The WPCC Lounge

[Rikifive 23,492]

Someone said game? 

15 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

I so wanna convert my project to C# so bad...

Can I explain...?

Converting projects? I know that pain. 

[CypherHoof 26,479]

13 minutes ago, VG_Addict said:

I had a great idea: A special about the 80s cartoons villains meeting and teaming up. Shredder, Mumm-Ra, Skeletor, Cobra Commander, and Megatron.

Skeletor and Cobra Commander interacting would be comedy gold.

I think Marvel did a series literally called "Supervillain team up" but I haven't read it...

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

I had my first scary dream in forever: cancer (not me, my dad) and my digestive tract was dying. Yeah, I'm not gonna fall asleep again; I might get diagnosed with something worse...

And I lost my glasses in the 50-whatever floor hospital.

1 hour ago, Rikifive said:

Someone said game? 

Converting projects? I know that pain. 

Game dev major here...?

Well, I feel it might be a lot better I'd I did convert it; I know more C# than JS...

Edited May 19, 2019 by Ganaram Inukshuk

[Rikifive 23,492]

1 minute ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

Game dev major here...?

Well, I feel it might be a lot better I'd I did convert it; I know more C# than JS...

I was moving a project between engines in the past, so I pretty much had to start over, because not only the language was different, but its whole layout and workflow. It was an RPG, so there were lots of things all over the place, for statistics and stuff. 

If you really feel, that converting will be for the better, then it may be worth it. It mostly depends on how far you are with your project and how complex it is. If you're close to releasing, it probably would be better to finish it and then eventually *remaster* it if desired. Think of what opportunities and possibilities converting can give and compare it to the time it may require, then judge if it is really worth it. Does JS give you a bad time? Are you familiar with C#? How big is the difference of your knowledge between these languages? Perhaps reminding/improving at JS wouldn't be a bad option, it's not a bad language from what I've heard, so it probably wouldn't be wasted.

I wasn't that far, so I reprogrammed things from nothing, improving it all while doing so. Also I originally worked with Ruby, which isn't a great language for games.  

[CypherHoof 26,479]

1 minute ago, Rikifive said:

I was moving a project between engines in the past, so I pretty much had to start over, because not only the language was different, but its whole layout and workflow. It was an RPG, so there were lots of things all over the place, for statistics and stuff. 

Rule of thumb is to plan on throwing your first revision away anyhow

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

So I got two scripts: one that generates a housing distribution (number of people per household) and an age distribution (number of people per age group), and all of that gets generated based on the number of occupied houses.

There's no tax system or timekeeping yet... Or job system...

I'm also the sole dev...

Edited May 19, 2019 by Ganaram Inukshuk

[Rikifive 23,492]

Hmm it sounds like it wouldn't be much of a pain to port to another language.  

 

I also do everything on my own. In fact, many indie devs work alone. They usually consider building a team when going serious - starting a commercial project or something. Until then, it's mostly one-man-army, occasionally commissioning someone for single pieces of art/resources. Either way, I get what you mean, personally the only thing that gets on my way is my job. It doesn't leave that much of free time, nor motivation.  

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

And here's where things get technical: I've done (what I think is) a good job keeping every class I write as much of a black box as possible (some with an internal state or whatever), but when it comes to putting things together in the context of gamedev, I can't figure out where things go. Like, where do I put the timekeeper? In its own black box?

Alright... I said this elsewhere, but some parts of a city builder have things analogous to a healthbar; for example, you have X and Y such that X <= Y but X and Y can change independently of one another (EX: X is your current health, Y is your max health; X changes depending on whether you heal or take damage, Y changes depending on whether you have anything that boosts your max health). What happens if you have a nested healthbar? Like, X <= Y <= Z and X, Y, and Z can change independently of one another? In the city-builder context, Z is the plots of land for building houses, Y is the number of houses currently built, and X is the number of occupied houses.

Never mind, I'm gonna go out for a covfefe...

[CypherHoof 26,479]

1 hour ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

And here's where things get technical: I've done (what I think is) a good job keeping every class I write as much of a black box as possible (some with an internal state or whatever), but when it comes to putting things together in the context of gamedev, I can't figure out where things go. Like, where do I put the timekeeper? In its own black box?

Alright... I said this elsewhere, but some parts of a city builder have things analogous to a healthbar; for example, you have X and Y such that X <= Y but X and Y can change independently of one another (EX: X is your current health, Y is your max health; X changes depending on whether you heal or take damage, Y changes depending on whether you have anything that boosts your max health). What happens if you have a nested healthbar? Like, X <= Y <= Z and X, Y, and Z can change independently of one another? In the city-builder context, Z is the plots of land for building houses, Y is the number of houses currently built, and X is the number of occupied houses.

One of the eternal UI/UX questions, really - so, visual metaphors for a meter?. 

To give some examples then - bars can be multipart without being nested  or multiple bars (which may or not be themselves multipart) can be vertically stacked. If you like the metaphor of a thermometer "line" as an "innermost" nested bar, you can have what amounts to a two-part bar top and bottom, and a three part bar in the middle.

you can also add visual indicators that are narrow or external (so caret style "ticks" or a pixel-thin threshold line and so forth)

 

[CypherHoof 26,479]

Well, still here, thank Celestia.

Switching ISP tomorrow, and I don't know when my current connection will be cut off to prepare for that..

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

2 hours ago, CypherHoof said:

Well, still here, thank Celestia.

Switching ISP tomorrow, and I don't know when my current connection will be cut off to prepare for that..

WOuld you like a consolation bug-hug?

[CastletonSnob 3,025]

G4 may be wildly successful, but I think Transformers is still Hasbro's main cash cow.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

16 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

WOuld you like a consolation bug-hug?

Well, bug hugs are always welcome, but it seems to be active on the new contract now, and a bit faster so that's something....

1 hour ago, VG_Addict said:

G4 may be wildly successful, but I think Transformers is still Hasbro's main cash cow.

I think that's relative to marketing though. Hasbro spends a lot on pushing the Transformers franchise, has made a fair few movies with signficantly more budget than they have spent on G4, and so forth.

[Olly 1,008]

boy howdy

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

2 minutes ago, Olly said:

boy howdy

Bug hug?

3 hours ago, CypherHoof said:

Well, bug hugs are always welcome, but it seems to be active on the new contract now, and a bit faster so that's something....

I think that's relative to marketing though. Hasbro spends a lot on pushing the Transformers franchise, has made a fair few movies with signficantly more budget than they have spent on G4, and so forth.

Also the Rubik's cube is I think older and overtaken by other manufacturers...

[CypherHoof 26,479]

3 minutes ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

Bug hug?

Also the Rubik's cube is I think older and overtaken by other manufacturers...

Rubik's cube was considered pretty cool when i was a kid.  Popularity started to pick up again after the patent expired. the name was copyrighted, but is now considered generic.

I have up to the 5x5x5, the pyramid, the five-axis dodecahedron and some of the other branded stuff (like the clock and rubik's magic) although I would have to dig though packing cases to find some of them

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

Just now, CypherHoof said:

Rubik's cube was considered pretty cool when i was a kid.  Popularity started to pick up again after the patent expired. the name was copyrighted, but is now considered generic.

I have up to the 5x5x5, the pyramid, the five-axis dodecahedron and some of the other branded stuff (like the clock and rubik's magic) although I would have to dig though packing cases to find some of them

I haven't touched my puzzles since December...

I never got the pyraminx but I hear that's really easy to solve.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

11 minutes ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

I haven't touched my puzzles since December...

I never got the pyraminx but I hear that's really easy to solve.

It is - but not as easy as the clock or magic.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

14 minutes ago, CypherHoof said:

It is - but not as easy as the clock or magic.

...I've never tried the other Rubik's puzzles; only the twisty puzzles...

Oh yeah, I dreamt a funky puzzle that can also twist along its diagonal. And a train station. And air conditioning.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Ganaram Inukshuk

[CypherHoof 26,479]

5 minutes ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

...I've never tried the other Rubik's puzzles; only the twisty puzzles...

Oh yeah, I dreamt a funky puzzle that can also twist along its diagonal. And a train station. And air conditioning.

I want a train station that can twist along its diagonal now

Edited May 23, 2019 by CypherHoof

[Rikifive 23,492]

On 5/20/2019 at 12:43 AM, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

And here's where things get technical: I've done (what I think is) a good job keeping every class I write as much of a black box as possible (some with an internal state or whatever), but when it comes to putting things together in the context of gamedev, I can't figure out where things go. Like, where do I put the timekeeper? In its own black box?

Alright... I said this elsewhere, but some parts of a city builder have things analogous to a healthbar; for example, you have X and Y such that X <= Y but X and Y can change independently of one another (EX: X is your current health, Y is your max health; X changes depending on whether you heal or take damage, Y changes depending on whether you have anything that boosts your max health). What happens if you have a nested healthbar? Like, X <= Y <= Z and X, Y, and Z can change independently of one another? In the city-builder context, Z is the plots of land for building houses, Y is the number of houses currently built, and X is the number of occupied houses.

Never mind, I'm gonna go out for a covfefe...

In game-dev you usually have a some sort of a global object, that holds variables and operates with them if desired. From what I know people tend to approach it slightly different than the others and it also depends on how the engine itself manages the objects.

What I do is to create an invisible object once and don't dispose it. It holds variables and basically follows the player. It just exists in the air, so to speak.

Such object could be used to keep track of time and update it.

There also are just global variables, that are stored directly in the memory, but I'm not a fan of these to be honest, as I can't really see them. Disposing an object removes all variables it had, where with global vars, I'm always unsure how they're doing.

 

As for the X Y Z thing you mentioned, there's absolutely no problem with that. That's also basically how most stuff works, especially rpg's. There are tons of variables all over the place, each one affecting the others.

You just need to put correct maths when adjusting the values. For example, if you want to raise X, remember to cap it to Y. If you'll want to reduce Y, remember to lower X to Y if it'll be higher.

... Assuming you were wondering on variable manipulation. 

As for design-wise, what Cypher said. Put nice bars and stuff, even just values would do the job.

Speaking of health bars, I actually use three variables:

- health

- damage indicator of some sort that follows hp with a delay

- and max health obviously

Each variable is changed separately as I want (well except the damage indicator as I made it work on its own) and they all work with each other. I just have to remember to include other variables in the maths.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

42 minutes ago, CypherHoof said:

I want a train station that can twist along its diagonal now

You probably dont...

28 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

In game-dev you usually have a some sort of a global object, that holds variables and operates with them if desired. From what I know people tend to approach it slightly different than the others and it also depends on how the engine itself manages the objects.

What I do is to create an invisible object once and don't dispose it. It holds variables and basically follows the player. It just exists in the air, so to speak.

Such object could be used to keep track of time and update it.

There also are just global variables, that are stored directly in the memory, but I'm not a fan of these to be honest, as I can't really see them. Disposing an object removes all variables it had, where with global vars, I'm always unsure how they're doing.

 

As for the X Y Z thing you mentioned, there's absolutely no problem with that. That's also basically how most stuff works, especially rpg's. There are tons of variables all over the place, each one affecting the others.

You just need to put correct maths when adjusting the values. For example, if you want to raise X, remember to cap it to Y. If you'll want to reduce Y, remember to lower X to Y if it'll be higher.

... Assuming you were wondering on variable manipulation. 

As for design-wise, what Cypher said. Put nice bars and stuff, even just values would do the job.

Speaking of health bars, I actually use three variables:

- health

- damage indicator of some sort that follows hp with a delay

- and max health obviously

Each variable is changed separately as I want (well except the damage indicator as I made it work on its own) and they all work with each other. I just have to remember to include other variables in the maths.

I'm building an incremental game...?

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

Umm... It works...?

[Rikifive 23,492]

2 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

I'm building an incremental game...?

Yes I know, you mentioned that before --- I'm kinda confused now. Did I say something wrong? 

I thought you were asking for some things, perhaps I misunderstood.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

Just now, Rikifive said:

Yes I know, you mentioned that before --- I'm kinda confused now. Did I say something wrong? 

I thought you were asking for some things, perhaps I misunderstood.

It takes me a while to process what I've done versus what I've been recommended... Also, I did the thing with the XYZ thing, hence the residential thing in my screenshoot...