next »

[rundown]

Also, FlashDevelop sure beats the hell out of using CS6. I'm glad you guys prompted me to make the switch.

Indeed it does! I hate using the Flash IDE, I feel dirty even looking at the icon. That is the reason why people don't believe in Flash for games, hopefully we'll prove them wrong

Well, if your good in as3, it doesn't matter what IDE you use. I'm a cheap guy. And cba to instal another program. Thats why i actually still use flash.

[Shadowspaz]

Also, FlashDevelop sure beats the hell out of using CS6. I'm glad you guys prompted me to make the switch.

Indeed it does! I hate using the Flash IDE, I feel dirty even looking at the icon. That is the reason why people don't believe in Flash for games, hopefully we'll prove them wrong

Well, if your good in as3, it doesn't matter what IDE you use. I'm a cheap guy. And cba to instal another program. Thats why i actually still use flash.

I totally know how you feel. I really got into working with Flash, because one day many years ago, my dad re-formatted the home PC, and managed to get Flash MX 2004 back on there (Even though we lost the key). So I just thought that was neat, got playing around, and here I am because I don't want to install UDK or the Unity SDK or something.

But I think McMillen has shown just how far you can take Flash into a dev career, so I'm okay with that for now. lol

[Geti]

Fwiw I made a lot of my initial games just using flex and geany. Debuggers are for pussies and all that.

I'm happy cause I've been writing shaders the past few days and it's fun trying to make things pretty and fast at the same time

[Noogai03]

But I think McMillen has shown just how far you can take Flash into a dev career, so I'm okay with that for now. lol

McMillen makes his initial games in flash but then ports them over to non-flash platforms (Super Meat Boy definitely isn't flash, and Binding of Isaac Rebirth won't be flash either)

[Shadowspaz]

But I think McMillen has shown just how far you can take Flash into a dev career, so I'm okay with that for now. lol

McMillen makes his initial games in flash but then ports them over to non-flash platforms (Super Meat Boy definitely isn't flash, and Binding of Isaac Rebirth won't be flash either)

Yeah, I was mostly referencing his beginnings and Binding of Isaac. His road to indie fame was paved with controversial Flash games.

[Garthy]

To balance out my latest grumpy programmer post:

I want to give big loving hugs to the developers of PCRE. I wanted to add simple regexp support to my code. I went from knowing PCRE existed to having it working in my code and framework with an associated test suite in about two hours. I needed it to be MT-safe, and whilst I haven't confirmed it is, the design suggests that it is. I used one bit of example code as a basis to put it together. Everything just worked.

[Shadowspaz]

To balance out my latest grumpy programmer post:

I want to give big loving hugs to the developers of PCRE. I wanted to add simple regexp support to my code. I went from knowing PCRE existed to having it working in my code and framework with an associated test suite in about two hours. I needed it to be MT-safe, and whilst I haven't confirmed it is, the design suggests that it is. I used one bit of example code as a basis to put it together. Everything just worked.

Isn't that just the best feeling? Going from knowing nothing about the language, to having it implemented in your code and functional... Such an awesome feeling.

[Garthy]

To balance out my latest grumpy programmer post:

I want to give big loving hugs to the developers of PCRE. I wanted to add simple regexp support to my code. I went from knowing PCRE existed to having it working in my code and framework with an associated test suite in about two hours. I needed it to be MT-safe, and whilst I haven't confirmed it is, the design suggests that it is. I used one bit of example code as a basis to put it together. Everything just worked.

Isn't that just the best feeling? Going from knowing nothing about the language, to having it implemented in your code and functional... Such an awesome feeling.

In this case it's a library, but yeah, working with a new language, API, library, or whatever, and having everything just falling into place is awesome.

[RalenHlaalo]

Not specifically game-dev related, but I just got subscriptions working on my website =)

http://paste.ofcode.org/sL8f4dbjrMDz67yNsAqPVa

Incidentally, SQL is harder than I remember... I think it's partly because Apache Derby implements only a limited version of SQL (no MERGE statement, for example), which makes things difficult.

[fractilegames]

I finally found a combination of bugs that has been plaguing my game's network play with horrible jerkiness and making it practically unusable. I've been hunting this bug for years (I'm not even exaggerating) and I was already close to dropping the multiplayer support from the game completely.

Still not perfect though, but a HUGE step forward.

[ThemsAllTook]

My current project has been completely stalled for months due to collision bugs. I was sick of making no progress and decided I'd fix them this week if it killed me. I'm still alive and the bugs are squashed! Finally I can make progress again! Yay!

I was literally doing a celebratory dance a bit ago. I can't describe how much of a relief it is to be unstuck at last.

[Shadowspaz]

My current project has been completely stalled for months due to collision bugs. I was sick of making no progress and decided I'd fix them this week if it killed me. I'm still alive and the bugs are squashed! Finally I can make progress again! Yay!

I was literally doing a celebratory dance a bit ago. I can't describe how much of a relief it is to be unstuck at last.

I absolutely love that feeling. My last game had me at a standstill for about four months... Feels so damn great to get past it. :D

[barley]

That's one of the best feelings

[Graham-]

hard work. it works!

[Garthy]

I finally found a combination of bugs that has been plaguing my game's network play...

I can't describe how much of a relief it is to be unstuck at last.

I had a smaller version of this this morning. I'm trying to get the output of two programs to match (one is replacing the other), and had a bug that I simply could not track down. The two programs went divergent at a point that seemed impossible to determine. Spent a few hours just trying to narrow it down.

Whilst checking the program logs I scrolled down and by pure luck ended up on a section where the logs indicated that the same entry was being inserted twice into a single hash table. "That's odd", I thought, as entries are only added once a lookup is done and failed. I confirmed that a read immediately after a write on the same key would not return the entry I had inserted. I wondered what could cause this. I realised an inconsistent hash value on an entry (two equal entries giving different hashes) is going to stuff up the hash table. Was my hash function broken? If it was, would it be easy to fix? Could this problem impact the divergent code I was trying to diagnose? Could it possibly even fix the problem? With no further intervention required?

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Freaking awesome.

[Graham-]

that's how coding happens. that's why I use mocking and testharnesses now allthetime.

[indie11]

my first attempt at coding wall sliding and wall jump.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70467204/Web/Web.html
[left,right arrow keys to move, Up key to jump]

any feedback?

[Shadowspaz]

Sorry to break up the "I finally found that damn bug" train (Although it is a great train to be on), but I just finished a very user-friendly level editor that I'll use to get experience designing puzzle games.

But really, what makes me so happy is using this:


To render this:


Complete with proper pseudo-3D! And this is actually a bit faster than using a conventional tileset, that has separate tiles for each configuration. And as a programmer, the less art I need to do, the better. Win/win! 

Also, indie11, you posted as I was typing this, so I owe you some feedback: It's very meatboy-esque, in my opinion. I do think it could feel better if you increase the delay for when you release the button and when you start sliding. Just a bit. It's a little tricky sometimes when you instinctively hit the button away from the wall. Also, maybe give it a bit more vertical velocity as you jump, just so you can counteract the gravity a bit better if you grab the wall while falling.

Also- Variable jump height. But that's another matter. It does feel pretty solid, so far, though.

[indie11]

Sorry to break up the "I finally found that damn bug" train (Although it is a great train to be on), but I just finished a very user-friendly level editor that I'll use to get experience designing puzzle games.

But really, what makes me so happy is using this:


To render this:


Complete with proper pseudo-3D! And this is actually a bit faster than using a conventional tileset, that has separate tiles for each configuration. And as a programmer, the less art I need to do, the better. Win/win! 

Also, indie11, you posted as I was typing this, so I owe you some feedback: It's very meatboy-esque, in my opinion. I do think it could feel better if you increase the delay for when you release the button and when you start sliding. Just a bit. It's a little tricky sometimes when you instinctively hit the button away from the wall. Also, maybe give it a bit more vertical velocity as you jump, just so you can counteract the gravity a bit better if you grab the wall while falling.

Also- Variable jump height. But that's another matter. It does feel pretty solid, so far, though.

thanks a lot for the feedback. I have changed the vertical velocity, I didn't get this part of your post

I do think it could feel better if you increase the delay for when you release the button and when you start sliding. Just a bit. It's a little tricky sometimes when you instinctively hit the button away from the wall.

 

Oh and btw your editor looks great too. When the circular tile and straight tile meet, do you cut them or they just overlap?

[Shadowspaz]

Ah, haha. Then maybe there wasn't any delay... I'm not sure.

While sticking to the wall, you can hit 'up' to jump off of it. But it feels like, as soon as you let go of the wall, you start sliding down and the jump doesn't respond as well. That might also be because I press the direction away from the wall when I jump (Meaning, if I'm on the left wall, I press right+up). This seems to immediately pull me away from the wall, though, and I can't jump off it.

I did notice that, if I hold against the wall (holding 'left' to stick to the left wall, for example) and then jump, it feels great. But then I need to switch directions mid-air to get the most distance from it.

So, if you just add some delay between letting go of the button and falling away from the wall (Release left button -> 20ms -> start sliding down), you could jump off in the opposite direction with just as much force as if you had stayed against the wall, without worrying about air-steer or anything.

I found an interview with Tommy Refenes (I think it might've been in Indie Game, actually) where he talked about the particulars of the physics used in Meat Boy, and he added a slight delay similar to this to make everything feel more natural. I feel like I might be over-explaining it, though, and if I'm just over-complicating everything for you, then ignore this.

To answer your question- They overlap. I have everything drawn as one composite bitmap image, and it just splits the 'wallmap' into two parts, based on the player's y coordinate: One that's layered under the player, and one over it. It also works with multiple objects on-screen, so that the wallmap can be split as many times as it needs to be, layering between the objects.