| --- Log opened Sat Mar 17 00:00:21 2012 |
| --- Day changed Sat Mar 17 2012 |
| 00:00 | <@Alek> | hrm. can I get some feedback on some potential game stuff? |
| 00:00 | < RichyB> | Ask away. |
| 00:01 | <@Alek> | basically, I want to make a Spiral Knights or Phantasy Star Online type MMO, only sci-fi, you're marines or scavengers going delving in ships, abandoned wrecks, planetary ruins, stuff like that. |
| 00:01 | <@Alek> | the main mechanic I have in mind is weapons that are upgradable with nanochip slotting. |
| 00:02 | <&Derakon> | I'm going to go ahead and assume that this will never make it past the theorycrafting stage. |
| 00:02 | <@Alek> | basic weapons have several modifier nanochip slots. you can get nanochips that modify your weapon, its firing rate, bullet speed, bullet strength, maybe stuff like exploding bullets. |
| 00:03 | <&Derakon> | So basically like gems/runes in Diablo/WoW/etc. |
| 00:03 | <@Alek> | maybe, dera. maybe not. I'm hashing out whether this is even a worthwhile mechanic, yet. |
| 00:03 | <~Vornicus> | This is also like enhancements in City of Heroes, sorta |
| 00:03 | <~Vornicus> | So it's a well-tread idea |
| 00:04 | <@Alek> | basically. only, thing is. the nanochips actually modify your weapon model, and they stack - so each successive nanochip in the line builds upon the previous ones. |
| 00:04 | <&McMartin> | That is what broke CoH at first |
| 00:04 | <@Alek> | if you have a nanochip that doubles your barrels, that can also split your slot line - so you have twice as many lines. |
| 00:05 | <@Alek> | but something like this would obviously be extremely rare. XD |
| 00:05 | <~Vornicus> | whee, exponential complexity explosion |
| 00:05 | <&Derakon> | So now we're talking something like the ship designs in Warning Forever. |
| 00:05 | <@Tamber> | So... if you've played the game for a week, newbies will hate it because they can't get anywhere without being ground into the dust? |
| 00:05 | <@Alek> | but that's just an example, yes. |
| 00:05 | <&Derakon> | TBQH I'd thought about trying to do a system like this where adding enhancements to your weapon caused model changes. |
| 00:05 | <&McMartin> | More to the point, you'll design a huge and complicated system |
| 00:05 | <&McMartin> | And then everyone will slot 1xAcc, 4xDmg because one person does the math and optimizes DPS and then you are done |
| 00:05 | <@Alek> | also, 3 basic guns. small (handgun), medium (carbine), heavy (PMG, rocket launcher). |
| 00:05 | <&Derakon> | I was just thinking along the lines of "bolt another barrel onto it" kind of thing and even then you get into tricky problems ensuring that your weapon doesn't intersect itself. |
| 00:06 | <&McMartin> | Death is the most effective status effect |
| 00:07 | <@Alek> | McM: yeah, it's not so much "acc" and "dmg" as "increase bullet speed", "increase caliber", "add hollowtips", etc. but yeah, I see what you mean. |
| 00:08 | <&Derakon> | Most weapon mods devolve to "attack more quickly", "attack harder", or "attack more targets". |
| 00:08 | <@Alek> | small gun would have maybe 3 chipslots, medium 5, heavy 7? just as an example. |
| 00:08 | <&Derakon> | Most games in turn are set up so that you optimize the speed/damage ratio to deal as much DPS as possible. |
| 00:08 | <@Alek> | originally, this was for an FPS, but I'd have to make it a huge 50+ hr game, like Stalker or something, to take advantage of the chip system. |
| 00:08 | < RichyB> | Might I suggest that you prototype this as a tabletop dice-rollin' roleplaying game? |
| 00:09 | <@Alek> | hm. yeah, that might work too. |
| 00:09 | <~Vornicus> | What RichyB said |
| 00:09 | < Stalker> | Like me? |
| 00:09 | < RichyB> | Tabletop games are easier to prototype the rules for than code. |
| 00:09 | <~Vornicus> | Any game system you design like this |
| 00:09 | < Stalker> | Or are we talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? |
| 00:09 | < RichyB> | annnd... your roll-players will very quickly find (and take advantage of) all of the bugs in your rules for you. |
| 00:09 | <&Derakon> | Especially if they're munchkins. |
| 00:10 | < Noah> | Everyone's a little munchkin |
| 00:10 | <&Derakon> | And believe me, if you want to make a networked multiplayer game? It will be ruined by munchkins if it possibly can be. |
| 00:10 | <~Vornicus> | Even torn-paper games will find design flaws. |
| 00:10 | < RichyB> | The reason why so many CRPGs use systems like d20 isn't that it's all the designers know, it's that the commercially successful dice systems are really well balanced. |
| 00:10 | < RichyB> | Noah, that fact gives me hope for humanity. |
| 00:10 | <~Vornicus> | there's a bit about how good d20 is somewhere on the internet |
| 00:10 | | * RichyB ? munchkins. |
| 00:11 | <~Vornicus> | http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-ex pectations-2 |
| 00:11 | <@Alek> | anywho. and 1 form chip per gun. so like basic small would be pistol, uncommon chip would be SMG (faster fire rate, less damage), rare chip would be revolver (huge damage, slow fire rate), legendary chip would be mebbe gyrojet pistol (amazing damage, fires almost never)... |
| 00:12 | <@Alek> | medium would be assault rifle, shotgun, scoped rifle, railgun? |
| 00:12 | <~Vornicus> | railgun isn't a medium weapon |
| 00:12 | <@Alek> | heavy would be flamethrower, PMG, rocket launcher, lightning gun? |
| 00:12 | <@Alek> | Vorn: not now it isn't. but I had to think of something to flesh out medium legendary. XD |
| 00:12 | < Noah> | What, no mecury bow? |
| 00:13 | < Noah> | Mercury* |
| 00:13 | <&McMartin> | Alek: You may want to look at Dungeon Defenders and its upgrade system |
| 00:13 | <@Alek> | lightning gun being basically supersonic bullet followed by a charge along the ionized path. |
| 00:13 | <&McMartin> | Especially since it's also free to play this weekend on Steam >_> |
| 00:13 | <@Alek> | McM: hm. I just may. XD |
| 00:13 | <&McMartin> | You get N upgrade levels each of which applies to a big pile of stats. |
| 00:13 | | * Vornicus decides in a fit of pique to break out Pygame. |
| 00:14 | <@Alek> | ahh... I dunno. |
| 00:14 | <@Alek> | Noah: whaddya mean by mercury bow? |
| 00:14 | <@Alek> | and basically, the form chip is what forms the weapon out of the small/medium/heavy blank. |
| 00:15 | < Noah> | A mercury bow spins a sliver of mercury, freezes it, and fires it out railgun style |
| 00:17 | <@Alek> | I'll just add that when I originally conceived of the basic stacking-nanochip-mod-in-line mechanic, I also thought of its fantasy variant - orbs on a wizard's wand. with elemental mods too, so a triple-orb could be followed by a fire, ice, and lightning orb each on the three lines that split off. tri-beam! >_> |
| 00:17 | <@Alek> | Noah: I do believe I've seen that in games. Oni? |
| 00:17 | <@Alek> | but this mechanic wouldn't be conducive to a mercury bow - it's nanite-powered and -assembled. |
| 00:18 | <&McMartin> | If Hideo Kojima has taught us anything it is that nanomachines let you excuse absolutely everything |
| 00:18 | < Noah> | Alek: Yes, Oni |
| 00:19 | < Noah> | it doesn't look anything like a bow though :\ |
| 00:19 | <@Alek> | oh, and an addendum I'd considered when I (recently) considered making this into a party-delving MMO: classless, with your role being defined by what you slotted. so maybe you could get a Heavy with gyro, rocket, railgun... XD |
| 00:19 | <@Alek> | Noah: I know. it's the mercury I was sort of worried about. |
| 00:20 | < Noah> | Gonna side with McMartin on that and say blame a nanomachine wizard |
| 00:21 | <@Alek> | and a Medic with healing mod chips. a heal pistol would fire short-range healing bursts, a heal rifle would reach further and heal more, a heal flamethrower would heal everyone in the cone. XD oh, and it's basically spitting nanites. with basic IFF. so if the bullet, cone, whatever hits an enemy instead, it does minor corrosive damage instead. unless it's an enemy that can somehow spoof your IFF. |
| 00:21 | <@Alek> | >_> |
| 00:23 | < RichyB> | Vornicus, that article was a really interesting read. Thank you for pointing that out. |
| 00:23 | <@Alek> | actually, basically I wanted feedback on the mechanic, and the details for it, not the game as a whole (which can be changed, really - MMO vs FPS vs dice). is this an interesting enough mechanic to further develop? |
| 00:24 | <&McMartin> | Stuff like it has been done, so it probably can get some theorycrafting |
| 00:24 | <&McMartin> | The primary danger is that it tends to be possible to solve such systems. |
| 00:24 | <@Alek> | mn yeah. |
| 00:24 | <@Alek> | true. |
| 00:25 | <@Alek> | it also tends to be possible to balance them, to defend against solving. XD |
| 00:25 | <&McMartin> | Instead of a dice game, though, if you made it a *card* game, you might be able to control the optimization via draw. |
| 00:25 | <&Derakon> | To the extent that you want customization to focus on weapons, you need to make weapons be good for more than just killing things to keep the game interesting. |
| 00:25 | <&Derakon> | So that players can specialize their customizations to different goals. |
| 00:25 | <@Alek> | make the more worthwhile chips rarer, for example. |
| 00:25 | <&McMartin> | No, that just means you grind longer to get the optimum build. |
| 00:25 | <&Derakon> | Yeah, rarity and obscurity are not balance mechanisms. |
| 00:25 | <&McMartin> | Rarity to balance power *only* works in something like draft card play. |
| 00:25 | <@Alek> | did I forget to mention chips can be changed out, at stations? |
| 00:26 | <@Alek> | McM: true enough. |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | Yes, this is again "the person who grinds will grind to build the optimum power" |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | This is *exactly* how enhancements worked in CoH |
| 00:26 | <@Alek> | mmn. |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | So they nerfed the Hell out of everything to make everything but 1Acc 5Dmg viable |
| 00:26 | <@Alek> | only an enhancement wouldn't modify the effect of the NEXT enhancement. XD |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | ... the end result was 2Acc3Dmg1Recharge Reduction. |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | Well, the nerf was to do so. |
| 00:26 | < RichyB> | Vornicus, the fact that Neverwinter Nights has you save an entire city at around level 6-ish suddenly makes sense. :) |
| 00:26 | <&McMartin> | Diminishing returns. |
| 00:27 | < Noah> | lol |
| 00:27 | < ShellNinja> | Aragorn was a 5th level character! |
| 00:27 | <&Derakon> | Richy: yeah, people seem to expect that having a bunch of characters running around at 10th-level is somehow normal. |
| 00:27 | <@Alek> | I DO tend to see that as a little odd, in games of that type. XD |
| 00:27 | <&McMartin> | The other way of balancing it results in "picking a strategy by throwing darts at a flowchart is just as effective a strategy as thinking about it" |
| 00:28 | <&McMartin> | This can be fun to work out but it's not much fun to play if you like engaging with the system. |
| 00:29 | <&McMartin> | RichyB: There's actually a d20 system variant where 6 is the level cap |
| 00:29 | <&McMartin> | Subsequent experience points just make you a more cunning SOB - that is, you keep getting feats, but you stay Level 6 for all other purposes |
| 00:29 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[T-2] |
| 00:30 | <&McMartin> | I've never played it but it sounds entertaining |
| 00:30 | <@Alek> | oh, though. the party-based mechanic I had in mind, a Spiral Knights or PSO style delve, doesn't this mean that the grinder's higher power won't really affect the casual player, unless they end up in a team together? |
| 00:30 | <@Alek> | McM: E6, yep. :P |
| 00:30 | < ShellNinja> | Epic 6 is good. |
| 00:30 | <&McMartin> | Alek: It means that what the game is balanced for means one of those two players won't be having fun |
| 00:31 | | * ShellNinja doesn't parse that sentence. |
| 00:31 | <@Alek> | why not? let the grinder grind, let the casual player do his own thing. |
| 00:31 | <&McMartin> | So, now they're teamed up |
| 00:31 | <&McMartin> | What do you put in the level that isn't trivial for one or overwhelming for the other |
| 00:32 | < RichyB> | That actually sounds really fun. |
| 00:32 | <@Alek> | true enough. hmm. maybe it'll depend on their loadouts. >_> |
| 00:32 | <&McMartin> | CoH eventually addressed this by letting players set their scaling by hand. |
| 00:32 | <&McMartin> | With commensurate rewards |
| 00:32 | <&McMartin> | A mixed team would still have the problem, but you could group with like and go faster. |
| 00:32 | < RichyB> | So it means that you gain Feats (which are normally buggerin' hard to obtain) at a cheerfully linear rate. Nice. |
| 00:33 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[zZzZ] |
| 00:33 | <&McMartin> | Alek: The SK approach is to gate the content based on loadout and nerf high-end loadouts in low-end areas. |
| 00:33 | <&McMartin> | This does appear to mostly work. |
| 00:33 | <@Alek> | heh. it does, at that. |
| 00:33 | <&McMartin> | SK's also balanced around "a top-tier player has One Of Everything and re-equips before each stage" |
| 00:34 | <@Alek> | PSO, on the other hand, just has the same content always, at any given level, or in any given mission. From what I saw, it seemed to work fine. <_< |
| 00:34 | < ShellNinja> | RichyB: Also, by way of Open Minded, you can get more skill points. |
| 00:35 | <@Alek> | SK: now, yes. but a few updates back, you could only re-equip at haven, the terminals, and the towns. |
| 00:36 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, before it was "at each terminal" |
| 00:36 | <@Alek> | also, I'm definitely working towards being a One Of Everything player. XD |
| 00:36 | <&McMartin> | You also only had the Arcade. |
| 00:36 | <@Alek> | yep. pre-missions. I remember. quite well. XD |
| 00:36 | <&McMartin> | Which meant you had the Stratum Map and could map out what you were likely to face at each one |
| 00:36 | <@Alek> | actually, you can still map out if you do the Arcade missions. |
| 00:37 | <&McMartin> | Right |
| 00:37 | <@Alek> | and the wiki has stratum mapping for the rank missions too, now, I believe. and the expansion ones. |
| 00:37 | <@Alek> | prestige, maybe. not sure. |
| 00:37 | <&McMartin> | I mean, you can see the icons when in the Arcade |
| 00:37 | <@Alek> | yup. |
| 00:37 | <@Alek> | you can see what the predicted levels are. |
| 00:39 | | * Tamber tries to remember WTF this mediawiki.el mode is for. |
| 00:39 | <@Tamber> | I'm sure I got it for a reason, but damned if I can remember why. |
| 00:39 | <&McMartin> | ... writing stuff in greek? |
| 00:39 | <@Alek> | hm. gonna go delve. |
| 00:39 | <&McMartin> | Oh, elisp, not ellenika |
| 00:40 | <@Tamber> | Same difference, right~? ;) |
| 00:40 | <@Alek> | but anywho. what DO you guys think of the mechanic? overdone, or can work? worth it? |
| 00:40 | <@Alek> | suggestions? |
| 00:40 | <~Vornicus> | you can also see the icons for the floors in the missions |
| 00:40 | <~Vornicus> | in the gate map |
| 00:40 | <&Derakon> | It sounds basically similar to mechanics that do work. |
| 00:40 | <&Derakon> | Just with different flavor. |
| 00:40 | <&Derakon> | So as far as fundamental concepts go I think you're fine. |
| 00:41 | <&Derakon> | Working out specifics will be where the hard work is. |
| 00:41 | < RichyB> | It sounds more like you're changing the flavour text underlying a slotting system than radically flying away from established practice. |
| 00:41 | <&Derakon> | Yeah. |
| 00:42 | <&McMartin> | Slots-can-modify-slots does mean that there may be certain abilities that completely warp the game, though |
| 00:42 | <&McMartin> | Must-haves for any serious attack design, etc. |
| 00:58 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 01:04 | <@Alek> | hm. true. |
| 01:05 | < Tarinaky> | Out of interest. What are people's opinions of 4x games that have research-boosting research? |
| 01:05 | < Tarinaky> | ie, the dreaded geometric progression. |
| 01:10 | <&McMartin> | Not a fan of my-curve-can-beat-up-your-curve games. |
| 01:11 | <&McMartin> | If you want a 'weak start for superior endgame' strategy, design your game to have zerg rushes, kekekekeke. |
| 01:11 | <~Vornicus> | Whenever there's research to do I tend to turtle like hell. |
| 01:12 | <&McMartin> | Yeah, this isn't that |
| 01:12 | <&McMartin> | It's "have no defenses at all, then research the entire remainder of the tech tree in one turn" |
| 01:14 | | * Alek agrees, doesn't like research curves either. building-based research boosting, otoh, is a tad saner maybe. especially if you have limited building space and/or materials. |
| 01:15 | <@Alek> | but yeah, I tend to turtle for research in, say, Space Empires. then if I'm still alive, trade the research buildings in for more useful ones, build super-armadas, and sweep the galaxy. >_> |
| 01:19 | | * Vornicus actually had the most fun in SE when he gave everybody finished research |
| 01:29 | <@Alek> | heh. I'll have to try that some time. |
| 01:33 | <~Vornicus> | (though I did turn off a lot of stuff too - stellar manipulation went straight out the window) |
| 01:37 | <~Vornicus> | (actually, the game is surprisingly complex even with pretty much everything turned off.) |
| 01:49 | <~Vornicus> | (one time I turned off everything except point defense, armor, and the non-starship craft, and it was very interesting.) |
| 01:54 | | Kindamoody[zZz] is now known as Kindamoody |
| 01:54 | <@Alek> | hehe |
| 01:55 | <@Alek> | I do like my Dyson Spheres in SEIV. |
| 01:55 | <@Alek> | need to play SEV. :/ |
| 01:55 | <@Alek> | find a triple-star system. make 3 dyson spheres. ??? Profit! |
| 01:56 | <@Alek> | find a misc system. make a sun. profit. XD |
| 01:56 | <@Alek> | unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, you couldn't make multi-sun systems. XD |
| 01:56 | < celticminstrel> | Aw! |
| 01:56 | < celticminstrel> | SEV = ? |
| 01:57 | <@Alek> | Space Empires 5. |
| 01:57 | <@Alek> | I need to play a game, see how it compares. |
| 02:13 | <@Alek> | "You know what Ubuntu is?" "Of course!" "And I only just found out what it's for." "What?" "So you can watch porn in peace, without viruses." |
| 02:14 | <@Vash> | |
| 02:16 | <&McMartin> | Still vulnerable to browser takeover and JS attacks |
| 02:18 | <@Alek> | mmm |
| 02:22 | <~Vornicus> | narg. I forgot what I was up to. |
| 02:23 | <&McMartin> | Mayhap it was SCIENCE. |
| 02:24 | <&McMartin> | Speaking of: Zoing still awesome even when he/she/it has no lines |
| 02:31 | | * Alek looks at Steam, :O |
| 02:31 | <@Alek> | there's a new f2p MMO on. |
| 02:31 | <@Alek> | 8-bit. |
| 02:31 | <@Alek> | bullet hell. |
| 02:32 | <@Alek> | with permadeath. |
| 02:32 | <~Vornicus> | Oh, right. |
| 02:32 | <@Alek> | with parties of up to 85 people. |
| 02:32 | | * Alek boggles. |
| 02:32 | <~Vornicus> | That's the one, uh, realm of the mad god? |
| 02:32 | <@Alek> | yup |
| 02:32 | <~Vornicus> | McM ranted about it some time ago in #fleet |
| 02:32 | < celticminstrel> | permadeath = ouch |
| 02:33 | <~Vornicus> | REflex games where you've got 500+ms lag = double ouch |
| 02:34 | <@Alek> | hah. |
| 02:40 | < celticminstrel> | I heard about RotMG from one of the LoL players in the computer lab. |
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| 02:53 | | * Vornicus finds himself once again sidetracked. Okay, seriously. Step 1: get physics working, stop fucking around with this other stuff. |
| 03:04 | | thalass [thalass@Nightstar-08442eab.bigpond.net.au] has joined #code |
| 03:18 | < Noah> | celticminstrel: permadeath isn't much in realm of the mad god, since your character doesn't really have any skills, it's level and item based |
| 03:26 | < Noah> | Vornicus: What are you working on? |
| 03:26 | < Noah> | Useless side note: I bought a watch. It has a calculator in it. *calculates aimlessly* |
| 03:27 | <&McMartin> | HOLY CRAP IT'S 1989 AGAIN |
| 03:27 | | * McMartin goes and plays Zelda II |
| 03:28 | < Noah> | I know, right? |
| 03:28 | < Noah> | It's DIGITAL |
| 03:28 | <~Vornicus> | Noah: so, well |
| 03:29 | <~Vornicus> | I was seeing how much of a topdown game like say LttP I could build |
| 03:30 | <~Vornicus> | And then I got into procgen and other good bits like that |
| 03:30 | <~Vornicus> | but I haven't even gotten "walking around" committed yet |
| 03:30 | < Noah> | Yea, might wanna do walking around |
| 03:30 | < Noah> | it's kind of important, usually |
| 03:31 | < Noah> | I wanna do a tactical game, like Ogre Battle 64 |
| 03:39 | | thalass is now known as Thalass|lunch |
| 04:02 | < Noah> | But isn't as uninteractive as say, Gratuitous Space Battles |
| 04:03 | <&McMartin> | Well, as long as it's 1989 |
| 04:03 | <&McMartin> | Maybe something like the old Gold Box D&D games, but without the D&D baggage? |
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| 04:57 | <~Vornicus> | hooray, I have rendered a level |
| 04:58 | < celticminstrel> | Yay! \o/ |
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| 05:01 | <~Vornicus> | (it says "Hi!") |
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| 05:32 | | * Vornicus gets it to pan around, but now the program sometimes crashes with a segfault when you tab away. |
| 05:41 | < cpux> | So the jury's gone into deliberation on the trial that's gotten this country into a frenzy about bullying for some reason. As an bisexual Rutgers alum who spent his high school years introverted and bullied, I'd hate to see Dharun Ravi get charged with anything more than Invasion of Privacy. |
| 05:45 | <&McMartin> | As it turns out that is exactly what he got convicted for, so you may rest easy. |
| 05:46 | < cpux> | And that's what I get for working until 8 PM and deciding to spend the rest of the evening drinking because it's St. Patrick's Day. |
| 05:46 | <&McMartin> | (He wasn't even *charged* with 'driven to suicide') |
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| 05:50 | <~Vornicus> | Well this is Not Awesome |
| 05:50 | <~Vornicus> | When it segfaults, it segfaults before I can read any events that can reasonably construed as tabbing away. |
| 05:51 | <&McMartin> | Oh, also "bias intimidation", which appears to be the hate-crime equivalent of incitement |
| 05:52 | <~Vornicus> | So that's, um |
| 05:52 | < cpux> | Sorry about that. The whole case hits close to home for me. |
| 05:54 | | * Vornicus cookies cpux |
| 05:55 | <~Vornicus> | S word not allowed |
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| 05:58 | < Vornotron> | and I don't know how much of mine was seen nor how much I missed or if anyone had any advice whatsoever |
| 05:58 | | Netsplit over, joins: @ToxicFrog, @jerith, @Tamber, @PinkFreud, froztbyte, &McMartin, ~Vornicus, Thalass|lunch, &Derakon[AFK], Noah (+7 more) |
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| 06:50 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 07:04 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
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| 08:31 | | Kindamoody is now known as Kindamoody|afk |
| 09:20 | <@Kindamoody|afk> | Oh crap. I just tipped a glass of milk over my notes on transformation matrices. :| |
| 09:25 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 10:01 | | Attilla [Obsolete@Nightstar-7d4a92bc.as43234.net] has joined #code |
| 10:17 | < froztbyte> | Kindamoody|afk: transformation successful! |
| 10:17 | <@Kindamoody|afk> | :P |
| 11:37 | | Kindamoody|afk is now known as Kindamoody |
| 12:27 | | * thalass ponders rolling his own opensuse. |
| 12:31 | < thalass> | oh hai. Android for x86 have an iso for eee pc hardware. |
| 12:55 | | thalass [thalass@Nightstar-08442eab.bigpond.net.au] has quit [[NS] Quit: bleh] |
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| 13:33 | | Kindamoody is now known as Kindamoody|out |
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| 15:44 | | * Vornicus pokes around for people with experience in pygame. |
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| 15:47 | | mode/#code [+o eckse] by ChanServ |
| 15:52 | | * AnnoDomini glares at the Eye of Gnome Image Viewer. |
| 15:52 | <@AnnoDomini> | It doesn't support saving in GIF. |
| 15:55 | <@TheWatcher> | Probably a holdover from the OMGpatents thing |
| 16:00 | <~Vornicus> | https://bitbucket.org/Vornicus/vornda So I'm poking at this, and it's giving me Issues: I get a segfault about half the time when I try to tab away, in any of the ways I can do that. |
| 16:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | People still use GIF? |
| 16:18 | < Noah> | Apparently. |
| 16:18 | | * Noah likes PNG |
| 16:22 | <~Vornicus> | TF: the main thing GIF gets used for is that it's animated without scripts. |
| 16:23 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 16:28 | <&Derakon> | Yeah, I only use GIFs for animations. |
| 16:28 | <&Derakon> | But they're handy for that. |
| 16:34 | | Vash [Vash@Nightstar-cdeba41f.wlfrct.sbcglobal.net] has joined #code |
| 16:34 | | mode/#code [+o Vash] by ChanServ |
| 16:34 | <@ToxicFrog> | I thought everything supported APNG these days. |
| 16:35 | | Ling is now known as Anna |
| 16:35 | <~Vornicus> | I've never even /heard/ of APNG |
| 16:35 | <@Tamber> | I've heard of it. Never seen it, that I can recall. |
| 16:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's the animated PNG format that people actually use (as opposed to the hilariously overcomplicated one originally proposed by the PNG spec) |
| 16:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Opera's supported it since 2007 or something, I know Firefox supports it... |
| 16:38 | <~Vornicus> | IE and Safari don't; Chrome has an extention to handle it, according to wikipedia |
| 16:41 | < Attilla> | APNG always freaks me out |
| 16:41 | < Attilla> | I never expect it |
| 16:42 | <@Alek> | first I've heard of APNG. |
| 16:45 | <~Vornicus> | so something like 75% of the market for web browsers doesn't have APNG support out of the box, apparently |
| 16:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | Welp |
| 17:02 | <@Anna> | No-one cares about IE |
| 17:08 | < celticminstrel> | I've seen it once. |
| 17:09 | <@Vash> | "Wild APNG has appeared!" >.> |
| 17:11 | <~Vornicus> | is that like the evolution of porygon or something? |
| 17:15 | <@Vash> | That'd be weird. |
| 17:16 | <@Vash> | (the name, anyway) |
| 17:40 | | * TheWatcher sets about effecively learning OpenGL all over again |
| 17:41 | <@AnnoDomini> | I still use GIF because I was using GIF before there was PNG, and habits die hard. |
| 18:06 | <~Vornicus> | gnarg! not working not working not working! |
| 18:09 | | * TheWatcher eyes this |
| 18:09 | <@TheWatcher> | "OpenGL error: Can't patch size is too small.(glXDestroyGLXbufferSGIX)" |
| 18:10 | <@TheWatcher> | Apparently, this is virtualbox ;.; |
| 18:11 | | * TheWatcher sighs, tries to work out WTF |
| 18:12 | | * Vornicus tosses this at Der: https://bitbucket.org/Vornicus/vornda to see if maybe he has some idea what's going wrong, if anything at all. |
| 18:13 | <@TheWatcher> | needs login? |
| 18:15 | <~Vornicus> | weird, it shouldn't, hang on, let me find settings |
| 18:15 | <~Vornicus> | Try now. |
| 18:16 | <@TheWatcher> | ah, there |
| 18:17 | <~Vornicus> | But yeah, I'm getting a sewgfault about 50% of the time when the game window gets completely obscured. |
| 18:17 | <&Derakon> | ...I don't have Mercurial installed on this computer. A moment. |
| 18:17 | <&Derakon> | % sudo port install mercurial |
| 18:17 | <&Derakon> | Of course this will require grabbing all sorts of dependencies and compiling them. |
| 18:17 | <~Vornicus> | of course |
| 18:18 | <~Vornicus> | click downloads and you can grab a zip of the wholre repository |
| 18:20 | <&Derakon> | Cute level design. |
| 18:21 | | * TheWatcher installs pygame, to see if it does the same here |
| 18:21 | <&Derakon> | It's not segfaulting for me. |
| 18:21 | <&Derakon> | I'm just task-switching and dragging windows around and so on. |
| 18:21 | < celticminstrel> | Oh yeah, I was going to install Mercurial just because. |
| 18:24 | <&Derakon> | Your code looks fine to me, though I'd put a "time.sleep(.01)" into the main loop just to keep it from never yielding. |
| 18:25 | <&Derakon> | If you put print statements into the main loop you should be able to narrow down where the segfault is occurring. |
| 18:25 | <&Derakon> | Presumably it's either in screen.blit or pygame.display.flip. |
| 18:26 | <&Derakon> | Though I suppose it's possible that there's something screwy in pygame's event manager. |
| 18:26 | <&Derakon> | You're on Windows, yes? |
| 18:27 | | * TheWatcher determines that glload and virtualbox don't get on |
| 18:28 | < celticminstrel> | glLoad? |
| 18:28 | <@Vash> | he's doing this on windows, yeah. |
| 18:28 | <@Vash> | (he went out for a bit... getting snacky happiness. >.>) |
| 18:29 | | * Vash is.. using photoshop 7 to pain something for a background |
| 18:29 | <&Derakon> | I didn't know Photoshop had a torture plugin~ |
| 18:29 | < celticminstrel> | XD |
| 18:29 | <@TheWatcher> | celticminstrel: a library that does opengl function pointer fetching. Used by some code I'm looking at while trying to grok this whole GLSL stuff |
| 18:30 | <@Vash> | I haet you dera |
| 18:30 | <@Vash> | also was texting vorn when I was typing that -.- |
| 18:31 | <&Derakon> | <3 |
| 18:31 | <@Vash> | vorn had been for a while playing around with the idea of Vorns Ahoy! (Ducks Ahoy!) |
| 18:32 | <@TheWatcher> | Vorn: it's working fine for me too :/ |
| 18:32 | <@Vash> | and he wanted to do the same thing technically- ducks, buildings... |
| 18:32 | <@Vash> | so I told him we should make an Azumanga Daioh version |
| 18:32 | <@Vash> | where it's cats instead of ducks and stuff |
| 18:34 | <@Vash> | ... and he also wants to do Rlyeh |
| 18:34 | <@Vash> | version* |
| 18:34 | <&Derakon> | You should cross it with Time Bastard. |
| 18:34 | <@Vash> | ? |
| 18:36 | <&Derakon> | http://derakon.dyndns.org/~chriswei/temp2/timebastard.txt |
| 18:38 | | * Tarinaky goes look up how much SEV is on steam these days. |
| 18:38 | | * Tarinaky hasn't played it since the days when he eyepatched the whole series. |
| 18:39 | | * TheWatcher digs some more, discovers that it's not actually glload but freeglut... and apparently freeglut and virtualbox not getting on is an old bug that is "fixed in svn" but doesn't appear to have made it into the actual relase |
| 18:40 | < Tarinaky> | Hmm. 14 for IV and V. |
| 18:40 | < Tarinaky> | >.> |
| 18:40 | < Tarinaky> | Whoops. Already pressed purchase >.< |
| 18:42 | < Tarinaky> | Ach. Sorry. I scrolled up and didn't scroll down >.> |
| 18:43 | < Tarinaky> | Anyone want to talk about TBS again >.> That looked like a cool convo |
| 18:49 | | * Vornicus shall put a sleep in there then. |
| 18:51 | < Eri> | What the heck is this garbage? Google searches now plug Google+? |
| 18:52 | | * Vornicus adds a sleep, that doesn't actually get him anywhere though. |
| 18:52 | <&Derakon> | I didn't really expect it to. |
| 18:54 | < Eri> | Hmm, what a waste of space. Like, I'm aware of the existence of Google+, and I chose not to use it, just like I chose not to use facebook. This is just wasted space. Wonder how difficult it'd be to get rid of it in Greasemonkey |
| 18:56 | < Tarinaky> | Anyway. I'm having second thoughts about the game mechanics for the 4x/tbs game I'm trying to make. |
| 18:56 | <~Vornicus> | Looks like it's happening in flip. |
| 18:56 | < celticminstrel> | What does "plug Google+" mean? |
| 18:56 | < Tarinaky> | I know sometimes google search shows me that so-and-so +1'd this search hit. |
| 18:57 | <&Derakon> | Vorn: does it happen if you don't pan the display around? |
| 18:57 | < Tarinaky> | But I don't mind that. |
| 18:57 | <&Derakon> | That is, always show e.g. the center 640x480 pixels of the level? |
| 18:57 | <~Vornicus> | I'll remove those and see. |
| 18:57 | | * celticminstrel pokes Eri. |
| 18:58 | < Tarinaky> | I didn't want people to be able to get a string grip on the game so I decided to make everything use a n^(1/k) progression - ie, diminishing returns... |
| 18:58 | <~Vornicus> | Still crashes. |
| 18:58 | < Tarinaky> | The downside is that research favours a perfectly balanced strategy. |
| 18:58 | <&Derakon> | Hm. |
| 18:58 | <&Derakon> | So much for that idea then. |
| 18:58 | <~Vornicus> | (this is with still doing flip&blit) |
| 18:58 | <&Derakon> | What happens if you remove the blit but still flip? |
| 19:00 | < Eri> | Ah, sorry, was reading some crap |
| 19:00 | <~Vornicus> | Crash. |
| 19:00 | | * Tarinaky :/s because SEV won't launch. |
| 19:00 | < Eri> | Basically, it came up when I did a search of csc, just to test if the firefox update had reverted to the mint-branded custom search, again |
| 19:00 | <&Derakon> | Okay, sounds like you have a pretty minimal test case to send to the mailing list then. :) |
| 19:01 | <&Derakon> | Try getting rid of the file read / setup stuff too. |
| 19:01 | <&Derakon> | Just set up the display then go straight to the main loop. |
| 19:01 | < Eri> | Anywhoo, about 1/3 of the page, on the right hand side, is a box for peaple and pages on Google+ |
| 19:01 | < Eri> | *people |
| 19:02 | < Eri> | Seeing as how I don't intend to use Google+, this is wasted space |
| 19:02 | < Eri> | Actually, hmm. I wonder if this is a frame that I could blacklist in ABP |
| 19:07 | | AnnoDomini is now known as Jasever |
| 19:09 | <~Vornicus> | Hm. I think I can narrow it down to reliably crashing on the second obscuration. |
| 19:10 | | * Vornicus tosses it by #pygame |
| 19:10 | <&Derakon> | Sorry I couldn't be of more help. |
| 19:12 | | * Derakon finds himself suckered into his own trap, is rereading Time Bastard. |
| 19:13 | <&Derakon> | "Eckersly fixes you with a terrible, smouldering glare, choking on his own boiling rage as he lifts a trembling finger and points it at you, radiating malice like the first crack in Chernobyl concrete. "FORNICATION!" he screms, utterly enraged, "THOU'RT IN MY KILLFILE! NEXT, GODSPEED!"" |
| 19:25 | <&Derakon> | > x signs |
| 19:25 | <&Derakon> | "TOUCH THIS AND YOU'RE DEAD. LOVE, DOC FAUSTUS." |
| 19:26 | <&Derakon> | "This is accompanied by various diagrams of stick figures who, uh...well, it's hard to get all empathic over stick figures, but someone really oughtta put them out of their misery." |
| 19:31 | <~Vornicus> | oh, ha ha |
| 19:31 | <~Vornicus> | even removing /flip/, it stillcrashes. |
| 19:31 | <&Derakon> | Cute. |
| 19:31 | <&Derakon> | So basically you have pygame.init(), pygame.display.set_mode(SCREEN_SIZE), and a do-nothing loop? |
| 19:32 | <&Derakon> | Oh, and the event processing. |
| 19:32 | <~Vornicus> | It eats events using event.get |
| 19:34 | <&Derakon> | > look up |
| 19:34 | <&Derakon> | "If you were suspended fifteen feet above a pit of sleeping vipers, would you look down? No? Then let's not go looking up anymore, either." |
| 20:00 | | Kindamoody|out is now known as Kindamoody |
| 20:04 | | * Vornicus tries some random other pygame game, confirms that it, too, crashes. |
| 20:04 | < Noah> | Vornicus: mebey ur doin it rong |
| 20:05 | <@Vash> | o_o |
| 20:05 | | * Vash beats Noah with a pikachu |
| 20:06 | < Noah> | No go, I'm ground type |
| 20:07 | < Noah> | can't seem to find a owner's manual for my 95 sable |
| 20:07 | <@Jasever> | I think he actually wields a pikachu and bludgeons you with it. |
| 20:07 | | * Vash beats Noah with a Lapras? |
| 20:07 | < Noah> | And now I'm dead, great. |
| 20:07 | | * Vornicus hunts around for a game that is SDL but not Pygame. |
| 20:07 | <&Derakon> | ''"Got it!" blurts Abdul excitedly. "Get this up you, Einstein!" He stabs a key [on a keyboard]. Reality soils itself.'' |
| 20:08 | < Noah> | Vornicus: Dwarf Fortress? |
| 20:08 | | * Vash eyes Noah |
| 20:08 | | * Vornicus is trying UQM first. |
| 20:08 | <@Jasever> | Yeah, DF is SDL now. |
| 20:20 | <~Vornicus> | UQM works |
| 20:20 | <~Vornicus> | so it's gotta be something that Pygame does. |
| 20:22 | <&Derakon> | Tried reinstalling? |
| 20:22 | <&Derakon> | Maybe your install is borked. |
| 20:22 | <~Vornicus> | Should try that. |
| 20:25 | | * Vornicus pokes at it a bit. |
| 20:29 | <~Vornicus> | there it goes. Had to totally trash the pygame stuff and reinstall. |
| 20:31 | | Kindamoody is now known as Kindamoody[zZz] |
| 20:40 | <&Derakon> | Hm, OSX's graphing calculator and python's math module don't agree. |
| 20:40 | <&Derakon> | The former says that 21.73 * log(101) is about 43.5, while the latter says it's 100.28. |
| 20:41 | < Eri> | Former |
| 20:41 | <&Derakon> | I guess they're using different meanings of log? |
| 20:41 | < Eri> | Chances are, pythons log is actually ln |
| 20:41 | <&Derakon> | Ah, so it is. |
| 20:41 | <&Derakon> | math.log accepts a second argument which is the base to use. |
| 20:41 | <~Vornicus> | programming languages tend to use log and log10 where math uses ln and log |
| 20:42 | <&Derakon> | Yeah, I was expecting log to be base10 with no base argument. |
| 20:43 | <~Vornicus> | weirdly enough I think the most natural one for computers to make use of is actually lg, but nothing seems to have that as default and I'm not sure why. |
| 20:43 | <&Derakon> | lg? |
| 20:44 | <~Vornicus> | log base 2 |
| 20:48 | <~Vornicus> | (mostly because you can do it with much less work and precision dropping, though that's only the method I know; there might be others that are more suitable for stable performance of lg) |
| 21:05 | <~Vornicus> | (algorithm goes basically like this: to get log_b(n): k = 1; result = 0; while n > b: n/=b; result += k;; while n < 1: n*=b; result -= k;; while k / result > FLOAT_EPSILON: n = n**2; k /= 2; while n > b: result += k; n /= b;;; return result; |
| 21:06 | <~Vornicus> | (this makes lg convenient because then b is 2 and you can do this on floating point numbers with just exponent fiddling) |
| 21:11 | < celticminstrel> | I thought I remembered C's log function defaulting to base 2... |
| 21:11 | < celticminstrel> | But I could be imagining things. |
| 21:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | log() is ln. |
| 21:13 | <@ToxicFrog> | logf() and logl() are float and quad versions of the same function. |
| 21:13 | < celticminstrel> | I've seen log2 in some places. |
| 21:17 | <~Vornicus> | mh, forgot an abs() in there when checking against epsilon |
| 21:21 | | celticminstrel [celticminst@Nightstar-5d22ab1d.cable.rogers.com] has quit [Client closed the connection] |
| 21:28 | <~Vornicus> | anyway, now that that's fixed I can actually make a game. |
| 21:49 | | Noah [maoranma@Nightstar-333d981b.pools.spcsdns.net] has quit [Ping timeout: 121 seconds] |
| 22:02 | < Eri> | Is there a way to do math inside the terminal? |
| 22:05 | <@Jasever> | Should be. You can program in it. |
| 22:08 | < Eri> | Hmm, crap. Searching for bc showed me that updating firefox has rebranded the search, again |
| 22:10 | | celticminstrel [celticminst@Nightstar-5d22ab1d.cable.rogers.com] has joined #code |
| 22:21 | | eckse [eckse@Nightstar-e6b3697e.dsl.sentex.ca] has quit [Client closed the connection] |
| 22:23 | | * Vornicus pokes around, trying to figure out what to do next. |
| 22:25 | <~Vornicus> | I should probably refactor this so it's not top-level code. Derp. |
| 22:59 | | Stalker [Z@Nightstar-3602cf5a.cust.comxnet.dk] has joined #code |
| 23:41 | | Jasever is now known as AnnoDomini |
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| --- Log closed Sun Mar 18 00:00:54 2012 |