Game Development

Joey Morani

00:29

Hey. Using XNA to create a test game. Does anyone know how I would detect collision on any sprites?

Found some examples/tutorials online but they only show how to detect collision on certain sprites.

Basically I trying to allow the player sprite to stand on other sprites, but I don't want to test for collision on each sprite.

Unless that's the way it's meant to be done?

tylerrrr07

00:55

@JoeyMorani - Create an object to hold all of that data - it could store a rectangle, the texture, and the collision type (enum or similar). When you check collisions you can skip all bounding boxes with a certain collision type (NoCollision) for example

Gajet

++

Joey Morani

Ahh okay. That makes sense. Thanks

I'll try that :)

ashes999

09:15

Are there any game dev competitions coming up soon?

Damir

11:12

@ashes999 Check compohub.com

AFAIK, there are Liberated Pixel Cup and AGBIC currently running

Gajet

11:39

@Damir did you mean compohub.net?

Damir

Yes

ashes999

12:14

Thanks

Gajet

@JoeyMorani it seems KAG is using awesomium.

@Wackidev plays that game alot :D

Wackidev

@Gajet I do. :P Have you been reading my profile?

Gajet

12:47

@Wackidev and I've downloaded that game from the link you provided.

while installing I've noticed there was a file named "awesomium.dll"

Wackidev

You're observant.

Cool!

What's your KAG username?

Gajet

I've just installed it, but I don't think I'll play it till tomorrow.

beside I've downloaded free version,

Wackidev

Me too

I have to go.

Gajet

13:29

any one interested? 24hdev.org

tylerrrr07

Happy Friday!

tylerrrr07

14:28

I accidentally left my phone unplugged all night so the battery was at 6% when I got to work and plugged it in. An hour and a half later it was at 5% :(

I've never really used the PC to charge fully (only supplemental while listening to music, etc.) - do these things not charge as well when plugged into a PC vs a wall outlet?

user4704

14:51

Depends

user4704

PC USB may supply less power

tylerrrr07

hrmm

Maybe I should try a different port

or invest in a wall charger for work

John McDonald

15:57

@tylerrrr07 What really?! Me too!

Except mine ran out sometime during the night, and my alarm didn't go off :(

On the plus side: I got more sleep, :D

Gajet

16:14

@tylerrrr07 charging with PC usually takes longer but still it will charge your device completely.

TreDubZedd

...Unless you're using it, evidently.

Gajet

I think william is busy selling my code :D,

did anyone tell him it's not complete yet?

tylerrrr07

@TreDubZedd that was just it - I wasn't using it :(

And it went down a percent

Joey Morani

Should I use multiple sprites to animate different parts of a character

?

John McDonald

Depends

Joey Morani

16:25

For example, when the character's leg is standing on a rock

tylerrrr07

Its definitely a viable option

In certain cases it can help performance anyway

Joey Morani

How would you do it otherwise?

tylerrrr07

Animation frames

So for example, you can rotate the sprites that represent Arms to look like hes swinging his arms as he walks, or you can have separate pictures of the whole character for each frame of the walk animation

Joey Morani

Ahh

Okay. I'll try using different sprites

Or maybe a mixture of both ways :P

tylerrrr07

Whatever works best for you. I'm going with animation frames for now

We'll see what happens with it :)

John McDonald

19:16

hmm, anyone know why 3TB drives seem to be unpopular?

tylerrrr07

From Newegg (looking at the filters list)

John McDonald

at my local OEM shop, there are only 3. Two of which are out of stock, the other is a 5400rpm

tylerrrr07

Capacity
4TB (1)
3TB (18)
2.5TB (3)
2TB (47)
1.5TB (8)
1TB (66)

Looks like the right popularity to me - too new?

Simply not enough exist

John McDonald

well, they aren't that new. I've had mine for a year

tylerrrr07

beats me

=/

John McDonald

19:21

yeah, for newegg.ca, I get:
3TB (4)
2TB (23)
1.5TB (7)
1TB (41)

for internals

I bet you were looking at externals, and 3TB = 2x1.5TB

tylerrrr07

Nope - internals

Apparently you just live in the wrong country :P

John McDonald

:( reminds me. I made this earlier. True story: ragegenerator.com/pages/comic/76345

tylerrrr07

awwwwww :(

John McDonald

Except the gift code was from FireFox! Can you believe it! I made money on the internet!

Money I can't use in Canada, but.. it's still money, right?

So I guess that mostly answers the question though. 3TB drives are still out there, but just not in Canada

tylerrrr07

Seems that way

Gajet

20:07

@JohnMcDonald you were going to buy an ssd with a $20 gift?

you were too naive!

John McDonald

I was going to use a $12 gift card toward an SSD

but now I'm just going to give the $12 to my brother in LA

Gajet

exactly what type of ssd do you get $12?

John McDonald

1 min ago, by John McDonald

I was going to use a $12 gift card toward an SSD

Keyword: toward

Gajet

so you mean you were going to pay the rest by cash?

John McDonald

Yes

Gajet

20:10

that's not how I use my gift cards :D

John McDonald

It's a common english expression to say that you're going to use a coupon or gift code or voucher toward the purchase of something more expensive

Well, I might be able to buy a paperclip from Amazon.com for $12, after shipping and duty costs

Gajet

true.

now I'm thinking maybe they have arrested @william due to chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/5024004#5024004

John McDonald

hah, yeah

Jimmy

well, it's also friday

MarkR

20:27

Hi chaps

Gajet

@Jimmy now that I'm thinking MSE is really nice.

Jimmy

hi mark

@Gajet yeah, it's the only AV thing where I don't notice it chewing up a lot of CPU or disk IO in the background

Gajet

and there is no notices about anything (unless the potential viruses in USB disks)

and what it complains about is always a virus.

Gajet

21:36

today I just got an upvote for a long lost answer of mine.

-3

A: C++ GameState management

The most common approch to GameState algorithm is to have some game states and program can freely choose to run any one of them, this means there is a GameDirector which has a pointer to current running state, and in each update cycle it'll call 'currentState->run()`. in this approch GameDirector...

after reading all those comments to refresh my mind why I did get the downvotes,

I can see there are many things wrong with my approach.

but still I think I need more advise about what things are usable and what are not.

I mean do you completely disagree with that architecture?

Jimmy

22:11

It's not Hitler

but it's not particularly good either

Gajet

what about creating a global variable for each of those engines?

Jimmy

well. fundamentally, the comments got completely sidetracked into a discussion about singletons

like, I'm not really going to complain about the singleton or global variable here

Gajet

I mean add a static getInstance method to each of those engines

Jimmy

since your "Director" class is basically the "Game" class

@Gajet that's worse

and getting close to Hitler-territory

lol.

Gajet

then how else can I provide a pointer to my render engine for newly created rendering components?

Jimmy

22:16

pass it in the constructor

or I'm not against giving it the Director class either.

Gajet

that's not the problem,

I was going to tell it's state class which is creating instances from components

well those guys are completely against director class, saying it's a case of "god object" anti-pattern

Jimmy

well, the problem is your code example is that it doesn't really have much to do with state management

Gajet

what else does it need to do?

I mean beside runGame and changeState?

Jimmy

I mean, msot of the code is pointers to Game Systems

whereas the question is about how to transition from say Menu to Game to Dialog to cutscene

Gajet

Director->getInstance()->changeScene(new cutScene) for example?

Jimmy

22:22

well, again, prefer to pass a reference in the constructor

rather than calling getInstance everywhere

@Gajet you're still young, and a student

which is probably why some of these stylistic things don't make immediate sense

it mostly comes from experience working with large projects where you're working with lots of other people

classes that getInstance everywhere wind up being tightly coupled, and it gets to the point where if you need to change one thing you wind up having to modify 200 other classes that are coupled too tightly to that one thing

Gajet

@Jimmy that's a thing I certainly don't like!

but still I can't see why it leads to coupling in this special case,

I mean Director class doesn't need to include anything except BaseGameState and other game systems.

Jimmy

in this case, the code is workable

Gajet

and none of them need to include Director for any case.

Jimmy

in terms of Director->getInstance->changeScene

of course, the discussion gets derailed quickly because you wind up talking about a class that manages resources across your game

Gajet

besides I can't really imagine anyone going to change anything about that director class which doesn't lead to complete change in application structure...

@Jimmy I was just saying same class could manage states too

Jimmy

22:35

@Gajet well, it shouldn't

Cohesion (computer science)

In computer programming, cohesion is a measure of how strongly-related each piece of functionality expressed by the source code of a software module is. Methods of measuring cohesion vary from qualitative measures classifying the source text being analyzed using a rubric with a hermeneutics approach to quantitative measures which examine textual characteristics of the source code to arrive at a numerical cohesion score. Cohesion is an ordinal type of measurement and is usually expressed as “high cohesion” or “low cohesion” when being discussed. Modules with high cohesion tend to be prefera...

Gajet

so you prefer to introduce another class just for managing states?

Jimmy

yes.

absolutely yes.

Gajet

now how are gamestates created? I mean which classes can create an instance from gamestates in your approach?

Jimmy

well, I'll say I've put game state (or workflow state, since I mainly do business apps) management into the "main" class of many projects before. But there's definitely stuff you can change

and it's better not to have state management code mixed with other stuff

for example, if you need transitiosn between states, or a state-stack so you can have a pause-menu on top of your game screen

Gajet

I tried to mix those things two things to facilitate creating new instances of gamestates

tylerrrr07

22:46

@Gajet - create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/… is a really good example of how to do what @Jimmy is talking about

Jimmy

yup, I do like that example

tylerrrr07

So what game should I waste my night on?

Jimmy

writing your own

melak47

an awesome one

Gajet

@tylerrrr07 adding some new contents to your page

tylerrrr07

22:55

@Gajet telling me to get to work? :P

I intend on getting a bunch done on Sunday

Oh thats what you are telling me to do... That's not a game! :P

Gajet

I was talking about intellisenseless.com

though i'm not sure how it's related to either your work or your game :|

melak47

I put visual studio on my steam games list, does that count?

Gajet

@melak47 hardly

what do you guys think about MS surface?

it looks promising.

the good part is the fact that you can run any normal windows application on it.

it's powered by intel corei5 after all

melak47

23:21

yeah, x86/64 tablets I can sort of see a use for

but what about graphics, does it only come with the integrated intel HD3000/4000?

Gajet

the only thing I'm sure about is the fact that you can easily play any triple A title on surface.

melak47

provided you have a mouse handy :p

prices are kind of skyhigh though

Gajet

you have a touchpad, and the device comes out with a full sized USB port

melak47

at least what I've heard people speculating what they might be priced at

Gajet

@melak47 I'm not sure about that one either, my estimation would be less than $1200 for surface pro

melak47

23:25

that's still about the price of my entire desktop

Gajet

and that device is much more powerful than your entire desktop with only 903gr weight!

melak47

if you assume €== $ for retail prices

@Gajet I...doubt it

Gajet

euro worth more than one USD

at least in iran 1 euro = 1.2564 USD

melak47

yes, but if something sells for $X in the US, it usually sells for X€ here. (harware, at least)

Gajet

guys good new, william's PC is on!

melak47

23:31

how do you know :o

Gajet

I can ping it!

melak47

did you finish his bowling alley job? :)

Gajet

it is still buggy,

and I need to polish everything both to increase performance and enhance it's results.

but he has an alpha version already!

I mean he had the night I started the code.

Jimmy

anyone tried VS 2012?

melak47

yep

Gajet

23:46

@melak47 VC or C#?

melak47

VC++

they integrated PIX' graphics debugging capabilities into VS

which is pretty comfortable

Gajet

what about intellisense?

and code highlighting?

C++11?

melak47

code highlighting...well it existed before, right?

intellisense works nicely

not all c++11 features are implemented I think, but a few

Gajet

they could have made some changes in it, for example highlighting known class names would be nice

melak47

blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.aspx

known class names?

Gajet

23:50

I mean everything except keywords are black in current highlighting system.

melak47

they are? I'm pretty sure you can change the highlighting colors for lots of things

like user types, classes, whatever

I've changed the colors since installing, so I don't know what the default color scheme highlights :/

Gajet

my VS currently looks like this :

melak47

Gajet

is that VS2010?

melak47

12

but hold on

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