Recent posts by truefire on Kongregate

Topic: Game Programming / How Do You Pronounce...

Originally posted by ballesta25:

I pronounce char and var as the first part of “character” and “variable” (i.e. “care” and rhyming).

“Jason”

“E-M-C-A Script” (Yeah I spell it wrong)

“Hacks”. (Official pronunciation is ‘hex’ by the way)

“You-int” (U. Int, the U is short for unsigned)

“Swiff”

“S-W-C”

“F-L-A”.

Topic: Game Programming / Games for the people?

This is pathetic. You can’t expect people to praise you for crap. Let’s take that example literally. I have some dogs. And my dogs occasionally poop, as dogs tend to do. Now, imagine that when my dogs pooped, I took their poop, and put it in a box, and mailed it to people I know. These people would probably complain. How dare they! I spent my own time collecting and packaging this poop, not to mention the money for postage. I did it for free. They don’t even have to use the poop, they could just ignore it or throw it in the trash! The ones that do use it should be sending me thank-you notes too!

But why would I tell you or any of these guys here who are so strongly removed from reality understand how poop mail works.

See where I’m going with this…

As for why I make games, here’s my story.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved video games. You don’t even know how much I liked them (or maybe you do). Gandhi and Buddha combined got nothing on the inner peace I experienced when I played Ocarina of Time for the first time.

I found something awesome, and I want to share it. Every game I’ve ever liked was made by people.

If someone ever smiles because of a game I made, stays up all night playing it, flips a table in frustration and then sits down to try again — then I’ve succeeded.

I couldn’t care less about money or fame — those are means to an end. I just want to give back to the world the awesome things it’s given me.

Topic: Game Design / Game on video game effects

(note: Happiness is capped at 100, while Grades can go infinitely high.)

It’s funny because it’s the opposite of real life.

Topic: Game Design / Tower Defense Themes

200 hours at minimum wage is 1450 dollars.

But 200 hours at indie gamedev wage is about $50, so your argument is moot.

Topic: Game Programming / About curly braces

Surprising this hasn’t erupted into a flame war.

I prefer non-nestled curly braces. AFAIK, nestling them IS more common overall. But for some reason, the flash community tends to prefer to not nestle them.

Topic: Game Programming / Respecting OOP a bit better this time around...

Originally posted by BigJM:
[snip]

I read “The test is wrong and the results are wrong and you are wrong”. Is all you know how to say “Nope, that’s wrong”? If you want to call someone out on something that’s wrong, fine. At least back up your statement.

The type of the function IS lost. This is a compiletime thing, and that’s clearly what Drakim was talking about. There’s no way to infer the type of the function at compiletime (except in very specific situations — and this doesn’t happen anyway, with Adobe’s compiler). If you want to say I’m wrong:

function a():bool { return false; }
function b():int { return 200; }

//...

Function f;
if (Math.random() > .5) { f = a; }
else { f = b;}

//Computers are not magic. If the compiler could know what the return type of f is here, so could you. So tell me what it is.
var x:??? = f();

The function type DOES exist — at runtime, in the RAM, bundled with the function object. This is obvious. Why wouldn’t it? Why would we just throw it away. The issue here however is that the runtime DOES have to do some “special stuff” now. If we had known the type of the function at compiletime, the compiler could have hard-coded in the details, but since it doesn’t, it has to do a lookup on the function object to find the type.

So, both the statement that “the type of the function is lost” and “the runtime has to do some special stuff” are true statements. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that function objects are necessarily slower. It’s possible that Adobe is retarded, and treats even direct function calls as calling through a function object. Based on my own speed tests a year or two back, the Jackston Dunstan article, 6 years of Flash experience, and general knowledge of computer science in general, I don’t think this is the case. (Even Adobe shouldn’t be that dumb).

If you want to argue otherwise fine. There is a possibility (though I have no reason to believe it to be very large at this point) that I’m wrong. Show me a test with “better methodology” that supports your argument — if you’re qualified to dismiss that test, you should be able to write your own. Show me documentation about how Adobe doesn’t take advantage of the obvious benefits of direct function calls. Look at the bytecode and show me that they’re equivalent. Take your pick. But don’t just tell me I’m wrong without any supporting evidence, and don’t do it to other people either.

Topic: Game Programming / What language should I learn?

+1 for HaXe

Topic: Game Programming / Solution: Stop being retarded.

If you go a few years back on the programming forums, you can find records of a 3-day debugging session of mine that ended up being a semicolon after an if statement.

if (/*whatever*/);
{
   //Y ALWAYS EXECUTE?
}

Topic: Game Programming / Coding on Timeline?

Classes by definition create abstraction between objects. This abstraction leads to slower access.

Not necessarily true all the time, just a good general rule. I maintain for this, a good no-timeline-code solution could be created that at least matches the speed of what Adobe does “natively.” I may not be correct. Adobe could have some “magic” behind addFrameScript, but I doubt they do.

Topic: Game Programming / 3D Game Creation In the Near Future

I think you misunderstood him Johnny. He’s defining a “hit” (which has now been re-designated “success”) as that. Even if nobody plays it.

More power too you. We can debate on and off what determines if something will be successful, but your time is better spent just doing your best. So go learn C++ or something.

Topic: Game Design / Why videogame players never value their lives.

it takes about 100 hours in total to level up.

And this is why you should never play MapleStory past level 30 ;P

How about these:

Crippling terror:

Keeping track of deaths:

Destruction of hardware:

Destruction of user:

Topic: Game Programming / Kongregate launches $10 million mobile publishing fund for indies

Don’t you just put dodgy “buttons” on the bottom of the screen to serve as keys?

You’re dead to me.

Topic: Game Programming / 3D Game Creation In the Near Future

And I was henceforth called Truefire, Blower of Minds.

Topic: Game Programming / Show us a screenshot of what you're working on!

Topic: Game Programming / 3D Game Creation In the Near Future

Originally posted by truefire:

OpenGL > DirectX

Don’t support the vicious cycle that is Microsoft.

Read this.

And this.

Topic: Game Programming / GiTD [#29] Entries and Discussion (started!)

So who thinks I can make a GAME IN 5 DAYS?!?!?! Wooo entering late. Yeah!

I’m probably not going to enter at all actually but we’ll see.

And feartehstickman, I am curious as to why these people erect a chimney every night just to tear it down the next day. They could more efficiently spend their time learning how to not totally break their ecosystem.

Actually maybe I will enter. AWAIT MY RETURN.

Topic: Game Programming / Coding on Timeline?

Flash does all kinds of weird crap with timeline code. I tried to understand it once, and gave up.

I’ll argue that anything that can be done via timeline code can be done just as fast or faster without it. Adobe doesn’t have any “magic” on the timeline. It just hides a bunch of stuff from you — a lot of which is probably unnecessary and just slowing things down.

Based on the existence of the (undocumented) MovieClip.addFrameScript() method, I posit that putting timeline code is similar to a function wrapped in an event listener. That is, I’d suggest that putting the following on the timeline on frame 4:

doA();
doB();
doC();

is the same as:

//in the class
private function doFrame4()
{
    doA();
    doB();
    doC();
}

//somewhere, possibly onLoad
addFrameScript(4, doFrame4);

which would be the same as

//in the class
var frames:Array;
private function checkFrameEvents(e:Event)
{
    if (frames[currentFrame]) { frames[currentFrame](); }
}
private function doFrame4()
{
    doA();
    doB();
    doC();
}

//somewhere, possibly onLoad
frames = new Array(4);
frames[4] = doFrame4;
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, checkFrameEvents);

True, I don’t know if Adobe does any compiler-based optimizations, such as directly embedding the functions within the checkFrameEvents, or having a special undocumented onFrame4 event or something. I doubt they do, because they’re Adobe, and because that wouldn’t work for things added with addFrameScript. But even if they did, the performance boost is marginal, and can be tied or outperformed with “class code”.

*I assume that Adobe would use an Array, rather then a Vector, because Vector hasn’t always existed and because Adobe is stupid. If this assumption is correct, then outperforming timeline code is trivial, even if they’ve done all the other optimizations, since the implied cast thing going on is all kinds of expensive. If the assumption is not correct, it’s still totally possible to tie or outperform this system.

Originally posted by BigJM:

My timeline code will almost neglibly out-perform your abstracted class system any day of the week. The timeline is where boss playas code.

This is sarcasm, right?

Topic: Game Programming / Kongregate launches $10 million mobile publishing fund for indies

But if you use HaXe, wouldn’t you be able to publish for both Flash and mobile anyway?

It’s a little extra effort, but yeah. The problem for me is that I generally don’t care to build games optimized for mobile, or even designed for mobile in many cases (where is my keyboard?!)

Topic: Game Programming / HLSL and HxSL

OpenGL > DirectX

Don’t support the vicious cycle that is Microsoft.

Read this.

And this.

Topic: Game Programming / Kongregate launches $10 million mobile publishing fund for indies

Darn mobile devs, stealing all my free money.

Topic: Game Programming / Game in one hour

We had a GI1H comp in GDR one day a while back. I made the winner.

Topic: Game Programming / Coding on Timeline?

I’ll assume you’re talking about this tutorial.

It’s quite possibly the case that Drakim knows better then this guy. I can’t say for certain, but nothing I can find evidences that the person writing this tutorial is really all that experienced.

It’s also not necessary to use the timeline to make a preloader work. It’s stupidly painful and convoluted to do it otherwise because lol Adobe being competent. But it is definitely possible.

Topic: Game Design / An absolutely awesome Integrated game - people just think of it!

By the way when I say balance I mean like the game is not too difficult but also like the players dont get too strong weapons all the time either so its perfect. Not like the balance in a table when you put all the stuff on one side of it how its not balanced.

Topic: Game Design / An absolutely awesome Integrated game - people just think of it!

But when players cap their max skills, how do we keep them from winning too much? This game will obviously be multiplayer, and also it must have the best internet connection in it. but I think with so many developers we can definitely make a fast enough internet connection for evreyone to play the game. But the question is, when they beat the others, how do we stop it from unbalancing too much onto one side? I don’t think having unity of all the developers is good enough, but also, we need designers and maybe even some psychologists probably. Because they can do things like – analyze the players and so they can see how they will behave, so we can make sure the game is balanced for every player.

Topic: Game Programming / Is kong good for SVG?

If you’re making a game in flash, you can load SVGs into them as graphics though.