Game Development

Alexandre Vaillancourt

1:44 AM

I'm away 4 days and I'm greeted with 23 votes to do in the close review queue :P

Almo

2:09 AM

:D

NaCl

oh my god what have I done

user92578

7:30 AM

damn

user92578

trello has broken my custom stylish plugin for my board

user92578

8:52 AM

3

user92578

Enemies now run in panic when a grenade latches to them

OMGtechy

9:41 AM

awesome :D

This game reminds me so much of Broforce

Jon

10:05 AM

Why doesn't he die

wadry

super kevlar man

OMGtechy

he uses protection

user92578

10:34 AM

@OMGtechy too much?

wadry

11:08 AM

0

Q: Unity Compute Resource Management

I have a n open ticket with unity about some code I have that uses the GPU to generate quads and passes them to an array on the cpu. The code in question is a little specific to my situation so I don't think posting and asking for help with that is the way to go but unity is behaving oddly and I...

Jon

12:26 PM

14-Year-Old Prodigy Programmer Dreams In Code

►

user92578

Here's the most fun application

Jon

This 14 year old has 14 apps on the appstore what's your excuse?

Mine is that I don't release shit

Almo

I have a full-time job programming, and I don't really like programming that much.

that's mine :)

Jon

The piece is really making him look like a shithead

Dude needs some friends but doesn't want any

Seems to think all the other kids his age are moronic apes

Welcome to the real world kid

user92578

12:37 PM

Just did a playtrough of the current content with brother

user92578

Ended with a crash :(

Leggy7

his apps are shit?

user92578

Not very many bugs though

user92578

And one level was ridiculously hard

Jon

They show his lineup of apps and they look like shit to me. But I didn't write apps at 14 eithrr

Leggy7

12:42 PM

when I was his age I used to play starcraft till dawn with 56k modem. Used to dial in connection putting it under a pillow to sooth sound :)

Almo

I was making games in BASIC on a C64

also learned asm on that, but only got a few support routines and one game written in it

Leggy7

Almo.. 1 gam is worth shit. not even close to 14. you're fired!

:)

Almo

:D

Leggy7

besides everything, I always like to go peeking into indie devs' stories

they are always intersting for me

Leggy7

1:05 PM

guys, I have a curiosity. how does big games handle % of chance in different sitations? does they use some magic treshold number or rely on complex probability calculations?

when i deal with chance that something happen I just use some random function and compare the result with some number that I extrapolate from testing and so on

Almo

That works well enough

Leggy7

I wonder if professionally big companies use some different mechanisms

Almo

depends on the game

Leggy7

for example to build a drop system

complex enough in d2 style

I heard somewhere that they used something they called treasure classes

Almo

the main issue in my mind is making sure your random number generator is solid

Leggy7

1:07 PM

but then to roll between them I think they didnt just use some random function

Almo

next is organizing the drops so the designers can balance the drop rates

which would be what you're talking about with treasure classes.

Leggy7

yes, I guess

so, substantially, random functions are solid enought to grant randomness?

things may change if I want randomness to depend on other events

Almo

they are, but you gotta make sure you're using a good one

I think arcrandom4 is the one to use these days

Leggy7

what is that and what is different from normal random in sys.math or the built in unity mathf.random

Almo

if you're doing shit serverside, there's hardware to do rnadom at the quantum mechanical elvel

I don't really know.

OMGtechy

1:12 PM

@Tyyppi_77 I like Broforce, so take it as a good thing :D

Almo

i've read about it a few times, but i don't remember the details

user92578

@OMGtechy Yeah I got that, it's just that I constantly fear that GunHero is too close to Broforce

OMGtechy

If you ended up making Brofoce that'd still be one hell of an achievement

I wouldn't worry about it personally

there will inevitably be differences

Jon

It will be compared to it

Just like my game will be compared to red remover

Just like any game with a cube is compared to minecraft

Leggy7

1:45 PM

always got attracted to broforce but the title's name always rejected me :)

is it a nice game?

user92578

it's awesome

user92578

Expendabros is free on Steam

user92578

It's kind of a limited version of the game

Leggy7

that's a really cool marketing move!

when selling are consolidated it is a great thing to do

Almo

Broforce is really, really good.

they got a lot of little details in the gameplay right

OMGtechy

1:59 PM

it's silly, light hearted, fun, easy to get into, and SO BROOOOO!

but still presents a challenge even though the controls are easy

i.e. can you complete this level without stopping at any point?

it's the kinda game where you run straight in screaming throwing grenades and shooting like mad

and it feels awesome

Leggy7

should be worth the purchase

OMGtechy

free on Playstation Plus last month too

Leggy7

could be one of the next tiels I'll try

holy crap I don't get the point in consoles

OMGtechy

?

Leggy7

aside for the market

sorry you made me think of creating games for consoles

OMGtechy

2:05 PM

I prefer some games on console personally

the stream controller changes that a little for me, but it's not quite there yet

support for controllers in games ain't that great yet (generally speaking)

user92578

2:20 PM

Iterate over items in a vector

user92578

Call a method on each item

user92578

Get a crash on one of the items

user92578

Find out that it's not in the vector

user92578

???

Leggy7

using unity?

user92578

2:27 PM

nope

user92578

I kinda want to make the grenades float

Almo

@Leggy7 Guaranteed hardware.

got a PS4? It will run any PS4 game at the same frame rate as everyone else's.

Never worry about a driver.

As a developer, I would much prefer working on consoles.

60 FPS on my dev station? 60 FPS for all customers.

user92578

^

Leggy7

doesn't specifications exist to size your market to a certain range of hardware configurations? is that bad?

and nowadays if you're not an aaa company id hard to build a game which doesn't run on everymachine

i mean, especially if you deal with 2d

Almo

2:40 PM

it sucks having to worry about it

my game Cognizer was crashing on one samsung device

OMGtechy

because suddenly you must tackle every combination of hardware, software and firmware you "support"

Almo

I got lucky that someone here owned one

and could tell me what it was

turns out you have to tell unity not to auto-pick which version of OPenGL to use, or it crashes on that device

I should never have to worry about that kind of idiocy as a developer.

with consoles, I don't. Or if I do, solve it once, solve it for all customers.

WoW had a problem on OSX with the Logitech mouse driver.

made me look straight up once every few minutes

OMGtechy

also lets you make assumptions

Almo

When I complained I got an upset email from a tech guy who was just frustrated because the issue was with Logitech's driver.

OMGtechy

and the OS can make assumptions

Almo

2:42 PM

and they couldn't get them to fix it.

not an issue on consoles.

user92578

@Almo yeah that sounded really odd

Almo

yeah that was some BS there

when that tech at blizz got upset with me, i mailed him a list of all the video cards they support, and asked why they couldn't support a mouse from one of the biggest mouse companies

he told me he was just upset because they were getting tons of complaints each day about it, and were essentially powerless to do anything about it

SO I finally broke down last night and looked up the thing I was stuck on in grim fandango

I was very, very close to figuring it out. Though I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have.

Zombi is 22 GB

free on PSN right now

OMGtechy

3:02 PM

permadeath, nice

user92578

damn my event manager is broken :(

OMGtechy

At least you know it's broken

user92578

I had this issue where event listeners could be registered while in an event callback

user92578

Which resulted in modifying a vector while iterating over it

OMGtechy

You can do that

just takes a little more codez

user92578

3:06 PM

Oh, how would I do that safely?

OMGtechy

well, the simplest is to use the return value of std::vector::erase, but if it's happening outside of the loop in something the loop calls (which it sounds like it is), you could add them to a queue that'll be processed when the current iteration is done.

OR you could make that change an event itself, so it'll get processed as if it was all in sync

i.e. you get an "event subscribe" event that modifies the listeners

depends how your event manager is currently implemented

user92578

I tried the queue approach

OMGtechy

link to the manager?

user92578

However the class could just be outright deleted

user92578

So I would then try to call a method on a deleted class

user92578

3:09 PM

@OMGtechy the code you mean?

OMGtechy

yeah

I can probably help more then :D

user92578

It's really really basic, but (almost, heh) does the job: pastebin.com/3tizqVgt

user92578

And basically it's used so that all event listeners implement an interface

user92578

The interface's constructor calls AddEventHandler(this)

user92578

And its virtual destructor calls RemoveEventHandler(this)

OMGtechy

3:12 PM

Mutex

user92578

So a buffer won't really work, because the pointer would be immediately invalidated

OMGtechy

Does everything run on one thread or is it split up somehow?

user92578

One thread is the idea

user92578

I'm not sure if another thread might accidentally call that

user92578

But currently that's not the case

user92578

3:13 PM

As the threading is as minimal as possible

OMGtechy

Well you could add an assert for that, but I'll assume it's on one thread atm

Why not have an EventSubscriber object that "deregisters" in its destructor?

and then use the queue thing

or am I missing the issue here

I don't see why the queue thing won't work

user92578

Because I use pointers

OMGtechy

And?

user92578

So when I call delete thisImplementsEventHandler;

OMGtechy

Why would you do that?

user92578

3:15 PM

It ends up calling RemoveEventHandler(this); down the destructor chain

OMGtechy

Oh ok

I thought you meant the event manager was deleting objects directly aha

user92578

So if I would store the eventHandler passed to RemoveEventHandler it would be invalidated immediately

user92578

As the object is deleted

OMGtechy

Still, queue should work fine still, if you queue up removing as well

Aidan Mueller

Have any of you tried google's actual reality yet?

OMGtechy

3:17 PM

hmm but if the object is destroyed whilst events are firing ...

Don't delete objects; queue up a delete event

user92578

That would require me to change up a whole whole lot of things

OMGtechy

s'ok, just giving you ideas

you could also use weak references

user92578

I actually had this one idea but I'm not sure if it'll work

OMGtechy

it does, but you need to have all objects made inside shared_ptr which isn't great

user92578

Basically, instead of storing IEventHandler*s, I would store std::pair<bool, IEventHandler*>s

user92578

3:19 PM

And mark the bool as false when RemoveEventHandler is called

OMGtechy

std::map<IEventHandler*, bool> would be even nicer

user92578

Then check in the SendEvent if the handler is "alive" with that boolean

OMGtechy

if object destruction and event handling is on one thread then that should work fine

user92578

@OMGtechy No, won't work as the object is destructed I think

OMGtechy

I need to check the spec for that

I am pretty sure it should be fine though

user92578

3:20 PM

Because of the boolean, the actual IEventHandler won't be touched if it's dead

user92578

Then I could just do cleanup by checking the boolean

OMGtechy

this could get tricky with inheritance too

the most derived type would have to set the boolean which isn't ideal

user92578

No I was thinking that PEventManager would set the boolean

OMGtechy

the fundamental problem here is the looping I think

you could use a proxy object

but that pretty much gives us the same as the bool

the simplest solution here is to not allow deleting of event handlers from event handlers aha

it'd be easy to add a check for this in your one thread model

user92578

hmm, yeah

user92578

3:28 PM

so I would go trough my current OnEvent implementations and change them so that they won't add or delete handlers

OMGtechy

hmm, can the handler ever be added more than once?

you could store an iterator as a member of the class

let the removal method update that iterator

and use an iterator based loop instead

if you use a std::list this is easy @Tyyppi_77

you can just erase and all is well

don't you love it when the solution is simple? :P

user92578

3:48 PM

@OMGtechy Would that for real work?

user92578

I could erase and add while iterating?

user92578

(sorry, I went to eat)

Jon

4:31 PM

291 levels played since I put the data collector thingy

291 levels beaten I should say

I should collect the stats on losses.. that would be useful

user92578

Is it weird if grenades explode when they hit the water surface?

Jon

yeah

make it sink and blow up at the same timed interval I would say

user92578

yeah

Jon

so... level clears and touchcount, failure count, timestamp

i think that is all i need

hmm... its gonna suck to do level fails

user92578

4

user92578

4:41 PM

How's that?

Jon

perfect

user92578

yeah I think so too, ty :)

Jon

are you slowing it down progressively?

user92578

Yeah I make the gravity a bit smaller

Jon

looks awesome

user92578

4:42 PM

And then each frame the grenade is in the water I lerp the velocity towards zero

Almo

oooh

looks fuckin nice man

user92578

<3

Jon

obligatory fish

and fish explosion

user92578

lol

user92578

5:02 PM

I think I might have a build ready for a demo release

user92578

Anyways I'll call it a day now and maybe see if I could put something out tomorrow

user92578

Thanks for the feedback today!

Jon

5

NaCl

5:47 PM

"she needs to join our startup"

Jon

question is... who took the picture?

Aidan Mueller

@Tyyppi_77 Seeing as grenades are made out of metal, they would probably sink faster than that (assuming it is not heavy water). Cool though. Now, if you really want to make it look cool, make it create a splash or ripple on the surface of the water depending on it's depth.

user92578

6:03 PM

Yeah I need to add splash particles

user92578

I have those ready, I just need to use them

Jon

make banana bombs

user92578

lol

Jon

OMGtechy

@Tyyppi_77 yes

std::list iterators are not invalidated when an element is erased (except the one you're erasing)

so long as it's all on one thread you'll be fine

> cd: no such file or directory: code

Jon

6:15 PM

yes, she wrote "code" for a command

OMGtechy

my other half is going to comment on it apparently

or not when she realises how old it is

OMGtechy

6:31 PM

@Jon to be fair you can see a little of what looks like a git push just before

user92578

I think I have script somewhere that just fills the console with a constant stream of random 1s and 0s

Jon

after matrix came out everyone had that

user92578

lol

Jon

after the movie hackers came out, there was a ton of idiots taht sprung up online

Aidan Mueller

6:59 PM

@Jon Doesn't seem to be that way. More like she tried to navigate to a non-existent directory named "code". But look at the code that she is actually writing above the console.

Why would you concatenate "hello" with "world" when you could just put them into one string?

Jon

7:39 PM

clearly you are not a real coder

real coders take pictures of their salad and antioxidant drink, and offer ad space for other products

and only code on wednesdays... ONLY

Leggy7

that meal does not look very healthy

Jon

what would you know, you chiseled godlike man

Aidan Mueller

8:01 PM

@Jon I...I didn't know! And here I thought that I was the one who was doing it right.

Jon

noob

Aidan Mueller

I guess I better make things right:

Jon

Aidan Mueller

@Jon If I'm going to be eating all this salad, do you have any salad recommendations?

Jon

salamander salads

mondo protein boost

Aidan Mueller

8:07 PM

I'll write this down.

Try it...next wednesday, of course.

user92578

Jon

<3 oRLY books

You

Hello
It's me.

Aidan Mueller

@Jon I assume real programmers also put all of their stuff in the /home/nitrous/code/labs/hp-tdd-structure-code-along-precollege-se1-nyfl-072015-1 directory.

user92578

You?

Jon

8:11 PM

user92578

lol yeah... tbh web development with assembly is my fav

You

@Tyyppi_77 Yeah, You.

Jon

my mind is blown

Aidan Mueller

@You:

You

I need that picture for my profile! :)

user92578

8:13 PM

^

Jon

yup, use it

You

Testing...

Jon

it will look like shit in here

You

I put it on but it's not working. :(

Aidan Mueller

@You It takes a minute.

user92578

8:16 PM

Yeah

Aidan Mueller

Or two.

Or a hundred.

Jon

might take a hundred minutes

while you wait, playtest gorb for me

You

Actually, on the profile it looks bad, so I'll just have it on my description.

github.com/kobolog/gorb is gorb?

Jon

jgallant.com/Gorb

do I look like a kobolog?

You

No. But if I had github, my name would certainly not be You.

PearsonArtPhoto

8:31 PM

Did you change the level order around?

Jon

yeah.

PearsonArtPhoto

That make sense then. It's hard to tell now what levels I've done, and what ones I haven't.

You

Why does level 14 have 0 par, though?

Jon

yeah, i should add a clear data option ... and a options menu

pars are not set properly yet...

it was a par 0 -- but I have been tweaking the levels

so the pars are getting messed up

You

The game is good.

But it's another addicting game! NO!!!!!!! Loses productivity.

PearsonArtPhoto

8:33 PM

The level button images don't match with the levels...

Jon

yeah, they don't :)

I need to regenerate them

haha, and thanks

You

And also, all the buttons lead to the level selections, even Exit.

PearsonArtPhoto

Ever since he released his latest demo I haven't had much motivation to work on my own game... Coincidence?

Jon

glad it is addictive

Only thing the main menu does, is start the game :)

You

So the other buttons are there just because?

Jon

8:36 PM

because I haven't coded the other menu options in yet

PearsonArtPhoto

Placeholders.

Jon

yeah, that and I always keep about/options for last

PearsonArtPhoto

Makes sense.

Jon

People have been saying I need to tone down the negativity

mainly the calling people Losers

You

Yeah, it's really dragging me down on level 31.

Jon

8:42 PM

what do you think ?

You

It's great. I would buy it if I had money.

But I feel like 31 is impossible. I know I need timing, but I can't get it.

Jon

heh

its possible.

it is funny a lot of people told me that one is hard

but I can do it easily

I may have to move it back some more.. around 50some maybe

You

I did it just now, actually. :)

Jon

feels good doesn't it?

You

Yeah.

Ferrybig

8:49 PM

What is the procedure to report a user who is ragequicking, and vandalising and deleting all his posts with him?

Jon

ping @JoshPetrie

You

I also noticed that the edges are jagged. Did you implement anti-aliasing yet or is that something for the future?

Jon

yeah, i have AA on other builds.. this will be for android and iOS

the WebGL build, for some reason, doesn't do AA

Ferrybig

@Jon How can I reach him without placing the name of the user in question public in the chat?

Jon

as long as you flag what he is saying, it will be seen by mods

even if it was deleted

who is the user?

Ferrybig

8:53 PM

@Jon The user in question: gamedev.stackexchange.com/users/51896/painkiller?tab=activity He is already suspended on SO for vandalism

Jon

Rest assured, he will be banned if he keeps it up.

Josh can take a look at it

Thanks for reporting. Did you flag anything previously that he deleted ?

Ferrybig

I don't have 10k to see any of his posts, so I can't flag anything

Jon

People like him don't last long on gamedev.se

We are a pretty tight nit community here, heh

Ferrybig

This user came up in the normal operation in the CharCoal HQ, where we saw that he was vandalishing and deleting large amount of posts, and because he had earned a disciplined badge here, I wanted to ask here in the chat if someone else could flag it

You

Well, goodbye.

Jon

9:04 PM

no wait

you need to sign a non-disclosure agreement

user4704

9:18 PM

@Ferrybig He only seems to have deleted one question/answer pair. It's not too bad. I restored the content and asked him not to do that.

user4704

Do you know why he was doing it on other sites?

Ferrybig

I do not have a reason what the motive of the user was

Almo

did you guys know Kraftwerk localized their music?

Jon

no

Almo

wife's going through rolling stone top 100 albums

just hit kraftwerk, and it's in english

original's in german

wow cant' even find the german on spotify

also, since ralf is the only remaining original member, he's erasing all the faces from the album covers

weird guy

Jon

9:24 PM

weird ones are the smart ones

Almo

when Coldplay wnated to use one of their melodies for Talk, they just got a plain envolope back iwth a piece of paper saying "yes"

they didn't like the phone ringing in the studio, so they disabled the ringer

they'd pick it up at 2:00 pm each day to see if someone was calling

(or some time)

Jon

hating stuff is awesome

Aidan Mueller

@Jon Here's an idea: sudo (the linux command) has an easter egg that makes it insult you if you get your password wrong. You should make a switch in GORB that turns on the insults.

Jon

have an option called "PC friendly"

haha, that coudl work

"Awww, we are all winners even though you failed the level."

Aidan Mueller

Also, I just beat 31 in about 3 tries.

Jon

9:29 PM

piece of cake

Almo

@Jon :D

Aidan Mueller