At 12/8/14 11:38 PM, Diki wrote: Might be a more powerful card but it's well outside his price range.

Oh, yeah. Not outside mine, though.

And where did you buy the card from that doesn't accept PayPal or some form of direct bank transfers?

I mean I can't afford it all in one shot, I need to make payments on it instead.

Page files will be used even if there is spare memory on the physical RAM since the OS will be smart enough to know that the page file will suffice. If you've been getting BSODs then your OS is probably corrupted in some way; there's nothing about page files per se that could cause a BSOD.

True, though it only seems to happen when I cap out my RAM. Which, again, with a higher-end game and Chrome open seems to be pretty frequent.

At 12/8/14 11:56 PM, egg82 wrote: True, though it only seems to happen when I cap out my RAM. Which, again, with a higher-end game and Chrome open seems to be pretty frequent.

It's possible Dragon Age just has a memory leak. I've played modern games with multiple browsers, both video and music players, PDF readers and FTP clients all open and I've never run out of RAM, and I only have 8GB.

Though, I've only ever played Dragon Age: Origins, so it's possible that Inquisition just eats up RAM like a fat person eats up cake.

I really like the look of the R9's for the price. The double memory 290X's seem a bit like: "Look, bigger number! We can compete with Nvidia in this price range!" though.

Also, I find it interesting how people believe triple A titles are as good as a game can be. If these companies spend more time optimising code, I bet that computers from 4 years ago could run them just as well as they run now on comparably priced hardware. In fact, it's probably one of the main things that drive PC upgrades. So lazy scripters and engine writers do the component manufacturers a huge favour by increasing sales, and it lets them pump out games a little faster and cut a few corners.

At 12/9/14 12:01 AM, Diki wrote: Though, I've only ever played Dragon Age: Origins, so it's possible that Inquisition just eats up RAM like a fat person eats up cake.

lol.

Egg
GTX 980 or bust. Got myself a credit card to actually buy the damned thing. I kid ye not.

Eventually I'll get there, not right now though, damn student loans.

MSGHero
Switchable graphics cards, though, I have all the answers on those
pieces of shit.

haha, Yeahh. They definitely are. Once I build my pc, and take my laptop when I am on the go... I am going to hate my laptop soo much.

Sam
I really like the look of the R9's for the price. The double memory 290X's seem a bit like: "Look, bigger number! We can compete with Nvidia in this price range!" though.

Yeah, I do too. But like MSGHero said, It may perform better, but quality might not be as good. If it only last a year where a GTX 760 would last 3 - 5 years Id much rather take it the GTX 760 for right now in my stages of life. I'm not at a point where if it fails I'll be able to go out and drop another $300 or so on another card. I'll be researching it a little more. Wish one of you guys had a R9 280 or 280x and cloud share how well it works for them.

This info is very helpful, thanks all for contributing.

At 12/9/14 12:13 AM, Sam wrote: Also, I find it interesting how people believe triple A titles are as good as a game can be. If these companies spend more time optimising code, I bet that computers from 4 years ago could run them just as well as they run now on comparably priced hardware.

A lot of it has to do with half-assed console ports. Ubisoft is notorious for not giving a shit about the quality of their console ports, which is why Far Cry 4, to name one example, has so many problems, and is also why I don't buy Ubisoft's games (that and because uPlay is garbage that I don't want to use). I did buy Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon before I was aware of Ubisoft's shoddy quality (and before uPlay existed) but I won't make those mistakes again.

Fortunately there are some companies that do care about quality, such as Valve or CD Projekt; their games run great.

At 12/9/14 12:22 AM, Diki wrote: A lot of it has to do with half-assed console ports. Ubisoft is notorious for not giving a shit about the quality of their console ports, which is why Far Cry 4, to name one example, has so many problems, and is also why I don't buy Ubisoft's games (that and because uPlay is garbage that I don't want to use). I did buy Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon before I was aware of Ubisoft's shoddy quality (and before uPlay existed) but I won't make those mistakes again.

Fortunately there are some companies that do care about quality, such as Valve or CD Projekt; their games run great.

Yeahh... Ubisoft.... Assassin Creed Unity cannot get 60fps with 2 GTX 970...

Sam
So lazy scripters and engine writers do the component manufacturers a huge favour by increasing sales, and it lets them pump out games a little faster and cut a few corners.

Soo, my bad coding does have a little benefit. It leads to more research into hardware upgrades that can run my poorly coded stuff at reasonable speeds. (My programming is getting better though! man I cringe at my old projects and code.)

I have a great idea for a game, it's a side scrolling platform game. But I have no experience whatsoever in programming, what should I do? I have Flash cs4 and I'm good with animation and all the visual jazz. But I can't program actionscript for poop.

At 12/9/14 12:43 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: I have a great idea for a game, it's a side scrolling platform game. But I have no experience whatsoever in programming, what should I do? I have Flash cs4 and I'm good with animation and all the visual jazz. But I can't program actionscript for poop.

If you want to create a game for Flash then you'll need to learn ActionScript (or Haxe). There's no way around that.

Your first step will be to get a programming IDE, such as FlashDevelop, because the Flash IDE is nefficient for game development.

Then you'll have to learn the language. You can start learning AS3 here. I don't know of any solid Haxe resources (@MSGHero probably does) but I found this one through Google and it looks solid. Both AS3 and Haxe are fine languages and I say learn whichever one you want. Haxe isn't limited to Flash so if you ever want to release on a different platform than Flash you should learn Haxe.

If you run into any problems you can post in here or post a new thread and someone will no doubt be able to help.

At 12/9/14 12:50 AM, Diki wrote:

At 12/9/14 12:43 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: I have a great idea for a game, it's a side scrolling platform game. But I have no experience whatsoever in programming, what should I do? I have Flash cs4 and I'm good with animation and all the visual jazz. But I can't program actionscript for poop.

If you want to create a game for Flash then you'll need to learn ActionScript (or Haxe). There's no way around that.

Your first step will be to get a programming IDE, such as FlashDevelop, because the Flash IDE is nefficient for game development.

Then you'll have to learn the language. You can start learning AS3 here. I don't know of any solid Haxe resources (@MSGHero probably does) but I found this one through Google and it looks solid. Both AS3 and Haxe are fine languages and I say learn whichever one you want. Haxe isn't limited to Flash so if you ever want to release on a different platform than Flash you should learn Haxe.

If you run into any problems you can post in here or post a new thread and someone will no doubt be able to help.

Thank you very much for your informative response! What is programming IDE for? Can I not just program in the action panel in flash cs4? And I can program a side scrolling game in flash if I go through the whole thing you linked to me? the as3 resource?

At 12/9/14 03:18 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: What is programming IDE for? Can I not just program in the action panel in flash cs4?

An IDE is what is called an Independent Development Environment. A programming IDE is useful for game development because game development is predominantly programming, and the IDE helps you organise and debug everything that you will be doing.

You could do all of the coding in Flash CS4, yes, but I don't recommend it. Flash is an animation suite, which makes developing games with it cumbersome. Think of it like this: you could use Photoshop to create an animation if you wanted to, but that's not what it's intended for and doing so would be tedious and difficult. Coding a game in the Flash IDE is like making animations in Photoshop: not a good idea.

At 12/9/14 03:18 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: And I can program a side scrolling game in flash if I go through the whole thing you linked to me? the as3 resource?

The two resources will teach you everything you need to know to create a game, yes.

After getting up to speed with the language you will also want to get a game engine since they take care of all the boring and tedious coding required to start working on a game. Flixel and FlashPunk are two solid game engines. There is also a Haxe version of Flixel and a Haxe version of FlashPunk.

It's also especially important for you, as a beginner, to use a game engine so that you don't lose your motivation by having to create all the boilerplate code required to run a game (e.g. managing keyboard and mouse input, loading external art assets, or playing sounds and music). Once you get more experienced you could take a crack at doing that stuff yourself, but right now it's more important that you just start working on stuff and using an engine makes that quite easy.

I'm reading the as3 101 thingy, it's very uh demotiviating.. how am I supposed to remember all of those code names like event listener or where to put the fullstop or why are there brackets? Is there a resource where it will say exactly what to type for a particular type of game? like my side scrolling platform one?

At 12/9/14 08:02 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: I'm reading the as3 101 thingy, it's very uh demotiviating.. how am I supposed to remember all of those code names like event listener or where to put the fullstop or why are there brackets? Is there a resource where it will say exactly what to type for a particular type of game? like my side scrolling platform one?

That's why you use programming IDE's.

You don't need to memorize any code, all you need is to understand the concepts. You know that you need to add an "event listener" to detect keyboard or mouse input for example. You know that you need to tie this to a function.

This is the structure you need to understand. So once you know this, typing "addevent" in something like FlashDevelop will auto-complete with the correct name of the function. The first part is where you specify what kind of event it is and the second you give it your function

Most programmers frequently look up documentation as they work. So if you're not already using it as a reference, the AS3 documentation can be useful for looking up new functions to see how they work.

Ludum Dare

Also hey everyone! It's finals week but I decided to make a game a day late and kinda sorta finished something. I also realized I haven't made a game in so long.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=10760

At 12/9/14 09:05 AM, 4urentertainment wrote:

At 12/9/14 08:02 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: I'm reading the as3 101 thingy, it's very uh demotiviating.. how am I supposed to remember all of those code names like event listener or where to put the fullstop or why are there brackets? Is there a resource where it will say exactly what to type for a particular type of game? like my side scrolling platform one?

That's why you use programming IDE's.

You don't need to memorize any code, all you need is to understand the concepts. You know that you need to add an "event listener" to detect keyboard or mouse input for example. You know that you need to tie this to a function.

add event listener (What kind of event is it?, What is the function that gets called when the input is detected?)

This is the structure you need to understand. So once you know this, typing "addevent" in something like FlashDevelop will auto-complete with the correct name of the function. The first part is where you specify what kind of event it is and the second you give it your function

addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,KeyDownFunc);

Most programmers frequently look up documentation as they work. So if you're not already using it as a reference, the AS3 documentation can be useful for looking up new functions to see how they work.

Ludum Dare

Also hey everyone! It's finals week but I decided to make a game a day late and kinda sorta finished something. I also realized I haven't made a game in so long.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=10760

ah I see, thank you very much. I still feel overwhelmed with all the information hehe. You seem like an expert, what would be your estimate of me reaching my goal of making my dream game? I'm totally new to programming in AS3, I do know maths, so how much time do you think it'll take me to completing my game?

At 12/9/14 09:31 AM, bzzzooooo wrote: ah I see, thank you very much. I still feel overwhelmed with all the information hehe. You seem like an expert, what would be your estimate of me reaching my goal of making my dream game? I'm totally new to programming in AS3, I do know maths, so how much time do you think it'll take me to completing my game?

You'll realize in 3 weeks that your dream game is way too complicated for you to make right now and you should try something else for a while. You'll realize in 2 months that it's still beyond you and this takes a lot of time and practice. If you try again in a year, you might end up making it, but it'll be crap.

Also, your game idea sucks.

At 12/9/14 09:05 AM, 4urentertainment wrote: Also hey everyone! It's finals week but I decided to make a game a day late and kinda sorta finished something. I also realized I haven't made a game in so long.

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=10760

Finals week here as well, 3 exams today. I could never make a game like that, I think it's too simple for me to ever think up.

At 12/9/14 11:29 AM, MSGhero wrote:
You'll realize in 3 weeks that your dream game is way too complicated for you to make right now and you should try something else for a while. You'll realize in 2 months that it's still beyond you and this takes a lot of time and practice. If you try again in a year, you might end up making it, but it'll be crap.

But I haven't even explained what my game is, how do you know it sucks? Isn't that just prejudice?

At 12/9/14 06:40 PM, bzzzooooo wrote: But I haven't even explained what my game is, how do you know it sucks? Isn't that just prejudice?

His point was that every game idea sucks, which is explained in greater depth the article he linked, and that because of that you should focus less on coming up with "cool and/or new ideas" and instead just make games that are fun to play.

At 12/9/14 06:52 PM, Diki wrote:

At 12/9/14 06:40 PM, bzzzooooo wrote: But I haven't even explained what my game is, how do you know it sucks? Isn't that just prejudice?

His point was that every game idea sucks, which is explained in greater depth the article he linked, and that because of that you should focus less on coming up with "cool and/or new ideas" and instead just make games that are fun to play.

I see, but my game idea is one that is fun to play. I honestly wasn't aiming for a cool or flashy or innovative one, I know for sure I can't pull those games off.

At 12/9/14 06:56 PM, bzzzooooo wrote: I see, but my game idea is one that is fun to play. I honestly wasn't aiming for a cool or flashy or innovative one, I know for sure I can't pull those games off.

That's a good start. Honestly, it comes down to practice at this point. Ask ppl like hero101 who is relatively new (pretty sure I said the same thing to him). Just keep making very small not-even-games, just like a concept or something. Eventually you'll get the hang of it to the point where you're capable of making a game.

I had 3 finals today and my brain is so wrecked right now.

At 12/9/14 07:47 PM, MSGhero wrote: I had 3 finals today and my brain is so wrecked right now.

I remember when I had finals.
Now I stand at a kiosk and watch YouTube all day. Occasionally get a customer or an angry phone call from a customer.

At 12/9/14 09:04 PM, egg82 wrote: Now I stand at a kiosk and watch YouTube all day. Occasionally get a customer or an angry phone call from a customer.

I once did customer support at my previous job (even though I was just the web developer; we were short-handed that day) and one of the people viewing the webcast we setup for a client, which was a webcast presented by doctors for other doctors, complained to me that they were using "complicated doctor speak" and that he couldn't make any sense of it. I politely explained we only setup the cameras and website for the webcast to run and had nothing to do with the content being presented. His response was "Whatever. We're done." and left the support-chat.

Me and my coworker got a pretty good laugh from that one.

Too bad I didn't get to speak to him on the phone. Hearing him be super pissed off about something so petty would have bene great.

If you use openfl and want menus and UI, omg use http://haxeui.org/. It's not fully documented yet, but you specify the UI layout in an xml file. The cool part is that if you're compiling to a cpp target, you have access to live file reloading. Tweak the xml, recompile the assets with a batch command, stick in an event listener to reload the layout, boom. It only recompiles the assets, not the game, so it's pretty fast.

In jugg1 and 2, I recompiled idk how many times moving buttons around a couple px back and forth, changing layouts slightly once every 20-30 seconds. This blows my mind.

The input text fields in cpp suck, though, so actual testing is best done in flash where copy/cut/paste/select all are supported already.

At 12/10/14 02:41 AM, MSGhero wrote: If you use openfl and want menus and UI, omg use http://haxeui.org/. It's not fully documented yet, but you specify the UI layout in an xml file. The cool part is that if you're compiling to a cpp target, you have access to live file reloading. Tweak the xml, recompile the assets with a batch command, stick in an event listener to reload the layout, boom. It only recompiles the assets, not the game, so it's pretty fast.

How'd you manage to find this and mess around with it during finals week? :P

Installed (love installing with just a simple command line). This looks cool. Definitely would've help me before I made my sequence designer... Wish I knew about before. Thanks for sharing.

http://blog.bioware.com/2014/12/09/dragon-age-inquisition-patch-2-notes/

"Fixed case where game would incorrectly think the player has more than one race/class/gender"
Yeah, I was tired of people calling me a "her"

"[PC] Hair should be less shiny on lower quality settings."
Oh, thank fuck. lol. I was worried my character hadn't bathed in years.

Thoughts on DA:I for anyone that's played it?
So far I've been playing it through the (way too-often) repeated crashes and blue screens it's been giving me and even updated to beta drivers for it. Since I wouldn't do that for any game, that's about as good of an endorsement as it can get.
A tip I read that set me on the right path for it was to move out of the Hinterlands at some point. As the article put it, "you're the fucking Inquisitor, you don't need to find some farmer's lost druffallo." (which was a giant pain in the ass quest, by the way, since the damned thing refuses to go anywhere but through a level 12 rift)

Aside from the frequent bugs and crashes, it's an absolutely fantastic game with a ton of lore in it. Great for me, since I've been a giant lore nerd for the game since I played the original.

Spolier:

I always wondered what the black city looked like up-close. Mind = blown

At 12/10/14 10:15 AM, swishcheese wrote: How'd you manage to find this and mess around with it during finals week? :P

Installed (love installing with just a simple command line). This looks cool. Definitely would've help me before I made my sequence designer... Wish I knew about before. Thanks for sharing.

I made it a couple weeks ago but played around with it last night.

"This would look better centered" -> horizontalAlign=center -> run batch -> centered
"It needs to be wider" -> width=90% -> run batch -> "hmm a bit wider" -> width=93% -> run batch -> "perfect"
Maybe took 20 seconds.

At 12/10/14 11:47 AM, MSGhero wrote: "This would look better centered" -> horizontalAlign=center -> run batch -> centered
"It needs to be wider" -> width=90% -> run batch -> "hmm a bit wider" -> width=93% -> run batch -> "perfect"
Maybe took 20 seconds.

Damn nice. Better than.... It needs to be more to the right. Search through code find x position. Increase X position by 50. recompile.... It needs a little more to the right. Increase X position by 25. recompile. Damnit... to far. Decrease X position by 10. recompile. Total time: minute and a half.

At 12/10/14 01:03 PM, CodeCrunch wrote: Not to be a negative nancy (it does look neat) but have you guys considered planning your layouts more rather than trying to remedy the effects of doing things on the fly?

Even with planning things out, ideas/plans always change. It is good to have tools that can make changes quickly. I'm more of a programmer than a designer so I do not take as much care into making UI until towards the end of a project. It is not so much remedying the effects of doing things on the fly. Its that, this process IS the planning of the design which involves making changes in code. If by planning more you mean on paper, then that will take twice as long since you'll then have to recreate it on the computer. In addition, If working on a team and there like let me see what you got for the menu, and you just show them a drawing you did of a layout, there going to be like... what.... all you have is a drawing? (that is if you are the programmer, not a designer)

At 12/10/14 01:03 PM, CodeCrunch wrote: Not to be a negative nancy (it does look neat) but have you guys considered planning your layouts more rather than trying to remedy the effects of doing things on the fly?

Designers SHOULD have this covered, though sometimes they're drunk and you have to manually fix small things. The thing I'm working on is a GUI editor for dialogue in games, and I'm playing around with how I want it to look in the end.

At 12/10/14 01:03 PM, CodeCrunch wrote: Not to be a negative nancy (it does look neat) but have you guys considered planning your layouts more rather than trying to remedy the effects of doing things on the fly?

I AM the designer in most cases. And I'm a terrible designer. Which means I need to constantly re-work things until they look halfway-decent.
Meh, it works.

Apparently my girlfriend saw a doctor today and found out she needs to eat way healthier because her cholesterol is through the roof. This means I get to eat way healthier.

Farewell, Hot Pockets. I knew ye well :'(

#firstworldproblems

At 12/10/14 10:17 PM, egg82 wrote: Apparently my girlfriend saw a doctor today and found out she needs to eat way healthier because her cholesterol is through the roof. This means I get to eat way healthier.

I remember when I transitioned from regularly eating garbage food to eating mostly fruits, vegetables and whole grains (and like two litres of milk every day because I love milk). Breaking the habit of shoveling salty and/or high processed prepackaged foods was tricky at first but I'm now at the point that I could never go back to eating that way; if I were to try I would feel sick and have gut-rot the next day, which isn't surprising given how lacking in essential nutrients most unhealthy foods are.

But I still eat more food than any person I know (3200-3500 calories daily). Yeah, I eat like a horse. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

Once you eat in a way that gives you all of your essential vitamins and minerals, as well as the required amount of protein/fats/carbohydrates (you should be getting at least 100g/30g/50g of each, respectively, and more if you regularly exercise), your body will reward you by making you feel like a million bucks.

And if anyone tells you not to eat fats or carbs: tell them to blow it out their ass because they don't know what they're talking about. I've seen countless people claim that eating fats and/or carbs makes you fat, which doesn't make sense. To hammer the point home: I eat over 80g of fat and 400g of carbs every single day and I am not even remotely close to fat (I'm 5'6"/142lb/15-17% body-fat). The only thing that makes people fat is over-eating; the human body cannot defy the laws of thermodynamics; body-fat is nothing but stored energy and that energy has to come from somewhere (which would be food). Also, don't take nutrition advice from doctors (i.e. general practitioners); they're notoriously uneducated when it comes to nutrition. And especially don't take advice from a nutritionist because they know even less than GPs (any random asshole can call themself a nutritionist; it's not a protected title like 'doctor' or 'lawyer'). If you must seek out nutrition advice then see a registered dietician; accept no substitutes ('registered dietician' is a protected title).

Lyle McDonald is hands down the most knowledgeable person on the Internet when it comes to nutrition, and I owe a significant amount of what I know to him. He's a colossal douchebag but he knows his shit when it comes to nutrition. Couldn't hurt to read his articles if you and your girlfriend are looking to improve your diets; it could easily clear up any myths you may have been tricked into beleiving, such as the following myths: starvation mode exists, stoking the metabolic fire is important/exists, sugar is inherently unhealthy, fats/carbs make you fat, people can be genetically fat, eggs raise cholesterol, egg yolks are unhealthy, red meat gives you cancer, sodium is the devil's plaything, asptertame gives you cancer, or that gluten is horrible for you. Not a single one of those is true, yet many people still believe that they are.

Anyway, you might have already known some or all of that but you brought up a topic that I care a lot about so I couldn't resist. :)

P.S.
Talking about food made me hungry so I'm going to go make a big gut-buster of a meal.