Game Development

Trevor Powell

00:03

Slowly done. Think that last 1000 has taken me half a year.

Madcowe

so guys, which games are you waiting for?

Trevor Powell

Mine

John McDonald

Yeah, how's that going Trevor?

Trevor Powell

I got simulated players using the chat system, a couple days ago. For such a small change, it really fills out the game nicely.

John McDonald

NOOO! Google Reader is going away in a few months, ;(

@TrevorPowell Hah, cool

Trevor Powell

00:06

Down side is that there's occasionally a fatal error in the AI, and I don't know what's causing it. :/

Gets into a state of "Okay, I've reached the destination that my quest told me I should go to and -- wait -- my quest isn't active any more?" No clue how the quest is de-activating in the middle of transit to it.

John McDonald

hmm

My first instinct tells me that it completes but doesn't move on to the next state

So it reaches the destination twice

Madcowe

hm I dunno

Trevor Powell

My instinct is that it's probably to do with a combat quest. Like, user has a quest to kill 'n' of a particular type of monster, and attacks one, but maybe the quest cleanup logic only runs if that user struck the killing blow, so if there was another user attacking the same monster and that other user did the final attack.. maybe the first user's AI gets caught into a weird state where it doesn't realise that the quest has now been completed.

It's been a long time since I actually wrote that AI code. Will have to debug and figure out what's going on.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hello this place. :D

John McDonald

@TrevorPowell ic

Hey MindWorX

How's school going?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

00:24

It's going great. Purely A's and B's. But it's very draining.

Don't feel like doing anything when I get home.

John McDonald

Oh yeah

I don't need reminding, :p

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Hehe

But I really enjoy it. I just miss programming. But I can't get my head into it lately.

John McDonald

yeah. I don't remember working on many hobby projects while I was in school

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

It's really weird. It's not like I'm tired or anything. I just have a really hard time focusing.

John McDonald

:/ yeah

I've been working too hard recently or something, and I haven't really felt like working on AO either. Don't beat yourself up too much

and I've been filling a lot of my spare time with board games

Trevor Powell

00:33

Yay, board games

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Yeah, I spend a lot of time on my roleplaying preparations as well.

John McDonald

heh, nice

I want to brief myself on the rules of my new game tonight: Dominant Species

A couple of my friends would like to try D&D sometime

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Dominant Species reminds me of a roleplaying map making game. It's a way to generate a world where everyone has had their chance to do things. Each round players accrue points they can use to shape the world.

Actions can be everything from making mountains and forests to adding/destroying civilizations or start wars.

After you're done, you'll end up with a map where each player know what has happened and a timeline of events in the world.

Been thinking about getting more experience with JavaScript and HTML5.

Maybe make a really simple game of some kind.

John McDonald

likewise. I'm actually working on some php that will need some html/js as a front end

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Like a small top-down scroller, with some of all the free artwork.

What I'd actually really like to make was my own take on the browser game "Die2Nite" which is a zombie survival cooperation game.

John McDonald

00:42

Right, I've heard of that

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

I think it's a cool concept. Each player has a few action points each day, to collect resources and build defenses.

Then every day at midnight the horde attacks, and your defenses are tested.

Next day, you expand even more.

Trevor Powell

Rampart with zombies instead of pirates?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Don't know.

Die2Nite stuffs 40 random players into towns to cooperate.

To varying degrees of success. :P

Trevor Powell

Rampart (video game)

Rampart is an arcade game, released in 1990 by Atari Games, that combines the shoot 'em up and puzzle genres. It is widely-ported, with versions for most contemporary systems. Overview In Rampart, the player is in control of a set of castles, which they must defend, by alternately shooting at attacking ships (or other players), and repairing any damage done to them within a time limit. Surrounding this castle is a wall, made up of small blocks, completely surrounding a region of the board. This area is considered the player's territory, and it may contain one or more castles, and any ...

Dave

03:44

any one around

Benjamin Danger Johnson

Hey does anyone know of any good/cheap colleges that offer degrees in Game Design online?

I've got a $2,500 tuition credit from my company to use up and I'm having trouble finding a legitimate school

Dave

04:05

online courses never compare to going to uni for a degree

Benjamin Danger Johnson

yes but I don't have that option being a full time employee

also I know the field pretty well, my company just wants me to get the degree

Dave

hmm dunno

Benjamin Danger Johnson

rather than my generic Computer Science degree

Dave

doesnt your company know any =/

Benjamin Danger Johnson

the best I can find so far that doesn't look like a scam is Full Sail for about $1,500 a class

well I tried that, but most people end up doing business classes instead which is much easier to find

I mean Full Sail is cheap enough as far as schools go, I'd just like to get 3 or 4 classes out of the tuition credit without having to pay anything else

but I'm not too knowledgeable about online colleges since I don't think they are really all that fantastic

Almo

05:01

Rampart was HARD. Good game. :)

Almo

06:18

@William'MindWorX'Mariager That's a cool game, dude. Very interesting social dynamics come from the hard cap on total water.

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

08:46

@Almo Indeed. I've been trying to figure out a way to make it more accepting of early on failures. In Die2Nite it seems like everyone would just die on purpose if the first few days didn't go perfect. Which can be tough in a game with at least a dozen strangers with you.

ToddersLegrande

11:39

Well my meta post (on stack overflow) regarding pasting of images in chat only got 5 up votes. It's a far cry from 50 but I'll take what I can get :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Images in chat?

ToddersLegrande

5

Q: Can we get a paste feature added to image uploads in chat?

We've already got it for questions and answers. Let's get it for chat too! Most of my images come from screen captures so this would be really great!

It's pretty exciting that you are spending more time here these days :P

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

12:02

Hehe

Fratyr

12:22

Hello hello

ToddersLegrande

Hey there

Welcome to chat. It's pretty quiet right now but I wanted to throw it out there as an option for you because discussion oriented questions can indeed happen here

Fratyr

I never knew there's a chat here :)

ToddersLegrande

Yeah each Stack Exchange site has one or more chat rooms

Fratyr

It's getting talkative during U.S daytime?

ToddersLegrande

Yeah its kind of sporadic depending on the day

Basically there are a whole bunch of lurkers and when someone finally says something interesting we all chime in at once

Fratyr

12:27

:) guess my question wouldn't be a yummy one

ToddersLegrande

Doesn't matter

The general rule is if you have a question, just ask it, unless its completely dead someone will likely respond, though perhaps not right away

thats where @Fratyr (demonstrating the @ syntax) comes in

Fratyr

You scared me off T_T

ToddersLegrande

lol why

Fratyr

Weird chat sound :) I thought it's a guitar string broken.. but then "Wth, I'm in the office, there's no guitars here... What was that? T_T"

ToddersLegrande

haha gotcha

ToddersLegrande

12:45

@Fratyr to in all seriousness... and the reason your question is not suited for the site, is because it all depends on your very specific scenario which can lead to the it being too localized and discussion oriented.

That being said... if you are interested in 2D I would recommend XNA / Monogame

Both support C# and are really easy to get into. They provide you nice high level objects to work with that allow you to focus on the core aspects of your game

They also have 3D capabilities but I personally can not speak to how good the 3D API is or anything to that extent since I haven't worked with 3D myself

Unity and UDK can actually be used for pretty cool stuff but can be a little scary to get into and will definitely take some work / practice with the tool set to get results you want. Very powerful tools though

2D XNA is primarily what I have worked with and I have dabbled in UDK and Unity to some extent. So outside of these I can't give much other advice

Jason Coombes

13:18

Hi Fratyr and ToddersLegrande

ToddersLegrande

Hey

Jason Coombes

I also made a comment on just that question

ToddersLegrande

Yeah he has seem to gone idle

Jason Coombes

i've worked for some years in 3D XNA, and started with Unity last year. I find Unity more restrictive, but many of the gains outweigh those negatives. If the aim is 2D, I also would recommend XNA. Moving to 3D, then initially Unity is easier to get into

I went to Unity for several reasons: C#, cross platform, and that XNA was being canned

anyway need to leave, hope this gives a little bit towards answering the question with my point of view

Fratyr

13:35

Hello

:)

I just can't forgive Unity its restrictions

Especially the poor control of GUI elements and OOP limitations.. :<

ToddersLegrande

Fortunately (and unfortunately) there are some free and paid solutions that makes working with Unity pretty slick. I bought something for Unity called the 2D toolkit that could easily be used as GUI components as well. You would have to work in SpriteFonts somehow versus using text options unity offers out of the box but overall its pretty solid.

The asset store for Unity simply has some cool stuff

Fratyr

13:51

I know, but as a web developer, it really pissed me off when I couldn't assign an event to a TextField.. :) so I just rage quit Unity :D

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

keeps lurking

Fratyr

Show yourself! :)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

14:35

I don't wanna!

Fratyr

:<

Shotgun Ninja

14:55

sup folks

ToddersLegrande

Heyo

Fratyr

@ToddersLegrande hm... Monogame looks nice, but lack documentation, isn't it? :)

How about XNA itself, can something nice pop out of it? Cross platform is of no interest for me right now

ToddersLegrande

Again... I've only worked with 2D - and I actually haven't worked with Monogame but plan to in the future - but supposedly, the majority of anythingyou can find on 2D XNA should work in Monogame

Fratyr

Ok :0

ToddersLegrande

And to answer your question about something nice popping out of XNA - the answer is most certainly

Granted, most of the XBLIG are crap by the nature of people just trying to make a quick buck... everything on there is XNA

(Xbox Live Indie Games)

And I can't speak to how much of the games are XNA I do know that both Terraria and Magicka require XNA to play

XNA is essentially a giant wrapper for Direct X / Direct3D

Thats obviously an over generalization but you get the point

Fratyr

15:09

Yeah, I just got confused by what Jason said previously "
I went to Unity for several reasons: C#, cross platform, and that XNA was being canned"

being canned 0_o

ToddersLegrande

Oh right

Well

There is no further development / improvements being made to the XNA framework itself

Fratyr

People on XNA forums said the opposite.. fanboys :|

ToddersLegrande

It's still supported in Windows 8 and you can play games on Windows 8 with it just fine via desktop mode.

vg247.com/2013/02/03/…

But yeah that's where Monogame comes in. From what I've heard it's an API that's essentially the same as XNA and is made to be cross platform and work on the Windows 8 store

Fratyr

I thought it comes above XNA, to simplify it even more.. isn't it too dangerous to rely on a technology that has no further support from the creators? :)

Shotgun Ninja

Yeah, Monogame is just the continuation of XNA.

@Fratyr Depends.

Fratyr

15:14

The guys, at least, stuck with Dx9 forever now :)

ToddersLegrande

No

or at least I don't think so

I thought it wrapped around SharpDx

Fratyr

It is

ToddersLegrande

So you are at the mercy of SharpDx which is not a Microsoft thing

its just a C# wrapper for direct x

Fratyr

Aha...

Amazing!

ToddersLegrande

It's been a long time coming but I hear its shaping up quite nicely. Like I said, I intend to give it a shot eventually

monogame.net/about

Oh interesting... they use Drupal as their CMS apparently. Oh the things I notice.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention Bastion for XNA

I believe it was originally done in XNA for the XBox and it appears ports are being done via Monogame

(Was looking at the Monogame Showcase)

Fratyr

15:51

Drupal T_T

ToddersLegrande

16:02

Yeah I don't know which I'd rather work with... Drupal or SharePoint. Right now I'm going with SharePoint because its what I'm better at :)

@JohnMcDonald - PlanetSide 2: is the Helios / whatever server it turned out to be a little underpopulated, I played at the wrong time of day (it was quite late), or battles really aren't that exciting?

I found I was just following the group as we stomped whatever base we went to and then moved onto the next

Finding actual battles proved to be difficult

Shotgun Ninja

gross

ToddersLegrande

I assume it was the time of day thing or the underpopulated thing or quite possibly a little of both

Shotgun Ninja

You always run that risk in an MMO, I guess, but still.

Fratyr

Never experienced underpopulated servers in Planetside

ToddersLegrande

Maybe I simply chose the absolutely wrong continent to play on

Fratyr

16:06

usually picked the smallest fraction to have more hardcore pressure

John McDonald

yeah, there's a lot of factors. Apparently most people like Ameresh (the area)

ToddersLegrande

And that was the only continent I didn't play on

whoopsies

John McDonald

heh

ToddersLegrande

Outside of that it was pretty fun though! Once we conquered the whole continent we got on flashes and raced back to the warp gate

John McDonald

but yeah... it can really be hit or miss, :/

Fratyr

16:08

But I find it boring after a while

Dota 2 never gets boring though xD

Shotgun Ninja

Well, I know League of Legends does from time to time.

Especially when you get matched with noob teammates.

ToddersLegrande

@ShotgunNinja is pro

We've had this conversation here many times but I do prefer the style of HoN / Dota / Dota2 over LoL

Shotgun Ninja

@ToddersLegrande No, but I've played a fair bit, lol

ToddersLegrande

:P

Shotgun Ninja

Yeah, though I really can't stand HoN.

ToddersLegrande

16:16

And I think my big argument is going to be that the free hero selection is tiny

Makes gameplay really repetetive because you don't have the freedom to pick from multiple characters that fit your play style without having to purchase them (regardless of the free vs paid currency)

And the problem with that is I don't know if I actually like the guy I'm purchasing because I'm limited to only try what has been offered out on a weekly basis

Shotgun Ninja

I can see where you're coming from, but in practice, I always tend to stick with a few champs for a while so I can learn how to be proficient with them.

ToddersLegrande

So it makes me not want to risk spending my hard earned ingame or out of game currency

Shotgun Ninja

I'm only really good with three or four champs.

John McDonald

Wow. Only 1k of javascript: js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1459

Shotgun Ninja

Sona, Graves, Miss Fortune, and Cho'Gath.

ToddersLegrande

16:18

That's exactly the problem though. If you only have three of four champs then the variety of gameplay goes really stale. I've got about 3 guys that I know I like and I was getting pretty bored without trolling my brothers over skype

Its kind of like every single game was the same

I could have limited perspective on the game but I found the Dota / HoN formula to have a lot more variety in the games themselves

Shotgun Ninja

Yeah, I fully agree.

I'm still more of a "honing my blade" sort of player, though; I pick something I enjoy, stick with it for a while, and learn it in detail, before trying other things.

My god, I think I'm turning Japanese.

Fratyr

lol

picking your nickname was a first step ;)

ToddersLegrande

lol

the "t" in Shotgun was a typo.

Should be "Shogun Ninja"

Fratyr

indeed :)

Madcowe

can someone tell me if those spikes are normal?

Fratyr

16:28

tried changing the channel?

ToddersLegrande

@Madcowe is that transfer rate? I don't have Windows 8 in front of me and I don't speak/read the language xD

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande the colored lines are the received data, the dashed lines are sent

@Fratyr dont know if that could be the problem, ever since a long time ago it always happens, and I think that's the reason why the majority of the times I open a site (for the "first" time) it only loads half of the stuff, and I have to refresh so I can see images/etc

ToddersLegrande

If yes... spikes are probably fine because higher is faster. The majority of this is probably data transferred over the internet so you would be capped by your ISP. It's possible the spikes are data just transferred over the network and not the internet, or you happen to be visiting sites that have varying degrees of their own speed, etc.

Though I don't really know much about networking so thats all a guess :)

<----- Is a software guy

Madcowe

ehehhe thanks though :P

I have always known a bit more than average about computers in general, have been in contact with them since I was 4 years old, but networking is my biggest weakness xD

ToddersLegrande

Ditto

Madcowe

16:36

A wild computer appeared!

Computer used new software layout.
It's not very effective.

User used experiment with new layout.
It's super effective.

Computer used Network connection error.
It's super effective! Critical hit!

User fainted with massive damage!

ToddersLegrande

And if it helps at all... just based on the description it sounds like maybe the sites are failing to load the CSS files. I see this on occasion when I have some network instability / packet loss. The page loads but the style doesn't so you lose out on fonts, image, formatting, etc.

I would start with the basics and unpower your router and modem for 15 seconds and plug them back in if you haven't tried that already.

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande I did, the problem is that there are 7 people on this house, most connected to the internet, so it is a bit tricky to fiddle with it...

Shotgun Ninja

Tell them that there is unplanned system downtime for the next 15 seconds or so.

It sounds officious enough to be passable.

Madcowe

we are all students so you can guess how it is, they all lived here for like 6 months before I came to this house, and I think I'm the first one to know a bit about computers and stuff around here xD

and on top of that, I really should change the password, they use the default password since they bought the router

Shotgun Ninja

💩

ToddersLegrande

16:39

If it is within your budget or if you have a spare, I would also give another router a go. Get it from a store with a good return policy so you can return it if its not the problem.

I had an issue fixed by a new router that seemed to only affect my computer, or at least affect my computer the worst out of all devices in the house.

Other devices would get the same ping spikes I had but they were significantly less severe

250ms vs the 3k - 9k pings I got

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande maybe it was my chrome settings as well, I had issues ever since I bought this new computer, but I think that was because I imported my settings from my google account, it helped a lot to deactivate the account and to clear all the cache files

WOW! 3k - 9k PIng!?!?!

ToddersLegrande

Yeah basically my internet would stop

Madcowe

but the thing is, my girlfriend came with me here, and she never had any kind of problem with the internet

ToddersLegrande

My wife never noticed the problem but after I confirmed it was a communication with the router issue, I opened up a command prompt and did a pint -t on her PC to find that she had the spikes as well and with what she used the PC for she just didn't notice it

Especially since her spikes were less severe

It seemed to give my computer priority over the lag

Madcowe

yup, 99% sure the problem might be with my chrome

ToddersLegrande

16:44

Cool

Or not :P

Chrome runs fine on my PC

Madcowe

yea xD

ToddersLegrande

So not sure what voodoo you applied to yours :P

Madcowe

I just didnt want to clear the cookies :C

I <3 cookies

ToddersLegrande

I clear mine all the time it seems

(by choice)

John McDonald

Why?

Madcowe

16:46

@ToddersLegrande prolly should too one day...

ToddersLegrande

All the time is probably a bit of an exaggeration...

more frequently than one usually does I suppose

John McDonald

I've got FF to remember history and cookies for ever and ever

ToddersLegrande

@JohnMcDonald I think its just a habit from the days of early web development with stuff caching and whatnot. If something doesn't seem right when I'm working on something its usually one of the first steps I take after I decide that I'm 95% certain I'm doing it right

Unfortunately... these days it doesn't seem to help as much :)

Really all I want to do is clear the cache but I generally leave the cookie box checked

I've really got nothing to save so I do it to rule that out right away

John McDonald

ic

ToddersLegrande

If I said "SharePoint" would you believe me? :P

I feel like I just cleared them for something at home though and I can't remember what

John McDonald

16:54

fyi, the BF4 trailer/sneak peek is out: youtube.com/watch?v=U8HVQXkeU8U

Shotgun Ninja

@ToddersLegrande pint?

John McDonald

I'd also like a pint -t command

ToddersLegrande

lol

*ping -t

one of the handiest commands I learned

John McDonald

pint 'Tree IPA' -t

ToddersLegrande

Especially for server reboots :P

I've only recently gotten into beer and have been told to stay away from IPA

There is a brown ale I really like and then I'm more into porters and stouts it seems

John McDonald

16:56

hah, yeah. If you've new to beer, don't

Well... the porters I've had are pretty strong tasting, so maybe you would like an IPA, but start with a Pale Ale first

ToddersLegrande

Strange thing is... now that I've been drinking beer I can't stand the taste of hard liquor nearly as well any more

Except for a good Gin and Tonic. Those are good :)

John McDonald

heh, nice

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande exactly like me

however, disabling hamachi did help with the more severe problems

well, ping to my antenna is <1ms

ToddersLegrande

@Madcowe I think for me it was something specific to my hardware because I had the issue on Windows 7 and still had it when I upgraded (clean install) to Windows 8

Madcowe

ping to the router is 1ms, the MAX (which only happened once) was 6ms

ToddersLegrande

17:10

Did you have any problems while you ran this test?

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande did you use chrome with the google account?

ToddersLegrande

I want to say no but I'm not really sure.

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande nope, did ping -t 192.162.1.1, which is the router

the same for the antenna IP

ToddersLegrande

Right. If you don't experience any problems during the test I wouldn't expect your pings to show any signs of problems

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande because it was the google account that messed my internet, pretty sure of it

another thing which I dont know if it is related with distance or not...

when I play online here, with my brother or something, my ping is never lower than 400

and it can go up to 700 or 800 on average

ToddersLegrande

17:12

ick

Madcowe

is it because I'm in italy and my bro in portugal? because it doesnt make sense

I played with people from all over the world, and they all had decent pings most of the times

ToddersLegrande

If the game is P2P and/or the server you are connecting to is far away

Madcowe

whenever I would see someone with a ping at around 200 I would think like "wow, that's quite a ping!"

@ToddersLegrande left for dead 2 on steam, it has a huge lag, ace of spades as well. but terraria for example, there is nearly no lag

which leads me to thing that it might be some kind of router restriction or something that only lets me send/receive a certain amount of data...

ToddersLegrande

you could do something like just-ping.com/index.php?vh=google.com&c=&s=ping%21 and ping your IP (external not internal) and see if its a distance based thing

Madcowe

@ToddersLegrande rrt is the same as ms?

oh wow, these numbers go all over the place! D:

ToddersLegrande

17:19

Yeah I think so

Madcowe

is there ANYTHING I can do to change this? D:

some are really low, but others go to like 600

and on a few places I even get lost packets

ToddersLegrande

Play on servers that are in locations where the ping is reasonable

Or move =/

John McDonald

@Madcowe heh, at first I thought you made a typo, but now I think just-ping made a typo. rrt should be rtt for Round Trip Time

Madcowe

@JohnMcDonald ah nice, thanks for the clarification ;)

going away for a while, later guys

ToddersLegrande

Ciao

Shotgun Ninja

17:29

@Madcowe adios

ToddersLegrande

That's obnoxious... Disqus has added ads to their comment system

I'll have to see what it takes to get rid of that

Yay! It's optional but turned on by default! ....

Apparently I am going to get more traffic and make some money by advertising for them

I turned it to "Just Comments" and it disappeared :)

Byte56

Looks nice, I hadn't seen Disqus before.

I could really use that live update with the 2 comments per month I get.

ToddersLegrande

lol

I figure its a decent way to avoid too much spam

I've seen it get spam on big sites but none on mine yet so thats a plus. I had a drupal site with a forum just for some team collaboration once and it got absolutely bombarded with spam

So I'm pretty happy with Disqus in that respect

My only problem is I want to pronounce it like the olympic frisbee and not "Discuss"

:P

Byte56

17:57

Well. It was very easy to apply to my blog.

Now I'm just waiting for it to import the old comments, which is also a very nice feature.

So, reactions are when someone shares the page?

ToddersLegrande

I honestly have no clue. I haven't posted anything meaningful since I set up my website xD

Byte56

Ah yes, "Reactions: Pull mentions of your page on Twitter back into the Disqus conversation on your own site." So, I guess it's twitter only.

ToddersLegrande

18:14

@Byte56 I made an obligatory "You got Disqus!" post. Feel free to remove it since its completely irrelevant to the blog post I did it on :P

Byte56

Thanks. But if I remove it, I'll have about 30% fewer comments. :)

ToddersLegrande

18:31

Haha. Alrighty then.

Madcowe

18:52

hey there

ToddersLegrande

Welcome back

Madcowe

so what's that site you were talking about?

ToddersLegrande

We were talking about the commenting system "Disqus" for our own personal blogs

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