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colinhect

Member Since 09 Jul 2005
Offline Last Active Jul 23 2012 12:39 PM
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#4929682 Terrain Generation with Plate Tectonics

Posted by colinhect on 09 April 2012 - 03:48 PM

It seems to me like even the most naïve model of plate tectonics is able to produce more convincing heightmaps than conventional fractal based methods. That's why I'm really wondering why it's not used in more projects?


Fractal-based methods are often used because it is fast enough to be computed on the fly for procedural terrain (see Minecraft). For extremely large scale terrain you simply can't have all of the terrain in memory (see I-Novae). This is the main reason why fractal-based methods will continue to be very popular.

Your work looks awesome. I don't have time to read your thesis though. Do you have any rough numbers on how long it takes to simulate and what resolution height-maps it can run in reasonable time?


#4928546 PS Vita - what programming language does it use?

Posted by colinhect on 05 April 2012 - 11:52 AM

C++ isn't that hard. You just have to remember if you wrote new you have to write delete somewhere.


It isn't quite that simple.


#4899430 How to handle update-rate?

Posted by colinhect on 03 January 2012 - 05:30 PM

Use a fixed timestep. Explained here: http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/

This will decouple rendering framerate from the logic update rate.


#4896236 help in choosing programing language and game engine

Posted by colinhect on 21 December 2011 - 11:56 AM

As I usually hear here and there, start tough. I started with C++ instead of Java or C#... This way I would feel confortable when trying to learn C#, If I had gone to C# first I guess I'd get frustrated trying to go through cpp...


Personally I would disagree with this if this is your first exposure programming. The pitfalls of C++ can detract from learning the core programming concepts that will make you a good programmer in all languages. I learned C++ as my first language (when I was fairly young) and I feel like I learned the details of C++ before I really understood OOP and general good programming practices. I would recommend starting with C# or Java.





#4893315 What is your longest C++ macro

Posted by colinhect on 12 December 2011 - 06:02 PM

I would implement it as a function first. If you find it is a performance bottleneck then put it in a macro (or inline function, or __fastcall, etc).

Unless you are calling the function a lot of times per frame I doubt the function calling overhead will affect much. In general, macros in C++ should be avoided if possible.


#4840855 Java vs C# (Mono)

Posted by colinhect on 26 July 2011 - 04:39 PM

I don't understand why there is so much talk about performance. Have you ever not played an indy game because it runs 5 FPS too slow? For hobby projects the time spent developing is a lot more important than the run-time performance. I have 6 years experience in C++ and 1 year in C# and I know that I can design/implement C# code about twice as fast as C++. That is worth a bit of a run-time performance hit (for me).


#4796855 Deferred shading and alpha testing

Posted by colinhect on 10 April 2011 - 05:55 PM

Ok I finally found what I was looking for. In order to not write a pixel in a fragment shader you use the discard keyword:


if (color.a > alphaTest) {
	gl_FragData[0].rgba = vec4(color.rgb, specular);
	gl_FragData[1].rgba = vec4(normal.xyz, gl_FragCoord.z);
} else {
	discard;
}

I just didn't know what to search for.

Thanks


  2. » Viewing Profile: Reputation: colinhect
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