At 6/10/12 11:23 AM, webufs wrote: Heyoz, I've been kicking around the Flash forums for a while, so I figured I'd say hi!

I'm not all too familiar with AS3 (actually, I've only been learning C++ for about a month, and I'm finally starting to get a hang of AS3... kind of), but maybe I'll pick some stuff up from you guys by... osmosis or something?

Or by me telling you everything...

At 6/10/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote: But why does pathfinding need tile based maps? (It doesn't...)

Have any of you used NavMesh? I can't find much info about it, and I'm wondering how the path gets drawn considering there are an infinite number of points to go to and for the heuristic to use...What other pathfinding methods are there besides tile- or polygon-based?

I have a zombie thing that uses a few raytraces to avoid obstacles, though it doesn't learn anything from its environment...but zombies are stupid, so ha.

At 6/10/12 11:23 AM, webufs wrote: Heyoz, I've been kicking around the Flash forums for a while, so I figured I'd say hi!

Hey! Welcome.

At 6/7/12 08:23 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: I was going to make my own A* API eventually, but since you're already making one, here's what I was going to do.

I've just always noticed the amount of art based games being larger than the amount of tile based games, and most tutorials and beginners start with art based games.

I agree with you. Most beginners to flash are getting started in CS5 the tool, and working their way up through that. I think you're completely right, however; I think a pathfinding library in that vein would probably be a separate effort, and a separate codebase. I like the idea.

If anyone ever wants to contribute to EasyStar, just check out the code and do a pull request. Diagonal movement is some pretty low hanging fruit of a feature that anyone could tackle. Then you would be a true open source contributor! Wow! I'm pretty sure ladies would instantly flock to you.

p.s. Anyone doing the AustinBreed gamejam ? I want to do it, but I will be on an airplane / on vacation during the jam. I feel lame that something comes up every time I want to do one of these. Maybe I can try for a solo entry -- that way I don't let anybody down if I can't finish.

At 6/10/12 03:35 PM, PSvils wrote: First misconception in game AI, "pathfinding must always be perfect".

No, it MUST be PERFECT.

So for polys, you just go from midpoint to midpoint or vertex to vertex or whatever? In that regard, it seems like you could just lay down waypoints at those locations and then smooth the path. When I read about polys, it said something like "the polygons define the space that the ai can traverse"; but vertex/midpoint/centroids limit where it checks. What if a straight line is the best path, and your triangles are weirdo scalene with their centroids and vertices all over the place?

At 6/10/12 02:09 PM, PSvils wrote:

At 6/10/12 12:06 PM, 4urentertainment wrote: I've just always noticed the amount of art based games being larger than the amount of tile based games, and most tutorials and beginners start with art based games.

But why does pathfinding need tile based maps? (It doesn't...)

That's exactly what I'm saying. I've yet to see someone make a pathfinding API that doesn't need (or at least, doesn't imply that) the game needs to be tile based.

Just use a graph as the base of your pathfinding

its the same algorithm, and a tilemap can be trivially converted into a graph

I used to post in the ol' Lounge a lot back in the day... How's it been?

Just thought while I was here I'd say hello. Doubt any of the old regulars I used to talk to remain, but ah well! I myself have begun the transition from Flash to Toon Boom Animate. In terms of an animation tool, Toon Boom is insanely better. Doesn't have the AS stuff, though. Which works for me, since I want to do animation and not programming.

Anyway, hi everybody. And now I suppose I'll make my exit again...

I just had that frustrating but satisfying feeling when you solve a problem you've been having for ages and it turns out to be something really stupid.

I've had a problem for literally months with making movieclips rotate towards the direction of the character. My movieclips are stored in an array so they are sharks[0], sharks[1], sharks[2] etc. The issue I was having was that when the sharks rotation went from -180 to +180 it would just stop following the character. It was really frustrating because I wasn't having the same problem when they went from +180 to -180. It been literally months and every now and again I've gone back to it trying to isolate the issue. I tried soooo many different things!

Turns out I had written sharks.rotation instead of sharks[i].rotation in one location. No error message so I never knew anything was up. I'm so satisfied now I've found it, but annoyed that it was something so tiny and stupid.

Anyone else got any annoying stories like this?

At 6/12/12 04:35 PM, alwayssim wrote: Turns out I had written sharks.rotation instead of sharks[i].rotation in one location. No error message so I never knew anything was up. I'm so satisfied now I've found it, but annoyed that it was something so tiny and stupid.

Anyone else got any annoying stories like this?

What program are you using to write your code? If you call for 'rotation' property on an array, which obviously doesn't exist, you should get an error. Get Flash Develop immediately, would save you from these things :).

But speaking of annoying errors, I had one today. I'm making a game that loads an image from a server, and I made multiple changes to the image and uploaded it to the server again replacing the old one. But my game didn't want to load this new image. I was very puzzled about this, and found out like after an hour trying to figure it out that it was firefox who refused to load the image again. It was pulling the old image somewhere else for some odd reason. Not even ctrl f5 refresh helped the problem. I used to be a supporter of firefox, but after this ordeal Chrome looking much better to me. I still do not quite understand how firefox prevents a swf from loading an image from the server and rather insert the old image somewhere between there.

At 6/12/12 04:55 PM, ProfessorFlash wrote: But speaking of annoying errors, I had one today. I'm making a game that loads an image from a server, and I made multiple changes to the image and uploaded it to the server again replacing the old one. But my game didn't want to load this new image. I was very puzzled about this, and found out like after an hour trying to figure it out that it was firefox who refused to load the image again. It was pulling the old image somewhere else for some odd reason. Not even ctrl f5 refresh helped the problem. I used to be a supporter of firefox, but after this ordeal Chrome looking much better to me. I still do not quite understand how firefox prevents a swf from loading an image from the server and rather insert the old image somewhere between there.

Ah, I had this same problem (dynamic loading screen backgrounds) - It's Firefox's cache

Though i'm sure you know this, i'm putting it out there anyway.
A cache helps web browsers load pages faster. If the image is already stored locally, it just grabs the one on your hard-drive (in your temporary internet files) and uses that rather than loading a whole new image.

As to the F5 problem: I think I had the same problem. I can't exactly remember how I fixed it (I think I cleared the cache manually) but F5 doesn't work for some reason, which is odd because it's supposed to be a "total refresh"

As to my stories: I have many, many stories of frustraing code that i've solved. Can I remember one now? No, but I wish.

Man, I had to fish this topic from the third page, ARE YOU ALL DEAD???

Anyway, we've started officially working on Concerned Joe's sequel (I wouldn't call it Concerned Joe 2 because it's more of a spiritual successor, like it doesn't build off the previous game, it just recreates it with a new and vast-er experience)

We even made a website and a devblog!

http://concerned-joe.com/

So I'd like to know what you guys think, maybe if you think the devblog is interesting etc..

At 6/25/12 04:36 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: Man, I had to fish this topic from the third page, ARE YOU ALL DEAD???

Anyway, we've started officially working on Concerned Joe's sequel (I wouldn't call it Concerned Joe 2 because it's more of a spiritual successor, like it doesn't build off the previous game, it just recreates it with a new and vast-er experience)

We even made a website and a devblog!

http://concerned-joe.com/

So I'd like to know what you guys think, maybe if you think the devblog is interesting etc..

That link...with that IDE...I want. Will the next game be Flash and C++/something or just the latter?

At 6/25/12 04:36 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: So I'd like to know what you guys think, maybe if you think the devblog is interesting etc..

I like the website with the scrolling footer. The devblog is great. I liked the post about making the box2d body for Joe. I think that kind of stuff is inherently interesting. Good work!

At 6/26/12 11:56 AM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: I like the website with the scrolling footer. The devblog is great. I liked the post about making the box2d body for Joe. I think that kind of stuff is inherently interesting. Good work!

Thanks man! We'll be posting more and more details into the design and problems we face.

At 6/25/12 03:25 PM, MSGhero wrote: That link...with that IDE...I want. Will the next game be Flash and C++/something or just the latter?

Bret Victor is a flipping genius. You should watch his our long presentation if you haven't already.

(For those too lazy to find the link on my blog:)

http://vimeo.com/36579366

Also it will be made in just Lua. No flash version this time. At first I thought that, since flash games get millions of views, and since marketing is super important in downloadable games, that the flash version could act as a free ad. That doesn't actually work as well as it should because most flash gamers aren't the ones that pay for stuff. So when they see an ad for an iOS game for example, they are less likely to buy than players who see an ad inside an app.

At 6/27/12 03:40 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: Also it will be made in just Lua. No flash version this time.

What framework are you using ?

At 6/27/12 03:40 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: At first I thought that, since flash games get millions of views the flash version could act as a free ad. Most flash gamers aren't the ones that pay for stuff.

I have always thought of this as a really smart thing to do. I wouldn't totally rule it out. Do you have any concrete examples of when it didn't work ?

At 6/27/12 11:58 AM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote: What framework are you using ?

We're using the Love framework which is really awesome.

At 6/27/12 11:58 AM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote:

I have always thought of this as a really smart thing to do. I wouldn't totally rule it out. Do you have any concrete examples of when it didn't work ?

Almost every single flash developer that has moved onto downloadable games has tried that and they all say the same thing, it doesn't really boost sales by all that much.

Also, about my rant about C++ being not a good language to use for 2D games...I take that back.

The more I use Lua and other languages/setups, the more and more I realize why C++ is so awesome. The only reason I haven't switched back to C++ is because there isn't (or I haven't found) a framework that is as flexible as the Love2D framework, or as flash. Something that has built in rendering, sounds, physics, events and ties that all together easily so I don't have to spend weeks or months making my own framework before starting on the actual game.

One major feature of C++ is portability. Lua is loose as a goose. Variables don't have types, there are no braces and there's no real OOP. After using Lua for a month or so I can only describe C++ as "beautiful" now. Sure it's not the best language for quick prototyping, but if you want something solid, it's not the speed of performance of C++ that's attractive to me, it's all the features the language has.

I mean pointers alone are very much worth using C++ for. At first when I was learnign C++ and realized that there were two kinds of variables "normal" variables and "pointers" I thought it was really cumbersome and a really bad feature. But after getting back to Lua and AS3 in this game jam, I'm amazed these languages DON'T have pointers.

It's like when you do:

Now I found myself asking. Did I just pass a value to otherVar? Or did I pass a reference? So if I do

Will that change myVar too? No it won't. So you just passed a value. Conversely:

Now this will output 100, even though you changed that property of ho and not mc. So what you passed was a reference to the mc. As in, you didn't pass the value, you passed its address in memory, and that is what they call a "pointer".

So the fact that you can control when to pass something as a reference and when as a pointer is immensely helpful. And so are all the powerful OOP features.

At 7/2/12 09:45 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
var ho:MovieClip = mc
ho.x = 100

You should get in the habit of using semicolons to end your statements mang.

If you're ever having trouble figuring out how to implement something, turn your interwebs off for 20 mins. I figured out so much just by being alone with my ideas

All alone...

At 7/2/12 01:40 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote:

At 7/2/12 09:45 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
var ho:MovieClip = mc
ho.x = 100

You should get in the habit of using semicolons to end your statements mang.

Goddamnit people, stop telling me to use semicolons > : (

Semicolons are too mainstream anyway.

At 7/3/12 06:52 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: Goddamnit people, stop telling me to use semicolons > : (

Semicolons are too mainstream anyway.

well it is a good habit, better then having a habit to meth.

"In the desktop profile of Adobe AIR, quality can be set to StageQuality.BEST or StageQuality.HIGH (and the default value is StageQuality.HIGH). Attempting to set it to another value has no effect (and the property remains unchanged). "

WELL FUCK YOU TOO ADOBE
grumble grumble grumble

At 7/3/12 06:52 AM, 4urentertainment wrote:

At 7/2/12 01:40 PM, PrettyMuchBryce wrote:

At 7/2/12 09:45 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
var ho:MovieClip = mc
ho.x = 100

You should get in the habit of using semicolons to end your statements mang.

Goddamnit people, stop telling me to use semicolons > : (

Semicolons are too mainstream anyway.

It's interesting to see how different languages handle semicolons. Flash doesn't care, C++ and Java yell at you when you forget them, and languages like GNU Octave print the variables you defined on that line if you leave out the semicolon, which can actually be quite useful.

Embrace the semicolons, mannn

haXe.

What are you guys (thinking about) using it for? Are there NG-like sites for HTML5, C++, etc games that I haven't stumbled upon yet? Or are you using it purely for its versatility, ie to show off to your ladyfriend that you can export to any language her heart desires? For me now, there's no point in using it over AS3. And as far as my college courses, they'd probably consider that cheating, not to mention I'd be screwed for tests.

Of course, I remember asking why people use getters/setters; and now I use them like my life depends on it

At 7/5/12 03:07 PM, MSGhero wrote: haXe.

What are you guys (thinking about) using it for? Are there NG-like sites for HTML5, C++, etc games that I haven't stumbled upon yet? Or are you using it purely for its versatility, ie to show off to your ladyfriend that you can export to any language her heart desires? For me now, there's no point in using it over AS3. And as far as my college courses, they'd probably consider that cheating, not to mention I'd be screwed for tests.

Of course, I remember asking why people use getters/setters; and now I use them like my life depends on it

That's like asking what you would use HTML5 for, or C++ for etc..

Getting the hang of haXe will allow you to easily publish your stuff for any of these platforms. Say you want to make an iOS game without getting into objective-c, just do it with haXe! The language you already know. Now you made the game, want to port it to android? Probably won't take more than a day to make whatever changes need to be done. Etc..

I reaallly need to start looking at haXe

At 7/6/12 12:27 PM, Sam wrote: I reaallly need to start looking at haXe

That was painless to install.

At 7/3/12 07:45 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: "In the desktop profile of Adobe AIR, quality can be set to StageQuality.BEST or StageQuality.HIGH (and the default value is StageQuality.HIGH). Attempting to set it to another value has no effect (and the property remains unchanged). "

WELL FUCK YOU TOO ADOBE
grumble grumble grumble

I hear you bro, iOS = automatic high quality. -_-

Programmers are so goddamn lazy in the most ironically productive way.

I'm helping out with a Flash Showcase for NGADM and to do so I need to compile a list of everyone who is auditioning, along with links to their entries. Instead of doing it all manually, I put myself through a crash course on Perl, just so I could parse the audition thread HTML and automatically create a hash containing all of the entries.

I feel accomplished, even though a task that would've taken a few hours at most turned out to be a two-day endeavor.

HaXe is all kinds of fun. One thing that's bothered me is the lack of swipe functionality when it comes to using NME.

Bahaha @Archawn -- Very clever

At 7/17/12 12:06 AM, Archawn wrote: Programmers are so goddamn lazy in the most ironically productive way.

I'm helping out with a Flash Showcase for NGADM and to do so I need to compile a list of everyone who is auditioning, along with links to their entries. Instead of doing it all manually, I put myself through a crash course on Perl, just so I could parse the audition thread HTML and automatically create a hash containing all of the entries.

I feel accomplished, even though a task that would've taken a few hours at most turned out to be a two-day endeavor.

I *love* it when stuff like that happens. Like when our IGCSE grades come out on the Cambridge website, the load on the servers usually causes the website to either load very slowly or not at all, and as you keep refreshing, once the website loads, by the time you enter your log in details, it crashes again.

So I made a simple greasemonkey script to automatically keep refreshing until the site opens and automatically enters the log in info and presses enter.

Another time I wanted to eat some pizza and browse 9gag, but I didn't want to get my keyboard sticky. So I just made a scrolling script.

It's awesome when a programmer does something purely for his convenience. It feels like you're bending the tools to get what you want.

It reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/196/