Messages

Looks absolutely fantastic! Can't wait!

That, indeed, look like an awesome cover mockup.
Thanks

[emboss]

Why does emboss filter exist in graphics software?

I kind of understand what it does and where does it get its name, but "it makes stuff look like it's embossed into metal" doesn't sound either practical at any level or situation, nor does it look good enough to be one of must-have vanilla filters.

...or is it just "Hello World!" of shader/filter programming? Pixel processing logic seems simple enough...?
What am I missing?

thanks

How do I put this parabola into single line of code (function)?



Want to make a shop in my RPG experiment where strength of a horse is tied to its age. Age 8 should be the peak for strength

[why]

Yes, but I'm wondering about what is physically behind it, why you cannot simulate everything for 5000 players?

Or let me rephrase
Why is Doom II from 1995 more or less at same level from technical standpoint (like number of players) as games in 2013? Why haven't we moved forward? Technology sure has! And enormous maps aren't anything new either, think GTA or ARMA, for example
Sounds like there's some weird limit here technology hasn't passed... for 18 years

I've been thinking about it all day (without doing actual research) and tried to crack this down. Only simple explanation that makes sense me goes like this:
Player 1 shoots a gun
Server relays that information to player 2
Server relays that information to player 3
...

and if relay takes 1ms and there's 5000 players, last player would have 5-second lag. Because software/processor does linear operations which means it cannot relay to everyone at once

How far is that theory from truth? Or is it just reduced by faster server/connections?
I cannot really imagine how fast could a server relay anything, but I guess speed of light should be the top limit (if we'd have directed lasers instead of cables and thus no electric resistance or something)

Design standpoints I know. For example, player models in 3D games tend to take up most of the poly budget. The more players, the heavier drawing gets.
And of course server with 5K players is harder do moderate and whatnot

There's a question I cannot google answer for:
Why do multiplayer games still have super low player limit? I mean, usually it's 32..64 players for any first person shooter, 8 for strategy games and so on.
Yet MMOs do exist. So what's that different about them, or in other words, why aren't games like Chivalry: Medieval Warfare 5000 vs 5000 player ones and numbers like this pretty much standard by now?

I just want to understand technical side of this. In age of 100Mbps internet speeds, is such amount of players still a problem? Surely amount of polys for so many characters might be, but connection-wise?

Does anyone know how does CG mastery happen?
I mean these breathtaking 3D and 2D digital painted pictures found in 3dtotal.com or cgsociety.org... how did those people achieve such incredible levels?

I do believe that I can draw and model, yet at my very best, it feels like millenia of endless training away compared to what those people do.
And they dare to call their work imperfect, while yet feels like something impossible for human to do.
Are art schools/courses truly that effective or do those artists just have insane amount of talent and free time?
Some of those people reside among us -- here, too.

Wikipedia gives me headaches. I cannot understand a symbol on this page

Anyway, given that "engine" was just few creatively wasted hours on experimenting, I think it turned out pretty lovely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhxImIat0uI&feature=youtu.be

[perfect]

Nice, my little tile-based light engine (sort of) works now.
Edge falloff still feels rough, but I don't think formula's to blame, but redrawing same area


E: Yeah, a bit of adjustment and it's perfect.

Thanks!

[actual use]

Simple and quick:


What's the formula for this graph?
y = ...?

What for:
to change the value of a variable from 1 to 0 as represented with this curve in a for-loop - starting off slowly, then quicker, and then slowing down again. Note that X goes steady +1 in every cycle.

P.S. I hate every math teacher I had: stuffing my young brain with this crap BEFORE I actually got into game making and found actual use for it. And now I don't remember squat.

Thanks mate, I can use this

E: Boy, AGS sure makes simple things look complicated. Here's how I do this in Game Maker (adjusted for looks and minus line drawing)
No defining functions, anything

ft+= 4;
t+= 9;
r = 50 - t/50;
xoff =  round(100 + sin(degtorad(ft))*r);
yoff =  round(100 + cos(degtorad(ft))*r);
x = mouse_x + xoff;
y = mouse_y + yoff;

[Circular/spiral motion]

Okay, I need some programming/math help again:

Circular/spiral motion

I want something to move along circle, or even better, a spiral that moves in a direction and gets smaller.
Imagine smoke clouds or fallen leaves in a wind, as they roll and make smaller and smaller circles as they move away.
Can anyone help me with some pseudocode as what formula would change X and Y of the smoke/leaf/whatever to get such motion?

Since it's pretty clear that trigonometric function (sin/tan/etc) lies in this problem somewhere, I'm at loss.

Epic mspaint to illustrate:


Spiral as described would be awesome but I guess I could work circle (with variable-adjusted radius) to become spiral also.

I think I got it!
Pseudocode:

y += 10*sin(.2*step);

Where step increases by 30 per second (my frame rate) or 1 per cycle, and 0.2 controls speed.
Loop breaking problem happened because I didn't want to overflow step value and reset it at some point.
But resetting to 0 at some astronomical number such as 2592000 (time until 1 day has passed) basically eliminates broken loop, because nobody plays a game 24 hours straight...
and even if so, a sprite making a tiny jump once a day isn't even noticeable.

[math question time!]

math question time!

How do I make a variable that has oscillating value? I mean, going up and down in some range.
I want to use it to offset sprite on y-axis, making it - say - float like a boat (up and down) in the range of 10 pixels.

I can easily do this the "hard way", but I imagine it can be done with sin function, using only a code line or two.
But three math teachers I had - none of them managed to explain understandably what sinusoid does.

This is where I got, thanks to wikipedia

y += 10*sin(time)
where time is abstract value I increase over CPU cycles. But it doesn't return to starting position and feels like a broken loop

Any help with this? If possible, also how to speed up or slow it down?

Don't I need to know hemisphere I'm on and the directions of east and west to read the moon?

I was thinking how to tell exact time within 10 minute accuracy if I'm in the middle of nowhere and have a some sort of clock, but have no idea which way is which (no compass).
What I came up with is this:

Suppose it's a sunny day
I stick a pole into ground.
Use something - cord or sticks to measure shadow of the pole
Set clock to 12:00
After every 10 minutes I repeat measurement (12:10 on my clock) and if shadow is shorter than previous measurement, set clock to 12 again
The moment I don't have to reset, It's noon + around 10 minutes

Is it logical? Daylight saving can offset this by hour but generally, it should work?

E: nvm

[does work]

Eh, rotation. It does work but after hour of trying, I decided to scrap the idea; I have no clue how to dampen it, values must be very specific towards each other to get good result, direction and speed I use can be totally random and even when balanced out at best  it feels very unnatural and blinks like hell. It's easier to just make some rotating sprites.

Thanks anyway.

E: What did I needed it for? Well, my weekend accidentally found me remaking old DOS game Paratrooper...

I thought about different, upgradeable weapons and one gun would shoot flak, which I thought would be awesome if clusters of flak would rotate like angry bees (very wip pic yet):

Not the latter, I need spiral like I drew, not arches. And yeah, it's something moving through the air