the fuck is a fred?

A space marine needs to save the galaxy from a tyrant alien. He shoots things dead. He saves the world.

you're not supposed to start a flame war with gust.

If he gives wrong information in a topic, call him out on it there, but don't flame him personally.

that's how you deal with gust. He's harsh, but he's right a lot. Just be harsh back when he's wrong :P

World of Goo
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-gam es/5692/world-of-goo/index.html

I wasted my 8000th post for this so you better take the advice

although you should buy the game from 2DBoy's site so they actually make good money off of it

At 10/24/09 05:03 PM, GodsBitch wrote: But with the Mac, I never use my mouse, unless I'm playing a game.

I like the trackpad so much I beat world of goo with it.

Pet Peeves about Windows
I'm a developer so I'm going to go about this from a developer standpoint and not bother covering the "viruses, right click, and games" arguments you people so like to latch on to.

1. DLLs
FUCK DLLS seriously. It's an outdated piece of shit way to reuse executable code. If you have a different or wrong version of the DLL in question, your program will still run it'll just give random idiotic errors, crash, and burn. So... What DLLs does my program need to run? I'll just stick them in the same folder as the exe and all is well. Using SDL... and openAL... and openGL... and that's about it. OH WAIT NO visual studio links with it's standard c/c++ library too, which unfortunately isn't a standard header on windows and has a different version for every version of visual studio and 40 different versions for each type of processor and junk and it's stupid. I think I solved it after a while, but DLLs are hell to organize, especially when you have multiple versions of the same dll on your computer (and programs need a specific one to run, not any one)

OSX has a much more graceful option, "frameworks". It's a package format where it stores data about the current and past versions of a specific dynamic library, much more organized than microsoft's crappy DLL system. Plus, .app packages on OSX are way nicer than windows .exes. I can package all my resources and frameworks and junk into one nice .app package. It's a glorified folder, but when you open it it runs the program inside instead. No need to distribute the game as an exe, a folder of resources, and a list of DLLs to install, just zip the app and the user never knows that it is actually a package.

2. Xcode / Visual Studio
Visual studio has a better debugger. Too bad the good version costs like a crapload of money.

I use Xcode on OSX. It's a cleaner, nicer coding environment and it's FREE.

Visual studio takes FOREVER when you try to open a text file with it. That's expected for a project file and junk, since it's a massive bloaty program, but it's a pain to double click a small .cpp file and have it spend 2 minutes starting up.

Xcode takes some time to open up a project file too, but here's the kicker: when I just click a raw cpp or h file to open, it starts up near-instantly (and doesn't load any of the project management IDE junk, basically just acts as a lightweight text editor). That's huge, and a really awesome feature to have when i'm working on small junk that doesn't need an IDE for compiling.

3. Screenshot tool

print screen is way outdated and retarded. On OSX, I hit cmd-shift-3 to screenshot the whole screen and save it to the desktop as a png (no ugly copy-paste junk). BETTER YET, I hit cmd-shift 4 and get to select what to capture by dragging a box. Or, instead of dragging a box, I hit space, and it'll let me capture 1 window, no background objects, and is nice enough to put the alpha transparency drop shadow on the window too (see: http://www.closuregame.com/Log/screensho ts/2009/08_AUG/Picture%2019.png )
(this is built in OSX stuff)

4. Spotlight. I type what I want to search for on my hardrive, it takes about a second to find EVERYTHING (searches in files, in filenames, etc). On windows, I hit the search button and the dog with the magnifying glass pops up and talks to me. I tell him what I want to search for, then walk away and go cook dinner. I come back and he's found 2 things, neither of which are the one I want.

5. Everything else. There's a ton of hidden OS usability things on the computer. I don't even realize how much I use these features till I move to windows, and suddenly the tiny features I use all the time are gone.

6. Windows API, Cocoa API

BOTH are retarded in my opinion

Cocoa: void NSApplicationPoolShittiness(NSString*&&*
** nuts, NSShitballs n)

Windows API: HANDLE WinGetHandleToKeyboardKeyCapitalA(LPVOID HANDLE, WCHAR_T, LONG_INTEGER, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0, NULL, NULL, 0);

It's a placebo effect. People die every second anyway, so statistically speaking every time you press any button somebody dies.

1. timewave zero chart had it's bottom axis at like .3, not 0, so wtf is the point there? It's just an ordinary minimum like the others on that graph. Not that the graph has any significance whatsoever anyway.

2. a 6-year old predicts there'll be an assassination attempt on obama? Anyone could "predict" that

3. a nuclear bomb does more damage detonated from a few hundred feet in the air than it would at ground level or underground, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about and just says there's a bomb to scare people.

i quit after 10th grade I think

i got too tall to actually do it successfully

I have a unix executable file (on OSX 10.5) (called sample)
I zip the unix executable file (zip stuff.zip sample)
I send the zip over ichat to a friend (running OSX 10.6)
He unzips it
sample no longer has execute permissions (-rw-r--r--)

doing chmod +x sample allows the file to be run

How can I make it so the unix file gets unzipped with execute permissions, so people don't have to run command line junk to run it?

compressed bytearrays encoded as strings

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1107 353

WAV:
stores the raw audio waveform. Pretty much nothing special you need to do with it to get it to make noise, just send it to the audio card and it'll play

MIDI:
Stores (essentially) the "sheet music" for a song. When to play what note, for how long, at what volume, and which instrument. A wav file needs 44100 samples per second to make audio (at 4 bytes per sample, that's 176kb per second). A midi file is much more compressed because it's not storing sound, but instructions on how to recreate that sound.

Of course, most programs have their own "midi sound generators". A midi file can be read in by 2 different programs and recreated with completely different instruments in each one (although most try to find the closest match).

As a result, you should really have the program making the midi file export a wav or mp3, otherwise it will sound different

At 10/23/09 04:01 PM, CaptinChu wrote: Why has nobody yet mentioned merge sort?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting_alg orithm#Summaries_of_popular_sorting_algo rithms

there, there's all the useful sort algoruthms

if you want to name-drop algorithms you know to make yourself feel smart, at least post an obscure one like *wikipedias 'algorithms'* the Coppersmith-Winograd algorithm. Oh wait that's not for sorting, i forgot.

At 10/23/09 03:45 PM, K-Guare wrote: Only traced once, both AS2 and AS3.
Well played, Flash. Well played.

want more fun?

var a:Boolean = true;
a && somefunction();

//same as

if(a) somefunction();

although don't blame me when people start asking WTF IS YOUR CODE DOING?

At 10/23/09 03:38 PM, GustTheASGuy wrote: It's called lazy evaluation, and yes, Flash does it too.

It's actually not quite the same thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-circu it_evaluation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evalua tion

At 10/23/09 03:27 PM, K-Guare wrote: Well, a disgusting, inefficient option would be
to use a logical OR operator, the ||.

FYI that's actually not an inefficient option, any fluff you do on top of that is going to make it slower.

Just imperceptibly slower, so it's not an issue.

(in c++ at least, don't know for sure about flash), || and && "short circuit" when they've reached a point where they can deduce the value of the whole statement

I.E. (excuse the c++ it's been a few months since i've touched flash)

int a = 4;
if(a == 1 || a == 2 || a == 3 || a == 4 || a == 5 || a == 6 || a == 7){
  STUFF
}

It'll evaluate a==1, a==2, a==3, and stop when a==4 returns 1 (because anything || with 1 still returns 1, there's no need to evaluate the other statements).

Similarly with &&, when one statement in a chain is evaluated to 0, it'll stop and continue.

The simple way to test this in flash would be to stick a function call at the end of a chain that should be short circuited early, if the function gets called then FLASH IS STUPID

this tidbit of information is brought to you by the letter F

At 10/23/09 03:23 PM, knugen wrote: if (number == 1 || number == 90)
{
_root.asdf = 5;
}

You could also use some other tricks with switch/case statements or arrays to get cleaner code, but this is functional.

switch(number){
  case 1:
  case 4:
  case 90:
  do stuff;
  break;
  default:
}

is most certainly NOT cleaner code.

When you have a large amount of data to compare a number to, say
var POPTIONS:Array = [1, 4, 3, 8, 45, 278, 65, 83, 24, -67, -22, 30968, -928, -3982756];

wrap it into a function, and call that function like so

function inarray(n:int, a:Array):Boolean{
for(var i:int = 0; i<a.length; i++){
if(n == a[i]) return true;
}
return false;
}

then in your code

if(inarray(54, POPTIONS)){
}

I was going to recommend SAT, but then I remembered that's a collision detection algorithm.

What language are you using? Most of them have a sort or qsort in their standard library

At 10/22/09 07:55 PM, dELtaluca wrote: It's the only thing i have that remotely resembles something that will prevent infection, given that it's 62% pure alcohol and kills bacteria for a living in seconds. Well you know what? IT HURTS ALOT ON RAW FLESH OWWWW

buy a $0.25 bottle of hydrogen peroxide. One bottle lasts about a year.

If you got a facebook account go become a fan of Closure

if you need another reason or a celebrity endorsement, here you go

only a few more fans to go before I pass Super Meat Boy again

decode this one:

45-GnnYnnUnn-x<<><7&^8##,,,,,
::
:::'
-------()($$!nn##nn#h#k
^^vv^<><>ba@

At 10/19/09 12:38 AM, Senti wrote: I turned twenty-one today. While it might not mean much to our British friends, it now signifies that I can enjoy legally drinking in the United States.

I hope all has been well in the Lounge.

that is a surprisingly readable post from someone who just turned 21

what are you waiting for?

chew your food more

At 10/18/09 04:58 PM, Toast wrote: Yes, but how will it know that Floccinaucinihilipilification is a word? For the AS wars, I was thinking of having 1v1 duels this time instead of an arena of 4. Despite its more visually appealing fights, I find 4 bots to be too unbalanced because there will often be one bot who is attacked by two other bots, and one bot who is attacked by no one. I also thought about removing the heal option, but I'm not sure. You could argue that with the option to heal, there is more strategy involved and more space for different decisions, but in a 1v1 duel with no heals it's the bot who will have the best dodging algorithm and smartest shooting pattern who will win.

1v1 is much better, but how about each player gets a team of 20 bots, each with a small amount of life, and bots can only heal a nearby bot, not themselves

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

also, AS3, and the code has to be written as a series of haikus (or limericks)

At 10/18/09 04:33 PM, Saza wrote:

At 10/18/09 03:16 PM, Toast wrote: On an unrelated note, we didn't have a 2009 AS wars. I'm thinking of setting one up unless anyone else is up for it.

How many people would join the battle if we made one before 2010?

Yeah, count me in. I'll make a wordsearch game ;)

A wordsearch game would be no fun for an as war..

psuedocode:

for(i=0 to width) for(j=0 to height) for(dx=-1 to 1) for(dy=-1 to 1) if(!(dy==0&&dx==0)){
    String word = "";
    for(d=0 to max(width,height) {
        word += grid[i+dy*d][j+dx*d];
        if(isWord(word)){
              circleWord(j, i, j+dx*d, i+dy*d);
        }
    }
}

Platformer is a stupid category. It's akin to calling "3D" a genre.

In 2D you got 2 choices of perspective if you want to do a game with a character in it: Top Down, and Side View. Of course if your game is side view, and there's gravity, people call it a platformer cause your guy runs and jumps on platforms and junk. Doesn't matter if the core gameplay is puzzle solving, collecting coins, beating up junk, or whatever, because of its perspective it's just gonna be labeled a "platformer" and I don't like that. Platformer is a huge umbrella genre, not some specific type of game.

At 10/17/09 05:54 PM, kizza0 wrote: So i guess iv got to use timers on each line like my last game to remove the line after 1 frame. Just better if their was another option since Their will be multiple guns firing.

you clear, then draw, on the same frame.

but you need to draw every frame

At 10/17/09 06:26 AM, Montycarlo wrote: Wouldn't it be better to create a general class that just produces a line depending on the arguments supplied to a constructor, holding the instances of that class in an array and then removing a certain instance and deleting the element when required? I would have thought redrawing them would be wasteful. Maybe my way is worse.

you HAVE to redraw them, flash redraws them every frame anyway so it's not really that wasteful

You could create a movieclip for every line. THAT would be wasteful