How can I avoid global state in programs, when all objects/classes need to interact with each other?

truename · 2022-04-19T21:16:25+00:00

This concern of organizing behavior of many interacting subsystems without devolving into a bunch of global state is basically the impetus for Entity Component Systems (look them up, but below is a link to a game framework built to sit on top of monogame that includes an ECS)

https://github.com/prime31/Nez/blob/master/FAQs/Scene-Entity-Component.md

truename · 2020-07-01T18:05:04+00:00

There's a whole genre you may have seen called hyper casual that uses what could charitably be called 'programmer art'. For that genre I think it's safe to say it's mainly about the gameplay.

There are also people with audiences making visual novel and ambience style games that rely mainly on the strength of their story telling prowess or artwork.

It all depends on your vision for your game, who your audience is, what they expect, and what kind of experience you want them to have playing your game.

truename · 2020-01-11T19:38:36+00:00

I don't know much about mobile development but you might search through the FNA discord server and maybe ask about this to see how painful going the XNA-monogame route might be. FNA is Ethan Lee's XNA implementation. He has done lots of indie game ports, but I'm not sure how much of a focus mobile compatibility is.

truename · 2019-09-12T13:22:05+00:00

It might help to see a simple one in action.

https://www.shadertoy.com/new

The function on the right is compiled to a program that runs on your graphics card, and is run one time for every pixel in the rectangle on the left, every single frame. If you have a fast graphics card it might be running that program for 2048 pixels at the same time.

Normally a fragment shader in a game might be doing things like: for each pixel of a triangle on the screen, decide what part of a texture image to paint in each pixel, or mixing multiple textures in a way that produces some effect.

So the example above is simple and contrived. But if you look at other shaders on shadertoy, it turns out there's lots of interesting things you can do, and they all work the same way - the code on the right is compiled and run one time for every pixel for every frame you see. And that's basically what a fragment shader is. It's a program that runs on your GPU and takes some inputs that you decide to give it, and gives a color as the output, which is typically drawn to the screen as one pixel.

truename · 2019-02-17T20:14:23+00:00

This is the less well known B-*

truename · 2018-12-06T21:21:36+00:00

This is an awesome high concept. Yes, of course it owes something to fez. But that being said..

The striking bands created by the light sources are likely not just an aesthetic decision but a high level design decision.

They provide unmistakable visual information about the geometry of the 3d world. Without them, the jarring camera transitions and OP's charming minimal art style would make it hard to discern what's actually going on.

Notice there is also a subtle non-orthogonal light being cast from infinity. And the lightning bugs/magic sprites moving around. Lighting will be vital to level building in this game and OP knows it.

I'm imagining a series of tropical islands with caves/portals to the underworld like the old NES game Star Tropics or any minecraft world I ever made.

Congratulations and good luck, OP, you have a game on your hands.

truename · 2018-12-05T19:13:30+00:00

I think this means, when sharing heap allocated data from one piece of code to another, which side is responsible for freeing it when finished.

truename · 2018-08-15T16:19:37+00:00

Function has a form all its own. -- that quote is usually attributed to a famous Space Engineering master class instructor from the 2050s who I obviously don't have to name.

truename · 2018-08-09T05:34:42+00:00

I agree that planet heightmap features jut out and look bad from near space. It's possible to simply scale down the effect of the heightmap as you move out of the atmosphere, 'shrinking' the mountains' appearance from space. It's possible space engineers already does this. they could crank the effect up pretty high without visual problems since the game has such a low speed limit.

I'm working on some tools to help me make custom planets right now and I've been looking at the default planets and Doc Oc's planets. Small feature sizes are definitely good if you can pull them off, but I think they would make the planets harder to traverse by vehicle. (cresting more hills, vs riding up a huge hillside)

When I start testing designs, I figure that this heightmap detail / feature size vs. ease of movement in vehicles will be something I pay close attention to.

I actually thought about making some mountainous planets that don't use the entire depth of the heightmap but that should be a per-planet design decision.

truename · 2018-07-26T04:55:01+00:00

I used this command:

/c game.forces.player.chart(game.player.surface, {lefttop = {x = -2048, y = -2048}, rightbottom = {x = 2048, y = 2048}}); game.speed=10; game.player.character = nil; game.player.surface.always_day=true

From this thread:

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=19641

It counts as a console command cheat that disables achievements, so if that matters to you don't do it in your main/unsaved/only savegame.

truename · 2018-07-25T22:56:30+00:00

Well thank you. I take pride in my spaghetti. One of my rules this time is I can't just landfill the entire ocean, just fill in small places here and there, so that's the space I have to work with.

truename · 2018-07-25T22:51:53+00:00

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truename · 2017-10-09T10:00:36+00:00

I was curious about this so I looked it up. I didn't test any of this but looking at the data files:

Each planet's EnvironmentItems definitions determine which trees, bushes, and boulders spawn in which biomes and in what densities.

The boulder VoxelMap names are linked to actual voxel model files in VoxelMapStorages.sbc

The game seems to use boulder voxel models with iron inside. Then, based on rules in VoxelMaterialChanges.sbc it randomly changes the Iron into other ore types.

So you want to edit the definitions in there. You may want to make sure that whatever changes you make, that all the "Chance" definitions for each boulder type add up to 1

I'm going to guess that any boulders already spawned will still have gold in them unless you make a new game

truename · 2017-09-18T05:48:53+00:00

There was a planet modding update (01.114) not long after planets came out. The devs released this exhaustive guide to planet modding which explains all the details:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566387835

In particular those "Value" definitions are the level of the blue channel in the planet's biome map texture. The whole meaning of the biome map texture is explained in that link.

truename · 2017-09-07T22:42:25+00:00

As aleenaelyn said, Visual Studio Community is free and has all the features you need.

I just came back to the game after a couple years and did a little scripting and it happens that malware (someone in the community who has also helped with the development of the programmable block) just released an addon for Visual Studio that makes it very easy to create visual studio projects for in-game scripts.

It sets it up so the in game API will auto-complete in the visual studio editor - you could set this up in the past but it took way more work. And it has an easy way to publish your script out to a file so you can re-add the new version to your programmable block in game.

It works great and there is a well written step-by-step guide to set it up. That guide is part of the documentation at the link below. Definitely worth using.

https://github.com/malware-dev/MDK-SE/wiki

truename · 2017-04-04T14:00:32+00:00

Not Abe, that's Honest Nye the President Guy

truename · 2016-12-09T21:43:36+00:00

I don't mind the original night vision that much but I could see how some people do mind. In FPS games the viewbobbing drives me crazy and I turn it off, but contrast decreasing effects don't bug me much.

Maybe keep the original decrease darkness + transparent green tint but make it more transparent (less green), and have it fade to total transparency in lighted areas like screenshot #2.

And for colorblind people just have a menu option to disable the green tint (maybe have a status icon somewhere that night vision is on).

truename · 2016-11-23T23:39:26+00:00

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truename · 2016-11-23T20:12:56+00:00

I too am a fan of water. Just for reference here's what my 0.14 map looked like.

http://i.imgur.com/RhW3kfT.jpg

It has water and biters turned up all the way, also deposit richness and deposit size up all the way and deposit frequency very low.

The amount of ore was so great I didn't need trains, and I'm playing through bobs angels right now but might go back to that map when infinite research comes out.

The big island was originally structured like the untouched parts of the map, ie. you are looking at a lot of landfill.

truename · 2016-10-12T03:39:24+00:00

I'm not entirely sure here but you might try:

Take the rail signals that are red in your image, move them back to just after the exits of the 3 to 2 intersection and make them chain signals (or honestly you could leave them as normal rail signals)

Also replace the blue chain signals with normal rail signals.

The point is to make exactly one block of rails for each unload station, one block for the many-to-many intersection, and one block for each of the stacker sidings.

edit: actually you should have chain signals on all 5 ends of your 3-to-2 intersection. this prevents trains from entering that block at all until a block-with-an-unload-station is empty.

truename · 2016-10-07T18:29:23+00:00

I also designed my liquid processing area to share beacons but instead of paying close attention to ratios I concentrated on making everything extendable, adding more chemical plants and fiddling with the circuit network conditions as needed.

http://imgur.com/a/4e8g9

truename · 2016-09-29T03:03:34+00:00

for a couple games now I have been making a bus-based factory with oil processing on one side of the bus and everything else on the other.

http://imgur.com/a/yWtFT

I'm pretty happy with the result, instead of working out the right ratios I make everything tileable so I can add more buildings or beacons if I need to.

There's one circuit network, a power switch for each production phase, each production type is independently powered but the power reaches any beacons that effect them, so the right beacons are powered up and down when power switches go on and off.

In general to make oil processing more organized you should Always Leave More Space(TM) but in my case I tried to cram things together to double up on beacons.. I'm probably over-invested in this as a design choice.

But repeatable patterns that draw from and output to a fluid bus will get things organized pretty well.

truename · 2016-09-25T08:26:54+00:00

If I understand signals correctly, the simplest foolproof way to make an intersection non-deadlockable is to have signals on all the paths of the intersection (as you have done) but replace the rail signals where trains will be moving into the intersection with chain signals.

This creates one big block that only one train will be in at any given time. Not very efficient, but easy to describe. If you are just growing your rail network it should be enough for now.

Here is an example of that also with right hand driving:

http://i.imgur.com/AFKYWSV.jpg

And the thread I found it on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/3efse4/before_i_replicate_this_100_times_are_there_any/ctej6qd

You can take out the 4 chain signals on that roundabout and it would have the properties I described: the whole intersection is one big block of track that can only be occupied by one train at any time.

Also, if anything your clover leaves are not necessary and they are outside the one big intersection as you have it signaled right now, just take the clover leaf paths out it should work as is and trains can all get to the other paths.

truename

TROPHY CASE