Game Design Novice

Hm, interesting. I personally don't have that sort of problem since I don't plan on really using bullets per se in my game. But it does make me wonder how you could effectively send larger data like that over without screwing things up.

I have also been using TCP though, if that makes any difference. I WOULD have gone for UDP, except that actually caused troubles in my server set up and so I had to stick with TCP.

Funny you guys mention this. I have already reached the limit of a UDP datagram so we now have to start looking at optimizing communications. We can no longer just "spam" the entire world to every connected player any more :) in fact my limit was bullet no. 40 :)

I might work for just bullet handling though. Either way you look at it, you probably won't be able to send the bullet data in every ping.

From my experience with Box Chaser, yes you can. My system actually sends the gamestate over as one [12][3] array. Probably not a good idea with larger or preferably more efficient games, but it's working for my purposes so far.

can you send arrays over a network in one query?

finnally got it work work after having to "help CD" lol…(glad I remembered the help thing) anyway, it's cool but your thrusters arn't powerfull enough to accelearte you to escape velocity.

Thanks. Glad to get some feedback. Right now there isn't much happening. We have recently added some bullets, but they don't really do anything (except kill the network when too many are fired). So my first priority is fix that, then

• add camera view, so the world becomes bigger
• Then maybe collision between players so they bump instead of flying through
• And then bullet damage and killing each other.

Something like that.

Welcome!

posts lots and hop in chat whenever you can to.. yeah.. chat :D

I just tested it out then. I had the same problem as Mr Glasses, the text that was appearing for me was "Address 255.255.255.255 is not valid". I then figured it might have been an address issue, so I tried "client.exe localhost" and that worked for me.

It's pretty cool, though that gravity seems a bit strong. :P Once I got too close to a planet I'd just get stuck. :P

So what do you think you might be working on next and stuff?

It shouldn't shut down. Are you sure you didn't press escape to close the client? Did you start the server first? Do you have a firewall installed/enabled, and if so, did it pop up with a warning when you started the server and another warning for the client?

What was the flashing text? it should tell which server the client is trying to connect to… ah, unless you mean the text in the console window. If that is the case, try running it from the console.

Open a console by pressing windows+r, type cmd. Then cd to the directory where you extracted the files and type client.exe. When the client exits (crashes?) you should see the text in the console.

Let me know how it goes :)

Hello,
I go by the online alias of Krete and am an active game designer currently attending a State University and studying Computer Science. I have my associates degree in media art and design, with a primary focus in game design. My computer programming knowledge is pretty limited at the moment, although I know the basics for Java, C++ and Python. Although what truly fascinates me is not the programming, artistic, story telling or business side of game design, but rather the complex series of game mechanics that create the rules and obstacles we must overcome. I'm not sure if "game design" is a term we can use to describe ourselves, because it's a term widely used by every profession is the gaming business. Still anyone understanding enough of the business I'm sure understands what I'm talking about.

In the following months I'm hoping to contribute greatly and remain an active participant in this wiki. I think wiki's are the way of the future, and since game design is still so very young, and by that I mean very little actual research has been done, I think wiki's are probably one of the best sources of information around. I've read several game-design books, and while I find them fascinating, I noticed that most are drastically incomplete and overall, under thought and missing meaning. I'm hoping that this online community of people, who share common intrests, can establish a formal forum to discover and discuss true theories in the hope of advancing game design. Perhaps I've jumped the shark. Time will tell, looking forward to becoming an active member and reading the insight others have about this hobby of mine. -Krete

cool! and thanks. I extracted but the client never initiates the window…it just flashes a piece of text and shuts down…

do you need the alpha channel?

Here is a zip file of the build which includes the dll files. Download this, run the server then the client and you should be "playing" in no time ;)

http://www.mediafire.com/?mlmmmzmrtdz

The size of the 7zip file compared to a rar file was about 66% when i compressed the DLLs. Which means it is probably close to half size of a zip file (the worst of the bunch). 7zip is the future.

Can you download 7zip? If not, i will make a zip file available to you :) You're making graphics so it is quite important that you can try it of all people ;) I chose 7zip because there is not so much to show so i figured i would save on space.

btw, I will include your planet in the next build! It will probably be tomorrow (Thursday evening).

Proceedural generation is a method that uses seeds to creat infinate worlds. You probably know that computer's "random" numbers are not truely random, if you put the same seed in, you get the same result. This can be used to create entire worlds that are infinite and no place is exactly the same. Here is a great article and example of proceedural generation. http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=34 and http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_easyfaq&task=cat&catid=15&Itemid=28#faq20 and I can't find the article that discusses it in detail!!! I'll get back to you when I do.

Pseudo P.G.(yeah I was lazy and used an abreviation) in the case that I used it would be using and extreamly simplified form of it. Instead of actually generating little details, you have large sections of space and arrangements of objects that can be stuck together and those big section's arrangements will depends upon proceedural generation.

That's a very good idea, I hadn't thought of that! My pet project doesn't rely on a single worldmap, so it wasn't really an issue, but I'll definitely write your solution down for further use. :)

One of the devices I was thinking of to avoid the problem you mention is time linearity: some key events will take place at certain points in time (again, with a calendar system in mind) - that may or may not be fixed - and the endgame sequence will only be available after a particular event takes place. There would be a default scenario - default key events that will take place if the player does nothing to prevent or change them - and alternative routes that can be taken by the player. But in any case, certain key events will need to happen before the endgame can start, to ensure that the minimal completion time isn't too short. I'm not talking about story development, but more of events, like a solar eclipse, an earthquake, a volcano eruption, a ceremony/festival/ritual, and such. Events that will take place whether the party is at the heart of them, or on the contrary, completely unaware of what is going on.

That's a term I picked up in a faq. :) It designates dungeons with areas you can't explore the first time you go through the dungeon, because you don't have the necessary tool/ability to access those areas. Thus, you need to go back to those dungeons once you do get the needed tool/ability.

As I mentioned earlier, Wild ARMs 5 is a good example: almost every single dungeon in the game has chests or whole areas that aren't accessible the first time round.

For the Survival Range, I was thinking along the same lines as Daniela: to me, it's the zone the party can explore without running into monsters that are too hard for the party's current level. I have very fond memories (insert sarcastic tone here) of certain places in Star Ocean 3, where while exploring a perfectly safe area, you could stray just a teensy bit and get owned by monsters that were suddenly twice your level. -_-

The distance that the party can walk without staying at an Inn (or equivalent) doesn't only depend on your level, after all. It also depends on the play style: a item hoarder can stay alive way longer, for example; and someone who has mastered all the subtleties of the battle system, who knows the monsters well and has a good sense of strategy, will also survive for a long time without needing to rest. So that kind of "survival time" is a bit subjective to be defined clearly, in my humble opinion. :)

could you compress thsoe as .zip instead of .7z?

I added some (crappy) gravity, collision detection and response to the planets. There is also a build (finally) so if you feel like trying it out, have a go and download it from:

http://code.google.com/p/spacebomber/downloads/list

There is a separate download which contains all the SFML dll files which either have to be installed, or put in the same directory as the executable.

Let me know how it goes :)