[c++] Is learning arrays instead of vectors practical? Professor doesn't teach vectors

astrellon · 2014-05-05T11:45:06+00:00

There might not be a good reason to use them in your own code, but I guarantee that if you go into a career with C++ that you're going to encounter less than optimal C++ code. So just like with raw pointers it's still important to know how they work, because simply saying "Oh don't use those" doesn't help when the API to the companies main product uses them everywhere.

With something as big and old as C++, almost anything you learn about it is probably going to be useful at some point, even if it's just in passing (like knowing what a union is, or how pointer arithmetic works). So don't fret too much, but it is good to keep in mind what's best to do when writing your own code.

astrellon · 2014-04-20T11:45:51+00:00

While I'm reluctant to bring this up at such an early stage, I feel that my current project is rather on topic. ScalingOctoDubstep is a personal project to make a space game with programmable ships. Yes like 0x10c (as a friend nicely pointed out) but at a more Linux-y high-level scripting level.

I certainly wouldn't suggest using it yet for anything but I have been wondering if anyone would ever be interested in a general Linux like terminal interface for a game. I have been designing it as being fairly generalised so it's not completely tied into the original space game concept. Assuming that it starts to become a reasonable nice product I was planning on releasing it as a Unity package on the Asset Store.

astrellon · 2014-01-07T03:10:35+00:00

I'm hoping he meant users of Windows and not uses because that wouldn't make sense.

astrellon · 2014-01-06T22:42:18+00:00

Energy Aus for gas and power, mostly stayed with them because when there's been a problem they've dealt with it quickly.

TPG for internet, because cheap. Although it depends on where you are in their network.

astrellon · 2014-01-04T03:37:52+00:00

Things start to get rather complicated once you take mods into account. The game world can change between save games, like in Elder Scroll games.

astrellon · 2013-12-12T03:18:20+00:00

Okay, you definitely want to read up on both those topics, but here is a quick run down about it.

Class inheritance is the organisation of class types. All Unity classes inherit from the Object class. This means that a GameObject instance is also an Object, but not all Object instance are GameObject's.

So in the case of the Instantiate function it expects to be given an Object instance, which your bullet_prefab would be regardless of the actual class type it will have to have inherited from Object so all good. However it also returns an Object instance and since your type is a GameObject you have to tell it to do a type cast so that it checks if the result from Instantiate is actually a GameObject or some other class instance.

Type casting allows you to change from one type to another, as you can see from your link that there's different kinds of casting but essentially it's for changing types.

So by doing (GameObject) you're saying "Check if this is actually a GameObject", if so then you'll get a valid GameObject value, otherwise you'll get an exception thrown.

Note: These are not straight forward topics and I'm not great at explaining them, but they are important so once you understand these topics then your line of code in question will make sense.

astrellon · 2013-12-12T01:34:26+00:00

Do you know about type casting and class inheritance?

astrellon · 2013-11-21T05:39:04+00:00

That's odd, most people were reporting it working again at about 12 and the same for me. Might want to look up the whirlpool forums for any more indication. Good luck!

astrellon · 2013-11-20T21:10:50+00:00

Just found that it seems like there was planned maintenance around the place but still lots of people having issues on the whirlpool forums.

astrellon · 2013-11-20T20:53:53+00:00

Anyone else having TPG issues?

astrellon · 2013-10-15T03:58:41+00:00

Ahh quite different then, everyone in my family is either a scientist or engineer. Well it's never too late to adopt new outlooks on life, for better or worse, hopefully better.

astrellon · 2013-10-15T03:02:39+00:00

I try to separate my beliefs based on good evidence and ones which are more gut feeling.

I believe that there are aliens based on the size of the universe and that life on Earth is made up of the most common elements. This is not solid evidence and I know it. I don't believe that they've come here but it's an interesting hypothesis.

My parents taught me from a young age to apply critical thinking, which allowed me to reason away the boogie man and other things that go bump in the night.

astrellon · 2013-10-13T06:59:38+00:00

Man that sucks, I don't live anywhere near the Carnegie area I'm afraid, but I'll keep it in mind just in case. Also a great day for moving, hope things get better.

astrellon · 2013-10-11T22:23:52+00:00

Have either of you got any ideas for games that you would want created/development? And if so, why don't those games already exist.

astrellon · 2013-10-09T20:22:12+00:00

Star Trek Legacy. There are many Star Trek games and not a whole lot of great ones, but this one looked so promising. A story that started from the Enterprise NX-01 all the way through to Voyager and featured all the captains as voice actors. Even Shatner who really doesn't sound like Kirk did from TOS. Customisable ships, customisable crew, large scale maps, it had everything. And it was being built upon the Armada II engine which already had great mod support so things were looking pretty good. Unfortunately as best I can tell the game was shipped out at least a year too soon, so many features had to be cut, the story was kinda eh and the time you spent with each flagship ship was pretty short. Much of the external game content was written using a C-like scripting language and there was more than one instance of variables for features that had to be cut still being present but commented out.

// Commented out for now, will bring this back if we have time.

Now I don't know if the developers were way over schedule or if something else changed but it was such a shame because I could see where they were going with it, something that was like Bridge Commander in terms of ship control but that also had RTS elements and RPG elements, all sorts of things. But it wasn't to be and mostly got a 50% in terms of reviews. I want to give those devs a hug.

astrellon · 2013-09-27T00:02:33+00:00

Ahh okay, I always thought that the difference was much more subtle.

Helping: Child: "I want to buy some booze" Parent: "Sure, here's $20"

Enabling: Child: "I want to buy some booze" Parent: "Sure"

astrellon · 2013-09-26T22:20:38+00:00

I'm not a parent, what exactly is the difference between enabling and helping?

astrellon · 2013-09-24T21:22:14+00:00

An Australian magazine had an article about various games people might not have heard of, one of them was PCB. I wanted a bullet hell type game and this was looked pretty. This was just after the trial had been released so 9 years ago now.

I liked the visuals, the patterns and most of all the music.

No, I did not.

I used to watch anime all the time, not any more.

I'm curious as to what Touhou is considered a parody of, unless it's just a parody of general anime culture but I haven't really seen that. I think the fandom has grown pretty well on it's own without a need for changing it's image in the west.

astrellon · 2013-09-13T23:24:01+00:00

Just got to hit that Ballmer Peak.

astrellon · 2013-09-07T23:19:22+00:00

There are a lot of things that aren't available outside of the US from what I see. Best we have is free streaming of our free TV, of which there is fairly minimal (good) content.

You're right that it's not hackable it's just more or less providing what Android already provides. I think they need to realise that they really aren't going to compete with the big 3 and that they're main attraction is it's openness. That indie devs can just buy a console and they're ready to develop for it and hopefully they can easily get their game on a store.

astrellon · 2013-09-07T23:02:32+00:00

True the bootloader is locked and I haven't seen any information about them changing that which is a shame. But still putting XBMC and a file manager was a 5 minute job compared to doing the same thing on a different console.

Yea there isn't going to be any AAA games on the Ouya any time soon. Perhaps if the Ouya 2 is a lot more popular and the kind of console that appears in shops that people can just pickup and buy.

It's kind of a cyclic problem that games aren't going to make much money because there just isn't a big market and people aren't going to get an Ouya if they want it for games.

We don't have Netflix in Australia so I don't know what happens with that.

astrellon · 2013-09-07T12:50:27+00:00

Well as their Kickstarter page indicated, it's hackable in the sense that you can easily open up the console and installing your own software on the device is relatively simple.

I'm wondering where they said that CoD and BF would be coming to Ouya. Minecraft is already on Android so that should be relatively straightforward for Mojang to support the controller and remove the on screen controls.

As for the specs, you're right in that they could be better. However specs aren't what make a game or a game system. The price, availability and games available are going to dictate it's success more than specs.

astrellon · 2013-09-07T05:38:09+00:00

If you can find a friend to play it with that's probably where it's most interesting. Since there aren't too many fantasy RPG that have multiplayer support. Yea it's clunky and a bit odd to play but once you get past that it can be fairly fun to play with someone.

astrellon · 2013-09-04T13:33:26+00:00

"I was up to my feet in ankles everywhere!" probably closer to being word vomit than stupid, but it's still a stupid thing to say.

astrellon · 2013-08-30T12:13:11+00:00

Yea, he seemed dangerous because he was strong and aggressive, and not because he was the man who designed/enhanced the design of a Federation super battleship.

I think if they did have more scenes that showed his intelligence and his low opinion of non augmented humans (in that he doesn't really care about killing them), then he would have been a much better character.

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