skap35

Just to let you know, .NET applications can make calls to unmanaged code like the SDL. So don't discount that option entirely just because you are using C#. http://cs-sdl.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page - This site has the wrappers to allow .NET to easily call the SDL.

Well for a simple 2D game, an interpreted language would be fine. I was just saying that for a complex game with lots of code, you are going to want it to run as fast as possible, which means using a compiled language for the CPU intensive code. That's what I was getting at in my other post. Those aspects of the game are best done using compiled code. Then you could combine it with a scripting language to control the other aspects of the game I mentioned.

Just because it is interpreted doesn't mean it is bad for games. Actually many modern games, especially RPG's use interpreted languages to allow the user to customize the game. Personally I think a scripting component is essential for any game of moderate complexity. It makes it easier on the developers and adds a huge amount of replay value for the end user; a vital consideration if you want to make money off a game. Just look at games like Unreal Tournament. There is a whole collection of end user developed mods, so once you beat the original game you can replay it with custom changes to the gameplay. However, developing an entire game engine in an interpreted language would be a bad idea. Personally C++ is the best language for the development of the engine (as you mentioned). But anything dealing with gameplay, characters, missions, etc should be developed in the game's scripting language so they can easily be customized later on.

I just wanted to add one thing I forgot in my original post. The reason I think that jail time might be acceptable in this particular strike (aside from the fact that they agreed not to strike) is that they wasted millions of dollars for the city. So effectively the union, in a sense, stole tax dollars from the people. I personally don't like income tax as it is, but when it is thrown down the toilet because of some union complaints I feel like I've been ripped off.

I disagree with this. In a "normal" union strike I would agree, however it is against the law for public workers to go on strike. When these people applied for their jobs they knew this and agreed that not going on strike was part of their employment contract. They violated that contract, and cost the city millions in doing so. If they wanted to have the ability to go on strike they should have found another job.

I was just going to say the same thing. I regularly go to The Register for technology related news. But I tend to ignore the idiotic political comments that are sprinkled throughout the articles. All in all, it's good for tech news, but ignore everything else they have to say...

Could you be a bit more specific about the features you are trying to add and what the product is that you are trying to improve? And that sounds like adapting an existing product, not inventing something new. You are taking features found in a number of existing products and combining them into a new product. But you aren't adding any completely new features.

I always thought that Sim City 2000 was an anti-Objectivist game. The rules of the simulation rewarded the type of policies that your standard liberal/environmentalist would advocate. Basically, industry was bad for the simulation, though it was still necessary for your game. You shouldn't build roads because cars cause too much pollution, which lowers your land value if you live near a road. As far as generating power, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and microwave were the best choices. Don't use nuclear or coal. If I remember correctly (it's been a long time) I think the nuclear power plant actually caused heavy pollution too, which is obviously inaccurate. And then there was the worst part: the "laws" that you could pass in your city. There were things like mandatory recycling, banning nuclear power from the city, and various other socialist policies. Passing those laws ended up improving your city and your job approval rating always went up when you did. Overall still a very fun game, but I remember those things irritated me back when I played it.

I watched a friend style some bihawks for a concert and he just squeezed a whole bottle of Elmer's glue onto his head. Very strange if you ask me but I guess it works well...I just wonder how you go about getting the glue out.

For the random number generator, The Art of Computer Programming, Seminumerical Algorithms (Vol. 2) has a huge section dedicated to random numbers. Just a warning though, the learning curve in Knuth's books is pretty steep and it involves a lot of math. But that entire series is pretty much the programmer's bible so it is useful for much more than just random number generators.

What kind of random number generator are you using?

I was in the exact same situation a few years ago. My best friend at the time knew that I was interested in this girl, but being as shy as I was, hadn't worked up the courage to ask her out yet. Well one night my friends and I were out drinking and my friend started bragging to me about how he had sex with the girl the night before. Which is a bit more extreme than your situation. Obviously I was very angry, but I certainly didn't punch him. Actually I was mad for about 20 minutes before I realized that it would be pretty stupid of me to try to pursue an actual relationship with a girl that is that "easy." At least I found out before I had a relationship with her and ending up getting cheated on. As for my friend, I continued to hang out with him, but no longer considered him my best friend. Actually, the longer I knew him, the more I realized that when it comes to most things, he is a nice guy. But as soon as an opportunity with a female comes along, he shouldn't be trusted. dondigitalia's explanation pretty much describes my friend exactly. He tried to hook up with as many girls as possible and bragged about every single one. So I guess it might be wise to keep your guard up when it comes to this guy and girls you like. But since you do live with this guy, you may as well try to get along as best you can. Otherwise things could be much worse.

Off the top of my head cross-platform development and ISAPI filters for IIS. But don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say .NET is a bad thing. I actually do VB.NET and C++ programming for a living and I really like most aspects of .NET. The language you choose should be suited to the project. I use VB.NET for most apps that will be used directly by an end-user, but I also maintain the code for our ISAPI filter and that can only be done in C++. This is an issue I've encountered way too many times when using VB.NET. The IDE is great at generating all that "tedious" code for me. But there are times when the IDE gets confused about the code it generated and refuses to compile. I've found that the only solution to this is to actually delve into the section of code labeled "VS generated code, do not edit using the source code editor" and fix the problem manually. If I had no clue what was happening when that control was first created, I wouldn't have been able to fix the problem. Problems like this are actually bugs in Visual Studio and should hopefully be fixed as Visual Studio and .NET in general matures. But the fact remains, if you don't know what is going on, how are you going to deal with these bugs?

Remember that many modern operating systems (including Windows and Linux) are written in a combination of C, C++, and assembly. It's not that it is a legacy language, it's just that it mainly falls into the domain of low-level system programming. For this reason, you shouldn't start with C. If you do want to get into C/C++, I'd recommend C++. Chances are you will never code much straight C unless you want to do some low-level programming. If you learn C++, you will understand most C code, plus you have the added safety of STL classes, which are much easier to understand and debug. VB.NET is perfect for an absolute beginner. The only problem with VB is that it hides quite a bit from the programmer. So once you get a little more advanced, I would recommend moving to C++ or Java so you will be more exposed to the important concepts. This goes with what I was saying earlier. The point and click design of Visual Studio makes it easy to initially create something. But if you eventually want to learn why things work the way they do, Visual Studio will always try to hide that from you.

You might find this site useful: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html. I found a lot of great information on there back when I was working on my 2D RPG.

What exactly do you mean by this? Are you saying that being a workaholic is a bad thing?

Clearly you are free to do what you want with your own time. But if you are at work and on the clock, I believe that would be immoral since you are being paid to do something that you not doing (i.e. work instead of surfing the Internet). You just said that people are free to waste a resource they own such as food or fuel, and time is a resource no different than those things.

Could you be more specific on the type of game? A "sprite-based" game could be many things. Also a couple other things: 1. A cross-platform game is a bit of work because of the graphics code you will need to implement. In Windows, you have DirectD3, DirectDraw (at least if you use an old version of DirectX) or GDI. Or a few other options. You'll need to consider how to redo your graphics routines to work on other platforms. However, a great option you might consider is the SDL (Simple Direct-media Layer). It is a very simple, open source and cross-platform game library. Think of it as a stripped down version of DirectX that also runs on Linux. 2. What about artificial intelligence/path planning and that sort of thing? Will this be some sort of human-vs-human game or will there be an AI opponent? 3. Back to the cross platform issue: what compiler(s) do you plan to use? In my personal experience, Visual C++ doesn't exactly follow standard C++. So if you write something in Visual Studio, there will be all kinds of issues if you try to recompile it in gcc.

NOTHING! I'm already prefect! 1. Currently my life consists of VB.NET programming at work. Come home and get right back on the computer to do my C++ project, or read, or lift weights. I rarely go out and try to meet new people so I need to force myself to socialize more... 2. Finish my distributed virtual machine project (that I've been working on for the past four years! ) 3. Set up a RAID file server on my network. 4. Build a Linux cluster for my virtual machine. 5. Set up a PPTP server so I can access my network from the road. 6. Stop buying new books faster than I can read them so I can finally get rid of that stack of unread books on my bookshelf. 7. Learn to spell before I go around calling myself perfect...I know I know, really bad joke...I just had to say it though. The only problem I see with my list is that the first one requires me to spend less time on the others. I don't know how I'm going to pull that off...

So I was driving to work this morning and was surprised to find that the car in front of me had a "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker. I thought it was kind of neat to see that and was wondering if that was anybody on this forum.

Looks like the U.S. won! http://slashdot.org/articles/05/11/16/1255212.shtml?tid=95 The "compromise" (lol) is that the U.N. now has a committee that will be consulted on decisions, but the U.S. still has 100% control of the root servers. In other words, nothing has changed. btw, some of the comments on the above news article are great:

Why? Because as Dikaiosyne already mentioned these classes are notorious for being nothing more than Collectivist propaganda courses. I took a similar course at my school and all it was was a professor telling us why we were not individuals. They spend the entire time explaining that the good of society is more important than you are. Maybe you were lucky enough to not have such an experience. But most college students aren't so lucky. Dikaiosyne: I couldn't agree with you more. My university was the same way. It's really too bad because there are some interesting topics in that area, but unfortunately I wasn't so lucky to have any neurology type courses at my school (unless I was in the college of medicine, which I wasn't)

Oh wait, are you talking about that whole SCO thing?

What legal debate?

Back when Clinton was president, America was on a quick trend to exactly that state. Thankfully, there has been a more Conservative trend in this country over the past few years. So Clinton's gun laws have been eased up considerably. In fact, last year (I think) I was surprised to hear that my home state of Ohio passed a law allowing people to carry a concealed weapon. Of course, you still need to take a little course on gun safety and register with the government, but at least it's progress in the right direction... Too bad I can't say the same about a backwards state like California. lol, so what is the point of owning one? If you can't even buy ammo for it how are you supposed to defend yourself? Just out of curiousity how does that law apply to making your own ammo? Is it legal to buy empty shells/slugs/gun powder? It sounds to me like they effectively banned rifles and shotguns as well...