| --- Log opened Sat Apr 21 00:00:34 2012 |
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| 01:47 | <&McMartin> | http://www.flickr.com/photos/raindrift/7095238893/in/set-72157629492908038/light box/ |
| 01:57 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 01:57 | <@rms> | That was poseted a few hours ago |
| 01:58 | <&McMartin> | Not in here it wasn't. |
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| 01:59 | <&McMartin> | Speaking of a few hours ago: |
| 01:59 | <&McMartin> | 07:42 <&jerith> Why does nobody care about fixing compiler warnings? |
| 01:59 | <&McMartin> | Because there aren't any standard sets of warnings, and entirely too many warnings are for things that aren't bugs. |
| 02:00 | <@rms> | [06:15:20] --> Attilla (Obsolete@Nightstar-d1137b23.as43234.net) has joined #code |
| 02:00 | <@rms> | [07:04:07] <Tamber> http://www.flickr.com/photos/raindrift/7095238893/in/set-72157629492908038/ |
| 02:01 | <&McMartin> | "uint32_t x = whatever(); uint16_t y = (uint16_t)(x & 0xFFFF);" is a warning on some compilers even with the cast, despite being provably acceptable |
| 02:01 | <&McMartin> | And the explicit cast will either remove or cause the warning also depending on compiler settings. |
| 02:04 | <&McMartin> | Oh,r ight |
| 02:04 | <&McMartin> | Also, because too many eager FLOSS contributors think "fixing a warning" means "leaving the unsafe behavior there but massaging the code so the compiler doesn't complain about it" |
| 02:35 | | Kindamoody[zZz] is now known as Kindamoody |
| 02:36 | < celticminstrel> | I care about fixing compiler warnings! |
| 02:36 | < celticminstrel> | Of course, I ignore a lot as well. |
| 02:49 | < Rhamphoryncus> | McMartin: because "software engineering" is a lie |
| 02:50 | < Rhamphoryncus> | We're all just people building something in our garage. Yes, many get payed very well for it, but it's still just garage work |
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| 04:48 | < Noah> | Hey. I don't suppose anyone has some neat bookmarks for articles or websites detailing why Python is good for beginning programmers? |
| 04:49 | <~Vornicus> | Not per se. |
| 04:50 | <~Vornicus> | I just have personal experience. Python was my first real language. |
| 04:51 | < Noah> | Well, it's what my composition paper is about, so I'm collecting sources. |
| 04:58 | | * Vornicus pokes at his D&D character generatorizer |
| 04:58 | <@Alek> | what did it do now? >_> |
| 04:58 | <~Vornicus> | Well, right now |
| 04:58 | <~Vornicus> | The problem is that half the races get a choice of languages |
| 04:59 | <@Alek> | aaah |
| 05:00 | <@Alek> | don't some classes also, in 3.0 or 3.5? |
| 05:00 | <~Vornicus> | Well, I'm doing 4.0 |
| 05:00 | | * Alek nods. |
| 05:04 | < Noah> | You mean MMO: Pen and paper edition? |
| 05:04 | < Noah> | I jest, I like 4.0 tbh |
| 05:04 | < Noah> | No more magic missiles followed by a nap |
| 05:09 | <&McMartin> | The only reason anyone would decide that class balance was a good idea was by copying from WoW |
| 05:09 | <&McMartin> | Also, encounter powers are just like clickies with cooldowns, so it clearly stole that from WoW too and not any of WoW's predecessors, nor, indeed, from 3e. |
| 05:09 | <&McMartin> | (Also, fighters in 4.0 are actually fun to play~) |
| 05:10 | <&McMartin> | I had this joke thing where I'd say "Also, 3e totally ripped off Diablo because all fighters do is the equivalent of repeatedly clicking on enemies" |
| 05:11 | <&McMartin> | This is no longer funny because (a) people actually did say that 3e was Diablo The Tabletop Game because feats are totally skill trees |
| 05:11 | <&McMartin> | and, uh, (b) there was kind of a Diablo II RPG based on D&D2. |
| 05:13 | <~Vornicus> | Noah: 4e is pretty good, yeah. hard to run on IRC though |
| 05:13 | <&McMartin> | You absolutely need a battlemat for 4e |
| 05:14 | < Noah> | Yea |
| 05:14 | < Noah> | I have a huge vinyl one |
| 05:14 | < Noah> | erasable markers, and g2g |
| 05:14 | <~Vornicus> | Back when I was actually running 4e I did up the rooms in Visio |
| 05:14 | <~Vornicus> | and printed them out and carefully cut them out. |
| 05:15 | <~Vornicus> | But yeah, a good dry-erase battlemat would be a lot easier. |
| 05:16 | < Noah> | I prefer wet erase, doesn't smudge when I role the map up |
| 05:16 | <~Vornicus> | mmm, probably a good idea |
| 05:16 | <~Vornicus> | Well, actually |
| 05:17 | <~Vornicus> | What I've done on occasion is use wet-erase and dry-erase on the same board. |
| 05:17 | <~Vornicus> | Works great because you can have permanent and temporary features. |
| 05:17 | < Noah> | Some brands stain on the wet erase though, so I try to avoid them |
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| 05:44 | < Noah> | Pro Tip: Using a cell phone for your internet connection? Better plug it in loser! |
| 05:45 | <~Vornicus> | Yep. |
| 06:08 | < Noah> | Uhg, I need one more source |
| 06:21 | < celticminstrel> | [Apr 21@12:09:02am] McMartin: The only reason anyone would decide that class balance was a good idea was by copying from WoW |
| 06:21 | < celticminstrel> | Class balance? |
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| 07:49 | < Noah> | God, perl really has that many keywords? |
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| 08:25 | <&jerith> | McMartin: Yes, but this happens even for things where the warnings are more standard. Java, for example. |
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| 10:53 | < Rhamphoryncus> | standard warning, isn't that an oxymoron? |
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| 14:55 | <@ToxicFrog> | Google, I will cut you |
| 14:56 | < gnolam> | Let me guess: silent serach term replacement? |
| 14:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | No, actually! |
| 14:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | URL fuckery. |
| 14:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | So right-click-copy-address on a search result gets me this: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGkQFjAH&url= http%3A%2F%2Fnew.fantasyflightgames.com%2Fffg_content%2Fdescent%2Fdrtl_rulebook. pdf&ei=xruST7mwBeeJ6QGNj4mfBA&usg=AFQjCNH50PXqw0IiHlAjB65N18qKPpTo9A |
| 14:57 | < gnolam> | Ah. Their "let's make sure nobody can see if they've visited that page or not" thingy? |
| 14:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | Rather than the actual URL, which is this: new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/descent/drtl_rulebook.pdf |
| 14:58 | < gnolam> | .. yeah, that one. |
| 15:00 | < froztbyte> | I thought they just used that for page safety filtering, clickthrough tracking, all that |
| 15:02 | | * Vornicus wonders how hard it would be to use js to copy the true url as opposed to the googly one |
| 15:03 | | * Vornicus can't actually see a path for that. |
| 15:06 | <@Tamber> | Rewriting the url on the page, sans their tracking crap? |
| 15:07 | | Kindamoody|out is now known as Kindamoody |
| 15:11 | <~Vornicus> | What I mean is, keeping the tracking stuff (because that's how google works, it has to keep track of what people actually go look at so they can improve the results), but make it so when you copy the URL you get the normal one instead of the tracky one. |
| 15:15 | <@Tamber> | Ahh |
| 15:17 | <@TheWatcher> | Well, they could use the normal url as <a href="actualurl" onlick="tracking fuckery">link</a>, but *shrug* |
| 15:21 | <@Tamber> | Ah, but that wouldn't be web2.0 enough+~ |
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| 15:32 | | * TheWatcher vaguely stabs the mysql workbench authors until they explain why their POS software takes longer to compile that fucking gcc. |
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| 15:33 | <@TheWatcher> | *than |
| 15:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | Tamber: it would be more web 2.0 than munching the href= |
| 15:37 | <@Tamber> | Hmmm, I suppose so. |
| 15:38 | | * Tamber winces at trying to untangle a merge. |
| 15:39 | <@Tamber> | Well, it could be worse; it's only 60 lines of diff... |
| 15:42 | <@Tamber> | ...and it still compiles *and works* after that; that was /too easy/... |
| 15:43 | <@TheWatcher> | Uhoh |
| 15:43 | <@Tamber> | So all the bugs will probably be lurking in the stranger bits. |
| 15:45 | <@TheWatcher> | Stand by for heisenbugs |
| 15:45 | <@Tamber> | Oh the humanit |
| 15:45 | <@Tamber> | No, wait, that was *hinden*bugs. |
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| 15:47 | | * Tamber watches the codebase explode and burn anyway. |
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| 18:28 | | * Vornicus pokes at js |
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| 18:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | celticminstrel: class balance, as in gameplay balance between classes. |
| 18:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | As in designing character classes/archetypes/roles/whatever your game has so that no one class is significantly under- or over-powered compared to the others (in either a narrative or gameplay sense). |
| 18:44 | <@Anna> | http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/image/737 |
| 18:44 | <@Anna> | Like so |
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| 19:29 | < celticminstrel> | Oh. I think that's a bit pointless really. |
| 19:30 | < celticminstrel> | I don't quite get Anna's comic link... |
| 19:30 | <@Anna> | It's in regards to game balance |
| 19:30 | <@Anna> | Which is related to ToxicFrog's comment |
| 19:35 | < celticminstrel> | Well yes, I got that much. :P |
| 19:35 | <@ToxicFrog> | celticminstrel: think what's a bit pointless, game balance? |
| 19:36 | < celticminstrel> | Making all classes equal. |
| 19:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | Keeping in mind that the discussion is in the context of multiplayer games, not, say, roguelikes where cross-class imbalance forms a sort of difficulty selection. |
| 19:36 | <@ToxicFrog> | "equal" and "balanced" are not the same thing. |
| 19:36 | < celticminstrel> | True. |
| 19:38 | <@ToxicFrog> | (Anna's link is making fun of the techniques various companies use for ongoing balance in multiplayer games - purportedly, when a significant imbalance is discovered, Riot responds by making the stronger class weak; Valve by making the weaker class strong; and Blizzard by doing both at once) |
| 19:39 | < celticminstrel> | Ah, so that's what "taking turns" means. |
| 19:40 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah. A is overpowered, B is underpowered. This is a problem! Solution: make A underpowered and B overpowered, at least until the next patch~ |
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| 19:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anyways. Making all the characters equal (at that point you can't really say "all the classes" because there's only one) is a fairly easy approach to game balance and the one taken by a few board and computer games. |
| 19:45 | <@ToxicFrog> | Strictly speaking, very few, because in (say) quake you could still end up with unbalanced weapons and it just means effectiveness is based on "who spawned closest to the rocket launcher" rather than "who picked a Shaman at character generation" |
| 19:46 | <@ToxicFrog> | (similarly, Go looks 'equal' at first glance and then you realize entire books have been written on how to balance the fact that White plays first) |
| 19:47 | <@ToxicFrog> | (Er, black does, rather) |
| 19:47 | <@Anna> | White first is chess |
| 19:49 | <@ToxicFrog> | Balancing a game where all the players can operate differently is harder but makes for a more interesting game. |
| 19:49 | <@Anna> | Like StarCraft |
| 19:50 | <@Anna> | IMO that was one of the best balanced games ever |
| 19:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah, StarCraft was interesting in that it was one of the earliest RTSes with multiple factions that each played very differently but which were mostly balanced with respect to either other. |
| 19:51 | <@ToxicFrog> | *to each other. |
| 19:51 | <@Jasever> | It's like the designers actually playtested the thing. :P |
| 19:52 | <@ToxicFrog> | Other RTSes of the era either had all the factions as nearly identical copies of each other (Warcraft 2, Total Annihilation, Homeworld) or abandoned all pretensions to balance (TA: Kingdoms) |
| 19:52 | | * Jasever pipes up with an example of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e, which is balanced pretty peculiarly, because it's balanced for new players - that is, those who don't know which spells their wizard should pick for maximum ownage. |
| 19:53 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah, I would not call 3.x "balanced" in any real sense. |
| 19:53 | <@Jasever> | This is why Sorcerers got the nerf in beta. |
| 19:53 | <@Jasever> | A newbie with a Sorcerer is more effective than a newbie with a Wizard. |
| 19:56 | <@ToxicFrog> | It's a system mastery test. A group that knows the game well will all design overpowered builds (or make an agreement among themselves not to), resulting in a balanced group at the cost of ignoring a great many character options (and possibly some major headaches for the GM, depending on how much power they decide to go with). |
| 19:57 | <@ToxicFrog> | A group that doesn't will pick whatever looks appealing, which causes much worse problems; early on the players who picked the "hard" classes will have no idea how to operate them effectively, and later on - as the players as well as the characters gain experience - the players who picked the "powerful" classes end up dominating the game. |
| 20:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | Jasever: the problem with "balancing for new players" in general is that newbies grow up. |
| 20:01 | <@ToxicFrog> | In, say, an FPS, if you have ten weapons, all of which are more or less equally effective in the hands of the unskilled, it starts out fine. |
| 20:02 | <@Jasever> | Yes, I realize. |
| 20:02 | <@ToxicFrog> | But if two of those ten weapons are incredibly overpowered, you rapidly end up with everything else being ignored by everyone except the newbies, who don't stay alive long enough to fire a shot anyways. |
| 20:03 | <@ToxicFrog> | s/incredibly overpowered/incredibly overpowered in the hands of an experienced player, despite being balanced at low skill levels/ |
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| 20:08 | <@Jasever> | Hmm. I still like that better than 4e's approach to balance. |
| 20:09 | <@ToxicFrog> | What, "have some"? |
| 20:10 | <@Jasever> | Which would be, "balancing across subsystems is hard, so let's use only one system for everything". |
| 20:11 | <@ToxicFrog> | "Using one system for everything" is another term for "consistent game mechanics" and I personally consider this a good thing. |
| 20:12 | <@Jasever> | I like subsystemsp |
| 20:12 | <@Jasever> | *. |
| 20:12 | <~Vornicus> | I still haven't figured out why 4e kept the raw ability scores. |
| 20:12 | | * Jasever hugs SR3. |
| 20:12 | <@ToxicFrog> | When you have a system where every possible action uses its own distinct rules for resolution, you have a game that is (a) nearly impossible to balance and (b) a colossal pain in the ass to actually play. |
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| 20:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | Hmm, it's d20 under for ability checks, unless it's strength, or you're a rogue in which case sometimes it's d100; but d20 over for attack rolls; d20 over for saving throws, each one of which uses its own table; danything for damage rolls, except where the attack has special rules; a different advancement table per stat per class all of which must be looked up separately. |
| 20:15 | <@ToxicFrog> | This is, admittedly, a more extreme example than 3E (but still less extreme than some other games!) and illustrates the problem nicely. |
| 20:17 | < celticminstrel> | What does under/over meam? |
| 20:17 | <~Vornicus> | I always say that one of my favorite improvements of 3e over 2e was that except for certain setup tables, I could memorize a formula and that would tell me answers. |
| 20:17 | < celticminstrel> | mean? |
| 20:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | celticminstrel: whether you want to roll over/under the target to succeed. |
| 20:18 | <~Vornicus> | Like, experience. in 2e, each class had its own advancement table and they weren't very simple, and ability scores didn't often translate nicely to bonuses. |
| 20:18 | < celticminstrel> | So if the target is 5, under means 1-5 and over means 5-20. |
| 20:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Eg, in d20, the pass/fail mechanic is always "roll 1d20 + bonuses over target number" |
| 20:18 | <~Vornicus> | er, I got kind of carried away |
| 20:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah. |
| 20:18 | <@ToxicFrog> | Whereas in early editions, you would make checks directly against stats and you wanted to roll 1d20 under. |
| 20:19 | <~Vornicus> | In 3e, if I wanted to know the experience required to gain a level, I could use a formula to find it and the formula was simple. |
| 20:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which is also the reason for the 3-18 stat range; it fits nicely incide the 1-20 d20 range while still leaving a little room for failure at the high end (and success at the low end). |
| 20:19 | <~Vornicus> | And if I wanted to know how much a particular fight was worth, I could do that too, though the formula was harder. |
| 20:19 | <@ToxicFrog> | Vornicus: I have no idea why 4E kept raw ability scores instead of replacing them with ability bonuses. |
| 20:20 | <@ToxicFrog> | Normally I would say "to appease the grognards" but that went out the window with basically every other design decision made in 4E, so. |
| 20:20 | <~Vornicus> | they are used in exactly two places raw: your carrying capacity, and your starting hit points. |
| 20:20 | <~Vornicus> | oh, sorry. there's also feat requirements |
| 20:20 | <~Vornicus> | Idunno |
| 20:20 | <@Anna> | It's to keep the Ability bellcurve for the default chargen system (rolling) |
| 20:21 | <~Vornicus> | you don't roll in 4e |
| 20:21 | <@Jasever> | You can. |
| 20:21 | <~Vornicus> | I don't know anyone who rolls in 3e |
| 20:21 | <@Jasever> | It's listed as an option. |
| 20:21 | <@Anna> | We always rolled in D&D |
| 20:21 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which no-one uses unless they're playing Paranoia-style oneshots. |
| 20:21 | <@Jasever> | The group I played 4e here in Oslo rolls. |
| 20:21 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anna: OD&D was a very different beast. |
| 20:21 | <@Anna> | Because that was the default option |
| 20:22 | | * Anna only ever played 3.0 Modern, 3.5 and 4e |
| 20:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | Hell, 3E is a very different beast, and even then every group I played with used point buy or, more rarely, stat array. |
| 20:22 | <@Anna> | Also that blazing shitball called Essentials. |
| 20:22 | <@Anna> | Oslo rolls? |
| 20:22 | <@ToxicFrog> | (here in Oslo) rolls |
| 20:23 | <@Anna> | What? |
| 20:23 | <@ToxicFrog> | As in, the group he played with, which is located in Oslo, uses rolling for stat generation |
| 20:23 | <@Anna> | Oh |
| 20:23 | <@Anna> | nm |
| 20:24 | <@Anna> | Point generation would be best IMO, skip the 3-18 -> -4-+3 part and just go straight to +0-+5 |
| 20:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | Yeah, agreed |
| 20:25 | <@Anna> | Because negative modifiers is pointless |
| 20:25 | <@ToxicFrog> | This is what I meant by "replacing them with ability bonuses" |
| 20:25 | | * Tamber sighs, facedesks. |
| 20:25 | <~Vornicus> | 3e and 4e do make it so odd-valued ability scores have /some/ point to them, it's just not much |
| 20:26 | <@Jasever> | A stepping stone towards a better bonus. :P |
| 20:26 | <@Tamber> | pkg-config wants pkg-config during its build. This is... inconvenient. |
| 20:26 | <~Vornicus> | You only unlock available feats at odd ability scores, and only get bonuses at even ones. |
| 20:26 | <@ToxicFrog> | I think the whole feat requirement set up is a mess as well, but that's a separate discussion~ |
| 20:27 | <@ToxicFrog> | And I get the impression that the reason that convention exists is that otherwise the odd-numbered scores are entirely pointless. |
| 20:27 | <@ToxicFrog> | It would not be hard to drop ability scores, replace them with ability bonuses, feat requirements are based on ability bonus. |
| 20:27 | <@Anna> | Feats are mostly useless |
| 20:27 | <@Jasever> | They're not useless. |
| 20:28 | <@Anna> | Only a handful are ever useful |
| 20:28 | <@Anna> | Jasever: "mostly useless" != "useless" |
| 20:29 | <@Jasever> | I'll tentatively agree, not wishing to review 2000-ish feats. |
| 20:29 | < RichyB> | A bunch of semi-useful magic stuff comes in as feats. |
| 20:29 | < RichyB> | All of the metamagic options are feats. |
| 20:29 | <@Anna> | Yeah |
| 20:30 | <@Anna> | I think 3.5 was slightly better than 4e for feats |
| 20:30 | < RichyB> | Cleave and Greater Cleave come in as feats, and they're abilities that some people practically build characters around. |
| 20:30 | < RichyB> | Oh I may have wrong context here, I'm thinking of feats in 3.0e. |
| 20:30 | <@Jasever> | RichyB: I think he meant that most feats published are something you wouldn't consider, compared to gems like Power Attack. |
| 20:30 | <@Anna> | But 4e includes stuff like "you get this encounter power that disables a bunch of other encounter powers you have; and you can only use it if you're one of a few classes" |
| 20:30 | <@Tamber> | Oh, wait; disregard that, that's libtool wanting building. *facepalm* |
| 20:31 | <@Anna> | Yeah, 3e feats are good. |
| 20:31 | <@Tamber> | ...I think. |
| 20:31 | < RichyB> | Tamber, for bonus points, pkg-config is always optional. |
| 20:31 | <@Anna> | Jasever: yes |
| 20:32 | <@Tamber> | heh |
| 20:32 | <~Vornicus> | what the space feat is that |
| 20:32 | <@Tamber> | RichyB, well, if you can tell me how to tell pkg-config's configure script to stop falling over crying that it can't find pkg-config... ;) |
| 20:32 | < RichyB> | pkg-config is used to pick up exactly which -Ifoo -lfoo options need to be set for particular libraries. AIUI anyone using pkg-config never *needs* it because the configure script should understand --with-foo=xyz. |
| 20:32 | <@Anna> | Vornicus: every feat that gives you a power that needs your Channel Divinity |
| 20:32 | < RichyB> | At least, that's what I -believe- the situation to be, I may be mistaken. :/ |
| 20:32 | <@Tamber> | *sigh* |
| 20:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | Anna: 4E's feats feels almost like they wanted to go for per-class ability trees or something, but ended up implementing them as feats |
| 20:33 | <@Anna> | There's like 50 of them |
| 20:33 | <@Anna> | Yeah |
| 20:33 | <@ToxicFrog> | Which is not really a good approach to take |
| 20:35 | <@Tamber> | RichyB, well; yes, you're right in that it's not /strictly needed/. However, it's an arseload more convenient than finding everything manually~ |
| 20:35 | < RichyB> | Tamber, intuitively this feels rather like the chicken and egg problem when trying to find a C compiler :) |
| 20:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Tamber: yeah, but there isn't really another way around that |
| 20:37 | <@ToxicFrog> | Short of "have an older version of pkg-config installed" |
| 20:38 | | * Tamber finally realises what it's actually looking for, facedesks a few more times. |
| 20:38 | <@Tamber> | Disregard me, I'm a retard. |
| 20:38 | <@Tamber> | It's only been staring me in the face! |
| 20:42 | <@Anna> | Oh and there's the PHB2 Feats that actually make you take the Feat and lose an At-Will or Encounter power slot (but give you a questionably useful power to fill it in exchange) |
| 20:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | I wonder if anyone's written a patch for 4E that actually replaces the feats with ability trees. |
| 20:44 | <@Anna> | Probably |
| 20:44 | <@ToxicFrog> | I know people have backported the HP calculation improvements to earlier adventures and whatnot, and written "feat tax" patches. |
| 20:45 | <@Anna> | The group I play with hates house-rules and is "vanilla always" though |
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| 20:48 | <@ToxicFrog> | RAW works only if the game doesn't obviously need patching~ |
| 20:50 | <@Anna> | Yeah |
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| --- Log closed Sun Apr 22 00:00:57 2012 |