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Inspired...

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 9:12 pm
by Deej
Josh,

You've inspired me to get off my arse and get back to some of my own java projects that I'm been tinkering around with over the years. Got any interesting (but language agnostic) links/URLs for tips on planet rendering? I've got a few basic perlin noise bookmarks stashed away that I might dig up again.

cheers,
Deej

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 9:47 pm
by croxis

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:42 pm
by Deej
Brilliant!
Thankyou croxis.

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 12:30 am
by Jason S
I was inspired enough to order a book on procedural generation of Amazon. Hope I get around to reading it...

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 1:34 am
by Atarun
Jason Schupfer wrote:I was inspired enough to order a book on procedural generation of Amazon. Hope I get around to reading it...
Nice. Can you give us the reference? And tell us if it's any good once you've gotten around to opening it? ;)

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:25 am
by Jason S
I could not find many at Amazon uk, in fact this was the only one really and it may not be too up to date. But hey, it's a start.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1558 ... 01_s00_i00

When I get it I will have a look and give an opinion.

I have been pressing on the "Surprise Me!" link to give example pages of the book and there seems to be a lot of example algorithms and pretty pics of the results, which is nice.

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:54 am
by Atarun
@Jason: Thanks for the reference and if you find the time to start reading it, please do tell if it's interesting. ;)

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:56 am
by Atarun
OMG, that takes the cake. I've looked up "procedural generation" on amazon.fr and found this title: "Procedural Generation: Computer Graphics, Level Design, Fractal, Speech Synthesis, Electronic Music, Generative Music, Avalanche Studios, Lazy Evaluation, Functional Programming"

Then I read the description and stumbled on that:
"Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online."

And it's sold upwards from 48€ ($62)... What a ripoff. :x

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 8:04 am
by Jason S
H'mmm, yes you could give that a miss :)

There is stuff on line certainly, I was reading http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 3:21 pm
by aspman
Deej wrote:Josh,

You've inspired me to get off my arse and get back to some of my own java projects that I'm been tinkering around with over the years. Got any interesting (but language agnostic) links/URLs for tips on planet rendering? I've got a few basic perlin noise bookmarks stashed away that I might dig up again.

cheers,
Deej
Ditto, Josh you have also inspired me to "get off my arse" and jump into C# programming - something I have should have been doing for the last couple of years but keep putting it off. After reading your blog and filtering the C++ tags http://joshparnell.com/blog/tag/c/ I see you went through some pain to begin with, but the results have clearly paid off for you.

I need C# for work (asp.net rather than classic asp) but wondered why you chose C++ rather than C#? isnt C# a later/better implementation?

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 4:16 pm
by Atarun
aspman wrote:Ditto, Josh you have also inspired me to "get off my arse" and jump into C# programming - something I have should have been doing for the last couple of years but keep putting it off. After reading your blog and filtering the C++ tags http://joshparnell.com/blog/tag/c/ I see you went through some pain to begin with, but the results have clearly paid off for you.

I need C# for work (asp.net rather than classic asp) but wondered why you chose C++ rather than C#? isnt C# a later/better implementation?
AFAIK C# is a different language altogether, though heavily inspired by C++ (you could say the same about Java).
I hear it's a lot harder to port C# programs to Mac and Linux, though. So maybe it's a good thing he went with C++.

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 4:01 am
by Jason S
The book on procedural generation arrived.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1558 ... 01_s00_i00

I will try to use the techniques in a future game, although I do not think it will be a space sim.

There are plenty example pictures and really a lot of nice useful and short or not too long algorithms to get the head around. The book looks nicely formatted and the code and non-code parts well presented.

The maths is hairy at times of course due to the nature of the subject, but I guess it's not essential to fully understand the maths to use the algorithms.

Many of the algorithms are written in Shaderman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenderMan_Shading_Language
That language is C like and can be used in open source languages Pixie or Aqsis according to the wiki.

The link on the back of the book to get the algorithms code put me to a dead link. However the algorithms look to be short enough to easily type in and you would want to convert them to your own framework anyway. They are high level (No open GL C++ stuff that I could see on first glancing through the pages) as they sit on top of Renderman, but high level is good to understand the algorithms in my opinion.

There is stuff on so much in this book from wind to clouds to planet creation and far too much for me to list. It really has lot of useful algorithms. It's 687 pages and a lot to read. Hard back and quite heavy, use with strong hands or a book rest :)

Oh and to jump to the previous discussion, C# is a rather nice language and easy to pick up if you know Java. C# is important in business circles and windows and windows phone and XBOX etc... For game dev, C++ could have an edge for portability although there are cross platform frameworks that use C# like Mono where you can write your code once in C# and port to most of the main platforms.
Depending on the game development you wish to do cross platform frameworks such as LIBGDX are good as they do the open GL stuff for you (although you can still go low level including programmable shaders etc) and have things to help with asset management. LIBGDX is a write your code once and compiles to HTML5, Desktop runnable jar, Android and also IOS very soon. Decent cross platform alternatives to LIBGDX are Cocos-2dx which I think uses C++ and also Playn by Google. Pratically to do anything for IOS you need a MAC which is a financial pain, but hey ho, and you can get away with using a Mac mini. The frameworks I mention are free without royalties, except for the IOS dev option you may also need to purchase Monotouch which is 399 dollars for an Indie license (Yes I know, ouch), it is either that or learn Objective-c.

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 3:21 pm
by aspman
Jason Schupfer wrote:Oh and to jump to the previous discussion, C# is a rather nice language and easy to pick up if you know Java. C# is important in business circles and windows and windows phone and XBOX etc... For game dev, C++ could have an edge for portability although there are cross platform frameworks that use C# like Mono where you can write your code once in C# and port to most of the main platforms.
Depending on the game development you wish to do cross platform frameworks such as LIBGDX are good as they do the open GL stuff for you (although you can still go low level including programmable shaders etc) and have things to help with asset management. LIBGDX is a write your code once and compiles to HTML5, Desktop runnable jar, Android and also IOS very soon. Decent cross platform alternatives to LIBGDX are Cocos-2dx which I think uses C++ and also Playn by Google. Pratically to do anything for IOS you need a MAC which is a financial pain, but hey ho, and you can get away with using a Mac mini. The frameworks I mention are free without royalties, except for the IOS dev option you may also need to purchase Monotouch which is 399 dollars for an Indie license (Yes I know, ouch), it is either that or learn Objective-c.
Thanks for the advice Jason. I think I set a bit of confusion chain going on the kickstarter comments with my comments about learning C#. I am aware Josh uses C++ but I need to get into C# to service some clients I inherited recently but was very pleased to find books about "Game programming using C# and OpenGL" so it has inspired me big time to "get off my arse" as per the OP!

Re: Inspired...

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 4:01 pm
by Jason S
Glad to be of help, keep those clients happy and even if C# may not always be the most efficient executing for games (Like Java isn't either) it is often fast enough and it is quite nice to use and can open many doors in corporate world.