Yeah tank spawns are pre-set, but whether a tank activates into that spawn is randomized. However, due to the number of different ways infected players can choose to play that tank, I'd say vs still has a whole lot of variety.

Well, tbh, my objections aside, XBLA/XBLIG are NOT public venues, and MS has every right to control what goes on in their territory. I just disagree with the reasoning behind it.

But that means we're punishing authenticity and rewarding those who glorify senseless violence! And somehow people just accept that's the way things should be. I mean... what the FUCK? It makes complete sense that we're afraid to face these things, but one of the functions of art is that it provides us a safe way to do so. This is why I'm opposed to censorship of any sort.

(You still haven't given any specific games, btw.)

That's because I'm too lazy to do research!  :D
Also, I haven't been playing many recent games, which makes this a little bit harder.
Like I said, I think Bioshock is still a good example despite the 'monstrosity' of the little sisters. I believe you can set off a nuke in both Fallout 3 and Deus Ex. You could kill kids in the original Fallout, but it was quite fearless in what it was willing to portray (unlike... well, never mind).

God of War, Fallout 3.

That's what's fucked up, there's the line of 'acceptable transgression' in games. So we have killing these kids, which is transgressive, but 'acceptable' transgression, and molesting these kids, which is on the side of 'unacceptable' transgression. But it's an arbitrary line drawn based on arbitrary and convoluted moral values which have little to do with the actual damaging effects of actions in the real world. In a way, it's insulting to anyone who's survived rape or molestation, because it implies they're better off dead.

Yeah well they made them look like kids for a reason; because it's a lazy shortcut to 'emotional conflict'.
For examples, see any game where you set off a bomb in a populated area.

My point is that for some reason it's more acceptable for heroes to burn down villages, kill anyone who looks at them funny, render the world uninhabitable for years to come, etc, than to touch one kid who no one gives a shit about anyway. This is annoying not so much because I have any real objection to transgression for FUCKING PROTAGONISTS IF YOU PREFER THAT TERM, but because it's a retarded place to draw the NOT OKAY line. Personally, I don't think there should be a NOT OKAY line when it comes to fiction, but that's my thing so whatever.
Anyone who doesn't think that it's fucked up that a game's more likely to be censored for a little girl getting her ass touched than her brains blown out is a jackass.

I'm finding it difficult to maintain politeness because I'm in a shit mood, but thanks for going out of your way to miss the point.

OH SHIT NO A TRANSGRESSIVE HERO THOSE AREN'T ALLOWED IN GAMES.

Listen kids: ripping off arms, slitting throats, bashing heads, those are all fine, but don't you DARE grope a chick. Feel free to rape anyone male for laughs though.
Yay hypocrisy.

Good stuff! Thanks!

God. Hope for your sake that their HR department just used C as short-hand for C++. I saw your code

Now that's not a very nice thing to say! 
I'm hoping I'm flexible enough to write C++ like C++ and write C like C, but obviously I'm a lot more used to the former than the latter.

Hey, does anyone have some exemplary examples of C code I could look at? I think that's the missing piece here for me.

It IS good to know! It's just that it's a common trap for people to get so bogged down in making the perfect game engine that they forget to actually make a game. It's happened to me, it's happened to a lot of people here. So, just be careful of that 

Just as an aside, I've been thinking one could make an extremely fast pixel perfect collision check by just making a vector of ints where each bit is either occupied by spike or not, and then just shift and 'and' the bits your critter occupies. If any of the ints aren't 0, it's a collision.
Probably more trouble than you want to go to. Just a fun thing to think about (for me anyway ).
Honestly I'd say pixel-perfection is usually more trouble than it's worth. If I were you I'd worry more about getting a fun game working than little details like this.

Unless you really make a lot of use of either the STL, templates, or object polymorphism

Ech, I do use a fair amount of STL and polymorphism. STL is no big deal, because it's really not too difficult to implement one's own linked list or use an array instead of a vector, but polymorphism is a pain. I guess I just need to get the feel for more procedural style programming...

It just all seems so silly, if you're gonna be doing all that why not just use C++ in the first place 

I'd probably also make sure to know about function pointers.

Are they the same in C as in C++?

I'm curious what the job description is. Some kind of firmware programming?

No it's just gameplay programming for an MMO. No idea why they decided to go with C instead of C++.

I'm familiar with most of this stuff, but what are unions?

I just applied for a programmer position without paying too close attention to the description, and it turns out it's a C programming position. They sent me a link to a programming test thing I'm supposed to take to apply for the position, and I have a little bit of time to study up before I actually take it.

Now, I've been spending a lot of time brushing up on my C++, but I don't really know a lot about C. I got a lot of the basics from this article, which is a good start; but stuff like this is only good for the basic differences in language, and not so much for the best practices expected of a programmer using it. So basically, uh, what do you guys think I should know?

edit: This article is also useful, for anyone else trying to do the same thing.

Definitely probably most likely.