Ask a games programmer

[Formaldehyde]

I think this is a large part of the reason why so much software development occurs elsewhere. I have averaged 45-55 hours per week with a lot of spare time spent keeping current and thinking about work-related problems in my off time. While there are a few people in the US who only work 40 hour weeks, they are by far the exception instead of the rule. In the US, it isn't a good career choice at all for those who want to be 9-5ers.

I worked for a British company for a while. The Australian CEO tried to bring all software development to the US for this very reason, and because he could then fire people for no reason. But he became so successful so quickly afer the company went public, he quickly lost all interest in doing so.

In my last job, my boss pretty much insisted that everybody come into the office every Saturday for at least half a day.

All these jobs were on a salary basis instead of per hour, of course. It is one of the reasons why I would prefer to be an independent consultant because they must pay you for every hour you actually work, even though you don't get overtime.

 

[Zelig]

Would you be able to be a games programmer if you weren't able to drink?

 

[GamezRule]

Would you take a job at Valve?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I wouldn't move to America, if that's where Valve is

 

[GenMarshall]

I wouldn't move to America, if that's where Valve is

Nah, it would take you ten years just to get a job at Valve (And yes, that's a Valve Time joke ). Since Gabe is to busy on his... ...DAMNIT I'VE DELAYED EPISODE THREE AGAIN!!! .

Do you have an opportunity to poke at classic nostalgia games like Pacman and Pong?

 

[RedRalph]

I wouldn't move to America, if that's where Valve is

Would you move to Ireland? I'd love to go on the lash with you

 

[Mise]

Related: Are you ever going to come to one of the CFC UK Meets?

 

[GamezRule]

Nah, it would take you ten years just to get a job at Valve (And yes, that's a Valve Time joke ). Since Gabe is to busy on his... ...DAMNIT I'VE DELAYED EPISODE THREE AGAIN!!! .

Do you have an opportunity to poke at classic nostalgia games like Pacman and Pong?

My teacher's niece worked on Left4Dead.

Our class videochatted with some Valve game designers.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Bump.

No more questions then or should I ask for the thread to be closed?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Question: Why would you close the thread?

 

[Ajidica]

In late night programming sessions, have any of you had the urge to fly red flags, call each other comrade, drink vodka, and collectivize the company?

 

[Cheetah]

Bump.

No more questions then or should I ask for the thread to be closed?

Why the hell would you close it??

But if you want a question:

I'm making my own Civ/MoO-clone (though it's more of an on-again-off-again project) and while I get most of the game logic to work, and all the other stuff, graphics and GUI is something that still isn't.

I've been writing it in C# for a while now, and was considering using the XNA framework to make the graphics part easier. Unfortunately XNA isn't designed with PC strategy games in mind, so there's more or less no support for a graphical GUI with buttons, lists and sliders.

So I'm still stuck with Windows Forms (It was just too easy to start with that!). I've been able to turn on double buffering and to draw a bunch of custom 2d graphics (and I'm generally going for the retro-look), so it's survivable, but it's still flickering a bit too much.

Any idea on an easy way to implement a good GUI? I don't need any fancy 3d-stuff (as I said, I'd be happier with a retro-looking (think Civ1) game), but I'd like to move images without them flickering around the screen. I'd also like to be able to use a framework for buttons, lists, sliders and so on, to avoid too much work.

Don't mind that I've written everything in C# so far. The entire code is well-structured, so it'll be easy to convert or change parts of it as needed.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

In late night programming sessions, have any of you had the urge to fly red flags, call each other comrade, drink vodka, and collectivize the company?

That happens most lunch times. It's a lot better at our company now than it used to be, only worked 4 hours overtime this month

Why the hell would you close it??

But if you want a question:

I'm making my own Civ/MoO-clone (though it's more of an on-again-off-again project) and while I get most of the game logic to work, and all the other stuff, graphics and GUI is something that still isn't.

I've been writing it in C# for a while now, and was considering using the XNA framework to make the graphics part easier. Unfortunately XNA isn't designed with PC strategy games in mind, so there's more or less no support for a graphical GUI with buttons, lists and sliders.

So I'm still stuck with Windows Forms (It was just too easy to start with that!). I've been able to turn on double buffering and to draw a bunch of custom 2d graphics (and I'm generally going for the retro-look), so it's survivable, but it's still flickering a bit too much.

Any idea on an easy way to implement a good GUI? I don't need any fancy 3d-stuff (as I said, I'd be happier with a retro-looking (think Civ1) game), but I'd like to move images without them flickering around the screen. I'd also like to be able to use a framework for buttons, lists, sliders and so on, to avoid too much work.

Don't mind that I've written everything in C# so far. The entire code is well-structured, so it'll be easy to convert or change parts of it as needed.

It shouldn't flicker with double buffering on? Are you waiting for a vertical refresh (VSync) before swapping the buffers? Dunno how to do that in Windows Forms though. You might be able to do that with some kind of hi-res performance timer, dunno how though.

If you can put all your controls outside the playing area do a Windows Form but use XNA to draw to a window on the form... do that.

I'm pretty sure there's a way to memory map a window's display area to increase performance as well.

Does XNA not offer any simple controls?

EDIT: This might help http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tdk2485d.aspx

 

[Cheetah]

XNA doesn't really offer any controls, no.

However, thinking about this for the nth time, I've decided to go back to full XNA for my GUI. I'll just avoid any complex GUI elements like lists and so on, and just rely on buttons and checkboxes. Those are easy enough to make properly.

Another question though: Do you have any tips on how to handle a game world that gets too large for the memory? With a large game world, with many units and buildings and other things, I'm concerned that my game will require too much of the machine's RAM...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Your game world would have to be massive in a strategy game for that.

Super big worlds are usually streamed in from disk, you keep the areas adjacent to you in memory and background load areas as you move from one area to another.

In a strategy game you really need to process all the units and such though, so standard tricks like only processing entities near to the player don't work very well. Typically you fully process entities near you and run reduced or no processing (or just follow fixed paths say) for entities far away from the player.

There are a number of ways to reduce the numbers of inter-object interactions though, such as using spatial partitioning trees such as quadtrees (2d), octrees (3d), BSP-trees or Kd-trees. This is typically the main processing time killer since a naive approach checks every entity against every other which is n² complexity in the number of entities.