Game Development

Vaillancourt

00:22

@Pikalek it's nicer than before on mobile.

IMHO

Serilena

00:49

Hi guys, so if anyone knows about SDL
does
```SDL_UpdateWindowSurface```
is like switching the backbuffer with front buffer?

or it does something different? because the docs doesn't say much about it

Vaillancourt

01:14

> This function is equivalent to the SDL 1.2 API SDL_Flip().

> SDL_Flip -- swaps screen buffers

@Serilena

Serilena

Oh, yeah I read that, in the remark now, and it seems it does flip, them
Thanks. A lot!

Pikalek

I should probably put some optional logging in to track the lists. I'm tessellating a bunch of Bezier curves & I wouldn't be surprised if the overall vert count goes high enough for initial capacity to matter. But I'm not sure if the individual curves clock enough verts for it to be an issue.

My bigger concern at the moment is that C#'s List.Insert(0, foo) differs significantly from Java's ArrayList.addAt(0, foo).

But that's what profilers are for right?

Vaillancourt

@Serilena :)

@Pikalek profilers ftw!

OKprogrammer

01:37

Do any of you know how to compare GameObject names in Unity? I've attempted to use if (gameObject.name == Apple), but that brings back an error saying "Apple" doesn't exist in the current context.

Nevermind. I just forgot to put quotation marks around "Apple".

It's the little things that matter in game development.

Vaillancourt

:)

OKprogrammer

Ya know, maybe I should use a rubber duck for debugging. Or my brothers, but they really wouldn't like that.

Vaillancourt

This room is fine :)

OKprogrammer

Cool! I like talking with you guys too.

And you help me debug without even saying anything! :)

Vaillancourt

01:55

The next step is to start to write a question on SO or gamedev, then figure out that the issue you think you're having is not the issue you're actually having.

Happens to me once in a while.

Pikalek

^ That accounts for most of the questions I haven't posted here.

Vaillancourt

:)

Pikalek

Outside of chat that is. I'm still cultivating the zen art of thinking about things before dumping them into chat.

Vaillancourt

(It's probably not the next step though, took me some time to get there.)

@Pikalek You mean that you don't ask a lot in chat because you think a lot before asking?

Pikalek

02:15

No, the other way around. I don't ask on GDSE because by the time I formulate a decent looking post, I either realize the real problem is something else, or I've found a solution.

Vaillancourt

Yeah, okay :)

Pikalek

For better or worse, I'm willing to barf up a problem in chat though :P

Vaillancourt

Yes, I think it's okay to do that here ;)

OKprogrammer

Yep. I just figured you guys could help, then fixed it myself!

Pikalek

Then we're performing within spec ;)

@brug Evenin'. Making the rounds?

OKprogrammer

03:19

Ooh dang she just ignored you! ;)

brug

04:22

@Pikalek ohh Hi. I had to refresh my computer and didn't see this ping when I reopened all my tabs.

Uri Popov

08:30

hey @DMGregory do you guys use Unity in production for anything? I have a question.

Free Internet Points

11:35

-1

Q: Drawing header and footer area in DirectX 9

I don't know how to draw something like this? I am using DirectX 9.0 currently. Code: #include <windows.h> #include <windowsx.h> #include <d3d9.h> #pragma comment (lib, "d3d9.lib") LPDIRECT3D9 d3d; LPDIRECT3DDEVICE9 d3ddev; // function prototypes void initD3D(HWND hWnd); void render_f...

nwp

11:53

Downvoted before it could be posted here smh

Oh wait, it got posted here after a bounty. Never mind.

user92578

2fast

user92578

12:16

Aight time to write today's two pages...

user92578

Should be able to finish the red-black tree insertion and deletion theory and hopefully also get started on hash maps

DMGregory

12:53

@UriPopov The prototypes that became Starlink were originally build in Unity, but the Toronto studio hasn't shipped any games on that engine. Some of our other studios do. What's the question?

@Tyyppi_77 Oooooh data structures! Got some new results?

user92578

Just a look into how the standard libraries of a few programming languages implement their search structures

user92578

It's not a super great paper to write since I've had a hard time of actually finding other academic papers looking into this, mostly just text books :/

user92578

But then not a lot of sources combine the information of implementation choices and efficiencys of the choices so I think that's where the scientific value of this lies, I hope

DMGregory

13:32

Hope so! I remember watching a good CPPCon talk a little while back about ways hash map design can improve over the standard library implementations.

user92578

Scala actually has some interesting stuff since it has proper functional programming support, and immutable data structures, so its immutable hashmaps are hash tries so that changing elements can mostly reference to the old tree nodes that were left unchanged

user92578

I mean, C++ is the programming language to wait till 2011 to add hashmaps to the standard library :P

user92578

Do you think the CppCon talk might have been this one?

DMGregory

14:04

Yes, I think that was it.

Pikalek

14:33

@brug Hey no worries. If a tree pings in the forest and all the tabs are refreshing, it doesn't make a sound. Or something like that :)

@Tyyppi_77 Are you finding that many of them are up front about such things? My own experience has been mixed.

user92578

Scala is very explicit, C++ just describes complexity requirements

Uri Popov

15:03

@DMGregory I was wondering how you handle bakimg lights for all the levels. Is there a dedicated rig and some custom distributed bake or something.

DMGregory

We didn't really have to deal with that for our particular project, so I can't speak to how that's normally handled.

I think we were back on Unity 4, so the baking options have changed a LOT in between.

Uri Popov

Yeah but there is still no build in way to distribute a bake. You bake 1 scene on 1 machine. Im thinking of investing the time to building such a system and was wondering how other people may have handled it.

nwp

15:25

~~Open a bakery.~~

Almo

:D

OKprogrammer

15:51

@DMGregory Why do people ship them on different engines instead of just keeping Unity?

DMGregory

In our case, we needed additional features that were on Unity's roadmap, but without a confirmed timeline. Our higher-ups weren't comfortable committing to work on an engine we couldn't control or be certain would be where we needed it to be by our target ship date.

OKprogrammer

Oh, like they wanted more features that haven't been added yet and then if they had waited they would've been behind schedule?

DMGregory

Potentially. Back in the Unity 4 days, the engine was not as full-featured, flexible, or high-performance as it is today. All the goodies we're enjoying today were planned, but we needed a hard guarantee they'd be production-ready by [date] if we wanted to ship on time, and that wasn't a certainty at the time.

So, it was a safer bet at the time to take the hit of switching to an engine we controlled - Snowdrop - that we knew already had the features we needed, or could guarantee it would have them in time.

OKprogrammer

Ok, that makes a bit more sense.

nwp

The devs who say "NIH".

OKprogrammer

16:05

@DMGregory Is the Snowdrop engine an engine only Ubisoft devs can use, or is it payed software?

DMGregory

It's an in-house engine, not available outside of Ubisoft.

It was developed by Ubisoft Massive for The Division.

OKprogrammer

Just for a single game?

Almo

Ubisoft LOVES to make engines

we had at least 5 of them when I was there

user92578

Our engine isn't even named :(

OKprogrammer

Holy cow that's a lot!

DMGregory

16:09

To be fair, a lot of them were acquisitions, rather than ones we invented.

Almo

fuckin Onyx... its config file was like X:\config.cfg

could not have two onyx projects on one computer

DMGregory

Lead was a fork of Unreal 2, Dunia is a fork of CryEngine...

We've gotten a lot of use out of Snowdrop on other projects. It's powered everything from Starlink to Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle, in addition to shooters like The Division. It's proven to be pretty flexible! So I expect we'll be centralizing more of our projects on it.

Almo

cool

OKprogrammer

16:51

Which engine would you say is the most used in the games you make?

DMGregory

Every commercial product I've worked on has been on a different engine. 😉

In my own work outside of Ubi, I use Unity almost exclusively.

OKprogrammer

Wow.

Almo

Unity is great for crossplatform

DMGregory

I think Anvil and Snowdrop are the most-used engines within Ubi.

Vaillancourt

Do all devs want to go work for the engine team?

DMGregory

17:00

I don't think so. A lot of folks like making games, not just tech.

Vaillancourt

Yeah, the challenges are not the same.

I suspect that you can't do a little bit of both at Ubi...

DMGregory

It depends on the project. Some project-specific work gets integrated back into the main engine line. Some projects have tighter collaboration with the engine teams, while others are more distant consumers.

Vaillancourt

Ah, makes sense.

user92578

While waking up today I swear I had some kind of good idea about a code fix
But I have no recollection about what it even was about though, nevermind the actual change

Vaillancourt

This always happen to me when there is a rush at work and I'm under stress... :/

DMGregory

21:55

@Tyyppi_77 Ah, it turns out that wasn't the one I was thinking of, but it was also fascinating!

The one I was thinking of, it turns out was from a different conference entirely.

C++Now 2018: You Can Do Better than std::unordered_map: New Improvements to Hash Table Performance

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