I find the usual hungarian a bit cumbersome, but I do use a "simplified" version that I find useful. bBoolean, sString, nInteger, fFloat, lList, pPointer, hHash and not much more.
You're correct, it's quite possible to write very portable code. For example, I compile our games (follow link at sig) for Linux, Mac and Windows from a single codebase.
The trick is to use portable libraries (in our case, SDL, ZLIB, and a few others), as few OS-specific APIs as possible, and in the occasions when you must use OS-specific code, encapsulate it in a library for which you have multiple implementations.
You end up coding against a (usually) thin layer which is completely OS-agnostic.
About Direct3D and OpenGL, one solution is to have an abstract renderer class which then calls OpenGL or Direct3D. Good examples are the excellent Ogre3D and part of the code in the Doomsday Engine.
But that's by brute forcing. Surely having many orders of magnitude more processing power will change some things (such as cryptography, as you say), but it's still "more of the same".
Disclaimer : I know next to nothing about quantum computing.
However, I wonder if we really need quantum bits. Sure, we probably can reproduce the same kind of circuitry that we have now with quantum gates and whatnot, but I fear that would be missing the point, or rather grossly wasting, the capabilities opened by quantum mechanics, by forcing these into our current paradigm. That is, using quantum stuff as a new mechanics for our current paradigm, instead of coming up with a new paradigm that actually utilizes quantum properties fully.
In a word, this looks like evolution - will this cause a revolution?
As I said, I know almost nothing about this, so excuse me if my post didn't make sense at all.
Well, you'd guess since the MS guys made the kernel and the tool, they should be able to at least stop some random piece of code from disabling it, right?
I think it's more of a financing thing, and exactly what you consider a publisher. Most of us small indies sell from our own sites but also from the big portals (Big Fish, MSN Game Zone, Yahoo, Real Arcade, Shockwave,...). Some indies consider that to be "selling out" (we don't).
Other indies do the same as Id, finish their game and submit it to a publisher. I don't think you cease to be an indie because of that. If the publisher gets the game after it's finished, it doesn't finance its development, and has no creative input on it, you are independent from it in that sense.
But I agree, it's quite probable that there's no universally agreeable definition of "indie".
I'd say gameplay is different, not better per se. Indies usually target casual gamers, as opposed to hardcore gamers, so the gameplay must be different. A hardcore gamer can spend hours at a time playing a RPG with lots of text to read, but the stereotypical soccer mom just wants a quick 5 minute game. You can't expect a similar level of "commitment" from such different demographics.
We usually mean "self-funded", in essence. This more or less captures the "indie" spirit in that publishers don't control you or impose creative limitations, which is what most people complain about the retail industry.
This definition is somewhat problematic, because you don't usually think of Id Software as an indie developer, although it is, according to this definition. For most indies the definition is accurate though.
Whenever you enter an username + password in Firefox, it asks if you want it to remember the password - the options are Yes, No, and Never for this site. I think what you want to do can be accomplished using Yes and Never for this site.
Of course, you can change these settings afterwards if you want to.
Well, what you say is true, but SDL is supposed to be a low level API. Things tend to get messy if you read the documentation, especially in a low level API.
Other than that, I doubt anyone uses SDL directly. I wrote a high level framework on top of SDL, at a level of abstraction similar to Flash. It's quite good for doing that, precisely for being so low level and not forcing you to do things in a certain way. For the results, see my sig.
Write your own, in C++. It's easier than it sounds if you design the controls correctly. I wrote the UI for our games (see Betty's Beer Bar for an example) and it didn't take too much time. It's not OpenGL but the idea is the same, only the drawing part changes.
As for OpenGL, keep it generic - you can hook a SDL window and Direct3D (I submitted a mini howto but I think Sam never included it, check the mailing list archives), so a good idea may be to create or use an abstraction library that can use either OpenGL or Direct3D. Since Direct3D 8+ is almost a copy of OpenGL, writting one is also easier than it sounds. And if your license is compatible, there's a simple wrapper in the Doomsday Engine project.
Of course, you can always use a 3D engine which already includes a GUI (we are currently using OGRE) and which solves the OpenGL/D3D/Whatever abstraction.
It's *sent* over the wire that way, because originally SMTP only supported 7 bit ASCII, but once it gets go Google they should store it however they please, so I don't think this applies.
Please, please, please, please let me send and receive exes as attachments or inside an attached zip file! Both are forbidden now.
I know, this filter catches lots of viruses, new and existing, and as such I think it's a good idea to have this filter on by default for most users - but there should be a way to disable it! As a developer I need to send exes back and forth between collaborators and partners. I'm sure many./ readers are in a similar situation.
That, and not being able to compose mails in HTML, (it can be done VERY elegantly inside a browser - see this truly amazing editor) is what keeps me from actually using my GMail account.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the usual hungarian a bit cumbersome, but I do use a "simplified" version that I find useful. bBoolean, sString, nInteger, fFloat, lList, pPointer, hHash and not much more.
You're correct, it's quite possible to write very portable code. For example, I compile our games (follow link at sig) for Linux, Mac and Windows from a single codebase.
The trick is to use portable libraries (in our case, SDL, ZLIB, and a few others), as few OS-specific APIs as possible, and in the occasions when you must use OS-specific code, encapsulate it in a library for which you have multiple implementations.
You end up coding against a (usually) thin layer which is completely OS-agnostic.
About Direct3D and OpenGL, one solution is to have an abstract renderer class which then calls OpenGL or Direct3D. Good examples are the excellent Ogre3D and part of the code in the Doomsday Engine.
Thanks for the first actual reply to my question :)
I read some Kuhn a long time ago. You're right, I abused the words, but I think these are the best to express the concept I was trying to express.
These sets of posts are called a "discussion" on the topic. So what's wrong with saying "I don't know about this, I feel this, what do you think?"?
Besides, what's up with civilized replies by registered users and STFU responses only by ACs?
But that's by brute forcing. Surely having many orders of magnitude more processing power will change some things (such as cryptography, as you say), but it's still "more of the same".
I said I knew very little about quantum mechanics, and I didn't make any claim - I asked.
Disclaimer : I know next to nothing about quantum computing.
However, I wonder if we really need quantum bits. Sure, we probably can reproduce the same kind of circuitry that we have now with quantum gates and whatnot, but I fear that would be missing the point, or rather grossly wasting, the capabilities opened by quantum mechanics, by forcing these into our current paradigm. That is, using quantum stuff as a new mechanics for our current paradigm, instead of coming up with a new paradigm that actually utilizes quantum properties fully.
In a word, this looks like evolution - will this cause a revolution?
As I said, I know almost nothing about this, so excuse me if my post didn't make sense at all.
Well, you'd guess since the MS guys made the kernel and the tool, they should be able to at least stop some random piece of code from disabling it, right?
I'm dying to know what the other 0.9% of programmers do!!!
Hmmm. It's hard to believe coming from someone that confuses "Marine Core" and "Marine Corps" just because they sound similar...
I think it's more of a financing thing, and exactly what you consider a publisher. Most of us small indies sell from our own sites but also from the big portals (Big Fish, MSN Game Zone, Yahoo, Real Arcade, Shockwave,...). Some indies consider that to be "selling out" (we don't).
Other indies do the same as Id, finish their game and submit it to a publisher. I don't think you cease to be an indie because of that. If the publisher gets the game after it's finished, it doesn't finance its development, and has no creative input on it, you are independent from it in that sense.
But I agree, it's quite probable that there's no universally agreeable definition of "indie".
I'd say gameplay is different, not better per se. Indies usually target casual gamers, as opposed to hardcore gamers, so the gameplay must be different. A hardcore gamer can spend hours at a time playing a RPG with lots of text to read, but the stereotypical soccer mom just wants a quick 5 minute game. You can't expect a similar level of "commitment" from such different demographics.
We usually mean "self-funded", in essence. This more or less captures the "indie" spirit in that publishers don't control you or impose creative limitations, which is what most people complain about the retail industry.
This definition is somewhat problematic, because you don't usually think of Id Software as an indie developer, although it is, according to this definition. For most indies the definition is accurate though.
Firefox has something like that, each bookmark popup has a Open in Tabs entry which does more or less that.
Whenever you enter an username + password in Firefox, it asks if you want it to remember the password - the options are Yes, No, and Never for this site. I think what you want to do can be accomplished using Yes and Never for this site.
Of course, you can change these settings afterwards if you want to.
Well, what you say is true, but SDL is supposed to be a low level API. Things tend to get messy if you read the documentation, especially in a low level API.
Other than that, I doubt anyone uses SDL directly. I wrote a high level framework on top of SDL, at a level of abstraction similar to Flash. It's quite good for doing that, precisely for being so low level and not forcing you to do things in a certain way. For the results, see my sig.
With all the trouble these particular iBook models have experienced
What trouble is that? I have one of those and I'm quite happy with it (although I use it as a second system only). Can someone explain?
Notice that the mistake was corrected in the 1979 edition :)
You can, in fact, write a simple raytracer in a couple of hours. Here's one of mine.
Write your own, in C++. It's easier than it sounds if you design the controls correctly. I wrote the UI for our games (see Betty's Beer Bar for an example) and it didn't take too much time. It's not OpenGL but the idea is the same, only the drawing part changes.
As for OpenGL, keep it generic - you can hook a SDL window and Direct3D (I submitted a mini howto but I think Sam never included it, check the mailing list archives), so a good idea may be to create or use an abstraction library that can use either OpenGL or Direct3D. Since Direct3D 8+ is almost a copy of OpenGL, writting one is also easier than it sounds. And if your license is compatible, there's a simple wrapper in the Doomsday Engine project.
Of course, you can always use a 3D engine which already includes a GUI (we are currently using OGRE) and which solves the OpenGL/D3D/Whatever abstraction.
Good luck!
Please, please, there must be a sane way to query data from a highly normalized database.
Serve yourself!
(full disclosure : that's my day job)
It's *sent* over the wire that way, because originally SMTP only supported 7 bit ASCII, but once it gets go Google they should store it however they please, so I don't think this applies.
I imagine they are so high on the list because of their numbers, and few people think of them in this way.
:)
Silly me, I thought the list was alphabetically sorted. What a coincidence!!
Please, please, please, please let me send and receive exes as attachments or inside an attached zip file! Both are forbidden now.
./ readers are in a similar situation.
I know, this filter catches lots of viruses, new and existing, and as such I think it's a good idea to have this filter on by default for most users - but there should be a way to disable it! As a developer I need to send exes back and forth between collaborators and partners. I'm sure many
That, and not being able to compose mails in HTML, (it can be done VERY elegantly inside a browser - see this truly amazing editor) is what keeps me from actually using my GMail account.
That's almost exactly like my story, including Monster Maze (I always hit BREAK when the monster came close) and a ZX Spectrum instead of a C64 :)