Game Development Megathread

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Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

mewse posted:

500 - Internal Server Error

Yep, this is still the case - I'm sure it'll let up in a few hours, though. In any case, it'll be nice to be able to kick test builds out. The original plan was to wait for mobile testing until toward the end, maybe even try and do a first push within the 30 day trial, etc. It'll be much better to be testing throughout dev.

Might have a greybox wang tile thingy going on my iPad before the end of the week, woo! :neckbeard:

EDIT: VV Note, we have no such noble reason. I'm just being a massive cheap rear end and trying to do the whole lean startup thing. Penchin' pennies, hoohah! :black101:

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 5, 2012

# ? Mar 5, 2012 21:01

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# ? May 25, 2024 01:45

ambushsabre: Sep 1, 2009; It's...it's not shutting down!

Shalinor posted:

Yep, this is still the case - I'm sure it'll let up in a few hours, though. In any case, it'll be nice to be able to kick test builds out. The original plan was to wait for mobile testing until toward the end, maybe even try and do a first push within the 30 day trial, etc. It'll be much better to be testing throughout dev.

Might have a greybox wang tile thingy going on my iPad before the end of the week, woo!

Agreed: my biggest problem with using Unity for mobile dev was that I would eventually have to shell out for the license + the apple tax. Sorry, but that's too much for me as a lone kid making stupid games. This certainly solved the problem though!

# ? Mar 5, 2012 21:08

Internet Janitor: May 17, 2008; "That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."

I've been tinkering with a new compiler that targets my VM- this time, a systems programming language with a superficial resemblance to C that I call Stroyent. Here's a few little samples:

code:

include <Print>;

func main() {
	print("Mandatory Greeting!\n");
}

// Calculate a few values of the
// Ackermann function recursively.
func ack(m, n) {
	if (m = 0) { return n+1; }
	if (n = 0) { return ack(m-1, 1); }
	return ack(m-1, ack(m, n-1));
}

// Swap the data in two addresses.
func swap(a, b) {
	var t := *a;
	*a    := *b;
	*b    := t;
}

I just got to the point where I can make graphical things in this language, so I wrote one of those "falling ball" games to put all my library routines through their paces. The resulting code isn't nearly as pretty as Forth (or as fast as the equivalent Forth would probably be), but it compiles and runs!

Source. (Stroyent)

# ? Mar 5, 2012 22:23

ambushsabre: Sep 1, 2009; It's...it's not shutting down!

In unity, is there any way to apply a texture and then like stretch an cube, then have the texture tile instead of stretch with it? AKA instead of having the 32x32 texture skew, simply wait 32 pixels and then add a new block for another 32 and so on.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 04:11

Luigi Thirty: Apr 30, 2006; Emergency confection port.

Unity physics are so fun to screw with. Can't wait to see how it performs on iOS.

I'm filling up my Macbook's hard drive with recreations of 9/11 instead of usable work though. Am I going to hell? :ohdear:

# ? Mar 6, 2012 07:50

Red Mike: Jul 11, 2011

Is XNA going 360 or Windows Phone only soon? The main site definitely makes it seem that way. In which case, what's a good alternative for 3D game development in C#?

# ? Mar 6, 2012 10:29

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

Red Mike posted:

Is XNA going 360 or Windows Phone only soon? The main site definitely makes it seem that way. In which case, what's a good alternative for 3D game development in C#?

I haven't heard anything about it. I do know that the 360 and winphone are their main selling points for XNA to the point that when you download the VS bundle with XNA, it's called the windows phone dev kit or something. Aside from that, I haven't had any trouble with PC development or seen anyone raising flags about them stopping the PC side of development.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 14:09

Red Mike: Jul 11, 2011

poemdexter posted:

I haven't heard anything about it. I do know that the 360 and winphone are their main selling points for XNA to the point that when you download the VS bundle with XNA, it's called the windows phone dev kit or something. Aside from that, I haven't had any trouble with PC development or seen anyone raising flags about them stopping the PC side of development.

So I'm supposed to be downloading the windows phone dev kit then, since I can't really find any proper info on windows development on the site. Thanks.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 14:18

Orzo: Sep 3, 2004; IT! IT is confusing! Say your goddamn pronouns!

Red Mike posted:

Is XNA going 360 or Windows Phone only soon? The main site definitely makes it seem that way. In which case, what's a good alternative for 3D game development in C#?

SlimDX.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 15:44

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

Red Mike posted:

So I'm supposed to be downloading the windows phone dev kit then, since I can't really find any proper info on windows development on the site. Thanks.

Correct. I think since they are also adding in the windows phone emulator, they just went ahead and switched the name. You can actually define what you want installed when you actually run it first time so I wouldn't worry.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 15:46

PDP-1: Oct 12, 2004; It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Red Mike posted:

So I'm supposed to be downloading the windows phone dev kit then, since I can't really find any proper info on windows development on the site. Thanks.

You're downloading the right thing, it's just a case of terrible marketing on Microsoft's part.

XNA 4.0 came out at the same time Windows Phone 7 was launching, and back then the marketing folks couldn't stop themselves from stamping WINDOWS 7 PHONE on every flat surface they could find. As a result you now get to download the Windows 7 Phone Dev Kit to make Xbox or Windows games. :downs:

The whole history of XNA has been plagued with this kind of thing, and it's a real shame. When it first came out it was pushed as the Xbox dev tool and as a result it's locked into DX9 and has some funky restrictions on what you can do with vertex buffers because everything has to conform to the Xbox architecture. Now it's getting pushed as the WinPhone7 dev kit and has the wrong name and confusingly named HiDef and Reach graphics profiles.

If XNA had been set up as a gamedev kit in C# that let you choose your own target platform it would have been great. As it stands now, you can't use the full capabilities of a desktop machine, there is no reason to develop for Xbox because of their terrible indie marketing, and WinPhone7 has sold about three units worldwide. It's mainly useful as a prototyping tool at this point if you already know C#.

In summary, the Microsoft marketing team ruined XNA and are a bunch of Apple plants hellbent on destroying Redmond.

PDP-1 fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 6, 2012

# ? Mar 6, 2012 16:11

Shameproof: Mar 23, 2011

XNA is the worst way to develop a video game except for all the others.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 19:08

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

Shameproof posted:

XNA is the worst way to develop a video game except for all the others.

XNA for video game development is the worst and everything else for video game development is the worst which makes developing video games the worst which of course implies games are the worst.

In conclusion,

# ? Mar 6, 2012 19:22

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Shameproof posted:

XNA is the worst way to develop a video game except for all the others.

XNA is kinda cool in that it gets you into Dream Build Play. Some notable indie success stories have started there.

That aside... :effort:

# ? Mar 6, 2012 19:38

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

Shalinor posted:

XNA is kinda cool in that it gets you into Dream Build Play. Some notable indie success stories have started there.

That aside...

I haven't used anything besides XNA except for pygame which barely counts. I tried Unity for a single night but was bombarded with so much information at once, it was hard to get going.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 19:51

GROVER CURES HOUSE: Aug 26, 2007; Go on...

XNA makes it easy to put two dimensional textures on the screen. I have yet to find another upside to using it.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 20:46

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Magicka was made in XNA, which at least proves that it has a pretty high capability ceiling, but it sounds like it was pretty painful.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 20:57

GROVER CURES HOUSE: Aug 26, 2007; Go on...

OneEightHundred posted:

Magicka was made in XNA, which at least proves that it has a pretty high capability ceiling, but it sounds like it was pretty painful.

Oh, you can do all sorts of things with XNA. I just can't think of a reason for using XNA over anything else, unless you literally had no other choice.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:05

TJChap2840: Sep 24, 2009

Serious question:

If XNA is terrible, what is recommended after you remove Unity, Python, and C++ from the picture.

I honestly think Unity is more trouble then its worth but I am also very game development dumb.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:14

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

TJChap2840 posted:

If XNA is terrible, what is recommended after you remove Unity, Python, and C++ from the picture.

For what kind of game and on what platform? Also it's bizarre to lump Unity, Python, and C++ all into the same bucket.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:16

Mata: Dec 23, 2003

Broken Knees Club posted:

Oh, you can do all sorts of things with XNA. I just can't think of a reason for using XNA over anything else, unless you literally had no other choice.

I think XNA is pretty swell, C# is an easy language and Visual Studio is really good. I'm making a PC game with it and haven't run into any issues yet!

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:20

TJChap2840: Sep 24, 2009

devilmouse posted:

For what kind of game and on what platform? Also it's bizarre to lump Unity, Python, and C++ all into the same bucket.

Obviously just speaking for myself here, but I don't want to learn Python, I don't want to use C++ and I don't like Unity.

So, generally speaking, what does that leave? I like XNA because it is easy to pick up and fits into elements I am really comfortable with (ie Visual Studio, C#, Windows etc)

I just want to be clear that I am not trying to be snide. I am curious and open to advice from much more experienced individuals.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:26

Internet Janitor: May 17, 2008; "That isn't the appropriate trash receptacle."

Java, especially with one of the OpenGL bindings, can be a practical choice, although it isn't the same degree of out-of-the-box magic as XNA. On the plus side it's fairly easy to get running on all three desktop operating systems and presumably an Android port wouldn't be too painful. Java has tons of great libraries for everything.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:33

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Discounting XNA, Unity, and C++ kind of cuts you off pretty dramatically, but other fun things you could play with:

UDK - It's more powerful than Unity but far less documented! But it's Unreal so that's awesome! And UnrealScript is generally pretty good. But support? HA! And you can't actually publish on a shoestring budget.

Flash (ActionScript 3) - Grab Flixel and go to town being "retro". AS is ECMAscript so it'll look familiar and there are a ton of libs for doing all of the common stuff. Plus, you can put it on the web!

HaXe - Write once, deploy anywhere! Sure, the debugger is basically horrible and you'll be writing a bunch of lower-level stuff, but you can do some really neat language tricks (cross-compiling to ObjC to target iOS and Flash at the same time!) if that has any appeal.

Edit: Also I'm chuckling over the fact that just a few years ago, I'd have told you to suck it up and learn C++/OGL. How times have changed! Barriers be damned!

devilmouse fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Mar 6, 2012

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:46

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

EDIT: ^^^ Man, no kidding. If you told my 10-years-ago-self that in just a decade, I'd be touting the wonders of Flixel and Unity 3D and UDK, and arguing against bothering with low-level C++? I think I might have punched the speaker square in the nose. Ah, how age mellows programmers...

TJChap2840 posted:

Serious question:

If XNA is terrible, what is recommended after you remove Unity, Python, and C++ from the picture.

I honestly think Unity is more trouble then its worth but I am also very game development dumb.

Um, you removed the 3 of the best languages for game development, more or less, but ok.

Let's see. UDK would be recommended up there with Unity, but I feel like you didn't mention it only because you hadn't thought to exclude it. Flash/Flixel is quite awesome. There's Stencyl, if you want to fiddle at a really high level.

Given your specified limits, if you want to work in a not-very-high-level language, then yeah, XNA's probably your best bet. I just can't really recommend it, given the limitations and presence of better toolsets.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Mar 6, 2012

# ? Mar 6, 2012 21:54

Shameproof: Mar 23, 2011

I think people misunderstood me. I personally have found XNA to be the best way to make games, making games is just hard, period.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 22:05

PDP-1: Oct 12, 2004; It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

TJChap2840 posted:

Obviously just speaking for myself here, but I don't want to learn Python, I don't want to use C++ and I don't like Unity.

So, generally speaking, what does that leave? I like XNA because it is easy to pick up and fits into elements I am really comfortable with (ie Visual Studio, C#, Windows etc)

I just want to be clear that I am not trying to be snide. I am curious and open to advice from much more experienced individuals.

I'm in pretty much the same spot as you, and it looks like the choices are XNA or C#/SlimDx.

XNA is actually pretty nice to work with overall and you can get a lot done using their built-in components. My main complaint is that in trying to span phone/Xbox/PC they had to make a lot of compromises with the graphics API so now if I want to do something with DirectX 10 shaders I can't because an Xbox that I will never run my game on cant handle DX10. There is also the issue that very few people have the XNA libraries installed, so distributing a game is a shade more complicated and with indie games every hurdle you place between your user and immediate gratification loses you 50% of your audience.

SlimDX gets around the graphics limitations, but you still have an external library to lug around and it is a lot more work to do simple things like getting a window up on the screen. You also lose a ton of XNA toys like content importers and their nifty helper classes.

With that in mind, if all you want to do is putter around for your own amusement while using a language/IDE combo that you're comfortable with XNA is great.

Someday Ballmer will stop screening my phone calls and we'll get managed DirectX back, the good bits of XNA rolled into the standard .NET libraries, and I'll be the happiest nerd on earth.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 22:05

Orzo: Sep 3, 2004; IT! IT is confusing! Say your goddamn pronouns!

PDP-1 posted:

I'm in pretty much the same spot as you, and it looks like the choices are XNA or C#/SlimDx.

SlimDX gets around the graphics limitations, but you still have an external library to lug around and it is a lot more work to do simple things like getting a window up on the screen.

It's not so bad if you have the internet. Boilerplate code for SlimDX is pretty easy to find and it really isn't that much work to get a window to show up. Sure, it's a little more than creating a form and deriving from Game or whatever XNA uses, but in the end both approaches are going to be like less than 1% of the actual work you put into any game worth caring about.

# ? Mar 6, 2012 22:11

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Shalinor posted:

If you told my 10-years-ago-self that in just a decade, I'd be touting the wonders of Flixel and Unity 3D and UDK, and arguing against bothering with low-level C++? I think I might have punched the speaker square in the nose.

I wouldn't have dreamed that Epic would have released a free version of UE, but I'm not actually that shocked by the lack of good low-end C++ options. That much has pretty much been the territory of open source engines, which have been awful starting with Crystal Space (1997) and continuing through today because the developers are all more interested in making stuff that's fun to develop (i.e. renderer features) than useful (i.e. tools, cohesive integration, scripting, networking).

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Mar 6, 2012

# ? Mar 6, 2012 22:56

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

OneEightHundred posted:

I wouldn't have dreamed that Epic would have released a free version of UE, but I'm not actually that shocked by the lack of good low-end C++ options. That much has pretty much been the territory of open source engines, which have been awful starting with Crystal Space (1997) and continuing through today because the developers are all more interested in making stuff that's fun to develop (i.e. renderer features) than useful (i.e. tools, cohesive integration, scripting, networking).

Man, I used Crystal Space. It was awful :3:

Anyone remember Nebula Device? We made a pretty big prototype in Nebula Device 2, and I still think it was one of the best. Of course, it was maintained by code drops from a commercial studio, so that's probably why.

OGRE wasn't bad, though - probably the best, all told. (and it's one of the few still alive, tellingly)

# ? Mar 6, 2012 23:08

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Shalinor posted:

Of course, it was maintained by code drops from a commercial studio, so that's probably why.

Being used to make an actual game is also a huge factor.

I think the Doom 3 base could be made into a compelling choice as well, it's a very capable engine, but it would take an amount of work that I don't know if anyone is willing to spend at the moment. I abandoned my own efforts because I'd have to redo more of my current project than I'd save by switching and it's a LOT less modular than Quake 3 was.

That said, that doesn't fix the initial complaint, which is basically that the list of good open source engines maintained on their own and not Id's latest charitable donation is microscopic.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Mar 7, 2012

# ? Mar 7, 2012 00:50

a lovely poster: Aug 5, 2011; by Pipski

TJChap2840 posted:

Serious question:

If XNA is terrible, what is recommended after you remove Unity, Python, and C++ from the picture.

I honestly think Unity is more trouble then its worth but I am also very game development dumb.

I'm no expert by any means but I have worked with a few different game engines and the most recent one I've found has been very easy to work with. Major disclaimer, it's only 2D. That being said, if you want to make games quickly and easily this has been by far the best experience I've had. Granted, that might just be because I'm understanding the creation of games a lot more than I did when I first started.

I hated XNA, but found python pretty agreeable (I never used pygame but I did work a little with libtcod)

a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Mar 7, 2012

# ? Mar 7, 2012 04:51

captain_g: Aug 24, 2007

Internet Janitor posted:

Java, especially with one of the OpenGL bindings, can be a practical choice, although it isn't the same degree of out-of-the-box magic as XNA. On the plus side it's fairly easy to get running on all three desktop operating systems and presumably an Android port wouldn't be too painful. Java has tons of great libraries for everything.

Java is awesome from the library point of view and it also has nice community (https://www.javagaming.org). I guess the main selling point of XNA is that it works out of the box from Microsoft / Visual Studio impaired point of view.

If I had not invested so much in C# I'd probably start a Slick project. There are some very nice libraries for it and it is integrable with some nice GUI systems. Of course you can say goodbye to iPad / iPhone development.

I haven't tried XNA myself, but judging from its API it seems like you'd hit productivity ceiling pretty fast, unless you end up using an engine or implement the features yourself.

Thankfully the C# world has moved towards better libraries, but still every now and then a library pop up with retarded proprietary licenses mostly due to poor understanding of proper open source licenses such as BSD, MIT or LGPL. This is all fine until the author disappears... Pisses me off so much...

captain_g fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Mar 7, 2012

# ? Mar 7, 2012 06:18

RoboCicero: Oct 22, 2009; "I'm sick and tired of reading these posts!"

I'm doing a small assignment in XNA at the moment for one of my classes, but I'm running into an issue where I'm building some basic level geometry with the ubiquitous gray cube texture. Right now I'm writing some shaders in HLSL to provide the basic amenities of life, but I'm running into a minor issue where I don't have tangents/bitangents for the cube texture -- there's an option in XNA to generate these automatically, but it requires UV coordinates to work.

I was skirting the UV coordinate issue by passing them in personally, but this is a bit more of a issue. I tried opening the cube up in blender so I could set some basic values but was quickly :supaburn:

by the editor and the help website. This seems like a completely ridiculous problem, but anyone have any suggestions? Worst comes to worst should I just hand-build a cube?

# ? Mar 7, 2012 10:23

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

RoboCicero posted:

I was skirting the UV coordinate issue by passing them in personally, but this is a bit more of a issue. I tried opening the cube up in blender so I could set some basic values but was quickly by the editor and the help website. This seems like a completely ridiculous problem, but anyone have any suggestions? Worst comes to worst should I just hand-build a cube?

Just hand build a cube in code. The UV coordinates for it are easy, just work per-face, and one end gets 0 and the other gets 1.

I mean if you had Maya, and understood its basic operations, and etc etc, sure, it would be a fast export - but in the time it would take you to figure all that out, you could have opened a .cpp file, started referencing an array of floats, and been done with your cube 20 times over.

Besides, at some point you'll be really glad you've got code that can output simple test geoms. It's super handy to be able to call a function and have a cube/sphere/cylinder/etc spit back at you.

# ? Mar 7, 2012 16:46

Shameproof: Mar 23, 2011

There's a good time and place to learn some basic 3d modelling, but definitely not while you are stressed by a school deadline

# ? Mar 7, 2012 19:26

RoboCicero: Oct 22, 2009; "I'm sick and tired of reading these posts!"

Yeah, that's almost certainly the best method. I was blinded by the fact I had a cube/cone model lying around from another exercise, but I'll probably save on a lot of time and stress if I can specify world coordinates and have a cube pop into space there, especially since this is going to be mostly procedurally generated.

# ? Mar 7, 2012 20:47

Contero: Mar 28, 2004

Shalinor posted:

EDIT: ^^^ Man, no kidding. If you told my 10-years-ago-self that in just a decade, I'd be touting the wonders of Flixel and Unity 3D and UDK, and arguing against bothering with low-level C++? I think I might have punched the speaker square in the nose. Ah, how age mellows programmers...

I can't help but write everything as C++ and low level stuff. I recently ditched SDL and just started mucking around in win32 calls myself. Is there something wrong with me? :gonk:

# ? Mar 7, 2012 20:59

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

Ugh, I loving hate when something simple ends up taking way longer than it should. I am using Clan Lib which includes a particle system called Linear Particle. I spent quite a long time reading the source for Linear Particle and couldn't see an easy way to simply "scroll" the entire particle system. Not change the source of the particle emitter mind you, just shift all particles for normal game scrolling. So I went from this one line to render the particle system:

code:

L_DrawParticle(gc,emitter);

To this:

code:

// For some reason the blend mode is not set correctly if we use emitter->draw, so we need to set it now.
CL_BlendMode blend;
blend.set_blend_function(cl_blend_src_alpha, cl_blend_one, cl_blend_src_alpha, cl_blend_one);
gc.set_blend_mode(blend);
	
// Now we can actually draw
emitter->draw(gc,screenX-posX,screenY-posY);

// And lastly we have to return the blend mode to normal
CL_BlendMode default_blend_mode;
gc.set_blend_mode(default_blend_mode);

Edit: It's entirely possible that I'm an idiot and this can be done in a much easier way.

# ? Mar 7, 2012 21:00

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# ? May 25, 2024 01:45

Polio Vax Scene: Apr 5, 2009

a lovely poster posted:

I'm no expert by any means but I have worked with a few different game engines and the most recent one I've found has been very easy to work with. Major disclaimer, it's only 2D. That being said, if you want to make games quickly and easily this has been by far the best experience I've had. Granted, that might just be because I'm understanding the creation of games a lot more than I did when I first started.

Okay I gotta say I've been messing around with this and it's pretty rad but man is the userbase small/dead.

# ? Mar 7, 2012 23:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Game Development Megathread

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