Game Development

Chris McFarland

05:54

been on the fence about trying out GameSparks (www.gamesparks.com)
but just read that the dev can only choose one location out of their servers on the globe
so you couldn't have multiple servers in multiple regions
which sounds absolutely stupid lol

gamesparks.com/blog/…

probably fine for turn-based games but not real-time multiplayer

Blue Bug

10:19

I am creating some fantastic modern art pieces.

They are unique and special, because they cannot be reproduced, because I don't know how I even got this.

Chris McFarland

2trippy

Chris

'art'

Blue Bug

~~kill me~~ ok I can do this

Chris

im just messing with you man i like them both

i do allot of computational geometry myself

Blue Bug

@Chris computational geometry? That sounds like game dev.

Chris

10:28

@BlueBug codepen.io/anon/pen/KWqGqo

Blue Bug

This looks like an alien DNA

Chris

@BlueBug i like the natural algorithms

its mycaelium

im using it for mountain texture

from space, birds eye view

i have other algorithm for flora because they have more of an L structure and fibonocci rules

Blue Bug

dang

so like you are rendering... earth?

Chris

yeah im making a 4x civ game

Blue Bug

That's cool

I am making just graphic engine with that ^

Chris

10:32

you should study the smallest paturns and do landscapes, than a small something with the landscape as its paturns in the forefront, that would be art

Blue Bug

I wish I could do that That sounds kinda fun, but for now I am stuck with rendering triangle bro

Chris

this one i sent you its basically a root, that is seeing how close it is to its parent root, and the hormones (points they go to) are creating a mid point for the root to follow

each time a new root born it compare with its parent, and divides the hormones

the distance to each hormone :P

Blue Bug

You do it once then render it the rest of the game right?

Chris

ye its like dynamic divide and conqour

think of grains falling down a slope taking the path of least resistance, in that case the hormones are increases in gravity because of slope gradient, but same paturn forms when leafs and fungi form etc

So yeah the game is made of huge arrays of seeds that contain the visual data, so 100 points could display a mountain that has thousands of vertices

Blue Bug

11:13

I just got inspired by MineCraft blocky graphic. So I created this beautiful piece.

user92578

cool

Blue Bug

Today I am getting very high dose of artistic inspiration.

DH.

Hey Tyyppi, tested your new build

It's a lot better, didn't get a single FPS drop now

user92578

awesome!

user92578

I'm actually really really happy about that! Yay!

DH.

11:15

Yeah specially because I'm on a rather low end, I have a GT 730M

Seems like everybody will be able to enjoy your game

user92578

I don't have a superb gfx card either, it's a 750ti

user92578

yeah that's really cool

user92578

and all it took was a few button presses :)

user92578

I'm not actually very sure about whether the game is GPU or CPU bound

user92578

rendering is very basic but SDL's implementation isn't the fastest, I'm not sure if they do any batching at all

DH.

11:18

I'm almost certain it's most on GPU

user92578

very possible yeah, but then the new build is faster on CPU

DH.

I have a simple GPU, but I have a i5 3rd generation lol

That thing handles all my compiling pretty fast

Lasse

it was CPU bound on my laptop the last time I tried it, but it was a while back

DH.

And I got inspired and since I already was at the desert and finished the game lol

Lasse

my cpu got so hot that it actually started throttling and dropped the speed

user92578

11:20

cool!

user92578

yeah I put out an update yesterday that among other things now has full optimizations on in release builds

user92578

old builds had none

Lasse

cool, I'll have to try

DH.

So, 2 notes

First, the game crashes if you happen to get killed inside a tank

Chris McFarland

hah

user92578

11:21

oh yeah that I sorta knew about

user92578

it now works (on my end) if you get killed by an ice shard but other dead sources still crash I believe

DH.

The other one is, on the last boss fight, at the start of the stage the villain weapon was already sitting there, and with it I one shotted the boss, so I believe this is not intentional lol

user92578

that shouldn't happen lol no

DH.

Oh and I liked the new tutorial stage

user92578

that's also cool to hear, I like it a lot too, both feature and story wise

user92578

11:25

maybe the start is a little weird but meh

DH.

The focus isn't story so I wouldnt worry :P

user92578

yeah :)

DH.

It's not like people didn't like Contra 3 just because he is fighting aliens with no context

Chris

Isn't aliens a context?

Blue Bug

11:51

Ah I think I am about to fix the bug YES!!!!

DH.

Do you intend to launch the game next month Tyyppi?

user92578

yup

Blue Bug

oh wow? it is coming for eral?

DH.

Cool

user92578

I really hope so, gotta get everything done :)

DH.

11:55

The game itself is now pretty solid, think you just need to finish the other details like description of the store, etc.

user92578

yeah trailer is the largest todo right now

user92578

I'm pretty happy with the store page description but I guess it could use a little work or something

user92578

hey do you get the visual studio redistributable installed everytime you launch the game?

DH.

Hm, I played offline last time, so IDK

PearsonArtPhoto

12:09

It's a rough start, but I think I'll take it for now. Time to move on to something else!

One thing I'm wondering about is the small amount of the game that can be seen behind the picture. I don't like the small bar, it seems accidental, but I'm wondering if I properly place the image if you think it would look alright.

user92578

awesome! I love the weird exploded ship image thingy

user92578

seeing the world generate might be cool but I wonder if you actually showed that you'd have to apply some sort of animation to it or something

PearsonArtPhoto

I was looking through my collection of images in the game, that was the best that I could find.

Hmmm. I think you are right, it would need to have some kind of animation...

The image that I show is actually the texture used for the ship that I'm using.

Slight tweaks. I think that's a bit of an improvement. Maybe I'll have something a bit more subtle like the background becomes less blurry as time moves on or something like that.

But I'll wait until I have an image I like better for that.

user92578

12:29

just a stupid idea

user92578

but I think like a ship sailing back and forth might be cool as kinda like a loading icon

user92578

but this is like a totally worthless waste of time

PearsonArtPhoto

Not a stupid idea at all.

Actually, it might not even be all that difficult to do...

Blue Bug

Little touches add up to create sense of professionalism

John Hamilton

12:31

not difficult at all

the load screen for the game I made took like fifteen minutes to put together

PearsonArtPhoto

The load screen isn't really taking any time. Getting it to actually update the UI when loading took forever...

John Hamilton

If it's just a loop of a ship going forward and back, it's really easy, but if you're actually updating a bar while it loads, it might take longer

user92578

bars in general are hard to do if you need accuracy

user92578

I just fill the remaining half of the bar until loading is done, so essentially just a stupid cheat

user92578

it's fast enough to go unnoticeable

John Hamilton

12:35

yeah usually the bars will go up to a certain point pretty well, then just jump to the end

I got something like this and it works quite well

user92578

that's cool

PearsonArtPhoto

Well, I could probably fudge something if I really wanted to, but I'll save the progress for another time.

I know about how long it takes to load, so I can just make sure an animation won't repeat in any funny ways.

John Hamilton

yeah I just use async load and it does tend to freeze up animation towards the end of the loading process

user92578

seriously who incompetent idiot is responsible for the gdc vault

user92578

game names are wrapped in these ticks ''

user92578

12:43

if the game name is in the front of the title

user92578

the alphabetizing breaks

PearsonArtPhoto

My world is procedurally generated, and that takes a bit of time.

user92578

so the talk 'RimWorld': Contrarian, Ridiculous, and Impossible Game Design Methods is before any talk with the letter A in the name

PearsonArtPhoto

I had to move the process to a thread to allow for the UI to be updated.

For your entertainment.

user92578

that's cool

PearsonArtPhoto

12:48

The UI is still locking up, and I'm not actually sure why that is the case. Hmmm...

It's a bit too fast too.

user92578

a while ago I removed a boolean parameter from a method that seemed useless

user92578

just found out what removing that broke

John Hamilton

the whole purpose of the script? :P

user92578

it was for this one really specific purpose which I seemed to have missed/forgotten

user92578

I'll make sure to add a comment this time lol

PearsonArtPhoto

12:53

Ahhh, I figured out the issue. Now to get it improved...

Actually shouldn't be that bad, so... Hmmm...

Interesting... I just did "High Tech" profiling (Stepping through code one line at a time in the debugger), turns out I know exactly which line of code is causing my slowness issues. And, even better, it should be pretty easy to fix.

And to make it even more better (Yes, it's a word), it was code that is actually #3 on my to-do list to improve anyways!

John Hamilton

well, we did something good then! we wanted a loading screen from you, and you got performance fixes! :P

PearsonArtPhoto

13:21

LOL

I knew there was something going on, I just wasn't able to pin it down...

Blue Bug

13:59

I too know something is going on with my thinging... I just cannot pin it.

John Hamilton

what is that tho

Blue Bug

this is something. It is supposed to be just a basic shape

John Hamilton

ooooohhh it's something!

Blue Bug

If you look at it very carefully and try hard, you can distinguish the shapes

Maybe this can be a game, u know? A game about finding a hidden shape in the dazzling fractal patterns

John Hamilton

maybe it could become a loading screen background too O.o

Blue Bug

14:02

sound of eyes burning

John Hamilton

xD

user92578

how fucking hard color keying can be:

user92578

PearsonArtPhoto

14:21

Wow, what a complex thread of an issue (No pun intended)

Essentially I needed to thread the creation of my textures. That's not an easy thing at all in Unity.

While getting this to work, I found another huge inefficiency, which is probably responsible for a lot of the slowness of my code.

I just have to motivate myself to fix it...

DH.

14:51

@BlueBug You are getting good at this LSD simulator

user92578

15:14

It's stupid and took me unbelievably long to make, but it's pretty cool too:

user92578

GunHero Trailer Ending Mockup #1

►

John Hamilton

I'm sure you now know how to proceed faster and the rest will be much easier to do :D

user92578

well yeah the "normal" video editing is faster

user92578

I actually wrote a pygame program for the background, it spawns randomly boxes or weapons and rotates them a little and then lets them fall

user92578

then I recorded a good 30s of that

John Hamilton

15:18

Whoa (>*.*<)

user92578

Doing that in Blender would've been a pain

John Hamilton

that's something like what I'd do too tbh

user92578

And doing that in-game would've taken a lot longer than writing a simple Python

user92578

I tried to do it so that the boxes and guns would render behind like a purple background and I'd colorkey that away but apparently that was too much to ask for

user4704

I feel like I expected the background clutter to be spinning

user4704

15:20

Although I'm not sure if that would be too noisy

user4704

Otherwise cool

user92578

not a terrible idea

John Hamilton

sometimes I get something working through hard work, and other times I just stumble onto a completely irrelevant seeming thing and change that into what I want

the first feels good but the second feels amazing xD

PearsonArtPhoto

Still not perfect, but it is an improvement.

John Hamilton

15:44

look look I've done some stuff too :O

that's a whole shader there :P

user92578

whoa that's awesome

John Hamilton

I didn't write the whole shader tbh, I just took some blending effect and added my spin to it :P

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@JoshPetrie Are 4 upvotes enough to perform the suggested change?

John Hamilton

Here have a fifth (I read this before and didn't upvote even though I should've, dunno why lol)

user4704

I dunno. I don't think it's a big enough margin given the activity on the question.

user4704

15:58

I've mostly been putting off looking at that thread :D

PearsonArtPhoto

My shader for the main map is something like that.

It's mostly a shader.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah; I guess you disagree with the upvotes, hehe :P

John Hamilton

shaders are lovely aren't they :D

PearsonArtPhoto

They are pretty nifty.

The second to the last frame of the loading shows what my map looks like without shaders.

John Hamilton

I think the second post has some merits too, maybe we should merge them altogether or find some other solution?

shaders, mmmmmmm...

PearsonArtPhoto

16:04

Well, I'm not going to do anything more for today with my loading screen, but I will give it a shot for this weekend.

If I can get myself away from BotW, that is;-)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@JohnHamilton As my post suggest, I'd remove the 'entity' tag in any case as it has no meaning, except when linked to component, system, or both. As for the other two, I guess I'd at least find a decent tag description..

Alexandre Vaillancourt

16:16

@JoshPetrie And there are at least 30 views on that question that are from me hehe :P

Blue Bug

@DH. lol

John Hamilton

It turned out pretty cool tho, I've added some extra controls to feather amount and limiting: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/138775/…

Alexandre Vaillancourt

18:26

It's Friday afternoon. It shows.

jgallant

19:28

Saint Paddy's day.

You are obligated to get shit faced drunk and possibly pick a fight

As is tradition

DH.

Good thing we don't have the tradition here then

jgallant

I'm dating an Irish girl

DH.

But we have carnaval that is almost the same shit tho

jgallant

I gotta get totally fucked tonight.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

A couple of years ago, a drunk guy tried to climb on a float, here... he fell down while doing so and got ran over by the tractor pulling it...

He died.

jgallant

19:32

I rolled a few joints to keep me from drinking too much

Lmao

DH.

Drunk people are weird

jgallant

Sober people are weird to drunk people

yahoo5000

19:55

pastebin.com/vgFQ2atG

Hi guys just get back to coding after some break and face a problem probably just doing something stupid :/ got an error when trying to insert char buffer

Bálint

@yahoo I'm pretty sure the characters vector is empty when you try to get it's first element

yahoo5000

yes

Bálint

So you try to insert a nullptr in the vector?

yahoo5000

i am trying to insert buffer at begin()

Bálint

buffer is a char

user92578

19:59

You're inserting chars into a vector of objects?

yahoo5000

char * yes

Bálint

char != PlayerIDCard

yahoo5000

i am inserting char * into vector yes

Bálint

But the vector contains PlayerIDCard-s

user92578

^

Bálint

20:00

Hi Josh o/

user4704

Hi.

Bálint

Hi Jon o/

jgallant

hi.

yahoo5000

@Bálint but my buffer contains PlayerIDCard -s

jgallant

Soooooo.. whats going on

Bálint

20:02

No

jgallant

i try to insert a lot of things

user92578

Nope, you have a buffer of chars

Bálint

char * buffer = new char[buffersize];

@jgallant With varying results I assume...

jgallant

indeed.

1/5 times, it inserts properly

user92578

He does have a kid

yahoo5000

20:03

yea but inserting those chars into vector<PlayerIDCard> should become an object ?

jgallant

he beat zelda with me

that sonavabitch beat a guardian before me

Bálint

@yahoo5000 No, that's why it throws an error

user92578

@yahoo5000 uuh no, why?

user4704

Definitely not how that works.

jgallant

That damn son of a bitch.

user4704

20:04

If you want that to work PlayerIDCard needs a constructor that takes the char* and does the correct thing to extract the data from that char*.

yahoo5000

i mean i am sending std::Vector<PlayerIDCard> from server as a char buffer and here as i am recving them so its just a same data in same format ?

user4704

Frankly it looks like you're trying to send structs over the network by casting them.

user4704

Don't do that.

user4704

That's bad.

jgallant

serialixez.

user4704

20:04

And wrong.

user92578

But C++ doesnt know that

jgallant

write a custom serializer.

nothing compares.

user4704

It is also not the same data in the same format, necessarily.

jgallant

custom serial stream is the best kind of stream.

user92578

Yeah endiandnessdes

Bálint

20:05

Your class requires stuff, like int64 and strings

yahoo5000

Hmm i was hoping to save some code instead of dealing with char * just inserting it .

user4704

And packing.

user92578

Oh yeah packing yup

user4704

And the fact that it contains std::string.

user4704

So even if you were to "correctly" serialize the struct by interpreting as a byte blob, it won't work.

Bálint

20:06

So, I had some spare minutes

mcdorli.github.io/mandelbrot

user4704

Unfortunately, your entire approach is wrong.

yahoo5000

Josh so i need proper constructor for PlayerIDCard to deal with char* right ?

user4704

I mean, yes, but it's still not going to work.

user4704

The data you send from the servre is already corrupted and broken.

yahoo5000

why not ?

well yea i have to fix both server and client now

user4704

20:08

Because PlayerIDCard contains a std::string.

user4704

A std::string is basically like: struct string { const char * data; unsigned int size; }

user92578

And byte order might be reversed, right?

yahoo5000

yea now i have to pack all vector into char array and then send to client

byte order is not that important

user4704

So when you just cast a PlayerIDCard to chunk of bytes and sned() that, what goes out onto the wire is a pointer.

yahoo5000

i see

user4704

20:09

And whe you get that pointer back on the client, it's bogus. It points to who-knows-what.

user4704

Byte order and padding are important.

user4704

You have to manually serialize and deserialize your objects into a buffer. Look that up.

jgallant

yep.

nothing like doing it yourself.

user4704

I will reiterate here, as I did last time, that you've got some serious gaps in your understanding of the C++ object & memory model and you really might benefit from filling those instead of bulling forward with such an advanced topic as networking.

Almo

^

jgallant

20:16

Well said.

Sup Elmo

Almo

is there someone named Elmo here?

jgallant

Lol sup

Almo

:) not a lot

probably have next week off

this time I will really work on my music

jgallant

Nice. I got this IAP update for picross Touch. If you wanna duplicate the update on picross we could negotiate the terms

Almo

That's a possibility

send me details on what it involves by email

user92578

20:20

eyyy its elmo

jgallant

Hehe ok

Almo

UNity's new IAP system is nice, right?

hey, Causality is a really nice mobile puzzle game

ios/android

first set of levels get you used to the interface.

then it gets crazy

you have these guys walking on a grid, and you can turn arrows to direct them

they have to get to goals

there is a teleporter that warps the guy to anotehr place. BUT the target is specified both by location and what time on the timeline.

so if you have an arrow on turn 8 set so he'll hit the portal on turn 10, and the portal pops him out at turn 5, there will be another guy 3 turns away from the exit.

if you turn the arrow, he disappears.

DH.

How you find those games that are so unpopular? It has only 59 reviews, and none on my language btw

Almo

it's really cool man

Bálint

@DH. What's your language?

Almo

20:24

Causality was featured by Apple

DH.

OH k then

Almo

I often look at the little games they feature; they know a good game when they see it. :)

DH.

@Bálint Portuguese, brazilian "variation"

Almo

oh yeah, if your guy bumps into future/past guy, the background turns black and it says "PARADOX ALERT"

yahoo5000

20:39

is they the same ?

i mean only difference is signed and unsigned but the size is the same

jgallant

@almo it is ridiculously easy

The iPhone store does not auto reload purchased items

Almo

right, you just need a "restore purchases" button somewhere

jgallant

Android does

Almo

yes it does

Ali.S

@yahoo5000 signed and unsigned make loads of differnce

also why are you using "__int64" when you can use "int64_t"?

I mean the only difference is that the "int64_t" is language standard, while the other is implementation dependant

yahoo5000

20:52

i changed it :D i was not sure ether i was thinking there was a difference between them but get more into that and notice that they are same

i also remove unsigned i dont think i need actually

Ali.S

you can use "reinterpret_cast" if you want to mix signed and unsigned... but still it's a bad habit

Almo

reinterpret_cast... shudder

Ali.S

@Almo it does have some weird uses... don't you agree?

like when some imbecile declares his data class as a pointer to "unsigned char" while you actually have some string in that class that you want to be treated like an string.

yahoo5000

well i was thinking to use unsigned int64_t first and my Get64Bits not templated function witch ask int64_t , i could maybe do it as a templated actually

Almo

@Ali.S I'm not really sure. Been in C# world too long. I just remember it being dangerous.

Ali.S

20:56

it is dangerous

yahoo5000

well we live in dangerous world :D

Ali.S

no arguing that... but still it's usually ok when you are using it on primitive types

when you actually know what you are doing

jgallant

GORB was greenlit awwww yahhhhh

6

Just now

Fuck yeah

Ali.S

@jgallant well done!

Almo

Awesome jon

jgallant

20:58

Thanks

Almo

:)

Chris McFarland

Grats

jgallant

Awesome news

user4704

(You don't need reinterpret_cast just for signed/unsigned casts.)

Chris McFarland

NOA approved my latest Tallowmere update first try so I'm breathing a sigh of relief

3

Ali.S

20:59

@JoshPetrie not for signed/unsigned, but for pointer to signed/unsigned I'm required to use it

like "char*" -> "unsigned char*"

user4704

Yes, you need it for pointer conversions.

jgallant

@ChrisMcFarland tallowmere is established now

Congrats

user4704

I'm a little skeptical of that code in the screenshot, but, eh

Chris McFarland

high-fives all around

jgallant

Seriously

Success in the chat

yahoo5000

21:02

Josh whats wrong there ? :D

its good deal :D looks ulgy but should do its job

DH.

Nice Jon!

yahoo5000

int32_t charCount = 0;
				pClient.Recv32Bits(charCount);
				int32_t buffersize;
				pClient.Recv32Bits(buffersize);
				char * buffer = new char[buffersize];
				pClient.RecvAllBytes(buffer, buffersize);
				int pos = 0;
				for (int i = 0; i < charCount; i++)
				{
					int charID = 0;
					std::string name;
					std::string surname;
					int64_t  rep = 0;
					int64_t money = 0;
					PS::Recv::Get32Bits(charID, pos, buffer);
					PS::Recv::GetString(name, pos, buffer);
					PS::Recv::GetString(surname, pos, buffer);

Almo

Powdered Donutz Cereal (Commercial, 1982)

►

DH.

@ChrisMcFarland What is NOA?

Almo

nintendo of america

Chris McFarland

21:03

Nintendo of America

I gotta submit to Nintendo of Europe next, never got around to it last year, bloody depression

wish they would just merge the two :)

user4704

Need them tax shelters.

Chris McFarland

;_;

user92578

21:20

@jgallant you have the weirdest greenlits

jgallant

Lmao I know

Someone is looking out for me

user92578

lol yeah. Maybe someone saw that picross is doing well and wanted more jgallant quality games?

jgallant

Ahahaha

Definitely

I am so happy I was greenlit

Wooohooo

Fucken best day ever haha

Someone at steam likes me

DH.

21:38

Now get rich with low priced games with cards

S. Neut

21:59

Could anyone help me with a unity 5 thingy?

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