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Search found 15 results on 1 pages for 'klaim'.

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• Game mechanics patterns database?

  - by Klaim

  Do you know http://tvtropes.org ? It's a kind of wiki/database with scenaristic tropes, patterns that you can find in tones of stories, in tv shows, games, books, etc. Each trope/pattern have a (funny) name and there are references to where it appears, and the other way arround : each book/game/etc. have a list of tropes that it contains. I'm looking for an equivalent but for game mechanics patterns, something like "Death is definitive", "Perfect physical control (no inertia)", "Excell table gameplay", etc. I think it would be really useful. I can't find an equivalent for game mechanics (tvtrope is oriented to scenario, not game mechanics). Do you know any?

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• Logging library for (c++) games

  - by Klaim

  I know a lot of logging libraries but didn't test a lot of them. (GoogleLog, Pantheios, the coming boost::log library...) In games, especially in remote multiplayer and multithreaded games, logging is vital to debugging, even if you remove all logs in the end. Let's say I'm making a PC game (not console) that needs logs (multiplayer and multithreaded and/or multiprocess) and I have good reasons for looking for a library for logging (like, I don't have time or I'm not confident in my ability to write one correctly for my case). Assuming that I need : performance ease of use (allow streaming or formating or something like that) reliable (don't leak or crash!) cross-platform (at least Windows, MacOSX, Linux/Ubuntu) Wich logging library would you recommand? Currently, I think that boost::log is the most flexible one (you can even log to remotely!), but have not good performance update: is for high performance, but isn't released yet. Pantheios is often cited but I don't have comparison points on performance and usage. I've used my own lib for a long time but I know it don't manage multithreading so it's a big problem, even if it's fast enough. Google Log seems interesting, I just need to test it but if you already have compared those libs and more, your advice might be of good use. Games are often performance demanding while complex to debug so it would be good to know logging libraries that, in our specific case, have clear advantages.

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• Game-oriented programming language features/objectives/paradigm?

  - by Klaim

  What are the features and language objectives (general problems to solves) or paradigms that a fictive programming language targetted at games (any kind of game) would require? For example, obviously we would have at least Performance (in speed and memory) (because a lot of games simply require that), but it have a price in the languages we currently use. Expressivity might be a common feature that is required for all languages. I guess some concepts from not-usually-used-for-games paradigms, like actor-based languages, or language-based message passing, might be useful too. So I ask you what would be ideal for games. (maybe one day someone will take those answers and build a language over it? :D ) Please set 1 feature/objective/paradigm per answer. Note: maybe that question don't make sense to you. In this case please explain why in an answer. It's a good thing to have answers to this question that might pop in your head sometimes.

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• Can an issue tracking system be distributed?

  - by Klaim

  I was thinking about issue tracking software like Redmine, Trac or even the one that is in Fossil and something hit me: Is there a reason why Redmine and Trac are not possible to be distributed? Or maybe it's possible and I just don't know how it's possible? If it's not possible, why? By distributed I mean like Facebook or Google or other applications that effectively runs on multiple hardware a the same time but share data.

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• How to balance a non-symmetric "extension" based game?

  - by Klaim

  Most strategy games have fixed units and possible behaviours. However, think of a game like Magic The Gathering : each card is a set of rules. Regularly, new sets of card types are created. I remember that the firsts editions of the game have been said to be prohibited in official tournaments because the cards were often too powerful. Later extensions of the game provided more subtle effects/rules in cards and they managed to balance the game apparently effectively, even if there is thousands of different cards possible. I'm working on a strategy game that is a bit in the same position : every units are provided by extensions and the game is thought to be extended for some years, at least. The effects variety of the units are very large even with some basic design limitations set to be sure it's manageable. Each player choose a set of units to play with (defining their global strategy) before playing (like chooseing a themed deck of Magic cards). As it's a strategy game (you can think of Magic as a strategy game too in some POV), it's essentially skirmish based so the game have to be fair, even if the players don't choose the same units before starting to play. So, how do you proceed to balance this type of non-symmetric (strategy) game when you know it will always be extended? For the moment, I'm trying to apply those rules but I'm not sure it's right because I don't have enough design experience to know : each unit would provide one unique effect; each unit should have an opposite unit that have an opposite effect that would cancel each others; some limitations based on the gameplay; try to get a lot of beta tests before each extension release? Looks like I'm in the most complex case?

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• Does it make sense to write a build scripts in C++?

  - by Klaim

  I'm using CMake to generate my projects IDE/makefiles, but I still need to call custom "scripts" to manipulate my compiled files or even generate code. In previous projects I've been using Python and it was OK, but now I'm having serious trouble managing a lot of dependencies in two very big projects I'm working on so I want to minimize the dependencies everywhere. Someone suggested to me to use C++ to write my build scripts instead of adding a language dependency just for that. The projects themeselves already use C++ so there are several advantages that I can see: to build the whole project, only a C++ compiler and CMake would be necessary, nothing else (all the other dependencies are C or C++); C++ type safety (when using modern C++) makes everything easier to get "correct"; it's also the language I know the better so I'm more at ease with it even if I'm able to write some good Python code; potential gain in execution speed (but i don't think it will really be perceptible); However, I think there might be some drawbacks and I'm not sure of the real impact as I didn't try yet: might be longer to write the code (that said I'm not sure because I'm efficient enough in C++ to write something that work quickly, so maybe for this system it wouldn't be so long to write) (compilation time shouldn't be a problem for this case); I must assume that all the text files I'll read as input are in UTF-8, I'm not sure it can be easilly checked at runtime in C++ and the language will not check it for you; libraries in C++ are harder to manage than in scripting languages; I lack experience and forsight so maybe I'm missing advantages and drawbacks. So the question is: does it make sense to use C++ for this? do you have experiences to report and do you see advantages and disadvantages that might be important?

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• Logging library for (c++) games

  - by Klaim

  I know a lot of logging libraries but didn't test a lot of them. (GoogleLog, Pantheios, the coming boost::log library...) In games, especially in remote multiplayer and multithreaded games, logging is vital to debugging, even if you remove all logs in the end. Let's say I'm making a PC game (not console) that needs logs (multiplayer and multithreaded and/or multiprocess) and I have good reasons for looking for a library for logging (like, I don't have time or I'm not confident in my ability to write one correctly for my case). Assuming that I need : performance ease of use (allow streaming or formating or something like that) reliable (don't leak or crash!) cross-platform (at least Windows, MacOSX, Linux/Ubuntu) Wich logging library would you recommand? Currently, I think that boost::log is the most flexible one (you can even log to remotely!), but have not good performance. Pantheios is often cited but I don't have comparison points on performance and usage. I've used my own lib for a long time but I know it don't manage multithreading so it's a big problem, even if it's fast enough. Google Log seems interesting, I just need to test it but if you already have compared those libs and more, your advice might be of good use. Games are often performance demanding while complex to debug so it would be good to know logging libraries that, in our specific case, have clear advantages.

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• In which directory to write game save files/data?

  - by Klaim

  I need a definite list of directories, one or more per platform, where to put game save files and other game generated data. Either based no the OS developer specification, or because it is common usage if there is no recommandation. Please provide one answer per platform, with different directories. Also, example of how to get the directory location in C++ or C is best, as it's the language you'll have more hard time. Locations: Player's game data (saved games, config). Shared game data (like high-score or config for all computer users). Temporary game data (aka cache directory).

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• Does it make sense to write build scripts in C++?

  - by Klaim

  I'm using CMake to generate my projects IDE/makefiles, but I still need to call custom "scripts" to manipulate my compiled files or even generate code. In previous projects I've been using Python and it was OK, but now I'm having serious trouble managing a lot of dependencies in two very big projects I'm working on so I want to minimize the dependencies everywhere. Someone suggested to me to use C++ to write my build scripts instead of adding a language dependency just for that. The projects themeselves already use C++ so there are several advantages that I can see: to build the whole project, only a C++ compiler and CMake would be necessary, nothing else (all the other dependencies are C or C++); C++ type safety (when using modern C++) makes everything easier to get "correct"; it's also the language I know the better so I'm more at ease with it even if I'm able to write some good Python code; potential gain in execution speed (but i don't think it will really be perceptible); However, I think there might be some drawbacks and I'm not sure of the real impact as I didn't try yet: might be longer to write the code (that said I'm not sure because I'm efficient enough in C++ to write something that work quickly, so maybe for this system it wouldn't be so long to write) (compilation time shouldn't be a problem for this case); I must assume that all the text files I'll read as input are in UTF-8, I'm not sure it can be easilly checked at runtime in C++ and the language will not check it for you; libraries in C++ are harder to manage than in scripting languages; I lack experience and forsight so maybe I'm missing advantages and drawbacks. So the question is: does it make sense to use C++ for this? do you have experiences to report and do you see advantages and disadvantages that might be important?

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• Client/Server game even in solo: any big problem?

  - by Klaim

  I'm making a game which have strong basic design based on multiplayer but also should provide a really interesting and self-sufficient solo game. A bit like a real-time strategy game. The events and actions taken shouldn't be as massive and immediate as in a FPS, so you can also think the networking like for an RTS. It's a PC game, targetting Windows, MacOSX and Linux (Ubuntu & Fedora). It's programmed in C++, using a variety of open source libraries, so I have great (potential) control over the performances. So far I always considered that just making the game work with two applications, client & server, even in solo mode was ok. However, as I'm in the process of starting the network code I'm having doubts about if it's a good idea. I'm not a specialist so I might be missing something in my analysis. I see these pros and cons: Pros: The game works only one way so if I fix a bug it should apply on all game modes, whatever the distance with the server is; Basic networking issues would be detected early, including behaviour with the protection softwares (firewall) installed (i am not specialist so this might be wrong); Cons: I suppose that even if it should be really fast enough, networking client and server on the same computer would still be slower than no networking and message passing in (one) process memory. Maybe debugging would be more difficult? I don't have experience in this case but so far I assume that debugging with Visual Studio allows me to debug multiple process so it shouldn't be really different. Also, remote debugging. My question is: is there a big disadvantage that I missed? Or maybe there are advantages that I missed and that should encourage me to just continue with only client-server game sessions?

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• Why Android for new (micro) consoles?

  - by Klaim

  There are a lot of new (micro) consoles with Android inside coming soon or already there (OUYA for example). My question is: why use Android and not another OS as base for these consoles? I assume that there are pragmatic answers to this but I can't see any clear killer feature. For example, one can assume that any stable Linux distribution would work (like Valve seem to think). Android is primarily targetted at mobile platforms which mean it is built around the idea of being interrupted which goes against a lot of what console devs needs in new hardware - but is not killing Android as a platform for gamedev either as it's just a constraint. Why not another OS? What's the Android killer features that make micro-console builder using it instead of Linux or anything else?

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• Looking for a free xsd scheme editor

  - by Klaim

  I'm looking for a free alternative to all the XML/XSD editors around here (that are relatively expensive--at least for me). I totally fail to find one. I need it to allow me to edit xsd files to help in writting an xml-based language specification. I need it to be visual to help with the design, making it clear. Other features are less interesting for me. Any suggestion?

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• Float compile-time calculation not happening?

  - by Klaim

  A little test program: #include <iostream> const float TEST_FLOAT = 1/60; const float TEST_A = 1; const float TEST_B = 60; const float TEST_C = TEST_A / TEST_B; int main() { std::cout << TEST_FLOAT << std::endl; std::cout << TEST_C << std::endl; std::cin.ignore(); return 0; } Result : 0 0.0166667 Tested on Visual Studio 2008 & 2010. I worked on other compilers that, if I remember well, made the first result like the second result. Now my memory could be wrong, but shouldn't TEST_FLOAT have the same value than TEST_C? If not, why? Is TEST_C value resolved at compile time or at runtime? I always assumed the former but now that I see those results I have some doubts...

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• How to get all property names of a Groovy class?

  - by Klaim

  The title ask it all : How to get all property names of a Groovy class? Is it even possible? I thought I could use collection syntaxes with classes too be it don't seem to work.

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• In C++, is it a reflection of poor software design if objects are deleted manually?

  - by grokus

  With the advent of smart pointers, is it a sign of poor design if I see objects are deleted? I'm seeing some software components in our product that people are still doing this. This practice strikes me as un-idiomatic, but I need to be sure this is the industry consensus. I'm not starting a crusade but it'd be nice to be prepared theory wise. Edit: legit uses of delete, Klaim mentioned the object pool use case. I agree. Bad examples of using delete, I am seeing many new's in constructor or start() and corresponding delete's in the destructor or stop(), why not use scoped_ptr? It makes the code cleaner.

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