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[fin]

SSS! Going crazy on making levels now. Here's a slide show of a teleporter puzzle.

 

[motorsep]

been working on my witch...

I kinda wanted her to force throw the various rocks from the air at you, like vader, it's making me have some headaches in terms of getting it right.. I'll come back to this later.

Ohh, pretty cool! I like the art and animation.

 

[Noogy]

Thanks so much guys. your encouragement really helps me keep going on this thing.

It's awesome to hear from you. I had my socks knocked off by dust and it had a lot to do with getting me to think that maybe I could make a cool looking (obviously not AS cool looking) game myself.

I think this is looking fantastic, easily one of the better Metroid-likes I've seen, can't wait to try it! And in a way you helped me make a decision on what my next game will and will not be PM me if you want details.

 

[qq more]

Think of it as a Thwomp, except it shatters into pieces when it crashes onto the ground.

 

[Chris_C]

I just released the Android version of my game, Cook, Serve, Delicious! Woo!

Here's a demo: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.vertigogaming.cookservedeliciousdrdemo

And the full version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.vertigogaming.cookservedeliciousdrd

Working with Android has been interesting. I'll have to post about my experiences later.

You made Cook, Serve, Delicious? That's awesome! I saw that Quick Looked on Giant Bomb. I'm not generally into that genre but it looked like a lot of fun and had tons of character.

 

[missile]

Thanks! It's awesome to know you're designing this for all the right reasons. Getting that true "feel" hinges on accurate simulation of every relevant force, and you seem to have a clear vision of what you want to simulate and a realistic sense of the limitations within which you'll have to work. The description of your Stage 2 wind model doesn't sound too far from a real-time CFD model--I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts and approach to that when you get to it.

If you would knew what a physics engine I'm really after (another one than
the one I'm currently building), you would start to cry! This sort of a next-
gen physics engine will be way more sophisticated than most of things we see
today in video games. It is the real deal so to speak, simulating objects by
breaking their - material volume - into finite elements simulating real
stress, shear, material properties etc. Hence, real volumetric deformations,
and no matter whether the volume consist of some matter, fluid, or gas. So we
would be able to compute structure deformation/breaking/buckling, fluids,
fluid-structure interaction, gaseous phenomena, etc. All of this would rely on
the same mathematical principles. However, computational requirements will be
very demanding. I think we are approximately one console generation away from
making such kind of physics a reality. But I think we can even have it in part
for the coming next-generation of console like PS4 and XB1 while keeping the
world within bounds. 8 cores and 176GB/s (PS4) is quite a lot of resources!
Esp. the memory bandwidth is the real kicker for making said simulations a
reality, since for such kind of simulations there will be a huge amount of
data that needs to be send to the equation solvers as fast as possible. I
still can't believe that we indeed have 176GB/s on the PS4. Holy shit!

I would pretty much be interested in doing all of the things said above, but
it's hard doing so on all temporal and financial limits I have. And I think
it's very unlikely getting enough bakers to bake such an engine via
kickstarters. What you think? Hence, for the time being, am bounded by rigid
bodies and friends. Which isn't so easy to say either given all the
constrains, but result will come out faster. And so I'm here pimping rigid
body physics to my liking and see how far I can go with it, building some cool
games and making some money to even further improve on the stuff mentioned
above.

As you have clearly recognized, stage 2 requires a fluid simulator, which
leads us straight into CFD. Well, I think I can program a 3d fluid simulator
for games. I think it would work out quite well since for simulating wind we
can use large grid cells (assuming that small objects won't influences the
motion of the wind) which would lessen the computational burden quite a lot.

Stage 2 is actually a preparation step for another stage, stage 3. However,
this is stuff for the Real Deal (seems I have found a name! xD). I wrote; "for
the time being" (last post). Unfortunately, axis-aligned structured meshes
aren't able to approximate curved objects as good as unstructured meshes can.
So the deal is to reformulate the Navier-Stokes equation on unstructured
meshes, which clearly is pretty much advanced stuff and falls right into the
next-gen stuff I was indicating above. This is something I can't do yet,
because I'm pretty much limited in time and money. That's the reason why I'm
doing it in an incremental fashion. And each increment needs to spit out some
games, since otherwise it won't be possible to advance on the engine.

... I originally wanted to develop a bird flight sim for my first project. However, after familiarizing myself with Unity and the way the PhysX engine handles rigid bodies, I felt my limited programming experience would tempt me to rely on writing very basic AOA/drag/lift functions to arrive at the forces I desired. My simulation of wind was going to consist of a few simple "multiplier" variables plugged into those functions, the values of which would change based on the bird's velocity/trajectory versus the local rotation of its lifting planes versus a predetermined global wind direction/magnitude. Kindergarten stuff compared to the realistic wind dynamics you want to achieve... and I knew my basic approach might not produce the most accurate feeling of flight, so I dropped my sights to the BMX sim... so it's easy to see why I'm interested in what you're doing. Keep it up!

That bird flight sim sound pretty interesting. Perhaps you can reignite it
after your BMX stuff is done. Perhaps we can make sort of a deal and you can
use my wind simulator than. :+

 

[Toma]

Currently creating the august Indie games thread. If you have anything recently released or in progress, post it over here so I can possibly to the next OP:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=608986

 

[motorsep]

I don't really have much new to show, as we are still trying to tackle the tech, but I have been working on a new DLC for Steel Storm:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=163788283

Another small indie team has been working on multiplayer spin-off in MOBA flavor of Steel Storm:

http://www.twitch.tv/zratchet/c/2575193

And finally, Steel Storm 2 dev videos (still using idTech 4, but soon will upload vids using Doom 3 BFG engine):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL83EF655802BAA9F5&feature=mh_lolz

 

[Duderino]

Just some advice for the aspiring 3D artists and animators reading this thread, do yourself a favor and learn how to script/program. If you're a Maya user, at the very least pick up Python (skip Mel).

If ever in the future I find myself conducting an interview or reviewing an applicant, it will be high on my list of skills to look for. You are a far greater asset to any team when you can write code to troubleshoot your own work and help others.

 

[motorsep]

Just some advice for the aspiring 3D artists and animators reading this thread, do yourself a favor and learn how to script/program. If you're a Maya user, at the very least pick up Python (skip Mel).

If ever in the future I find myself conducting an interview or reviewing an applicant, it will be high on my list of skills to look for. You are a far greater asset to any team when you can write code to troubleshoot your own work and help others.

Being an artist and animator myself, I do see a great benefit of learning Python. Helps a ton when one needs to get assets out of 3D app to the game. Also helps with automation tasks.

However, if aspiring artist / animators what to on top of the food chain, they should learn their trade first. When they achieve quality they are satisfied with, then perhaps they should branch out. I constantly find myself unable to advance in art as fast as I would like to due to the fact that being indie is tough and requires wearing too many hats at time. Regardless of the industry, one should have at least one skill that (s)he excels at. That's my IMO

Also, there is only so much time one can dedicated per day to a chosen discipline. So while you are young folks, use your free time wisely - it seems that past ~25 - 30 free time becomes scarce, almost like a rare find in RPG games

 

[Blizzard]

One side note about Python in particular, if anyone happens to be using Blender, it uses Python as its native scripting language, so you might be able to do some crazy stuff with it.

For other modeling tools, it might be more of a benefit just in terms of being more familiar with the concept of a scripting languages or tools, so you can use things like Kismet.

 

[hodgy100]

Hello IndieGAF!

Having just finished a years work placement in industry and getting back home awaiting for my final year on uni, and a friend having finished their computing course. We have started on a small android game project, coding most of it from scratch, as it doesn't seem to difficult to set up a simple engine in android, only thing is struggling to wrestle box2d into it and trying to get my head around screen space and world space so the physics and rendering match up. Engine coding is all pretty new for me really, as I have only either made small programs or worked on large pre-existing code-bases in the past. but I'm sure I'll get my hear around it.

still I'm hoping to be able to post progress in here along with the rest of you guys and of course I will totally be accepting suggestions and constructive criticism.

 

[Duderino]

Streaming again tonight, I'll be working/talking about the following:

- Going over the animation transfer issues we ran into last stream.
- Playing the game again, hopefully this time hopefully with less streaming lag.
- Having a little conversation about the Phil Fish, Marcus Beer ordeal from an indie developer perspective.
- Talking a little about my recent thoughts in this thread about the value of scripting as 3D artist/animator before I more formally reply here.

Thanks again to Clash Tournaments for hosting:

(Click Here to Watch)

 

[chubigans]

You made Cook, Serve, Delicious? That's awesome! I saw that Quick Looked on Giant Bomb. I'm not generally into that genre but it looked like a lot of fun and had tons of character.

Thanks! I hope you give it a try, there's a demo for pretty much every platform its on.

Also, I just got my first one star review in the Google Play store:

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[missile]

... only thing is struggling to wrestle box2d into it ...

Can you explain what makes you struggling within this regard?

SSS! ...

Can you post an animation?


@Funky Functionality
Your post and some rethinking on my assumptions brought me to the conclusion
to skip stage 1 and go straight to stage 2. For one, once I can compute a wind
field, I can perhaps compute a steady-state (stationary) wind field and use
this as a pre-computed wind field on smaller hardware. This way I can also
have pleasing wind fields on lower spec hardware (am still interested in
making a 3DS game as well). Another option is to update the wind field every
hour or so. This frees me from the hassle of composing a wind field out of
basic ones. Since the problem with this approach would be that it would be
quite difficult to compose some vector fields resampling convective flow due
to, for example, heading. However, with a steady-state computed solution on
the grid I would be able to include such flows. For example, parts of the
landscape (esp. broad fields) can be assigned a heating characteristic such
that those parts would induce a flow of the air above them. If the force isn't
too large (can be controlled), it is very likely that the wind field will turn
into steady state after some time has past, delivering a static but yet
sophisticated wind field useful for the game at hand with no further cost
(just interpolation). For sure, everything can be done in realtime if the
hardware is powerful enough. That way, the wind field can be computed anew
each frame. Hence, forces can be applied at each instance in time. For
example, depending on the angle to the sun and some assign vegetation
properties, parts of the landscape can be heated much more than others,
producing what ... thermal convection! Heh?

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

Man, Unity is so easy to use. 2d toolkit is quite nice too.

 

[Tiu Neo]

I'm doing an postgrad course on Game Development, and last saturday was the last class of the first module. Until now, all we made was small prototypes and parts of games. The last test was making a 2D game.

So, after a (really busy) month, me and a friend finally finished our first proof of concept for a game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soULREo0g8A

The game uses only open or free art, since we're both programmers, but we are really proud of it. We used Monogame and C#, and tested the game on Windows and Ouya. It'll probably run on Linux and Mac too, but we didn't have time and resources to test that yet.

It's a top-down adventure game, based on older Zelda games, but with totally free exploration and dual-stick controls + attack button, for the weapons. Each weapon has a different mechanic: The sword works either with the stick (pointing your sword to the enemy if you use the attack stick, attacking to the front if you use the button), the bow uses the stick for aim and the button to shoot, the boomerang must be thrown with the button, but can be controlled with the right stick, and so on.

 

[razu]

Yo yo yo!

I've just switched Chopper Mike back to paid on iOS. The game has now been downloaded around 77,000 times on iOS.

I'll report back in a few weeks with whether sales are any different than before. I'm imagining they'll be pretty close to zero again!


In other news, my boy's skate game is coming along. Nothing to show yet, but it's looking like it'll be good fun

 

[Duderino]

Being an artist and animator myself, I do see a great benefit of learning Python. Helps a ton when one needs to get assets out of 3D app to the game. Also helps with automation tasks.

However, if aspiring artist / animators what to on top of the food chain, they should learn their trade first. When they achieve quality they are satisfied with, then perhaps they should branch out. I constantly find myself unable to advance in art as fast as I would like to due to the fact that being indie is tough and requires wearing too many hats at time. Regardless of the industry, one should have at least one skill that (s)he excels at. That's my IMO

Also, there is only so much time one can dedicated per day to a chosen discipline. So while you are young folks, use your free time wisely - it seems that past ~25 - 30 free time becomes scarce, almost like a rare find in RPG games

Being an expert in your primary craft is very important, that said with today's job market and large pool of unemployed talent, I do believe it's becoming increasingly beneficial to differentiate yourself with additional skills that are harder to find and less likely to be outsourced. Having even just a basic knowledge of scripting for example can place you in a higher bracket of applicants. Everyone has their own path so this does not apply to all, but it is worth considering the roads less traveled in a crowded industry.

As you mentioned, going indie does require wearing more hats. It can get in the way of progress in one specific area, but it also can fast track your skills in others. For example, I've been able to increase my shader programming knowledge at an accelerated rate compared to my time working at a studio. Again, that may not be the case for everyone, but joining/starting an indie project with a few growth goals in mind can keep your personal progression moving forward.

One side note about Python in particular, if anyone happens to be using Blender, it uses Python as its native scripting language, so you might be able to do some crazy stuff with it.

For other modeling tools, it might be more of a benefit just in terms of being more familiar with the concept of a scripting languages or tools, so you can use things like Kismet.

That is true, though I imagine they mostly just share the syntax in common. I actually wouldn't be surprised if python was better integrated with blender.

As you also mentioned, from UDK to Unity, having that scripting background does comes in handy. I've been putting it good use in Unity.

 

[Ashodin]

Today should be hooking the rest of the letters up to the sprite font, then it's more UI work and getting an actual battle system going. WOO!

 

[motorsep]

Yep. In this market it's only beneficial to learn new skills.

One thing I've learned is that nowadays C++ programmer are _scarce_ and C++ / OpenGL / Cg programmers are almost impossible to find. I wish to get into those disciplines, but that's something a way over my head right now

What shader programming have you been learning? GLSL or Cg? If Cg, would you mind sharing educational resources you've been using? Cg is something I need to learn too.

Being an expert in your primary craft is very important, that said with today's job market and large pool of unemployed talent, I do believe it's becoming increasingly beneficial to differentiate yourself with additional skills that are harder to find and less likely to be outsourced. Having even just a basic knowledge of scripting for example can place you in a higher bracket of applicants. Everyone has their own path so this does not apply to all, but it is worth considering the roads less traveled in a crowded industry.

As you mentioned, going indie does require wearing more hats. It can get in the way of progress in one specific area, but it also can fast track your skills in others. For example, I've been able to increase my shader programming knowledge at an accelerated rate compared to my time working at a studio. Again, that may not be the case for everyone, but joining/starting an indie project with a few growth goals in mind can keep your personal progression moving forward.

 

[fin]

Can you post an animation?

Here's the whole level:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcSnqb2MEhI

Plug your ears though, sound is still early and ugly.

 

[fr3shme4t]

Yep. In this market it's only beneficial to learn new skills.

One thing I've learned is that nowadays C++ programmer are _scarce_ and C++ / OpenGL / Cg programmers are almost impossible to find. I wish to get into those disciplines, but that's something a way over my head right now

What shader programming have you been learning? GLSL or Cg? If Cg, would you mind sharing educational resources you've been using? Cg is something I need to learn too.

Cg's old news, don't wast time learning it. Learn GLSL or HLSL.

Really, they're pretty much all the same in the end, just some small syntax differences and such. It's the GPU pipeline and related concepts you need, learning any shader language will teach you those concepts.

 

[Duderino]

Yep. In this market it's only beneficial to learn new skills.

One thing I've learned is that nowadays C++ programmer are _scarce_ and C++ / OpenGL / Cg programmers are almost impossible to find. I wish to get into those disciplines, but that's something a way over my head right now

What shader programming have you been learning? GLSL or Cg? If Cg, would you mind sharing educational resources you've been using? Cg is something I need to learn too.

At the moment I've mostly been using Unity's own custom shader language. The code you write eventually does get compiled to either CG or GLSL, but many of the common functions are stored separately to simplify the shader writing process and handle universal engine tasks like shadows/lightmaps/etc independently of what the user writes. It's not terribly different from what UDK does with their material editor, only from a coding standpoint instead of as a node editor.

All the general concepts absolutely apply though. Aside from the Unity documentation and forums, I mostly just google what I want to implement and translate it back into Unity's shading structure. I was able to do that with the following:

• Cook Torrance Specular
• Energy conservation
• Spherical Harmonics (for ambient lighting term)
• Anisotropic highlights
• BRDF shading

I typically use polynomial approximations in the place of more expensive operations where I can as well. Some of this can get a bit complex though, so I'd recommend starting with learning the basic principles and simpler concepts first.

 

[motorsep]

Cg's old news, don't wast time learning it. Learn GLSL or HLSL.

Really, they're pretty much all the same in the end, just some small syntax differences and such. It's the GPU pipeline and related concepts you need, learning any shader language will teach you those concepts.

I need Cg for my pipeline (it ends up being automatically compiled into GLSL / HLSL). Hopefully the tech we are fixing up now will serve us a solid platform for several future projects, so learning Cg would be a priority over GLSL.

 

[motorsep]

At the moment I've mostly been using Unity's own custom shader language.

Oh, I don't use Unity so I didn't know Unity has its own stuff for shaders. Sounds kinda counterproductive to learn yet another shading language :/ (unless Unity's is a way easier that Cg or GLSL )

 

[Duderino]

Oh, I don't use Unity so I didn't know Unity has its own stuff for shaders. Sounds kinda counterproductive to learn yet another shading language :/ (unless Unity's is a way easier that Cg or GLSL )

It is actually very similar to Cg or HLSL, just streamlined to work with the features of the engine, reduce some of the complexity, and automate porting the code to multiple platforms. So yeah, it is easier and has some notable benefits.

Probably not the best place to start for those looking to build a universal or lower-level shader programing knowledge, but for Unity users it's a very helpful addition to the engine.

 

[missile]

A few hours to go an I do have an Oculus Rift for development!!! It's already
in Vienna somewhere in a post office.

---
Edit: And there it is!


I'm going to integrate the Rift as soon as possible into all of my games/
physics stuff. But before I have to complete another thing; am for the life of
me want to approximate the center of pressure (COP) while not having the
pressure distribution at all, which would require an entire fluid simulation
to be carried out. The center of pressure can be imagined as the point where
the aerodynamic forces (drag and lift) act upon, similar to the center of mass
(COM) with respect to the gravity force. Since COM != COP (usually), we get
a momentum arm and as such a torque. Some of you may know that I'm going to
implement lift for a rocket. This lifting force in conjunction with the drag
force should start to turn the rocket while it is at an angle to the flight
path. If the rocket is at an angle caused for example be a wind disturbance,
thruster instabilities etc., and if the COP is below the COM, then rocket
should return back into the flight path again. But if the COP lies above the
COM, then the rocket should turn over while going out of control. This subtle
feature (but yet very far reaching one) is something I want my engine to be
able simulated as well, i.e. making the rocket turn solely by aerodynamic
forces. That's way different from manually exerting a torque force on the
rocket -- by tilting the nozzle for example --- as one can see in some of
my animations shown in previous posts.
---

Here's the whole level:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcSnqb2MEhI ...

Way cool! Seems you will have a tough job in generating good levels, do you?
It seems that each puzzle needs to be touched by hand, or can you use some
sort of algorithmically generated puzzle?

 

[cbox]

This is what happens when you unlock dev mode when playing with 3 of your friends, absolute chaos.

 

[missile]

This is what happens when you unlock dev mode when playing with 3 of your friends, absolute chaos.

Aww! But your game looks best in motion!

 

[Warrozo]

So we've just put Flipper out onto Mac, Windows, Linux and the web - Could I get some feedback, preferably on the "Chaser" mode as its new and we haven't experimented with it on people yet.

http://www.justapixel.co.uk/flipper/

 

[lordfroakie]

It's official, time to buy construct 2:

We've just had confirmation from Nintendo that we're now approved for Wii U software development! We'll be looking at adding a Wii U exporter to Construct 2!

 

[Jobbs]

It's official, time to buy construct 2:

holy fuck. someone teach me how to use C2, quick.

 

[Santini]

Hey indie game dev GAF!

This is my first post here, but I've lurked about the thread since subscribing to it months ago. Thanks for being a source of inspiration, as well as providing all of the handy links in the first posts that helped me out when I was starting.

I'm wrapping up my first game and wanted to share a bit of the experience.

Like some in this thread, before starting out I had no programming experience. I did have game design experience, but I didn't consider myself a coder by any means.

Depending on your engine of choice, there is a wealth of written tutorials, YouTube videos, and communities out there that can help you get started. As a few have suggested here and elsewhere, I built Pong, among other smaller projects, to get my head wrapped around basic concepts.

I'm still very much learning, but ultimately I've gone from practically no experience coding/scripting to completing my own game in about 6 months' time.

My primary goal was to simply make a game from scratch and finish it. Anything else that happens after release I consider icing on the cake.

Like many, I have big, grand game concepts, but I felt that starting out with something on a smaller scale would be more beneficial to me in the long run. If anything, I would learn what worked and what didn't, and could take that knowledge into future projects.

I used Unity 3.5.x, with no commercial plugins; I picked up some must-haves during their Summer Daily Deals promotion, but the project was too far in for me to start switching things around at the last minute. Still, important lesson learned: if you can afford it, definitely get the tools that will save you time and trouble, though you can still learn plenty by dealing with those issues.

I'm a fan of the Lovecraft Mythos and in various projects I've done in the past, this has popped up somewhere in the game design. With that in mind, I took the concept of Cthulhu, his cult of followers and their insane devotion, and made it into a dark, physics-based puzzle game.

What's actually more challenging in my mind is not the coding or creation part, but what you have to do once you finish making the game: QA, submission (Apple, in this case), and marketing. I've heard both good and bad from friends who have gone this route and fully understand what they've been through.

I also decided to forego the F2P/freemium/P2W route. I grew up playing games that were fun, complete, challenging packages and wanted to offer the same (well, the SF2 Turbo SNES DLC was pricey at $60, but still...).

Anyhow, thanks again for being there, indieGAF. I hope to share more experiences and continue to read more about yours!

 

[lordfroakie]

holy fuck. someone teach me how to use C2, quick.

There is a free version, but it has limited features.

 

[Ashodin]

It's official, time to buy construct 2:

HNNNGH apexicon would be perfect for Wii U!

 

[Jobbs]

Hey guys. I bring two items of business today.

First:

The Ghost Song Kickstarter will go live on Monday, August 5th. If you're interested in the project, you can help me by just passing the word on, and by retweeting this.

Ghost Song began as a flash game, but I no longer want to release it as a flash game. I want to rebuild it in unity and redo all the art in high res - with more and better art and everything more awesomer. That's what the KS is for. I need to bring on a dedicated programmer.

If that was too self promotiony then I'm really really really sorry. But I feel like I've had a months-long arc here in this thread and as such it may be okay.

Second:

The many doors of Ghost Song. Because -- What's a game without lots of cool doors?

 

[Limanima]

Yo yo yo!

I've just switched Chopper Mike back to paid on iOS. The game has now been downloaded around 77,000 times on iOS.

I'll report back in a few weeks with whether sales are any different than before. I'm imagining they'll be pretty close to zero again!


In other news, my boy's skate game is coming along. Nothing to show yet, but it's looking like it'll be good fun

Ho wow. 77k times? I'll have to put Snails on iOS...

 

[Chaos]

I noticed today that there is a beginner C# Game Programming course starting in September on Coursera if anyone wants to sign up -

https://www.coursera.org/course/gameprogramming

 

[Servbot24]

I noticed today that there is a beginner C# Game Programming course starting in September on Coursera if anyone wants to sign up -

https://www.coursera.org/course/gameprogramming

Oh, cool, I may do that. Even though I'm the artist on the project, my current game is using C# and it'd be nice to have a better idea what's going on there.

 

[LSauchelli]

Nice to see your plot unfold Jobbs. Can't wait for monday.

 

[DTU]

Nice to see your plot unfold Jobbs. Can't wait for monday.

Same here. I've honestly never given to a Kickstarter, but this will be my first. Good luck, Jobbs.

 

[cbox]

Retweeted, all the best Jobbs!

 

[Ranger X]

Also, I just got my first one star review in the Google Play store:

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Well, at least the retardation there makes it almost worth it.

 

[zero shift]

I'm trying to make a platformer in Gamemaker and I don't know how to make it so that my character can't walkthrough walls. Help!

 

[MrGerbils]

I noticed today that there is a beginner C# Game Programming course starting in September on Coursera if anyone wants to sign up -

https://www.coursera.org/course/gameprogramming

Been wanting to pick up some C# for use in Unity. Thanks for posting this!

 

[omg_mjd]

Been wanting to pick up some C# for use in Unity. Thanks for posting this!

This (free) book helped me a lot when I was learning C#. It's well-written, complete and just the right length (200 pages) so it's possible to finish in a few days:

C# Yellow Book by Rob Miles

 

[Funky Functionality]

@Funky Functionality
Your post and some rethinking on my assumptions brought me...
...
...producing what ... thermal convection! Heh?

Dude, yes! You in turn got me thinking more about the way I was going to apply my predetermined wind direction/force multipliers to the bird in Unity. The original plan was to use area triggers as my own wind zones, such that when the bird is within its bounds, my basic aerodynamic functions would be influenced by whatever force multipliers I choose for that zone. I was going to manually arrange a number of zones with varying magnitudes so as to "fade" the wind forces when flying between no-, low-, or high-wind zones.

I never actually considered it until reading those brief thoughts on convection modeling, but I'm positive I could arrange my wind zones as cubes in a 3D grid, write some functions allowing each zone's wind force/direction values to be influenced by a collective sampling of the force/direction values of the 6 (at most) directly adjacent zones, calculate that influence on a fixed timestep, staggering the calculation between groups of non-adjacent zones (i.e. if it were a 2D grid like a chess board, calculate only white zones, then only black zones, then only white, and so forth), play with methods of handling recursive influence for dampening purposes... essentially creating a very basic fluid model and scale the "resolution" of the 3D grid to the target hardware. Could specify certain zones as "wind sources" by not allowing their force/direction values to be influenced by adjacent zones. I also think it'd be fairly easy to create a few zones representing primitive solids by having them place limits on the wind direction values (within specified ranges) for any adjacent, non-static wind zones. Layer those "solid" zones roughly within corresponding world geometry so that wind zones surrounding a large hill or building, for instance, would be forced to flow around it accordingly.

Of course, using heat as a universal upwards force modifier would be great, and I could denote "heat source" zones or groups thereof and base their heat values on any number of calculations like the one you outlined above.

I'm definitely going to have to come back to this when I'm done playing with bicycles and see if I can make it work.

 

[MaritalWheat]

Construct 2 is getting Wii U support? Lol what the...

Also, if anyone is randomly trying to learn C++, I'll throw out some resources that have actually been decent for me in my recent quest to do just that:

Started with straight reading here: http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/introduction/
And then am working through this "pong in C++" tutorial here (which uses the SFML framework): http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Game-From-Scratch-CPP-Edition.aspx

I'm excited to finish up the tutorial and really get my hands dirty with SMFL for some quick and dirty C++ learning projects on the side. Thought I'd share those two resources - word of warning, your mileage may vary if you have no programming experience. Even with plenty, I still feel like a baby using C++ :/

 

[razu]

Ho wow. 77k times? I'll have to put Snails on iOS...

Uh, yeah, most of which were free!

But the 'takeaways' from this are:

1) Going from a high price to a lower price triggers purchases, for £0 advertising.
2) Going from paid to free triggers LOTS of downloads, for £0 advertising.

Still not got 'sales' data on the switch back to paid. I'm sure it'll be sub-double figures though!