Game Development

01:16

Is that a link only?

1

A: How can I simulate relatively realistic weather?

It sounds like you know how to simulate, your problem is that you don't know meteorology. There are lots of intro courses online. The NWS has some basic courses, there's more in depth stuff on Coursera and EdX. There's some really great quick explanations by topic at http://www.theweatherpredi...

Pikalek

01:50

@AlexandreVaillancourt Probably? Even if it's not a link only, it seems marginal / low effort. I'm surprised it has an upvote.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Pikalek Actually, it has 2 upvotes and one downvote...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

09:58

When there is a community wiki answer, is it better to modify that answer to add something that has not yet been said, or should a new answer be added?

user92578

10:09

ugh today I'm at http chat

Alexandre Vaillancourt

They keep on changing you? Or you requested something else?

user92578

I think I might have unusually actually came to the chat from the link at the bottom of the main page yesterday

user92578

But today I came from my history/suggestion/whatever

user92578

So, Greenlight's gone then huh

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Ah, you'll probably have to clear your history at some point, I guess.

I don't know, I've only followed what's going on with it from what's being discussed here...

And yeah, I think 100$ is not enough.

user92578

10:16

steamcommunity.com/greenlight

user92578

I'd imagine they'll greenlight a bunch of okay-quality games that just didn't make it through

Kevin van der Velden

@AlexandreVaillancourt I kinda agree, but hey they never said it will always be 100$, if there's still abuse it can be changed

John Hamilton

Greenlight wasn't good enough at filtering stuff through tho

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@KevinvanderVelden Yeah, I though about that too; I guess they don't have a clue...

Kevin van der Velden

There's a lot of conflicting priorities at play, starting low and seeing if that's enough is a decent approach

Alexandre Vaillancourt

10:22

It is, but if they realize it's not enough, they won't be able to remove the low quality games that went in.

Kevin van der Velden

True, but there's already a giant amount of crap on it anyway, a bit more won't matter =p

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, probably.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

11:32

Wow.

8

Q: Has there ever been 25 or more stars on Wonder Woman's panties?

In Epic Rap Battles of History: Wonder Woman vs Stevie Wonder, Stevie Wonder (played by T-Pain) concludes his first verse with I'm the ceremony master blaster with the bars And I got more Grammies than your panties got stars Stevie Wonder has won 25 Gr...

I'd downvote for "Not useful".

doppelgreener

12:04

Scifi.se specialises in trivia, alas

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Heh! I guess I'm not geek enough.. :P The only question I'd ask/answer would be about Dune and Hyperion. But even then, I read the books in French so I'd have a hard time using the proper terms/names....

doppelgreener

Hyperion!!

That series is my favourite hands-down.

(not Dune though. I didn't enjoy that one so much and didn't finish the first book; I'm not on the author's wavelength so the content was not resonating with me and I was enjoying it less and less as it went on)

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, it's awesome; I read it twice. And I'll read it again ;) But I'm due for a Dune re-read first!

Ah, ok; I read the (7?) canon, nice stuff going on!

I read some other stuff from Frank Herbert, it was more, hmm... philosophical.

Lol, another one:

> Has there ever been a bald-headed Vulcan character in Star Trek?

This is the result of 2 guys having an heavy discussion in a bar.

:P

Still, it's entertaining!

doppelgreener

12:20

For me the stuff around how mentats worked, the ideas around terrible purpose, etc, seemed to work just fine for the author and resonate just fine with many people, but I couldn't really follow along with what I was meant to get out of that stuff.

They seemed to switch up how spice & mentats worked halfway through the first book, and the author seemed to want to express some idea around terrible purpose, but never expressed what it was so I wasn't sure what it was getting at.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

I'll try and see what you're talking about during my next read :)

And I don't have a clue what "terrible purpose" was translated to in French, so I don't really know what it is.

Shaun Wild

How on earth do sound

doppelgreener

@ShaunWild earth do vibration

atom do the hokey pokey beside other atoms and then into ear

ear do electrify to brain

Shaun Wild

No stop this

doppelgreener

haha

Shaun Wild

12:26

You are causing me a frighten

I am on the 8th Google page for "Island Generation", I already know full well how to do it, I'm just looking at all the different approaches different people take

I believe the term is

O B S E S S I O N

doppelgreener

or INTEREST

Shaun Wild

They go hand in hand with me

doppelgreener

noice

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Obserest

Shaun Wild

I love the islands created using voronoi

PearsonArtPhoto

13:34

So I'm trying to figure out what to do about the zooming in/ out, specifically with respect to the labels show in this diagram, among others. They tend to look poor when zoomed out at far levels, but too large maybe when zoomed in.

I'm thinking of setting these to be either a constant size, or at least scaled somewhat based on the zoom level. Any thoughts?

PearsonArtPhoto

14:25

I'm also facing my age old struggle of which object should appear on top of which...

PearsonArtPhoto

14:38

Well, I figured out at least part of the object appearing on top of each other. Now, to do the rest...

GuardFromUA

14:52

hey! Can someone help me with my problem?
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/142180/unity-touch-problem

PearsonArtPhoto

I'm not quite sure I understand your problem.

Shaun Wild

"Facing the problem, that UI over that swiping code working with it" Did you run your entire question through google translate lol

GuardFromUA

shame on me

Shaun Wild

Can you try rephrasing?

Might be able to help

Almo

@PearsonArtPhoto i've seen constant size in other games

or at least conmstant size from a certain zoom and smaller, but then expanding as you zoom in further

GuardFromUA

15:06

@Shaun

@ShaunWild done. I hope, you could understand the problem)

PearsonArtPhoto

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to do something like that...

I think many games have different levels of detail, where if you are zoomed at a certain point, an object is visible or not.

Hmmm... I'm also going to have to consider that I haven't decided yet if I want to do a different perspective...

Sigh. Okay, I think I know how to make this work...

Free Internet Points

0

Q: Is state change command less reliable than sending the entire state?

I'm asking for a game that I develop right now. The game is using TCP communication, there's server and multiple clients. While players in a room are playing the game, I send state update commands in a custom binary protocol every 33 ms. (30 FPS) Problem is those states are huge - there are playe...

networking client-server

Shaun Wild

15:30

@PearsonArtPhoto Note: It works wonders when your zooming is smooth ;)

DukeZhou

15:55

@ShaunWild props for your island generation obsession. Maybe you'll figure out a new, better way to do it

PearsonArtPhoto

Mostly Civilized: A Hex-Based 4x Game Engine for Unity - Part 5

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That's another way to do island like generation. You might have to watch a few of the other videos to get it, but it's interesting at least.

DukeZhou

Landscape generation has come a long way in recent decades, but it still has a long way to go

Shaun Wild

Tell that to the Rust devs @DukeZhou

Rust has such awesome map gen

PearsonArtPhoto

I have a few ideas to improve mine. I've become increasingly unhappy with my system...

DukeZhou

@ShaunWild I've heard great things about Rust, but I'd have to see some geographical output to make a determination

PearsonArtPhoto

16:02

There are just too many worlds that are way too bland that are created.

DukeZhou

Procedural generation, imo, although the proper way to do it, still results in repetitive output

Shaun Wild

Here is a server list, if you click on a server, you can see the map created for that server: playrust.io

DukeZhou

@ShaunWild nice

I will say that many brilliant people are working on this, and there have been major strides

I have no doubt that it will eventually be indistinguishable from actual geologically formed worlds!

DH.

Yeah, proc generated is hard stuff

I mean, to get almost always a good result

PearsonArtPhoto

I want to move to a plate tectonics type system, but I haven't quite got there yet.

DukeZhou

16:07

@ShaunWild Those Rust maps are pretty damn good. (Now I'm going to be clicking generate all day lol)

Shaun Wild

Clicking generate? huh?

DukeZhou

The game we're about to Beta is, interestingly, also a mechanic for map generation for certain fundamental strategy games. We're not using it for that atm, but I can get ~7x10^21 unique maps on a 9x9 grid, with just a handful of instructions

@ShaunWild re: Generate. Yeah. I'm addicted to map generation. (in some cases, I like it more than actually playing the games lol)

Clarification: That Rust link lets you generate maps, not just look at the severs

Shaun Wild

Oh really

It's blocked in my work so I haven't actually visited it

lol

PearsonArtPhoto

16:32

Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization

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Simon Forsberg

19:27

Hello all.

Almo

hey

what brings a blue to our neck of the woods

Simon Forsberg

I'm a fan of making turn-based games but there's one thing I can't seem to decide on: Mutable or immutable state?

Almo

explain what that choice means exactly

I think i can guess, but i'd rather be sure before answering

Simon Forsberg

Let's take Chess for example. Do I make Board b = new Board(); b.move("B2", "C3") or is it preferable to do Board b = new Board(); Board nextState = b.move("B2", "C3")

(Please ignore the fact that B2 can't move to C3 :P)

Almo

yeah

personally I use mutable state when I make turnbased games

But I'm not really an architecture expert.

just seemed reasonable to me when I did it

Simon Forsberg

19:30

In many cases I agree that it is reasonable

dot_Sp0T

Why would you need immutable state?

Simon Forsberg

But if you want to analyze many states, then I have a feeling it might get easier with immutable states

@dot_Sp0T I don't need per-se.

dot_Sp0T

Analyze as in for AI decisions?

Simon Forsberg

Yes

Almo

I having a hard time figuring out how immutable state helps my othello AI

dot_Sp0T

19:36

Hmm, I guess it depends on your goals and the game. I personally create personal states per AI. For chess an immutable general state makes sense as you can always see the whole board. But in a classic turn-based game with fog-of-war and similar, an AI should probably not have access to all state-data - then again, I am pedantic with these things

doppelgreener

@dot_Sp0T oh, so, representing the different things the AI thinks might be going on?

dot_Sp0T

Immutable state makes still sense so that you not accidentally modify a past state. Though.

Almo

I'm not sure how a recursive minmax algo can accidentaly modify a past state

it's all hidden in the stack

Simon Forsberg

@dot_Sp0T Just because you're using immutable state doesn't mean that your AI gets access to all state data.

dot_Sp0T

@SimonForsberg true, but it's easy to overlook if you access general state. At least that's my experience.

Simon Forsberg

19:41

@Almo How would you implement minmax exactly if you use mutable state? You'd either need to keep track of all the moves and be able to undo them, or make copies of the game state, right? (Or have I forgotten something?)

Almo

copies, if i recall

Simon Forsberg

Yeah, copies is probably easiest choice.

@dot_Sp0T I think whether or not to use mutable state and how to restrict AIs access to hidden state are two separate issues. You could use a .hide method or something that takes your immutable state and makes a hidden version of it, with all hidden real values removed, or throws an exception if you try to access them.

Almo

board state in othello is 64 pieces of data, so it's not a problem to copy it

I think I understand the issue better now

awesome, someone called my game "The Dark Souls of Puzzle Games"

hahha

Simon Forsberg

@Almo True that, and in chess it's 64 pieces of slightly more data.

Almo

yeah

Simon Forsberg

19:53

@Almo Just tried your game for the first time. I'm impressed. I love to make games with interesting rules, and I love puzzle games, but I'm having a hard time making GUIs (and suck at it). Seems like you succeeded with both. App downloaded, thanks!

And for this app, using immutable game state would be crazy.

DukeZhou

I effing hate Othello AIs!

@Almo what type of physics is your specialty?

Almo

@SimonForsberg awesome, glad to hear you like it. :)

classical physics is what I was best at

I know bits of quantum mechanics statistical mechanics electricity and magnetism, plasma physics, and a good deal more than is normal about stellar mechanics.

DukeZhou

I love that you have that background, and work in games

Almo

:)

fuck andoird manifest merging bs

DukeZhou

I think there's a "quantum" aspect to the [M] game we're about to Beta, but I'm a little hesitant to publicize that before I can discuss it with some physicists

Almo

20:06

right

DukeZhou

pst me a [email protected] if you want more info or want to check out the beta (Android and iOS)

Based on the combinatorial nature of Cognizer, I think you're going to find [M] fairly interesting

DukeZhou

20:22

There have been some interesting attempts at quantum games. (I found Quantum tic-tac-toe is highly instructive: perruchenautomne.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/…

Unlike Quantum Tic-Tac-Toe and Quantum Chess, people actually seem to enjoy playing [M]. Possibly it is because this aspect arises purely from the structure and mechanics of the game, as opposed to being externally applied...

My 6 year old niece was able to play [M] and beat "Boopsie", our dumbest AI, with only a single instruction

Almo

:D

DukeZhou

And yet the game itself remains mathematically unsolved, and has complexity akin to chess

yup, we're more concerned with weak as opposed to strong AI (partly based on how not fun it is getting crushed repeatedly by Othello AIs;)

Lee Sedol described his experience vs. AlphaGo as "soul crushing"

Not a good sales tactic, imo

Almo

my othello AI is easy to tune. Just the depth it searches. Level 1 is not hard to beat, Level 5 is quite a bitch.

DukeZhou

We're tying to do "adaptive" in the sense that the AI will get dumber if you lose, and smarter if you win

(half the people we're polling don't even know what AI is, so we don't want them to have to set the level.)

Our AI has to be general, b/c [M] is actually an array of games based on a set of fundamental mechanics

thus "respectably weak AI" is our current goal

Me and the developer consistently beat our strongest AI, but only by fairly narrow margins

by contrast, our marketing guy had to be coached on the flaws in its game, and still only wins some of the time ;)

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou I made an implementation of that here: zomis.net/ttt/TTTWeb.html?mode=Quantum Code: github.com/Zomis/UltimateTTT

DukeZhou

20:33

@SimonForsberg nice!

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Intriguing.

DukeZhou

I've been wanting to try QTTT for a while, but couldn't find it

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Too bad we didn't meet sooner.

DukeZhou

@SimonForsberg I assume it's ok if I post a link at: deterministicgames.com

(Been hard pressed to find free combinatorial online games from sites that don't data-rape;)

Simon Forsberg

Unfortunately I haven't any multiplayer support for playing there - yet. And the AIs are pretty dumb I think. But multiplayer support is on my todo-list™

@DukeZhou Absolutely.

I do have a sort of finished puzzle game that just needs GUI fixes, would be interesting to hear your thoughts of that, I might reappear another day to share it.

DukeZhou

20:38

And, btw, we're just getting started at MClass/Fundamental Combinatronics (www.fc123.us), so don't be a stranger

email me at [email protected] if you want to get on the Beta list for [M]

Simon Forsberg

If anyone is interested, my most popular online game (and pretty much my only real one) is Minesweeper Flags

DukeZhou

nice. We're using libGDX also

App size is just under 7mb

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Emailed

@DukeZhou Wow! Too good to be true.

DukeZhou

We've actually forgone a web version to focus on the app, but the original prototype was a 32kb pure-javascript file coded on iPad

I'm very interested to see how small the kernel can be in an uncompiled language

and web and FB versions of the game are markets we want to eventually pursue

@SimonForsberg I feel lucky I popped onto chat today!

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Same here

I'm usually just hanging out on Code Review chat.

The 2nd Monitor (general chat), and here:

Coding Projects and Duga Heaven :)

Minesweeper Flags, Zomis' games, PDB, MTG, Cardshifter, and al...

1

DukeZhou

20:46

I notice you're something of a titan over there

Simon Forsberg

A chat room originally created to create a Trading Card Game together, but now we're mostly talking about other things... and playing Factorio

DukeZhou

I built the prototype partly with cannibal code from Stack lol

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Erhm... yeah. I joined back in November 2013 and became one of about 5 core users and got elected moderator after graduation in 2015.

DukeZhou

I accidentally fell to the top of the heap on Mythology. (My only issue over there is we don't get nearly enough questions.)

but there are some fine scholars

Simon Forsberg

Judging from a quick search, I see you are about as crazy about Factorio here as we are on Code Review.

DukeZhou

20:49

It was actually my lifelong work with metaphors that led me, inadvertantly, to combinatorial game design

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Didn't even know about that site until now.

DukeZhou

Factorio looks awesome. (All games are economic, imo)

My worry is if I download it and play, I lose a few months, but I suspect I'm going to do it anyway ;)

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou A front page for an old Donald Duck magazine inspired me with a game idea (for another, potentially fun but still unfinished game)

DukeZhou

Game design is an art!

(I find that aspect to be all too often overlooked)

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou Months? I'd say years. 661 hours and counting.

DukeZhou

20:53

It's mechanical and aesthetic, which is why I think it's the highest art there is

Simon Forsberg

I just wish I ~~was better at the aesthetic parts~~ had someone that could take care of the aesthetic parts for me.

DukeZhou

We'll talk. I grew up programming, but I'm one of those people who likes to spend 99% of the time thinking, and 1% doing. I'd be happy to lend any expertise I have regarding the aesthetics to your noble efforts.

Kevin van der Velden

Factorio \o/

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou I find it quite enjoyable to implement game logic and maybe make prototypes, but when it comes to deciding exactly how I want things to look, I'm lost.

DH.

I think the same applies to everyone

Starting projects is fun, finishing them is hard

2

DukeZhou

20:58

Graphic design wise, I'm merely a gifted amateur. Narrative, symbols and metaphors, and how the can be expressed in a logical/mathematical contexts is where my true strengths lie.

Simon Forsberg

@DH. Glad to hear that I'm not alone.

Kevin van der Velden

@DH. yes, hence why I like gamejams

DukeZhou

I found with the [M] prototype, by focusing on form first and plugging in the functionality second, I got something with extreme elegance and appeal. My coder approached it (probably wisely) the opposite way, so we're still struggling with the elegance of the actual product.

Minimalism is always best, imo. It seems like all of the crappy app games use the same crappy artist they found on the web somewhere lol

Kevin van der Velden

Damnit now I want to play more factorio

Alas, time for bed

Simon Forsberg

@DukeZhou And with form do you mean general GUI layout, or the game-specific layout?

@KevinvanderVelden Haha, sorry. I shouldn't have said anything ;)

In case anyone is interested though, I recently uploaded my first official Factorio mod

Almo

21:10

if you want a tip on how I got Cognizer to look nice, just a passing look-over and comments from a real graphic designer made all the difference.

Simon Forsberg

@Almo And where did you find the graphic designer?

And maybe more importantly: How much did the graphic designer cost? ;)

DukeZhou

The GUI

I was trained as an artist before I learned to program, from a very early age, so I was obsessed with it "looking right" and having a sticky feel

Functionality-wise, it was exceptionally primitive--I wrote the code with no real structure so my loop were all f*'d, and there as a little memory leak

Almo and JG make very nice looking apps

I hope I can get out production version up to that standard

sooner rather than later

Almo

@SimonForsberg I live with one. :D But you could contract one. I would expect to pay... $75 an hour for maybe an hour of time to get the amount of feedback I needed.

depends on the size of your app though. cognizer is just one game screen and like 7 menus or so

Simon Forsberg

@Almo Oh what a luxury to live with one.

Almo

haha yeah

Simon Forsberg

21:17

Hmm... maybe that's something I should put up on my Tinder profile... "Programmer looking for graphic designer"

Almo

it helps that she's A) really fucking good B) specializes in bold elegant design and typesetting.

DukeZhou

@Almo I'll have to hit you up when we have cash for a custom font

Almo

she doesn't make new fonts, but she knows how to pick them

she chose the one for the maniac games logo, then adjusted the letter-spacing subtly to make it look just right

I was going to use Futura, same one as in Cognizer, but she suggested OCR-A (I think it's called) and it just looked better.

DukeZhou

It's the licensing agreements that really frustrate me with the fonts

So many seem to be oriented toward desktop use

Simon Forsberg

I'll have to say good night for now, but it's been enjoyable to chat with you this evening, and I'll definitely be back.

Almo

21:29

bye :)

Shaun Wild

22:52

i.gyazo.com/0bf10ab422a5495a94fe20ddc052ac2b.mp4 Starting to create the editor

Coding Projects and Duga Heaven :)

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