Game Development

Almo

13:31

c# question:

public event Action OnCompleteOpenEvent;

getting the error just a sec

Alex M.

don't call events like that

Almo

warning CS0067: The event `AbstractMenu<T>.OnCompleteOpenEvent' is never used

but

	protected virtual void OnCompleteOpen()
	{
		IsOpened = true;
		IgnoreInputs = false;

		if(OnCompleteOpenEvent != null)
			OnCompleteOpenEvent();
	}

Alex M.

event handlers should be called like that

public event Action OpenEventCompleted;

SomeObject.OpenEventCompleted = someObject_OnOpenEventCompleted;

or something like that

Almo

well, this is someone else's code

so I'm more annoyed by the warning than the naming :)

Alex M.

got it :D

does the warning persist after a build?

Almo

13:33

anyway, I haven't found anything to remove this error beyond the #pragma suppress

well, this is Unity

Alex M.

is the same event defined in a base class?

Almo

so every time I change a file and go back to unity, i get the warning

Lasse

Do you really need to check if event is null before calling it? I remembered that events were special in this maner.

Alex M.

I guess not, otherwise you would have noticed

and the warning would have said so

Almo

this is a

public abstract class AbstractMenu<T> : ManagerSingleton<T>, IMenu where T : AbstractMenu<T> {

Alex M.

13:34

@Lasse yes

Lasse

I remembered wrong then

Alex M.

unless you initialize the event with an empty lambda

Almo

looks like this OnCompleteOpenEvent thing is only defined in this class, AbstractMenu

Alex M.

public event EventHandler NewEvent = delegate { };

Almo

not in the base classes

Alex M.

13:35

this ensures the event is never null

so you don't have to check it

@Almo yeah, and a subclass can't directly access a parent's events anyway

you have to wrap them in methods

Lasse

I wonder if it's more efficient to check if it's null or add empty delegate on it

Alex M.

@Almo restart Unity, do a clean build, w/e? :D

Lasse

But that's just premature optimization to think about that

Almo

:D

Alex M.

@Lasse I sorta always check for nulls

got used to it

Almo

13:37

I guess I'll just put up with the warning

They annoy me because in my own code, I set warning = error

GnomeSlice

omnipsyence.bandcamp.com/album/dark-star-falling

Almo

my iPhone games compile with zero warnings :)

Lasse

My bad habit is that I don't check before I got an exception. Should check for them anyway.

MickLH

:)

Alex M.

@Almo I can't compile without warnings

Lasse

13:37

Of course I check if it's obvious to check for null

Almo

that way when I do get a warning, the number of warnings goes from 0 to 1, not 155 to 156 and say hey! a new warning

Alex M.

the Orthello library for Unity has its own

Almo

fucking great

Alex M.

my code doesn't though

Almo

ok well thanks for looking at the thing

Lasse

13:39

Me not being native english speaker fails me again, what is the concept of a world? If I have several different maps separate from each other, are they considered to be different worlds?

Kevin van der Velden

@Lasse they could just be different regions

Lasse

But you can travel from region to region just by walking, you can't walk between these maps

Alex M.

@Lasse a world should be substantially different from the others

Lasse

I'm just thinking how I should name my classes

Alex M.

like, this world is Earth-like

the other is Mars-like, with all sorts of aliens on it

Kevin van der Velden

13:42

Basically, this is where naming classes like real world objects breaks down

Lasse

Okay, but two worlds can be similar, like have similar plants and animals, but they just have no physical connection to each other, right?

Kevin van der Velden

And you just have to use something that sorta fits and add a comment with what you mean

joapet99

hello

Lasse

Yeah, I guess I'm going to call these things worlds

Kevin van der Velden

Lo @joapet99

joapet99

13:45

lo?

Lasse

lo is like yo

joapet99

oh

Kevin van der Velden

It's hello without the hell

Lasse

no, it's without the hel

Kevin van der Velden

@Lasse phonetically

Alex M.

13:49

> "Whats better in this solution?"

No, one has mentioned here the main reason the "event != null" pattern is avoided. The problem? Race condition!

In a multi-threaded environment these checks seem innocuous but are dangerous. Without putting in an empty delegate you'd have to implement a mutex to perform the check and call in which in my completely non-scientifically proven opinion is more expensive then notifying an empty delegate.

comment on using empty delegates for events vs null checking

Lasse

so it depends on the usage then

Alex M.

yeah seems so

MickLH

both are ridiculous silly solutions

use an atomic pointer

god damnit I was just so proud of myself for not being a douche

Lasse

we're talking about C#

Kevin van der Velden

We should stop talking about C# and start talking about C++, it's ++ so it's obviously better!

Alex M.

13:55

I'll use the empty delegate approach for a few weeks and see what downsides/upsides I come upon

Lasse

But C++ users can not C#

(see sharp, got it? heh? hehheh? no?)

Alex M.

speaking of C++, this was a nice read: herbsutter.com/elements-of-modern-c-style

I especially like the range for

and std::begin() and std::end() that also work on arrays

Lasse

I just made a Vector3i because I didn't feel like using tuples for creating keys for my dictionary

I wonder if this is the right call

MickLH

If there's a good hasher what could go wrong :P

Lasse

oh well I could also use just plain int for the keys

oh, wait, no

I don't know what the max values are

Alex M.

14:06

RT @aksirPP: Ondertussen in België. http://t.co/lsLtDz5zQt

Tweeted by RPlasterk on April 6, 2014 at 5:49 PM

better just post the pic in the tweet

Kevin van der Velden

What

GnomeSlice

@AlexM. what the hell is this

That looks like it would derail the train.

Alex M.

no shit

Martin Sojka

@GnomeSlice It looks like it wouldn't even slow the train down.

GnomeSlice

Depends on how big the train is I guess.

Lasse

14:12

yeah the wheel would just cut thru it, the train has so much weight

GnomeSlice

What are they trying to measure, I wonder?

user92578

hey there

Kevin van der Velden

@GnomeSlice that's a fire truck

It's most likely a water hose =p

Lasse

I think that's just car tire protection for the hose

GnomeSlice

Why don't they just park the truck on the other side of the rails?

Martin Sojka

14:14

Even "just" the small 612 ones we have driving around here everywhere already weight more than 100t per wagon.

Kevin van der Velden

@GnomeSlice cause it's a fire truck, they need to be on that side of the rails, maybe to fight a fire?

in The Bridge, 45 secs ago, by Arperum

@KevinvanderVelden I read that the twitterpost was mostly a joke, because that piece of railroad was closed off for a week.

Someone from belgium chimes in!

And a wild @JoshPetrie appears

Alex M.

lol the railroad pic now got cross-posted twice

quick, everyone, post it in other places too

Kevin van der Velden

I posted it to ask someone from belgium about it =p

Alex M.

work day over, going to head home

yay

GnomeSlice

@AlexM. done

Lasse

14:40

I just calculated that currently one single world can take up to 1536 terabytes of space if it's completly filled with blocks, and then there can be several worlds.

I think that can count as infinite

There can be 4*4*4 billion chunks filled with 32x32x32 blocks in one world

Should be enough for this

Almo

I don't think "infinite" means what you think it means. ;)

Kevin van der Velden

@Almo it's infinite, it just loops

Which may or may not be how the universe is infinite, so what the hell why not!

Shotgun Ninja

15:00

bah, boss threatened my job

too distracted

sup nerds

joapet99

Hello shotgun

Shotgun Ninja

yo

erebel55

anyone know what the"upgrade discount" is for verizon after 2 years into your contract

lol

Kevin van der Velden

@erebel55 completely dependent on your region

That much I know

erebel55

ahh okay

Martin Sojka

15:10

@Lasse Depends. How fast can a player explore, in terms of chunks per second?

Lasse

Not fast, one block is intended to be one meter, like in minecraft

And there are 32x32x32 blocks in one chunk

Martin Sojka

Estimate, please.

Default Minecraft flying (creative mode) speed is 10.8m/s which translates to about 1 chunk/s when flying diagonally.

Lasse

Well, I think it would be something like 1 meter per second at max, which is about 1.5 chunks per minute

Martin Sojka

Horses are faster, but limited by terrain.

Lasse

But yeah I haven't counted flying

Martin Sojka

15:13

You know, 1m/s could be rather slow unless you're playing a rodent ...

Lasse

lol yeah

well, let's say 3-4 blocks per second then

But anyway, I think you get the idea

Jon

Martin Sojka

So ... a slow jog, about 1 chunk every 2 seconds.

That means you need about 158456325028528675187087900672 seconds to explore everything, give or take a few.

Lasse

How's that 1 chunk every 2 seconds

Ah, right, you used the minecraft speed

Martin Sojka

Assuming a constant mean solar year of about 365.24219647 days, it's 5021285221452738448991 years of playtime.

Sorry, 5021285221452738448992, I rounded that wrong.

Lasse

15:17

Not bad eh

I'd say that's infinite

Kevin van der Velden

@MartinSojka or, about 3.6*10^11 times the age of the universe

Martin Sojka

Yep.

363913989089 times, says my calculator.

Kevin van der Velden

I asked wolfram alpha

Martin Sojka

That's practically infinite, as far as the human perspective goes. I can certainly say I won't be playing it for quite as long.

Sorry, the game just isn't that good. ;)

Lasse

damn, I was hoping you would play it 363913989089 times the age of universe amount of time

That would actually take so much time that by then we should have home computers that are capable of storing the whole world

Since that would take up 1536 terabytes

MickLH

15:25

Since I aborted the jam timeline anyways, I guess I should do a decent javascript port before I go any further

Shotgun Ninja

@Lasse Yeah, but that's only for one snapshot of the world. What about world video?

Or streaming worlds?

Lasse

My engine also supports several worlds apart from each other already

count that in

Alex M.

15:42

well, no moderator response to my question

I'll go ahead and post the project highlight in a couple of hours

user4704

I couldn't tell what you were asking.

user4704

But it was something about a community ad?

Alex M.

no

I pasted the permalink to the message so that you could follow it :(

user4704

Yeah, it wouldn't follow.

user4704

I have some problems with the JS or scripting or whatever aspects of the site on this network. :\

user4704

15:44

(vote buttons don't often work either, which is super lame)

Alex M.

anyway, what we want to do is make this meta post where everyone posts stuff about their projects and regularly update it; then, at the end of the year, we give an award to the most popular project

user4704

I don't think that would be considered spam on its own. It might attract some, which we'd need to monitor for, but no more than anything else.

Alex M.

aight

user4704

Are you going to enforce (or suggest) limits on the format, such as posting no more than N pictures?

Alex M.

I guess one defining picture per post with extra links to pictures is fine

user4704

15:47

I don't think it's strictly necessary at first, but might be worth considering if people start to abuse the question.

Alex M.

15:58

it's not necessary but embedding pictures is not necessary either tbh

links work just fine

I'll just avoid adding the rule for now and see what happens

John McDonald

@Pip I have added some notes on strategy to my entry, and the "AI" does not cheat!

I don't really want to say how dumb the AI is, but... needless to say, I did the simplest thing I could do in the time allowed: Gratuitous use of Math.random()

Alex M.

so uh

when's the gamejam ending?

I suck at clocks

Almo

it ends when someone does this

11

Q: Monday morning mistake: sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

Here's a an entertaining tragedy. This morning I was doing a bit of maintenance on my production server, when I mistakenly executed the following command: sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /mnt/hetznerbackup / I didn't spot the last space before / and a few seconds later, when warnings was floodin...

Alex M.

old

already discussed

damnit almo

YOU'RE NOT EVEN TRYING

:P

Martin Sojka

Math.random() AI can be quite fun. What I like to do for the quick & dirty is: Make a function to estimate how good the current situation is. Chose a bunch (five or so) actions with Math.random(). Pick the one which results in the best result. Repeat until defeated by the player.

Lasse

16:09

I think it ended 3 hours ago

Alex M.

@JoshPetrie can you close it in that case?

Almo

Just wanted to make sure anyone who didn't see it, saw it.

user4704

Close this: meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/1565/… ?

Alex M.

yup

John McDonald

Sounds good

Alex M.

16:12

Romania's biggest code & algorithm challenge website is starting to add content in English

switching to English will gain them some extra popularity but will sorta alienate the project from Romania

user4704

Do you want to prevent votes?

John McDonald

No

Alex M.

@JoshPetrie nope, voting will go on

user4704

k

Alex M.

> Here's an interesting interview question I've heard recently.

You are given an 100G size file on disk which represents a square matrix of 32 bit integers. Design an efficient way to transpose that matrix given that you only have 1G of available memory.

> A solution can be obtained by splitting the initial matrix into 100 smaller sub-matrices, using files on disk. Since each sub-matrix will have 1 GB, we can load it in memory, transpose it, then write it back to disk. The final step consists of assembling all 100 sub-matrices in the correct order, into another 100GB file.

This works because:
(A B)^T = (A^T C^T)
(C D) (B^T D^T)

(assuming A, B, C and D are square sub-matrices).

> Is the file in binary or text format ? It wouldn't be that hard to interchange between them but I am curious.

LE: I'm thinking that with the binary format you could seek in that file, this enables you to even transpose it in place,
without even using any significant memory or extra disk space for even larger files. But this is slow due to all those disk read/write/seek operations.

> Read a few lines down of the matrix and start constructing the rows of the transposed matrix left to right in memory. When the memory fills, dump them to disk in a preallocated file by seeking to the beginning of each row if it's binary, or by writing each row to an individual file then cat-ing them together if it's text. You'll only have sqrt(100G) * 100 = 31600000 seeks to do then if it's binary.

Martin Sojka

16:18

"Flip the initial bit indicating it's a column-first matrix to a row-first matrix" doesn't count as a solution, I guess?

Alex M.

The #1 New Paid App In The Play Store Costs $4, Has Over 10,000 Downloads, A 4.7-Star Rating... And It's A Total Scam
http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/04/06/the-1-new-paid-app-in-the-play-store-costs-4-has-over-10000-downloads-a-4-7-star-rating-and-its-a-total-scam/

that's the effect of Google approving anything until someone makes a complaint

any app is guaranteed to be published by them in less than 2 hours

Martin Sojka

BTW, the matrix has 160k rows and columns, so you can exploit how the file system stores it: First transpose blocks of the matrix in strips which correspond to the physical block size on disk in place (for 4k block size ext2, that would be 1024x1024 blocks, 4MB in memory each), then rearrange the file metadata so that the matrix file itself is correctly transposed.

Alex M.

you should go work for google

Martin Sojka

Nah, I'm fine working for the TV stations right now. :)

@AlexM. Well, it doesn't do any harm, at least.

Alex M.

I think lying to customers is harm enough

Martin Sojka

16:30

No, that's marketing.

user4704

This reminds me of the "I'm Rich" application from the early days of the iOS app store.

Alex M.

that one was not a lie

@MartinSojka you seem more intelligent than that imo

erebel55

people are stupid enough to be exploited, i don't think it is google's job to protect them

Alex M.

sigh

Martin Sojka

@AlexM. No, really. Claiming something has features it doesn't just so people (well, fools) part with their money is marketing. Fraudulent marketing, obviously. It's still common practice and will continue as such.

Alex M.

16:33

I'm not even going to discuss this further

erebel55

i'm not saying that what the developer is doing is right. I'm just saying google shouldn't constrain it

imo

Almo

disagree

makes people npot truyst buying things on google store which hurts us honest devs

Lasse

@AlexM. Damn lot of code just to change an icon on tap

Alex M.

@Lasse lol

just go use the SDK to generate an EMPTY project using a tab view

and bask in the glory of those hundreds of lines of code

that's pretty much android tbh

Lasse

Yeah, well, I have no idea since I've not made apps for android without any library

Alex M.

16:37

I still can't believe starting a Yes/No dialogue and listening to it for the user's choice is so complicated and takes a shitload of code

Lasse

And the only one I've made was with libgdx and I never got it to run on my android virtual

Shotgun Ninja

16:50

welcome to Java

land of boilerplate

even our lambda functions have it

Alex M.

DialogInterface.OnClickListener dialogClickListener = new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
			    @Override
			    public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
			        switch (which) {
			        case DialogInterface.BUTTON_POSITIVE:
			            ai.receiveAnswer(question, type, "Yes");
			            break;

			        case DialogInterface.BUTTON_NEGATIVE:
			        	ai.receiveAnswer(question, type, "No");
			            break;
			        }
			    }
			};
			AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(this);

that's a Yes/No dialogue

Shotgun Ninja

again, boilerplate

C# could roll that down to like 6 lines.

Alex M.

actually, it's less

Shotgun Ninja

because tying in lambdas as responses to buttons instead of implementing interfaces with anonymous classes

makes it super fucking sexy

Grey

@AlexM. Your java'ing?!?!?

coughs

Alex M.

16:53

if (MessageBox.Show(params here, which instruct it to be a Yes/No dialogue) == DialogResult.Yes) { //do stuff if yes } else { //do stuff if no }

that's C# .NET

@Grey I don't have a better option on Android

Shotgun Ninja

oh yeah, right

Alex M.

erebel55

lol

Shotgun Ninja

if it works, it works

Alex M.

17:27

haha, Pascal code I wrote 5+ years ago

var numowowowo,x,y,z,b,a,c,n,t,i:longint;
    u,q:text;
    iepuri:array[0..100000] of longint;
begin
//WoooOOOOoooOOOooo!
assign (u,'iepuri.in'); reset(u);
assign (q,'iepuri.out'); rewrite(q);
readln(u,t);
for numowowowo:=1 to t do begin
  read(u,iepuri[0]); read(u,iepuri[1]); read(u,iepuri[2]); read(u,a); read(u,b); read(u,c); read(u,n); readln(u);
      for i:=1 to n-2 do begin
      iepuri[3]:=(c*iepuri[0]) + (b*iepuri[1]) + (a*iepuri[2]);
      iepuri[3]:=iepuri[3] mod 666013;
      iepuri[0]:=iepuri[1];

Lasse

The best part of it is this line:

//WoooOOOOoooOOOooo!

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@AlexM. Xamarin? :P

Alex M.

@William'MindWorX'Mariager yeah I'll surely pay money for that :P

@Lasse lol yeah

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@AlexM. Got a free version? :P

Alex M.

the free version has limits I could not live with

limits on resources, limits on apk size, limits on libs you can use

also limits on source code size (lol)

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

17:31

Really?

That's not very clear from the overview :P

Alex M.

:P :P :P :P :P :P :P

just google for more

I'm building a virtual assistant that's part of a much larger ecosystem

having limits is just not a good way to go

I'd rather develop everything in assembly if I have to, instead of paying $300 or whatever to Xamarin

^ hypothetical case

Java is not that bad for me here

99% of the time I deal with code written by me which is just as clean as the C# I write

Lasse

Am I the only one who can't get acces to this website: opengl.org/sdk/docs/man/docbook4/xhtml/glGetProgramInfoLog.xml

Or has it really been down for several days already?

Alex M.

doesn't load for me either

Lasse

I wonder if anyone who's responsible for that website knows that

user4704

It's been down for a while :\

Lasse

17:41

Any mirrors around?

Well, I could google it

user4704

Dunno offhand.

Lasse

lol "opengl documentation mirror" produces tutorials to create mirrors

I don't want that this time >:(

user4704

opengl website mirror

user4704

perhaps

Lasse

nope

maybe google cache has something

GnomeSlice

17:43

Today's Listening is brand new.

Siddharth

any guy working on unity?

erebel55

anyone have any performance numbers they could share for the different admob ad networks?

Alex M.

0

Q: Community Project Highlights 2014

Welcome to the first Community Project Highlights! Here's what it's all about: As a member, you can post an answer to this question with details about a personal project. You can have multiple answers (thus multiple projects) posted. Said projects should be gamedev related: games, game engines ...

discussion

it's alive

Grey

ALL THE UPBOATS

John McDonald

copies For Sparta! over

Siddharth

17:51

I want some suggestions in this

answers.unity3d.com/questions/682174/…

Alex M.

@JohnMcDonald are you going to work on it further? :O

GnomeSlice

guise

Kevin van der Velden

gnooms

John McDonald

@AlexM. Heh, not likely. Might add some balancing and some niceties, but no significant work

Alex M.

the things is more intended for stuff you're working on :(

John McDonald

17:52

I don't want an other Like Clockwork that will suck all of my energy away from Asteroid Outpost

@AlexM. Then say so

Alex M.

asteroid outpost is a good example of something you could post

John McDonald

Sadly, this post sounds a lot like a smaller version of TIGSource's dev forum, but... I guess that's ok

GnomeSlice

I should really get on TIGsource and starting learning up on some shit

Give me IndieDB or give me death

John McDonald

There is an insane amount of traffic in the TIG dev forum

Grey

forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=profile;u=57120

forums.tigsource.com/…

John McDonald

17:58

I was a little demotivated by TIG, just because everyone seems to be all about the flashiness of a project, and because of the low engagement I was getting, ;(

like a 3% engagement, ish

Grey

Same with my project. Incredible amount of circle jerk, "who you know" and the amount of flashiness in your project.

Transcript for