next »

[Garthy]

Using Facades and/or Interfaces means that any component needs only know as much about other components as they need to. It also makes it easier to switch out different implementations or pop in proxies or so forth.

For initialisation order dependencies, I have been known to use or work with the following:

- Tree-style init for the simplest cases.

- Just set it all up at the top level. Usually if I'm pushed for time and it is non-trivial.

- Make every component have an interface to every other component they care about. Each component calls init on components it cares about, and each component only performs the first init that is requested of it. IMHO the best solution if you can get away with single-stage init, and sometimes does multi-stage init fine.

- Have a set of init levels that all of the components accept, and they perform actions in their init level. Works when init is no longer a single-stage process. Usually needed when there are complex dependencies between components that you don't yet know anything about, eg. interdependent external modules.

- Delay true init for a component until first use. Whilst a common technique, I used this once to resolve an initialisation order dependency when a less-informed colleague got a stick up their ass re the need for init to grow beyond a single-stage process.

[Schrompf]

I'm super pissed ATM because Software Engineering as a craft is simply not required anymore to make games. Thanks to Unity and the likes. People nowadays can assemble their games with code snippets from the Asset Store. And they're widely successful with that.

Only that some issues never get fixed because they simply don't know how it works. Combine that with a survival game that offers map changes from planet to space and back, while three players are seated in a space ship. Two players spawn in that space ship at the new map, the third player appeared in thin air. And none of them were able to see the other players anymore. That's how networking is supposed to work. Frigging rocket science.

After the third loss of a ship/base to server bugs we stopped playing. And the depressing part is that if I ever do a multiplayer game, and *if* I actually achieve to make it work nicely, it won't help me a bit. Because when players notice if your game works fine or is buggy as fuck, you already have their money. Nice trailers sell games. Proper craftmanship doesn't make a difference.

[oahda]

what about bethesda

[ThemsAllTook]

I'm super pissed ATM because Software Engineering as a craft is simply not required anymore to make games. Thanks to Unity and the likes. People nowadays can assemble their games with code snippets from the Asset Store. And they're widely successful with that.

Greater accessibility is always a good thing, even if it comes with a few hiccups. Think of it this way: Instead of (arbitrarily low numbers) 10 new high quality games being made per year, there are 20 high quality games and 200 garbage games made per year. Of those 200 garbage games, maybe 10 of the developers will continue learning their craft, and they produce next year's high quality work. The sea of garbage might seem like an annoyance to sift through to find the gems inside, but without it, fewer gems would exist.

There's certainly something to be said for encouraging developers of garbage to either try harder, or to have some standards of quality and not try to distribute projects that fall below it, but trying to keep a craft in the hands of only an elite few is a terrible thing for the ecosystem.

[oahda]

+1

Just be careful about what you buy. Look at reviews and ratings first.

[gimymblert]

Brb, forging my own cpu with fresly mined ore I extracted yesterday. Considering making my own sun to create said ore instead of using ready made one in the crust.

[Schrompf]

... but trying to keep a craft in the hands of only an elite few is a terrible thing for the ecosystem.

You're right on this, sorry. In the end I think it's a great time to be alive, when such a lot of people get the chance to follow their dreams, and quite a few of those will end up being madly good at what they're doing.

But hey... at least the thought fit the "grumpy old programmer" topic very well, didn't it?

[DireLogomachist]

but trying to keep a craft in the hands of only an elite few is a terrible thing for the ecosystem.

 

100% this. Remember there were crap games before Unity and there will be crap games in the future.

Sturgeon's law cannot be denied.

[oahda]

don't forget those games in the desert

[Photon]

Uuuuuuuuh...

So I had a snippet in my project configuration XML for Haxe/OpenFL that looks like this:

Code:

<!-- optimize output
	<haxeflag name="-dce full" /> -->
	<haxeflag name="--no-traces" />

I wanted to turn traces back on, so I thought I'd move the comment tail over top of the trace flag:

Code:

<!-- optimize output
	<haxeflag name="-dce full" /> 
	<haxeflag name="--no-traces" /> -->

Apparently this small change made my anti-virus claim my game executable was malware.

[Photon]

Also, don't you love it when Windows tells you that you need permission from yourself to delete a file, then errors out when you try to give permission to yourself?

Instead of testing my game, I'm fighting with Windows to retake control of the Steam install directory where the game belongs.

 

[Crimsontide]

Also, don't you love it when Windows tells you that you need permission from yourself to delete a file, then errors out when you try to give permission to yourself?

Instead of testing my game, I'm fighting with Windows to retake control of the Steam install directory where the game belongs.

 

LMAO...  Good old windows 

[JWki]

Spent like three hours trying to find my mistake in implementing the direct illumination part of UE4s basic shading model - not a difficult thing to do in itself, learnopengl.com has a very nice section explaining it, but my normal distribution just kept being wrong.

Of course it had nothing to do with my maths.



Fuck me.

[qMopey]

Inverse transpose to the rescue?

[JWki]

Inverse transpose to the rescue?

Yeah eventually but I don't care about non uniform scaling atm.

[ferreiradaselva]

back at programming. Time to be sad again.

[ferreiradaselva]

spent 4 hours looking for an error in the projection/view matrices.





the error was the rectangle that i created with height 0.

[JWki]

spent 4 hours looking for an error in the projection/view matrices.





the error was the rectangle that i created with height 0.

Can I recommend you RenderDoc? It's been great at improving my graphics debugging experience.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

what is renderdoc?


It never fails when I'm setting up a new renderer, spend at least 20 mins saying "why the hell is the screen the clear color? Where's my triangle?"

[InfiniteStateMachine]

I wouldn't say this is really a grumpy post but I guess this area applies most.

I recently went on vacation and tried catching up on my c++. It's crazy that even with a year where I've only been putting maybe 10% of my time into c++ things have already moved so forward. I feel like I keep falling more and more behind in regards to the STL additions and changes.

Now I'm reading about C++ metaclasses and I can barely keep up. I'm a little weary about metaclass abuse but at the same time they sound like they would solve a lot of issues major frameworks have had to work around using code gen and macros.

I know I need to keep an open mind and should probably allocate more time to keeping up with c++ but sometimes I miss coding in C where I can fit all the rules in my brain at once. I've been writing a lot more C at home lately.