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Keeping low profile

ofer — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:27:04 +0000

Hello everyone reading my blog,

I just wanted to say that I am not sure how often I will update my blog. I have started to work on a new job which I enjoy a lot.
I am going to keep a low profile on game development. I believe I will be back to it sooner or later.

Thank you for reading.

Crossstiches

ofer — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:47:40 +0000

Someone showed me her cross stitches today. She said there are millions of website where you can buy cross stitches images and samples.
Some of them are a representation of a photo or a realistic artwork. But some are also more schematic.
I am not sure about the legal issues here, but I would think that the cross stitches samples may be a really good source for pixel art.

What do you think?

Ground Truth

ofer — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:37:32 +0000

When you are in a position that you don’t know if your code is the faulty one or the bug is somewhere else. Sometimes you can just use another program that you know is working and use it to verify where the bug is at.

An example. Say you have written code to load a BMP file format. You use your program, but the image has some weird artifacts. Is it a bug in your code? Or is it a corrupted BMP file?
You can simply load the same BMP file with another program such as window’s paint, and see if it loads properly or if paint is having problems with this file as well. If paint loads the BMP file properly, the bug might be in your code.

I have given the BMP file format as an example, but this is true to many other fields where you have some tool you know is working right. It is kind of similar to the Bug negative verification.

Don’t make sense

ofer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:46:12 +0000

Making sense isn’t always good. I was debugging some code and printed some number on the screen. The number had weird initialized values, so I rationalized why these values are not 0 at the beginning.
Bottom line, I just forgot to initialize the debug variable so I had garbage values.

I think it’s a common trait of humans to try rationalize everything. Sometimes they are so convinced at something and the logic behind it, even though it has no basis or it is even something that can’t make sense.

Does it happen to you too?

Who moved my monitor(cheese)?

ofer — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:15:32 +0000

I was starting to work at a new workplace last week. They have set me up a temporary desktop computer.
It was placed on a “table corner”, where two perpendicular tables connect. The set up was inconvenient. The monitor was placed far into the corner, and the mouse and keyboard cord barely reach the table’s edge.
Since the monitor was far, it was making my eyes tired. I don’t know exactly what I was thinking, but I rationalized why I should not try to pull the monitor closer.
At first I thought that because the mouse and keyboard cords can’t be pulled, there will be a problem with the monitor cord as well. Then I was told that I will get a new monitor today, so I said after I will get the new monitor this problem will be fixed.
I then talked about it with my boss, and while talking to him I figured how silly it sound that I just didn’t check or try to pull the monitor closer. I tried to gently pull the monitor and found out there was a lot of loose cable.
We some time rationalize things or find excuses to not try things because of a future event we are looking forward to.
It is a really important quality to be able to try things out even if you have no prior knowledge if it will work or how you are going to do it.

Happy Malloc Year!

ofer — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:09:48 +0000

Well, it’s not new year yet but I would like to talk about “special dates”. I think some people like events, they like to have anticipation to something. An event is sometimes an opportunity to change, to start fresh.
People think that after new year they will change, they will break an old habit, they will do something new. Or people think that on the weekend they will have fun, while on working days they just count the days until weekend.
This can be good, an event can be an opportunity to do something new. But isn’t it better to just change or do something new the moment you want to? Instead of procrastinate to some event?
It is possible to get used to do new things, to learn new things, to change the moment you want to instead of waiting for some event to come.

It is also relevant to game development. Especially in terms of efficiency. You might procrastinate doing things because you need to finish some boring task first. But you end up delaying that boring task because it’s boring.
I think what tempt us to look to events is that we like linear advancement. We like to think we always walk straight and every step we make we get closer to our goal. This might be a good thing sometimes, but sometimes it also hold us back.

I am not entirely sure about this subject and what I wrote. I just had a thought of why we like events, why we have anticipation to these events and why we promise ourselves to change only at a certain event. What do you think?

Happy New Year.

Learning and #include

ofer — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:18:41 +0000

In C++ you can roughly divide code files into two types. Implementation files(.cpp) and header\definitions files (.h). The header files can include other header files, which mean you have some sort of a graph depicting the includes “web” of the headers. You cannot have cyclic inclusion of headers. The header files are used to make class and function definitions, which allow other files(.h or .cpp) to use these classes/functions as well.
I want to ask you some questions, and I want you to think of the answers before you keep on reading. Even if you don’t know C++, try to think of answers. There is no penalty for giving a “wrong” answer, just try to honestly answer these questions.

What is the potential problem of having a header include many other headers?
Why it can be good to include directly all the necessary headers instead of including a header that include the necessary headers?
What is the potential problem of having many headers include the same header?

My answers to these questions are not the “correct” answers, they are also not the only answers. These are just things I have learned from experience, and they were right for me at least at one moment and situation.
The potential problem with having a header include many headers is because of compilation. If you include many headers, each time you change one of those headers, you will need to recompile everything that include this header. Which means almost every time you change the program, you will need to compile a lot of things.
Including the necessarily files directly is good when you want to remove a specific header file from your project. Because otherwise you might need to start figuring out what more you need to include in a file that included the header you want to remove.
When a lot of files include a specific header, removing that header might require removing all those file that include it. This make sense and is how things work. But things might get problematic when a header file contains two “subjects”, one that you want to remove and the other that you don’t want to remove. In this case you need to split up this file.

What does all this got to do with learning? I just recently completed and released Labyrinthica: The quest of lima, and started to work on a new project. I wanted to use some of the files from Labyrinthica in the new project, but I wanted to remove some files which were not relevant to this project. This made me encounter some of the problems above, and made me learn by example or learn from mistake. People remember much better when they learn from a mistake.
This is backed up by studies and research. I have already been told by other developers about good practices with header files, a million of times. But only when I experienced the problem myself, I got an in depth understanding of the problem.
Programming is a bit different than giving an incorrect answer. Because programming is not 100% formal, problems in programming can have many different solutions and no one correct answer. But still, you learn how to program by sitting down and trying to code. Some people might try to find the perfect solution to a problem they never solved before. They end up thinking about it for months, But never trying to actually sit and code. Sometimes you need to look for the simplest solution, without knowing if it will really succeed or if this solution won’t really solve the problem. If this solution works, good. If it doesn’t, then you will have better understanding of the problem you tried to solve, and in the next attempt you are more likely to solve it.

And lastely, here is a research I have found by looking at Yahoo news. Link.

Project “TRG(The RPG Game)” and other active projects.

ofer — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:33:03 +0000

I currently have 3 active projects.
Labyrinthica: The quest of lima, is complete but I intend to improve it and fix problems. There is a problem in case someone has a new graphics card and an additional old graphics card. Labyrinthica would shout about the old graphics card and won’t let the game run. There is also a need to add instructions in the game, especially for the potions system. Since it’s pretty unclear to new players. I also need to promote and get exposure for Labyrinthica. In a sense, from now on Labyrinthica will always be an active project.

The second project is Banana Jump, Barrel Kick. The windows version is almost complete, the main thing I need to do is draw the artwork.

The third project is a new project. For now I will call it project TRG(The RPG Game). This game will be a 2D RPG game, single\multi player. I have a good feeling about this project. The game will use a lot of the code used in Labyrinthica, this means that if I improve the core code of this game, I will also improve the core code of Labyrinthica.

The Indie Games Xmas Calendar 2009

ofer — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:47:02 +0000

The Indie Games Xmas Calendar 2009 is the idea of juuso from Game Producer. A website I like to frequent. This calendar will reveal at least one new game every day until December 24, and maybe even beyond that.
I hope to have Labyrinthica to feature in this calendar. I also believe a lot of the less familiar and less covered games will be featured in this calendar, so it’s worth to keep an eye for.

The arcade magic is back.

ofer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:01:41 +0000

For those of you who are old enough. Remember those days you would go to an arcade? You would play some game on your own, advancing quite a lot in the game. Suddenly you would notice some kid is silently standing by your side, watching you as you play in pure fascination and seriousness. The game turned to be a lot more fun to play when that kid was watching you.

This kind of social playing, or “arcade magic” is absent in online games. You can play with other people all around the world, but it’s not the same as like having someone in the same room with you.
I was playing castle crashers on the XBOX with my friend. He didn’t really got excited about it, and claimed there was nothing special about CC. I kind of felt the same way and let go of that game(we played the demo). Then a different friend played CC with me. This time he tried to study all the moves, he was quite good at the game and the overall experience of playing the game with him was a lot better. I suddenly felt the game was a lot better than I previously thought.

It might sound obvious, but playing with other people at the same room can make a great difference on your game experience.
I think this was the charm in the arcades, something that has been gone for some time when online gameplay has appeared(at least for me).
But I think for quite some time “same room” gaming have returned, especially with games like guitar hero. And I think game developers should look into the added value of games you can play with other people in the same room. Maybe that is even what made all the music bands games so popular in the first place?