Game Development

noobprogrammer

01:12

Well, I just finished weightlifting. My arms are now basically dead. And my leg hurts a lot.

DMGregory

⚰🦾

noobprogrammer

Yup. Gotta get strong.

Vaillancourt

01:30

Do you have requirements for becoming stronger?

noobprogrammer

Just have to find a workout room, determination, and basic knowledge on lifting.

Or, a lifting coach instead of knowledge.

Vaillancourt

I mean, do you need to become stronger?

noobprogrammer

No I don’t need to. But I just want to.

Vaillancourt

I think a coach that knows what they're talking about is a good complement to knowledge.

All right :)

Do that while you still can :P

noobprogrammer

Yep. My coach has taught me a lot. And my brothers.

DMGregory

01:37

noobprogrammer

Yup, that might be me in a nutshell. I’m the most clumsy. 😅

Vaillancourt

There is an issue with the shadows there..

DMGregory

Blame it on gem magic. 😉

Steven Universe | “Strong in the Real Way” | Cartoon Network

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noobprogrammer

I’m “Strong in the Real Way”. Or, at least hope so.

I try to help people I guess that’s probably my biggest strength.

Vaillancourt

:)

noobprogrammer

02:11

@Vaillancourt Does your username have any special meaning? Or is it like your name?

Vaillancourt

It's my last name.

noobprogrammer

Oh ok, that’s what I thought.

Vaillancourt

:)

brug

04:22

I think strength is overvalued. There should be more appreciation for frailty and fear...

nwp

10:15

I haven't had the patience for RPGs in a long time.

noobprogrammer

13:35

@nwp That's funny! That's actually what I used to do when I started, believe it or not.

@brug I mean I do as a Christian, as the Bible tells us to: "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." - Psalm 82:3-4

user92578

13:54

Eh, the Bible tells anything

noobprogrammer

14:07

Not anything, but the right thing.

Elva

And most of the time also it's complete inverse

Which is great fun, super handy to have a book people find important that you can cherry pick from to support your points

Of course, it was edited to be useful for that so.. no surprise

noobprogrammer

That's not what the Bible is used for. It's used as a guide Christians are called to follow.

Or what it's supposed to be used for. But some people use it the wrong way, sadly.

Elva

Isn't that what I just said?

noobprogrammer

Oh yeah, I think so? I might've missread.

Elva

Oh I meant it for both the christians you think are good and the christians you think are bad

noobprogrammer

14:13

Yes, after Christianity began to spread, people began making up their own twisted versions of the Bible. That's why there were so many wars over it, because people got into arguments over petty stuff like "I don't like this word, take it out" or "This isn't needed".

@Elva Also, about the cherry picking, I have to agree. Some extremists try to use God's Word saying President Biden shouldn't be in the White House, but I say that God does everything for a reason, so don't try to raid the Capitol.

Elva

Given there's no evidence other then the one book either is as valid as the other honestly

noobprogrammer

Yep. Western Culture changed and twisted a lot of the Bible.

That's why I read the original kind (in English of course).

brug

Wow. That was not the conversation I was trying to spark.

noobprogrammer

Yep, why don't we just get back to game dev, shall we? ;)

brug

I just picked up UE

Seems pretty intense. I hope I can make some use out of it though.

Money Oriented Programmer

14:25

Unreald Engine makes other applications run much slowly when it is compiling shaders (1500). Oh my ghost. Should I buy a new superior pc?

user92578

Shader permutations go brrrr

Money Oriented Programmer

What is shader permutation?

user92578

I'm considering dumping my custom OpenGL renderer and just integrating BGFX instead, would get me a lot of platforms and features for a bunch of refactoring effort but then less implementation effort in the future

noobprogrammer

@brug I know, I tried it once. Didn't even get anywhere, but probably cause I was stupid with C++, and still am.

user92578

@MoneyOrientedProgrammer Each material becomes a shader, generating a bunch of permutations of a base shader

noobprogrammer

14:28

That sounds performance demanding.

brug

Its a very complex program with a very high learning curve and a very high base level entry requirement.

Money Oriented Programmer

@Tyyppi_77 Thank you!

brug

It isn't because you are "stupid"

user92578

C++ also not the most trivial of programming languages :P

brug

that too.

noobprogrammer

14:29

No, I mean I literally didn't know any C++. Like, didn't even look it up.

But now I know how to learn this stuff, so I might be able to learn it now.

brug

Howdy @Pikalek

How have you been?

noobprogrammer

Maybe I should change my name to okprogrammer, because technically I am an ok programmer now.

Pikalek

Morning, I'm frosty & grateful for my coffee. -21°F / -29°C today. Came home with planet Hoth ice lashes.

brug

ackk

that is unbelievably cold

Money Oriented Programmer

I am a money-oriented programmer.

Pikalek

14:38

It's the sort of thing we expect more in Dec & Jan, but not so much in Feb.

noobprogrammer

@Pikalek Dang, you living in Antarctica?

brug

Yeah, they kept telling us that this polar vortex was going to hit us, but it keeps not quite getting as cold as they were warning.

Perpetually around 20F, -6C

noobprogrammer

In Indiana, I just expect the snow to start melting, and then we get more snow. So many people fall in ditches, it's crazy.

DMGregory

@noobprogrammer I don't know C++ either, but somehow I have a C++ tag badge here... 😅

brug

@DMGregory Wait. You don't?

Pikalek

14:42

@noobprogrammer 58102 - Fargo, ND. Coastal Antarctic is actually warmer than us right now. But if you trek inland to the pole, they have us beat. timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica

noobprogrammer

Those docs do come in handy, I guess.

@Pikalek Close enough to Antarctica.

DMGregory

@brug Nah. I do all my day to day coding in C#. I do watch CPPCon videos to learn more about the language though.

brug

Feels Like: -60 °F

noobprogrammer

I used to do Codecademy.

Pikalek

@brug The polar vortex is the intoxicated, doesn't want to leave the party guest here this week.

brug

14:44

@Pikalek Fargo... Now I am imagining you with an overaffected Holywood accent.

:(

Money Oriented Programmer

@DMGregory I might know the reason. Because you answered many questions with C++ tag attached. :-)

brug

@Pikalek I'm happy that it isn't coming our way. We live in an old house with problems with pipes freezing. It is a problem around 10F. But at -10F even running the water doesn't stop it.

noobprogrammer

@brug Our outlets freeze.

brug

outlets?

noobprogrammer

Yes, outlets.

brug

14:47

@DMGregory I don't knpow why I am so surprised that you wouldn't know more about C++...

Pikalek

@brug When I was in Alabama, the locals said I didn't really seem to have the Fargo accent. Then again, when I came back, my spouse asked how long I was gonna sound southern'.

brug

electrical outlets?

noobprogrammer

Yep. One time I tried to plug a heater in and it started sparking.

brug

@Pikalek 😂

noobprogrammer

A bunch of frost and other ice was in it, so I waited for it to thaw in the morning.

Pikalek

14:48

@brug Can happen if the boxes / walls aren't insulated well. Esp, on older non-plastic electrical boxes.

DMGregory

Well, at Ubi, most of our games are written in C++, but I'm a designer, not a programmer, so I don't touch that side of them much. 😉

noobprogrammer

The walls were insulated though. It makes no sense.

Pikalek

Sure, but how well insulated are they?

brug

^

Pikalek

And even with insulation, you can still get thermal bridging.

Heat will take the path of least resistance.

noobprogrammer

14:51

Maybe it was because they were next to the windows. Also, my room gets the hottest and coldest, depending on the temperature outside.

brug

@DMGregory Design is funner anyway. But if you are designing, then why do C# instead? I read somewhere that prototyping in a different language can prevent prototype code ending up in production. Is that part of it? Or was your background simply in C# before you got into the position you are in?

DMGregory

Ah, my C# stuff is rarely related to my day job. 😉

Also, I don't agree that prototyping in a different language is a major barrier. Starlink Battle for Atlas was prototyped in Unity/C# before we migrated to the Snowdrop engine for the final version.

I prototyped the shader we use to render the planetary maps in Unity Shaderlab before converting it to a Snowdrop shader graph. Then also ported it to WebGL, with the thought we might use it on the game website.

Once you've done the hard work of solving a problem, translating that solution to different syntax is usually easier. 😀

brug

ohh no. The reference I am talking about mentioned it as a useful technique. Prototyping in a different language kept fast and loose code from getting shoved into the project.

DMGregory

Ohhh, I see what you mean. Like "prevent" in the sense of an accidental leak.

brug

yes...

DMGregory

15:04

I wouldn't say that was a focus for us. Moreso iteration speed. I was able to test out and prove ideas faster in Unity, from being more familiar with it.

Uri Popov

so anyone checked out the GWENT leak ?

Pikalek

@UriPopov Skimmed a few articles reporting on it. Didn't look like I had the expendable liquidity to meet the minimum expected bid.

Uri Popov

that was for cyberpunk and Witcher no? I got the torrent hash for gwent for free. I'm just wondering on the legality of looking at it haha. It seems to be a complete Unity project.

Pikalek

@UriPopov Oh, yes, you're correct, I was referring to the other leak.

I might actually be legit. It's free on GOG. Remains to be seen if that means it can be re-released elsewhere though.

Huh. C# doesn't have Double.MIN_NORMAL :/

Uri Popov

what do you mean free on GOG ?

the game is free yes. I'm talking about the source code

user92578

15:16

@Pikalek Where do you need that?

user92578

Like where does one need a small number but not actually the smallest possible?

Pikalek

@Tyyppi_77 Porting some computational geometry code from Java to C#. In this case is it's used for dealing with numbers that are probably meant to represent the same real, but maybe don't do to binary limitations & non-communitive ops.

DMGregory

Bet we could cook up a quick snippet to construct it if you need it.

Hmmm... I wouldn't use MIN_NORMAL for that. What you probably want is an ULP-based threshold.

Pikalek

Code was derived from here: floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison

@UriPopov Oh, I gottcha. From what I see, it looks like that was part of a pre-release / proof of concept for the pending Witcher / Cyberpunk source.

DMGregory

Ahh, so there they're only applying it for numbers that are denormalized anyway, not for greater values. That makes sense.

Pikalek

15:26

@DMGregory Yeah. I was able to find this for C# : docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/…

Which is close, but I haven't verified that it's a 1-to-1 replacement.

In the end I decided to dump it to a hex constant & use that in order to keep as close to the original as possible. Plenty of other places for the port to go wrong - don't want to get unnecessarily creative with the low level math.

user92578

Imagine using a sane programming language that guarantees IEEE752 numbers :P

user92578

(C++ does not, all though in reality I think most platforms provide those :P)

DMGregory

Fair enough.

Pikalek

Word. It's almost as if (trying to) guarantee IEEE752 induces language insanity.

DMGregory

Have you seen John Gustafson's work on Unums / Posits as a floating point alternative?

Stanford Seminar: Beyond Floating Point: Next Generation Computer Arithmetic

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Pikalek

15:41

@DMGregory No, I don't believe that I have. ... Expatriated to Singapore to work on computer math. Don't like what that implies about the rank of priority in US higher ed. Anyway, thank you for linking it. I'm looking forward to consuming it.

But probably not looking forward to how it makes me feel about the tools on hand :(

DMGregory

The one thing I reeeeeallly crave about unums is that they're fast to take the reciprocal. So all that fuss trying to avoid unnecessary divisions goes away.

I'd be interested to see if they ever get hardware support, or if IEEE752 is just too entrenched now for anyone to take a risk on something new and weird (or spend precious die area supporting both in parallel)

user92578

Finally it's the time for C++ and the abstract machine to shine!

Pikalek

@DMGregory The magic of FPGA might help there. If you could proof of concept it & get something decent, might be easier to make the leap to dedicated silicon.

user92578

The issue might also be software? Too many things probably relying on random 752 black magic?

Pikalek

^ That is a problem FPGA isn't gonna fix :(

DMGregory

15:50

That I think is the biggest risk. Things like the equality comparison above that's coupled to the underlying number format. There are probably lines like that in pretty much every program that doesn't use integers exclusively.

And games love to rely on floating point quirks or even NANs as load-bearing parts of the machinery.

Pikalek

If there was performance / stability to be had though, I would think there would be a transition. When I started, floating point was too expensive & things were either integer or fixed point. Silicon provided float support as a norm & games moved to use it.

DMGregory

Might be a chicken and egg thing though. If software isn't ready for it because it's not in hardware, hardware doesn't need to implement it because there's no software demanding it.

Pikalek

Yeah :/

Money Oriented Programmer

17:03

I got frustrated. Unreal Engine does not allow me to learnt it smoothly. My computer get frozen indefinitely. Oh my ghost..........

doppelgreener

18:20

Unreal seems to have some pretty beefy system requirements, like their recommended build is 64GB RAM!

DMGregory

18:33

Some of our in-house engines basically need a fast SSD to be usable, since we have to stream huge open worlds in the raw, pre-optimized-build formats during editing.

OKprogrammer

I got an SSD and HDD. I load everything except games into my SSD. But thankfully I got a beefy i7 and 16GB RAM.

And I use Unity, so that makes things a lot better, too.

@DMGregory In those open world games, couldn’t you just unload certain chunks? Or do they already do that?

DMGregory

18:48

We do that. It's moreso the amount of time it takes to load them in their raw form. In the built game, they're all packed and optimized for fast loading. While we're working on them, they're referencing assets here there and everywhere, so we're constantly seeking around the disc.

Pikalek

19:04

@DMGregory Like Optane fast or just pro-sumer fast?

DMGregory

Not sure of those details. I just take what IT gives me. ;)

Pikalek

Fair enough. On my last build I settled for a pair of T-Force Z340 M.2 1TBs. Not best in class, but decent balance of speed & expected lifespan.

And I kinda lost my zeal for over the top grade components when it became clear that I wasn't going to get a Ryzen 5000 series anywhere near my time of purchase :/

OKprogrammer

19:24

I’ve been hearing a lot about Ryzen lately. What’s so good about it?

Pikalek

This glosses over a bunch, but AMD's latest CPU architecture has performance that rivals Intel equivalents at lower TPD & cost (assuming you're not paying scalper prices).

OKprogrammer

Ah, ok. I was lucky and didn’t have to pay for a CPU, it was just a gift.

Pikalek

And the general read is that their procs are as susceptible to spectre / meltdown attacks.

Though that might just be more a case of black hats tending to aim for center of mass market share.

Resisting known attacks isn't proof against unknown future attacks.

But there's something to be said for not buying something you know has a security hole.

@FranklinPezzutiDyer You study homotopy theory?

Franklin Pezzuti Dyer

19:40

Hah not really, was just checking the room out

OKprogrammer

Well, I didn't know my CPU had security flaws. That kinda stinks.

Pikalek

@FranklinPezzutiDyer Ah, I see. Either way, welcome to GDSE chat!

Franklin Pezzuti Dyer

Thanks! That video about unums is interesting, btw

Pikalek

Yes, I agree. Too interesting. I was trying to listen while doing other work & my productivity kept bottoming out.

OKprogrammer

@DMGregory I actually haven't seen that lecture. Or any, really. But I probably should if I want to get better.

DMGregory

19:44

That one's probably not too important, since it's speculating about number formats that might be nice to use in future, but aren't supported anywhere right now.

OKprogrammer

Oh. But the small stuff is important, too.

Pikalek

@OKprogrammer There are patches. And nothing is 100% secure. But yes, I does suck.

OKprogrammer

I'm gonna download a patch now.

@DMGregory I wonder how Wasabi is, since we last helped him. (Or more since you helped him)

Pikalek

@OKprogrammer You might want to research it a bit. I've heard it both ways. Some think it's worth patching & others don't.

OKprogrammer

Ok. :)

Pikalek

19:50

I took a topology course once. Got my back side handed to me.

OKprogrammer

What’s that?

Pikalek

Topology?

It's a branch of mathematics.

brug

Ohh I thought you meant IT network topology.

Which I found exhaustingly large but not difficult.

Pikalek

I found the math version exhaustingly difficult, but not large :)

OKprogrammer

Opposites 😂

Pikalek

19:55

It's about proving how you can make a teacup out of a donut but not from a sheet of paper.

brug

Not sure I understand.

But there are a lot of things I don't understand.

I have come to accept this.

Franklin Pezzuti Dyer

It's like geometry, but if you were using squishy objects rather than rigid ones

Pikalek

Let's say you had some clay, in the shape of a donut. You could reshape the clay, without introducing or removing any holes & form it into the shape of a teacup. But you cannot do that if the clay was in the form of a sheet. You have to add a hole for the finger loop.

DMGregory

They call it "rubber sheet geometry" - it looks at patterns of connectedness in shapes and spaces. So, you're not so concerned about the distance from this point to another, but rather whether there is a path between them, or whether one path can be transformed into another.

OKprogrammer

@brug I felt that.

DMGregory

20:02

So for instance, if you're on a flat plane, you can take any path between two points, and smoothly transform it into any other. But if you're on a plane with a hole in it, the path has to either go around the hole on the left side or the right side, and you can't smoothly transform one to the other without breaking it somewhere.

It comes up in games sometimes in the form of navmesh connectivity or UV unwrapping.

OKprogrammer

Ok, I think I have a basic idea. It sounds kinda complex, but also kinda interesting.

Pikalek

It also proves why flat maps of the earth look the way they do.

brug

Does any of that impact pathfinding?

user92578

I think that's generally graph theory

DMGregory

A little. If you know you're in an area without holes, you can be sloppier with your first pathfinding pass, then transform the path at the end to smooth it out. But if there are holes, your path could get snared around them and not have a smooth transformation to the final path you wanted.

Pikalek

20:08

And if you have teleportation nodes, then your world isn't a planar graph anymore, so it might be applicable to finding a good distance metric or something like that.

OKprogrammer

20:36

When I get the review queue permission, will I be able to review the posts I've flagged?

user92578

I don't think so, and you get close vote rights at the same time as you get access to the close vote queue, so this would only apply to low quality queue anyways

Pikalek

21:16

And FWIW, the guidelines are to flag either if you cannot vote (due to rep) or if you consider the post harmful, otherwise vote. So once you can vote you generally do less flagging here.

Though maybe over on SO, there's enough traffic that there's always something to flag.

OKprogrammer

21:40

Which came first, stack exchange or stack overflow? Because they both seem to have websites that look much different from each other.

DMGregory

StackOverflow came first, then they generalized it to a platform for other topics, StackExchange.

OKprogrammer

That's what I thought. Because I was wondering, why do we have stackexchange.com while they have their own separate website? Then I realized they must have seen success with SO, and decided to expand. But, buying that many domains would be expensive, so they just decided to "clump" them together.

I'm way overthinking this aren't I?

DMGregory

Super User has their own domain too.

OKprogrammer

Huh. When I first went to Stack Overflow, people just started roasting me left and right and I don't know why. I wasn't asking them to write me some code, just help me figure out the issue with it. So I left that terror and came here, where people are much nicer.

DMGregory

21:55

They have to deal with a much higher volume than we do.

OKprogrammer

That is true, but they still could show some politeness.

DMGregory

Making our culture more welcoming to new users has been an ongoing project on the network for years. It's tricky.

OKprogrammer

Well, I have to thank you. You were the first person who helped me on here, and your friendliness made me decide to stay here.

DMGregory

I've got my grumpy moments too, as you've seen. 😉

OKprogrammer

Yes, me too sometimes. But I've gotten better with my temper thankfully.

Except when my wifi goes out. Then I get kind of mad! 😉

DMGregory

22:36

@OKprogrammer Good talk on the Spectre/Meltdown stuff I was just rewatching while waiting for my build to patch...

CppCon 2018: Chandler Carruth “Spectre: Secrets, Side-Channels, Sandboxes, and Security”

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