Game Development

DMGregory

13:34

I also found a follow-up to the video Tyyppi_77 linked, with some interesting info about profiling hashmap performance. 🙂

CppCon 2019: Matt Kulukundis “Abseil's Open Source Hashtables: 2 Years In”

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OKprogrammer

14:29

My brother wants me to make him a game, but I said maybe instead I can teach him how to code and the basics before starting.

And then we can make one together.

DMGregory

That sounds like a good idea. Teaching is also a great way to cement your own understanding of a topic.

nwp

It can also be a rather frustrating experience :D

OKprogrammer

The issue is, he doesn’t really know anything. So I’ve started to go through the basic steps about what you want your game to be, make people feel, like @DMGregory thankfully taught me.

DMGregory

Glad it's useful!

For beginners, you can probably start a bit more low-level than that. eg. cloning an existing game like a basic platformer or space invaders. Use an existing, familiar game design to build up the skills in working with an engine, then you can branch out to designing novel games.

user92578

Yup, that's what I was gonna say too

OKprogrammer

14:37

He wants to start with randomly generated 2D levels, but I think I’m gonna instruct him on some basic platformers like you guys recommend.

Because randomly generated 2D levels aren’t good for starters at all!

DMGregory

You might be able to bridge the two. Make a simple platform setup to test your character controller. Then make another platform setup to extend the map, then another. Then turn each of these chunks of platforms into a prefab, and make a script that randomly selects one to spawn whenever the player gets close to the end of the level.

OKprogrammer

That sounds like it might work. I actually want to add that to the gauntlet feature in my game.

Uri Popov

16:48

you should start him with the basic of programing and then move on to games

like how to swap the value of two variables

and loops

that's how I started teaching my art director. Now he makes his own basic python scripts for Blender. I'm very proud.

Pikalek

@UriPopov That's pretty cool. Did having some shared understanding about coding improve communication about development?

Uri Popov

honestly its a two edge sword. Before he used to trust my word as gospel. Now not so much haha

DMGregory

In Unity, I like to start folks off with an Angry Birds type game. Learn about placing objects in the scene view, attaching colliders and rigidbodies to them to make them stack and fall, then about applying a velocity to the projectile on click to launch it. Keeps the lesson very visual, with only a few lines of code.

Uri Popov

In my experience I've found that you can teach people to make games but that does not really teach them about coding and it leads to further confusion or trying to solve new problems with old ways.

So I prefer to start them with coding if they are into that at all and then build up to games

Having them make a console calculator teaches them more about software design I think

DMGregory

17:03

I do find folks who are initially code-averse or anxious about it respond well when learning the basics in terms of things they can see. So that "object" isn't just an abstract idea in the computer's memory, it's literally a shape you can see on your screen. And when you change its properties you can see it change.

user92578

I'm thinking about setting up some kind of tool to auto launch the game with different renderer backends, and somehow validate the renderer output
But probably direct screenshot comparision wont work very well as I assume there can be minor aliasing etc. differences between implementations

user92578

But I'd also not really want to manually have to validate the output...

Uri Popov

maybe you could start a renderdoc and compare that data? Like check if all instructions are the same and ok ? Dont even know if renderdoc has a api for this kind of thing

user92578

Well the API calls are gonna differ anyways

user92578

So it'd have to be a really high level capture, and I'm not sure if RenderDoc has anything like that

user92578

17:06

The main use would be to validate the few things that are still backend dependent but not handled automatically, like render target origins and such, which I guess aren't that common so might be just okay to manually switch the backend every now and then while developing

user92578

Which might be the way to go since automation here doesn't seem too trivial

Uri Popov

it all depends on how much time you are going to waste on manually validating rather than automating it yeah

user92578

I have automated gameplay input sequence testing setup, I could maybe try to figure out some way to attach screenshots to the end results of those and maybe just manually verify those (basically is the image upside down? :D) occasionally as a some kind of middleground

OKprogrammer

18:28

@DMGregory Perhaps I start him off with that. 🤔

Pikalek

19:39

It's like one of those de-motivational posters, but as a Stack Exchange question: How much percentage royalty do I get from Springer (as the paper's author) and how I can apply for royalty payment?

DMGregory

Ooof

Pikalek

I'd like to thank Hot Network Questions for that brief moment of "what, really? there are royalties?" followed by a crushing defeat of rekindled innocence.

Vaillancourt

20:16

UHF - Wheel Of Fish

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Pikalek

That's a great clip. I tried to explain Wheel of Fish to my kiddo once. I didn't do it justice.

We both agree that snapper is a tasty fish though.

Vaillancourt

:P

Pikalek

"Choosing a language version newer than the default can cause hard to diagnose compile-time and runtime errors."

I guess I don't need to have a default interface implementation specified in the same file, but it would have been nice.

What's with VS wanting IName for an interface instead of just Name? I thought they left the Hungarian conventions behind.

Vaillancourt

That's when using a wizard?

Pikalek

The code window put an angry dotted line under the first character of the interface name & when I check into it, it gave IDE10006: Name rule violation: Missing prefix 'I'

Vaillancourt

20:31

Oh; I don't have that here. Is that c#?

Pikalek

Yes, C# sorry, should have mentioned that at the lead.

DMGregory

IWhatever is a .NET convention for interface names. You can see it in IEnumerable, IComparable, IList, etc.

Pikalek

Doesn't really matter, just surprised me.

Oh, that sort of makes more sense.

Sort of a "where does C# end & .NET start" kinda thing.

Which seems to be the same reason I can't casually change the C# version at the moment - concerns about framework settings :/

DMGregory

Yeah. It's just a convention, but VS will nag about it. Same if you use a lowercase name for a property.

Pikalek

Oh, yes. I've already been doing a change all on my .x & .y fields as I port them.

But I can imagine worse problems to have.

Porting multiple inheritance for example.

DMGregory

20:37

What's annoying is the Unity convention is lowercase for properties/fields, so you end up being inconsistent with one or the other. :(

Pikalek

That does sound like a pain. Can't win there.

Vaillancourt

21:04

errrr... those googly eyes remind me of dead or alive extreme 2...

(which was not a very good game, content-wise)

Wasabi

Ha ha ha lol, guys look what I found while fixing Package files in Unity:

    {
        enum Pass
        {
            Prefilter13,
            Prefilter4,
            Downsample13,
            Downsample4,
            UpsampleTent,
            UpsampleBox,
            DebugOverlayThreshold,
            DebugOverlayTent,
            DebugOverlayBox
        }

        Level[] m_Pyramid;
        const int k_MaxPyramidSize = 16; // Just to make sure we handle 64k screens... Future-proof!

Vaillancourt

(or is it "container-wise"? the minigames were okay, but I have a hard time with agree with the use of the characters.)

Wasabi

When will we ever have 64K screens?

Vaillancourt

Which part is fun?

Maybe multi-screen setups.

DMGregory

21:19

I think the comment was facetious. 😉

Vaillancourt

21:47

Sometimes I think about commenting "Did you reticulate the spline" on some questions, but then I remember I am a mod and our "be nice" policy.

DMGregory

Hahaha. 🤣 May I ask which question?

Vaillancourt

-1

Q: Game not build and running to android after making a keystore?

At the end of the build it says postprocess player and does not run the game on my android phone. It also says build succeeded.

1) I don't really understand what's you're issue nor what this is about and 2) probably someone who has a clue will still need more details.

DMGregory

22:06

I'll confess, I never managed to get my game to automatically run on my Android device out of Unity. 😅

Vaillancourt

Me neither.

I have never tried, I must admit.

Almo

I never auto run stuff

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