Game Development

Sie

00:02

@StephaneHockenhull From where?

Stephane Hockenhull

the 10K rep power-trip toolset.

gamedev.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools

Sie

For when someone posts a compressed image/uses Windows XP to save a jpeg...

►

I literally have 1 rep and 39 on SE across all networks lol.

Stephane Hockenhull

haha

Sie

I had more but I lost access to my old account. I broke my phone and the e-mail that was tied to the account had two-factor (no recovery option) so I had to reset on certain websties.

Stephane Hockenhull

aw

Sie

00:05

Not really a huge loss. I mean I like Stack Exchange but I literally only come here for the chat 99% of the time. Also when I forget to RTFM or code help lol.

Full immersion

►

Stephane Hockenhull

Considering how "easy" it is to hijack someone's cell number cell-phone based 2-factor auth seem more a hindrance to the legit users than the bad guys.

Blue Bug

excuse me Sie but internet points are a big deal

Sie

Ya I'm basically a serf here lol.

Blue Bug

you lost all your previous internet points and had to reset the process, you might as well reset your life from the very beginning and prevent that from happening

it is live-die matter man

Sie

I would make a joke but I think I'd get temp banned for it in here lol.

Blue Bug

00:08

careful Sie

I have been temp banned a few times

the rules can be... strict but atm there are only 7 of us

so u might get away with it

type inappropriate messages

Sie

So anyone hear from Mick anymore at all anymore?

Blue Bug

nope

Stephane Hockenhull

Chat kind of got boring since :(

Blue Bug

chat was slowly dying anyway

stackexchange as whole is dying

Sie

@MichLH Come back.

I don't think I can ping him from here.

Stephane Hockenhull

00:11

It's kind of inevitable from the site's nature. At one point you run out of good Q/A ...

Sie

Then we shitpost!

Blue Bug

your ping doesn't reach him Sie, Mick is beyond our reach now

Stephane Hockenhull

And it all becomes: How do I work around this bug in Unity Version X.Y.Z?

Sie

I'm still surprised Stack Exchange is surviving. I mean I know there is the career thingy but I don't really get what the business model is.

Blue Bug

0

Q: How perform for obj follow mouse with angle?

how i can perform for sprite follow mouse if i change angle ? If i change angle the sprite no more follow mouse correctly. https://jsfiddle.net/jonforum/ow9w7rfz/10/ thank a lot for help

Stephane Hockenhull

00:14

@Sie ^^^ Reply to WinXP jpeg

Sie

Noice.

Stephane Hockenhull

Sucks we can't reply directly with images in the chat :P

Sie

Ya.

Stephane Hockenhull

But I guess it'd generate into meme wars :D

And photos of grossly offensive pugs.

Sie

Oh ya. I finally got around to making a new website. It's fairly bare bones at the moment but it will get there once I post some more junk.

elysrealm.website

Had to go with that domain as I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for a better one when that's less than a $1 for the first year.

Stephane Hockenhull

00:22

Man, those URL were a bad idea. Makes auto-detecting URLs with simple reg-ex impossible now.

Anything can be a website address now..

Blue Bug

I noticed there is no programming question

a lot of questions are debug question "my code do dis and it doesn't work help" or "how do I do things with Unity"

but then I do notice good questions... I will try to answer some I guess

Stephane Hockenhull

Yeah, and when new users don't get their code debugged they take that as elitism or rudeness :P

Blue Bug

"fugging these cocky elitism morons, won't debug my code, trash website"

Stephane Hockenhull

lemme find an example from (I think) yesterday...

-5

Q: how to create app desktop Management queues in c#?

good people I want to create a desktop application, management queues in C #. What should I do, I have no idea, I would like help

c#

Blue Bug

"wtf I write question then it got closed. They ban new users here, awful community."

Stephane Hockenhull

00:33

I'm sure a few people are actually rude but I know from experience too many people will take simply-terse answers as rude.

Especially if they're flailing about desperate to keep their job. Which SO gets a lot more than GDSE...

We're lucky to have a much higher ratio of hobbyists...

Blue Bug

oh yeah I noticed

a lot of people with really different backgrounds coming for hobby game dev

Stephane Hockenhull

But honestly I don't think any of it is a problem that needs fixing (nor a problem at all.)
If we want to keep the site clean it will be "elitist". And like I mentioned earlier invariably people will run out of good Q&A. It's kind of like cryptocurrency :P

Feelings will get hurt.

Sie

The first plant to become a venus fly trap

►

Stephane Hockenhull

I saw that one :D it's awesome :D

Stephane Hockenhull

00:49

@BlueBug For example that new question just now: "Physics engine without time steps" I hesitated to spend my time answering it for many reasons...

Blue Bug

an interesting concept though

interesting...

Stephane Hockenhull

Which everyone doing physics engine has quickly tried and dismissed :P

ah well, turns out this guy has a good attitude.

Sie

01:05

Why do I keep procrastinating instead of learning GoDot? Damn it. I don't even have classes until the 14th. Need to get focused and make games. What really matters in life.

Blue Bug

0

A: A* implementation issue

Since your goal is implementation rather than game dev, I highly recommend writing tools to test out your implementation. As someone in comment section pointed out, it is better if you had traceable "executing on paper" some form of "I can look at and see where things are going wrong". I am su...

I answered this

I haven't answered like forever

I feel proud

Stephane Hockenhull

@Pikalek and when calculating relatively small movement (tight time step) of far objects (large magnitude from the world zero point) you hit floating point rounding errors so bad that using fixed points suddenly becomes very interesting.

kerbal space program has struggled with that issue a lot. Not sure if they got it reasonably solved.

Sie

extends Area2D

signal hit

export (int) var SPEED
var velocity = Vector2()
var screensize

func _ready():
	hide()
	screensize = get_viewport_rect()

func _process(delta):
	velocity = Vector2()
	if Input.is_action_pressed("ui_right"):
		velocity.x += 1
	if Input.is_action_pressed("ui_left"):
		velocity.x -= 1
	if Input.is_action_pressed("ui_down"):
		velocity.y += 1
	if Input.is_action_pressed("ui_up"):
		velocity.y -= 1

	if velocity.length() > 0:
		$AnimatedSprite.play()
		velocity = velocity.normalized() * SPEED

I don't know about this GDScript though... I just don't like it for some reason.

Blue Bug

is that python

Sie

Blue Bug

01:15

I like how neat it looks though

@StephaneHockenhull making rocket science in unity game engine lol

Stephane Hockenhull

01:40

Yeah, not the very best idea...

We're dealing with massive force on tiny objects at large planetary distances and very low friction...
The very thing that even 64bits floats are notably bad at...

Blue Bug

04:56

I think game dev chat is dying or something

Blue Bug

05:47

how can there be only 4 people!

user92578

yeah we've seen better days

user92578

Blue Bug

What do you think we can do

to bring back those better days

where chat was thrived with... content

I am thinking how should enemies detect my player

should they start to chase enemies when they see the player in a straight line? or should they start to chase player when the player is close enough and available path exists

user92578

06:34

I'd say vision, and maybe even sound triggers? Like if a barrel or something explodes near enough, the enemies will hear that and walk towards the sound

user92578

I don't think there's much to do, the good old days are simply over

Blue Bug

QQ

Kevin van der Velden

08:49

@Tyyppi_77 though chat is now a lot less negative

user92578

08:59

@KevinvanderVelden I guess a little bit, not worth the content loss though imo

Alexandre Vaillancourt

11:27

Hello! I'm back.

Kevin van der Velden

Aaaaaaaah runs and hides

I should do more gamedev

I need time for that though

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah, me too.

Gotta get rid of my useless stuff before, though...

Blue Bug

Alon Mor - Late Night Skyline

►

This music is so good, that I thought it would be great if there existed a game that had this as BG music

Initially I thought my computer was going crazy tbh

because the music has this absurd audio clips

user92578

14:43

133

Q: We're More Aggressively Enforcing Self-Moderation In Chat

While the timing of this post coincides with us expressing some serious concerns around how we're not doing a good job of helping and guiding Stack Overflow to remain a welcoming place for everyone, this is something that's been weighing heavily on our minds for quite some time, and applicable to...

discussion featured chat behavior be-nice-policy

user92578

This kinda annoys me, given how little attention they pay to the actual issues in chat, like autosuspensions and stuff like that

SQB

15:07

Hello @AlexandreVaillancourt, my question over on Arqade was put on hold, with an advice to ask it on GameDev. Do you think it would be a good fit for this stack?

nwp

@Tyyppi_77 That annoyed a lot of people.

user92578

@SQB IMHO no, because that's a question that only a Legend of Zelda -developer can answer

nwp

Let's hope these sort of things don't happen here too.

Although I guess SO is fast on deleting those posts, so we will never know.

SQB

@Tyyppi_77 that, or someone well versed in game dev history.

user92578

Hmm I don't actually know if we do game dev history here

user92578

15:11

TBH I don't feel like your question is off-topic on Arqade but I guess they know better over there

Sie

Welp there's always Discord and Reddit.

Frankly, while I appreciate the fact this site has chat I don't really have any loyalty to it or any platform.

user4704

15:30

@SQB We don't consider that on-topic here, though.

user4704

That said, I would guess that the answer to your question is "yes, they were designed to fit like that so they could stuff them all into one chunk of memory and save space."

user4704

@Sie Discord's actual chat functionality is not as good as SE's though. I miss a lot of stuff (especially the reply-linking) when I chat in Discord servers.

SQB

Yeah, I gathered as much from @KevinvanderVelden. I've asked in Retrocomputing chat now.

Pikalek

@JoshPetrie could reframing the question to ask about the benefits of how it appears to have been designed be more on topic or does that become too opinion based?

user4704

It's speculative.

user4704

15:32

The only way I can think to make it on-topic here basically changes it to a totally different question, basically presuming the answer is what I suggested.

Sie

@JoshPetrie Ya. I do wish we had proper mobile chat though. I mean you can do it via mobile browser but it's quite clunky.

user4704

Which doesn't actually help the asker much more than my guess does, really.

user4704

Something like "how can I optimize the memory usage of tile-based game levels on NES hardware?"

user4704

Which you can answer "with 'do like what Zelda did and pack them together like Tetris pieces.'"

Sie

Everytime I see @doppelgreener his avatar reminds of a character from Adult Swim.

Pikalek

15:35

Again I wish we had Opinion.Overflow or the like.

Sie

user92578

Opinion.Overflow exists, it's called Tumblr

doppelgreener

@Tyyppi_77 also facebook

also twitter

@Sie oh wow, the resemblance is uncanny

Pikalek

couldn't you say that Google was the stack overflow before stack overflow though?

Sie

Ya lol.

doppelgreener

15:37

it's peridot + the mario hat

now also murderface cosplay

Sie

He's from a show called Metalocalypse.

doppelgreener

i've seen the first season of it. :D

it's a fantastic show

Sie

I've been meaning to watch Steven Universe myself. It's supposed to be a great show with a lot of depth from what I've heard/read about it.

doppelgreener

all true.

doppelgreener

15:54

I've found it pretty wholesome & very enjoyable, and it has some powerful messages about compassion & self-love that helped me a lot whilst I was going through an episode of depression.

SQB

16:07

@JoshPetrie it's okay though, retro will have it.

user4704

16:17

Neat.

user92578

16:30

user92578

UI programming today, wrote a multiline label and a table element

user4704

neat

user4704

Is the keybinding list hardcoded? :P

user92578

yeah it is, some of them could probably be programmatically gathered from my keybinder helper class, but like the mouse stuff would have to be added anyways manually so I didn't bother

user4704

looks good

user92578

16:38

thanks!

user92578

now I gotta localize this... it was all fun and games at the beginning but now it's starting to be a burden when I'm adding new stuff

user92578

I've been planning a string refactor, transition away from my custom string type and just use std::string, but I've also thought about introducing another string type that can only be constructed inside the localization manager, which would probably make me forget less about the localizations on new things. Is that a common approach?

user92578

Enforcing localizations via type-safety?

user4704

I'm not sure how common it is, but yeah, I've seen it before.

user4704

developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nslocalizedstring

user4704

16:49

Not actually "type safe" since it's a macro, but a similar idea.

user92578

Have you personally used it in a project? Did you like it?

user4704

Unreal does it via FText / FString.

user4704

It's fine. Sometimes it's annoying to deal with conversions.

user4704

17:01

Often that annoyance is useful though; like you're building up some text programmatically to present to the user and you can't because an FString isn't an FText and you have to explicitly convert.

user4704

That illustrates a place where you're going to likely "miss" localization of that string.

user4704

But OTOH it's uselessly annoying when it happens in editor UI you know you won't be localizing.

user92578

yeah true, I think I really might go this route now that my editor UI is localized too

genaray

17:53

I have a mysql table which contains all items ( Wood, Stone, HealthPotion etc. )... My Database also stores the inventory of all my players ( PlayerID, ItemID, amount ) ...

user4704

18:17

I'm sorry.

Jimmy

18:29

not a problem if that's what your long-term data store is. Probably a problem if you're dynamically querying mysql from your game engine

Sie

19:05

Do we have a Stack Exchange for memes? @JoshPetrie

Pikalek

@Sie it would appear that we do not: stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic

Pikalek

19:23

@StephaneHockenhull Yeah, I hadn't thought about it, but I can see how something like Kerbal would struggle with that sort of thing. Even the stripped down project I worked on was a huge hassle. I'm glad I did it, I learned a lot, but I'm not eager to repeat the experience.

Blue Bug

20:22

The moment you are writing question then realize you know the answer

oh well...

actually nvm... I don't know the answer

user4704

Problem solved.

Blue Bug

20:43

0

Q: 2D Top Down: Can't follow the path accurately

In my game, there are many agents. Agents request a path, then after attaining a path to "goal" they follow the path. However player and many other things in the world can impact their position by pushing them or pulling them. When agents get pushed and they happen to advance forward closer to ...

path-finding path-tracing

user4704

Are you path segments always straight lines?

Blue Bug

yeah cuz they are point node based

user4704

And does the agent "know" it has been displaced from the path?

Blue Bug

I could let my agent know that it had been displaced from the path when it moves too far away from the node based on angle and distance I think

THAT I can do however I am lost when it comes to properly putting my agent back onto the path

user4704

So specifically you want to know how to find the "best" point to go back to?

user4704

20:50

Not neccessarily the "closest" point?

Blue Bug

hmmmm I feel like finding "best" is not possible because that basically means I am creating a new path?

so maybe "closest" point onto the path

user4704

I posted a thing.

Blue Bug

your thing me appreciate

nwp

starbait

Sie

@nwp You really think people would just go post stupid things in a random tiny chatroom for validation?

Well you're not wrong.

user4704

21:06

Actually I deleted a thing.

user4704

I think you should just regenerate the path to the goal.

user4704

Using the straight line distance like I suggested is probably going to bias you toward picking the goal node in almost all cases except for paths that are already pretty straight. Anything with real deviation like in your examples probably would, for example.

user4704

That means the actual implementation degenerates towards regenerating the path from the new agent position to the goal (in order to perform the test), and then doing that a bunch more.

user4704

But you'll almost always just discard those additional results, so that's wasteful.

user4704

And presumably you need a path to get back onto the original path anyway (or why did you need a path in the first place?)

user4704

21:10

So it's probably simpler to just re-run the path finding to the new goal and use that.

Blue Bug

that makes sense

btw FYI you may have deleted it but I sceencaptured it

hard to read but I can apply effects gamma and stuff then boom! readable +_+

user4704

10k users can see it too

Blue Bug

Wish I had that superpower

Blue Bug

21:34

but I guess that means I cannot have these DOZENS of little enemies that I am planning since recalculating path for every one of them is, ur

user4704

Optimize path recalculation.

user4704

:D

Blue Bug

it is optimized I think

user4704

Also, defer it: have the agent start walking in a straight line while the path is computing.

user4704

Using edge-walking.

Blue Bug

21:35

I bought it from asset store

user4704

It's probably definitely got room for optimization then :P

Blue Bug

but that defeats the purpose of paying money for it though

if there is a room for optimizaion when I look at the code

I am gona request refund

+_+

user4704

There is always going to be room because the asset is probably written for a general case and you have a specific case.

Blue Bug

oh

ok that makes sense

Stephane Hockenhull

21:49

I don't like that https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/455/good-resources-for-learning-about-game-architecture will forever promote a small limited selection of resources that will become more and more out of date...

Should that be deleted?

It got dug back up by someone updating one of the answers' URL

user4704

I am uncomfortable doing it unilaterally.

Stephane Hockenhull

same

user4704

But you could make an argument for it on meta.

user4704

Are you even permitted to vote-to-delete it?

user4704

I thought there was some restriction on non-mods VTD'ing stuff that had answers and a positive score

user4704

21:53

(I bumped it again by deleting some tags!)

Stephane Hockenhull

I don't know if I can, I mean I'm not sure whether its better to leave it up because it does have good links or it's unfair and going to cause more harm than good eventually.

> Doesn't seem to be readable on Google books any longer. Oh well. – James McMahon Aug 30 '11 at 3:52

user4704

I think your argument has merit.

user4704

If you hit the "vote to delete" button, does it tell you how many votes are needed total? Help center says it scales with the score of the question

Stephane Hockenhull

lemme try.

Doh!

Suddenly that looks like a much bigger endeavour.

And connundrum

Altho all the doubles are also bad opinion/where-to-get-started questions

gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/linked/455?lq=1

user4704

I am fairly sure I can still nuke it.

user4704

22:01

But I'd need to see a pretty large meta turnout in favor of doing so before I was comfortable with it.

user4704

I could lock it with the historical significance tag.

user4704

Although I don't know if I feel that's a great solution on my own either

Stephane Hockenhull

Yeah but it'd still show up on google...

user4704

True.

user4704

I think it'd stop people from making edits though, which means the links would all eventually rot away.

user4704

22:04

But that just ends up being like deleting it without actually having the stomach for going through with it. Kinda wishy-washy

Stephane Hockenhull

Yeah.
Eventually (if a bit hyperbolic) it'd be like handing out someone a book on K&R original C

And telling them they should learn C using this

Not just as a historical trivia :P

@JoshPetrie Actually, we just delete the answers...

That would solve the issue.

Not quite fair rep-points-wise that the Q gets to keep the rep and the A's get deleted but that sound like a better solution.

because 8 years ago we were still writing some software renderers, and almost always for uni-processor systems...

In another 10 years we'll be targetting 64+ core computers as the norm :P

(just rubber-ducking options before I post on meta)

user4704

22:42

@StephaneHockenhull Fair point.

Stephane Hockenhull

*we could .. .was too late to edit

user4704

It is a wiki question so it's not clear how many of those votes actually translated into real rep.

Stephane Hockenhull

22:58

Do we have a strikeout in SE formatting?

nwp

no

Jimmy

~~chat formatting isn't SE formatting~~

wat

nwp

You can use it in questions and answers, but not in comments.

You can use some strike-through site for comments.

Jimmy

in questions and answers I have to use <strike>asdfasdf</strike>

in chat you use ---text---

nice, unicode strikethrough

𝖀𝖓𝖎𝖈𝖔𝖉𝖊 𝖎𝖘 𝖒𝖆𝖌𝖎𝖈

Stephane Hockenhull

23:50

It's also what makes unicode terrible.

DMGregory

I'll confess, I'm not a big fan of character identity and styling being intertwined in the same data value. :/

Stephane Hockenhull

Guidance, mentoring, suggestions, and advice are good and fine things, and are very important. But to my mind, they don't fit the stackexchange model. Such things are better fits for a forum where users can receive immediate, time-specific personalised help, and their threads be deleted after a month or a year, to make space for future conversations. To my mind, personalised mentoring doesn't make sense for a system where every question and every answer is stored publicly in perpetuity. The StackExchange sites are designed as almanacs, not as personal advice columns. — Trevor Powell Apr 23 '14 at 13:23

This is a very concise explanation of the issue.

From 4 years ago...

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