Eurch - sounds awful. When I turn this project into something interesting, I'll definately look into some other file format and loaders suggested.

Right now, I just realised how imminently due 'this Friday' actually means, and am going to stop working on irrelevant parts and get working on the stuff that's actually going to get me marks :p

I've been thinking on superheroes games recentlyish - would definately like to see it as a compo.

Thanks Snakey - I'd love to not have to throw out the code just because I've spent so much time debugging the damn thing.

Here's the specific bit of code that's having the problems (to summarise: doesn't run when using Max exported files, gives weird numbers when using Blender exported files).

Code:

           //face description
            case 0x4120:
            {
                fread(&quantity, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                object->numOfPolygons = quantity;

                for (int i = 0; i < quantity; i++)
                {
                    Poly p;

                    fread(&p.a, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&p.b, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&p.c, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&faceFlags, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);

                    object->polygons.push_back(p);
                }
                break;
            }

And here's the entire file loading method:

Code:

void T3dsLoader::loadFile(T3DObject_ptr object, string filename)
{
    unsigned short chunkID;
    unsigned int chunkLength;
    unsigned char character;
    unsigned short quantity;
    unsigned short faceFlags;

    FILE *file;
    file = fopen(filename.c_str(), "rb");
    if (file == NULL) return;

    while (ftell(file) < fileLength(fileno(file)))
    {
        fread(&chunkID, 2, 1, file);
        fread(&chunkLength, 4, 1, file);

        switch(chunkID)
        {
            //main chunk
            case 0x4d4d:
                break;

            //3D editor chunk
            case 0x3d3d:
                break;

            //object chunk
            case 0x4000:
            {
                char name[20];
                int i = 0;
                do
                {
                    fread(&character, 1, 1, file);
                    name[i] = character;
                    i++;
                } while (character != '\0' && i < 20);
                object->name = name;
                break;
            }

            //triangular mesh
            case 0x4100:
                break;

            //vertices list
            case 0x4110:
            {
                fread(&quantity, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                object->numOfVertices = quantity;

                for (int i = 0; i < quantity; i++)
                {
                    Vertex v;

                    fread(&v.x, sizeof(float), 1, file);
                    fread(&v.y, sizeof(float), 1, file);
                    fread(&v.z, sizeof(float), 1, file);

                    object->vertices.push_back(v);
                }
                break;
            }

            //face description
            case 0x4120:
            {
                fread(&quantity, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                object->numOfPolygons = quantity;

                for (int i = 0; i < quantity; i++)
                {
                    Poly p;

                    fread(&p.a, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&p.b, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&p.c, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&faceFlags, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);

                    object->polygons.push_back(p);
                }
                break;
            }

            //mapping coordinates list
            case 0x4140:
            {
                fread(&quantity, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                for (int i = 0; i < quantity; i++)
                {
                    MapCoord mc;

                    fread(&mc.u, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                    fread(&mc.v, sizeof(unsigned short), 1, file);
                }
                break;
            }

            default:
                fseek(file, chunkLength-6, SEEK_CUR);
        }

    }
    fclose(file);
}

And here are two of the .3ds files that I'm using to test: 3DSMax teapot, Blender monkey.

I've been using this tutorial to try and get a .3ds loader up and running, and thus far everything's borked.

The initial problem was that a .3ds file exported using 3ds Max 8 didn't seem to have any data for the faces chunk. I only realised it was the file rather that my code that wasn't working when I used Blender to export a .3ds file and suddenly - faces data!

Unfortunately, this faces data seems to be rubbish - far too many digits for what I'm meant to be using it for.

The code in the tutorial files relies on the faces data when creating the triangles in openGL, but with the large digits it's well out of the array bounds. At the moment I very vaguely get the shape I want without using them, but it's nowhere near correct. I'm pretty sure my loading code for the .3ds files is correct - I've gone over it a hundred times and it's basically just what the tutorial says.

Soooo - any thoughts at all? I can't afford to spend much more time on this part, so if I can't get it working soon the game will just have to be about shooting down cubes instead of teapots, but I'd quite like it to work.

Alternatively, if anyone knows of a file loader (of whatever format, though one natively supported by 3ds Max would be nice) that I can just add to my project (no linking) and have it work without any dicking around, I will quite gladly jump ship

That is really awesome.

Well, pretty much all of my projects fail but teach a lot, although the most useful one was probably the 2D sidescrolly-adventure thingy I was writing in Python that turned into a horrible goop of tightly coupled classes where every change meant changing stuff in two or three other classes. Thinking things through before vomiting out a bunch of code seems to help avoid this, so now I'm doing that.

That would explain why I've been reading comics and forums for the past hour or so rather than working on this game/assignment...

Guh.

There's an interesting game (or subset of games, maybe?) called Nomic, where creating the rules and voting on them are the game (although, of course, given the nature of the game that can change too...). Basically it's procedural gameplay only driven by people rather than computers.

I'm not sure exactly how to port this into a computer game, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

I rarely find game related treasures (just a snazzy boxed copy of System Shock, really). But bookswise - it just doesn't get any better than Bookfest. Every six months or so, Lifeline sets up tables full of second hand books in the convention centre and sells them for $0.50-$2 each. We're talking - y'know, several million books here.

On the (mild) downside, my shelves are full of books that I'll never get around to reading. It's a small price to pay

http://aztaka.citeremis.com/?page_id=7

I'd be quite interested to know if it's any good...

But yeah - keep an eye on Iron Tower generally. They have a third game besides Age of Decadence and Scars of War called Cyclopian in a sort of public-preproduction state, and a couple of secret projects. It's rather cool what they're doing in creating a sort of umbrella-label for indie RPGs.

So - now that all the technical stuff is out of the way, I'd just like to say that your game looks awesome.

While I'm not going to go as far to say that game designers are unnecessary, I think it would be ideal to eliminate them when possible and have artists or programmers do the design. Design is, after all, the primary creative force behind game development. It would be nice if those who are actually making the game are also the ones with the creative direction.

The power of being a programmer certainly goes to my head (hells yeah for actually being able to make a game without relying on other people - that's why I learnt to program in the first place) - I'm quite willing to extend the same respect to artists (hey, they can produce stuff too, that's pretty awesome). Designers ... welllll - in isolation they don't actually produce anything but a plan, and plans are both boring and useless unless someone implements them. Sure, perhaps they've learnt how to tweak their plans so that they're really good plans, but they're still just plans and anyone who puts some effort into it can come up with one. I just don't feel that there's a need to seperate art/programming positions from design if the artists and programmers are that way inclined (well, except for commercial ones - wanting your skilled programmers to be programming rather than designing because that's a better way to be spending the budget - but seeing that we're all for indie spirit here I'm not sure that's relevant).

I'll acknowledge that that's not all entirely true, but there's enough truth there that I can't shake the feeling that designers should be unnecessary, and that we'd be better off with programmer/designers and artist/designers instead.

Aik, do you believe pirates show contempt for the people who develop the games they play? After all, by taking the game without paying, they're violating the developer's rules of distribution (to say nothing of actual laws). I don't think contempt is generally the right word to describe it in either instance, myself.

Hmm, I'm not sure. It might be, but in any case it's not that relevant, because pirates aren't trying to convince developers to give them money - it's the other way around. I'd say it's at least a slightly different thing - the pirates aren't actively trying to dick developers around by pirating their stuff, while certain DRM tactics are.

I don't think it's true that if someone believes something is wrong they wouldn't do it. I do plenty of things that I think are wrong, so do most people. People are not moral saints, most everyone does things that they know are wrong. I don't know anyone who lives up to their morality. So I really do positively believe that most pirates know what they are doing is wrong, and do it anyway. The number who believe what they are doing is helpful to the developer is tiny.

I'm sure I've seen more studies on this than what I can google - especially a recent one where some massive number (~80%) of young people in Sweden don't feel that piracy is morally wrong.

Here's what I found, anyway: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/the-generational-divide-in-copyright-morality/ (purely anecdotal, but still interesting)
http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-has-become-mainstream-studies-show-090313/

And here's one that seems to basically say that the morality of the matter isn't relevant to most pirates:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/01/8703.ars

But then, even if people felt they were doing the wrong thing in pirating a game, I still don't think they'd be happy about misdirecting and time-wasting type tactics.

I don't think developers are under any obligation to help pirates get their work for free, but I think if you want them to give you money at any point - annoying them isn't the best way to go about it.


As for serials - I don't feel they're irritating or offensive enough to make a pirate dislike you - sometimes they're even beneficial, as with shareware. While I'm damn well never going to pay for another Atari game (fuck Securom), I'll buy Geneforge 5 when I have the money.

Basically, serials don't feel like a 'fuck you, criminal scum!' - active measures tend to.

I also don't think I'd ever buy a game made by cliffski based on the contempt he seems to have for me (not me personally, mind you - that would be weird because I've never spoken to the guy - but people who pirate things in general). Even if I thought that piracy was wrong, I doubt that would change my reaction to being insulted.

I think uploading fake torrents (demo posing as real version) does show contempt - you're actively going out and breaking the rules of the site you're posting it to. Regardless of your intentions here, that's going well past locking your car type measures. Locking your car is having a serial or something on it, which I don't think anyone is going to dispute your right to do.

Your distinction between religious pirates and pirates that think what they're doing is wrong is bizarre. If most pirates thought piracy was wrong - they wouldn't do it. My guess is that most pirates are apathetic to the morality of it, with a large chunk who feel that it's morally right.

I do know someone who considers piracy wrong and pirates anyway, so they exist - but I just can't see there being that many people who disregard their morality willy-nilly.

That's interesting. How do you envision that sort of phenomenon happening with games, though? Don't you think the people that pirate independent, high-brow art films are a somewhat different demographic from those that pirate video games?

Well, I guess that depends on the game. I can't actually say if there's any link between the high-brow art thing and whether people will support it, but I guess it's possible that there's a link and that people would do the same for a high-brow art game.

OTOH, I don't get the impression that only high-brow art type people downloaded the movie. More like lots of people downloaded it just because it was there and it sounded kinda cool, and then realised that hey - this is really good. It being casually available (and people saying nice things about it, of course) is the reason it was so widely distributed, and it being so widely distributed and popular is how the producer was able to make money out of it.

Of course, I guess there's the thing with games that there's no 'live' way to do it - like going to the movies or a concert, so it would probably be less successful moneymakingwise with games where you can't go off and pay for a unique enhanced version/experience of what you pirated. Still, popularity and good relations with the people who like your stuff has other benefits (they might buy a copy just to support you, donate, spread the word to people who will buy a copy, or buy something that you make later). Telling them 'you're a dirty pirate - gtfo' is less likely to help here than going 'oh, cool you like my stuff. I'd appreciate some money though if you can'.

Pirates are not necessarily consistently pirates though - sure, they might pirate one of your games, but later on they very well might buy another one. If you've gone to a lot of effort in frustrating their piracy when they were just checking your stuff out, there's not going to be a lot of goodwill there.

Do you really think the only reason the iTunes store survives is because it's easier than piracy? It's not a hassle to download music illegally at all - if I want to download an mp3 the least convenient thing I could do is to to iTunes. People buy for a number of reasons, but because their piracy attempts were thwarted by bad uploads - probably not so much (except for big new releases before which torrents are safe have been worked out - and that's not relevant to indie devs). Piracy sites are quite effective at weeding fake uploads from the real thing.

I can't help but remember this case: http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/719

I think *fighting* piracy is the wrong way to go about things - it's not a fight you can win unless you're utterly obscure and no one cares about your game. Using the energy of piracy to, say - spread the word or grow a loyal fanbase is a better option if you can pull it off.

Here's a detailed article on how Zero Sum did it: http://web.archive.org/web/20071024195944/www.zero-sum.com/press.html

That I have to use the archive.org to show you that should tell you something about how it all turned out - still, they did have funding...

I hate the 2nd of April when your guard is down but all the april fools news articles are still up...

And so nothing of value was lost.

I do enjoy these threads though. It's amazing how many people expect highly competent programmers to make their game for them. It would be offensive if it wasn't so damn funny.

Running out of steam. Everything's bright and rosy until the first hurdle which sucks up far more time than it really should, and enthusiasm dies horribly after that.