Game Development

12:30 AM

What do you call blending where you pick the highest of two color components? Sorta like this:

r = math.max(src.r, dest.r);
g = math.max(src.g, dest.g);
b = math.max(src.b, dest.b);
a = math.max(src.a, dest.a);

I'm currently using additive for my lighting engine, but I have a feeling a color blending like that might give a nicer effect, but I want to know if it's a defined blending type, or if it's something new I'll have to make myself.

user4704

1:23 AM

@MindWorX I don't think that has a name, per se.

MindWorX

I would've thought so

Time to get creative!

user4704

But note that you cannot program the blending operation with the framebuffer, so you'll need both source colors in the shader.

MindWorX

I coin the blend mode... Maxitive!

user4704

I guess component-wise-maximum would be reasonable

MindWorX

Hm

I think I need to figure out exactly how blendmodes work

user4704

1:41 AM

they blend the output of your pixel shader with the framebuffer

user4704

according to the mathematics of the operation you specify

MindWorX

2:04 AM

Ah

So I guess the reason there's no maximum blend state is because it can't be done with mathematics?

John McDonald

2:00 PM

@thedaian, heh, Nice rant:

2

A: What technologies are required for 3D game development?

And I want to start from very start. Please tell me the skills, technologies that one should posses while making it. Start from the very start, eh? Well, first you're going to need to know math. A lot of math. Algebra, Trigonometry, Matrix Rotations, and a whole lot of physics if you wa...

Sadly, it's mostly true. :(

A few days ago, I did a depressing calculation to put hobby projects into perspective:

I used World of Goo as a reference point with lots and lots of assumptions. World of Goo had 2 developers and took 2 years to complete. Assuming that your hobby project is half as complex (will take half as long) as World of Goo, that your team of N would be as effective as their team of 2, that they worked 40-hour weeks with 2-weeks of vacation, and that your team would effectively put out 26 man-hours of work per week, you could finish in just under 3 years

((2 years / 2) * (52 - 2) weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 2) / 26 hours/week * 1 = 2.94851767 years
:(

thedaian

2:23 PM

nice bit of math :)

John McDonald

:( thanks

I think I just killed half of the hobby projects in here

thedaian

hopefully not.

John McDonald

Yeah, hopefully people will look at the math and decide to make their game one eighth the complexity of World of Goo and have small teams

thedaian

lol

Martin Sojka

@JohnMcDonald I'd add "If you want results faster, start modding. Like the guys who did Team Fortress, Counter Strike or Nehrim." if you care about encouraging people to make games anyway. :)

John McDonald

2:26 PM

heh, yeah. Those mods didn't take a short period of time either though

:p

I know because I've tried

thedaian

hobby projects are good to have, and there's ways to speed things up, like Martin said.

Martin Sojka

You see results way faster though, which is a big plus.

thedaian

mods, using existing engines, heck, map making in starcraft is fast

John McDonald

Yeah, map making for SC

@Martin, and yes, you do get to see stuff faster, and it is a lot of fun

Gilson

3:21 PM

@JohnMcDonald i managed to do the clock sync, now i'm change the logic a bit to adjust to it :D

*i'm gonna

John McDonald

Cool

fyi, You can edit chat messages, and it's the next best thing to sliced bread

Gilson

hahah good to know, editted

John McDonald

It makes me wish that MSN or XMPP (google talk) would implement the feature

</aside>

Gilson

specially when you are talking to a girl :D

John McDonald

:p

thedaian

3:30 PM

hi girl, i want to -censored- with you.

John McDonald

eat?

thedaian

there we go, edits message to say "eat"

user4704

@JohnMcDonald That question makes me rage.

Jimmy

they'd just click the pencil button to see the history

John McDonald

@JoshPetrie heh, yeah, I can't blame you

user4704

3:36 PM

So many close votes required ;(

John McDonald

"Why should I make a 2D game first when I want to make a 3D game?" </silly voice>

Jimmy

The part that makes me rage the most is when he dismisses UDK and Unity

because they do the work for the developer

John McDonald

:/ yeah

thedaian

there's... a reason i posted what amounts to a rant...

John McDonald

heh, and a reason I +1ed your answer

user4704

3:40 PM

Yes but did you do your civic duty and vote to close that crud? Eh? EH?

user4704

(I didn't read the answers yet)

thedaian

i would vote to close but i can't :P

i need about 40 more rep...

user4704

wat

thedaian

er... no, 1,040 more rep

user4704

huh i thought you were higher. there's an unfortunately small number of active users who can actually cast close votes right now -- only something like 24? discounting the diamond mods.

thedaian

3:41 PM

all i can do now is flag it

yeah, it's kind of annoying :(

John McDonald

I'm a long way from being able to close stuff

Jimmy

same, it's a good incentive to grind out some answers though

you can get maybe 50 points for ranting an answer out every time someone asks "I'm about the make a game like Oblivion -- where do I start?"

so just wait for 20ish more of those questions and you can start closing them

thedaian

lol

user4704

hahaha

John McDonald

Make some templates, one for: World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Need for Speed, Baldur's Gate, Age of Empires, etc.

Tetrad

3:56 PM

I do have to say I like the trend of the few people that have been diligently editing questions to have actual questions in them

there are some pretty bad examples out there

gamedev.stackexchange.com/posts/18792/revisions

user4704

"put the question in the question" hehe.

user4704

Yeah, it bugs me when the titles aren't in question form.

Tetrad

really tempted to go through and close all those "list of resources" questions

or ask the bigger question, is "where can I find" questions on-topic?

thedaian

the "list of resources" questions are good as a place to point when someone asks "where can i learn to draw better" or "how do i art?", but they might be good to either close or protect

user4704

I think they're bad questions, but they seem to keep surviving. So long as they are CW, I care a little less.

Jimmy

4:01 PM

I find "list of resources" questions really helpful

I have a lot of them favorited on SO

user4704

And some of them -- finding free texture or sprite resources -- are useful for game development. I've thought about suggesting they be closed/protected and the top-voted results moved to the relevant tag wiki. But I don't think tag wikis get read as often as they'd need to be for that to work

user4704

It's also egregiously difficult to edit tag wikis, in my opinion.

thedaian

man, you need to get 20k rep to edit tag wikis? that's... annoying :(

user4704

Or have the bronze tag badge.

thedaian

that's almost harder

user4704

4:05 PM

Yeah; 100 upvotes across 20 questions.

Jimmy

there should be some kind of limit based on a particular SE's distribution

these numbers are geared towards a SO/SF/Programmers.SE level of activity

thedaian

there's been a few attempts to change required numbers based on SE activity, but it's generally shot down (it kind of makes sense, but...)

user4704

gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags and for the most part, it's mostly Tetrad and I who have them -- and we're already reasonably close to 20k.

user4704

Yeah it makes sense, because readjusting upwards as activity spools up would be a bit weird. I think it works out reasonably well, but still.

Jimmy

I dunno, I think a dual-limit system would be good

like, either top 10% OR the hard limit

Tetrad

4:12 PM

well I could have zero rep and still do whatever I want to thanks to mod status

Gajet

I'm not sure why but once every few weeks there is a time period That I can't answer any questions!

I mean there is either no question or I don't know answer to any of them!

thedaian

I think that happens to most people.

John McDonald

heh, yup

Then other weeks there are too many questions to answer that you can't get around to them all

thedaian

there's nothing wrong with not being able to answer a question. happens a lot in my case, especially when people ask about rendering techniques or physics or something

Gajet

but I think it's a bit weird, There is a week that for every question I'm the first one to answer, the next week I can't answer questions, for some questions I can't even understand what he is asking!

user4704

4:24 PM

It's not that weird.

user4704

And to be honest a disturbingly large number of questions can be answered by Google.

Tetrad

gamedev.stackexchange.com/users/51/…

thedaian

wow, they have graphs now!

user4704

gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/18234/… for example -- took me a few minutes with a search engine to figure out.

Jimmy

The secret's out: Tetrad is a werewolf

user4704

4:26 PM

Indeed; September was apparently a boring month for me gamedev.stackexchange.com/users/1430/josh-petrie?tab=reputation

Tetrad

there was actually one day where I earned negative rep due to downvoting a bunch of questions and not posting anything

Jimmy

do you have a limit on downvotes?

Tetrad

well, that and somebody un-accepted my "they're just 3d models I don't know what you're asking" answer

I think I have the same limit as everybody else

thedaian

wow, the guy even put a bounty on that question, @JoshPetrie

user4704

That's what encouraged me to try to answer it ;P

Tetrad

4:29 PM

learning

user4704

Clearly, the system works

Tetrad

time to die

user4704

hehe

Gajet

well, I'm not really always in a searching mood! I mean I only answer questions if I know the exact answer (or at least if I think I know).

@josh I've noticed you never asked any question! does that really mean you never encountered any question?

John McDonald

@Gajet heh, It took me quite a while to ask my first question on SO too. But I started to ask a few more after finding gamedev.SE

Not that long though, :p

Gajet

4:36 PM

there are three cases that I ask a question here: 1. I don't feel like searching in google! 2. I want to know others opinion about something, and there are rare cases that I can't find anything on google. I'm almost sure others have same reasons to ask a question.

it's just really surprising that josh never asked any question. it makes him some kind of Gamedev god!

John McDonald

From the questions I have asked, I usually come here when a question does not have a google answer, and the problem has been nagging me for months, if not years

user4704

4:50 PM

@Gajet Correct.

thedaian

I'm going to assume Josh's "correct" means "correct, i am a gamdev god"

Tetrad

So I decided to close my own question gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/350/…

user4704

@thedaian Of course! ;)

Gajet

@Tetrad, though that's really offtopic, I think it's good to at least have one question of that Type open!

thedaian

probably good, @Tetrad. it's like those SO questions about funniest bug, good for legacy stuff, and funny reading, but... not worth keeping open

Jimmy

5:04 PM

wow that question is hilarious

John McDonald

I like the NPC congregation

It would be a little freaky though

Jimmy

I saw a mudcrab the other day

filthy creatures

user4704

well, goodbye

John McDonald

:p

Nice

thedaian

later, josh

John McDonald

5:07 PM

heh, I think it was an other Oblivion quote

user4704

yes ;)

Noctrine

5:45 PM

Awesome cleanup today :o

thedaian

once i have full edit privileges i will make more attempts to clean up questions and answers

Noctrine

I thought that with the, everyone can edit it just needs to be approved thing tagwiki's are editable by everyone?

thedaian

it's a bit harder to do if your edits go into a queue

they are editable by everyone

Noctrine

Congratulations you now have question / answer editing privileges.

thedaian

hooray!

also scored a "nice answer" badge from your upvoting :P

Noctrine

5:56 PM

@thedaian Everyone over 5000 Rep at least, in the case of tag wiki edits. So like, 9 people.

thedaian

ah. well, only 3,000 more rep to go

/me flexes question editing privileges

Noctrine

You can still add edits to the queue though.

thedaian

but that's less fun :P

how do i add edits to the queue, instead of insta-editing?

Noctrine

Do you see the text, "help us create it" on the tag pages?

thedaian

oh, right. wikitag edits

Noctrine

6:06 PM

Yep

thedaian

sorry, got confused

Noctrine

Hrm, do we really need tools? I'm currently removing development-tools because it's redundant and only has 4 questions.

thedaian

the one time i really looked through the tag wiki stuff, there really wasn't much of anything i could edit

Noctrine

Might have been before anyone can edit?

thedaian

hmm, i phrased that weird. i meant, there really wasn't anything i could see to add to any of the tag descriptions

i think it might be worth keeping tools, though most of the questions seem to be of the type "what tool is the best for ..."

user4704

6:24 PM

Don't you have to have edit rights to the tag to approve the edit though?

thedaian

6:34 PM

you might be able to do it as a trusted user or a mod

Tetrad

gamedev.stackexchange.com/privileges

that will answer all of your "what can I do" questions

I don't know how I feel about this question gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/9710/…

John McDonald

6:58 PM

Some interesting answers, but it's a really open-ended question without one true answer

user4704

@Tetrad I don't like it.

Tetrad

I'm trying to kill the learning tag, as well as non-academic education tags, but I'm not sure what to do with that one

user4704

I think the whole question should be nuked; or at least CW'd.

thedaian

I agree with @JohnMcDonald, there's some interesting answers, but it's an open ended question that doesn't quite fit

user4704

But yeah, retagging it is a tricky one

John McDonald

7:06 PM

btw, my Dad was also a computer scientist, and he would say that Marketing is way more important than people realize

Tetrad

I suppose I could just delete those questions

John McDonald

Well... it has been stared 11 times

Tetrad

SO has solved this by locking those questions for reasons of "historical significance" meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/109246/…

user4704

Just delete those 11 users too!

thedaian

haha

locking the question is honestly probably the best option

John McDonald

7:15 PM

* unstared

thedaian

outright deleting questions seems like something that should only be done on terrible questions that are duplicates

Tetrad

well there's also really off topic questions that are closed

user4704

agreed

thedaian

yeah

i think it's basically that bad questions shouldn't be deleted if they have good or potentially useful answers

Tetrad

I generally avoid deleting things unless it's spam

user4704

7:35 PM

I'm really enjoying browsing these questions you're causing to get pushed to the front page and discovering that I submitted an answer that I'd totally forgotten about

Tetrad

I'm in "worst moderator ever" mode right now and closing as "not constructive" every "how do I get started" question I can find

user4704

\o/

thedaian

haha

John McDonald

Not that I care for those questions, but is there anywhere on SE for these noobs to go?

thedaian

it... might be good to have one giant community wiki that we can all point to for those questions

Tetrad

7:44 PM

Not really, but SE isn't, and shouldn't, be all things to all people

the goal of the site is to get expert answers to your questions. It isn't a forum. It isn't even really a "community".

gamedev.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask

thedaian

there's something like that on programmers for "what do i need to know to do web development"

also i kind of think of the chat room as the "community" aspect. the main site is where you go to ask questions, here is where you go to talk to other game devs in a more social format

Tetrad

I mean really most of the SE traffic comes from people googling the topics and finding questions answered on a site

Jonathan Connell

Tatrad's on a rampage! /o/

John McDonald

Yeah, makes sense

Tetrad

so in the past month

200k hits from google, 20k hits from SO, 4k hits from t.co (link shortener), and then everything else is insignificant

a few thousand from reddit

thedaian

7:49 PM

true, but i think any website like this needs a community to survive. if there isn't a community, then people stop coming to the site, and the site dies and we get exactly 8 active people who can cast close votes

Tetrad

well the way Joel puts it is that you need interesting questions to keep the "experts" around. If all of your questions are the same boring/subjective questions every single time then your content creators are going to leave.

joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/04/19.html

thedaian

that's another valid point

John McDonald

Yeah, I can totally see that. If this site were more like a forum with subjective questions, I probably wouldn't be here

Jonathan Connell

I have a question, probably for meta but It's probably a quick answer

Why exactly are questions upped when they are closed? - All the recent questions that may have been intersting have been booted off the front page.

thedaian

i think it's actually that the questions were edited to remove a tag, and THEN closed

John McDonald

7:56 PM

You're looking at the "active" questions, not the "newest" ones

thedaian

and since editing bumps up a question to the front...

Jonathan Connell

Yeah

Jimmy

I answered the minecraft question as if it was from a novice programmer, but I feel like if the the question had stayed on gaming.SE it would have gotten a layman's explanation.

Tetrad

Unless I use a bulk tag merging tool, even just editing tags bumps questions to the top

Gajet

8:11 PM

Guys completely off topic, I'm sure you noticed google plus can find your location. that's basically web browsers doing.

but I'm wondering how can browser find where I am right now? I'm sure my laptop doesn't have any GPS devices.

John McDonald

IP

Gajet

and I'm using a wireless network connected to a wimax router.

Martin Sojka

@Gajet Look up "GeoIP"

Gajet

IP isn't accurate enough! I tested my location right now and it was only 10m off!

thedaian

basically, this, @Gajet: diveintohtml5.info/geolocation.html

Jimmy

8:17 PM

wow, it's 10 miles off for me

Gajet

well i've tested GeoIP right now and it's pointing to Esfahan while I'm in Tehran!

Jimmy

just testing, Google+ gives me the same address as the geoIP

so google isn't actually getting my location versus spyplane

Gajet

google plus in IE gives same address as GeoIP, but when I tried chrome I got incredible results.

Jimmy

maybe google has a spyplane in tehran.

Martin Sojka

Don't use Chrome then? Also, check what Chrome is actually sending, maybe via Wireshark if it isn't encrypted?

Jimmy

8:23 PM

I heard the Street View cars log Wifi hotspot info

Martin Sojka

They did.

Gajet

it seems firefox is also able to find me accurately. any ideas how are they doing this?

Martin Sojka

IIRC, Google promised to delete that data.

Gajet

I'm almost sure it's not based on ip.

since almost every site which looks for address based on traditional IP system, gives wrong address.

thedaian

obviously, firefox and chrome secretly install GPS software on your computer. IE doesn't.

Gajet

8:27 PM

by the way IP is something google knows but your browser asks for user permission to send your position to remote host. so these data is based on something other than just IP

John McDonald

heh, it thinks I'm in a cemetery

Gajet

@thedaian that's why everyone says "IE protects your privacy!"

thedaian

@JohnMcDonald you mean you're not an undead zombie?

John McDonald

heh, couldn't resist

thedaian

hehehe

John McDonald

8:37 PM

and don't forget to read the alt text: "'Meet hot young singles in your mom's basement today'? Man, screw you, GeoIP."

thedaian

haha, nice

Gajet

@thedaian In the link you provided there are two ways that writer suggests for looking up position, one is to use cell towers and the other one is GPS device.

I'm sure my laptop can't connect to either one of them!

thedaian

it's possible that it's connecting to one of those via some other route. though that's purely a random guess

this actually might be an interesting question for superuser or something...

Tetrad

10:03 PM

we need to make it so that our top voted questions aren't legacy "lists of X" community wiki questions

Jimmy

10:13 PM

Is that a problem?

the highest rated questions on SO are kind of in that category

with the "what is the --> operator" and "how do I parse XHTML with Regex" questions being in there for humor

John McDonald

heh

</butthead>

John McDonald

11:04 PM

Wow, until recently I always thought that delta times could solve any problem, and I was thinking that variable time-steps were the way to go. But the more that I look at some of my code and think about it, the more I'm thinking that delta times in combination with a fixed time-step could be useful

Very useful

Jimmy

are you digging through the highest voted questions?

I agree though, "Fix your timestep" is a really good read :>

John McDonald

heh, no, but I think I read that one recently

Mainly with physics in mind

But now I'm looking at my miner code and seeing that I'm doing some weird stuff so that I don't lose fractional seconds. If I used a fixed timestep, that wouldn't be a problem

Jimmy

well, delta times is better than "fixed-time" with sleep(targetFPS - delta) in every call

John McDonald

Yeah, I'm using a variable delta time everywhere right now. I was thinking of changing it to be a fixed delta time, but still holding on to the delta times

(even though they should all be the same)

XNA, so it does all the fixed math

Jimmy

well physics is better behaved when running at predictable intervals, but it really depends on what else you're doing in an update

John McDonald

11:10 PM

Heh, "what else"

Well... I'm not using a physics engine yet, and I'm not sure I plan to

It's a space game

Jimmy

well, I've been experimenting with having game logic on another thread

John McDonald

with no collisions (yet)

Oh really?

Jimmy

but the time synchronization is pretty awful

John McDonald

A friend of mine told me this really cool way to make a multi-threaded game engine

Yeah, I don't doubt it

want me to geek all about it?

(not for the weak)

Jimmy

geek about it

John McDonald

11:13 PM

:)

Jimmy

we're all manly men with ample chest hair in here

even our top hats have chest hair

John McDonald

Well... this method requires 2 versions of each and every game entity. How you maintain or create the second copy is up for debate. One copy is the "old" copy from the previous frame, the other one is the copy for the next (current) frame.

The old copy is Read Only, and the new copy is Write Only (no reading)

So, instead of updating an object from it's own state, and interacting with all other objects in the universe, each object reads it's previous state and modifies it using the previous states of other objects to generate the current state of the object

You with me?

Jimmy

yeah

John McDonald

Doing this allows you to use as many threads as you would like. Each thread would be allocated certain index ranges. All threads can read the old states with no problems, doesn't matter if they want the same information. When the threads want to write, they are guaranteed that they are the only ones trying to write to the current copy of the element

So in effect, each and every object is using the old state of all other objects to determine their current state

Jimmy

and if you fix it at say, 1-frame history, you just flip back and forth between two states and avoid dynamic allocations

seems like a good idea

John McDonald

11:21 PM

Correct, there are many ways to prevent dynamic allocation

Yeah... it's certainly interesting

Jimmy

plus, just keep more than 1 frame of history, and you get Braid mechanics almost for free ;)

John McDonald

Probably tougher to implement than to explain, but

hahah

yeah

And if you think about it, in normal single-threaded games, the first entity to update is using the old state of all of the other entities. The second one has 99% old and only one entity in its new state

Jimmy

it's like writing the game of life

impossible to do without keeping 2 states around

John McDonald

heh, Yes, Exactly

Maybe I'll look at implementing a multi-threaded game when I have 100k+ objects that do a lot of processing each

Jimmy

my problem is I never have a game

I just have things I want to do

John McDonald

11:29 PM

heh, yeah, I was like that once

well... who am I kidding, I still have a million of things I want to do

but I also have a game that I'm working on

Jimmy

I have.... well, I'm going to be making the best MMO ever

John McDonald

Oh yeah, Galaxy of Warminecraft, I remember

thedaian

lol

i have about 3 main games i really want to make

well, 3 games that i want to make and think i have the skills to make

sim city 5 is kind of out of my reach right now

John McDonald

Nice

thedaian

of course they're all crazy huge simulation games :(

Jimmy

11:33 PM

sim city sounds like a really nice hobby project though. It's so emergent.

John McDonald

I... have settled down with all of my ideas, and now I'm really trying to keep my head down and get this game done

thedaian

the problem with sim city is i'd have to make it better than sim city 4... and that's REALLY hard to do

John McDonald

:/ yeah

Jimmy

I never really got into the sim city genre... I wouldn't know why :P

John McDonald

Well... there have to be niche markets

Jimmy

11:36 PM

a procedural building generator sounds like fun though

kind of like ship.shapewright.com but for buildings

John McDonald

For me, I looked at a game "Dungeon Defenders" on Steam recently, and it's in a similar genre to what I'm making, and there is NO way I could ever make a game with that amount of complexity

Jimmy

complexity isn't always good

I really appreciate games with simple but powerful mechanics

John McDonald

What does my game offer above and beyond dungeon defenders though? It does everything I hope to do, and then a whole lot more

yeah

You played Greed Corp then?

Jimmy

have not

John McDonald

Great indie game with such simple rules, but a whole lot of fun

Jimmy