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[Graham-]

UnityVS is great, from personal experience.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

I think I'm cured of oo-itis.

be careful. it hibernates.

hahah don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's dead. Unless I'm using a language where I'm forced.

My rough solution is this:
 1. Laziest implementation first.
 2. Upgrade by necessity of feature, or provable increase in elegance.

But I still fuck it up.

Yeah that's certainly better than the opposite of designing some huge thing before beginning to implement.

[Graham-]

Than the opposite? And is the opposite? I'm confused.

over-architecture will always make love to your off-limit parts

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Yeah over-architechturing is what I was referring to

[Graham-]

yeah ok. all is right with the world.

[Geti]

Trimmed 600 code lines and a lot of cruft from a data oriented prototyping engine in C++ while decreasing leftover OO crap, increasing documentation, simplifying the system structure and adding extra features and C interoperability.

[Ky.]

Um ok


I've finally accomplished something I've been wanting to do for many many years: Released a software based game.

Every game I have released has been made in something that does a good deal of the dirty work for me (aka: Flash)  and I stopped released Flash games many years ago in favour of wanting to release "Software" based games.  I've run the gammut of Engines, everything from IdTech2 to Unreal Engine 3 and Unity 4, and even trying to program my own from the ground up using 3rd party components (like Ogre3D for rendering, AngelScript/LUA for scripting, etc) and absolutely nothing I did ever got to the point where it wouldn't just be discarded for something else. I've hopped a ton of tech.

Last year, a friend of mine and I decided to enter the CyberPunk Game Jam, it's a two week compo. 8 Months later, and we're still working on what was our entry, and it's still a ways away from being completed.  But it's the closest thing we've ever gotten to releasing a game for Computer so far. The fact it's *still* in progress has at times been discouraging.


This last weekend, I said "... enough is enough. I just need to release SOMETHING" like the biggest case of internet blue balls ever, and we decided to enter into the Three Hour Game Jam (the results are in my signature) in an effort to see what we can do with our existing tech, we've written in a language called "D" from utter scratch, in a very short period of time.

Sure, it's a game made in a very tiny amount of time. But you know what? It was perfect. Even though it was cranked out and it's by rights not a very good or even super fun thing, I killed two birds with one stone:

1. I released something for public consumption, and even though that was two days ago, I'm still on that "release high", you know where you can't stop refreshing your analytics page and watching the activity?

2. I got to finally release something playable, that was created from scratch, with no pre-existing engine written by anybody else, and it's downloadable and playable on all platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux).  This is something I've been working towards for like 10 years.  And even though the debut product of that effort is nothing to be proud of in of itself, the Software V-Card has now been officially tossed for me, now my confidence is high again, and I'm just brimming with "what am I going to do next" ambition.


Note: There is absolutely *nothing* wrong with using Flash, or Unity, or Game Maker or anything else. This to me has simply been an act of self-indulgence. I'm very self-destructive in the sense that I need to drag myself through the dirt and rocks of a larger picture, in order to feel confident that this is something I want to pusue. If I can't take the mud-dragging, it's obviously not something I'm super passionate about, you know?


Mind vomit, TLDR!

I released something. It was crappy and made in an excruciating time limit, but it felt good damnit!

[Zack Bell]

Got this working 

[Geti]

@redacted congrats. I remember my first LD in much the same way;remember that to work on anything bigger you'll need to figure out a way to keep working on something even if you hate it that day/week/month though, one of the hardest parts of game dev imo. Out of interest w what did you use alongside D?

@zach neat, is there anything playable by the public yet? Been seeing lots of this developing but a bunch of it could just be level creation from the look of the gifs

[dirak]

I'm feeling happy about my progress so I wanted to share:

(Texture not mine.)

Besides from the minor visual glitch, I have a working ray caster for the first time in years! I've never had the time to think it through before, but I've always liked the style.

[gamerzap]

I'm feeling happy about my progress so I wanted to share:

(Texture not mine.)

Besides from the minor visual glitch, I have a working ray caster for the first time in years! I've never had the time to think it through before, but I've always liked the style.

Looks nice, but you're getting this weird sort of thing where the walls curve away from you on the edges of the screen.  Unless that's intentional.

[Geeze]

So do walls in real life when you are close enough. Your brain just does not notice it.

[dirak]

So do walls in real life when you are close enough. Your brain just does not notice it.

I vaguely remember something like this a few years ago starting a really long physics argument 

As for the run-off, that will be taken care of with the fishbowl fix when I get around to it. I want the option to turn it off/on while creating my world to see how it impacts it and if it should be something I keep in.

[gamerzap]

I vaguely remember something like this a few years ago starting a really long physics argument 

As for the run-off, that will be taken care of with the fishbowl fix when I get around to it. I want the option to turn it off/on while creating my world to see how it impacts it and if it should be something I keep in.

OK.  I was just pointing it out in case you didn't notice because that can cause some disorienting effects when moving.  When you said visual glitch I wasn't sure if you meant that or the wall overlap.

So do walls in real life when you are close enough. Your brain just does not notice it.

You also have an almost 90 degree horizontal and vertical FoV in real life, things blur and appear twice when you get close, and you can only focus on one small area at a time.  Doesn't mean it would look good in a game.

[Ky.]

@redacted congrats. I remember my first LD in much the same way;remember that to work on anything bigger you'll need to figure out a way to keep working on something even if you hate it that day/week/month though, one of the hardest parts of game dev imo. Out of interest w what did you use alongside D?

Ya, that's what our Cyberpunk Jam entry (now called "Corrode") is still doing hahaha we were a little, shall we say, ambitious?

And that segues into the next part: This is everything powering our tech that wasn't made by us: D2lang, DUB (D Package Manager and DMD Build Manager), and SDL2.  Though we only really tap into SDL for the multi-platform window launching and input API (wanted Gamepad support, seemed like the least annoying way of doing that. I'm still on the fence with this one though haha).  Our editor of choice is simply SublimeText2/3 (DUB being a command line tool), and I think my pixel artist used an old version of Paint Shop Pro? I could be wrong on that one though.
But that's literally it. This is why we're taking so long, we're doing everything as native to D as possible. And while D is a very very awesome and laid back language, outside of SDL2 there's really not a lot of support for any third party libraries or even snippets anywhere (or Game Dev in general, at all), and even SDL2 support had to be created by a group of very generous people underneath the name "Derelict" on GitHub haha

But that's whats awesome about the little 3 hour challenge, it really bluntly informed us of all the weaknesses our engine has yet to polish, bumps in the pipeline, and as well confirm the really awesome things about it. So, all in all a positive experience (though the other half of the project had to drink himself to sleep that night or something haha he really can't stand releasing unfinished stuff no matter the reason)

[s_l_m]

This is a pretty good explanation of the Raycasting fishbowl thing.
http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/rayc8.html

Anyway, I love writing simple raycasters/tracers/fractals. Great coding exercises.

[Quarry]

[dirak]

This is a pretty good explanation of the Raycasting fishbowl thing.
http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/raycast/rayc8.html

Anyway, I love writing simple raycasters/tracers/fractals. Great coding exercises.

Thanks a lot! I added shading & added a filter for the fishbowl effect. Having a nice pictorial explanation is very valuable for me.

[framk]

After using SDL pretty much exclusively for my c++ development I recently stumbled upon SFML and I love it. It's everything I could have asked for in a library and much more.  <3

[Ky.]

After using SDL pretty much exclusively for my c++ development I recently stumbled upon SFML and I love it. It's everything I could have asked for in a library and much more.  <3

..that looks awesome. Definitely bookmarking that...