clyde

Question: Would it be irresponsible of me to write a magical realism short-story about a home-owner who decides to smoke ceiling-mold and enters a Narnia-like? I can be a pretty compelling author and I don't want anyone to poison themselves because I demonstrated my skillz.

I made it through the entire thread! I had many thoughts as I spent the last two hours enjoying what this community has to offer. I've forgotten many of them and most of them were developed and stated with more craftsmanship than I would have been able to muster. Things I remember wanting to say that didn't get said: -In the discussion of referential humor bein a secret handshake for certain groups. It eventually turned into a discussion of how saying something is a must-see is an attempt to get cool-points. I suffer from this tendency and though I want all the cool points I can get, I think of my desire to make a viewing of Daguerrotypes mandatory is motivated more by the fact that I really like that movie and I really appreciate y'alls viewpoints and so I want to mix those ingredients. I imagine that it's the same for many people who chose the media they consume through their particular social media sphere. It's like when you really like two people so you want them to meet; it rarely works out though. Other thing: - I don't remember what the other thing was. I'll edit the post if I remember. Wowza this thread was so great. If I ever need to write good characters and their views on media-responsibility, I'm going to come here and do studies. I had been wanting to have discussion about both satire and the Suey Park thing, little did I know that it was happening a few threads over. How embarassing. Edit: I remembered the other thing. I was going to say that before I read this thread I was polarized in how I allocated accountability for a mediums message (at varying poles). I like the ideas espoused here that accountability can be shared. I find it easier to do when the externalities are boons rather than traumas. For instance, I don't think that episode 152 is solely responsible for the great book I just read, but it wouldn't have been written without it.

Now that i think about my plan, I suppose everyone would be stealing all the plastic they can find and selling it.

The only problem I've had with that is not having matched capitalization or spelling between the class name in the actual script and the script's file name in the project-area in Unity's main screen. They have to be exactly the same.

It looks great, the vim with which you hit that space-bar shows that you put some effort into it Pro-tip, if you don't like doing something, don't do as good of a job as you've done here because people will want you to do it for them too. Would figuring out how to do a procedurally generated background be more fun than what you've got in mind? I draw a lot of inspiration from my desire to be lazy.

I just looked at page 9 of this thread. I started using Unity about 10 weeks ago. My previous programming knowledge was a little bit of Python from Code Academy and trying to use Ren'Py. Dosed, I was where you are now in early February; it's now two months later and I am already making shitty games. If you work on learning some Unity every week, you will be able to make shitty games too.

Did you write a script for the ability to exit the game Jason Bakker? I tried making a PC build for the first time and had just assumed that pressing "esc" would close the window or something. Your game seems to do that.

I listen to Animal Collective and Panda Bear, but I didn't know Avey Tare had another band. Sweet.

I haven't watched those micro-talks and I hadn't read the other impressions posted in here before I recorded this. I know that's going to be hard to believe, given that my experiences felt very similar. My eyebrow didn't raise like Murdoc's, but I got nervous like when someone on the street asks me for money, due to what Murdoc explicated.

I have decided that I despise satire. I don't like it. At best it's a prank with a stooge, at worst it's a scarecrow argument mixed with a metaphorical misrepresentation of the circumstance. Either way, it just looks like someone saying "You are fucking pathetic!" and then following up with "I'm kidding! Can't you take a joke?"

Another option is to just buy one pair of new pants every two months or so. If you slowly enter the new ones into rotation, you won't go from comfort every day to complete discomfort.

It is my personal belief that disposal of trash should be paid for by the companies that produce it. I don't know how it's done in other states, but people are charged a deposit when the but a car-battery here and you can take a car-battery to a store and get the deposit back for it. I don't see car-batteries lying around. On the Big Island, you never saw bottles or cans in the trash or littering the place because people were getting their deposits back. I don't see any good reason that there shouldn't be a plastic deposit when you buy packaged goods and have people be able to sell plastic back by the kilo.

I look forward to playing it when I get home. I'll video-capture it and try to be vocal so you can see my initial impressions good and bad.

One thing I really like about Chime is that the game appears to be one thing to novices and then transforms as you increase in skill. The first time I played, I felt that I was basically cheating at Tetris. You can rotate and place blocks any where on the grid, slightly altering the music when doing so. It appeared to be more of a toy than a game because it lacked any challenge. I've shown the game to people that don't play many games and they see it in a similar way. But after a few games, a typical reaction is to try and fill the entire grid before the timer runs out. This doesn't appear to be difficult as blocks can overlap former matches and there is plenty of time to do this. I've seen both novice-gamers and obsessives have this same reaction; but the novices look at the challenge as approachable and the obsessives see it as a simple obstacle on their way to an actual challenge. Once the grid is filled, there is an additional grid to be filled afterward and the transition between the two grids goes to effort to point out that you have earned more time, but noticably less than you had in the first level. This is standard fare for us, but a comfortable familiarity and maintained approachability for new players. But when that second level loads, Something caught my eye; the score multiplier (which I hadn't given any attention to) rolled over into the second level. Even though this is an explicit design-choice, the greedy, fraudulent portion of my mind experienced heightened activity to what I saw as a potential exploit. Eventually you run out of time and then you start over with your new knowledge. If after that first match, the player comes close to finishing a second or third grid, they may make it their goal to complete that near-achievement. For me, I decided to try and get the highest multiplier possible so it would carry over to the next grid and I would be able to clean up. This is where the true challenge of Chime reveals itself. To me, the brilliance of the design is to have the challenge available, but not promote it explicitly. If they had done so, the personal bests of novices would feel inadequate. Instead, once the challenging portion of the game is discovered, knowledge of it triples your score, skill in it increases your score by multitudes. I see Chime as a game that encourages flow for a variety of skill levels and game-literacies.

Progress report for Week #9 What were my goals for the week? Which of my goals did I accomplish? -I made a musical toy. Accomplished! -I wrote a mid-progress report on Wednesday and a memoir of desperation of Friday. Accomplished! -The goal (as discussed in Week#7 and #8's reports) was kind of to make a complete game and I don't feel that I did that, but I have a lot to say about that aspect of the goal. somewhat Accomplished! What happened? -There were highs; there were lows. It was a really great objective and I learned a ton of stuff very quickly. Much of what I learned was how much I did not know. So everything I did up into Wednesday, I had done before, just not necessarily to the same technical level. But when the refinement phase came, I really had no experience to fall back upon. I didn't think that it would be all that different from phase 1, but it was. I'm used to just adding cool stuff and adding more cool stuff, I never have really deflated the extrapolation to try and make it more cohesive. I had a hard time accepting that the game would be limited, and once I did accept that, I had a hard time determining what was polish and what was adding features. Once Capt. Hastings played the build and spoke her mind, everything started to get prioritized effectively. I had spent a lot of time considering unifying themes that I could apply, content that would allow discovery, and objectives that would engage the player; but I only had a week. The refinement phase became a matter of making it so the controls were intuitive, the game was not frustrating, and the most basic things that I was trying to express were potentially in there. This meant that all the annoyances (such as not being able to scale a ball immediately upon instantiating it) had to be fixed. It also meant that the stuff I was putting off because I thought implementation would be simple, should be done immediately. Capt. Hastings pointed out how absurd it was that I had only put in three dud-like sounds when interesting sounds was such an essential part of the game toy. Once she mentioned that it would be more enjoyable to tune the game with better sounds, I realized that low-hanging fruit should be picked first, not last. It didn't even make sense that I did that. Why would I do that? This was the theme of the last half of the week, realizing that I had all these strange defaults that were not very useful toward the purpose of finishing a game. I didn't actually finish it, but the musical ball toy is far more likely to get finished because I had to reel the potential back in before I extrapolated the potential so far that I couldn't tie it back together. It was hard enough to do that in the latter half of the week; thinking of doing it after a few weeks gives me a "whew, that was close" kind of relief. Check this screenshot of the toy out: If you happened to see the screenshot from Wednesday, you may notice that the performance in this one has more than doubled. Let me tell you how this happened. On Friday, I started erasing code because I love erasing code. When I'm scripting, I'm just trying to figure out how to make something happen and I end up doing it in very inefficient ways. When I come back to it and start erasing (actually, a better practice would be to comment the code at this stage, because it would have a similar effect) I see all this stuff that doesn't do anything and a bunch of processes that take the long-route. I'll just be saying to myself "Why would I do this the hard way?" The answer is that I was just trying to do it any way. Coming back and cleaning it up is essential. One big thing I noticed (maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I remember (btw, the code is in a previous update if you want to compare it to the finished code I'm about to post)) was that I was running things in the Update() without conditionals. When I went back in, I started trying to make nearly everything in the Update() start with an if. This led me to create many bools. Another thing I changed a lot of was that I had the scripts talking to each other a ton. But when I went back in, I could see what was accessing what and I was able to move those into the same scripts or make new bools that were independent of other scripts. I really learned a lot about scripting this week. The way I would phrase the jist of what I grokked was that I started asking myself "What does this object need to do?", separating the tasks, and then writing a separate script for each task (when they didn't share variables). I was startled with the boost in performance. Here is the "finished" toy. PitchIsScale Here are the scripts, I commented a few of them really clearly so if you are learning C# or Unity, this may be really useful to you. I tried to explain even the most simple things. I got tired though and I didn't do them all. If you want me to do another or offer additional explanation, just ask. You can use this script for fulfilling the ambitions of yourselves and your loved ones. What are my goals for week #10? -Rest and enjoy my musical ball toy/game.

I think we should start a play-testing thread. Once I put up my game, it would be useful and interesting to see how easy it is for others to play the game. It seems that we have a reasonable quantity of forum-users who are prepared to record their play-throughs of Spelunky and Titanfall. We also have a lot of people who want to participate in game-development without the ability to make the time-commitment required to learn how to use a game-engine. A play-test thread where we put our builds up, ask for reactions, and encourage video-recordings of first times playing could be really illuminating.Also, when I was looking through Blender tutorials, there was one where all the key-presses and mouse-clicks were logged at the bottom of the screen during the video-capture. That would be really nice to have when ither people try to play our games. Does anyone know what software does that? I'm having a hard time finding it.

I have a lot if ideas for games and I get more as I try to make them. While working on this musical ball-game for instance, I've already seen three different directions it could go with more development, all good. Then as Capt. Hastings and I were trying to figure out how to make it sound more like music, we had another great idea. Besides that, I have lists of ideas I'm excited about. My point is that ideas for games are springing up faster than I could possibly make them, and by the time I get to the point where I can make one, I have a bunch of others I'd rather make. So, I'm starting to think of my long-term goal more as just gaining the ability to make games. It would be cool if I could make a game for someone's birthday within a day or two ya know? As far as over shooting goes, what has really helped me is playing lots of amateur-games on freeindiegam.es When I dream of making a simulation of genetic algorithm populations that form their own economies and technologies, I get frustrated with my inability to make something simple happen. My new version of over shooting is just being able to complete a simple idea to its potential.

Wow. The haggling part is really interesting to me.

The way I'm learning C# is just watching these videos so that I know concepts exist and then going back to them over and over again when I am trying to do something that is related. I can only absorb the information once I'm ready for it, and I'm sure there is a more efficient way to learn C#. I'll get an idea of something I want to happen and I'll just try writing the script, fixing the errors as they come up and using Debug.Log("this happened") a lot. I also take the time to look through the predictive text options that MonoDevelop provides as I'm typing stuff up; even if it's not something I'm using right now, it helps to know it exists. As you can tell, my struggles mostly involve just knowing that something exists in order to use it. For example, how about OnMouseDown() That is a method I'm using constantly now that I know it exists. I probably watched videos that talked about it before I was ready to use it, but when I needed to be able to just click on an object for something to happen I Googled "select with mouse Unity" and found out about OnMouseDown() I'm also using the script reference constantly as I write stuff. The easiest way to do this is highlight the variable or whatever that you are pretty sure you need to use in while typing in MonoDevelop, then press Ctrl and ' at the same time and it will open up the page that explains what it does and gives you a few samples of code that they say are fine to copy. I type those out (instead of copy&pasting) to get more familiar with how things are organized. I'm sure there is a better way to do this but honestly, I just can't absorb the information unless I try to do something, fail, and then look it up and apply it a few times. The problem with this learning-method is that I know I'm missing fundamental information and that does cause a lot of frustration. I'm psyched that you are making games Dosed! If you have any questions, I'm more than willing to give you possibly incorrect answers. Also, when I am just staring at the screen and not actually thinking anymore, I go and play a few rounds of Titanfall. For me, the key is to work on making games when I don't feel like doing anything specific. Before I was just loading up Spelunky if I didn't have anything specific I wanted to do; I got really good at Spelunky. Now I'm going to be a technomancer. Where are you going to teach?

This impressive feat of human engineering is out-staged by the fact that the roo-bot (see what I did there?) has a small orange light for an asshole.

I'm having one of those days where I feel like it would have been more productive to do nothing. I made a bunch of changes, couldn't save it as an alternative version, pushed forward and ended up with something I like less. It's incredibly demotivating. Good thing I'm a sunshine and rainbows kind of guy. Oh gawd, what have I done to my game?! I'm learning some hard lessons today. For one thing, my plan to just erase non-essentials did not focus my efforts. It means that I'm rebuilding many parts of the script, with a slight improvement to simplicity. I'm still having to solve all sorts of problems with convoluted solutions. There is no doubt that my skill is improving, so if that's my validation of effort then "Bravo". I'm getting a much better understanding of how things should be divided between multiple scripts( I think?), but it's a slog. What should I have done instead? Well, if I could figure out a reliable way to save copies of whole projects in Unity, then that would be an improvement. Copying and pasting may work, what I did was I copied the entire project folder and pasted it with another name, then when I opened it I discovered that I had actually copied that 2D conversion I made the other day. Oops. So now I am committed (involuntarily) to the changes I made this morning. I could just re-import all the scripts from their state last night, but... no, I just need to keep going. What should you have done instead Clyde? I don't know. It might be unrealistic, but Ideally, I would have implemented mechanics, one at a time, in a more holistic manner. For instance, I've decided that each ball's pitch can be changed by clicking on it. the original plan was that you would press space-bar and kinda change them all. If I had been playing with it and said "I'm going to avoid having a menu pop up at any point of development" then I wouldn't have to go back and redesign so much stuff. I don't know. Don't feel bad for me. I really am getting better at this, I just happen to want to bang by head into the keyboard until something breaks. I'll make some lunch and come back to it. Edit (four hours later): I'm going to double down. I'm pretty sure that the root of my difficulties today is that the I'm conflicted between needing to solve significant design problems and sticking to this idea that the refinement stage means I should be done with scripting mechanics. I don't know if I've described the problem clearly earlier. The problem is that I don't want the player to go into a menu, but I do want the the player to be able to chose a fraction and apply it to a ball. Complicating the matter, I'm ambivalent about whether or not the collisions should perform those changes to pitch and scale also. So I need to figure out (for sure) what the player will and will not be able to do, and then figure out a way for them to be able to do it with minimal controls and intuitive contexts. Today. Sunday I'll be busy and my deadline is Monday. Here is the plan: I'm going to keep erasing/organizing the scripts with the perspective that I am trying to make them more generally applicable to not just balls bouncing, but also dominoes or whatever. I know that sounds like I'm adding further complexity, but at the moment I think that making the scripts more generally applicable will make the way they should be organized seem more clear to me. Let's do this!

I'm currently frustrated with the lack of a "Save Project As" button in Unity. As I'm looking into it, I'm discovering that there is something called "Version control". Unfortunately, I wouldn't be finding out it exists unless I needed it... right now. Anyway, I found this thread that may be helpful to you. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/8740/version-control-workflow.html Edit: Also found this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/ExternalVersionControlSystemSupport.html

I've been having a progressiely harder time getting into matches and it concerns me. I used to be able to come in at any time and find a match immediately. This is the second morning in a row that I've spent 10 minutes trying to find teammates and get into a match. I was hoping this game would be as popular as the Call of Duty franchise so I would be able to avoid these woes.

In case y'all don't know what I'm talking about with Rise, this video gives you a pretty good idea (I did not record it).

This article claims that the is a scientific study that examines the relationship between reclamation of slurs and perceived power. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/how-to-defuse-a-hateful-slur.html I'd like to read the study. I may be being a bit entitled here, but I fucking HATE the idea that I have to pay a fortune to read things from an academic journal. How is this possible in 2014. I hate it. It makes me angry.