What Are You Working On? April 2015

[andrewmcwatters]

[QUOTE=Dr Magnusson;47539797]Yeah, progging with others is cool. I haven't done it in a while though.

I'd love to help you with your project, but I mainly do C++.

Wouldn't mind making some games in C++ though with someone though, if anyone's interested.[/QUOTE]

Grid still uses LÖVE under the hood and as much as I love LÖVE, I feel like it's limiting me in small ways that have large consequences. For instance, my request to the LÖVE developers to extend input to handle touch devices was widely ignored for about a year. I know I have a history of moving slow, but SDL hands those things to you for free and LÖVE is a glorified set of bindings, in my opinion. I was talking to skooch and we wanted to make our own fork of LÖVE or a separate framework all together called Euclid. He talked me out of it due to how much I have going on right now, and my clogged project pipeline has diminished my desire to work on a 3d framework that allows you to make games in Lua.

The idea was to move Grid off of LÖVE and onto Euclid so we could create 2.5d games.

I would love to take up creating Euclid with a small group 2-3 of highly skilled developers that wanted to contribute back to the indie game scene. I want to take on the niche demographic of hobbyist indie game devs and modders, because that's where I feel like I came from.

I like what LÖVE has done for the game dev community, but I feel like its contributions only go so far, and the projects that come forth from it have limited quality because people have to forge their own systems.

On the other end of the spectrum you have Unreal and Unity and I feel like those engines provide a lot upfront and documentation is questionable in my opinion. You also have to go and watch tutorials here and there it seems to get started. That's not how it should be.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/OQR77GX.png[/img]

[SteveS]

[QUOTE=Protocol7;47539946]My worry is being able to control everything I need with cPanel; but that's probably not an issue, since my webserver is still Apache and I'm just a newbie webadmin.[/QUOTE]

cPanel? People still use that steaming pile of shit?

[andrewmcwatters]

If I can get these projects to outclass Polycode, for instance, I'll have felt like I've met my goal. It requires a lot of work, though, and for years I've felt like I've been pushing myself to my limits (at least with time as a big factor.) I don't think I do enough outreach, though, so I guess that's what I get.

[Darwin226]

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47539954]Grid still uses LÖVE under the hood and as much as I love LÖVE, I feel like it's limiting me in small ways that have large consequences. For instance, my request to the LÖVE developers to extend input to handle touch devices was widely ignored for about a year. I know I have a history of moving slow, but SDL hands those things to you for free and LÖVE is a glorified set of bindings, in my opinion. I was talking to skooch and we wanted to make our own fork of LÖVE or a separate framework all together called Euclid. He talked me out of it due to how much I have going on right now, and my clogged project pipeline has diminished my desire to work on a 3d framework that allows you to make games in Lua.

The idea was to move Grid off of LÖVE and onto Euclid so we could create 2.5d games.

I would love to take up creating Euclid with a small group 2-3 of highly skilled developers that wanted to contribute back to the indie game scene. I want to take on the niche demographic of hobbyist indie game devs and modders, because that's where I feel like I came from.

I like what LÖVE has done for the game dev community, but I feel like its contributions only go so far, and the projects that come forth from it have limited quality because people have to forge their own systems.

On the other end of the spectrum you have Unreal and Unity and I feel like those engines provide a lot upfront and documentation is questionable in my opinion. You also have to go and watch tutorials here and there it seems to get started. That's not how it should be.
[/QUOTE]

I feel like both Unity and UE have a very Java-like approach. You are immediately thrown into the whole framework that feels like it's expecting you to make a huge game. Java always felt like every project had to be a million LoC project for the various layers of indirection to finally make sense.
There is no graduality.

I was hoping for Unity to be like a modern version of Flash, but it really didn't turn out that way.
On the other hand, I've recently overheard a couple of 13-14 year olds talking about some toy game they were making in Unity. Maybe I just didn't give it a good try.

[andrewmcwatters]

That's the counteridea: I want to build people up. It's a Goldilocks project. There's too little with LÖVE, and too much with Unity.

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Honestly, I'm doing a bad job with it though, considering I've paid such little attention to tutorials until recently.

[Berkin]

[QUOTE=Fourier;47537748]It's good idea, if you want to make Rant more popular :).

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Btw, random though, Rant could be used for dictionary attack right?[/QUOTE]

Probably. I've never tried it.

[Fourier]

[QUOTE=SteveUK;47539962]cPanel? People still use that steaming pile of shit?[/QUOTE]

I think I got DejaVu reading your post

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

[QUOTE=Berkin;47540045]Probably. I've never tried it.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I think it is doable.

By the way, is Rant your only project? I haven't seen anything else, that is why I am asking

[andrewmcwatters]

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47540035]That's the counteridea: I want to build people up. It's a Goldilocks project. There's too little with LÖVE, and too much with Unity.

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Honestly, I'm doing a bad job with it though, considering I've paid such little attention to tutorials until recently.[/QUOTE]

Oh to follow up, that all being said, I'm going to work my ass off to make it happen.

On a related note, great work pays off. I've been featured on [url=http://expo.getbootstrap.com/]Bootstrap Expo.[/url]

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Tomorrow or next week New Relic will take the stage after me.

[Berkin]

[QUOTE=Fourier;47540050]I think I got DejaVu reading your post

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Yeah I think it is doable.

By the way, is Rant your only project? I haven't seen anything else, that is why I am asking[/QUOTE]

A few of my other bigger projects are Stringes, Victor, and Diffmark. Rant uses them all.

The next logical step is to make a game that uses Rant. [sp]But I'm already on that ;)[/sp]

[Protocol7]

[QUOTE=SteveUK;47539962]cPanel? People still use that steaming pile of shit?[/QUOTE]

Yep! I got a good deal for unlimited webhosting since I used to work for Xenon servers. It seems relatively stable but I might move to a Windows VPS in the future, just to alleviate all of my aforementioned issues.

[SteveS]

[QUOTE=Protocol7;47540356]Yep! I got a good deal for unlimited webhosting since I used to work for Xenon servers. It seems relatively stable but I might move to a Windows VPS in the future, just to alleviate all of my aforementioned issues.[/QUOTE]

Crappy, limited shared web hosting doesn't sound like much of a reward when you can get a low spec (but able) Linux VPS for like $5/m.

[Protocol7]

[QUOTE=SteveUK;47540431]Crappy, limited shared web hosting doesn't sound like much of a reward when you can get a low spec (but able) Linux VPS for like $5/m.[/QUOTE]

The only reason I'm still keeping it is unlimited bandwidth and storage for less than $2 a month. It's served it's purposes until now.

[CapsAdmin]

Started doing a glua wrapper for some reason. I kinda like doing it because I get to test my own framework while doing it. I've already done one with for löve (not finished of course) and it already helped me a lot. Of course they'll probably never be 100% done but it's the journey I like about it.

[VID]http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/244444/ShareX/2015-04/2015-04-16_20-10-41.webm[/VID]
I expose a wrapped engine api, mount gmod and source engine with my filesystem and then include init.lua in a new environment
[url]https://github.com/CapsAdmin/goluwa/blob/b99d6fe7bfc829a4ac99bc95078284cb8d732e7c/.base/lua/libraries/gmod/gmod.lua#L211-L306[/url]

[Quincy.]

Still working on the centurion drinking app (I did add that "drink responsibly" warning :v:)

[img]http://i.imgur.com/lx88P9i.png?1[/img]

Anyone want to give my design some criticism? It looks quite bland right now

[andrewmcwatters]

Change the background to something since there aren't practically any UI elements, and pick and stick to a color scheme. Try to stay away from black & white alone as it's very difficult to create good interface harmony without color hinting of some sort.

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Oh and don't use Roboto, or at least don't use the older version of it. It's a [url=http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-a-four-headed-frankenstein/]frankenfont.[/url] I actively discourage people from using it because it's also hella ugly.

[img]http://typographica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Roboto1.gif[/img]

[Хум]

[QUOTE=Dr Magnusson;47539797]Yeah, progging with others is cool. I haven't done it in a while though.

I'd love to help you with your project, but I mainly do C++.

Wouldn't mind making some games in C++ though with someone though, if anyone's interested.[/QUOTE]

I'd love to, but I'm probably nowhere near your level in C++.

[zenby]

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47539523]I used to have this really cool ménage à trois going on with Jesus and Gregor but ever since The Stanley Parable I don't hear much from Jesus and I'm not sure what Gregor is up to but we agree we should do something.

I secretly want them to be contributors to Planimeter projects like Grid/VA.

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

Since Gran PC is swinging with another crowd now, any Lau hackers are welcome to pair up with me and my shenanigans. :v:

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

I miss those guys.[/QUOTE]

I'd be willing to throw some help your way over the summer, LOVE is my shizz
I want to implement and object framework like Unity's so that I can make stuff easily without getting entangled, but still use LOVE

[Darwin226]

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47540561]
[IMG]http://typographica.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Roboto1.gif[/IMG][/QUOTE]

For such a bland font you would need to be really spot on to claim individual letters are from different fonts, but from what I can tell almost none of them match perfectly.
I think that if you took just Helvetica, you would get almost the same correlation.

I mean, those Univers and FF DIN letters look nowhere close to what they do in Roboto.

[andrewmcwatters]

[QUOTE=ZenX2;47540633]I'd be willing to throw some help your way over the summer, LOVE is my shizz
I want to implement and object framework like Unity's so that I can make stuff easily without getting entangled, but still use LOVE[/QUOTE]

That would be killer.

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

[QUOTE=Darwin226;47540659]For such a bland font you would need to be really spot on to claim individual letters are from different fonts, but from what I can tell almost none of them match perfectly.
I think that if you took just Helvetica, you would get almost the same correlation.

I mean, those Univers and FF DIN letters look nowhere close to what they do in Roboto.[/QUOTE]

They aren't perfect matches; the idea is that portions of the typeface inconsistently borrow from other typefaces. It's definitely a font snob thing, and if you care deeply about typefaces glyph forms, it's not easily missed.

[Aluminum Ken]

Compared to you guys, what I've done seems so little:
Fixed loading screen not being able to work on Alien Swarm engine, and make current view the background image. Now I can add anything to the loading screen now :)
[video=youtube;CjvT4woJJ5c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjvT4woJJ5c[/video]

[proboardslol]

Signal processing!

SO I have ~7 periods of 1200hz for 0 and ~14 periods of 2400hz for 1.

here is a clipping of sample I made in audacity:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/2IdO580.png[/img]

the total clip translates to

0000 0011 1000 0000 0001 1100 0000 0000 1110 0000 0000 0111 0000 0000 0011 1000 

I expected a great amount of noise that I would have to account for when I recorded and played it all back on my tapedeck, but what I found is that if I turn the volume up high enough on playback, it will actually become a pseudo-square wave, and drown out all of the noise along the copper auxiliary cable. Thus, I can simply count the number of times the wave crosses 0, as the good Dr. Fourier (the one from here, not the dead one) suggested I do.

Now here's the sound after being recorded onto my tapedeck, and then played back:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ENNFtBQ.png[/img]

So you can see that there's no noise at all at the right volume! So if I can break up the wave file into 256-sample intervals, and then count the number of times the wave crosses the 0-point, I can translate each sample into 0 or 1! I think the actually transmission will require quite a bit of fucking with the volume knob, but from what I understand that was a real concern back in the 1980s so I'm not so concerned with the actual logistics of it as long as what I'm attempting is feasible in some way.

I'll need to figure out a way to mark the beginning of the first sample; I was thinking some kind of "start transmission" signal, and a throwaway bit, which would be either ultra high or ultra low frequency. Then, to figure out how many samples ahead is the beginning of the first sample, I just do some math: if the throwaway bit is equal to all 256 samples of what is supposed to be the throwaway bit, then I know that I'm right on track; it's its, say, 192 samples of the throway bit + 64 samples of the "start transmission" signal, I know I need to adjust my offset by + 64 samples.

[Dr Magnusson]

[QUOTE=HumbleTH;47540595]I'd love to, but I'm probably nowhere near your level in C++.[/QUOTE]

Honestly, C++ is such a big language that you can be an expert in one area and a complete idiot in others, I know for a fact that there are some things I don't know well enough to meddle with, I'm sure we could both learn from the experience, hit me up on Steam if you want!

[Karmah]

Lets say I have a panel which displays the properties of a selected object.
If the user selects [I]multiple [/I]objects, how should my properties panel respond?
Should it display:
A) blank fields for properties that vary between objects
B) only the properties for the first selected object in the selection stack
C) only the properties for the last selected object in the selection stack

I'm inclined to take say A), but it sounds a lot more costly than doing B)
Although in general this probably boils down to personal preference, but I'm just curious what other people think seems [I]​the most right[/I]

[ThePuska]

Have you people ever made use of continuable exceptions? Meaning exception handling where you may continue execution at (or immediately after) the statement where the exception was raised. For example, if the exception was an out-of-bounds, you might correct it immediately, or if it was a socket error, you might set an error flag and return null or something.

I've run into it a few times while programming robots - when then exceptions involved division by zero, or exceeding the robot's motion range, or something similar, and mostly I've found it useful.

But there's no similar mechanism in C++ (due to the quite strict restrictions on the exceptions) and I haven't seen any library which would've made it even possible - and C# is much too inspecific - though I don't think it'd be impossible to adapt to C or C++ if you had some access to the runtime environment.

I've considered adapting it to MSVC's exception handling, since I think it's entirely possible (if you circumvent some of C++'s requirements) but I've no notion of its usefulness to anyone else.

edit: Basically, when a continuable exception is raised, the control is transferred to the handler (wherever in the callstack it may be above the function that raised it). When the handler is done, the control is transferred back to where it was raised from - and here it differs from ordinary exception handling, where control can never be transferred downwards in the stack.

[MeepDarknessM]

[t]http://vgy.me/5h8R6I.jpg[/t]

finished my lua++ module

it basically lets you do anything you want, and it's really easy to use too!

[andrewmcwatters]

[QUOTE=MeepDarknessM;47541462][t]http://vgy.me/5h8R6I.jpg[/t]

finished my lua++ module

it basically lets you do anything you want, and it's really easy to use too![/QUOTE]

that's the shit but you totally need to abstract your stuff dude

[MeepDarknessM]

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47541653]that's the shit but you totally need to abstract your stuff dude[/QUOTE]

what do you mean abstract it? (i'm a self-taught coder - sorry if i don't know some terms :x)

[hugg]

[QUOTE=MeepDarknessM;47541668]what do you mean abstract it? (i'm a self-taught coder - sorry if i don't know some terms :x)[/QUOTE]

Looks like a lot of magic numbers.

[G😹nz😻]

[QUOTE=Hugg;47541673]Looks like a lot of magic numbers.[/QUOTE]

You must to believe in it!

[andrewmcwatters]

i mean that's not even needed, you can write lua wrappers for what he's doing

by the time you're working in lua, and you expose some functions to read memory, you can write modules that work with higher level concepts, like working with entities directly, rather than addresses

switching between abstraction levels is pretty helpful when you want your code to be less duct taped together

for instance, when the process address changes, and the size of entities change, you have to adjust all of your offsets rather than in just one place

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

hell it doesn't even matter, it's just a software design nitpick

what i'm more interested in is your process for reverse engineering your shit

like how are you coming up the pointers for the gEntList, and determining the memory address size to iterate over? how about the glow ptr? are you using source sdk 2013 debug binaries for function signature and class size reference?

and down where you have obj.r, .g, .b, .a, how are you handling that and making it work with source? do you have mock-bindings to the color struct?

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

tell me your secrets

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

[url=https://code.google.com/p/hl2sb-src/source/browse/trunk/src/utils/sourcelua/game/server/baseentity.h]that stuff reminds me of back when i had the most ghetto way of handling sniffing down function signatures for SourceLua[/url]

overv was explaining to me roughly how SourceMod(?) found signatures in the engine to work with and I used a really primitive baked in method for replicating hl2sb's Lua API but for all Source Engine games

[editline]16th April 2015[/editline]

i like to pick at people's brains who dig their hands into memory