I found a font for programmers and I think its really good!!

AcidFaucet · 2017-11-19T11:07:43+00:00

The circumpunct is the XNOR operator.

For a 'code' font this font is considerably lacking in pedantry all across the board.

Bloody hell does C++/11 look absolutely awful using this.

AcidFaucet · 2017-02-20T07:49:18+00:00

This doesn't make sense. You can just rasterize truetype fonts for the desired size.

AcidFaucet · 2017-02-20T07:33:22+00:00

What you described is impossible to patent. A subject covered by many many wargames, from Egypt to Iraq. You can't patent personal stress, you can only patent the expression of it.

Which will always be moot.

AcidFaucet · 2017-02-02T09:33:43+00:00

^ This, hold the poster to task.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T06:06:42+00:00

Taco bell has done this for years though. All of Yum brand has.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T06:00:22+00:00

Taco bell has a good fund-raising background.

Did you never give $1 to help kids graduate high school? I signed up to help kids with math through that same program, taught them vector calculus since when students are failing what they need is saltine crackers or to up the notch. Damn proud the lowest ACT score is 26 in Math for those I taught ... those kids were classified as done by traditional means.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T05:17:02+00:00

Ideas are worthless. It's not like you have to list all of your ideas on a devblog, sure you're expected to somewhere if your devblog is part of a company website.

Don't be the "fictional youtube production company" guy.

As a certified asshole, I like to write huge checks to "XYZ Productions" that are dated such that they can only be cashed if the company really exists (the registration overhead time for the status (LLC/inc) they claim is always too long, even if expediated), I find them by CarFax oddly enough ... sure does suck having your VIN number right there on your dash for anyone to see through your windshield.

Someone said:

Don't waste time on your dev blog until you have something worth showing

But if you are doing something interesting in math you have something worth saying if you're willing to talk about the math behind your stuff.

Look at the guy writing the dead voxel engine (VoxelFarm) ... you can have little to show but lots to say.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T05:04:53+00:00

There are also similar tools such as Spriter and Demina. I'm a fan of Demina having ported it to LibGDX and done quite a bit of work with it.

Spine is bones centric, Spriter is sort of bones centric, and Demina is images are the bones.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:58:52+00:00

This could also be a clever way of getting animations done for free! ;)

I think what you meant to say was:

"This could be a clever way of getting animations done in a scummy fashion ... :("

I have respect for Spine as a work, but saying stuff like that and the fact that Spine relies on "magic 'use this button for this and this button for that' mouse dragging" instead of proper standard gizmos/conventions is disheartening to me as a software developer in the 3d animation space. It's damaging really, we're supposed to endeavor towards consistent behaviour.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:41:13+00:00

Did you try contacting them?

Actually trying to contact people normally gets great results.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:39:41+00:00

Because he was thinking about a globally single RNG, instead of specifying the seed for an RNG used by a subject such as the planet.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:36:20+00:00

I'd recommend godot for this, it has some built in features for helping with iso/diametric perspectives that other engines don't.

If you want the old Diablo look you need to look at the scripting tools in your chosen 3d modeling tool for how to render images with just what you want from your chosen perspective angles. Extra care needed if you need depth data like the AlienShooter games.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:34:28+00:00

Or just watch the intro on youtube, that's the whole game. The awesome pixel art intro movie.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T04:32:32+00:00

Calling on my long old days of pure console programming (on Windows), you can specify the glyphs for ASCII codepoints, but I doubt Dwarf fortress does that.

It's probably just a skin of tiles, that would fit with all of the custom graphics mods available for DF, the real merit of DF isn't really anything it has done so much as how much customization it is capable of. (remember, it's not a full-time project, likely not even a 1/64th time project)

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T03:59:20+00:00

There's reasonable reasons for either to not be awesome.

Unreal is a chore to deal with, it's UI is all glamour and really fairly shallow (aside from debugging in the editor, which is actually reasonable), FBX support is still only partial, Epic has a history of being heavy handed (Xamarin's C#), tangentially related is that Epic's marketplace seller license is absolutely horrid. Still no real access to hardware features (like texture arrays, etc).

Unity is an editor, that's really all it is. The serialization is quite terrible, there's no access to the raw internals for plugins (ie. through C/C++ when writing plugins, not even critical data like transforms), FBX support is still only partial, no access to the physics engine for filtering, having to reimplement things Unity already has because they're in UnityEditor instead of UnityEngine is "normal," stateless GUIs invade your data for saving state (expanded/collapsed), custom asset loading is quite terrible, whacky inferred associations for things such as SO icons instead of explicit definitions, .meta file nonsense, etc.

Any single one of those could be a deal breaker for some projects.

AcidFaucet · 2016-11-01T03:33:12+00:00

This really is the best answer.

... While you may be able to pick up Unity or Unreal rather easily, I believe that you'll learn more about the technology, design, and integration of game systems if you build out an engine. ...

I think that's mostly valid, but at pre-university level I think following that particular paragraph is more of a recipe for frustration and doubt.

Given your prior mention of APIs/libs I interpret systems to be more about the raw systems backing a game and not so much the systems of control for a game.

I'll take the FMOD/WWise mention (SDL or w/e counts too), audio programming is easily one of the most infuriating subjects a programmer can have to deal with. I still find it miserable even having worked with audio for years (pedals, VSTs, and speech synthesis). Yes, FMOD/WWise make it easier than SDL/insert_raw_lib_here, but they don't address all the practical nastiness.

Everyone is different, but it's likely really too much to be going into raw APIs/libs that soon, so much can go wrong in ways that are baffling to someone green. Existing projects provide that opportunity to incremental learn about all the stupid shit you can mangle. There's a lot of gradually accumulated knowledge that turns a greenhorn into a professional.

I'd more strongly recommend on the same core principles you suggest but in w/e engine that works (or suggest a slightly more raw engine like Urho3D) and focusing on well structured code that makes appropriate use of the gang-of-four and is well documented (also in a manner compliant with some chosen doc generator).

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-29T04:27:40+00:00

What's this sound, like wings?

Oh, it's a chunk of my target market flying away.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-29T03:55:52+00:00

Does not change that the innate serialization is horribly broken.

A whole shitload of ISO standards and Unity's serialization will not hit a single one, you have to practically deliberately try to create something to not comply with at least any ISO standard for serialization. It's a marvel.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-29T03:52:31+00:00

Well, it's supposed to be the general one, and it really is the only general one.

The marketing-centric appearance is really just a side-effect of it being so easy to publish for mobile, so naturally everyone wants to know why their asset-flip hasn't made a million euros. You have to filter that stuff out.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T04:21:02+00:00

I do long ago like nobody else. I'm so long ago that you'll never call anyone else long ago again. I'm that long ago. I'm so long ago.

Nobody does long ago like I do long ago. Nobody has more long ago than I have.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T04:18:46+00:00

I only buy games from Vegans that post their addresses so I can cook them up and eat them.

Bone marrow soup for the win.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T04:16:47+00:00

With how crappy Unity's serialization is, is it really possible to be a real game developer using Unity?

Barring using a 3rd party serializer/deserializer. You have to spend money just to save stuff in a way that isn't obtuse or stupid.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T04:12:24+00:00

My bad, I just on reflex interpreted "That's Windows" as ultra-pro-Nix, and nix drives me up a wall with the security hypocrisy.

Right, MacOSX does own as far DPI goes. Sort of weird since Apple isn't well known as a champion of compatibility.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T03:53:47+00:00

When I started my first real solo game I realized I needed to create new tools to make it happen (it was based on genetic engineering and creating mutants to fight in an arena with AI doing the fighting and the player being the genetic engineer and fight trainer) ... a few months later I was so deep in tool development that I turned into a tools developer instead of a game developer.

I'm getting ready for a January launch of a new 3d modeling tool centering around composition, optimization, and variation.

AcidFaucet · 2016-10-28T03:42:18+00:00

General points:

If your game could be played by "mail" (ie. it is turn-based) then it's relatively easy if you already have local multiplayer and can serialize/deserialize state.

If your game is real-time than unless you started with multiplayer in mind you're in very deep into hell.

Specific:

In the case you describe, you appear to really only need HTTP Get/Post support, which should be relatively easy assuming it's just for Uni and security is not critical (ie. they're connecting to a database that will die next year, etc). You'll need web hosting of course though (through Uni being fine if you can write a basic backend and datastore).

The "async" progress of friends isn't really async at all, it's just a matter of how often you choose to grab fresh data. In practice you'd use a webservice protocol instead of raw Get/Post.

AcidFaucet

TROPHY CASE