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[jsnlxndrlv]

You're my hero, Max.

[Brentai]

I'm interested, I'm just too busy writing rushed and undocumented code.  Because I was told to write undocumented code.  And rushed.

Also, I think suddenly changing specs are at least as much to blame as deadlines for everything that's wrong with professional programming.

[sei]

Yeah.  I ran into a mother fucklot of that.  We had to pretty much throw the original spec sheet (and I use the term loosely) away entirely, pore over examples of intended output, make inferences about logic and semantics underlying said output, and badger the clients (who are around a month late on giving us some documents we need) for confirmation, or better information, since said output both incomplete and littered with fuck-ups.

It made me really glad that I was able to use rails and Active Scaffold.


RE: Math and stuff Max brought up.
The thing I'm most interested in, as far as math and game programming go, is working out curves of growth for different characters (or other player abilities) in RPGs.  I've been involved in a game's beta test for a bit now and I on and off get the idea that they're flailing.  It seems like having a baseline curve for anticipated damage on weapons, then having a %-based deviation would be better.

For example, I get the feeling that they kind of dick around and just decide that it's okay for guns to do 120% of sword damage at one level, but then it's fine for them to do 130% at another level, even though the gunner abilities may not have had disproportionate changes in ability coverage (or anything else that seems like it'd especially warrant inconsistency).

It's not just weapon stats.  I'm kind of interested (and this may more of a psychological matter) what kind of growth players like to see.  How trivial or challenging should yesterday's grunt be?  Do we make your health/damage/whatever grow geometrically or exponentially?  Do we give it kind of a logarithmic taper so that players don't utterly curb-stomp old threats?  What's generally most gratifying, as an underlying progression mechanic?

Tired.  Bed.

[MadMAxJr]

Here is another toy for codeheads.

DiffMerge is a free tool that allows you to take two files and it will highlight the differences.  It's not perfect, but damn this is pretty good for a free tool.  PC/Mac/Linux.

[MadMAxJr]

Whoever designed ASP.NET 2.0 RadioButtonList controls needs to be drug out into the street and shot.  When you populate RadioButtonList.Items using the property window, it brings up a nice little wizard for you to easily add.  That's fine and dandy.  It's even nice enough to duplicate the radiobutton.text into the radiobutton.value field for you.  If you want a blank text field and just keep a hidden value, it won't let you.  Even if you enter spaces in the little wizard for .text, it will use .value as the display.

I'm building a survey, and it's too much clutter if it appears as:

Code: [Select]

( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable
( ) Not at all Helpful  ( ) Not Very Helpful  ( ) Somewhat Helpful  ( ) Very Helpful  ( ) Not applicable

What I'm trying to do is

Code: [Select]

Not at all Helpful  Not Very Helpful  Somewhat Helpful  Very Helpful  Not applicable
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
( )                 ( )                  ( )                   ( )              ( )
Well, the spacing is off, but you see what I am getting at.


Thankfully, this can be circumvented by setting the radiobuttonlist to width="100%" and forcefeeding a text="" into the code for each radiobutton, and get the desired result.

I had to jump through this hoop because the selection array beforehand was written in plain HTML, and there are other ASP.NET controls on the page that trigger a postback.  When the postback fires, the asp controls will preserve their data, but the HTML controls will chuck their contents into deep space, never to return.  Can't have that happen while someone is in the middle of filling out a survey.


Sidenote, i'm working in Visual Studio 2005.  We can't move up to 2008 until budget approval, and IT doesn't support it yet.

[MadMAxJr]

Picked up a C++ Game Coding text to check out from Borders.com

Dunno when it goes away, but coupon code BC477 gets you 40% off one item.

[McDohl]

Any idea when that code expires?

[MadMAxJr]

Any idea when that code expires?

Not a clue.  If it doesn't work, add another 7 onto it.  One of the two should work.  I stumbled across it at The Consumerist, which linked to retailmenot

Different topic:  Interesting slashdot post w/ comments on small-group programming.

[sei]

How long do you give it before Brentai cracks and writes a Mistranslated Ship Captain plug-in for F—shit...Opera.

[Bongo Bill]

Dunno about Opera, but...

[Brentai]

But for translate I isn't use the 'Babelfish'.  In future possible, it is lazy.

[MadMAxJr]

I burn with rage love it when you work on a project (In this case, a slightly customized survey page, in ASP.NET), and then submit it for review to the client.  Who sits on the email for a month.  Then posts a big list of demands and changes due in two days.  The client has no technical knowledge, and essentially just changed his mind on how half the project should work.

And I've already moved on to other, higher priority projects.  Fun fun.

[MadMAxJr]

I am needing to implement a data-dictionary at work to help track the vast array of big words and acronyms so people are less confused.

Each entry needs a simple definition and a complex definition.  I figured an open sourced wiki might do the job, like screwturn, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's more than we need.  It needs to track dates of changes, and old versions, which are covered by the wiki.  The text editor is pretty decent, but I guess I just need to fiddle with it more and see if it is going to take more time to convert the wiki to our needs or make our own tool.

[MadMAxJr]

Lifehacker linked to a neat tool that will embed system information into your desktop. [Windows only]

[MadMAxJr]

This thread is slowly becoming my blog. :(  I should probably get one.

Apparently there is a small surge in indie game developers, who are leaving big development firms.

So do the guys who spend time as a cog in the system even have a shot at doing things on their own?  Hellgate London says no.  Surely there are prime examples of guys who left and went on to do awesome things.

[Royal☭]

Valve. Valve is exactly that situation.

[Brentai]

Treasure, but that's a Japanese example from a decade ago.

...

That's about it.

[Detonator]

So do the guys who spend time as a cog in the system even have a shot at doing things on their own?  Hellgate London says no.

I think Hellgate was a bit too much for them to handle, and it didn't help that EA rushed it out the door.  They had a shot, it just got botched.  If they had no shot, we wouldn't even have that example.

[James Edward Smith]

The problem when you work at a game development company/team, is that if anyone else has any seniority over you in any way and they have some games in their head they want to make, trying to get them to take any of your ideas over their's is next to impossible.

The other problem is that unlike conventional software development, game development is very much a matter of taste and personal preference so having too many artistic differences can be very devisive on teams that don't think alike.

I sympathize with people who finally get fed up with problematic situations that can occur in that sort of environment and just start their own companies.

[MadMAxJr]

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