Game Development

Q: What do I get if I buy the Helicopter in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood?

12:45 AM

Jon subscribes to the negative feedback school of game design

1

I have a car already, and the private jet. I'm just wondering what I get if I buy the helicopter. My travel between cities is already free, so... is it just professional rating stars I will get?

kim-kardashian-hollywood

the commenting people can fuck right off

1:06 AM

Why in the hell are you playing that?

I can tell you later

ask me again in about two months

???

k

Weird bugs...

I remember the last time I tested for some reason when one bot was active and got disabled it somehow broke the other. Now it's working. My game is playing tricks on me.

TheMuffinCoder

@Almo LMAO ALMO

NEVER HAVE I LAUGHED SO HARD LOL

1:23 AM

@Almo Time to spare some rep I guess!

Or spend... whatever :P

1:36 AM

Is the first step of practicing global illumination, learning how to do ray tracing?

AFI - Miss Murder (Short Version)

Wow I forgot I had this on my Spotify playlist. Good times...

►

Still a pretty ok song nowadays.

PearsonArtPhoto

1:51 AM

Nice, I like the improved Unity pricing plan.

Ya. Seems a lot more fair now.

Glad they listened.

PearsonArtPhoto

I might even consider getting the license, once I have a working game.

Q: OpenglGL Render two scenes with one draw call

2:09 AM

0

I need to draw a normal-vector scene and default scene. I could achieve this my having two programs with different fragment shader to produce the following images. It will require me to draw twice. //somethinglike useProgram(normal_vector_rendering_program); render_bunny(); useProgram(just_...

opengl rendering fragment-shader frame-buffer fbo

user4704

Bind more than one render target.

user4704

Output two different colors from the fragment shader.

user4704

You will of course need a second draw call to draw a fullscreen quad containing the render target you want to show.

user4704

You can also branch every fragment on a uniform if you really want.

user4704

Fairly straightforward.

user4704

2:16 AM

Unlikely to be saving you a whole lot of "computing resources" for your bunny model though.

Say if I do not render rendered_rendertargets (because I want to use these two for another shader processing) then will it save me some? @JoshPetrie

^ that question is wrong. I should have asked "is unlikely due to the fact that I am rendering rendered_rendertarget_texture?"

this is mind blowing to me btw...

user4704

It's unlikely because draw calls are what a GPU does.

user4704

It's good at doing lots of them.

user4704

Saving one? Not so big of a deal.

user4704

If you're not going to render the resulting two targets again, it might be worthwhile, but the extra complexity might also wipe that out, so...

2:22 AM

In this case, u r assuming that I am going to use vertex buffer object? Rather than passing information of vertices by a single call per vertex?

user4704

Uh, like you're using glVertex?

user4704

Using glVertex is likely a significantly bigger problem for your performance than trying to avoid a second draw call; you'd get far more mileage for your engineering time by switching to more modern rendering techniques.

it is like glBegin(gl_triangles); glVertexAttrib(location, x, y, z); glVertexAttrib(location, x2, y2, z2); glVertexAttrib(location, x3, y3, z3); glEnd();

no, I am not using glVertex, but I replaced glVertex with attribute passing calls. <- may this be the reason behind my slow performance?

user4704

Yes.

user4704

You should not be calling glBegin.

user4704

2:28 AM

And certainly using glVertexAttrib to basically mimic glVertex is less than ideal.

should I use glDrawElements glDrawArrays?

user4704

use VBOs

user4704

yeah

NaCl

much faster than glBegin-poop

user4704

That code you posted there doesn't even make sense.

user4704

2:29 AM

glBegin and glVertexAttrib are unrelated.

?!?!

It works. I am able to pass each vertex's position like this... but you mean the way I am using it to replace glVertex is not an intended way? Is my understanding of your statement correct?

user4704

Yes.

user4704

You're using it very wrong.

user4704

I'm surprised it renders anything.

lol

I mean... this was how most people on internet seemed to do, because upper glsl version shader abandons the older model of matrix and so on.

user4704

2:35 AM

glVertexAttrib normally these days would be used to, for example, set all attributes to some constants.

user4704

e.g., to force something to be entirely blue, disable the usual color attribute array and call glVertexAttrib(colorLocation, whatever, color, you, want)

user4704

Apparently the fact that it renders anything for you at all is an artifact of glBegin, which basically means your glVertexAttrib calls are the same as glVertex calls.

user4704

Which I must admit is not a thing I knew you could do or that the spec said was legal.

lol

user4704

So, tl;dr stop using deprecated immediate-mode crud to render and your life will be better

2:39 AM

setting a specific value for all the vertexs in the shader sounds very uniform. From what I understand, glVertexAttrib is differente from uniform that it... "overrides"? Now I can't think of case using glVertexAttrib. It looks like as if if there were a case of needing to use glVertexAttrib, then the shader is just designed fundamentally wrong because why would you need to set all the values to some constant as a vertex information, rather than as a uniform value?

NaCl

I wish there weren't so many tutorials and books out there which use glBegin/glEnd

Or maybe my understanding is incorrect and limited by my experience, so that I am simply not being able to see its practical application?

user4704

2:53 AM

No, you're right, glVertexAttrib and uniforms are similar.

user4704

You might use glVertexAttrib if you wanted, for example, to temporarily render an object as a flat color

user4704

you could disable the actual color attribute and use glVertexAttrib instead

user4704

then you don't need to change the shader

user4704

It's not, in my experience, super common.

Ty Josh.

BTW I am trying to render world position of vertices. In this case, do I need to separate model matrix from viewModel? Because I have proj and viewmodel(not proj veiw and model) cuz were told it was a good practice.

7:07 AM

Happy Friday to all

user92578

7:47 AM

Good morning!

Good morning to you my friend

Guten Morgen

So I started work on my new game last night

I couldn't think of a sensible way to store level tile data

How do you store your level @Tyyppi_77

I just had a int tiles[]; which had various values for tiles

user92578

Do you mean storage on disk or storage on runtime?

runtime

user92578

I use QuadTrees, so that my rendering is fast

7:52 AM

Quadtrees seems very overkill for just tile data

user92578

I use a separate QuadTree for collision boundings, and another for everything that should be rendered

user92578

Oh yeah true, but games often times aren't just tile data

user92578

So I treat my tiles just like other entities, tile just are never updated

Hmm

Well I have an int tiles[]

And each value corresponds to a tile

-1 is no tile

user92578

That'll probably end up sucking once you realize that your tiles might need other data too

7:54 AM

Like what?

user92578

Animation? Collision data?

All my tiles are just square

user92578

What about layering different entities?

layering?

user92578

like what gets drawn on top of what

7:55 AM

tiles -> entities -> ui

generally

user92578

sure, but what if an entity needs to be drawn under the tiles?

It wouldn't

If it did I'd add a 2d array instead

int tiles[][];

then I can have a "3d" world

user92578

Uuuh okay. Anyways, objectively, your approach might be good enough for you now, but it won't be very extendable in the future.

It's not about "3d" really, but simple things like going "behind" trees or having a semi-transparent water or fog tile be drawn on top of the entity tiles.

that's it

I quit

user92578

7:57 AM

^ Exactly what Martin Sojka said

Lasse

An array of tiles is fine. It's fast to render them if you don't go through all of the tiles, just the ones visible on screen.

Generally, you solve that by having layers. Which can well be stored as tiles[][].

YES

THAT WHAT ME SAY

user92578

dude chill

I wouldn't go as far as using a quadtree for the tiles themselves (unless you want to go big, as in, 10k x 10k tiles or more sized maps), but "chunking" them definitively helps.

It also plays nicely with level streaming, but on the other hand makes your AI and simulation routines harder to write, so that's the trade-off.

Bethesda games solve that by having two "levels" of AI, with the lower one not bothering with path finding, for example. Which is why you can't "imprison" an NPC by building stuff around them in their games. As soon as you wander off far enough, they'll just magically teleport out of it whenever their AI tells them to be somewhere else.

Fucking computers, why can't they just simulate all of the universe already?

8:11 AM

Yes.

@MartinSojka soon....

9:16 AM

Ok looks like I cant upload the thing I want. Does anybody have a idea how to apply a masking texture with semi-transparent pixel to a UI text object in Unity. using the build in UI mask does not work since it seem to only take into account fully transparent pixels.

9:42 AM

Are questions about developing gaming-related utilities on-topic?

Basically, I want to ask whether it's possible to get a list of all games currently installed

or at least of the major DRM platforms: uPlay, Origin, Steam, GOG.com, battle.net

so I can write a program for myself that randomly can choose one of these games.

No that'd probably be off-topic

user92578

I'm not sure, but my gut would say that that would be off-topic

user92578

Because it's not about game development

Would there be another exchange where that IS on topic?

user92578

Maybe Gaming.SE?

9:44 AM

@Tyyppi_77 Definitely not

Yup

Gaming.SE is purely for playing games, not developing games

or game-utilities

From what I know, some versions of Windows have a game center

Which no one uses

but the problem is that I'd like to have something system-independent

user92578

I would say that it's really hard to get those

In the first version of my program, I just said "hey, I install all my games in C:/Games, why not iterate that folder?"

user92578

9:47 AM

You could search for the installation folders of separate platforms

but then I found that GetFilesAsync is actually REALLY costly when you're doing it on a folder with 700 GB of games

user92578

Like Steam installs everything under a folder SteamApps I believe

@Tyyppi_77 that might be an option.

and then get a list of all the folders inside that one

Steam: forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1357516

user92578

> Game-specific hardware and utilities

9:48 AM

My main issue is that I'd prefer a solution that doesn't require me to configure what the name is for each game executable.

user92578

That's from Gaming's [help]

@Tyyppi_77 Yeah, but still, that's for using them, not developing them

user92578

Usage is a vague term

Yeah, I have 9k rep there, I'm fairly sure I've seen this question on it, it's off-topic =p

is mod development on-topic on here?

9:50 AM

Yes

user92578

yes

This might be a tricky subject, but would we consider expanding the scope of this SE to include game-related utilities? I'd say they're pretty similar to mods.

Start a meta topic

^

So I have a peculiar situation going.

I made some code, and I know it exists since it's working ... I just can't find it.

user92578

9:57 AM

lol

can't you use find tool on your project?

Find tool? What would I search for? :P

What is it doing?

user92578

Look trough your commits and see where you added that code?

Injected behavior in Warcraft III.

Hah, commits ...

It allows you to call a method with a null parameter without crashing.

user92578

10:01 AM

Yeah mine are really messy but it might help?

It's not a version controlled project :)

user92578

oh

no clue of any method names?

@WilliamMariager Next step: configure a VCR repository so you don't run into that again.

@Leggy7 Not really. And a lot of this is just memory offsets and byte arrays.

I'm sure I'll find it :P It was just a peculiar situation.

10:04 AM

I create code I don't version control all the time. Pretty bad habit

I also have this bad habit lol

atm if I lose data on pc I'll shoot myself

user92578

^ this is why I version control

I should put my shit into bitbucket soon

user92578

Yeah BB is nice, free private repos

Started using BB recently. Its ok

10:07 AM

yeah I used it for another project

just lazy to do go on

user92578

I only visit BB when I'm writing my weekly blog posts, so that I can quickly view the commits

Q: Should our scope include development of game-related utilities?

0

Some people are developing utilities to help players in their games. This includes things like savegame editors, fan-created modding tools, ini file editors, adding Windows Store games as non-steam games and vice versa,... In essence, external tools that help players customize their games to thei...

discussion site-definition

Feel free to discuss game utilities in there.

10:20 AM

@WilliamMariager You should be ashamed of yourself.

I have like, hundreds of projects.

It's not really feasible to version control all the smaller ones :P

@WilliamMariager My life story.

48 projects right now in one of my Eclipse workspaces. I have half a dozen of those, and also a bunch in Visual Studio and random game development tools like RPGMaker. All neatly version controlled.

user92578

I have like 6 random folders named "GunHero copy" that I don't dare to delete

user92578

Some have random OpenGL rendering implementations, so have something else weird going on

user92578

10:25 AM

I did not know about branches back then

What VCR client does BB use?

user92578

It supports multiple I believe

One of the first things we implemented in our LPMUD was an in-game CVS command for the "wizards" (coders and region builders). Back in 1995.

because I might migrate my projects away from Github if private repos are free

I'm sure it supports Git and I believe Hg as well.

10:27 AM

Ultimately I would have my own vc server with automated off site backups

user92578

Mercurial seems to work too

user92578

Damn people on Twitter really like to see my pixel art characters getting crushed by elevators

All vc services are pretty much blocked here

Hahaha fuck yeah they do

user92578

gotten me like the most upvotes/tweets ever

That portal 2d implementation got attention on reddit

Accidentally deleted the code lmao

user92578

10:32 AM

lol

Was a project I wrote during downtime at work and I cleaned up my old projects not thinking

Oh well lol no biggie

user92578

Damn it seems like everytime my task list looks clean and I'm like "aight, I can make a Greenlight trailer really soon", I end up finding these critical interactions missing / critical bugs that need to be fixed

Heh

@jon lol, we gave the same answer the same time

user92578

I mean sure, getting this stuff done is more time later down the road

Q: Should our scope include development of game-related utilities?

10:34 AM

Same answer at same time

You a smart man leggy

StackExchange

1

Some people are developing utilities to help players in their games. This includes things like savegame editors, fan-created modding tools, ini file editors, adding Windows Store games as non-steam games and vice versa,... In essence, external tools that help players customize their games to thei...

discussion site-definition

user92578

actually, leggy was first

user92578

both of your indentations suck

who the fuck downvoted my answer?

I'm about to go creazy and downvote the shit out of everything in that question and answers

Lol

Brute force dude is upset or something. I'm done with that thread

Super simple question

If you want to spend time analyzing that shit be my guest

10:49 AM

Bruteforce dude is the worst answer

user92578

yup

Clearly I have the best answer, I have all the best answers

user92578

jon remove your first comment, you're now dissing kevin

why is the https on the meta site broken ?

Because you can only get certificates for *.site, not *.*.site

10:53 AM

Certificates are awesome

I'm gonna start selling jgallant.com certs

Certifies if you are cool or not

Just send me 5000$ and you get auto certified as jgallant.com cool

@Jon How will you protect against forgery?

user92578

Seriously Jon, remove your first comment on the bad answer

Done chill

I will personally hunt and kill all forgers

user92578

I just don't want you dissing Kevin out there like that

What with the comment I put under his answer

Bitch please :p

11:11 AM

i just don't understand kevin's answer

ah no k

didn't get why subing 8 and adding 6 while could just sub 2

user92578

@Leggy7 to make it clearer where the values come

yeah I got it.. at last :)

Hello

So hot here

around 40 *

C

where do you live? central africa?

Hell?

11:19 AM

No

Bulgaria

user92578

#define SDL_Colour SDL_Color

user92578

Still makes me laugh everytime

:D

Now is actually 37

user92578

I just realized that it's Friday

yea

Why don't you post one screenshot? :D

Of your game?

user92578

11:22 AM

sure, hold on

user92578

(while waiting, did you see the gif in the sidebar?)

Y

woooooooow :D

these effects

particles, right?

user92578

yeah

Nice

user92578

Here's a new screenshot, I just added a background behind the time label and made the whole display tween in and out when the bomb mode starts/ends:

user92578

11:24 AM

user92578

I added the background because the timer was unreadable in the sunset color scheme

Another trick is to add a white on black, or black on white outline to the font

In your case a yellow outline

Or a white would work as well

user92578

Yeah sure, but I think the UI background quite nicely unifies the display with the rest of the game's UI

Or put it on a military-style digital clock in one of the upper corners (personally, I prefer upper right).

Nintendo is saying what they showed at e3 for Zelda was about 1% of the total game. Lol

They removed all villages and villager NPC for the e3 demos

11:32 AM

Looks nice

but when oyu will release the game?

Jon, have you heard about the things in Java?

Oracle gone mad

No

user92578

@sn0k3 when it's done, I'm looking to hit Greenlight soon

I mean

actually

what is the aim actually? I mean in the game?

Or just 2d platform shooter

user92578

the goal of the game? rescue prisoners, get trough the level, kill enemies

user92578

you don't have to rescue or kill anyone, but doing that awards you morale points, and enough those grant you a powerup

user92578

11:34 AM

that way I encourage the player to do what I want him to do

Windows only or android support too?

aha, nice

user92578

It's a PC game, will probably release atleast on Windows and Linux

user92578

The game doesn't fit mobile really

user92578

Almo will probably get pissed if I don't release on Mac though

Easy to do

user92578

11:36 AM

But you have to own a Mac to dev for mac

aha

I'm not sure, but aren't Mac pc s expensive?

user92578

Yup, and that's why releasing for Mac doesn't seem very attractive to me

user92578

I use SDL for the game so porting for any platform shouldn't be very hard

user92578

Just a couple of filesystem things here and there to port

aha

Well, I've tryed SDL

it isn't bad

user92578

11:40 AM

Oh yeah I'm a big fan, all though I rarely touch any SDL code these days, as I've got my own frameworks ontop of almost everything

You can get someone with a Mac to compile the bin

Aka almo

user92578

But I'd still need to port some of the code

There are services online for just building stuff with Mac too IIRC

also

I have heard that you can download hackintosh

im not sure, but I think this is mac os

but it doesnt require mac

But you would still need the SDK

11:46 AM

@sn0k3 yep thas exactly what it is

Uri? Russian?

I've done this before you can set up a virtual Hackintosh and target unity iOS from it.

@sn0k3 nope. Bulgarian.

А, що не казваш бре? :D

Па от де да знам :D

Well, yea but he uses SDL not Unity3d.

11:49 AM

so... same thing. The first time I set up a virtual Mac machine was when I needed to test USB flash drive performances. I'm pretty sure its just like a regular Mac once you get it going.

user92578

12:09 PM

Only allowing the target device to map buttons to actions is turning out to require more work than I expected

@UriPopov @sn0k3 this site is in English...

@AlexandreVaillancourt chill man, We just found out we are from the same country and exchanged a few words. Its not like we had a extended discussion or anything.

True, they only said it in their language only once lol

Don't worry, I'm chill, I'm chill :)

user92578

I'm feeling like a real pro-dev, with two controllers attached to my computer to test the controller input mapping menus :)

12:24 PM

@Tyyppi_77 only counts if you have 3 monitors :D

user92578

:(

user92578

I'd love to get a third one and pivot it but I don't have the room on my desk

If I only had one screen that is full HD I would be more than happy

At work I have 2-3 joysticks, 3-4 monitors, and sometimes a Logitech G27 :P It's more like a chore than anything else hehe

user92578

What do you do for a living again?

12:26 PM

Me?

user92578

Yes.

I make heavy vehicle simulators for training purposes (forklift trucks, mining trucks and the like).

user92578

Oh awesome!

Yeah, the most interesting part is that the company is quite small so I have the chance to do a lot of different things :)

I know it's taken seriously, but a forklift simulator is probably very funny

12:30 PM

The Germans make very funny simulators

Yeah! In the earlier stages you get all sorts of funny bugs!

@UriPopov Are you talking about Goat Simulator?

i should have put funny in "". I was talking about pxhst.co/avaxhome/71/04/00190471_medium.jpeg for example

That thing can barely move, how that can be funny?

Ha, yeah, they release a lot of these!

Wait a minute, in Farming Simulator they did all sort of weird stuff with those vehicles, I better just shut up

12:35 PM

Its funny cause of all the bugs they have. It's REALLY funny if you try to play the game in a way not intended by the devs.

Yeah that's exactly what I remembered

Ha, I think I've seen their Forklift Simulator on YouTube, the player was trying to lift the racks in the warehouse... the physics joints would bend in a way it should not have... was weird...

btw I've been struggling with a side project of mine. Do you guys know of a good ez to use solution for multi gesture recognition in Unity? Currently I've implemented $p but it doesnt really handle my needs all that well.

I don't. I'd hunt through the asset store. I think Prime 31 makes their gesture library available free.

Yeah, there's all sort of libs available at the asset store to handle input, some of them are really worth the money

12:43 PM

TouchKit? @Almo

1:10 PM

Yea, this chat room is in english..

relax

Ahm, who can suggest library to make an app C++?

Maybe qt isn't that good..

Qt is pretty damn good.

hm, okay..Should I use their IDE, or I can use their library using other IDE?

You can just use it as any other library.

aha

well, okay..

@UriPopov yeah that

@MartinSojka QT is very weird to get into, and requires a lot of work to get professional-looking results. But it's quite functional. I would never use QT for a game, but it's fine for an app.

#define public slot

that's from QT

1:43 PM

@sn0k3 what kind of app?

user92578

^