way to run version X

SpartanDonut

Right

John McDonald

I guess this is why they are starting with Skyrim

It's an old game, with a solid modding community

Christoph

20:38

sounds plausible, kinda

Hjorthenify

I thought the skyrim mod had died?

SpartanDonut

In the ideal world I was dreaming up it was more of a guarantee that they would support a certain set of standards for a long time (I'm looking at it like MS deprecating .NET functions, etc.)

They would announce with a certain predefined amount of time that X standards would be changing and mods leveraging them would need to be updated

Hjorthenify

@SpartanDonut I thought the point of .NET was that it would never deprecate functions?

SpartanDonut

This way consumers know how long they have to use mods

@Hjorthenify well not 100% like .NET. You can run code on old .NET versions but future .NET versions might remove deprecated functions

So the big difference, as John said, you can't run old versions of games

Hjorthenify

Right

SpartanDonut

20:41

But at least consumers would have an idea that if they buy a mod they have X amount of guaranteed time to play it, if not longer

If the ability to revert games to previous versions was an option... most of this would be moot

Hjorthenify

But still.. That would be a huge limitation to put on a game. "I wont alter this too much until 6 months into the future"

Kinda halts the development

SpartanDonut

Well it depends

If you have official modding channels (i.e. an API, etc.) as opposed to just hacking the files that already exist... a lot of that can be abstracted

Allows the developers to change the underlying systems without affecting mods

This would be the streamlining, accessibility, and whatnot I was getting at

Mods could just get better

Because developers would have invested in the tooling and support for it

The monetization bit allows for that to more likely be a reality

Hjorthenify

Yeah that's what MC is doing

But has killed a lot of mods because the developers didn't want to update them until the API was out

SpartanDonut

Right

We have a bit of a chicken and egg scenario here

I think it could become a reality if you get big support and I'm willing to bet Valve will front some money to help get it there

Without that support its very much chicken / egg as developers won't see the benefit and consumers won't want to buy into something so risky

Hjorthenify

Yeah :/

It has taken them a great while though

Not sure on the current status of it

@Jon have you worked with views?

Jon

20:57

yes

Hjorthenify

select * from load_inventory where Inventory.id=1;

Where load_inventory is a view: create view Inventory as Select * From Items inner JOIN Inventory ON Inventory.item_id=Items.id

returns the error: no such column: Inventory.id: select * from load_inventory where Inventory.id=1;

John McDonald

The outer query has no idea what's inside the view

Hjorthenify

Oh

John McDonald

So, you need to do: select * from load_inventory where load_inventory.id=1;

It treats the view like a table... kinda

Hjorthenify

I see.. New problem: I have two columns by the name ID

-.-

Because container id and item id

Jon

21:01

@Almo

John McDonald

right. The database I work with all the time has a bunch of ids, and they prefix them in the DB for this reason. So, itemID and containerID. You can either do that in the tables, OR you can do that in the view.

Hjorthenify

So if I remove the where statement then one of the columns is named id:1

Hmm right

John McDonald

I might rename stuff in the view: create view Inventory as Select items.id as itemID, inventory.id as invID, other, stuff, here From Items inner JOIN Inventory ON Inventory.item_id=Items.id

Or, go back a layer and rename the ids, :/

Hjorthenify

I renamed them. The database is a dummy one atm :P

Dammit.. Now I have two item_id columns xD

Jon

remove one

the power of being a programmer

Hjorthenify

21:10

^

Dropped the view thingy for the where statement. No need to create an outer query when it's going to be called from code anyways.

Jon

But honestly, you need to understand, that the power of a cpu, or even a gpu, is at your hands

and they are only getting more powerful

Hjorthenify

I still added a player_items view for convenience

Jon

and quite frankly, we are the smart ones

Hjorthenify

I know. We will soon be manipulating photons by the power of our keyboards!

Jon

soon, you will be able to heat up and feed burritos to fat people all in VR

Christoph

21:12

i still use a light switch for that

Jon

but in real life

John McDonald

I'm trying to remember where I read this great article on hungarian notation, and how it was originally designed to denote the kind of data being stored in a variable, not the type. So, a variable that stores inventory IDs might be prefixed with invid, and variables to do with counting something would start with i. Just by looking at the prefixes, you know what kind of data to expect, and what makes sense to do with it.

Hjorthenify

soon

John McDonald

Pretty awesome article imo

Jon

hungarians are all dead

Hjorthenify

21:12

Ping me if you figure it out :D

@Jon Yeah.. Too much death metal

Jon

mercury

Hjorthenify

ref is if I want to assure that the data is passed by reference, right? (C#)

Jon

did you know that the top egyptian kings would be entombed in mercury.. their corpse literally floating in metal

John McDonald

Cool, that was easy to find

@Hjorthenify Making wrong code look wrong: joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html

4

Hjorthenify

Yes I've heard that before. :P

@JohnMcDonald I'll take a look at it later. My mind isn't up for reading right now....

Thanks though

John McDonald

21:16

np

it just came to mind because you have two ID fields for different tables

Hjorthenify

I have a hungover from wine(those are the worst) and it's getting late..

Jon

kids don't drink

Hjorthenify

Yeah :D Newb mistake i guess..

John McDonald

No, wouldn't say so. But a great thing to learn, :)

Hjorthenify

In Denmark kids are born with a bottle of beer.

Yes :D
Last time I did SQL I was 12.. I think.

Jon

21:18

in canada, they force us to smoke weed at 6 months

with one of these

rite of passage

Hjorthenify

Damn I wanna move to Canada..

How's the beer there?

Jon

:D

i'm on 7% + now

anything less taste like crap to me

John McDonald

@Hjorthenify Shrug

@Jon mmmm, IPAs

Jon

hahaha, yeah you got it

Hjorthenify

Oh wow.. :P I'm at 6%.. anything less tastes water, but I'll get there, @Jon :D

Got a Carlsberg Black Gold in the fridge..

Tempting.

Lokkij

21:22

A few days ago I learned vodka tastes like shit.

Hjorthenify

@Lokkij I also have a bottle of this:

Wanna taste? That's 80% alcohol

Lokkij

Yuck

Probably burns like hell

Christoph

yup

Lokkij

You're basically drinking medicinal alcohol

Jon

lasjkdf

Hjorthenify

21:24

It kicks out a cold right instant.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

You're disgusting @Hjorthenify :P

Hjorthenify

@William You're welcome :D

Jon

yeah, you are gross

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Stroh Rum is some of the vilest I've ever had to drink :P Absinthe is less disgusting. :P

Hjorthenify

^

Absinthe can be quite good if used correctly.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

21:26

Aye

Christoph

but seriously people don't drink stroh it's more used for mixing

Jon

Hjorthenify

There's a reason this Stroh is still standing on my shelf. I've only had one occasion to use it :P

Jon

been drinking this one because of the robot, and its good too

Hjorthenify

@William Roskilde Festival

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

21:27

Nah. Not much of a festival goer.

Hjorthenify

Stroh works well there..

@Jon HopCity.. Wut?

Christoph

i'm going to wacken this year

Jon

hop hop citty bitch

John McDonald

I've always liked the Hop Box:

Partially for the puns, :p

Hjorthenify

:P

Jon

21:31

haha

Hjorthenify

It got some pretty cool labels as well

This one's ma' favorite:

Jon

MickLH

^

Jon

malt liquor

lando calorisian flavour

Hjorthenify

Is that one of those pisswasser beers where you get 2L for 99 cents?

Jon

21:35

this it the kind of beer that you can make in your bedroom over 3 days

its a step above spit potato liquor from jail cells

Hjorthenify

Oh wow..

Sounds like the famous(among students) beer from Denmark:

SpartanDonut

This is probably my favorite beer right now

Hjorthenify

Midwestern beer?

Almo

@Jon what man

Hjorthenify

Also we might as well just rename this room to "Game Development and Beer"

Jon

21:38

it is alive on the web @Almo

jgallant.com/WorldTest/WorldTest.html

Hjorthenify

:o

Jon

milestone :D

Hjorthenify

Yes! I see you fixed the clamping issue as well :D

Almo

took me 3 hours today to design that page to give all that info, and fit on an iPhone 4 screen

checking your link jon

Hjorthenify

Looks good

Almo

21:44

dood that's cool jonm

thanks hjorthenify :)

Jon

its a start :)

Hjorthenify

Now you just need dynamic water, cave systems, NPC, players, ores, items, changeable tiles, weather....

Lokkij

The crotch grab dance move is basically the unsexiest move possible, but people still do it :(

Jon

6

John McDonald

OOOOOooo

Hjorthenify

21:50

Is that... From your game?

John McDonald

@Hjorthenify That was a perfect opportunity to say "AAahhhhh". Common'

Almo

@Lokkij agreed, lokkij

2

Q: "Almost-finished" versus "almost finished"

I am attaching an almost-finished version of the report. I am attaching an almost finished version of the report. Which is the preferred form, (1) or (2)? Why?

grammar adjectives hyphen

woa that 9-voted answer isn't correct

Jon

yah

Almo

mine's WAY better

Jon

i have a bunch of crap

Almo

21:51

(read that as please upvote mine)

Jon

John McDonald

Looks like you've been making a really nice engine, but how is the gameplay coming @Jon

Jon

well that is the thing.. i am revisiting it in unity atm

the game play was lacking , as this was mainly a world gen engine i was doing for fun

John McDonald

ah yeah, I've been there.

Jon

i had a game

and now I am considering actually doing it.. and focussing on the core gameplay

Hjorthenify

21:56

I wrote the most of a ASCII game engine for fun..

OMGtechy

@Hjorthenify now write a UTF-8 one :D

Well, any unicode encoding tbh

John McDonald

@OMGtechy heh, I laughed a little

OMGtechy

You could do a lot with that :D

Hjorthenify

@OMGtechy It was boring as hell because no fancy graphics.. :/
But yeah UTF-8 could spice it up a little..

OMGtechy

I'd be tempted if I wasn't already doing my language

Hjorthenify

21:58

Not really fun when you only have 16 colors to choose from :P

John McDonald

yeah, but Dwarf Fortress

OMGtechy

Constraints are the things that make it more fun :D

John McDonald

I guess DF is pseudo-ASCII, but still

Lokkij

It is?

Hjorthenify

This was pure ASCII.. Ran in the console of vista+ versions of windows

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