What Are You Working On? April 2015 - Developers

[QUOTE=Superwafflez;47616949]I'd stick it out with Unity if I were you. Monodevelop gets a lot of hate, but it will let you see results very quickly in the main editor.[/QUOTE] Get VS 2013 Community, it's basically 2013 Professional but free for hobbyists and small companies. It also comes with some great plugins included, including full Unity integration.

Couple of years lurking here and finally feel like posting. I've been reading [URL="http://www.nostarch.com/hacking2.htm"]Hacking: The Art of Exploitation[/URL] and coding in C for a while now. Been getting more comfortable with it than I have ever been. Learning more C helped me start going through the [URL="https://open.gl/"]open.gl[/URL] tutorials with SDL2 which I have wanted to do for a while now. I've programmed with Python for many years now and C's and OpenGL's verbosity just pushed me away. I tried [URL="http://vispy.org/"]Vispy[/URL] with Python but it felt like I was not learning anything because everything was made too easy to accomplish (which sometimes is a good thing of course :v:). [vid]http://puu.sh/htQYw/cd515cb9da.mp4[/vid] [vid]http://puu.sh/htTqa/3ab6d928dc.mp4[/vid] Playing around with fragment shaders is fun. Autoloading shaders with inotify is also pretty damn useful.

Made a proof of concept of a 2D lighting solution for sprites. It's very simple and not physically correct in the slightest but works really well with small sprites and requires 0 extra artist effort. Made in SFML. [img]http://puu.sh/htTO3.jpg[/img] [img]http://puu.sh/htVHj.jpg[/img] Video where you can see the lightbuffer in the corner: [vid]http://puu.sh/htTrb.webm[/vid] Now to apply it to sprites animated in Spine and move the code over to a pixel shader.

[QUOTE=Darwin226;47616818]Always wondered why a potential employer would care if my personal projects were finished or not. I mean, if I'm doing something for fun it seems a bit silly to continue working on it after I've done the fun part I wanted to do. I don't have an incentive to push myself to do what I don't want. When a job is involved, on the other hand, there's the monetary aspect so finding motivation becomes much less of a problem.[/QUOTE] That aspect is realistically bullshit, too, for the most part. But there are differing levels of achievement. Did you write that library on the weekend [I]and[/I] full documentation for it too? Impressive if the employer has only been looking at developers who just started side projects but they were only built for themselves. That's an unrealistic scenario to be frank, most developers don't have a wide portfolio of projects, actually. You're already ahead of the curve if you do. I'm just saying it's a differentiator, and that's how you have to think about it. [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Funley;47617029]Get VS 2013 Community, it's basically 2013 Professional but free for hobbyists and small companies. It also comes with some great plugins included, including full Unity integration.[/QUOTE] I keep reading this and I haven't spent much time in VS since I worked on HL2:SB or Lua modules when I was working with binding things to use in LÖVE. Is VS 2013 Community the new Express? That is, is it the go-to free IDE for VS users now?

[QUOTE=andrewmcwatters;47617465]I keep reading this and I haven't spent much time in VS since I worked on HL2:SB or Lua modules when I was working with binding things to use in LÖVE. Is VS 2013 Community the new Express? That is, is it the go-to free IDE for VS users now?[/QUOTE] I'd imagine. I think there still is an Express edition, but it's feature-light. Community is both free and full-featured. There's no reason not to use it unless you want a leaner environment.

[QUOTE=Sidneys1;47617499]I'd imagine. I think there still is an Express edition, but it's feature-light. Community is both free and full-featured. There's no reason not to use it unless you want a leaner environment.[/QUOTE] The point of Community is that any individual developer can use it freely however they like. Teams have some restrictions applied but for your every day use, Community is perfect. More info [url=https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx]here[/url].

[QUOTE=fewes;47617435]Made a proof of concept of a 2D lighting solution for sprites. It's very simple and not physically correct in the slightest but works really well with small sprites and requires 0 extra artist effort. Made in SFML. -img- -img- Video where you can see the lightbuffer in the corner: -vid- Now to apply it to sprites animated in Spine and move the code over to a pixel shader.[/QUOTE] Ooooooh that's clever! Using the same sprite but with some offset in the separate direction relative to the light for the shadow, right?

[QUOTE=fewes;47617435]Made a proof of concept of a 2D lighting solution for sprites. It's very simple and not physically correct in the slightest but works really well with small sprites and requires 0 extra artist effort. Made in SFML.[/QUOTE] Reminds me of [URL="http://spritelamp.com/"]this[/URL]. (Scroll down for some cool demos) Very cool, though shouldn't there be a shadow from the opposite direction as the highlight?

[QUOTE=Sidneys1;47617946]though shouldn't there be a shadow from the opposite direction as the highlight?[/QUOTE] What you're talking about is a dynamic shadow system, not a lighting system. [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] You can have dynamic shadows even on fullbright sprites/models. They usually don't do self shadowing.

So I've been working recently on a post-jam game of mine, and I believe it has huge potential. However my mind is a bit scattered with ideas, and I'd like to start writing things down. I've worked with UML a lot in the industry and it just doesn't work for me. I'd like to visually but globally describe the game concepts and possibly link them together. I've been using Evernote and Trello, but Evernote feels only appropriate to write quick things down and offers no way to link or design. Trello, and the SCRUM way of organizing, works for me just fine but it's only truly functional for that and managing user stories. What's a good tool to design and document a non-linear game concept with? I don't mean writing a story, but being able to describe game mechanics and possibly link them together in a graphical fashion. I have, of course, also written a game design doc but I find that hard to really express my game concepts in. I'm not an artist and have difficulty drawing mock-ups, but I'd like something similar to express the game concepts with.

Check out mindmaps, might be a bit too simple for what you're going for though.

[QUOTE=fewes;47617435]Made a proof of concept of a 2D lighting solution for sprites. It's very simple and not physically correct in the slightest but works really well with small sprites and requires 0 extra artist effort. Made in SFML. Video where you can see the lightbuffer in the corner: Now to apply it to sprites animated in Spine and move the code over to a pixel shader.[/QUOTE] It looks very pretty in pictures but it really breaks the illusion and makes the character look extruded when the light moves. I would probably work really well for directional lights though.

[QUOTE=Handsome Matt;47618405]Pretty sure it's just a normal map over the sprite? And if it isn't, it should be.[/QUOTE] I think no, it is just an offset

[QUOTE=cartman300;47617921]Ooooooh that's clever! Using the same sprite but with some offset in the separate direction relative to the light for the shadow, right?[/QUOTE] Yep. The way the light buffer works is black background + white sprite on top at the same position as the actual one then a totally black one on top of that with an offset based on the distance and angle to the light. Pretty much exactly like using the Inner Shadow layer style in Photoshop. [QUOTE=Sidneys1;47617946]Reminds me of [URL="http://spritelamp.com/"]this[/URL]. (Scroll down for some cool demos) Very cool, though shouldn't there be a shadow from the opposite direction as the highlight?[/QUOTE] Heh, I knew what that link was going to be before I clicked it. Very cool but requires quite a lot of work from the artist. Adding a dark shade to the opposite would be very easy, just reverse the effect and make it multiplicative instead of additive. I found that it doesn't look as good though and it also doesn't make sense to base it on single light sources since the lights shouldn't be responsible for casting darkness.. [QUOTE=Darwin226;47618250]It looks very pretty in pictures but it really breaks the illusion and makes the character look extruded when the light moves. I would probably work really well for directional lights though.[/QUOTE] Generally it looks better the smaller the rim is. If I end up using this in a game the camera would be quite far away from the characters so I think it would end up working well enough. Imo the effect gives a lot for almost no work at all. [QUOTE=Handsome Matt;47618405]Pretty sure it's just a normal map over the sprite? And if it isn't, it should be.[/QUOTE] Nope. Although that would give more correct results it would be a tiresome process to author it for everything whereas this is basically free. For a really cool implementation of normal mapped sprites though see the Sprite Lamp link Sidneys posted above!

[vid]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35032740/ShareX/2015/04/2015-04-28_19-31-02.webm[/vid] So I got the first iteration of the application I was looking for done. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's basically a status bar. It pops out one some event. The plugin system is very managable. You just write a .NET assembly in anything you want and compile it to a DLL. The system looks for static methods that look like `void AddTickHandler(Action<string, int>)`. The plugin should implement this method so that it calls the given action with the new message and the priority level when some event happens. Here's what an example plugin looks like. It just fires a "Test" notification every 7 seconds. [code]module Spammer open System.Timers let timer = new Timer( Interval = 7000.0 , AutoReset = true ) timer.Start() let AddTickHandler (fn : System.Action<string, int>) = timer.Elapsed.Add( fun _ -> fn.Invoke("Test", 0) ) [/code] Every time a new tick is fired, the status bar becomes visible for 5 seconds and then hides again. This is the ticker part of it. The second part is the status. Your plugins can register a status that's always visible in the status bar (when the status bar itself is visible) and a method to update that status. This method will be called periodically when the status bar is visible. It can be used to track the progress of a download for example. It's try to write a qBitTorrent plugin next to demonstrate what it would look like. All in all, I think this might prove very useful. So far it only works on Windows because I had to use a lot of WinAPI magic to get things working right, but all that stuff is sealed in a separate module so if someone wants to take a shot at translating it to other platforms, that would be great.

Wheee :) Implemented a little helper class to allow me to schedule certain events to happen at specific intervals. Here the A* algorithm is called every 250ms, while the VBO is updated every tick (30Hz in this case). I also finally got scaling working properly! The continents no longer get stretched to the window size. Also added all missing countries (Congo, N/S Korea, etc) and added air travel (any route between countries with more than two degrees of separation defaults to air travel) though it didn't make it into this video. [vid]http://fat.gfycat.com/LastingAdmirableCurassow.mp4[/vid] [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] It's really cool to see what areas are uninhabited (city-wise) like the Amazon, Sahara, and Gobi.

I'm trying to redesign [URL="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mammothGames.wake1free"]my game's[/URL] Android icon. [quote] This is the current one: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/bVoGy7O.png[/IMG] This is the new one: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/WtS3Jy2.png[/IMG] [/quote] It's made to look more like the actual gameplay. [t]http://i.imgur.com/Ma0QXUQ.png[/t] I feel like it has some potential, but I can't quite make it work. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make it better? Also, brb. Recording a little gameplay video so I can show off all the little animations!

Im Working on A Remaster Version Of Bioshock (Real shit my Son) On Unreal Engine 4 And scince copyright will tear me apart i will set this free :) Otherwise im Working With my friends On 2 Projects We Created around 1 1/2 Years Ago

So the game is 99% done and polished. I'll be uploading the apk after I figure out the icon! My plan is to finally email all of the game review websites and maybe get a little bit of traffic finally. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VPH_j4tDGM&feature=youtu.be[/media] Check out how far this has come! This is the earliest video I have [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_ZfzbLkFI[/media]

Link us to reviews when you make it big time!

[QUOTE=Darwin226;47616818]Always wondered why a potential employer would care if my personal projects were finished or not. I mean, if I'm doing something for fun it seems a bit silly to continue working on it after I've done the fun part I wanted to do. I don't have an incentive to push myself to do what I don't want. When a job is involved, on the other hand, there's the monetary aspect so finding motivation becomes much less of a problem.[/QUOTE] This post makes me feel so much better about myself hahaha. I'm constantly beating myself up because I start a lot of hobby projects, take them to a certain point and then drop it in favor of something that sparks my interest later on. You managed to articulate something that I totally agree with and have felt but couldn't find the right words for. When I'm working on hobby projects, it's just for fun and there's no incentive other than my own interest in the project to finish it, but whenever I've been hired for contract work and there's an actual deadline and a limited feature-set and a client involved, I can still get stuff done. It's hard to remember that sometimes. [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=chimitos;47618919]I feel like it has some potential, but I can't quite make it work. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make it better? Also, brb. Recording a little gameplay video so I can show off all the little animations![/QUOTE] In all honesty, the game is just ugly, no offense. If you put some work specifically into choosing color schemes, redoing your UI / icon and making things more visually appealing, you could have a waaayyy more successful app on your hands, imo. I think a really good looking but simple mobile game can and will be more successful than an ugly game with great gameplay. If you want help redesigning, or just some more suggestions, PM me.

[QUOTE=srobins;47619440] [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] In all honesty, the game is just ugly, no offense. If you put some work specifically into choosing color schemes, redoing your UI / icon and making things more visually appealing, you could have a waaayyy more successful app on your hands, imo. I think a really good looking but simple mobile game can and will be more successful than an ugly game with great gameplay. If you want help redesigning, or just some more suggestions, PM me.[/QUOTE] "Change everything" isn't a suggestion. I'm all ears for actual helpful thoughts.

So a student from Nuremberg wants the source code to a project I did last semester where I simulated tank tracks in real-time. I'm not sure I can bear the shame of having him read my code.

[QUOTE=chimitos;47619463]"Change everything" isn't a suggestion. I'm all ears for actual helpful thoughts.[/QUOTE] Wasn't meant to be a jab or come off as aggressive, I just mean the graphical side of things is a little unappealing and you'd have a lot more success if you just put a little time into making things pop a little bit more. I'm not sure what you want in terms of "actual" helpful thoughts that I haven't already mentioned. Work on color schemes and consider redoing your UI / logo / icon, and I would defintely remove/replace the stars in the background and replace the background with something more interesting. [editline]28th April 2015[/editline] I don't know if I came off as rude with that original post, I definitely wasn't trying to whatsoever, but responding to someone taking time out of their day to try and write up constructive criticism purely out of an interest in helping someone else with "that's not a REAL suggestion, give me something ACTUALLY helpful" is a bit rude and offputting.

[QUOTE=srobins;47619518] I don't know if I came off as rude with that original post, I definitely wasn't trying to whatsoever, but responding to someone taking time out of their day to try and write up constructive criticism purely out of an interest in helping someone else with "that's not a REAL suggestion, give me something ACTUALLY helpful" is a bit rude and offputting.[/QUOTE] By real I mean specific. You can't just say that you don't like something without saying what parts or aspects you dislike and expect me to gain any new insight. Your first post was not specific or helpful, while the second post was. (Also, calling something ugly is universally offensive, regardless of supposed intent) Anyway, I'll go fiddle. Be back soon :)

[QUOTE=chimitos;47619663]By real I mean specific. You can't just say that you don't like something without saying what parts or aspects you dislike and expect me to gain any new insight. Your first post was not specific or helpful, while the second post was. (Also, calling something ugly is universally offensive, regardless of supposed intent)[/QUOTE] Well, sorry then. That's how me and my friends talk about each other's designs and nobody gets upset because we all know we're just being honest and trying to help, and that it's not coming from a place of malice. Guess I'll choose my words more carefully in the future.

I just realized I lost all my C# libraries I made when my computer HDD recently died.... time to go re-learn serialization! :D Most people don't seem to know much about Serialization.. but it is amazing. It means you can store a class or a function as bytes, send it through the network or a whole host of other things... [url]https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973893.aspx[/url] [url]http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/20962/Introducing-Serialization-in-NET[/url]

[QUOTE=chimitos;47619379]So the game is 99% done and polished. I'll be uploading the apk after I figure out the icon! My plan is to finally email all of the game review websites and maybe get a little bit of traffic finally. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VPH_j4tDGM&feature=youtu.be[/media][/QUOTE] How about you give extra points for same color combos ? Also when the speed increases you could also make the explosion bigger and faster to make it more dynamic.

[QUOTE=Rocket;47619997]You should really use a BinaryReader / BinaryWriter for this, especially for network-related applications.[/QUOTE] I guess it is because it is more compact, correct?

Protobuf is better.