Game Development

For the most part I haven't see anything different than what being a room owner has. (Well, it's for all rooms). The only big thing is when someone anywhere says something that gets flagged everyone gets a little notice.

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 define earlier...

Noctrine

12:13 AM

Oh, and other mods can summon you.

tylerrrr07

"yay, I can do 3D Mom!" or something like that

Gajet

@Noctrine I guess you can delete things after others don't

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Summon you?

Funky

Gajet

and you can manipulate others starts/post. that's a thing owners can't do

@tylerrrr07 we have a good example in Persian,

I can't really translate it, but it's the matter of life and death

actually a kings statement to forgive or punish someone,

Jimmy

I think flags go out to all users above X rep, it's not a mod thing

John McDonald

12:18 AM

@tylerrrr07 OOhhhh, double entendre! nice

Jimmy

well, at least we get chat-notifications. we don't get it in our SE bar

Gajet

now I'm wondering, do the trusted users (those with above 20k rep) have all the power moderators have?

Noctrine

Ah, then yeah. Its just that

Aside from the binding close votes, and a few other things yes.

But all of those things are really just more janitorial. Aside from question merging I've used all the other things combined less than maybe 10-20 times

He just keeps going

John McDonald

12:44 AM

:/ I can't find our discussion about community wikis, and where we thought we'd try to forward those sorts of topics to gpwiki

Jimmy

it's linked on one of the meta questions

0

A: 'Getting started' questions - shouldn't we have something for this?

We've somewhat already discussed this. A small idea to prevent new users from posting subjective questions We kind of already do have questions we can point beginners to, they're just closed. Must read game development books Good game design books? Free ebooks about game development What ar...

Jan 17 at 18:28, by thedaian

frankly, i'd either have a single massive, useful community wiki question for resources we can point to and close any other "where do i" questions, or have something like gpwiki.org be linked in the FAQ under the header "where do i.... questions", or something

John McDonald

yeah, that's a familiar name

Jimmy

just got an email from linkedin asking me to reset my password

did they leak?

John McDonald

So I heard, yeah

John McDonald

1:09 AM

@WilliamMindWorXMariager, do you have an online repo for that AwesomiumComponent?

Programmer art!

It's Dr. Horrible!

Mostly

Where's his freeze ray?

tylerrrr07

Not on the list of priorities hehe

Priority 1 - get him animating

D:

John McDonald

1:15 AM

heh, nice

tylerrrr07

For walking would it look awful if you just reversed the animation once in full swing?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@JohnMcDonald Nope.

tylerrrr07

At rest -> Begin walk -> Middle of Walk -> Full Swing -> (reverse)

Full Swing -> Middle of Walk -> Begin Walk -> At Rest

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Did the new firefox change how scrolling looks? It looks all... different...

Richard Marskell - Drackir

@Jimmy pcworld.com/article/257045/…

tylerrrr07

1:22 AM

So basically only use 4 frames for the 7 frames of animation?

John McDonald

@WilliamMindWorXMariager so... I'd like it to be in a repo/project somewhere. I've got a slightly more updated version than you, and I'd like to continue using it. What do we/you want to do?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Didn't you already create an XNA Awesomium repo?

John McDonald

Umm, yeah, kinda, you want me to just upgrade that repo?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Sounds like the easiest choice.

John McDonald

actually... I think i might want to/need to make a new repo that will do stuff like output a dll, much like the other projects I have

@tylerrrr07 and before I get too carried away on awesomium, if the legs are both black, it should be too bad

so, anyway, you don't seem to really care too much? I'll make an awesomium component project & repo, somewhere, and be done with it?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

1:33 AM

Sounds like a good plan. :) And yeah, doesn't really matter to me, as long as we get it somewhere people can see, with some tags so it'll show up on google. :P

John McDonald

An other friend of mine noticed that bitbucket doesn't really seem to support teams, or collaborative efforts very well. All of the urls use the creator's user id. Bitbucket is working on it, but in the meantime, they suggest a shared account. Kinda lame, and not really possible for our situation

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

gihhub?

John McDonald

hmm

Is there support for merc?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I... Don't know...

John McDonald

I thought there was, even thought the site name suggests otherwise

maybe not eh?

Richard Marskell - Drackir

1:39 AM

I'm pretty sure it's just git.

John McDonald

yeah, prob

Richard Marskell - Drackir

What about codeplex? Apparently it supports mercurial.

John McDonald

@WilliamMindWorXMariager So... I'd vote that you create a merc bitbucket repo, and I commit to it

It'll be in your name, but I don't care, I'll still link to it and maintain it

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Repo name?

AwesomiumXNA?

John McDonald

@RichardMarskellDrackir Nothing against codeplex, just that both of us have bitbucket accounts

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Sure

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

1:43 AM

Wiki and/or Issue Tracker?

John McDonald

Maybe a wiki, screenshots or something

Never used the issue tracker, but I'd imagine that 90%+ of the issues would have to be with awesomium

it can't hurt, I suppose

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Description: "A complete XNA friendly implementation of Awesomium."?

John McDonald

umm, sure

Richard Marskell - Drackir

@JohnMcDonald Ah no worries. It just seemed more team-friendly.

John McDonald

Ahh, right

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

1:49 AM

@John, You should've received an invite.

John McDonald

yup

already on it

Thanks

bbl

tylerrrr07

2:33 AM

Well the animation is horrible but he's animating!

tylerrrr07

2:51 AM

Red: Completely Blocking
Grey: Only Block the Top (Can land on, otherwise pass through)
White: No Collision

Gustavo Maciel

White and Cornflower-Blue*

tylerrrr07

Well

CFB is the background so I didn't count it. :P

Its not really an object being rendered to the screen like the white box is

All the boxes are the same class, with different properties

Oh snap. I need to separate out my texture rectangle and my collision rectangle. He currently can hover because his feet aren't quite as wide as the whole texture

John McDonald

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Hey, I think we can make a team

on bitbucket

Team name?

tylerrrr07

3:06 AM

Jeffrey

John McDonald

no

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

3:18 AM

Uhm...

...hm...

I'm bad at names.

John McDonald

CellWorX

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Perfect. :P

John McDonald

heh, that sounds like it's all me though

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Great minds btw. I was toying with MindCell. :P

John McDonald

I could do MindCell

One of us needs to own the team, and we need to use an email address that isn't used already

I have a spare email address

hmm... this unique email thing is proving to be annoying. I also need to make a team for me and an other friend. So does that mean I need to have 3 email addresses?

tylerrrr07

3:28 AM

@JohnMcDonald - what about going to the Admin Tab of a repo and then to Access Management?

John McDonald

yeah... what the deal is, is that they have just added a "team" feature. Without the team, each repo shows up under the creator's name, as in: bitbucket.org/jcpmcdonald/asteroid-outpost/wiki/Home

Adding more people to the project doesn't really give them any recognition as being part of the team

tylerrrr07

Ah

John McDonald

A better example is a shared project: bitbucket.org/jcpmcdonald/quadtree/wiki/Home

Where can you see the other guy's name? You can't. That's why I have to explicitly mention him in the description of the project

He has admin access to the project btw

tylerrrr07

Did he do any commits or anything?

John McDonald

no, he played a big er role on source forge, but was never really present because he's not actively using the projects

tylerrrr07

3:36 AM

Ah

John McDonald

3:48 AM

@WilliamMindWorXMariager yeah, my other email address is used up for my other team, and there's no way I want to try to keep 3 email addresses up to date and secure. Do you have one?

or... screw it, I will just use the existing repo, it just makes things easier, :)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hehe

John McDonald

4:06 AM

ehhh. I come across this on every project. Do you keep visual studio's default bin directory structure, and where do you put external references?

as in:
bin\x86\Debug\My.exe
bin\x86\Release\My.exe

So, do you add a directory at the same level as bin, and when you refer to it, do you add "..\..\..\" to the start of every file path?

tylerrrr07

4:29 AM

Programmer Art!

John McDonald

Not bad man

Gustavo Maciel

better than mine

much better than anything i could do, lol

tylerrrr07

Inkscape is pretty easy

Create box, apply gradient hehe

Create another box, move some verts, looks 3d!

Gustavo Maciel

heh

tylerrrr07

Alright so a status as of now... I can hodge podge all of that together and my objects to support it are more or less there. Next steps will be to do an import from Gleed2D to generate the level

Feels good being productive in my spare time again :D

Noctrine

4:38 AM

Didn't copy the right thing

tylerrrr07

Aww I wasn't done reading it :(

lol

looked like a good rant

John McDonald

:/ yeah... I saw that... or did I?

it was

Not by Noc though

Noctrine

-5

Q: Resources such as libraries, engines and frameworks to make Javacript-based MMORTS?

I am looking for resources outlined to make a MMORTS with Javascript as the client-side, probably just a simple canvas for the frontend. The guy in the video here mentions that JavaScript is one of the most misunderstood language -- and I do believe that. I think one can make quite cool games wit...

Can I call you Noc?

Yep

4:39 AM

Noc Noc

:O

John McDonald

Don't start that again

Noctrine

Not twice.

tylerrrr07

lol

Noctrine

Interestingly enough, to make the @ thing alert someone you only need 3 characters.

John McDonald

Cool

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

4:40 AM

@JohnMcDonald Don't start what John John?

John McDonald

:|

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

<3

tylerrrr07

lawl

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Speaking of arts, here's what I'm using for the base of my characters

Has the perfect size for what I need.

Noctrine

14 revisions, seriously.

tylerrrr07

4:41 AM

lol

It's still technically not a good question for the site either =/

John McDonald

He's trying hard to make a community wiki to help people trying to make an mmo, I think

:/

tylerrrr07

I love the question and the effort he put into it... maybe give him a wiki for funzies? I dunno :(

Noctrine

It's already wiki.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So, back to my old question... Did Firefox change the way the site scroll when using the wheel?

It seems more... Smooth, like slow acceleration/deceleration.

John McDonald

not that I'm aware of

tylerrrr07

4:43 AM

I use waterfox which seems to fail to update so beats me

John McDonald

@WilliamMindWorXMariager Ohh.... that I would notice in a heartbeat

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, it's definitely animated, didn't use to be that as far as I know.

It used to just jump whatever lines it wanted.

tylerrrr07

I might have to get that on my laptop because I use the multitouch scrolling on the trackpad and the jumping annoys the hell out of me.

John McDonald

Options -> Advanced -> General -> Smooth Scrolling and Auto Scrolling

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, I'm off to bed.

Cya kids, cya John John. <3

tylerrrr07

4:46 AM

Same

Until tomorrow

John McDonald

:| bill bill

Gajet

8:40 AM

@WilliamMindWorXMariager really thought you were going with robot shapes.

Michael

1:47 PM

youtube.com/watch?v=Oz2jzg5-x7A&feature=autoshare my new game for Windows Phone :)

tylerrrr07

2:52 PM

YouTube!!!! shakes fist!

Gajet

3:04 PM

@Michael +1

John McDonald

It's a nice video, but I still have no idea what the game is about

tylerrrr07

I decree, that as developers, we will know longer say +1

From now on we will say ++

John McDonald

(I think you mean "no longer", but:) ++

tylerrrr07

Oh no lol

Can't edit it either

Sometimes my fingers just type a word that sounds like what I want. I really know the difference between the two xD

Gajet

3:21 PM

we might believe that.

John McDonald

3:38 PM

\o/ My first close vote!

tylerrrr07

high five!

user4704

Oh which?

user4704

Was it the killing blow? Those are the best.

John McDonald

It was

>:D

This one: gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/30239/…

user4704

Ah yes, I voted on that one two. Obviously, now, as it lists us all :D

John McDonald

3:46 PM

I was thinking to myself: "man, a mod should close this, WAIT! I can close this!"

so I guess we're just going to sit back and see what happens with that MMO Wiki?

tylerrrr07

I think its dead =/

John McDonald

Well, it has been closed, but I think he's still trying to keep it alive

user4704

MMO wiki?

Gajet

-5

Q: Resources such as libraries, engines and frameworks to make Javacript-based MMORTS?

I am looking for resources outlined to make a MMORTS with Javascript as the client-side, probably just a simple canvas for the frontend. The guy in the video here mentions that JavaScript is one of the most misunderstood language -- and I do believe that. I think one can make quite cool games wit...

mmo mmorts

John McDonald

heh, good thing I didn't triple-paste it

tylerrrr07

3:55 PM

lol

Gajet

at almost exactly same time

user4704

i edited it. :D

tylerrrr07

I'll cave

user4704

i want to vote to delete :D

John McDonald

Like... how useful is this list? It's basically a sorted list of search results that will become out of date

Gajet

3:57 PM

@JoshPetrie me2

user4704

Done.

John McDonald

yeah... I don't think it's a good fit

user4704

It's not, and I'm a bit worried that he might just keep editing it and basically abusing the system.

user4704

I guess, unless I could edit it because of my rep? Can you guys see the "edit" link for the question?

John McDonald

:/ yeah. Maybe he can create an article on gpwiki

yup, and we can see all 15 edits

in like 15 hours

user4704

4:00 PM

Hm, looks like vote-to-delete is a 10k thing, so that probably won't happen.

John McDonald

:/ yeah, I can't help you

user4704

Oh well, not a big deal.

tylerrrr07

Is there a certain number of downvotes to delete a post? Could be a good feature...

John McDonald

close by pitchfork mob

user4704

4:19 PM

I must be angry today

user4704

gamedev.net/topic/626012-knowing-where-to-arrive

user4704

also twitter.com/jpetrie/status/210757692627763200 and twitter.com/jpetrie/status/210757900711378945

melak47

heh

I started learning c++ as pretty much the first language myself, and I haven't shot myself in the foot too badly to date :)

well, of course there was delphi and prolog and java in school..

user4704

It's not that it's not possible, it's just a horrible language to learn first. It's built on a culture of assuming the programmer is experienced and correct.

user4704

It is among the worst possible (but still remotely sane) options for a learning language.

melak47

4:23 PM

I'll admit I do stick to something that looks closer to C than templating the hell out of stuff :)

user4704

Templates aren't really the issue. I mean, they have their gotchas, but it's more fundamental language stuff.

melak47

templates and the stl make compiler errors really fun though

user4704

And to be fair a good chunk of the problems are exacerbated by shit educational resources, such as anything that purports these days that C[++] is "close to the machine."

user4704

Yes (though it's just a comprehension skill and modern compilers help a lot). But that's still a superficial issue and not something innate to the language. I'm talking about things like sequence points, the object and memory model, and undefined behavior.

user4704

The sheer volume of self-inconsistencies and edge cases in the language is astounding.

melak47

4:28 PM

hm, yeah maybe it's not the best choice as the first programming language ever to learn

I think delphi was pretty straight forward, apart from some wrestling with the win32 api

tylerrrr07

4:58 PM

Is twitter working? I know it used to be blocked at work but I somehow managed to read one of @JoshPetrie's statuses but now I can't get to twitter at all and its not the usual "you've been blocked" error message

Apparently its back now... weird.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Gajet That was before. Now it's more "our time scifi". Kinda like Stargate.

tylerrrr07

Twitter is just weirdly out of control for me. I'll just stop trying.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

That's awesome. <3

I miss that show. :(

:( yeah

5:26 PM

@JoshPetrie but it's close,

I mean it's close compared to other languages out there, but sure it now has a lot distance compared to what it was 10 years ago

user4704

Nope.

user4704

Since it has been a standard, it has operated in terms of a virtual machine.

user4704

The first fifty odd pages of the standard describe this machine.

Gajet

the machine it describes does everything that a Pentium 2 (or 3) machine can do and nothing more (at least as much as I can remember)

and I'm saying it's close, compared to other languages.

sure assembly is much more closer, but who the hell develops an application using assembly after 90s.

@JoshPetrie I think you got what I mean and if I'm wrong (which is not really a rare case against you!) please tell me more.

@JohnMcDonald @melak47 @WilliamMindWorXMariager how many people out there do you think could understand why the show was funny?

melak47

what do you mean?

there are people who don't find it funny?

you are shattering my view of the world here, man

user4704

5:42 PM

@Gajet It isn't to do with what the "machine can do," it has to do with what the standard documents the machine to be.

user4704

A CPU like a Pentium can address and write to any particular chunk of memory in its address space.

user4704

C++ explicitly cannot do that

user4704

But people still hold to the idea that because C++ will compile code that does that that C++ is thus "close to the machine" and representative of the behavior of the specific processor its being run on.

user4704

This is patently untrue.

user4704

See also, C++ will let you write a four byte value to an address that isn't four-byte aligned. Many CPUs will actually fault on such an operation.

user4704

5:45 PM

C++ operates in a virtual, idealized machine that is much, much simpler than the actual hardware running C++ programs.

user4704

And it has done so ever since it was first standardized as a language.

tylerrrr07

@JoshPetrie Having not ever really studied the underlying workings of programming languages I found these posts interesting. Thanks!

user4704

You should (try) reading the C++ standard some time.

user4704

It's illuminating. And a pain in the butt.

tylerrrr07

I bet

user4704

5:48 PM

The Koenig lookup rules are icky

tylerrrr07

I imagine the whole thing is icky lol

melak47

6:32 PM

@JoshPetrie hmm, say, can you think of any way to draw particles(or well, anything really) in distance order without drawing every triangle separately?

user4704

I don't understand what you mean; you aren't using individual quads for individual particles?

melak47

yes, well single vertices that get turned into quads/billboards by a geometry shader

user4704

You'd have to sort them back-to-front.

melak47

easy enough

but how do I draw them back to front

user4704

Submit them in sorted order.

melak47

6:42 PM

does the order in the index buffer really come out that way?

with all the parallel rasterizing, and what not

user4704

No, not necessarily.

user4704

If you've grouped them all into one buffer, you're basically out of luck.

melak47

yeah, that's what I meant..drawing each particle/billdboard/? individually

lots of draw calls

user4704

Yes, but you can bucket them in slabs.

user4704

Do you really need to sort them?

user4704

6:45 PM

Usually they are noisy enough that you can't notice. See gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/9436/…

Gajet

@melak47 yeah there are lot's of them

melak47

well, additive blending isn't the end-all-be-all of transparency modes :/

Gajet

almost anyone who can't understand how the computer is working (and even some of the people who know how it's working) found that show lame

melak47

what do you think would be the bigger overhead, drawing a million particles with a million draw calls, or drawing them with stencil routed k-buffers, or depth peeling, or other order independent transparency tricks

@Gajet shocking :/

user4704

No idea, but I think a million draw calls is basically right out as it would preclude drawing just about anything else.

Gajet

6:48 PM

@JoshPetrie you are completely correct saying C++ does too much abstractions to be called "close to machine" but still what about other languages.

melak47

@Gajet like assembly? :)

Noctrine

Are there other languages that are called close to the machine?

Gajet

@melak47 assembly is considered machine code in those books, not close to machine code!

as far as I can tell, C and pascal and are as close as C++ is.

user4704

They both operate on virtual machines, yes.

user4704

So in that, they are about as "close to the machine" as C++, sure.

user4704

6:53 PM

(which again is to say, not very close at all)

TreDubZedd

Is there anything that's between ASM and C, as far as closeness goes?

user4704

No.

user4704

Assembly is just mnemonics for machine code. Any other language is written against an ideal model of a machine.

user4704

(Or a higher level abstraction than even that)

TreDubZedd

so isn't claiming that "C++ isn't close (enough) to the machine" kinda a worthless argument?

user4704

6:56 PM

That depends.

TreDubZedd

Since there's nothing in-between...C++ is as close as you're going to get, unless you write assembly

John McDonald

Microcode

Microcode is a layer of hardware-level instructions or data structures involved in the implementation of higher level machine code instructions in many computers and other processors; it resides in special high-speed memory and translates machine instructions into sequences of detailed circuit-level operations. It helps separate the machine instructions from the underlying electronics so that instructions can be designed and altered more freely. It also makes it feasible to build complex multi-step instructions while still reducing the complexity of the electronic circuitry compared to othe...

just thought I'd add that into the mix

user4704

That's fair.

user4704

@TreDubZedd If it's a counter-agument to "C++ is close to machine, so learning it will teach me about how the machine works," then it is a worthwhile argument.

TreDubZedd

Ah, ok. I cede that point.

One of the classes I took, early in my CS degree, was intended to bridge the gap between the architecture and the programming language. We started out learning assembly (for a hypothetical processor)...and then jumped into C. The gap was not bridged--it was vaulted.

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