Hello Guest, please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
Login with username, password and session length.

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - TheDarkJay

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 118
1
Coding / Re: How to find memory leaks?(C# - XNA)
« on: January 28, 2012, 01:01:37 am »
Creating a new Rectangle every time isn't a good way to go about it, since the object does get constructed every frame.

It could be that the .NET runtime isn't seeing any reason to delete the objects until so much RAM is used up. The garbage collection routines of managed languages tend to wait until sufficient amounts of memory is used up, or so much time has passed, before clearing.

2
Entertainment / Re: Terraria: Anyone on ZFGC playing it?
« on: January 14, 2012, 11:09:39 pm »
Isn't it basically 2D Minecraft?

Trolololololol? Well, on the assumption it's not...basically it's got much more emphasis on exploration, combat dungeon crawling and equipment vs Minecraft's emphasis on building.

It's like Minecraft meets Metroid. And that's just awesome :D

3
Discussion / Re: [Need help] Development tools for my university work
« on: December 21, 2011, 11:03:19 pm »
Essentially with OpenGL each version is more modern than the last, with more features being required by cards to provide instead of being optional extensions (Frame-Buffer Objects were extension-only for far to long by any account) and the older implementations deprecated or even removed. As I remember it, by 3.x the fixed function pipeline was considered deprecated and by 4.0 it's not even guaranteed to be provided by hardware.

If you are comfortable with the concept of shaders or want to become comfortable with shaders (which since that's how modern video game graphics are supposed to be done nowadays, you'll want to be), I'd say 3.x (A window can be created with GLFW, SFML or SDL 1.3 if you don't want to mess around with the OS-specific stuff). If not, 2.x.

4
Discussion / Re: [Need help] Development tools for my university work
« on: December 19, 2011, 02:55:06 pm »
Construct is basically an alternative to GameMaker. It's actually pretty neat with a built in event system, some reckon it to be better but I've not used either enough to say :P

5
Discussion / Re: [Need help] Development tools for my university work
« on: December 17, 2011, 01:02:53 pm »
FreeBASIC
VisualBASIC
DarkBasic
Blitz
C#
Java
Construct

For Graphics if using a programming language:
OpenGL
DirectX
SDL
SFML

And Audio if using programming language:
OpenAL
FMOD
SFML

6
Other Projects / Re: [Demo] Warcraft: The Chains of Command - RTS
« on: December 14, 2011, 03:10:44 pm »
Ah that makes sense. Well I think the res problem is partly because of how GameMaker doesn't seem to really change the screens resolution, which means it's stretching a 320*240 screen to 1600*900 for my laptop xD

A clone is, as I understand it, a game that has the same or very similar gameplay, intentionally mimicking another game:) For example, the old name for FPS games was "Doom Clones". So an RTS with Warcraft-esque gameplay but that way you aren't limiting yourself to trying to follow Warcraft's lore ^^ It just gives you a bit more freedom for stories and gameplay design and the like :)

7
Other Projects / Re: [Demo] Warcraft: The Chains of Command
« on: December 13, 2011, 08:18:15 pm »
Well it works fine, but for some reason the units at the very top of the map I cannot control, yet it seems I can control the enemy units (though that control is wrestled away from the AI after a bit) xD

Other than that and it running in full-screen so being pixelated to incomprehension (solved by hammering the F keys until one of them changes the screen to windowed xD) yeah, keep going looks like a solid basic RTS battle engine so far (y)

P.S May I recommend you drop the explicitly-warcraft-ness? It sounds silly but you'll probably get more interest if you make it into a warcraft clone xD People generally expect even clones to be of higher quality than fangames so are less apprehensive about trying it out :) You can even keep the sound effects and graphics for now, nothing wrong with some "temporary artwork" for a WIP ;D

Also you may want to mention it's an RTS in the title, otherwise people may think you're making a Warcraft sidescroller and just turn away :)

8
Entertainment / Re: Skyrim
« on: December 04, 2011, 07:21:46 am »
I'm on the 360 versions, just got this game. My comp is 5 years old, otherwise I'd have gotten the PC version. What's wrong with the menus?

They work when you're using a gamepad, but with a keyboard and mouse they are horrendous to navigate. For example, they aren't mouse driven at all. And there's a lot of wasted "screen real-estate" that could have been used. Wording is too big since it's meant for TV screens not Monitors...

9
Entertainment / Re: Skyrim
« on: December 02, 2011, 11:23:34 am »
From the looks of things the UI is scripted in ActionScript, there's already some crude and simple edits of it and one developer was in the forums explaining things as best he could and answering questions ^^

Also wooh news on the Creation Kit: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/02/skyrim-to-receive-strong-mod-support/

10
Entertainment / Re: Some nice Games that are coming out
« on: October 21, 2011, 10:04:51 pm »
I just feel like the ES games (from what I've seen) have too much depth to the side quests and it makes it feel like the whole game is kind of side quests

Well the whole idea behind Elder Scrolls games is (or at least was) that you could play the game for months and not even start the main quest. In fact I think when I first got Morrowind I had it for about six months and played it regularly during those six months, but didn't do more than one of the main quests well...quests xD

11
Entertainment / Re: Some nice Games that are coming out
« on: October 14, 2011, 12:26:05 am »
It's funny Skyrim are targeting consoles since I consider modding so embedded in the concept of an Elder Scrolls game that I literally cannot conceive why you'd pay £10 more for 1/10th of the game you're get for the PC xD So yeah I probably will get Skyrim.

And of course I'll definitely get around to buying Arkham City at some point ^^

And maybe MW3 when the price goes down. Way down. Not big on the FPSes.

12
Entertainment / Re: Summer Wars
« on: September 23, 2011, 01:17:09 pm »
*looks it up*
*Notices it's the same director as the one behind The Girl Who Leapt Through Time...*

Well that alone sells it to me :D I'll have to check this out sometime ^^

13
Discussion / [Short Article] How to make a Video Game Engine
« on: August 24, 2011, 03:36:56 pm »
<Original>


A common mistake people learning programming with an eye towards game development make is the idea that they require a game engine. It just seems natural, a car needs an engine to move so surely a game needs an engine. If only life were so simple.

Look at the history of most of the successful game engines in history, let’s use the Unreal Engine and the id Engine for my examples here, and you’ll find they started off with the game and the engine came afterwards. The Doom Engine (precursor/father to/first version of the id Engine) was not written to be a powerful game engine (for the time), it was written to run Doom. It just so happened a lot of the code got reused in other projects and thus the id Engine was born.

The Unreal engine began, oddly enough, with the game Unreal. Then a lot of the code for Unreal got used in lots of games that followed, being changed, refined and completely rebuilt along the way.

Game engines are not so much invented as they are accidentally created. You write a game, and then you refactor a lot of the code you used so it can be used in a later game. This alone is often enough for the developers/publishers/marketing department to say that both games run on a modified version of the same engine. And I guess technically it’s true.

The idea of a game engine is inherently ill-defined, it can mean a whole lot of things. At the end of the day, seeking to create a “Video Game Engine” is a foolish endeavour, as trying to create something ill-defined often is. Without a lot of luck and skill, you’ll get distracted by the shiny things you can do and at best you’ll wind up with a fantastic technical demo, but not something wholly individual you can use to make a game.

In fact, one could easily argue that the creation of a technical demo, getting someone to run around the screen, is one of the simplest aspects of game development. It is often the unique aspects of a game, the unique code which doesn't quite always fit efficiently into the average generic "engine", that provide the real challenges in coding and in developing.

The reason the Unreal Engine, the id Engine and the Source engine are at their current state of awesome is because they have been used to create so many games that the code-base has been refactored, modified and reused countless times in a long, iterative process. This is how a true game engine is made: iteratively.

The best way to make a ‘game engine’ is, at the end of the day, almost always going to be to make a game. The old adage, “Make games, not engines”, is as true today as it was in the days of Doom.

14
Entertainment / Re: Anyone got the 3DS?
« on: July 31, 2011, 11:14:02 am »
 So I saw one of these in a local Game, on a stand on display. I looked at it and...my brain hurt. I mean, it actually hurt. My brain just went "whatnolooksweirdodd" and I felt a bit of pain behind my eyes.

So yeah, probably not gonna get a 3DS until the price goes down by quite a bit and will probably always have the 3D turned off xD

15
I agree to all of this minus FF7 being the worst. The worst is FF8. HORRIBLE!

I assume we're all pretending FF10 never happened then? God that one sucked...

16
Discussion / Re: Moving from 2D to 3D
« on: June 02, 2011, 05:34:21 pm »
I advise you learn to draw 3D things in OpenGL or DirectX. Get a book, get your head around the matrix maths, around the basics of the 3D models, around shaders (almost all 3D uses shaders nowadays, the whole matrix stack thing from the times of OpenGL 1.0 is outdated and deprecated), around the theory of how things like reflections are implemented. You don't need to remake the Unreal Engine, but I'd say it's best you have a rough idea what's going on if you decide to use the Unreal Engine...or the XNA engine, or the Irrlicht engine, or Unity or you get the idea ^^

Then again I do tend to advocate learning to swim with the sharks even if you just want to splash around with dolphins :)

17
...one of these Pikachus represents Nintendo. The other what I wish to do to Nintendo.

Guess which is which.

I guess they're going for cheap-and-mass-market again?...joy. I can't remember the last time I used a Wii but it's been a long time and for a good reason >.<

18
Recruitment / Re: LoZ - Ocarina of time
« on: May 03, 2011, 04:10:05 pm »
The problem with remakes like this is the people without the skills to remake it, want to remake it, and the people with the skills aren't interesting in remaking it because why remake when you can create?

19
Entertainment / Re: The Youtube Topic 2.0
« on: April 25, 2011, 01:59:14 pm »
I started doing a terrible William Shatner impression, I think any pretence of me not overacting for amusements sake was lost at that point ;)

20
Coding / Re: [C++]
« on: April 22, 2011, 03:19:02 pm »
Also friendly advice: Try not to think in terms of an engine. Engine's are created as the result of pulling the Game out of a Game so you can put a new Game in. Until you have a lot of experience (like...well-paid-professional level experience), make Games not Engines.

Also I recommend SFML if you're going with C++ and want something newbie-friendly. It's like SDL but Object-Orientated and (in my opinion) even easier to use: http://www.sfml-dev.org/

EDIT: Ooooh, didn't realise this was almost a month old xD Browsing forums hungover is silly and I need to stop doing it.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 118

Contact Us | Legal | Advertise Here
2013 © ZFGC, All Rights Reserved



Page created in 0.319 seconds with 35 queries.

anything