This is a good book but it's more of a wide comparison of different styles of handling game worlds. It doesn't get super in depth. Of course it does have resources to do further reading should you need them.

http://www.gameenginebook.com/

The lack of audio rendering chapters is a bit problematic now, but I hope a new version will cover that one day.
 

The good news is that's one of the main focuses of the second edition. Also some console specific stuff XBone PS4)


Also, as everyone said, it's really valuable to start coding and fuck up a bunch of times. The lessons stick a lot better when you experience consequences from bad patterns firsthand.

I dont think the cicular reference you describe in this case is a huge issue.

This is a good book but it's more of a wide comparison of different styles of handling game worlds. It doesn't get super in depth. Of course it does have resources to do further reading should you need them.

http://www.gameenginebook.com/

Yeah, as far as I can tell it mainly really only affects the devices that can't use the desktop like tablets.

You can install and play xna games on windows 8 pc.

Not entirely. IIRC metro does not allow it.

Xna is not supported on windows 8, just saying.

funny how Monogame does :D

OH WOW, WHAT THE FUCK, HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS GAME EARLIER

IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE FOR A GAME TO LOOK LIKE THIS???

Came here to post pretty much exactly the same thing. Holy jebus this is looking good.

Interesting. So under the 360's terrible jacket there's something good under there.

I do remember those saturn pads. They kind of defaulted as the best for me at the time mainly because of the 6 buttons (I'm a big SF player too).

I guess I've never noticed because I use joysticks for fighting games so I never really noticed when using a dpad.

yeah I'm not exactly sure about that. Gamepads in general are bad for fighting games but the dpad is the best option (except for the 360 dpad which is an abomination).

This is probably a dum question, but how do HAT Switches on gamepads work (The D-Pad if you're not familiar)?

Just in case you don't know, the vast majority of d-pads are not hatswitches.  The XBox 360 pad is the only one I'm aware of.  This is part of the reason why that d-pad generally sucks for fighting games.

can you elaborate? Do you mean internally they return non-discrete values?

Ultimately when the other option is a analog stick then you are kind of screwed for fighting games in general.

That's totally fair. If that's your goal then that's perfectly respectable

Comparison of cross-platform frameworks (emphasis on mobile)


http://www.research2guidance.com/r2g/Cross-Platform-Tool-Benchmarking-2013.pdf

In monogame 3 there is a content pipeline if you work in visual studio. It basically wraps the XNA content pipeline.

And I loathe the "don't reinvent the wheel" crap.  It's such a terrible metaphor.  Improvements in wheel design are some of the most important technological advancements in history.  The movement from solid to spoked wheels changed civilization.  Reinventing the wheel is good, both literally and figuratively.  That's how you get better wheels.

Yeah but in this case you aren't improving the wheel (IMO), you are making a similar untested wheel. I prefer a mature tested wheel that's endured years of scrutiny from the community. If your wheel is better then I'll be glad to use AveragePNG in lieu of libpng in the future once it's proven.

Anyways I guess at this point everyone is just restating the same thing they've said over and over. I'd say at this point the thread has run its course.

Also for some reason you quoted me under pauls name.

Started playing The World Ends With You.  Enjoying the game so far.  The two-screen combat system is a bit hard to get the hang of, though.

I liked that game, didn't know anything going into it. The battle system is really fun, although sometimes a bit frantic.

i already said i understood that, and i agree with it when it comes to other things. but specifically when it comes to image loaders, i don't feel that it's a worthwhile use of time to write one.

I and feel that it is worthwhile to write it yourself, for the numerous reasons I've stated.  The only justification you've provided is that you could be using the time for other things, which is a useless tautological statement.  I could literally say that about anything and be correct.  It's a worthless point.

You know what?  The time you're spending doing other things could be spent writing an image loader.  See how that works?  That's not an argument, it's stating the obvious.

Your argument doesn't really make any sense there. The other things he's mentioning are focusing on the project at hand, not re-implementing something that already exists and is fine to use.

also, you are again assuming that everyone codes as fast as you claim you can code. my position earlier was that coding an image loader would take the average programmer 2 weeks, and even very good programmers 2 days. i spent neither 2 weeks nor 2 days posting in this thread; i spent perhaps half an hour posting in this thread

 

To add to this. Even if you do manage to finish it in 2 days the library doesnt have the years of scrutiny from the coding community that libpng does. You would essentially be saying that we have to trust you are such a good programmer that the 2 day png loader you wrote with no history of testing is for some reason better than libpng.

I'm sick of games thinking that they don't have to play by the rules.

These are rules you've defined. Many authorities also say a golden rule is "dont reinvent the wheel".

EDIT: I recall an engineer at Sega saying that lack of reuse is one of things that really hurt sega in the early 1990's and early 2000's

if it were somehow true that i could code an image loader in half an hour, i would still rather have spent that time posting in this thread, because this thread is an important warning against people who might believe the type of stuff you believe. warning people away from wasting time coding low-level stuff is *far* more valuable to me than wasting my own time coding low-level stuff

learning to parse an image format can lead you to very interesting learning moments.
* run length encoding
* binary/hex editing
* bit shifting
* chunking
generally speaking you could learn about how to create a sexy binary file format specific to your game, and how to parse that file.

I don't think that's wasting one's time.

ps: for anyone that's interested ppm seems the easiest file format to start with
http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~soni/cs35/f13/Labs/extras/01/ppm_info.html
after that I think GIF is the easiest.

As for the list the OP posted, I am glad we do most of those things, but I can understand lone developers who rely a lot on third party stuff and don't do tests nor version control.

I would advice anyone that's not writing tests and doing version control to just start doing it.
And I would advice anyone to especially NOT use any third party libs that don't have tests.

nothing wrong with learning
 

Yeah reading the devlogs is certainly a great way to keep your motivation up.

If I tend to get in a longer drawn out conversation (say in general/games) then when I go back to work I have issues focusing because I still might have some focus on the forum conversation. Because of that on a development day I avoid anything under the business section. Call it a lack of discipline but I have it.

How are they a productivity tool?

I was just thinking "I've posted a LOT on tigsource the last couple days".

Incidentally I've also gotten little work done. Probably due to the fact all my deadlines right now have to do with business law and I'm not super interested in that.

i don't see how the price is relevant -- i mean, it doesn't make a computer better if it costs more. computer costs vary in different countries today, but that doesn't mean if you buy a computer in e.g. poland where they're twice the cost they are in the US that they are somehow better at making games. my point was that you don't need a great computer to make a great game, and people who believe they do are just acting entitled

Well we'll never know how mario 3 would have turned out if it was developed on a commodore but I would be fairly confident it wouldnt be exactly the same.

I agree with your overall point that you dont need a good computer to make a great game but let me give an example of where it can significantly improve the chances of a game being great or even complete.

My old P3 500mhz would take 2-3 days to do a radiosity pass on VRAD Since computers those days were single threaded I had 2 options. Low priority and I can use my computer but it will take 7 days to complete (also would usually crash) or wait 2 days and not be able to use my computer. So basically I had to stop developing for 2 days while I had to wait for the level to finish compiling.

When I got my next dual core computer. That time was reduced to under an hour and I could still work while it was computing radiosity.

On a similar note by having a GPU that has issues with shaders I lose time I would be developing the game trying to figure out why my rendering code doesnt work.

So while you are correct about the great game the term entitled isn't the right word to use. Artisans shouldn't be shamed because they choose to use superior tools. Also I dont think anyone said or implied that you NEED to have a good computer to make a great game but it's undeniable having better hardware will give more time to work on your game and less time dealing with other non-game issues.
 

I gotta agree about the integrated graphics. It's really annoying running into shader bugs that you later realize area actually due to issues with the integrated graphics.

Maybe if you are using GM7 (software hindered right?) a slower book would be ok but if you are doing something like graphics programming and are being impeded by the hardware then that's worth getting something with a discrete option.

also what greatest games ever made are you talking about? If you are talking about a game from a previous generation then that's not a fair comparison.

gm has been hardware accelerated since gm6. the last software one was gm5

but anyway, think of it this way: if your integrated video card is having problems with some aspects of shaders, you want to know about it, because your users are going to be using integrated graphics too. you want to make a game that runs on integrated graphics cards, so it's a good idea to own at least one computer with integrated graphics (you can also own a gaming computer for your desktop or something, and have a laptop with integrated)

why isn't it a fair comparison? if you make a game that looks and plays as good as super mario bros. 3 you'd have a mega-hit on your hands, and smb3 was made on computers less powerful than today's calculators

At the time Mario3 was made the computers it was developed on cost thousands of dollars. That's why I'm saying it's not a fair comparison.



As for the shaders, of course I'd want to test for those that have only that as an option but if something like an OpenGL function is not functioning because of a hardware/driver issue there's little I can do anyways. Actually I was just talking to some fellow students yesterday about games where the author explicitly says they cant support the non-discrete portion of optimus in a disclaimer.