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\n\n![](\"https://storage.googleapis.com/gamedev-files/campaigns/gdc25/logos/GDC25_logo_tagline_Logotext_k.png\"/){kind=logo}
\n\n![\"FGFS\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-209161.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nHi
I wonder how to drm protect my stuff better than I do currently. Currently I check at every start for a key and compare it online. I would prefer
to check it not so often or only once. The problem is how to know when my stuff get's copied to another location. (Win/mac/linux) etc. and start a
now online comparison.
Thanks for any ideas
\n
![\"Waterlimon\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-184844.png\" "\\"<div")
\nEither move part of or all of your game to servers you control, or replace your code checking with a dialog box that politely asks the player whether the game was obtained in a moral way or not.
[exeggaration] Anything else is a waste of your time because your game will be cracked by evil pirates in 3 minutes. [/exeggaration]
edit: added tone markup :3
\no3o
\n![\"SeanMiddleditch\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2021_02/thumb.6f3ac6dcb18d4386b1d30ad8c74826af.profile.png\" "\\"<div")
\nThe 1990's called; they want their business model back. :)
\nSean Middleditch – Game Systems Engineer – Join my team!
\n![\"Bacterius\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-181063.png\" "\\"<div")
\nLocally enforced DRM is a fundamentally flawed concept as information located on digital storage media under the user's control can unconditionally be copied or altered at near zero cost, especially since it is enough that one person do it and then freely release a crack to the world. There is nothing you can do to prevent that - if the information is stored on the user's computer, you've already lost whatever battle you were trying to fight. Indeed, the DRM problem (\"the user cannot access the game without being authorized to\") can be reduced to the problem of information copy (\"the user cannot copy this information without being authorized to\"), i.e. they are equivalent, and information copy cannot be prevented without limiting the user's ability to read that information in the first place.
That leaves online games (mmorpg's and other persistent worlds, where the closest thing to a DRM breach is setting up a free - or paid - private server and garnering a community of your own), or remotely served gaming (OnLive and the like, which are certainly not designed for DRM purposes anyway).
These are the hard facts. The kind of DRM you are thinking of does not work, never has, and never will. Think outside the box, the most successful forms of DRM were those that provided value for actually owning the game, instead of oppressing the player with dozens of \"security checks\", with half of them not even working reliably and the other half actually favoring players who do not own the game (used CD keys, anyone?). In short, if when people see \"DRM\" written on a game they mentally conjure up the image of a padlock, you have failed.
\n“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”
\n![\"Bluebat\"](\"/static/media/user/generic-user.png\" "\\"<div")
\nWhile I agree with others that every DRM will be cracked, etc. I don't think that's gonna convince OP to just abandon the idea.
Since what you asked is how to detect moved software, I'd suggest keeping some machine identifier (maybe MachineGuid or just user login) and maybe displaying user's surname on the splash screen or sth. Some people will be uncomfortable running software with different person's name.
And yeah, I know all those things are trivial to bypass, but that's not the point. The OP already has some form of registration and now the point is just to remind an honest user that he needs to register each new machine.
\n![\"Satharis\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-130319.png\" "\\"<div")
\nYes, not biased at all.Anything else is a waste of your time because your game will be cracked by evil pirates in 3 minutes.
\nThe OP already has some form of registration and now the point is just to remind an honest user that he needs to register each new machine.
Sean Middleditch – Game Systems Engineer – Join my team!
\n![\"frob\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/thumb.photo-78358.png\" "\\"<div")
\nFrom what I have observed, the best ones are just a nag as part of the loading screen.
This works especially well if your clients are businesses, but it can also work well with individuals.
A simple message \"Registered to x\" can be enough. Pirates are going to continue to pirate, and they won't care if they downloaded the game from a cheat site, or if it says \"Registered to Lame Hacker\", they'll still use the software. More honest people will pay, or at least feel guilty enough about it that someday they might pay.
As a real life example, one of my friends has a fairly popular shareware-style utility and is constantly battling piracy, but in a beneficial way as it is tied to support and benefits rather than to disabling features or other punitive measures. In one update he added a 'phone home' capability that reported assorted telemetry in addition to the license key to help discover and disable pirate keys. Among the discoveries, he found Microsoft had about 2000 users in their domains, but only a single license for a team of 12. They were not the only corporate offender, but they were the worst by number. So he amended his splash screen slightly, to say either \"Registered to x, single user license\" or \"Registered to x, n user license\" based on the license key. His forum went wild. There were a lot of people turning in their companies \"It says registered to our CTO as a single person license, but everyone uses it.\" Some IT people piped up saying things along the lines of \"Our mistake, we have a 2-5 user license for a team of 150, we're paying now\" and paid up. A few individuals piped up \"I didn't know it was registered to someone else\".
Since updates were frequent people were more likely to get the updates directly from the source rather than pirate sites, so with the added license visibility quite a few companies quickly coughed up money when it was obvious to all the users that it was out of license. He said that as the worst offender, Microsoft's licensing contacted him and worked out a bulk license deal, but even then he contacted them again with a list of phone-home IP addresses to help them get back in compliance or pay up. The 'phone home' is not just to disable pirate keys (usually accompanied by notification to the person who owned the key) but it also pulls out useful telemetry like feature usage, confusing features, and crash reports. Some people continue to abuse the license system, but it is tied to their license key so if they ever need to log in for support they are greeted by a screen that says their licenses appear to be out of compliance.
Otherwise if they have an unlicensed version of the software they can use it, just with a big nag screen during loading.
I also see this kind of thing in software like Perforce or Visual Assist X. They prominently display messages like \"Registered to Company, 1500 user license\".
\n\n
Currently I check at every start for a key and compare it online. I would prefer
to check it not so often or only once. The problem is how to know when my stuff get's copied to another location. (Win/mac/linux) etc. and start a
now online comparison.
i'm a little confused. what does comparing the key online accomplish, other than adding internet connection as a system requirement? as you can see, it does nothing to prevent illegal copying. or anything else that i can see - except maybe prevent running a legit copy when the internet is down.
NEVER NEVER NEVER deny legit access! this is _VITAL_ in _ANY_ DRM solution. better to allow access when unsure, than possibly deny paying customers.
to know if its been copied, the software will need a systemID or authentication certificate. there may be other methods as well.
systemID:
a systemID number is generated using hardware specs on the PC (serial numbers, types of processors and drives, etc). this systemID is then used to generate a matching registration key. so a reg key is only good with a given system ID, and a systemID is based on the hardware installed. this makes the reg key hardware dependent. if they move to another pc , the hardware changes, the systemID changes, and the registration key no longer works. the downside of this approach is what if they change their hardware? this is typically handled by allowing a couple new reg numbers per user when they upgrade. another approach is to simply licence the software for single user use and installation on a single mass storage device.
authentication certificate:
when the software is installed, a hidden authentication certificate is installed. this certificate identifies the PC as legit. a user copying the software can't copy the certificate as long as it remains hidden. downsides: 1: the certificate must remain hidden. 2: this probably requires install via web, so the user doesn't have a certificate on a master disk or in a master install exe.
note that copy protection is only half the battle. the other half is anti-crack protection for your copy protection.
in general, research on client server authentication and security procedures should help. your situation is more of a network AUTH issue than it is a pure DRM issue on a stand-alone pc.
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\nHmm, funny while coding this I've never thought my security through. So wireshark found that remote file on my site. Now another question: Would it be possible to fake that TCP GET request? Get that file locally and tell the myapp to use that instead? If so, I would better drop my DRM before it gets hacked...
I'll forget about not checking at every start...seems to complicated and I won't spend any more time on this.
\n\n\n\n\n![\"Servant](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_09/thumb.59b0b205bcab1_JaminGrey-shrunk.png.5c4936932a903d5f98fecef1d2ec9c36.png\" "\\"<div")
\n![\"contextmenupicture.png\"](\"http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/7985/contextmenupicture.png\")
![\"screenshotlnj.png\"](\"http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3571/screenshotlnj.png\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n![](\"wink.gif\")
\n\n\n\n\nHey guys.
I'm trying to follow the Real Soon Now guide to animating a Milkshape3D model. My code seems to be working in that the model is rendering correctly, and the animations seem to be translating the model in the world properly, however no joint is ever rotating. This is confusing me to no end....
I've refactored my code so many times, i've even tried to implement the animation code without following the tutorial, to no luck i always seem to come out with the same issue :(
If anyone could take a look and tell me if i'm doing something super wrong or what, i'd really appreciate that!
My current code:
\n\nI had a thought, \"Hey, maybe my quaternions are busted!\" so i removed the quaternions and changed them to matrices. Same result!
![\"taby\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2019_03/EARTH2.thumb.png.87d7865d938d0c9b1ca8e56c761ae323.png\"/)
\n![\"Klutzershy\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-191538.jpg\"/)
![\"Eck\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-967.png\"/)
![\"Alconost\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-220892.jpg\"/)
![\"Level](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-241744.png\"/)
\nMatrix BuildMatrix(const Vector& rot, const Vector& trans) {\n Matrix t = Matrix::Translation(trans.x, trans.y, trans.z);\n Matrix x = Matrix::AngleAxisRotation(rot.x, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);\n Matrix y = Matrix::AngleAxisRotation(rot.y, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);\n Matrix z = Matrix::AngleAxisRotation(rot.z, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);\n \n return t * (x * y * z);\n}\n\nVector ToTranslation(float* f) {\n Vector v(f[0], f[1], f[2]);\n v.w = 1.0f;\n return v;\n}\n\nVector ToRotation(float* f) {\n Vector v(f[0], f[1], f[2]);\n v.w = 0.0f;\n return v;\n}\n![\"Myopic](\"/static/media/user/generic-user.png\"/)
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\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/LordSamsonite/Images/screenshot_100.jpg\"/)
![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/LordSamsonite/Images/screenshot_104.jpg\"/)
![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/LordSamsonite/Images/screenshot_106.jpg\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Profile\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-15.png\")
\n\n\n\n\nAlready a GameDev.net member? Login!
\nThinking about joining the GameDev.net community? It's free to join and only takes a minute. Register now!
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\n\n\n\n\n![\"Kripis\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-201270.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n![\"JWalsh\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-26952.png\" "\\"<div")
\n![\"DZee\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-200435.png\" "\\"<div")
\n
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int a;
cout << \"Please type a letter which will then be printed out: \";
cin >> a;
cout << a;
return 0;
}
![\"HenryAWE\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2024_02/medium.4d6c9822181b4d63bacccf0eb37e8a76.__focalors_genshin_impact_drawn_by_quan_kurisu_tina__c28d41b5e415bf02681db4c71a41ca40.jpg\"/)
\n![\"Alpha_ProgDes\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-33427.jpg\"/)
![\"PVS-studio](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2020_11/large.6f9fe17f0a4a4072ac9044b740ab2c2d.PVS_Studio_icon-01.png\"/){kind=icon}
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main( int argc, char* args[] )
{
//Buffer
char a[250] = {};
cout << \"Please type a letter which will then be printed out: \";
cin >> a;
cout << a;
cin.get();cin.get();
return 0;
}
[size=1]I \"surf\" the web, literally.
\n\n\n
Thanks @DZee but I'm a C++ newbie (this is \"for begginer\") and I was wondering if you or anyone else could help me understand your suggestion I mean wth is code tags and some of the functions you put in your code well .. I don't know them :| pls help
//Including the iostream library
#include <iostream>
//Using the namespace that allows you to omit std
//in the file scope(As in everywhere in this file including in functions).
using namespace std;
//A default main function.
//Parameters are for passing values to your executable trough the command line.
//argc = Number of arguments(space delimited)
//args = Array of pointers containing all of the command line phrases
int main( int argc, char* args[] )
{
//Buffer
//Declaring an array of char containing 250 spaces(Simply expecting that much).
//Initializing with brackets let's the compiler optimize the initialization.
char a[250] = {};
cout << \"Please type a letter which will then be printed out: \";
cin >> a;
cout << a;
//Allows the shell to stay put, depends on your environment. Might need one, or two depending on IDE.
//There are other ways to handle this, as you know program execution runs and will reach the mains end
//very fast so this is just a way to keep your console stalled.
cin.get();cin.get();
return 0;
}
[size=1]I \"surf\" the web, literally.
\n\n\n\n\n
Thanks @DZee but I'm a C++ newbie (this is \"for begginer\") and I was wondering if you or anyone else could help me understand your suggestion I mean wth is code tags and some of the functions you put in your code well .. I don't know them :| pls help
MY CODE GOES HERE
#include <iostream>
#include <string> //Don't forget the <string> header!
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string text;
cout << \"Please type some letters, symbols, or numbers which will then be printed out: \";
cin >> text;
cout << text;
return 0;
}Already a GameDev.net member? Login!
\nThinking about joining the GameDev.net community? It's free to join and only takes a minute. Register now!
\n\n\n\n\n\nD.F Battlefield is a top-down shooter game project with pixel graphics. You play as a soldier who fight against many other forces to protect the earth. Unlock new missions and weapons. there are many unit types (fighter, mech, tank, alien....). Pick items (ammo, shield, speed boost...) during the battle to power up your hero.
D.F battlefield demo has been uploaded
Demo link:
http://darkforcebattlefield.weebly.com/download.html
gamplay video:
New video (assassin gameplay):
please give me your feeling about my video.
More images
Darkforcebattlefield.weebly.com
visit us for more info:
Darkforcebattlefield.weebly.com
indiedb link:
Indiedb.com
any feedback is welcomed
Thanks
![\"Bluefirehawk\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-201029.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nIt is a bit like you just put up a picture of a meal and ask us how we like it.
If you want feedback, write a bit what you wanted to achieve, what the player should like about your game. What makes your game special from any other top down shooter. Maybe you could ask specific questions you are unsure or want feedback about.
There is almost no helpful feedback I can give you if I don't even know the target of your project. Money, know-how acquirement, experimentation?
\n\nThe demo ver has been uploaded
-2 missions
-get points and buy new guns in store
link (above) or here:
http://darkforcebattlefield.weebly.com/download.html
more images:
http://darkforcebattlefield.weebly.com/gallery.html
I hope you'll enjoy playing it and please give me your feedback. They are very important to me to improve the game 's quality
\nnew video
new class has been added to the game (assassin)
you can go to the store and unlock his weapon and skill
i will upload the new demo soon
link here or above:
\">
thanks ![\"smiley.gif\"](\"http://forums.tigsource.com/Smileys/derek/smiley.gif\"/)
\n\n\n\n![\"irreversible\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-92315.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nMy current shading solution is relatively simple - the idea is to provide two generic paths that are toggled by branching in the shader:
- ShadeFull(), computes all terms and by default does specular & texture lookups, even if the maps are unbound or empty; multitexturing is branched to up to 2 TUs
- ShadeBasic(), does basic lighting, but doesn't do any other lookups other than basic texturing
Things get a lot more interesting, however, when adding support for full multitexturing and effects like detail and bump mapping. These are really easy to do as branches in the shader, but could also be branched on the CPU by creating separate shaders for major pipelines. Since I'll be generating the main shading component from pre-written modules on the fly anyway, it wouldn't be overly difficult to implement this either with minimal impact on maintenance.
Sorting geometry based on any number of surface properties on the CPU isn't going to be an issue, since I'll be making use of a low poly environment with tessellation. However, at the end of the day I'm having trouble coming up with a balanced and robust approach.
As there are plenty of industry-savvy people around to have tackled these choices before, I'd appreciate some insight :)
\n
![\"MJP\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/large.photo-118414.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nI can give some advice, but it depends on what level of hardware you're targeting. Do you have any idea what your target spec is for your game/engine?
\n\nOpenGL 3.0/GLSL 1.3, I'd like the game to run smoothly on GF2xx series laptops. This is the realistic target, although I do keep my eyes open for even lower specs.
\n\nSorry for the delay. In terms of performance of a single shader, statically compiling different permutations of that shader will always win over having a runtime branch. When you use a branch the compiler will need to allocate registers for any code inside of the branch, and those additional registers can limit your shader occupancy even if the branch is never taken. There is also some cost associated with executing the branch instruction at all, although this should be fairly minimal for the hardware that you're targeting.
In practice, you'll probably need to find a balance between permutations and branches. Adding permutations for everything tends not to scale too well if you add too many, since you can spend a lot of time just compiling them all (this can be especially problematic when using OpenGL since you can only pre-compile shaders for a given hardware/driver combination). You can also hit additional overhead from switching shaders too many times during a frame. So in general I would say you should use permutations when you need to, and use branches when you can get away with it. The best candidates for using permutation are:
1. Complex features that could increase register pressure
2. Features that are difficult to localize inside of a single branch
3. Features that require the vertex shader to output additional values (since you can't avoid this with branching, and additional VS outputs can degrade performance even if the fragment shader doesn't use them).
Hope this helps!
\nHey - thanks for the reply!
Can you give some more specific advice on, let's say, implementing material system, though? Based on your ideas I've laid out a specific example of minimally branched permutations for basic setups like:
Diffuse + Specular
Diffuse + Specular + Normal
Diffuse + Normal
With branches for :
[ + Emissive ]
[ + Opacity/Mask ]
Fork the above permutations to create duplicates that also make use of:
+ Lightmap
as lightmaps generally use a different set of UVs.
If the material uses only multitexturing/texture blending (assuming up to 3 texture units), the above would fork again, creating (up to):
3 base versions [with 2 branches] * 2 (lightmap) * 2 (2 TU multitexture) * 2 (3 TU multitexture) = 24 permutations [with 2 branches each]
In addition to this, all \"custom\" textures (eg animated or otherwise requiring a modified shader) get their own permutation.
In terms of design, does this look \"like it\"?
I guess based on your reply, I'm just not sure how to test this balance. Furthermore, on a practical note - I'm developing on the go on a GL4.2 capable laptop (GF 640M) and I genuinely don't have access to my target hardware to test out different combinations.
\n![\"21st](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2019_12/large.a9eacc175855423cb12d999290e01465.37640.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nIt may be instructive to look at how this kind of problem was solved in the past - Doom 3. There a decision was made that every lit surface has the same combination of shaders with the same inputs and outputs. If the surface didn't have a normal map then a generic one was provided, likewise with specular/etc. This could be as basic as providing a 1x1 texture procedurally generated during startup.
True, it targetted a different class of hardware and branching wasn't possible in the shading language it used, but if there are some of your current branch/permute cases which you can use this approach on (your diffuse/specular/normal basic setup seems a candidate, for example) it may help with keeping things more manageable.
\nDirect3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.
\n\nDummy inputs is actually something I've been wondering about. Thing about them is that regardless of the size of the texture and the fact that textures that are using dummies can be collated, the number of texture lookups won't change. Although it does make a lot of sense for diffuse/normal/specular as most textures can pretty much be assumed to have all three (and if they don't, the assumption won't affect speed expectations).
PS - I didn't know D3 was as generalized as this!
\n![\"Hodgman\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/large.photo-116251.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nUsing default textures is an interesting option -- despite the number of texture fetches being the same, fetching from a 1x1 texture will be faster on average (than fetching from a large texture), because every pixel is fetching the same value, meaning it will very likely be cached.
If you happen to be doing your lighting in tangent-space (which I admit, is rarer these days), then normal mapping vs not normal mapping has no cost difference either (besides the texture fetch).
One issue that I've had with it though, is that the common way of decoding normals from a texture doesn't allow you to ever represent a perfectly flat surface (i.e. a normal of [0,0,1]).
The usual process of decoding a normal map is ((float)8bitTexValue/255.0f)*2-1, and if you put 0 through the reverse of that, it's encoding is 127.5, which either gets rounded to 127 or 128, slightly tilting your normal map in one direction or the other... it's so small that you might not notice, but I have seen it reported as a bug in an engine that followed this design.
\n. 22 Racing Series .
\n![\"Bummel\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-185583.png\" "\\"<div")
\nBut tangent space normal maps naturally hold only z-values in the range [0..1]. I wonder why it is so common to compress the z-value also (and therefore waste precission). Is it necessary for texture compression?
\n\nIt's a tradeoff - if you compress all of the RGB values in the same way, in the old days it would be faster to decompress them all in your shader; nowadays you may even be able to get away with just storing 2 values (at the cost of some extra math ops shader-side) or using something like a 10/10/10/2 format (those extra 2 bits of precision can make a huge difference).
Many of the hacks in Doom 3 should really come with a health warning that they were a valid tradeoff in the days of 128mb gfx cards, but that these days burning the extra video RAM may be a better choice. At the same time, the generalization of surfaces and use of default textures still seems like a good approach.
\nDirect3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.
\n\n\n\n\n![\"jbadams\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-36615.jpg\"/)
\nWelcome back! Almost didn't recognise you until I spotted the \"formerly known as \"CoffeeCoder\" in your signature on a forum post.
\n\n
I think authorware tools like Game Maker are really starting to come into their own recently. They are still limited when compared to coding from scratch, and obviously different packages have different strengths and weaknesses, but the days when they could only produce crappy little games that performed poorly are gone, and they're now very capable and can potentially save quite a lot of work. Good to see more people starting to adopt them when it makes sense rather than holding onto the popular old prejudice of trying to use \"real\" languages for everything.
\n![\"CoffeeCoder\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-188909.jpeg\"/)
\nThanks!
\nYeah, I used to be one of those \"it's not a real game unless I program it from scratch!\" types, until October of last year when someone showed me Unity. I was floored by its capabilities, and I have many plans for it someday.
\nHowever, I've known about GameMaker (since around '07), but never used it because it was limited to 2D at the time (and I wanted to learn to program things from scratch), and I was more into 3D game development. I regret that decision, because if I had stuck with it I would have had many games out by now! ![\"tongue.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.png\" "\\":P\\"")
\nThe fact that I had the basic workings of a sidescroller up and running in around an hour just makes GameMaker the perfect choice for this project. GML is pretty easy to learn to, since it's based on C/C++. I highly recommend it to anyone starting out with game development!
![\"Profile\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-188909.jpeg\")
\n\n\n\n\n\n“The new version of the Church-Turing thesis (now called the ‘Church-Turing Principle’) does not refer to Turing machines. This is important because there are fundamental differences between the very nature of the Turing machine and the principles of quantum mechanics. One is described in terms of operations on classical bits, the other in terms of evolution of quantum states. Hence there is the possibility that the universal Turing machine, and hence all classical computers, might not be able to simulate some of the behavior to be found in Nature. Conversely, it may be physically possible (i.e. not ruled out by the laws of Nature) to realize a new type of computation essentially different from that of classical computer science. This is the central aim of quantum computing.”
How To Compute Without Numeric Variables In A Non-Von Neumann Architecture
http://www.tinyurl.com/indiscretelogic
I would like to patent and put this in the public domain.
\n![\"KrinosX\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-157532.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nWhat do you like to patent?
And how is it related to IA?
\n\tKrinosX\n
\n\nI think it could be used as a foundation for AI in quantum computing. It is pure connectionism. I would like to patent the concepts I outline in the document.
\n![\"swiftcoder\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/thumb.photo-47521.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n
I would like to patent the concepts I outline in the document.
Then go find a patent atorney.
Purely out of morbid curiosity, why did you decide to try and implement quantum logic processing *inside* CounterStrike?
\nTristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]
\n\nObviously I am not welcome here.
\n\nObviously I am not welcome here.
You're welcome to post. You've received confused responses because your post is confusing.
There is no question posed in your post. Are you looking for advice on how to apply for a patent? Do you want to stimulate discussion about the idea that you linked to? Do you just want to explain the idea and see what people think of it? What's the intention behind that post - what kind of responses are you looking for?
On a discussion forum, you have to either ask a question or give some kind of indication for what kind of discussion you're looking for. If you just dump a whole bunch of information in a post, you'll get replies asking you why you posted... which is what you've got.
A blog or a journal is fine for just dumping information on, but a forum assumes a question or discussion topic.
\n. 22 Racing Series .
\n\nI posted this because I have no avenue of review. I am indigent, and would like to see this put in the public domain. I would enjoy a discussion about it and would be more than willing to participate.
Thank you.
\n\nIsnt a primary problem that Quantum Computing only has limited application - only to certain classes of problems (as you are saying classical computing is also since there are some things IT cannot do as well) and thus what you really need is a hybrid of both ?
REAL Artificial Intelligence is having the computer build its own logic (learning) and that has been hard enough to do using binary discrete logic (and we ARE still very primitive compared to where it needs to go). SO it may be problematic that Quantum Mechnics being even more mysterious will be severly hampered when we try to employ it for that same purpose.
Recently IBM was touting some new neuron equivalent circuitry (a good step), but the one thing missing was how to get/create the weight patterns into that circuitry (there was no mechanism built into the hardware being shown off to 'learn')-- they actually had only the trivial part of the mechanism required for 'Artificial Intelligence'.
\n\nI think a hybrid would be possible. How a Turing Machine would interact with a quantum computer, I do not know. I think my paper opens the door to more than the limited applications such as breaking RSA encryption.
Yes, there is a need for some way for the computer to learn by itself. How that is done, again, I do not know.
I have read about the neurosynaptic systems IBM has created. It is still based in binary, and we are obviously not numerically based. Here is where you can read about it, scroll down to the bottom for descriptive papers of the hardware:
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/neurosynaptic-chips.shtml
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Original post by EasilyConfused
I really should learn Windows Forms. I reckon I'm going to have a look at the Managed C++ version rather than C#.
![\"Aardvajk\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-98449.jpg\"/)
\n![\"benryves\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2023_06/thumb.a049a84d570f4d71a36cf2e3010f15c3.15fe4f7457b5f4f9f05b3cc4b64798a893839798_full.jpg\"/)
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\n\n\n\n\n\nHey Gamedev.net
I've been a long time lurker, can't seem to find any other post resembling this.
The kickstarter project for Shroud of the Avatar, has a pledge for $400, which sounds as follows:
Want to be a part of the Development process? This is the level for you! Gain access to the private Developer Chat/Forums and help participate in guiding the game (estimated Developer Chat/Forums access in April 2013). You also get to help create a character in the game as well as name them. When everything’s said and done, we’ll put together a PDF document of various concepts and design documents.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0?ref=live
I've never really developed a game, but it is my dream to become one at a point, and currently working on an education towards it.
What would your assessment be of this \"developer\" position be?
Pros:
I like the overall concept of the game, and have a lot of experience with Ultima Online and feel like it has been one of strongest MMORPG's ever, and therefore think I can add something to the game
I have played almost all MMORPG's to ever launch on the western market(Including some korean/japanese that never made it to the west)
Cons:
No idea how much I will get heard, or how they will take in critique/new ideas.
$400 (It's not that I can't afford it, and it is something I would like to do, so I could add it to my CV or something silly like that,or I could look at it as an investment of some sort)
\n![\"starbasecitadel\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-202600.png\" "\\"<div")
\nThanks for the link!
That looks awesome, and is the first MMORPG I've seen in a while that actually looks exciting, with all the hundreds of WoW-clones going around. I played Ultima 3 back in the day and loved it.
Good thing the game won't be out for a while, might distract me from my own development ![\"smile.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/smile.png\" "\\":)\\"/")
In terms of the dev package, it does sound pretty interesting. I don't think it would replace the more in-depth process of joining a hobbyist/indie team, but as a supplemental project hopefully you could pick up some nice gamedev tips from their talented team. I'm tempted to try it myself, good find!
\n
\nIt doesn't sound like you'll actually be designing a game. What follows is my interpretation, and may not necessarily be accurate:
\"Want to be a part of the Development process?\" -> Want to see how things work behind the scenes?
\"Gain access to the private Developer Chat/Forums\" -> You can read and comment on what the actual developers are doing.
\"and help participate in guiding the game\" -> Very intentionally and ambiguously wording. You can 'help' to 'participate' in 'guiding' the game. Huh?
\"You also get to help create a character in the game as well as name them.\" -> You'll get to contribute ideas towards the backplot, personality, and appearance of one specific character in the game, and get to name him.
\"When everything’s said and done, we’ll put together a PDF document of various concepts and design documents.\" -> When everyone (the real developers and the $400 donaters) is done discussing things in the forums, then the real developers will make the decisions and create the design documents.
\n\nI agree, you definitely won't be in the \"real\" developer forums, or have access to their internal ticketing system, feature lists etc.
But even so, it sounds like there will be some opportunity to talk directly with their dev team, at least to a limited degree.
\n![\"Stormynature\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-195613.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n2,460 developers (assuming all Developer ranks and above are pledged). 206 currently at developer rank or above are pledged.
In my opinion this is what will happen (this is subjective and without having done more than skimmed the kickstarter project).
You will have access to the forums. You will make suggestions. Somewhere in all of this you might possibly make a suggestion that will be incorporated into the game. You will not have any rights to claim a part of the game earning despite having contributed, as you will have signed your rights away to your contributions when accessing the forums. You will not be accredited with the title Game Designer (or similar industry role) along with the other 2,459 pledgers but will rather be given a minor nonsensical title or more likely listed in the credits as a pledge with the rank of pledge you purchased. You will not really be able to use it on your resume and the only thing of real value that you may gain out of it (bar the ingame perks if you play) will be the information re: game design etc in the forums...which you will probably have signed an NDA for or alternatively the information in the forums will be limited to that which the developers don't mind becoming public.
If you want the game to be created and believe in it etc etc. then by all means pledge, but if you are looking for some substantive value with regard the development side...I would be asking questions through the comment sections as well reading all of the 1,494 (current) comments on the kickstarter looking at people's questions and most importantly - Whether these questions are answered and whether they are answered appropriately and not whitewashed under the PR and marketing hype.
Either way I wish you the best of luck with regard your decision.
\n\nHere is a reply from their own forum:
You will have direct access to the Developers through a Developer only Forum, and be a part of the development process through discussion and feedback not available to other pledge levels.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=question-about-developer-pledge
Still seems a lot ambigious. But atleast they said that you are able to give direct feedback on their forum.
\n\nThis is from their FAQ:
And if you contribute to our Kickstarter at the Developer level or above, we will bring you into the inner design circle. In addition to getting general design ideas from you, you will have the chance to lend a voice on even the more contentious issues involved in game design. Some examples would be: PVP – Where, when and under what conditions? Persistent Housing – How can we make a housing market that creates opportunity and engaging gameplay? These are just a few of the design ideas we will be discussing in our Developer Roundtable discussions.
![\"Kylotan\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_04/loc_wizard_rgb.thumb.png.a1df5717c00039dbef23f4abeb5d4c84.png\" "\\"<div")
\n\nIs that really different from most games? It seems like most companies have a forum you can post on before the game is released. Developers usually read the forums, to some degree.
It's fairly unique in that it costs $400 instead of being free, making it a more exclusive group where your access to the dev team is greater. Maybe that is a common practice and I just haven't heard about it before.
\n\nIt's fairly unique in that it costs $400 instead of being free, making it a more exclusive group where your access to the dev team is greater.
While this statement is technically true in every word...does it not seem wrong somehow to you?
These are just a few of the design ideas we will be discussing in our Developer Roundtable discussions.
In addition to getting general design ideas from you, you will have the chance to lend a voice on even the more contentious issues involved in game design.
None of these points suggest you gain more power than simply the ability to express an opinion or an idea, and as Kylotan points out.
It seems like most companies have a forum you can post on before the game is released. Developers usually read the forums, to some degree.
But if this level of access as suggested/implied is sufficient to a person's wants then by all means invest. But I will be honest, I would personally prefer $400 to go into helping one of the indie game's being developed by one of our members for example gnoblins or ruinvalor (examples used without permission :P) where such an amount while still small would be a hell of a lot more helpful, as well probably depending on the project give you access to an alpha/beta and the chance to make a suggestion that is more likely to be heeded.
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\n\n\n
You are part of the team that created the game, right? The way your previous post is written initially led me to believe you weren't involved in the project.
It's just because of that English is not my native language (Regardless, it looks like a really cool game - so congrats! Some of the screenshots have a weird grainy effect - is that intentional, or are those JPEG artifacts? You might have your JPEG compression set to high.
This grainy effect is combination of ingame post-effect and JPEG compression, as ingame post-effect it looks much better.\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTlandar must undertake a pledge to protect Astashica and free the planet from Asemeri oppression.
\n![\"Profile\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_12/IMG_20171221_110717.thumb.jpg.f1a07be498bc53e12b6e6bd9f15bc43d.jpg\")
\n\n\n\n\n
So we got the basic mechanics of edge traversal finally working, kind of. Excuse the dodgy animation, just a placeholder.
The idea is we maintain a contact point at each hand, offset slightly from the centre position. Each offset is a reference to an edge i.e. a pointer to the body, an index to identify the edge and a world-space position.
When we try to move, we move the position along its current edge, checking to see if we go over the end or not (basically a method called pointOnLine() which returns 0 - 1 when in the segment range or <0 or >1 if outside) and, if so, we find the next adjacent edge and project along that edge by the amount of step remaining.
This gives us two points we can form a vector between, then cross with (0,1,0) to get the normal so that he smoothly rotates around the corners.
Unfortunately the player capsule does intersect with the geometry a lot during this so I've had to disable collision checks between the bodies who own the edges in question, but this turns out to not be a perfect solution since some configurations of the environment can still report collisions where there should be none, so I need to think this through a little, see if we can come up with a better approach.
But it is essentially working and goes to show that if you have the freedom of an entirely kinematic controller with no physics, you can achieve almost any behaviour that you want.
Thanks for stopping by. I'm trying to keep these a bit briefer these days, and hope they remain of interest.
\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"gamedevnet.png\"](\"http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/1488/gamedevnet.png\")
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\n\n\n\n\n\nHi everyone, I'm working on a fps/rpg title, and having a bit of trouble coming up with a set of rules or a combo of methods or tests to determine if there is a steep rise in the height map in front of the player, NPCs, and monsters. the idea is, when checking for collisions, after calculating the unit's new position, if there is a \"steep rise ahead\" (like a wall or cliff) they stop. at first i was using the usual \"well if its less than x feet high they can just step up, otherwise its a wall type collision\". but that doesn't quite get the desired effect.
the desired effect is this: if its something they can easily surmount (say 3 foot high for a person), go ahead and move them. if the slope is not too steep (say 60 degree incline) go ahead and move them, otherwise, they must enter \"climb mode\" which allows them to scale sheer cliffs etc (imagine a VR rock climbing simulator).
climb mode works great, its the checking of the conditions for \"steep rise ahead\" (IE a climbable surface) that's being elusive.
the slope check is trivial: delta y / movespeed > 1.3 rads => its too steep, must use climb mode.
its the \"easily surmounted\" part that's tricky. the base walking moverate for a person is 0.3333 d3d units per frame. doing an altitude or slope check at a range of 1 unit or something like the creature's bounding box radius alone doesn't work. while a person may be able to clamber over a three foot rise in 6 inches of forward travel, the single check alone doesn't tell you if that's the top of the rise, and therefore truly a 3 foot obstacle,or merely the bottom 3 feet of a 100 foot cliff. i guess two checks are called for perhaps? one at one foot ahead and one at 2 feet ahead. if the slope to 1 foot ahead is \"steep\" and the slope from one to two foot ahead is not, then the altitude at 1 foot is the top of the rise (or close enough to it for government work).
most games i've seen simply limit forward travel based on the slope alone, leading to things like trucks that can drive up walls (EVO 4x4 2.0), or being able to walk across the face of a sheer cliff (Oblivion).
\n
Norm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
![\"lauris71\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-106796.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nI have done something similar by casting ray vertically down one step ahead of player. You record where will the ray hit ground and what will be the inclination.
Now if the dH (difference of heights) at hitpoint is less than vertical step limit AND the inclination there is small (i.e. not steep) go ahead and move.
If the dH is bigger than vertical step you have hit steep rise.
If the dH is smaller but the inclination is high you have potential steep rise and have to test two steps ahead.
\n![\"Lightness1024\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-158102.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nyou could also consider using a lower res heightmap for movement intelligence like this. first this will have the effect of smoothing details like little crevice that could be easily stepped over in reality but could give you wrong results if you check only some points.
secondly, the presence on the cpu of that texture would help its caching performance; whereas the large one only has to reside on the Gpu, thus not hurting cpu caches.
Then go ahead with hacking, trying to figure out complex flawless algorithms is ... a neverending quest. there are many heightmap collisions algorithms, based on cones, based on dichotomy etc etc.
\n\nIf the dH is smaller but the inclination is high you have potential steep rise and have to test two steps ahead.
Yes, this is the case it think i was not handling at first. with only a single test, you can't tell the difference between a 2 foot wall and a 100' cliff.
you could also consider using a lower res heightmap for movement intelligence like this.
the \"heighmap\" is 100% procedural, using floating point precision for both input and output. so no crevices etc, except where i code them in (or don't code them out). the world is 2500 miles by 2500 miles in size, so bitmaps for height maps isn't really practical, without a lot of during game paging of stuff off disk. The game doesn't do any loading during play at all, just loads the textures, meshes, models, and animations at program start and goes for it. the world map, dungeon levels, etc are 100% procedurally generated. dungeon levels do get loaded during runtime when you re-enter a dungeon you've been in before (IE it saves dungeon maps once it generates them as needed). since the height map is not stored in a bitmap, there are no issues about memory pool etc.
yesterday i fired up the game to get back to work on this issue. started by testing what i'd done the night before. Low and behold, now it was working! Checked the code, sure enough, last thing i tried was testing two spots not just one step ahead. in the end i didn't even use slopes, just direct comparison of y values. So far it seems to handle all cases correctly. cross fingers, flog the heck out of it in testing, and wait and see.
this led to a solution to a related problem: making you bounce off cliff faces when you slip and fall in climb mode. check y in each of 4 cardinal directions at a range of 1 foot.
if any is more than 1 foot below the y where the player hits the cliff face, its at least a 45 degree slope down, therefore not the bottom (or a level enough surface to land on). whichever y is lowest is the steepest downward slope. move the player 1 foot in that direction (bounce off the wall), and do NOT exit falling state.
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
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\n\nJust wanted to let the community know that we are working on the third game in our Touchgrind series.
The first game was Touchgrind, the worlds first multitouch skate game, which have sold very well on the App Store for almost 5 years now.
The second was Touchgrind BMX where we adapted the control scheme to work with BMX bikes. It's at the moment no5 in the Sports Games genre.
Now it's time to go back to skating, with Touchgrind Skate 2!
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\n- Awl you're base are belong me! -
\n- I don't know, I'm just a noob -
\n\n
Have you checked out Stanford's courses on Programming Methodology, Abstractions and Paradigms? You should definitely follow those series, they're rock solid:
\n\n\n\n\n![\"Juliean\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-170374.png\" "\\"<div")
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"hplus0603\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_05/laser-robot-128.thumb.png.ccbf0f94d8919222a3ce0d88dfa91a2e.png\" "\\"<div")
\nBoth can be used. Pick one, based on what you think works best for your game. If that ends up not working well in practice, try the other.
Btw: I think Tribes itself used the interpolate-then-extrapolate mechanism, similar to the EPIC network interpolation library.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2022_01/medium.d12061bdebe64b16a562252b843e170e.josh_thuglife.jpg.8a8fc989cb842d4c9d623739bd9f5dbf.jpg\" "\\"Josh")
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\nQuote:
Bit extreme, no?!
Quote:
As for the error, have you checked that stuff you expect to be null is actually initialised as zero. I got all sorts of odd, intermittent crap appearing when I realised I took this assumption for granted.\r
Quote:
I know you said it was a static shot but could it be tearing on the refresh? On second thought, it doesn't look like it...\r
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\n 
\n ![\"taby\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2019_03/EARTH2.thumb.png.87d7865d938d0c9b1ca8e56c761ae323.png\")
\n\n
\n ![\"HenryAWE\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2024_02/medium.4d6c9822181b4d63bacccf0eb37e8a76.__focalors_genshin_impact_drawn_by_quan_kurisu_tina__c28d41b5e415bf02681db4c71a41ca40.jpg\")
\n\n
\n ![\"Gamezdev\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2020_04/large.2bfb98253bfe4bc7882fc755966c75a6.LOGO.jpg\"){kind=logo}
![\"FuzzyBunnySlippers\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-224713.jpg\"/)
![\"TamaraRyan\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-221662.jpeg\"/)
![\"DjeeGames\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-231223.jpg\"/)
![\"Trapper](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-82273.png\"/)
\n![\"Jason](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-55079.png\"/)
\n![\"Calin\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2022_03/thumbnail.thumb.b7fa15b7d37a4874a982f7f6864e98ee.hellobarbiedisplay.webp\"/)
\n![\"kevinharwood\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-220861.jpg\"/)
![](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2019_11/large.29e62315bd23462897039b1afb7d625a.Beosar_Icon.jpg\" "\\"Beosar\\"/"){kind=icon}
\n![\"Profile\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-47547.png\")
\n![\"Profile\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-4681.jpg\")
\n\nclass Vector3 {\npublic:\n float x;\n float y;\n float z;\n Vector3();\n Vector3(const Vector3 &v);\n Vector3(float xIn, float yIn, float zIn);\n virtual Vector3 operator=(const Vector3 &rhs);\n ...\n};\n![\"SiCrane\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-925.gif\" "\\"<div")
\n\nVirtual is for inheritance purposes - your class isn't inheriting, and likely shouldn't be inherited from, so none of the functions should be virtual.
operator= is supposed to return a reference: \"Vector3 &operator=(const Vector3 &rhs);\"
What does your function declaration look like? Your linker errors may be related to that. Could you post the error message?
\n![\"alvaro\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-28434.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n\noperator= is supposed to return a reference: \"Vector3 &operator=(const Vector3 &rhs);\"
This is just convention, nowhere does the standard mandate that an copy assignment operator shall have any particular return type, it could even return void. The only requirement is that it shall have exactly one parameter as per C++11 13.5.3/1. 13.5.3/2 has an example with an copy assignment operator returning an int by value, for example.
As Álvaro mentions, if you do not declare a copy assignment operator, one will be implicitly declared and synthesised for you that does an element-wise assignment of the members.
\n\n\tTo make it is hell. To fail is divine.\n
\n\nThis is just convention [...]Conventions are important. The standard lets you have an operator + that modifies its operands, overload operator comma (,) and many other horrible things that will confuse the hell out of anybody reading your code. Trying to minimize surprises for anyone reading your code is a very good thing to do, and returning a reference from operator= goes well with that philosophy.\n
![\"ApochPiQ\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_06/321649.thumb.png.c7e3a9cb02b37a485d4cf9b8c638b8e7.png\" "\\"<div")
\n(flatVector = vector3d).z = 0.0f;\nWielder of the Sacred Wands
[Work - ArenaNet] [Epoch Language] [Scribblings]\n
![\"Washu\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/large.photo-14890.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nTruth. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Returning a mutable reference allows lots of nice things, such as chained assignments, and shorthand such as:(flatVector = vector3d).z = 0.0f;
In time the project grows, the ignorance of its devs it shows, with many a convoluted function, it plunges into deep compunction, the price of failure is high, Washu's mirth is nigh.
\n![\"Bregma\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2019_03/goggygotchi2.thumb.png.4361d2e1660df12c3b5891ec062458ed.png\" "\\"<div")
\nWell, if you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a copy operator return a copy rather than a reference. Sure, you could return an int, or a pointer, or even nothing at all (void). But to return a copy, you would need to invoke the copy operator, which invokes the copy operator, which... well, maybe you get my point.operator= is supposed to return a reference: \"Vector3 &operator=(const Vector3 &rhs);\"
This is just convention, nowhere does the standard mandate that an copy assignment operator shall have any particular return type, it could even return void. The only requirement is that it shall have exactly one parameter as per C++11 13.5.3/1. 13.5.3/2 has an example with an copy assignment operator returning an int by value, for example.
\nStephen M. Webb
\nProfessional Free Software Developer\n
\nBut to return a copy, you would need to invoke the copy operator, which invokes the copy operator, which... well, maybe you get my point.Different copy mechanism. Returning by copy would invoke the copy constructor, not the assignment operator.\n
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Most games I've played have had imbalanced or good enough or sometimes even terrible combat systems + mechanics.
Pretty much just one game I think that had a outstanding combat system + mechs.
I won't get into the argument about why I think class based games are doomed to be imbalanced in the 1v1 aspect.
For sake of avoiding that let's assume in this thread that class based games can be balanced as well.
So why is it so rare to find great combat systems + mechanics in games?
I'm sure the designers thought they had created a great great combat s+m.
So this means that most designers are terrible when it comes to PvP.
And I've actually had the opportunity to fight a few devs in different indy games so I know it's true.
So how can we design better combat systems?
First thing I think we all have to just assume is that we designers SUCK at PvP.
Maybe you are great.. But you have to assume you suck.
Another thing before I'll leave it up to us all to start discussing how to design a great combat system + mechanics..
It's already extremely tough to create an interesting, complex, advanced, hard to master etc etc combat s+m..
but if your game has classes in it as well, then you face the additional challenge of balancing these classes.. Which I've never seen accomplished in any game I've played so far.
So if you make a skill based game (no classes) then you only need to worry about creating a good combat system without without sweating about class imbalances.
Discuss!
\n
You then replace class imbalances with skill imbalances. Balance is key to any game, class or skill based. Balancing properly is something that most dev teams aren't super great at.
\n![\"menyo\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_08/large.M.png.e06ee32eed3e401bd2c8284ce3d1fdc2.png\" "\\"<div")
\n\n
Games with different classes never balance completely at all, afaik thats part of the system. Take a game like starcraft, there are still balance issues a year after release. Or Leagues of legends/Dota that have countless of heroes all with there own unique strategies, stats and abilities. But hey those games still play very well due to the fact they keep balancing the game. There will always come a player that exploits somekind of trait belonging to a certain character/race that is just something you keep having to deal with.
A little outbalanced is not a great deal if the game is deep enough and skill gets more involved. Some people will be able to deal with certain overpowered abilities more then others it's up to the developer to see what has to be changed and what not.
![\"Tiblanc\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-156448.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n\n
Imbalanced systems come from simplification. Most online RPGs are dumbed down so much that all fights become a race to 0 HP. If you deal more damage, you win. If a class ends up dealing more damage overall, it's seen as imbalanced. Randomness will make other classes feel like they stand a chance, but overall, the more powerful class will win more often.
To get a balanced system, you need to offer players a choice that will put the combat in their favor at any point. Even if they lost a part of the battle, they can still come victorious because they used the right skill at the right time. It should be like playing rock paper scissor until someone wins 5 times. Because you lose the first 3 rounds do not mean you lost the battle, just that you are unlikely to win it. For that, you need to add other mechanics, but that ends up adding complexity because it doesn't follow the standard damage race battle system.
\n\n
Rock Paper Scissor is as much luck based than a game where you can choose between a few actions and the result will depend on what action the other guy did. Fighting games are fancy RPS implementations and they are not considered luck based.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"vatsel\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-165774.png\" "\\"<div")
\nLinkaggge:
Now let's get to the art with our humble first post:
[attachment=17773:flatmate.jpg]
[attachment=17774:living room.jpg]
\n
![\"silkroadgame\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-209311.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nGood drawings!
\nhttp://www.game-silkroad.com
\ninfo_game@silkroadcg.com
\n\nnice stuff!
\n\nHi Vatsel. Can you post your workflow?
What software and tools do you use, how do you collect reference, and what do you like to work on first in a piece?
Also, in that room painting, how did you work out the vanishing (or perspective) lines without having the vanishing point or the horizon line being visible in the composition?
When I do a sketch on paper and it's an unusual perspective like that one, the vanishing point lies outside the paper and somewhere around the table I'm sketching on - I had to use rulers to mark it out.
\nThanks rouncer!
Kryzon, I use Photoshop and an Intuos graphics tablet for all the painting I do. As for reference, I only use a bit to get an idea for some extra things to put in the room and to try and get the different materials right. One very cool method of solving perspective problems is building the room skeleton in Google sketch up first and then printscreening the right angle and importing it into Photoshop, it usually saves me a LOT of time as then I'll already have the perspective done for me.
I think I should do a little tutorial on my room design, maybe that will help?
Thanks for the comments !
edit: formatting
\n\nThat's a smart solution, thanks for sharing. \n
One very cool method of solving perspective problems is building the room skeleton in Google sketch up first and then printscreening the right angle and importing it into Photoshop
\nKryzon - anytime!
Here's another piece of concept art
\nHow many work days does it usually take to finish a piece?
\n\nKryzon - depends on how much time I spend on the project during the day, but I'd say that it takes 14 hours of pure work.
It could take a couple of days or a week if I'm busy.
Thanks for the comment!
\n![\"GameAnalytics\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-230595.png\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHi all. Since my last post, my team has convinced me to switch to Unity3D from my own homebrew engine. So, I'm in the process of reimplementing some features that I had completed in my engine. Specifically, automatic doors and ladders. I'm using a pair of raycasts, one in either direction from the player center (at least, I think its from the player center) to detect appropriate \"interactable\" objects as follows:
Physics.Raycast(thisTransform.position, -Vector3.right, out hit, rayInteractableDistX, InteractableNonGroundMask) for left and
Physics.Raycast(thisTransform.position, -Vector3.right, out hit, rayInteractableDistX, InteractableNonGroundMask) for right
Where thisTransform is the player's transform. The problem I'm having is that these raycasts don't seem to work when the player overlaps the target object (ie: When the player is standing in the middle of the doorframe). Because one of the ways of exiting climb mode is to not be touching a climbable anymore, this is entirely preventing climbing from working, and seems to cause the door to close on the player as well.
What am I doing wrong?
\n\nUpdate: I've read that Physics.LineCast should do the trick, because it will detect anywhere on the line, however it doesn't seem to be working.
\n\nUpdate: I've read that Physics.LineCast should do the trick, because it will detect anywhere on the line, however it doesn't seem to be working.
Use SphereCast as that will take care of issues with errors.
\n\nMy objects are all configured as triggers so that won't work. I did, however figure it out after some experimentation and research. It seems, and I'm not quite sure why, that LineCasts don't like to detect things approaching from the side of their start (ie: line from left to right, it didn't want to detect things coming from the left). The way I got around this, in a way that allows detection from any position within the desired area (including the center) was to do two line casts, one from either side of the desired area and spanning to its opposite. This is quite functional, though admittedly rather inefficient.
\n\nMy objects are all configured as triggers so that won't work. I did, however figure it out after some experimentation and research. It seems, and I'm not quite sure why, that LineCasts don't like to detect things approaching from the side of their start (ie: line from left to right, it didn't want to detect things coming from the left). The way I got around this, in a way that allows detection from any position within the desired area (including the center) was to do two line casts, one from either side of the desired area and spanning to its opposite. This is quite functional, though admittedly rather inefficient.
Why can't you use a OnTriggerStay, OnTriggerEnter and OnTriggerExit in that case and make the bounding trigger big to encapsulate the whole area.
\n\nThat's an interesting thought. It would probably be a bit more complicated to code, since it would need to distinguish between the various types of colliding objects and figure out which ones it cares about after the fact, but doable. I don't what, if any, practical benefit there'd be, but its worthy of some research. <bookmarks discussion for future reference>
\n\nWhy would it be more complicated. If you put the script on the collider object i.e. the ladder object then you could send a callback to the colliding gameobject. Something like the following :-
void OnTriggerEnter(Collider collider)
{
collider.gameObject.SendMessage(\"OnCollissionEnter\", this, SendMessage,DONTRequireReceiver);
}
void OnTriggerStay(Collider collider)
{
collider.gameObject.SendMessage(\"OnCollissionStay\", this, SendMessage,DONTRequireReceiver);
}
void OnTriggerExit(Collider collider)
{
collider.gameObject.SendMessage(\"OnCollissionExit\", this, SendMessage,DONTRequireReceiver);
}
Now with this you get a message on from the triggers that something happened and the character itself can handle what it is supposed to do. The DontRequireReceiver ensures that if the game object which don't have this function hit then you can be sure that it won't throw an exception.
\n
\nBecause the interactions involved aren't simple if collided do this. There are other characteristics and controls involved (though nothing unmanageable). However, any difference in complexity is probably not terribly big, since I'm already using SendMessage -- the piping for figuring out when/how to send the messages would just be different. I'll almost certainly end up rewriting bits of the code for greater efficiency as I add more capabilities to it, so who knows what the final form will look like.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://www.rav.efbnet.com/gallery/novarunner/jump0.jpg\")
![](\"http://www.rav.efbnet.com/gallery/novarunner/jump1.jpg\")
![](\"http://www.rav.efbnet.com/gallery/novarunner/jump2.jpg\")
![](\"http://www.rav.efbnet.com/gallery/novarunner/jump3.jpg\")
\n\n\n\n\n![](\"smile.gif\")
). Am I infront of most people who are considering programming, am I with them or am I behind. The reason I sak this is because I want to have an understanding of the it subjects I''ll hopefully be doing in the future, to make it easier.\n\nThanks in advance.\nA confused dude! \n \n ). I''m not sure what side your aming at, art or code? But learing C or even C++ is not a bad idea, the more knowlege you have the better. As for programs, Photoshop is good, and 3D Studio is good.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlready a GameDev.net member? Login!
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\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"smile.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev.net//public/style_emoticons/default/smile.png\")
\n\n![\"dimi309\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_05/medium.d.jpg.ff4f8f5890f97d46dece1bb50047c6e9.jpg\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis happened a few minutes ago:
![\"neye8l.png\"](\"http://i47.tinypic.com/neye8l.png\"/)
And I cannot find the relevant post. Tried to reproduce by upvoting someone else, without luck.
\n“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”
\n![\"Ashaman73\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-112074.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nThis happens when you get an upvote in the developer journal section. You get the upvote here ![\"wink.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev.net//public/style_emoticons/default/wink.png\" "\\":wink:\\"/")
Ashaman
\n\n
Gnoblins: Website - Facebook - Twitter - Youtube - Steam Greenlit - IndieDB - Gamedev Log
\n\nThis happens when you get an upvote in the developer journal section. You get the upvote here
Aha, I see, that clears it up. Thanks!
\n“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”
\n![\"Cornstalks\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-67860.png\" "\\"<div")
\nI was gonna suggest phantom possibly voted you up, just because that would seem appropriate, given his name and the blank log entry...
\n\n\n\n\n![\"blueshogun96\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-83325.png\" "\\"<div")
\nOne of my main game features (visually) is the overlay texture I'm using. This overlay texture is full screen, and covers the entire screen which gives it a nice transparent pattern. On my PC and Mac builds, the impact to my framerates are minimal at best. On my iPad, I lose 15fps automatically.
I did some google searching, but didn't quite find a solution yet. The overlay image is 1024x768 and fits the entire iPad screen nicely. At first I assumed it was because the texture wasn't POT. So I tried splitting it into two textures: 1024x512 and 1024x256. Still to slow. So I tried googling some more. It turns out that the fill rate for mobile devices (especially a 1st Gen iPad) isn't nearly as fast as a PC or Mac video card. That's understandable because the entire quad uses alpha blending and the entire screen has to be processed by the fragment program, but I still haven't quite found a solution yet.
One idea I had was to render a few rows of 32x32 textured quads. The other idea is to get a new iPad. Tbh, I was trying to hold off on getting a new iPad because I'm saving for other hardware as well as licenses (fortunately for me, I can save up more than $1000 USD per month easily). On top of that, I want my game to work at proper speeds on an iPad2. When my game is ready, I will likely make it iOS7 exclusive anyway. And lastly, I plan on presenting this game at a public event in Seattle in early April, so I have to get the frame rates working acceptably before then (nobody wants to spend too much time on fixing a minuscule problem when there are other features that need to be finished).
I'm sure someone else has had the same problem here, but I still haven't managed to google any solutions. This sucks. Any ideas? Thanks.
Shogun.
\n![\"alh420\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-188223.png\" "\\"<div")
\nIs it this game? http://shogun3d.net/images2/looptil/04.jpg
If so, you could probably save a lot cycles drawing it on a mesh with a big hole in the middle instead of a full screen quad.
The idea is to process as few of the fully transparent pixels as possible.
1st Gen iPad isn't very powerful so its not impossible it's fillrate that is your limit, even though it doesn't look like your game should need that much...
You can also check in the gldebugger and profiler that comes with XCode to make sure where the bottle necks are
\n\nAlthough, that screen shot is old, yes, that's the game.
I'll give that a try, and I assume it would work better, but another reason I'm asking this is because I'd also like to release another game that uses post-processing effects on mobile devices. I fear that I would get the same frame rate issues, but in that case, I should probably have options to enable/disable it.
Shogun.
\n\nLosing 15 fps doesn't tell us much. Dropping from 1000 fps to 985 fps is a huge meh, and 15 fps dropping to 0 fps is the other extreme. I know you're somewhere in the middle, but no clue where.
If your texture is actually 1024x768 instead of 1024x1024, make it 1024x1024 (feel free to atlas with something else if you can) and compress it as much as you're willing for some speedup. If you are using a \"bad\" texture format, change to a proper texture format (probably PVRTC). If you're using OpenGL ES 1.x instead of 2, use OES_draw_texture. Use the lowest color precision you find acceptable. If you can, do multitexture instead of multipass. Basically, just follow the best practices Apple tells you in their docs. I'm sure I left stuff out.
I don't think 32x32 textures are faster than 1024x1024. If you really can't atlas with something else to fill out the 1024x1024, maybe 3 512x512 would be faster, but I'm not sure since you're trading one performance area for another and it will probably be dependent on what you're doing.
And that recommendation to avoid as much of the transparency as possible is great advice. Try varying numbers of polygons to see where the sweet spot is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're better off with 100+ polygons to minimize the amount of transparent overlay pixels to render rather than a single fullscreen quad. Still use as few textures as possible though, even if you have a lot of polygons.
\n\n\n
but another reason I'm asking this is because I'd also like to release another game that uses post-processing effects on mobile devices.
You should aim for later devices then ipad1 then. It's almost 4 years old now.
It all depends on what else you do of course, but I wouldn't plan on too fancy full screen post effects on anything more then 1-2 years old.
With the ES3 devices coming out now, the performance start reaching levels where you can do some pretty fancy stuff, but they are still very far from desktop.
That's not that strange considering their difference in size and power consumption though!
\n\nHow often is the texture being update ?
-If every frame, are you uploading the entire texture every frame even in the case where parts of the texture is not modified?
What format is the texture data in ?
-If its a fat format like RGBA, do you actually need 4-channels ? Would 2-channel or 1-channel texture suffice.
There is a multitude of reason as why your texture upload is so slow, but the solution probably boils down to taking a step back and looking at the requirements. I've seen you have tried a few optimization that haven't given you the desired result. Without more information like texture format, update frequency, its kinda difficult to give a concrete answer.
\nLosing 15 fps doesn't tell us much. Dropping from 1000 fps to 985 fps is a huge meh, and 15 fps dropping to 0 fps is the other extreme. I know you're somewhere in the middle, but no clue where.
If your texture is actually 1024x768 instead of 1024x1024, make it 1024x1024 (feel free to atlas with something else if you can) and compress it as much as you're willing for some speedup. If you are using a \"bad\" texture format, change to a proper texture format (probably PVRTC). If you're using OpenGL ES 1.x instead of 2, use OES_draw_texture. Use the lowest color precision you find acceptable. If you can, do multitexture instead of multipass. Basically, just follow the best practices Apple tells you in their docs. I'm sure I left stuff out.
I don't think 32x32 textures are faster than 1024x1024. If you really can't atlas with something else to fill out the 1024x1024, maybe 3 512x512 would be faster, but I'm not sure since you're trading one performance area for another and it will probably be dependent on what you're doing.
And that recommendation to avoid as much of the transparency as possible is great advice. Try varying numbers of polygons to see where the sweet spot is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're better off with 100+ polygons to minimize the amount of transparent overlay pixels to render rather than a single fullscreen quad. Still use as few textures as possible though, even if you have a lot of polygons.
1. My game has to run at a solid 60fps to remain playable. Without the overlay image, I get that. 45fps is not tolerable for my game due to the internal mechanics I've chosen to use. Sorry, should have said that earlier.
2. As I stated earlier, I tried POT-ing the texture, and it had zero impact. It's an issue related to fill rates. I'm going to try compressing it to use PVRTC soon, because I'm using RGBA8, which i know isn't too optimal, especially since it's black and white. I'm using OpenGL ES 2.0 right now, and now that I realize it, I did forget to switch the precision back to low, thanks. I read the Apple docs, and learned quite a bit from it, and implemented the necessary techniques to speed up my code, but none that address my particular issue.
3. No, that's not what I was saying. What I was saying was similar to your 4th paragraph. Use rows of 32x32 quads and not render the fully transparent area.
The tile-based architectures of most mobile GPUs have a different set of optimal use cases compared to more traditional GPUs. Check the advice in Performance Tuning for Tile-Based Architectures from the OpenGL Insights book to make sure you're not doing anything that triggers poor performance.
I saw that article once before, and forgot about it. This time, I'll try reading it more thoroughly.
but another reason I'm asking this is because I'd also like to release another game that uses post-processing effects on mobile devices.
You should aim for later devices then ipad1 then. It's almost 4 years old now.
It all depends on what else you do of course, but I wouldn't plan on too fancy full screen post effects on anything more then 1-2 years old.
With the ES3 devices coming out now, the performance start reaching levels where you can do some pretty fancy stuff, but they are still very far from desktop.
That's not that strange considering their difference in size and power consumption though!
Yes, well said. I do plan on aiming for only iOS7 compatible devices in the future (iPad1 is all I have right now, hence the reason why I'm using it).
I do own an OpenGL ES 3.0 compatible device now, a 2nd Gen Nexus 7 which does nicely. Haven't ported my game to Android yet.
How often is the texture being update ?
-If every frame, are you uploading the entire texture every frame even in the case where parts of the texture is not modified?
What format is the texture data in ?
-If its a fat format like RGBA, do you actually need 4-channels ? Would 2-channel or 1-channel texture suffice.
There is a multitude of reason as why your texture upload is so slow, but the solution probably boils down to taking a step back and looking at the requirements. I've seen you have tried a few optimization that haven't given you the desired result. Without more information like texture format, update frequency, its kinda difficult to give a concrete answer.
1. The texture is not dynamic, so it's not updated every frame.
2. It's RGBA, and compression wouldn't hurt, of course. I've read some posts by others who have the same issue, and they said that compression only got them a few extra fps (like 4). Still worth implementing either way.
Shogun.
\n\n1st gen iPads are a nightmare for fill-rate. Switching to PVRTC will help.
If your texture allows it, then identify areas which don't need to be filled, and use trade extra geometry for less fill-rate. You could even take that to an extreme, assuming we're talking about concentric hexagons visible in this image (http://shogun3d.net/images2/looptil/04.jpg), then the performance will be massively better if they are rendered as geometry with no texture whatsoever. A thousand or so extra triangles is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of pixels you'll avoid filling.
\n![\"Lodeman\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-212015.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nJust adding this in for clarity.
Make sure you aren't sending in the uniform for the sampler2D each frame. Just send it in the first time you need it.
I know you said the texture isn't updated every frame, but uploading and updating can mean two different things, hence why I want to make sure this is clear!
Cheers
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\n\n\n\n\n\nHi,
I asked the same question at Unity forums but I wanted to get the ideas of you guys also to have an idea out of Unity.
We are working on a multiplayer pool game heavily based on Unity physics (PhysX) and we managed it have a stable version of the single player gameplay.
For one week, we are working on the multiplayer version of it. Firstly I can say I am not a networking or physics expert but I know all the concepts of them, have 3 years background in game industry and have made a long research about it before I came to here.
Our current solution was the easy one which turnout to be not that easy. It is sending force direction and position from clients and calculating physics on both client/server and correcting the results (supposed to be too low) from the server at the end of the turn. To be able to make this work, we have made lots of investigation:
Firstly; simulation wasn't even same at the same computer with the same executable. To be able to correct it, we have to work on many Unity parameters, we corrected it up to same extent but none of them worked perfectly.
Our final results with break shot for 15 + 1 balls:
Client, two same shots, three balls position:
Ball_1: 7.647239, 1.791727, -7.450733
Ball_1: 7.647166, 1.791727, -7.450527
Ball_12: 3.079326, 1.791727, -3.05286
Ball_12: 3.080814, 1.791728, -3.052271
Ball_15: 7.133366, 1.791727, -11.65263
Ball_15: 7.133381, 1.791727, -11.6526
Server, two same shots, three balls position:
Ball_1: 7.649154, 1.791727, -7.458591
Ball_1: 7.649155, 1.791727, -7.458614
Ball_12: 3.076369, 1.791727, -3.062551
Ball_12: 3.076268, 1.791727, -3.063016
Ball_15: 7.1292, 1.791727, -11.64938
Ball_15: 7.129121, 1.791728, -11.64801
As you see the results are very close now but still even 0.01 differences make significant differences at some points (with a strong force or situation like in the client ball enters pocket but in the server it doesn't with a very small difference and such..).
I know the main problem here is physics random numbers and floating point arithmetic but I still believe there could be a workaround for this as it is a turn-based game at the end.
So my question here: Is it possible to make Unity physics deterministic and make it work with this approach?
Or:
Only way for this is state sync from server to clients which uses bandwidth around 6kB/s per player (16 balls, 12 bytes for position, 16 bytes for rotation, 10 bytes for header). Down side for this is; it will very expensive when we reach huge amount of players, also connection speed could effect this a lot.
Or:
Writing our own stable physics for it. Down side for this is; production cost and optimization issues. Possibly we could use another physics library with Unity but not sure if it will worth the results.
I hope someone could lead me to a possible solution for this.
Thanks in advance
![\"PeterStock\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-90838.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nI don't know myself, but I've heard a couple of people claim that deterministic physics isn't possible with Unity.
Deterministic physics is a very attractive way of making a multiplayer physics game send very little data. I'm doing this, but I have my own physics code, so when it breaks it's my own fault :P
\n![\"jjd\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-87074.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nThis may not be what you want for your game, but one approach you could take is to have the physics simulation take place only on the machine of the player whose turn it is, and simply transmit the positions of the balls to the other player. This solves your problem (I think) but it also makes scaling the solution easier. For example, if you decide at some point to have multiple observers of the game, transmitting the results is a straight-forward extension of transmitting the ball positions to the opponent. This comes down the idea that there is only ever one source of the Truth in the system and everyone is an observer (until it is their turn of course).
-Josh
\n
--www.physicaluncertainty.com
\n--linkedin
\n--irc.freenode.net#gdnet
\n\n\n\n![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/TANSTAAFL/ClickTheYellowRhombus.jpg\"/)
\n![\"johnhattan\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-15.png\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Azgur\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-139237.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nand finding a company that would want to relocate a game designer is extremely difficult.
![\"Tom](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2020_02/thumbnail.thumb.5e409d10523b4fada5fe831ce588d26e.kindaitomLC3z.webp\" "\\"<div")
\n
1. Hi there. I'm new to the forums, and I hope that I chose the correct forum to post this.
2. I've been working in game industry as a game designer (and lately as a producer) for 5 years, with over 20 projects ...
3. how should I proceed towards my career goal? [AAA games]
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
\n\n\n
I thought that I have the best chances on succes with something really small, Iike a web-based or mobile application, and it's still pretty far from AAA experience. It's not like I could create a PSN or XBLA title by myself:
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
\n\n
I'm suggesting that you work in your accustomed role (designer, producer) on an AAA-quality indie project, since you want to work in AAA.
\n-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Navyman\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/thumb.photo-130073.png\" "\\"<div")
\nI have read a few posts about using a Monte Carlo Tree Search. While I understand the basics I am at odds on how to put the idea into motion.
If there is anyone that could shed some light on the possible options / methods it would be most helpful.
Thank you in advance.
\nDeveloper with a bit of Kickstarter and business experience.
YouTube Channel: Hostile Viking Studio
Twitter: @Precursors_Dawn
\n
\nWhat aspects are giving you trouble? I am not an expert, but to get started I would say:
Check wikipedia for much more in depth analysis.
\n\n\n@ Alvaro Okay the hidden information was that part that was upsetting my mental design for the AI. However, if you are able to play multiple cards in a turn would this still require the tree to be formed to allow the AI to decide which order to play?
\nDeveloper with a bit of Kickstarter and business experience.
YouTube Channel: Hostile Viking Studio
Twitter: @Precursors_Dawn
\n
\n\nTypically, a \"turn\" in a CCG isn't a \"turn\" in the traditional game tree usage of the word, but a sequence of many AI turns of different types.
Taking Magic: the Gathering as a reference, every time a player passes priority to the opponent to answer his move it is one turn in the game tree, even if the other player's move is doing nothing (which in many cases is the optimal choice). Some of these turns are special actions (e.g. declaring attacking and blocking creatures), some are game state changes without player decisions (e.g. resolving spells and abilities, combat damage steps, state based actions) and some consist of composite moves (e.g. playing mana abilities as you play a spell or ability, or stacking several spells and abilities without passing priority).
\nOmae Wa Mou Shindeiru
\n![\"Orymus3\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_08/large.0.png.924f55bbfcb69e0c782e99ab6f96bbdf.png\" "\\"<div")
\nIs the opponent's deck 'fixed'? If so, there are a few ways you can cheat at this.
Also, are there complex interactions? (cards that strengthen others) or are most cards single-use/consumable effects or permanent 'lone wolves'?
\n\n
Is the opponent's deck 'fixed'?
I have not decided to set the deck and card order or allow it to be random card order. Writing the AI for a fixed card order would be much easier, because it would only require a few sets of switch gates to handle the card play order.
\nDeveloper with a bit of Kickstarter and business experience.
YouTube Channel: Hostile Viking Studio
Twitter: @Precursors_Dawn
\n
\n
Writing the AI for a fixed card order
I meant, is the deck content fixed? Or are the possibilities finite? CCG implies your enemy could have pretty much any kind of deck, so I'm assuming you want to have an AI that can handle all possible outcomes and weigh their relative values, but if you build opponent decks as with a single player linear progression, you could nudge your AI in the right direction with every level by making it understand the core concept of how to play the deck (somewhat hard-coded) and limit your efforts with actual AI (instead of creating an AI that has to know and master every subtlety and synergy of the entire card library).
\n\nI have redefined the method by which the Battlefield data is handled and now the AI has better access to the information. This hopefully make it easier to make the AI to select the better actions.
\nDeveloper with a bit of Kickstarter and business experience.
YouTube Channel: Hostile Viking Studio
Twitter: @Precursors_Dawn
\n
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\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/jhoxley/Dissertation/3DirectionalBlinnPhongLights.jpg\")
![\"ApochPiQ\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_06/321649.thumb.png.c7e3a9cb02b37a485d4cf9b8c638b8e7.png\"/)
\n\n\n\n\nQuote:
Memory virtualization for the win!
Quote:
Graphics cards with more VRAM for the win!
\nQuote:Only if the clown impresses me with an awesome debug tool thingy [grin]\r
Pipo DeClown for the win!
Quote:Why not, in some respects they'd complement each other!\r
Memory virtualization for the win! Quote:Both??
Graphics cards with more VRAM for the win!
Quote:Yup, Windows Vista views the GPU as a shared resource, thus you get shared/virtualized memory. Although, it is possible that large-VRAM cards might become a tidy speed up in the same way that adding regular RAM is now. I'd hope it's unlikely, but if a 128mb VRAM card ended up with lots of virtualization/swapping in and out of VRAM then replacing it with a 256/512mb VRAM card might make a big difference simply due to the reduced amount of paging...\r
DX10 is for the former, right?
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Wrathnut\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-1796.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/easilyconfused/mapedit.jpg\"/)
\n\n![\"jjd\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-87074.jpg\"/)
\n\n\nQuote:
Original post by Programmer16
Moving from C++ to C# was fairly easy IMO. Obviously there are quite a few differences, but there are also a lot of similarities. For WinForms you can download Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition and use the designer which works REALLY well.\r
As for resources, I don't really have any. For the few problems that I've run into I've just quickly googled and found some help. If you've got AIM (dfgDBeals) or IRC (#general) I'm available for most problems (still new to it myself, but I've learned a few of the quirks.) If you don't have either of those I check my PMs and email quite often.\r
HTH! Good luck with Win32!
\n\n\n\n\n\n I don''t think you want to use c# either since it''s unsupported.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Luckless\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-49523.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nI will admit that I'm very disappointed in myself. I wasn't going to do it, but then I saw a few guys in my office doing it, so I decided I would join them.
I purchased the new SimCity game.
Things were a tad slow in the office today, so I managed to take off early to get a few things done, and this left me with free time. In theory this also meant that I would have a chance to explore the gameplay and design aspects of the latest SimCity. Bought it, got it installed in the afternoon, and sat down to play a bit. Co-workers warned me to set up on European servers as the US ones were hammered, followed their advice, and then half an hour later I was getting errors about having lost contact with the servers.
No big deal right? This is still technically a single player game, I'm not interacting with any other players, so clearly not having contact with the server isn't a huge deal. I'll miss out on a few easy achievements maybe? It isn't kicking me off and has been flashing that message for awhile, so obviously everything is fine... Wait, I was eventually kicked off.
So I take a break for supper, come back, and now I can't log in because the servers are down for maintenance, and their ETA on coming back up is <parameter string>. Great, so not only can the servers go down for an unknown length of time, but the people behind them are sloppy enough that I can see internal strings that I'm not suppose to.
And this is the trend developers are pushing for? To piss me off enough that I declare to hell with their product, and have called up a friend to see if she and her roommate wants to play Carcassonne The City with me?
\n\n![\"blink.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/blink.png\" "\\":blink:\\"")
\n\nCouldn't they... not make a single-player game require a permanent connection to the internet in order to work?
That.
\n\nWhich is all well and good but this isn't a purely online game and while online is part of the experience the fact that you can set a region to 'private' implies single play is possible which brings up the question of why do you have to be connected to a server?They've been having server problems. It is still launch day after all.
\nYeah, I've lost count of the number of games that have shit me to tears on their launch day now.
Even going back as far as Half-Life 2 -- I bought the retail 5-CD copy, and it still took 5 hours to install thanks to Steam being hammered....
It's sad that this is the norm.
Oh, and all of Oceania apparently only has one Sim City server... balls.
Why is launch day an excuse?
I spoke to the people behind Battlefield 3's master server, and they seemed very proud of the fact that they didn't have any launch capacity issues, due to... you know... actually testing their software!
They wrote a fake user client that they could run from the Amazon cloud, so they could simulate the actual load caused by a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million users, all the way through development and find all the weak links. They'd also set themselves up so they could scale up or down capacity almost instantly.
You'd think giants like EA (who bought these people recently) and Acti-lizzard would be able to handle this...
\n. 22 Racing Series .
\n![\"TheChubu\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-203125.png\" "\\"<div")
\n^ I agree with everyone except frob. And seriously OP, you didn't knew the new SimCity would require an always on connection and its a pure (more or less) multiplayer game?
\n\"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ\"
\n\n
My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator
\n\nHalf-Life 2, while no less annoying I'm sure (I wouldn't know, I'm like one of 12 gamers in the world who don't like the HL series it seemsEven going back as far as Half-Life 2 -- I bought the retail 5-CD copy, and it still took 5 hours to install thanks to Steam being hammered....
![\"biggrin.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.png\" "\\":D\\"")
), does get a semi-pass as it was 8 years ago and this kind of activation was very new.![\"Alpha_ProgDes\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-33427.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n^ I agree with everyone except frob. And seriously OP, you didn't knew the new SimCity would require an always on connection and its a pure (more or less) multiplayer game?
I didn't know. In all the history of SimCity has it ever been online-always and mulitplayer? I mean sure it's a feature, but I'm surprised that the game itself is a MMO. WTH? It's always been a single-player experience. I don't think I'd rag on someone for assuming the thing.
\n\nI think people do complain about it, mostly those in internet poor countries, but the difference is that when a big game releases on Steam you have generally a) been able to pre-load 99% of the content already and b) don't end up with hours waiting to 'sign in' to get at the game itself.For some reason people don't complain about it any more with Valve -- I've never been able to get Steam to allow me to play offline for any game. A few seconds on Google will find many complaints when Steam was introduced about its always-on requirements.
\n\n\n\n![\"jeffkingdev\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-183898.gif\" "\\"<div")
\n\nIt looks really good, but too good for just ambient + sun light. Does anyone think AO?I can't see more light sources than just the sun, and I can't see any AO.
. 22 Racing Series .
\n\n\n. 22 Racing Series .
\n![\"MrOMGWTF\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-201312.png\" "\\"<div")
\n
The tree trunks seem to be normal-mapped, and the deer seems to be as well.
On the left, there's a thick white tree just left of a thick brown tree. Look at the vertical line where it transitions from light into shadow. On a smooth shape, this \"termination line\" would also be smooth, but on the tree it's very irregular, indicating a bumpy surface. It's either high-poly or normal mapped.
It could just be a bright light in a non-HDR renderer (e.g. sun brightness of 2.0), but as there's no visible saturation anywhere, it's either been carefully tweaked, or is HDR.
If you look at the thin white tree in the foreground on the left, the thin shadowed trunk appears quite different to the lit trunk next to it (which seems to share the same texture). Also, the lit trunk is almost saturated, so if that was the original texture, then when darkened (to produce the shadowed trunk) it would not have as much detail as the shadowed trunk actually has - so that texture has probably been lightened above it's original painted values in the lit areas.
\n\n
I guess HDR + bump = really nice scenes
Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]
\n\n![\"turch\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-182614.png\" "\\"<div")
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\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1556222920.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg\"/)
![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/jhoxley/directx/Lighting/Ashikhmin-ShirleyEquation.png\"/)
![](\"http://members.gamedev.net/jhoxley/directx/Lighting/Ashikhmin-ShirleyDiagram.png\"/)
\n\nQuote:
I really wonder how it'll look like.
![](\"http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~ash/brdfs/brushcyl.jpg\")
![](\"http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~ash/brdfs/eric.jpg\"/)
Quote:
the constants (man, how do they find these constants ? For example the 28/23 at the beginning ? Why not 27/23 ? :) ).
Quote:
the use of tangent and binormal vectors in the specular equation (i've always used them to transform a vector from one coordinate space to another - never directly like that).
\n\nQuote:
mmm, that book looks good. I'v been pondering weather I should buy it, or the ShaderX3 book as a christmas present for myself.
Quote:
I like to think of it as simulating in what directions there are grooves on the surface. Having equal alpha_x/alpha_y values means the surface behaves uniformly. Like clay for example. having them differ gives the impression that the material was created with tools (i.e a lathe)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"bmarci\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_06/3891_1094178088483_4816552_n.thumb.jpg.62064d272daa3fc8ae732641594362d9.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nHi,
I started playing with force feedback wheels, and as I noticed this is the point where most people had already given up or it's just simply out of their interest.
Anyway, I'm having a hard time finding good writings about decent force feedback \"simulation\", so I have to take the hard way, figuring it out.
Hopefuly some of you are also into this topic :)
Here are some notices and questions that arose:
- There is a strange behavior even if driving straight, the steering wheel wants to \"go slalom\", I noticed the same effect with some AAA driving game, but not with Gran Turismo. Maybe it's the toe-in or camber that generates some torque, which are not equal for both wheels and \"magnifies\" with speed. My quick solution is to have a dead-zone and some damping at the center, so I can release the wheel at 300km/h and not hitting the wall :)
But it feels there is no grip around the center. It builds up as I turn but not instantly.
- I'm using the good old Pacejka to get the aligning moment, but it not incorporates the caster angle, is that an important factor, or can that be neglected? Also, where should the Mz curve's peak be? At the peak of Fy's? Or should it go back to zero at Max Fy?
- Road surface feedback is what I did yesterday. I'm using constant force for aligning moment, so it seemed obvoius that I should add some \"noise\" to the current FF force depending on the surface, but it just doesn't make that rumble effect that I expected. Am I on the good way or should I turn my attention to custom FF effects?
That's all I can remember now, and thanks for every help, ideas and opinions...ect.
By the way, this is where I'm now:
\n
\nthis comment is not about physics but about controls
I don't know why all racing games on PC do not support mouse for steering the wheel, it will be much more accurate than using the keys
So you should add mouse support instead of keys and change that rare tradition
\n\nI don't know why all racing games on PC do not support mouse for steering the wheel, it will be much more accurate than using the keys
So you should add mouse support instead of keys and change that rare tradition
Yes, the Racer does support mouse, and it's pretty weird, but it's only my opinion. :)
The keyboard support is already there and works very nicely, even easier to control the car with keys, but the wheel is much more fun.
I tried the mouse at the early stage, but it didn't work out.
mixing keys and mouse might be an exciting idea :D
\n\nIf you move the mouse to the left the wheel will rotate to the left and mantain that position,how can't that work?
\n\n
If you move the mouse to the left the wheel will rotate to the left and mantain that position,how can't that work?
Obviously :)
But, in case of mouse you don't have any physical feedback of the steering wheel's whereabout, and that becomes very annoying at high speed.
Even with the FFB wheel, a few percent of dead zone is needed, otherwise the car will never go straight.
I played around with the mouse steering for a couple of hours.
I added some dead zone, damping and speed sensitivity, but still having problems with small \"correction\" steering at high speeds.
Maybe those issues could be overcame in time, though.
Anyway, it was an interesting idea (throttle/brake with keys and steer with mouse)
But back to the original topic, any idea, anyone? Sim gurus, where are you?? :)
\n\nSorry to continue the off-topic -- the old version of the CarX demo used to have mouse as lomateron described, which I really enjoyed despite there being no feedback. The new version of the CarX demo tries to simulate feedback by moving the wheel in response to wheel forces, so you have to keep moving the mouse to 'fight' against it. Kinda-sorta works a bit, but I actually prefer their original implementation ![\"wink.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/wink.png\" "\\":wink:\\"/")
I'm not sure what's the cause of the \"going slalom\" wheel when driving straight -- I have also seen this effect in many sim games. I've never tried it in real life to see if it really occurs ![\"laugh.png\"](\"http://public.gamedev5.net//public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.png\" "\\":lol:\\"/")
I always thought it was a side-effect, caused by momentum in the steering wheel peripheral. That is, the game applies a force to the steering wheel to make it return to centre, but the wheel over-shoots past the centre point and begins to turn in the other direction. This makes the car begin to swerve in the game, and makes the game apply an opposite force to the wheel, making it shoot back in the other direction (and again shoot past the center and continue the swerving motions). As this happens, the car begins to lose grip, so the swerving gets worse and worse...
I'm not at all sure about this hypothesis though.
P.S. your project looks very impressive
. 22 Racing Series .
\n\nI read somewhere, an old sim (maybe GPL) used some kind of force feedback prediction.
Since the devices have some latency (10-20ms) it could be useful to set the future Mz instead of the current.
used_mz = mz + ((mz - last_mz) * prediction_time) / dt; << or something similar :)
I tried this in the weekend and didn't feel much difference. Still damping at the center, so more to the center the wheel gets the less the FFB is set to.
An other idea is to damp the FFB depending on the turning direction instead of the position.
Haven't tried it yet... I'llkeep you updated.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"Visit](\"http://download.upr.si/rok/Flyer.jpg\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\nQuote:
Original post by Benjamin Heath
how to deal with such an incidentmeow. (Hold life safety above all else
\n\n\n\n\n\nSo I've had this idea for about a year now, and it's not really something that I'd want to distribute on a large scale--mostly it's just a learning endeavor, and something to satisfy my own amusement.
First I should say that I'm unfamiliar with pretty much all programming languages (save HTML) and I'm more of an artist, but I'd love to have a crash-coarse in whatever I need to learn by making this. Particularly javascript, which will help out with websites as well.
So! My idea.
Basically this \"game\" I want to make is the 3D interior of a house. The user will be able to navigate a character (which they can possibly choose at the beginning) through this house and examine and explore the rooms to find things, much like a single dungeon area in a Final Fantasy-esque RPG. I might have an animated sprite or I might have a 1st person perspective, still deciding.
Would it be easier to lay it out like the enviornments in the early FF games, with stationary camera? I suppose so, haha.
The goal of the game is to find codes that will unlock the front door, which is a portal to other places. For example, when the user finds the first code, she can use the code on the door and open it into a forest. If the next code is found, the user can step out into a street, etc. There will be popups like thought bubbles when the user examines certain things, and so on and so forth.
This house will have 3 stories and various different rooms.
Basically I was just going to create this 3D enviornment in Maya/Blender to practice using the programs, but then I thought it would be kinda fun to be able to navigate it in a game-like fashion.
I just have no idea where to start! Would GameMaker be able to handle this job? I would create objects in Maya--like tables and books and such--and import them. And then there's the animated sprite...
Just wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone had any suggestions! I really appreciate the time you've taken to read this, and thank you in advance! :)
\n![\"jbadams\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-36615.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n\n- Jason Astle-Adams\n
\n\n![\"DejaimeNeto\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-187867.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nYou could also check Leadwerks (a viable alternative to unity, way cheaper, but not as portable).
or check out the open-source Maratis3D before you marry buy a commercial engine.
\nYou could also check Leadwerks (a viable alternative to unity, way cheaper, but not as portable).
or check out the open-source Maratis3D before you
marrybuy a commercial engine.
Unity3D has a free edition which is pretty functional, especially meant for those wanting to have a hobby project as the OP.
\n\nYou could also check Leadwerks (a viable alternative to unity, way cheaper, but not as portable).
or check out the open-source Maratis3D before you
marrybuy a commercial engine.
Not saying those engines are bad or anything, but both use C++ (though I see that Maratis also offers Lua scripting). The OP said that he's an artist and his only experience with programming is HTML. I don't think dunking himself into C++ is what he wants.
BTW, it's off-topic but I'm a little curious: Leadwerks is a \"game engine for Linux and PC\", so why is there a Visual Studio screenshot in there? Do they mean PC as in Windows PC?
\n\nPC as in Windows
Yes, PC means windows in this case. It is an old term used by some veterans, dating back to when windows still ruled the world. Not really valid nowadays, but well...
Look at this Warcraft3 expansion CD box (Yes, it is still sealed):
http://s11.postimg.org/vavd93eib/2014_04_19_13_12_14.jpg
We still see people referring to windows as PC today, but it is not nearly as common as it was ten years ago.
btw, Leadwerks and Maratis, both, offer Lua. And I don't think it gets any easier than Lua aside from logic blocks visual programming.
But, considering it, there is also Unreal Engine 4, that offers some sort of visual programming (Blueprints).
Unity3D has a free edition which is pretty functional, especially meant for those wanting to have a hobby project as the OP.
Unity's free version is actually very limited. It cuts out several optimizations such as LOD (what imo is pretty basic), you can't play videos nor create a dynamic navmesh (your bots will look pretty dumb unless you limit your game to fit this). And, in the end, it is not free, since you'd pay with a free advertisement, where you could add paid ads from google, for example.
Is Unity good? Well, I personally like Unity and always recommend it.
But is Unity free viable? I personally would get a pro license for any full fledged games, save showcases and prototypes.
In my view, Unity free is basically a learning tool, that you use to crash into the engine and learn how to use it, before you buy the pro version; not meant to create and release commercial games.
Also, for its price, Unity commercial license is certainly a good option. Can't even imagine how many man-hours were spent on creating it.
\n\n\n\n\n\nI'm getting started with Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader.
How do I create shader files?
Should I write shader files myself or should I use a software for generating shader files?
\n![\"george7378\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-207590.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nThey are mostly done in Notepad - DirectX reads them as text files, and it's easy enough to put them together without any special additional programs. You can use things like RenderMonkey to test them out and debug on the fly.
\n\n
![\"Muzzy](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-121628.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n'FX Composer' is useful for helping with making sure your shader code compiles and gives you a preview of what your shader will do.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn the same vein as this post: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/656791-what-good-opengl-book-do-you-recommend-for-beginners/
Except I'm looking for a GL book for someone who already knows how to use a dozen other graphics APIs, and just wants:
At the moment I'm thinking of getting these:
Something like MJP and JasonZ's D3D book (\"Practical Rendering & Computation with Direct3D11\") would be nice
. 22 Racing Series .
\n![\"Promit\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_09/large.GIHK0NU.jpg.5ce73091f54cd83f6a7e51f6157600d2.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nI found Insights to be supremely useful -- you probably already know how closely Riccio follows the state of the industry with regards to OpenGL. Of course the big problem is that any book with too many concrete recommendations is likely doomed, given the quicksand shifting of drivers, implementations, and specs in current day GL. There's too much space for stale information.
\n\n\nAnother tip is to do a GL Intercept log of what the latest id Software engine does, because they're going to be the paths that vendors will be optimizing around.
\nDirect3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.
\n![\"bioglaze\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/large.photo-204569.png\" "\\"<div")
\nAnother tip is to do a GL Intercept log of what the latest id Software engine does, because they're going to be the paths that vendors will be optimizing around.
I'd replace \"id Software\" with \"Unreal Engine\" but the advice is fine.
\nAether3D Game Engine: https://github.com/bioglaze/aether3d
Blog: http://twiren.kapsi.fi/blog.html
\n\n
Another tip is to do a GL Intercept log of what the latest id Software engine does, because they're going to be the paths that vendors will be optimizing around.
I'd replace \"id Software\" with \"Unreal Engine\" but the advice is fine.
Depends.
On Windows the Unreal engine is still D3D, isn't it? And that's exactly the combination of platforms where 95% of your OpenGL driver problems are going to be coming from. So since id Software and the last major users of OpenGL on Windows (at least so far as games are concerned) then their engines are the ones that vendors will be making sure work.
For other OSs where OpenGL is the only option I'd say something like Unity may be a better bet, but unless you're certain that you're going to have a significant number of users on those OSs you'll probably be focussing on Windows.
\nDirect3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.
\n\nATI (AMD?) Render Monkey is a software that has gl/dx version of every shader and workspace, it comes with SDK as well. I would also read OpenGL ES specification compared to OpenGL to spot what is native and apreciated for Khronos philosophies. Besides that, I would compare GLSL versioning (wiki is rich on that particulary).
\n\nYou should really start with OpenGL 3+ since OpenGL 2 is old, fixed function pipeline is old and.... Wait, wait, *looks at title* Oops, wrong thread.
\n\"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ\"
\n\n
My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHi,
Any thoughts on how the coming DirectX 12 outroll will impact the industry in general and also certain segments of the market?
For those who do not know, it comes with promise to help developers have more performance advantage in low level coding and such issues by providing a thinner API layer between developer and hardware. Subsequently, game development costs in these related areas should be leaner than in the past while increasing access to optimizations such as threading.
\nPersonal life and your private thoughts always effect your career. Research is the intellectual backbone of game development and the first order. Version Control is crucial for full management of applications and software. The better the workflow pipeline, then the greater the potential output for a quality game. Completing projects is the last but finest order.
\n\n
by Clinton, 3Ddreamer
\n\nIn the near term the effect is approximately nothing.
It is not released. The official stance is that it is tied to the Windows SDK, and the next update is Windows 9.
Unless Microsoft decides to change their prior stance and push out an update to Windows 7, or decide to break out back out from the Windows SDK and back into a separate library, it will have very little effect on everyday games until something happens that drives people to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 9.
\n![\"Stainless\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-109222.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nAlso the focus of the industry is blurred right now.
You will have many more people having high level meetings about what devices to support, will they spend resources on a steambox version, how many Android versions will they put out, that sort of thing. DX12 will be mostly ignored until it starts causing problems.
DX12 is not something I personally will be looking at, couldn't care less about it.
But then I have refused to use windows 8, so I am not the best litmus test
\ni'm focussed on windows development, and i couldn't care less RIGHT NOW about dx12. because, it's 1.5 years away for general release. so essentially, it's a \"we'll see\" for me.
\nMy Page davepermen.net | My Music on Bandcamp and on Soundcloud
\n\nDepends.
If it's available on Windows 7 - happy days.
If it has feature levels allowing it to run on downlevel hardware - happy days.
If Microsoft hit those two sweet spots with it, allowing it to be usable by most people on day 1, then it will be successful. Remember: this is what they did with DirectX11 (it ran on Vista and had feature levels) so there is precedent. Hopefully they're aware that if they want this to be successful they'll have to modify some of their current attitudes.
\nDirect3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.
\n\n\nDX12 doesn't seem to introduce new features, just a leaner API. A leaner API optimizes performance (primarily with respect to CPU usage) but it's also a pain in the ass to code for. Look at the Mantle slides for a glimpse of that. Plus there's a risk that MS will screw us on OS support, as phantom mentioned. My take is that it will be an advertising point for AAA games but have very little impact on the industry otherwise.
\n\n
it finally forces the OpenGL ARB to get their head out of the instance-all-the-things sand and embrace this way of working.
Based on the latest stuff out of the GL camp, they're staying the course. Their approach appears to be focused around GPU driven rendering (MultiDrawIndirect) and bindless/sparse arrays. That plus a few other toys like persistent mapping/fences, buffer storage, and gl_DrawID. The slides actually admit that DrawID doesn't work properly everywhere.
\n\n\nWith the \"Approaching Zero Driver Overhead\" talk I thought they'd make an announcement along the lines of \"And now all these extensions will be supported in Intel, nVidia and AMD!\" but it didn't happened lol
\n\"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ\"
\n\n
My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator
\n\n\n![\"Saurabh](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2022_09/thumb.b0e50a47fa8a4fdc951ac8560ba4a4ea.IMG_20220904_095408-Saurabh-Torne.jpg\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"clb\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/thumb.photo-60791.png\" "\\"<div")
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHello.
I am implementing rotation around the up,left vectors of an object in the following way, which for some reason works only individually.
That is, i can rotate perfectly fine around up but after that, if i try rotation around left everything gets messed up.
Same if i rotate around left vector,and then try rotating around up.
Could you tell me if the following general method is correct?
vectors up,left,forward, float arrays with x,y,z components.
For example, if i want to rotate at an angle ANG, around UP (turn left/right).
1. I get the angles of the UP vector from XZ plane and the YZ plane.
Rotating the UP with these angles around the proper axes would align it with the Z axis.
2. I perform these rotations to all the vectors except UP.
3. I perfom the desired rotation with ANG, around Z.
4. I perform the opposite rotations in (2) (again,all vectors but UP),so only the desired rotation \"remains\".
I could just use glRotate to visualize the rotations, but i want the forward,etc vectors as information to where the object is looking at.
Thanks in advance.
(this forum looks awesome )
\n\n\n\n![](\"http://s3.dm-studios.net/PRImages/Update6.PNG\"/)
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\n![\"puz\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-158064.png\"/)
\n![\"Graph](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/gmz_so1.png\")
\nDay 13, 14
Wrote section that generates the maze
Day 15, 16, 17, 18
Wrote section that finds solution
\n![\"Graph](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/gmz_cl1.png\")
\nDay 10
Made the program assign numbers to all cells
and write edge numbers into cells.
Days 11, 12
Made the program find connections between cells.
\n
\n![\"Graph](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/gmz_ls4.png\")
\nDay 8
Made the program assign numbers to all vertices.
Day 9
Made the program assign numbers to all edges.
\n![\"Graph](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/gmz01.png\")
\nIt's been 15 months since I last posted. My new project is Graph Maze, which I have been designing in my head for many years. It is similar to Amorphous Maze in that the walls are at arbitrary angles, but different in that the locations are pre-set by a template created with a CAD program.
Day 1
To …
\n\n\n![\"Hexadecagon](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/cap88m11x14_1c2.png\")
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\n\n\n\n![\"Hexadecagon](\"http://members.gamedev.net/puz/maze_04.png\")
\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat are some good places to get sound effects and what to avoid?
\n![\"Khatharr\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-167899.png\" "\\"<div")
\n
Pay attention to the license requirements on each item.
You may want to grab Audacity (http://www.audacityteam.org/) as well for tweaking things and possibly for recording your own effects. With a little patience and creativity you can make most simple effects yourself.
\n\nYou can also make your own on http://sfbgames.com/chiptone/
You can even save (\"save setup\") to work with it later.
=]
\n\n
This guy has some good sound fx but doesn't have a lot of them since he mainly composes music.
\n![\"BBeck\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-231050.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nIt depends greatly on what kind of sounds you are looking for. Synthesizers are good for some sounds. Some sounds can be found on the internet as some have pointed out. You may have to record your own. A digital recorder is probably a good place to start for that. I'm sure your setup can become as expensive and as involved as you want it to be. In addition, you will probably want at least some simple audio editing software for cutting out parts of the track you don't want if nothing else. And recording is a skill like most everything else. It takes time and practice to get good at it. And more equipment.
\n\non the flight home from CGDC '96 I finally broke down and bought The General 6000 Series (50 CDs!) for $1000. collections start at about $100.
Norm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
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\nQuote:
Original post by PlayfulPuppy
However when it comes to positions that are far more centered around a applicants personality.....
Quote:
...he's unsure as to whether or not this experience would count for or against him seeing that OFP, being close to 9 years old now, is such an ancient qualification.
\n\n\n\n\nHi everyone!
Time to implement raiding and interband rivalry in my caveman simulator.
and i'm not sure what to do.
i've done the research and figured out how it really worked, but i'm still not sure what to do.
you'd have bands of cavemen, and they'd have good or bad relations with each other. they could raid each other for supplies, mates, slaves, etc. but killing would be somewhat rare, for fear of retribution. but on occasion, a band might be wiped out.
in the game, the player controls a band, similar to a household in the sims, or a PC and sqauddie NPCs in a shooter. the player can tab between band members at anytime.
non-player bands are either friendly or hostile. friendlies only become hostile if you attack. hostiles never become friendly.
if you kill all the hostiles at a cave or rock shelter, you clear it out. if you kill or drive away all hostile at a hut, you clear it out, and can take it over or demolish it.
taking of prisoners will be implemented. it was at one point already then turned off.
hostile raids on player caves, rock shelters, and huts (CRH's) are already modeled. if there's a player band member nearby, it triggers an hostile encounter. if not, there's a chance they take over (cave, rock shelter) or demolish (hut) your shelter, and you lose your stuff, depending on how well your shelter is camouflaged.
this is whats in the game so far.
i'm thinking one should be able to form alliances with friendly bands, and that hostiles should likewise form alliances, leading to tribes and nation states, and inter-tribal warfare.
any ideas?
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\nwhy no way for hostiles to become friendly? there should also be levels of relations, with giving of gifts(food, shelter, slaves) and performing actions(quests, attacking enemies, attacking allies) to increase the friendliness/hatred of the different bands.
as well as actions that raise your relations with one band while reducing them for another: like raiding a known shelter of one band for the other band to take over.
another thing going along the lines of tribes and nations having power struggles between different bands within the tribe/nation with inter tribe rivalries and alliances.
each band should have their own motivations, beyond survival. and give quests based on those motivations.
maybe you encounter a band that's main motivation is expansion and they are more likely to raid others to increase their area. or even grow hostile the more you expand in their direction.
\n![\"Wavinator\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-6483.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nYeah the first thing that jumped out at me was moneal's question: Why no ability to make enemy tribes friendly? If you need for there to always be some threat it would seem that animals could fill that role nicely. But if I'm playing a game where I'm encouraged not to kill but there are groups I can't even work to ally with I think I'm going to favor killing them just to get them out of the way.
Have you thought of inter-clan rivalries being moderated by formalized tribal competitions? It might go well with a non-violent (or at least non-murder) angle. The vibe I get is sort of a Clan of the Cave Bear summer or winter Gathering where tribes could trade goods, test their mettle, duel and even settle grudges, steal wives, etc. It would give you a meta-game goal to reach for as you play I imagine (especially if you could lose tribe members peacefully or gain them). Maybe this level of diplomacy could evolve officially and become something like the Icelandic Althing, where the most powerful leaders would meet to officially settle disputes and dispense justice. I can see this having Civilization / Alpha Centauri gameplay where you try to not only thrive but become influential enough to control the caveman equivalent of the United Nations.
\n\nWhile the concept appears original, I remember attending a seminar that glossed over a topic that you might feel relevant:
The \"caveman theme\", although strong and largely unused, it also one of the less appealing as a PLAYER.
The psychological reasoning behind this is that no one really wants to pretend they are an unevolved being (I'm really summarizing this here, but I suggest you have a look around).
A number of games have initially started from caveman-like themes and somewhat stretched out a bit to avoid making this allusion in the end (Dwarf fortress for example is very early human development centric, but it suddenly makes sense when put in the context of dwarves).
I'm not saying you should avoid using this theme, as I said earlier, I find it particularly interesting/original, but if I can drop one single bit of advice, I would definitely not play the immersion card here. The fact you get to manage a clan for example distanciate you from this and this is a good point. Perhaps it can help you make further decisions in that trend.
\n\nwhy no way for hostiles to become friendly? there should also be levels of relations, with giving of gifts(food, shelter, slaves) and performing actions(quests, attacking enemies, attacking allies) to increase the friendliness/hatred of the different bands.
yes, i'm thinking that simply having good guys and bad guys is too simplistic a model.
really there should just be other cavemen, who can range from friendly to hostile.
each band should have their own motivations, beyond survival. and give quests based on those motivations.
maybe you encounter a band that's main motivation is expansion and they are more likely to raid others to increase their area. or even grow hostile the more you expand in their direction.
hmm... thats an interesting one. thats taking it to another level. similar to the politics engine which drove campaign generators, which in turn drove mission generators in my star trek flight sim.
we've had this whole backstory thing and stringing quests together realistically plaguing the design of the quest gen for the game
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/638940-types-of-quests/
motivations might be the missing link.
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\nHave you thought of inter-clan rivalries being moderated by formalized tribal competitions? It might go well with a non-violent (or at least non-murder) angle. The vibe I get is sort of a Clan of the Cave Bear summer or winter Gathering where tribes could trade goods, test their mettle, duel and even settle grudges, steal wives, etc.
yes, i've been leaning in this direction. perhaps not on a multi-band scale, but the same idea when two bands gather together.
I can see this having Civilization / Alpha Centauri gameplay where you try to not only thrive but become influential enough to control the caveman equivalent of the United Nations.
LOL i love that one!
your mentioning of the Althing is right on the money. the caveman version would just be on a smaller and more primitive scale.
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\nthis topic has actually spread to three related threads.
here are the other two...
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/641211-rpg-whats-left-once-youre-high-level/
\n
Norm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\nI'm not saying you should avoid using this theme, as I said earlier, I find it particularly interesting/original, but if I can drop one single bit of advice, I would definitely not play the immersion card here. The fact you get to manage a clan for example distanciate you from this and this is a good point. Perhaps it can help you make further decisions in that trend.
this is a little different from you typical \"caveman\" game.
this is what it was REALLY like.
you're not a \"caveman\", you're a fully developed homo sapien, just like you and me.
you are the baddest mo fo to ever come down the evolutionary pike, and are destined to rule the planet, exterminating countless other species in the process (50 of which i model).
it started as a D&D type game in a paleolithic setting. it has since evolved into a VR paleo-world. this version is pretty much 100% realistic and authentic, all backed up by scientific evidence. over 3 major versions i've spent about 6 years on the game, almost two of which was nothing but research (when was the net invented? and stuff like that).
\nNorm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
![\"TheStumps\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-209772.png\" "\\"<div")
\nTo somewhat resound the sentiments of the previous posts, this seems rather simple in concept to solve.
Everything that you are at a basic level outlining currently has been exhaustively explored in many simulator games in the past.
For my two-cents, I would actually suggest looking at the Total War or Romance of the Three Kingdoms series', as the political war and social war involved was well done and is conceptually sounding close to the atmosphere of tension that you are looking for to create - instead of simply that of civilization which is not intense on every moment of political and warfare progression due to its interest in working a very long \"evolutionary\" track, rather than a localized period of simulation.
Because of that, I suggest these two period simulators which focus primarily on war and political alliances.
I also agree with moneal regarding the oddity of not being able to become friends with enemies; that is a rather crucial human behavior of societies.
\nI used to be Griffin_Kemp, but I lost all account information and decided to go with my more common username: TheStumps.
\n\nBecause of that, I suggest these two period simulators which focus primarily on war and political alliances.
hmm, the high level game in total war. yes an excellent politics war game. I'm a big fan of the series myself. I'll have to take a closer look at that.
I also agree with moneal regarding the oddity of not being able to become friends with enemies; that is a rather crucial human behavior of societies.
I've already started changing this, which has let to the questions:
Norm Barrows
\nRockland Software Productions
\n\"Building PC games since 1989\"
\n\n\n
PLAY CAVEMAN NOW!
\nhttp://rocklandsoftware.net/beta.php
\n\n
\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"buumchakalaka\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-202370.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\n\nTry to work out what features you want to implement before anything else. Start with general ideas and work your way down to specific features and requirements. Once you have all of your features in a list, you can start to design your architecture to implement these features, making sure to find solutions to dependencies between them. (this can be the hardest part!)
Don't bother with any pseudo-code after you've finished the architecture, as you've got all the elements needed to begin coding the actual game. When you do this, make sure to always write code that doesn't depend on a feature you haven't implemented yet. This should help you keep your game testable and cut down the amount of coding you need to do in between new builds, which will keep you motivated.
\n\n*90% of the time, a global shouldn't be a global, 95% of the time, a macro should be a template or a regular function, 99.9% of the time, a goto is being misused. 100% of these percentages are made up, but illustrate a point anyway. =)
**I find that it's rare, but not extremely rare. For performance reasons, probably 19 out of 20 of my dynamic allocations should be smart pointers - but I suppose that would vary from project to project. The vast majority allocations should be on the stack, and neither smart pointers nor raw allocations.
\n\nLots of good points in the previous posts. I'll second the point of designing ahead of the code. Don't implement any features you don't really need, and know what you do need before you start implementing stuff :) A 100% detailed design upfront would be nice, but not usually possible. But you at least need an overall game design, and a decent amount of full detailed stuff plotted out before you get coding.
For example, you might have a few levels planned out for a side scroller, with various platform and enemy types in them. Once you code all that up, you have all those components to mix and match in new, not-pre-planned levels, and maybe think of ideas for some more things to add. But you need those first levels designed before you start coding, or you risk falling into the trap of \"engine\" coding, which often results in lots of those unnecessary features :)
Also, use a coding style appropriate to the complexity of the game. Full C++/OO/RAII/smart pointer style is great for most things, but maybe a little overboard for Pac Man. If your game is similar to something done on SNES or earlier, chances are it was written in assembly with little if any heap allocation (usually using statically allocated pools for things that are dynamic in nature, but have a maximum number that can be on screen at a given time), and probably wouldn't run into many difficulties coding it in C.
And when commenting code, don't go overboard. Usually it will do to give a quick plain-English overview of what a function is trying to accomplish, or a block of code in longer functions. Only comment line by line if you're doing something particularly confusing, such as highly optimized code.
Quality content creation is time consuming. Background graphics, animations, sound effects, music, level design. But don't involve other people in your project until you have the design worked out well enough that a) they'll have something moving around on screen soon, and b) you're relatively confident that the project is not going to fizzle out due to excessive complexity or simply not being as much fun to play as you thought it would.
Be aware that 50% of the production time is finishing the last 10% of the game. If it doesn't look \"almost done\", you've got a long way to go :) But sometimes the transition from looking like a bunch of separate components into being a cohesive whole game can happen pretty much overnight.
\n![\"DpakoH\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-114408.png\" "\\"<div")
\ni want to add that during development keep in mind that at some point you will need some debug information displayed in the game. a really simple example: mouse coordinates (screen vs world), number of textures, number of vertices, state of an agent and so on, and so on. so when you think about the structure of the code, think about that too.
\n\nIf you want to design your game (or more precisely your game engine) up front, before coding something wrong and useless, elaborate your requirements in detail: there are features you really need, features which are likely to be useful, with vastly different priorities, and features you don't need.
Apart from discovering important decisions and complications early in the process to adjust your game design towards feasible objectives, knowing what you want is necessary in the choice of libraries, data structures, algorithms, contrasting architectures.
\nOmae Wa Mou Shindeiru
\n\n
Regarding up-front design - be aware that often, things will change as development proceeds. You may find that ideas you thought sounded fun on paper turn out to be terrible, in which case they will need to be dropped or re-worked entirely. Features that you wanted may turn out to be too processor intensive to work together, and scaled back or dropped accordingly. Early prototyping will help discover some of these issues ahead of time, but ultimately you will need to be flexible. Heavy investment in up-front design can be just as much of a waste of time as doing none at all and rewriting things several times, since you may actually have to do that anyway.
\n\nI think an object oriented language is the way to go for organization and maintenance (not speed though but it's fast enough for 99% of the code).
- Encapsulate as much as you can. I end up re-factoring my code all the time. To think you'll get it right the first time every time, or that you won't change your mind is silly, and the more you have things encapsulated the easier it'll be to re-factor things around without breaking the things that rely on the code. It also allows for experimenting with new ideas without breaking existing code. Even if you think something is small, encapsulate it because chances are you'll come back and make it more complex eventually and doing this can really make your life easier later.
- Make self containing code as much as possible. The more your code relies on each other the harder it'll be to make changes without breaking a bunch of stuff. This again allows for easier changes that don't break as much code if any. I like using event programming for this so that my objects fire events and other objects can subscribe to these events if they want. This way my objects aren't tightly coupled together (ie the HUD object doesn't need to directly know about the Player object), and don't rely on polling systems which waste time.
- Always make sure your code compiles each day that you are done with it. Don't leave compile errors overnight. Logical errors are OK to leave, but be sure to note them.
- I'll contradict Servant's comment and say, never use goto, global's, or macro's. In my 15 years of programming I've never used goto outside of first learning it. It's simply not needed. Globals took longer for me to realize their danger but eventually I have seen the harm they cause and haven't used one myself (libraries you use might) for probably the last 8 years. Stick to a singleton if you need something like a global. Macro's start out making your code easier and then you start abusing them and they actually end up making your code harder to read & maintain.
- The biggest thing I think is to make your functions small! They should be visible on about 1 \"screen\". Any bigger than that and it's most likely doing too much and should be split. It will also be harder to maintain than a small specific function. This is important, as it's all to common to see new programmers putting so many things into giant functions. Don't do it! This is worth repeating. Practice doing this until it's second nature. This is a big one.
\n![\"Krohm\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-35551.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nSource control. I cannot describe the peace of mind it brings.
Design the game first! Code is a thing but the game has certain things it needs to do. There are no \"features you want to implement\" but rather features the game needs to run (technically those would be the aforementioned requirements). Anything else should not be there... unless it brings you cleaner, safer code to manage without running out of sanity.
\nPreviously \"Krohm\"
\n![\"HappyCoder\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-120205.png\" "\\"<div")
\nOne thing that helps me get things done is having a deadline. Preferably a deadline that you cannot push back like for a contest. When you have a deadline it helps you keeps your project simple and cut out unnecessary features so the focus becomes finishing the game rather than trying to see how many awesome features can make it into the game. Even if you cannot find a contest or other hard deadline still try to set out a realistic timeline for yourself and follow it. If you find your initial estimates weren't accurate adjust them. But break up your project into smaller pieces and tackle one piece at a time.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http://www.radioactive-software.com/gangwar/network_debug2.jpg\"/)
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\n\n\n\n\n\nI have a project in Java that requires these features to be operated on one-variable polynomials
1) Input a polynomial
2) Print a polynomial
3) Add two polynomials
4) Subtract two polynomials
5) Multiply two polynomials
6) Find a derivative of a polynomial
7) Evaluate a polynomial at a specific value
My professor suggested using the Vector Class but I did research and Vector are usually used in a multi-threaded environment and there is an synchronized overhead on individual operation but given the features involved in this project does not require multi-threading or any type of threading.
I saw no problems reading about ArrayList. ArrayList are good to use in single-threaded environment and also given my experience using it. Based on my research, ArrayList has all the benefits in the world for these features.
I'm in a conundrum right now. I need advice.
\n![\"Stroppy](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-147865.jpg\" "\\"<div")
\nWhat advice? You already know the better choice, and why it's the better choice.
(Not that it really matters which you use, obviously the exercise is not about performance and either would work equally well.)
\n![\"ultramailman\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-204197.png\" "\\"<div")
\n\nMake small subsets of your project using both approaches and see which ones suit you best. As for the performance hit, unless your project has timing restrictions (which I doubt), it doesn't really matter.\nI have a project in Java that requires these features to be operated on one-variable polynomials
1) Input a polynomial
2) Print a polynomial
3) Add two polynomials
4) Subtract two polynomials
5) Multiply two polynomials
6) Find a derivative of a polynomial
7) Evaluate a polynomial at a specific value
My professor suggested using the Vector Class but I did research and Vector are usually used in a multi-threaded environment and there is an synchronized overhead on individual operation but given the features involved in this project does not require multi-threading or any type of threading.
I saw no problems reading about ArrayList. ArrayList are good to use in single-threaded environment and also given my experience using it. Based on my research, ArrayList has all the benefits in the world for these features.
I'm in a conundrum right now. I need advice.
\nThanks
\n\nOmae Wa Mou Shindeiru
\n![\"nsmadsen\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profile/photo-thumb-97973.jpg\"/)
\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"khawk\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_12/thumbnail.thumb.23415316_10155879294054294_8382855891648833845_o.jpg.8c942c608ba91389f55ff268dedafe5a.webp\"/)
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![\"Servant](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2017_09/thumb.59b0b205bcab1_JaminGrey-shrunk.png.5c4936932a903d5f98fecef1d2ec9c36.png\"/)
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![\"Fahir\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/profiles/monthly_2022_11/thumb.6106503061d446cf8206210a7f8f0dc2.250x250LogoBlackText.png\"/)
![\"Orymus3\"](\"https://uploads.gamedev.net/monthly_2018_08/large.0.png.924f55bbfcb69e0c782e99ab6f96bbdf.png\"/)
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\n![http://i.imgur.com/bZkyV.png](\"http://i.imgur.com/bZkyV.png\"){kind=link}
![http://shogun3d.net/images2/looptil/04.jpg](\"http://shogun3d.net/images2/looptil/04.jpg\"){kind=link}
![http://s11.postimg.org/vavd93eib/2014_04_19_13_12_14.jpg](\"http://s11.postimg.org/vavd93eib/2014_04_19_13_12_14.jpg\"){kind=link}
(And why is the page margin so wide on your journal?)\n