general gaming topic

Edit history:

kesvalk: 2011-11-12 11:37:40 pm

2011-11-12 11:37:20 pm

Indie Lover

bioshock 2, and mass effect, at least the steam version don't have games for windows live

the games on steam that i have and that have this damn thing is:
- bioshock 2
- section 8: prejudice
- arkan asylum

i think that's it, perhaps fallout 3 have it, but i didn't play it on steam, only new vegas.

kesvalk

Edit history:

kesvalk: 2011-11-13 01:17:55 am

kesvalk: 2011-11-13 01:17:38 am

2011-11-13 01:16:45 am

Indie Lover

hey guys, do anyone of you guys know if XNA is a good language to start praticing development for games? i have a overall understanding of progaming in C and Java (i did 4 years of Comp. Science before dropping college) and i really wanted to at least try independent gaming development, something like games you see on newsground/kongregate, before trying my hand on something bigger...

do you guys have any tips on sites where i could get some gaming oriented tutorials and languages that are good to begin with, or even some free engines?

Poision Envy

2011-11-13 03:18:40 am

Club 27 Goals

with my experience of XNA, it seems like it's used mostly to make things like handheld phone stuff. All the games on my Zune used XNA if I'm remembering correctly. Course though I haven't looked into it in a long while so who knows.

Newground and Kong use flash though, but if XNA is similar then it sounds like a good start.

arkarian

2011-11-13 02:13:52 pm

red chamber dream

xna is pretty good, and not just for mobile games. actually all my work using it has been for desktop programs that weren't really games, more like simulations. but yeah, it's very good for learning the basics of game programming as it sets everything up for you right off the bat (gives you a camera class, update routine, etc). so it's easy to just fill in the stuff you need.

if you want to do stuff like you see on newgrounds though, you might just want to use flash. i don't know anything about flash but it seems like that's what everyone uses. xna is more of a "real" development environment where you can use c or c# or whatever and actually make decent games.

there are tons of xna tutorials online, i remember finding one where you can fly a plane around and whatnot to learn camera programming. there's lots of stuff for 2d games too which are pretty simple to write, so you might want to start there.

kesvalk

2011-11-13 02:23:56 pm

Indie Lover

when i say like newgrounds, i mean simple games, like learn to fly and puzzle games, that have no need for 50 actors and keeping tabs about health, armor and position of every unit on the screen (like TD games), just some simple games on a more controlled enviroment, so if i do something wrong, it's easier to see the problem and understand how to not make it when i get to a more complex enviroment...

arkarian

2011-11-13 02:26:56 pm

red chamber dream

you might want to look into learning flash then. the reason i caution against that though is a) flash is on its way out in terms of support and b) if you want to get into real game development, you'll want to be writing stuff in c.

that said, if you don't ever want to do anything beyond the types of minigames you're talking about, definitely try your hand at some flash games and toss them up on newgrounds/kong/whatever. might also want to look into the html 5/javascript stuff that's out there.

kesvalk

2011-11-13 02:55:47 pm

Indie Lover

no, i want to go way beyond this type of games, it's just that i thought they would be a good way to study the language so i can be confident that i will not release a bag full of bugs instead of a game...

anyway, i will try my hand with xna, thanks for the tips.

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2011-11-13 02:57:51 pm

2011-11-13 02:57:40 pm

red chamber dream

yeah definitely go with xna then. flash uses actionscript which afaik is only used to do stuff in flash, so if you really want to learn the language real developers use, go with xna and write in c.

arkarian

2011-11-15 01:37:44 am

red chamber dream

Turtle

2011-11-15 08:37:03 am

I like turtles.

Haha, excellent.

Poision Envy

2011-11-15 12:02:53 pm

Club 27 Goals

"What are you doing?"
Shhh, just trust me.

haha, okay maybe youtube comments aren't totally terrible.

Poision Envy

2011-11-15 12:11:56 pm

Club 27 Goals

Guess the only thing that really sucks after so many big releases in November is the realization that we won't be seeing big titles for quite a few months.

At least the big winter steam sale will mean more things to do, but maybe it's time to take up another hobby until Diablo 3 or something comes out.

kesvalk

2011-11-15 12:54:06 pm

Indie Lover

last story and pandora's tower will be released on europe in the Q1 2012, for me, it's all i would want.

Poision Envy

2011-11-15 01:12:42 pm

Club 27 Goals

yeah I guess the Vita comes out in February, and maybe the 3DS will finally get some decent games by then too.

Quietus

2011-11-15 06:34:59 pm

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

Quote from Poision Envy:

steam

Oblivion is down to £3.50 at the moment, and I paid £10 a few weeks back. When will I learn... aiwebs_027

Poision Envy

2011-11-15 08:22:52 pm

Club 27 Goals

buying any game other through steam that isn't Skyrim or MW3 right now, and until December, would just be a really bad idea.

I learned my lesson last year, bought some games late November and literally all of them went on sale during the steam sale.

kesvalk

2011-11-15 08:58:04 pm

Indie Lover

and this is why i am waiting to get arkam city... and sonic generations -_-

tomatobob

2011-11-15 09:05:11 pm

One shall stand, one shall ball.

It's okay to get Arkham City full price.

Poision Envy

2011-11-15 09:05:27 pm

Club 27 Goals

so tbob are you going to try Skyrim?

tomatobob

2011-11-16 01:38:36 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

I don't know. Maybe, probably not totally worth it since playing on a PC isn't close to an option for me, but I might get it at some point just for the hell of it.

kesvalk

2011-11-16 03:41:43 am

Indie Lover

it's impossible for me to get Arkam city full price, as i have a discount for just having asylum on steam...

i just hope the discounts stack aiwebs_017

kesvalk

2011-11-16 04:20:01 pm

Indie Lover

TheGreenManalishi

2011-11-16 05:10:49 pm

Fucking why don't I have a PS3?!

J_SNAKE

Edit history:

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:46:01 pm

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:45:15 pm

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:43:42 pm

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:42:34 pm

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:07:49 pm

J_SNAKE: 2011-11-16 06:04:59 pm

2011-11-16 06:02:15 pm

Quote from kesvalk:

hey guys, do anyone of you guys know if XNA is a good language to start praticing development for games? i have a overall understanding of progaming in C and Java (i did 4 years of Comp. Science before dropping college) and i really wanted to at least try independent gaming development, something like games you see on newsground/kongregate, before trying my hand on something bigger...

do you guys have any tips on sites where i could get some gaming oriented tutorials and languages that are good to begin with, or even some free engines?

Allow me to give my add:
First off: XNA is an excellent start to learn game-programming. It is a framework. The programming language is C#. And
doing serious development in C is a wrong or misleading statement. You are only working with lower languages like C to implement time-critical engine-functions (low-level stuff). Nothing is stopping you from doing simple or serious development with XNA. It is well suited for small and large scale projects. Magicka and Terraria were done with it.

Notice however that you are bound to Microsoft-Systems like windows-pc, wp7 and xbox360. If you want a multiplat-solution things get a bit more complicated or restrictive. So if you don't mind microsoft it is a good choice.
And personally the best high level language to start learning is C++. C# might be confusing for beginners despite being simpler to use but it is ok, especiall when you already know Java.

C# natively encourages a coding-style that is less error-prone. But I think whether a game is bag of bugs still mainly
depends on its interface-design the more complex it gets, less on the language.

Surely one issue with C# regarding game-development is garbage-collection. You will have to keep this in mind when your game is allocating memory at run-time. And it may fundamentally affect how you design your code. If a certain amount of memory is allocated (approx 1mb, but depends on the system) a garbage call will be performed, thus you will notice an interrupt. So you may preallocate as much as possible to avoid generating garbage or at least to keep it at a minimum.
Along with this however comes another possible source for certain bugs. If objects are marked for deletion they are
still existing until the next garbage-call, so you might see stuff flying around for a certain time until it gets removed if you are doing it wrong. So garbage-collection adds a fair bit for hate in game-development since it heavily depend on real-time and visual-experience. But especially for smaller games, or games which are segmented(it means each time you are playing a small portion of it, like Super Metroid) it is not difficult to deal with it properly.

[quote="kesvalk"]hey guys, do anyone of you guys know if XNA is a good language to start praticing development for games? i have a overall understanding of progaming in C and Java (i did 4 years of Comp. Science before dropping college) and i really wanted to at least try independent gaming development, something like games you see on newsground/kongregate, before trying my hand on something bigger...

do you guys have any tips on sites where i could get some gaming oriented tutorials and languages that are good to begin with, or even some free engines?[/quote]
Allow me to give my add:
First off: XNA is an excellent start to learn game-programming. It is a framework. The programming language is C#. And
doing serious development in C is a wrong or misleading statement. You are only working with lower languages like C to implement time-critical engine-functions (low-level stuff). Nothing is stopping you from doing simple or serious development with XNA. It is well suited for small and large scale projects. Magicka and Terraria were done with it.

Notice however that you are bound to Microsoft-Systems like windows-pc, wp7 and xbox360. If you want a multiplat-solution things get a bit more complicated or restrictive. So if you don't mind microsoft it is a good choice.
And personally the best high level language to start learning is C++. C# might be confusing for beginners despite being simpler to use but it is ok, especiall when you already know Java.

C# natively encourages a coding-style that is less error-prone. But I think whether a game is bag of bugs still mainly
depends on its interface-design the more complex it gets, less on the language.

Surely one issue with C# regarding game-development is garbage-collection. You will have to keep this in mind when your game is allocating memory at run-time. And it may fundamentally affect how you design your code. If a certain amount of memory is allocated (approx 1mb, but depends on the system) a garbage call will be performed, thus you will notice an interrupt. So you may preallocate as much as possible to avoid generating garbage or at least to keep it at a minimum.
Along with this however comes another possible source for certain bugs. If objects are marked for deletion they are 
still existing until the next garbage-call, so you might see stuff flying around for a certain time until it gets removed if you are doing it wrong. So garbage-collection adds a fair bit for hate in game-development since it heavily depend on real-time and visual-experience. But especially for smaller games, or games which are segmented(it means each time you are playing a small portion of it, like Super Metroid) it is not difficult to deal with it properly.

Poision Envy

2011-11-17 05:09:09 am

Club 27 Goals

I think I found literally the most bullshit video game awards ever. EVER.

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011-nominees/voting/best-graphics
>No BF3
>RAGE is on there with some of the worst graphics I've seen this gen

But okay, graphics aren't everything, so lets check out another category: "Best <platform> Game of the Year"

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011-nominees/voting/best-xbox-360-game
>Two of the four are multi-platform

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011-nominees/voting/best-pc-game
>MINECRAFT instead of Skyrim

http://www.spike.com/events/video-game-awards-2011-nominees/voting/best-rpg
>Best RPG
>Dragon Age 2 in the same category
>NO Witcher 2

Holy tits it's like they have no idea about anything and just threw on whatever big-name game they could think of at the time. The worst part? Whatever game wins each category will get to slap on "GAME OF THE YEAR - Spike".