At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: The forum would only succeed if a good number of interesting game developers actually like hanging out there and talking. Do you guys think it has potential?

Absolutely! I think a forum such as that would have a lot of potential. Sometimes a simple forum post is all someone needs to be inspired to continue, or even start developing.

At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: Hey sorry if you guys have already discussed this sort of thing...

I think about how the forum that would personally interest me would be discussion about straight up game development and design. It doesn't matter what programming language or platform, game design is game design. The closest thing to it is conversations that take place here in the Flash Reg Lounge.

So it makes me wonder, what if we closed down the Mobile forum (because it's a flop), changed the entire "Developers & Programmers" category into just "Programming", then added a "Game Design" or "Game Development" forum under "Artists & Creators", officially representing game makers among the Animation, Art and Music categories we have now.

It would feel a lot more like the old Flash forum was before Animation was split off, but more wide spread in terms of languages. It'd be great because personally I love seeing games as they get developed and the posts that people make would give us a glimpse into what they're working on.

We could also have AMAs with developers. I (hopefully we) would want to make an effort to pull in guys from the scene and get them to have AMAs, post-mortems, etc...

Also a brilliant idea. It'd be cool to have a AMA thread that gets stickied for a fortnight and then rolls onto the next one, although, with that frequency, we might run out of developers fairly fast.

:So that begs the question, is it better to do it on user pages where it gets all fragmented, or would it be best in a centralized forum where everyone shares the same interests? It could be a mix of both, like making a big post in the forum, then using the front page Artist News to give the public a brief synopsis and link to your post - thus promoting the forum and bringing in more activity to the benefit for everyone who hangs out there.

Having it on user pages would mean that people who are already fans of that developer would be able to read about them, but finding new developers just based on the AMA would be hard as there's no central location for it. I think having one big post would be too cumbersome to find a specific developers AMA.

The forum would only succeed if a good number of interesting game developers actually like hanging out there and talking. Do you guys think it has potential?

I'm not much of a developer but I'd visit it often.

More on the topic of being language agnostic... When making a game, if you need some math to make an enemy shoot towards the player, or lob a bomb that lands on the player, it really doesn't matter what language you're programming in or what platform you're building for - you just need the math.

I want to get on the ball with more regular game jams but I want a place where we post the discussion thread for each jam. Where is that? If I post in the Flash forum it doesn't make sense when future jams will include HTML5 and Unity submissions.

I could see closing down Mobile and those guys just having an iPhone lounge, Android lounge, etc. in the Game Development forum. Games Factory guys could likely do the same... Could be GF2 lounge, Flixel lounge, etc. for those specific things.

Also I need to make a big post about all the economics of NG but I'll save that for later. When you see stuff like the Supporter system, don't think NG is gonna go BANKRUPT... NG doesn't carry any debt and my paycheck comes from the Behemoth. What IS depressing is that the staff has been shrinking these past two years and can't afford to shrink any more. If the staff shrinks more, all progress will slow down and it will just be a huge downward spiral, as it already has been with a tightening budget.

At 8/17/12 02:16 PM, 4urentertainment wrote: In fact, the flash framework is so efficient at making games that a lot of people are using it in non-flash games. A lot of iPhone or just generally games made with C++ and such use Flash for animation. I believe that's how Castle Crashers handled their art and animation. Everything is vector, and the vector data is taken from SWF's and converted to raster data during loading.

Apparently Bioshock also has SWF files in their source, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Castle Crashers is a Flash 6, AS2 game that is parsed to C++ and rasterized at run-time when files are loaded into ram.

Groundcats for iPhone wasn't programmed with actionscript but the art was all made in Flash and dumped to sprite sheets. The cinemas were made in Flash and converted to MP4 with Mike's upcoming Swivel software.

I do want to modernize with AS3 but JohnnyUtah and I are working on another console game using AS2... But Flash 8 this time. :P

At 9/15/12 07:23 AM, PSvils wrote:

At 9/15/12 07:13 AM, TomFulp wrote: I do want to modernize with AS3 but JohnnyUtah and I are working on another console game using AS2... But Flash 8 this time. :P

How do you deploy an AS2 Flash game to consoles?

I'm curious about this as well. I've been going around telling my friends "remember Castle Crashers? Yeah they actually used flash for that!" and when they ask me how my response is usually along the lines of "magic".

Also, good guy NG, donating to the indie scene:

At 9/14/12 09:40 AM, TomFulp wrote: Blurb.

The less forums there are the better IMO. I think the forums were a much more interesting place a couple of years back, things seem much slower since the redesigns and the increase in forums.

At 9/15/12 07:23 AM, PSvils wrote: How do you deploy an AS2 Flash game to consoles?

It's a messy process and I wasn't the programmer so I don't even know if I can explain it all properly. But basically, the actionscript code is parsed into C++ code and all of the movie clips become textures on flat polygons. I have to make some accommodations on my end to work around issues and I need to load and unload individual swf files based on what should be in RAM at any given time. So for example in Castle Crashers, the player movie clip and various others are resident in RAM at all times, but the individual levels and bosses get loaded and unloaded. I should see about getting a proper write-up on it. :P

At 9/15/12 11:31 AM, Xeptic wrote: The less forums there are the better IMO. I think the forums were a much more interesting place a couple of years back, things seem much slower since the redesigns and the increase in forums.

This is one of those questions I toss around in my head... Are the forums less active because there are more of them, or would the forums have died down regardless as a result of the growing means of communication via social networks and other niche sites.

I don't think any animators were discussing their craft in General. Some were in the Flash forum but it was more focused on games. The animation forum hasn't been a huge success but it still has great potential, I think it could really thrive if more serious animators became regulars. The big IF.

Since the Flash forum is where all the game development discussion is already happening, would it be too much of a shock to the system if the Flash forum BECAME the Game Development forum? I suppose it might scare away regulars who wonder where it went... And there are still enough Flash quirks to probably warrant it.

I really do want to avoid forum overkill, I just want to be sure our forums best represent the sort of things people on NG are doing, something which is aways evolving.

At 9/15/12 11:52 AM, TomFulp wrote:

At 9/15/12 11:31 AM, Xeptic wrote: The less forums there are the better IMO. I think the forums were a much more interesting place a couple of years back, things seem much slower since the redesigns and the increase in forums.

This is one of those questions I toss around in my head... Are the forums less active because there are more of them, or would the forums have died down regardless as a result of the growing means of communication via social networks and other niche sites.

I'm pretty sure that's also part of the reason (and it's probably also my perception because I'm getting old), but all the more reasons not to spread out an already thinning out community over a bunch of forums. Less forums > more active forums > more interesting forums > more activity?

Since the Flash forum is where all the game development discussion is already happening, would it be too much of a shock to the system if the Flash forum BECAME the Game Development forum?

Nah. With all due respect, and I'm really interested in your long term plans for Newgrounds, but I think Flash is slowly but surely dying out. The time seems right for re-naming the forum ;)

At 9/14/12 02:01 PM, knugen wrote: I was definitely one of the supporters of dividing the forum into more specific sub forums. I still do think that collabs should have their own section, but apart from that I've come to think the segregation got too out of hand.

I dont know if I agree with that. My problem with the collab forum is what exactly defines something as a collab. Like is it a catch all for music/flash/animation/games collaborations? Or is it specifically like large scale flash collabs, and if so then I always ask myself well why not just post this in the Animation forum then, itll get more interest from animators and stuff. Or if its a collaborative game, why not post it in this forum. I think creating a collab forum ended up alot more confusing than actually helpful. There might have been a small period of time back in the day when yea seeing collabs on the flash forum bumping out tech questions was annoying but i never saw it as hugely toxic. That was a huge tension point between me and some of the mods.
Like post redesign I never liked how this forum more or less became a tech support area, rather than a place with creative people with interests in flash. Yeah its nice to get an answer for something stumping you but i think that single serving approach to a forum visit isnt really that engaging or worthwhile.

Need more stuff like this lounge, where you have people with definate opinions and ideas and willingness to share them amongst their peers. Not necessarily people looking for a technical answer to a question, though those are fine as well. They are just not as valuable as the 'fluffy' enthusiast/indie talk. IMO.

Anywho its nice to be back, i was reading through a bunch of pages today and I forgot how many familiar faces are around here.

I also sometimes think that the forum scene in general is a decline from the moving trends on the web. Sometimes the forum system feels like reading a newspaper while everyone else is on their iphones getting live updates.

I dont have any solutions to that comment, but sometimes i just feel that the forum way of communicating feels like its outdated or becoming outdated. Maybe im wrong though. i just think about dumb stuff.

At 9/15/12 06:26 PM, Luis wrote: I also sometimes think that the forum scene in general is a decline from the moving trends on the web. Sometimes the forum system feels like reading a newspaper while everyone else is on their iphones getting live updates.

I think its impossible to argue that this isn't the case. Maybe someone just needs to make an iPhone application that can watch threads and treat them more like Facebook conversations than a forum feed. Can always dream!

Well, I find myself posting topics that I never see again unless I dig for them. I wanted to just "search" the forum for people who'd asked my question before, but apparantly that feature is also buried. I think the NG BBS has been the same pretty much without change for at least a year or two...maybe time for an update?

At 9/16/12 04:50 AM, PoisonHeart wrote: Well, I find myself posting topics that I never see again unless I dig for them. I wanted to just "search" the forum for people who'd asked my question before, but apparantly that feature is also buried. I think the NG BBS has been the same pretty much without change for at least a year or two...maybe time for an update?

Forum reply notifications are in the plan for the expanded feeds, should be happening this fall.

Yeah I think remove the mobile forum and add a "Game Design and Developers" one.

I put the word "Developers" in there just to GUIDE PEOPLE into not making threads about the new Zelda trailer or whatever.

I'd use that forum, obv. I'd post all the videos n crap I find and I'd write dev blogs about games.
Actually I literally never check OTHER threads on Tigsource, so I'd really selfishly use this forum to make threads about things I like, and then leave them.
Game design is a really nebulous thing to talk about though, so there'd be a bunch of dumb circular arguments on there.

Most forums I visited lately have died down a lot, I find myself using twitter (and facebook) a lot more to talk to people and have discussions online, they're quicker to use and its easier to filter out people you don't like and stuff.

I was quite active on tigsource the past few years, but all the cool devs I was there to talk to seemed to disappear, and the mods stopped moderating, so it just became full of trolls. I rage-quit the site (like actually blocked myself from visiting it) after reading through (and participating in... probably not the best idea) a 60 page thread about indie game the movie, where instead of celebrating the successes of fellow developers, they just hated on the movie, hated on the devs, tried to discredit them and all they did and whatnot, and flamed anyone who had a differing opinion.

I mean, damn newgrounds isn't exactly known for having a mature community or anything, but at least people here always seemed to have at least a little respect for each other.

</rant>

Lots of people I talk to sorta miss having a good forum to go to, but don't seem to want to waste time on forums again when they could be making games instead.

I got COMPLETELY LOST reading that, but if it makes your pathfinding look less robotic then thhuuuuuuumbs up!

At 9/17/12 02:23 PM, PSvils wrote: my brain exploded
Hard to understand, but I can draw it up if anyone's interested.

Yeahhh, draw it up

Fuck it, I'm gonna learn how to draw and animate. And write. SAT prep stole my writer, and my artist disappears a lot. Drawing with Jazza, here I come!

When I first learned to animate, I used a flash tutorial called "Flash For Complete Idiots" on StickSuicide.com and it was really good.

But that was in 2003 and it DOESN'T EXIST ANY MORE!!! All the Google results are me talking about it, hahaha.

At 9/17/12 05:10 PM, I-smel wrote: I got COMPLETELY LOST reading that

That's because he's probably using techno-babble and buzzwords to cover the fact that he's having to hack through his convoluted waypoint pathfinding system instead of building an efficient representation of the walkable spaces in his world :P Either that or he built his nodes in the correctly efficient way but didn't use them right yet.

That's what I made out of his explanation of what he's planning to do. Maybe the picture he's planning to post will prove me wrong.

PSvils, I'm interested to know how you set up your scheduling though. I'm assuming you split up the pathfinding process into several runs such that you don't get any information (as in partial, incomplete paths) before you get the final complete information (the path your algorithm returns)? I haven't thought about this before, as I haven't dealt with pathfinding too much, but it might be interesting to play with the optimisation of accuracy and length of partial path to an endpoint vs algorithm complexity (running time). Might be completely devoid of merit though.

These are interesting topics, and your project sounds fun. You should post structured writings about it, and not just pop up on the forum and start describing something from the middle of your train of thought when none of us have a clue about the background of what you're talking about.

At 9/18/12 12:45 AM, Toast wrote:

At 9/17/12 05:10 PM, I-smel wrote: I got COMPLETELY LOST reading that

That's because he's probably using techno-babble and buzzwords to cover the fact that he's having to hack through his convoluted waypoint pathfinding system instead of building an efficient representation of the walkable spaces in his world :P Either that or he built his nodes in the correctly efficient way but didn't use them right yet.

Yea it did seem like he was fancying up words here n there, tbh.
Folk don't "displace vertices" much here on Newgrounds.

I played around with zombie pathfinding a while ago too (2009 wow)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d56e5640470d8a1376c209c7 6ac61018

Click to place 2 'targets' then clicking again places walls

space+click to spawn shitloads of zombies where you click

It uses something called diffusion pathfinding, where the pathfinding data is stored in the map instead of running A* every frame on each zombie. What you do is you put a "scent" on the target, then diffuse the scent throughout the map every frame (have the scent spread to nearby tiles while having the targets place more scent), the zombie pathfinding now just needs to "follow the scent" to find the player. As in, check all the tiles around him, and go to the one with the highest scent. As an added thing, the zombies themselves generate 'negative' scent, and the walls generate negative scent too (which means zombies will avoid each other, and avoid walls), so if one pathway gets flooded with zombies, they'll start filling in the other pathways too.

Its actually fairly simple, all the complicated stuff is just emergent bonuses you get from the simple system underneath

At 9/18/12 06:00 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: It uses something called diffusion pathfinding

I remember discussing that a looonnngg while ago, when I made a pathfinder and everyone copied >=(

At 9/18/12 06:00 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: I played around with zombie pathfinding a while ago too (2009 wow)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d56e5640470d8a1376c209c7 6ac61018

Click to place 2 'targets' then clicking again places walls

space+click to spawn shitloads of zombies where you click

Spent way to much time screwing around with this. Add a title screen and you've got yourself your next Steam title.

Feels like it would work well with slow zombies considering all the zig zagging they do. Would look strange for fast zombies that tend to run in straight lines for the most part. Maybe that's just a matter of changing the negative scent values for walls and zombies? Either way, fun stuff.

At 9/18/12 06:00 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: I played around with zombie pathfinding a while ago too (2009 wow)
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/d56e5640470d8a1376c209c7 6ac61018

Wow that's amazing! I first looked into pathfinding a couple years ago, and it took me like a few days to actually get my head around A*. Once I did it I was like "Oh thank god, I have now worked out pathfinding." (my game Solid Sneak is what I made with it)

Then found out that that's a coding technique they came up with decades ago.

So this is cool, I totally wanna try this.

At 9/17/12 08:45 PM, MSGhero wrote: And write.

writing something somewhat-decent is actually pretty easy.
You just have to have no idea what the hell you're writing.
And use metaphors.

At 9/18/12 07:50 PM, egg82 wrote: writing something somewhat-decent is actually pretty easy.
You just have to have no idea what the hell you're writing.
And use metaphors.

...I mean for storylines and stuff lol. I wrote enough bs in my english classes throughout high school and the uni one last year. I want to write a story I actually care about and make it good...plus like designing skills and dialogue and all the stuff my RPG is currently missing.

Writing on my userpage was kinda therapeutic actually, getting ideas off my chest instead of writing about the crap my teacher likes. My engineering graphics class is so time-consuming, though (and I don't have that much to write about) that I can't just sit down whenever I want and write.

Also, Game Jam 8. Can we use pre-existing classes or is that not fair? By pre-existing, I mean like if I made a blitting or basic physics engine, could I use that?

Not the pre-existing classes of an entire game, lol

At 9/18/12 10:01 PM, MSGhero wrote: Also, Game Jam 8. Can we use pre-existing classes or is that not fair? By pre-existing, I mean like if I made a blitting or basic

so soon? :o

i'll see what my weekend's like and if i'm up for another or not. I still remember the last one. 15 Monster energy drinks in 72 hours.
They were on sale.

At 9/18/12 06:11 PM, 23450 wrote: Spent way to much time screwing around with this. Add a title screen and you've got yourself your next Steam title.

I actually am working on a zombie game right now, lol. I even made a backstory generator for it today
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/e825b2b7dd58d59b65e0fd73 7c83518f

I won't go into too much other detail for what the same is about though