Post screenshots of stuff you're working on!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Post screenshots of stuff you're working on!

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netcat: Apr 29, 2008

Marsol0 posted:

I'm working on a Roguelike.

I also started working on a small roguelike a couple of days ago, and I'm quite liking how it is turning out so far. The dungeons are OK if a bit predictable, but I plan to have several dungeon types.

No line of sight:

Line of sight:

The "renderer" is fairly generic so I can port it to windows or make a tile version easy, if I wanted to.

# ? Jan 21, 2009 18:07

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# ? May 8, 2024 16:48

csammis: Aug 26, 2003; Mental Institution

Last night I made a Pidgin plugin for Windows that sets your account statuses to Away when the workstation is locked (and brings them back to Available when it's unlocked). I know for sure that it works with AIM, GTalk, and Sametime accounts, Pidgin 2.5.2 and up.

Binary and source here

# ? Jan 22, 2009 16:31

wlievens: Nov 26, 2006

netcat posted:

I also started working on a small roguelike a couple of days ago, and I'm quite liking how it is turning out so far. The dungeons are OK if a bit predictable, but I plan to have several dungeon types.

No line of sight:

Line of sight:

The "renderer" is fairly generic so I can port it to windows or make a tile version easy, if I wanted to.

The roguelike wiki contains a very simple and very effective algorithm for generating caves, using Cellular Automata. And in some personal experiments, I've noticed that you can even use Perlin Noise to create cave-like dungeons. That way you won't even have to store a map matrix, and your cave map can be as large as you want.

# ? Jan 22, 2009 17:54

Marsol0: Jun 6, 2004; No avatar. I just saved you some load time. You're welcome.

netcat posted:

A better Roguelike than you!

Oh.

I've been working on this for a while and I suck.

I'll still play with it though.

Edit: What happens is that I get discouraged and then stop for a day or so. I'm working on my motivation problems.

# ? Jan 22, 2009 23:46

LOLLERZ: Dec 9, 2003; ASK ME ABOUT SPAMMING THE REPORT FORUM TO PROTECT ~MY WIFE'S~ OKCUPID PERSONALS ANALYSIS SA-MART THREAD. DO IT. ALL THE TIME. CONSTANTLY. IF SHE DOESN'T HAVE THE THREAD, SHE'LL WANT TO TALK TO ME!

PixPlz - an app that lets you pick which of two women are sexier, vote on them, and generally look at pictures of girls.

Click here for the full 1320x852 image.
I hate Google's terrible ad targeting. Race cars and S.W.A.T. Assault :psyduck:

, but I don't really know how to help it target on a site with no words on it.

Also if anyone has advice on layout or features, please let me know.

# ? Jan 23, 2009 04:31

netcat: Apr 29, 2008

wlievens posted:

The roguelike wiki contains a very simple and very effective algorithm for generating caves, using Cellular Automata. And in some personal experiments, I've noticed that you can even use Perlin Noise to create cave-like dungeons. That way you won't even have to store a map matrix, and your cave map can be as large as you want.

Yes, I'll probably use a cellular automata to generate natural caverns. But for now I'll focus on getting creatures, items and so on to get a somewhat playable game before I do more dungeon generation.

# ? Jan 23, 2009 16:38

Matlock: Sep 12, 2004; Childs Play Charity 2011 Total: $1755

LOLLERZ posted:

I hate Google's terrible ad targeting. Race cars and S.W.A.T. Assault , but I don't really know how to help it target on a site with no words on it.

Also if anyone has advice on layout or features, please let me know.

Google adwords doesn't pick up meta tags?

If it doesn't, why not just do what every lazy webdev does and make a block of text at the bottom in the same color as the background.

# ? Jan 23, 2009 17:19

LOLLERZ: Dec 9, 2003; ASK ME ABOUT SPAMMING THE REPORT FORUM TO PROTECT ~MY WIFE'S~ OKCUPID PERSONALS ANALYSIS SA-MART THREAD. DO IT. ALL THE TIME. CONSTANTLY. IF SHE DOESN'T HAVE THE THREAD, SHE'LL WANT TO TALK TO ME!

Matlock posted:

Google adwords doesn't pick up meta tags?

If it doesn't, why not just do what every lazy webdev does and make a block of text at the bottom in the same color as the background.

It doesn't seem to pick up metas. Doesn't the same-color thing count as "cloaking" and get you banned from AdSense?

# ? Jan 23, 2009 18:34

biznatchio: Mar 31, 2001; Buglord

My latest project:

# ? Jan 25, 2009 05:27

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Matlock posted:

Google adwords doesn't pick up meta tags?

All relevant search engines ignore meta tags, thanks to the copious abuse.

No idea, image tags?
vvvv

Mithaldu fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jan 25, 2009

# ? Jan 25, 2009 06:41

LOLLERZ: Dec 9, 2003; ASK ME ABOUT SPAMMING THE REPORT FORUM TO PROTECT ~MY WIFE'S~ OKCUPID PERSONALS ANALYSIS SA-MART THREAD. DO IT. ALL THE TIME. CONSTANTLY. IF SHE DOESN'T HAVE THE THREAD, SHE'LL WANT TO TALK TO ME!

Mithaldu posted:

All relevant search engines ignore meta tags, thanks to the copious abuse.

So how can you target AdSense ads appropriately when there's not really any text to work with?

# ? Jan 25, 2009 10:05

go play outside Skyler: Nov 7, 2005

LOLLERZ posted:

So how can you target AdSense ads appropriately when there's not really any text to work with?

As said above, try alt tags, titles, anything you can put in an img tag.

# ? Jan 25, 2009 13:20

Supervillin: Feb 6, 2005; Pillbug

biznatchio posted:

My latest project:

That's awesome, I'd love to see that in action when it's done-ish.

# ? Jan 25, 2009 23:09

ColdPie: Jun 9, 2006

biznatchio posted:

My latest project:

If you're just doing this for fun/education, consider creating a binary file format for your maps and a map editor. I had a really fun time creating the map file format for my game, and map editors designed for your game are generally easier to work with than text files. As your project gets more complex, you'll probably need to represent information in ways that text files can't provide anyway.

# ? Jan 26, 2009 01:22

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

ColdPie posted:

As your project gets more complex, you'll probably need to represent information in ways that text files can't provide anyway.

Text is the best file format, you are not making sense :colbert:

# ? Jan 26, 2009 01:29

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

ColdPie posted:

As your project gets more complex, you'll probably need to represent information in ways that text files can't provide anyway.

This is a really stupid thing to say (unless you're talking about image data or something). There are some advantages to using binary formats (e.g. it becomes much easier to use byte-offsets to point to data in the file), but in general the only thing you lose is performance, and if you're loading the entire contents of the file into data structures in memory, most of that is moot anyway.

Real men generate an EBNF grammar for their datafiles anyway. :c00lbert:

Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Jan 26, 2009

# ? Jan 26, 2009 01:31

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

Avenging Dentist posted:

Real men generate an EBNF grammar for their datafiles anyway.

Real men spent three hours trying to decipher boost.spirit error messages before rewriting the parser with libxml instead. :effort:

# ? Jan 26, 2009 01:47

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

Vanadium posted:

Real men spent three hours trying to decipher boost.spirit error messages before rewriting the parser with libxml instead.

Real men use Flex and Bison.

# ? Jan 26, 2009 02:22

biznatchio: Mar 31, 2001; Buglord

Supervillin posted:

That's awesome, I'd love to see that in action when it's done-ish.

I'll be doing binary/source releases when its more complete.

If you're brave enough to handle a completely unprepared, not cleaned up drop of the project, I've zipped it up in its current state and put it up in its current state for download.

The download includes a compiled EXE, but there's no installer to verify you have the required XNA prerequisites, so you're on your own getting that all set up if you want to actually run it. (If you do get it running -- arrows keys to move, space to jump, control to fire, and 'R' to restart the level.)

Also be forewarned the code is nowhere near good yet. This is my first 'serious' XNA project, and I've already learned I have some significant refactoring I'll need to do at some point.

ColdPie posted:

If you're just doing this for fun/education, consider creating a binary file format for your maps and a map editor. I had a really fun time creating the map file format for my game, and map editors designed for your game are generally easier to work with than text files. As your project gets more complex, you'll probably need to represent information in ways that text files can't provide anyway.

I plan on it. Loading in from a text file is just an interim solution that's just a step up from my original interim solution which was 'hard code creation of all the objects needed for my test stage'.

biznatchio fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jan 26, 2009

# ? Jan 26, 2009 02:50

dancavallaro: Sep 10, 2006; My title sucks

Avenging Dentist posted:

Real men use Flex and Bison.

Real men write finite state machines for their parsing needs.

# ? Jan 26, 2009 06:05

POKEMAN SAM: Jul 8, 2004

dancavallaro posted:

Real men write finite state machines for their parsing needs.

Pfft, only if you want to limit yourself with finite states.

# ? Jan 26, 2009 18:02

necrobobsledder: Mar 21, 2005; Lay down your soul to the gods rock 'n roll; Nap Ghost

Real men challenge other CoCers to do something and hope someone gets e-hurt enough that they write it out of pride.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 00:19

ColdPie: Jun 9, 2006

Avenging Dentist posted:

This is a really stupid thing to say (unless you're talking about image data or something). There are some advantages to using binary formats (e.g. it becomes much easier to use byte-offsets to point to data in the file), but in general the only thing you lose is performance, and if you're loading the entire contents of the file into data structures in memory, most of that is moot anyway.

Real men generate an EBNF grammar for their datafiles anyway.

I... can't tell if you're joking or not. Are you implying that doing atoi conversions is faster than just reading file contents straight into memory? And that binary file formats have no benefits over plaintext? How do you represent two things at the same spot (an enemy spawn and a tile, for example)?

Edit: Oh wait, I think I read your performance statement backwards. Non-performance related questions still stand.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 02:12

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

ColdPie posted:

I... can't tell if you're joking or not. Are you implying that doing atoi conversions is faster than just reading file contents straight into memory?

As for performance issues, reading file contents in binary format will probably save you a second or two of load time, unless the file is huge, or contains tons of generated data (e.g. BSP hierarchies).

ColdPie posted:

How do you represent two things at the same spot (an enemy spawn and a tile, for example)?

Boom:

code:

### my big gay tile data, however it's written ###

spawn: { (10,12), "giant_spider" }

Enemy spawn regions are separate from level geometry anyway, and I'm not sure why you'd try to cram them into geometry data in the first place. Note that I'm not saying that biznatchio's file format is good, but rather that it's straightforward to create a textual format with all the same features of a binary format. There are even advantages to binary formats (like the ability to cook in geometry optimizations - but this is rarely an issue in tile-based 2d games), but saying that a binary format can represent data that a textual format can't is just plain stupid.

For biznatchio's particular case, I'd probably just use a paletted image format for the tile information and a separate file with coordinates and handlers for event regions (spawners, doors, buttons, etc).

Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jan 27, 2009

# ? Jan 27, 2009 02:35

Jo: Jan 24, 2005; Soiled Meat

necrobobsledder posted:

Real men challenge other CoCers to do something and hope someone gets e-hurt enough that they write it out of pride.

Real men are a superset of rational men.
Rational men are a superset of natural men.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 04:02

ColdPie: Jun 9, 2006

Avenging Dentist posted:

code:
### my big gay tile data, however it's written ###

spawn: { (10,12), "giant_spider" }
Enemy spawn regions are separate from level geometry anyway, and I'm not sure why you'd try to cram them into geometry data in the first place. Note that I'm not saying that biznatchio's file format is good, but rather that it's straightforward to create a textual format with all the same features of a binary format. There are even advantages to binary formats (like the ability to cook in geometry optimizations - but this is rarely an issue in tile-based 2d games), but saying that a binary format can represent data that a textual format can't is just plain stupid.

For biznatchio's particular case, I'd probably just use a paletted image format for the tile information and a separate file with coordinates and handlers for event regions (spawners, doors, buttons, etc).

I see your points, but that just seems like more work to me than binary file formats would be. I guess parsing through all of that text just seems like a bitch versus just reading regions of data straight into data structures. I don't disagree with you, I just think that reading a binary file is easier than reading a text file. It's not like binary file formats have any downsides, so why not go with what's easier?

In any case, I think you can agree calling a suggestion to use binary file formats in a learning project "stupid" is not really called for.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 05:43

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

ColdPie posted:

I see your points, but that just seems like more work to me than binary file formats would be.

Writing an EBNF grammar is simple and fault-safety falls out of the parser automatically. Portability issues (e.g. endianness) vanish. Parsing languages is a well-known problem and many tools exist to simplify it (e.g. Flex/Bison).

ColdPie posted:

It's not like binary file formats have any downsides, so why not go with what's easier?

Aside from ease of debugging, portability, and better prebuilt tools to simplify the parsing, no, binary files don't have any downsides.

ColdPie posted:

In any case, I think you can agree calling a suggestion to use binary file formats in a learning project "stupid" is not really called for.

Earlier, ColdPie posted:

you'll probably need to represent information in ways that text files can't provide anyway.

This is wrong and represents a grave misunderstanding of the technicalities of data storage. "Stupid", or perhaps "ignorant" is the only word for it.

Further, recommending that someone design their own binary file format for a two-dimensional grid of data with discrete values (let's call them "pixels") instead of using one of many available formats that already do the same thing (lossless images) is misguided at best.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 06:03

ColdPie: Jun 9, 2006

Avenging Dentist posted:

Writing an EBNF grammar is simple and fault-safety falls out of the parser automatically. Portability issues (e.g. endianness) vanish. Parsing languages is a well-known problem and many tools exist to simplify it (e.g. Flex/Bison).

Fair enough. I know very little about grammars and parsers (just did the LSystems thing and that's it), so I'll concede the argument.

Avenging Dentist posted:

This is wrong and represents a grave misunderstanding of the technicalities of data storage. "Stupid", or perhaps "ignorant" is the only word for it.

Christ, tear my head off for making a friendly suggestion and poorly wording my defense. Obviously you can stick a bunch of crap at the end of your text file or make other files and tar them up or whatever, it just seems simpler to me to just write your own binary format and load it straight into memory instead of embedding a full-fledged grammar parser into your executable.

As I said earlier, I don't know much about parsers, so it might be dead simple. I don't know.

Avenging Dentist posted:

Further, recommending that someone design their own binary file format for a two-dimensional grid of data with discrete values (let's call them "pixels") instead of using one of many available formats that already do the same thing (lossless images) is misguided at best.

Er, I was talking about for the map data, not the texture information.
Edit: Wait you're actually talking about using a gif for the map grid? That is definitely more complicated than just writing your own format.

# ? Jan 27, 2009 06:10

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

ColdPie posted:

Er, I was talking about for the map data, not the texture information.

The point is that you could use a (paletted) image format to map pixels and their colors to tile information. Now, not only do you have more options available to you for editing (basically any image editor), but you can rely on mature, well-tested libraries to read your binary data and decode it into something usable by your application. I'd rather not spend my time hand-coding a binary parser and have to worry about things like badly-formatted data (especially not malicious data).

ColdPie posted:

Edit: Wait you're actually talking about using a gif for the map grid? That is definitely more complicated than just writing your own format.

What?

code:

array tile_data
color_map = {red => ground, blue => sky, ... }

img = Image("level.gif");
for(i=0; i<img.width; i++)
    for(j=0; j<img.height; j++)
        tile_data[i][j] = color_map[img.pixel(i,j)];

Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jan 27, 2009

# ? Jan 27, 2009 06:16

terminatusx: Jan 27, 2009; Indie Game Dev and Bringer of the Apocalypse

ColdPie posted:

this is really cool. so am I thinking correctly that your renderer draws the "3D mode" using only the 2D image data? Oh ok, just looked at the images in more detail and I see that you've set up the tiles as like cubes with textures on each side.. Still, very tight.
Keep us updated!

# ? Jan 27, 2009 17:00

biznatchio: Mar 31, 2001; Buglord

ColdPie posted:

it just seems simpler to me to just write your own binary format and load it straight into memory instead of embedding a full-fledged grammar parser into your executable.

Loading a binary blob directly into memory isn't an option with XNA -- at least, not if you want your code to be XBox 360 compatible.

# ? Jan 28, 2009 00:02

Xerol: Jan 13, 2007

Going back to working on Generations.

Right now it just iterates over an entire 2d array, but I'm working on a simplified hashlife implementation (more suited to my needs, which is mainly identifying regions that have changed a lot and/or have unique structures), which involves looking at multiple layers rather than just regions of the current layer.

# ? Jan 28, 2009 19:00

Jo: Jan 24, 2005; Soiled Meat

Roflex posted:

Going back to working on Generations.

Good idea. Impressive execution. (And good choice of music for the video.)

# ? Jan 29, 2009 02:02

Smugdog Millionaire: Sep 14, 2002; 8) Blame Icefrog

Roflex posted:

Going back to working on Generations.

That's really cool.

# ? Jan 29, 2009 17:46

oldyogurt: Aug 14, 2004; Son of a--; Muldoon

Finished a Flash paper doll with image upload support. Also tried to learn some AJAX. I feel like AS3 requires a lot more time to make anything than AS2, even if it is more robust.

Roflex posted:

Going back to working on Generations.

Wow, that's great looking in motion.

oldyogurt fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Apr 4, 2010

# ? Jan 31, 2009 17:28

StickGuy: Dec 9, 2000; We are on an expedicion. Find the moon is our mission.

Avenging Dentist posted:

Writing an EBNF grammar is simple and fault-safety falls out of the parser automatically. Portability issues (e.g. endianness) vanish. Parsing languages is a well-known problem and many tools exist to simplify it (e.g. Flex/Bison).

This is tricky though. It's easy to write a parser in Flex/Bison to accept a given grammar. It's harder to write one that gracefully handles input not accepted by the grammar.

# ? Jan 31, 2009 18:11

tripwire: Nov 19, 2004; _{ghost flow}

Roflex posted:

Going back to working on Generations.

Right now it just iterates over an entire 2d array, but I'm working on a simplified hashlife implementation (more suited to my needs, which is mainly identifying regions that have changed a lot and/or have unique structures), which involves looking at multiple layers rather than just regions of the current layer.

I don't know if this is the way you are doing it already but have you considered trying to get the heavy lifting done by the GPU? It seems like everything in game of life is just a texture anyway so it wouldn't be hard in theory to have the GPU do everything using GLSL or cuda or something.

# ? Jan 31, 2009 18:13

Avenging Dentist: Oct 1, 2005; oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

StickGuy posted:

This is tricky though. It's easy to write a parser in Flex/Bison to accept a given grammar. It's harder to write one that gracefully handles input not accepted by the grammar.

Well, "parse error: gently caress you" is way better than "aaarrghaglabh buffer overflow".

# ? Jan 31, 2009 21:32

Spelter: Jul 18, 2007; Are you puissant?

It's a homebrew port to the Nintendo DS of an old Amiga puzzle game called Deflektor. At the moment it only plays the built-in levels from the original game, but I plan to add the ability for anyone to write their own levels. Also the original game had a few things like enemies that messed up your mirrors, which I haven't implemented yet.

# ? Feb 1, 2009 01:01

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# ? May 8, 2024 16:48

Vanadium: Jan 8, 2005

Avenging Dentist posted:

Well, "parse error: gently caress you" is way better than "aaarrghaglabh buffer overflow".

"type error: <200 pages of template errors>"

# ? Feb 1, 2009 01:04

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Post screenshots of stuff you're working on!

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