Let's hear it!

[warz]

Bounding spheres! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijI32tpviiY&fmt=18

You need to make the bounding spheres larger than the turrets.  It still kind of looks like they go through each other.

Well, keep in mind that these are not the models I'll be using. Turrets won't be Cones laying on their sides, and Enemies won't be Cubes.

The part of the bounding sphere that you see in red is the diameter. When I made the Cone and Cube models that I'm using, I didn't know how to make the origin point reside in the center of the model - that's why the bounding sphere appears to the side of the model. The model is in fact being drawn offset from it's actual center point - the bounding spheres are accurate. The size of the bounding sphere is properly scaled to enclose the entire model, despite what may be being drawn here.

Clipping will exist for a while, most likely. I won't put much effort into corrected that until I know what the final models that I will be using will look like. I've been thinking of themes to go with while making this, and I think something zombie related would be fun to work with. It'd be cool to draw persistant blood stains on the ground, and detachable body parts when the zombies get shot. The map would eventually be covered in blood and body parts. :-P

[skip]

What do you guys think of these two laptops? The first one is a better deal, but it seems awfully bulky and heavy. It's mainly for school use -- so it should be pretty lightweight and portable. Is 7.71lbs for a laptop heavy? 15.71" x 11.5" x 1.61-1.73" vs. 16.14" x 11.25" x 1.37-1.63"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115546
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115592

[Hitmen]

trying to install a game in chinese is hard

[Blaze]

trying to install a game in chinese is hard

Not when you're Ergot!

[deadly7]

What do you guys think of these two laptops? The first one is a better deal, but it seems awfully bulky and heavy. It's mainly for school use -- so it should be pretty lightweight and portable. Is 7.71lbs for a laptop heavy? 15.71" x 11.5" x 1.61-1.73" vs. 16.14" x 11.25" x 1.37-1.63"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115546
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115592

I don't know about new-gen Turions, but you should try and find that laptop in a store somewhere. Turions used to run extremely hot even idling or doing nonintensive tasks.

[Newby]

trying to install a game in chinese is hard

Not when you're Ergot!

LOL.


So I figured out I'm definitely in the wrong linear algebra course for the following reasons. For clarification, I am enrolled in MAT22A (Linear Algebra) and the school offers another course, MAT067 (Modern Linear Algebra).

Syllabus for MAT 22A: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/courses/syllabi/mat22a.pdf
Syllabus for MAT 067: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/courses/syllabi/mat67.pdf

• The professor is the same professor I had last course. I didn't do well and he was a terrible teacher. I will not enjoy the class and it will be difficult to do well.
• The textbook costs $114 (recommended price) for the course I am in. I use the textbook for 9 freakin' weeks. I am out $114 for that reason alone. In comparison, the textbook for MAT067 is free and provided online. The "lecture notes" if you will. It's basically a book, from glancing over it.
• The class I am in gives a basic understanding of linear algebra, as far as I can tell. MAT067 used to be named "Advanced Linear Algebra" and is much more theoretical and useful, I'm guessing.

Only issue is that MAT067 doesn't fit into my schedule, and I'd have to file a waiver to substitute it for MAT22A, even if I could work it into my schedule.

On a related note, I've been studying differential equations in my spare time, following the syllabus for the differential equations class (change any syllabus's file name to mat22b.pdf) and using an older version of the book I have in PDF format. I do a "lecture" a day, and work through some example problems. After I finish that, I'll go ahead and look at MAT 067. No way am I falling behind in math skills this year! I plan to ace this quarter and the next two.

And I've been playing Morrowind. I think I might like it better than Oblivion simply because of how open-ended it is compared to Oblivion. And once you get the spells Mark/Recall and Boots of Blinding Speed, the game plays ten times faster than Oblivion ever did. Recall > fast travel, BOBS > mount.

Yeah.

[Hitmen]

trying to install a game in chinese is hard

Not when you're Ergot!

ERGOT TRANSLATE ERROR PLZ



I get this error like every 20 minutes while trying to patch the game and its really annoying, especially since it has been downloading for like 10 hours and still isn't done. It's really slow so I assume the connection is just timing out or something

[Rule]

And I've been playing Morrowind. I think I might like it better than Oblivion simply because of how open-ended it is compared to Oblivion. And once you get the spells Mark/Recall and Boots of Blinding Speed, the game plays ten times faster than Oblivion ever did. Recall > fast travel, BOBS > mount.

I played the original in 2001 or so.  I had a really awesome mage, with those boots, and with an ability to fly (quite quickly if I remember), and I could basically kill anything.  I got to the head of the mage guild.  Then I was kind of lost as to what to do next.  I wanted lunch with the emperor or something, but nooooooooooo.............. 

It's like "go join another guild and work your way up all over again"....

Wonder what was supposed to come next?  (I didn't know anything about the game, it was basically something I played when I couldn't sleep).

[Newby]

You pretty much summed that up, Rule. I'm the head of the mages and fighters guild. Now I work my way back to the top of another guild/house. All to kill time.

And yeah, the fly thing is awesome.

And there's a main storyline... the mages/fighters guilds are just other pseudo-storylines. I do like that in Oblivion the fighters/mages guilds are more story-oriented than in Morrowind (e.g. in the Mages Guild, you deal with necromancy; the Fighters Guild, you deal with some competitional guild that has a secret edge over you) so I'm torn as to what I enjoy more. It doesn't make sense that lower people in the guilds are giving me quests (which is possible, since I didn't do them all) and in Oblivion that was never an issue.

Although in Oblivion there is significantly less to do. Obviously all that time making those storylines detracted from other things you could do.

[warz]

oook. my towers now shoot at the enemies. there's no collision detection going on with the bullets, yet, but i believe that'll take like 30 minutes or so, tomorrow. relatively simple feature. in this video, the bullets don't travel at a constant velocity. it might not be visible, though. i've corrected this issue since recording this, but i'm just too lazy to re-record and upload. I've also increased the threat distance for towers so that they'll shoot at enemies from greater distances - more action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puQmEJ-s-JM

[rabbit]

Are you making a tower defense game?

[BigAznDaddy]

oook. my towers now shoot at the enemies. there's no collision detection going on with the bullets, yet, but i believe that'll take like 30 minutes or so, tomorrow. relatively simple feature. in this video, the bullets don't travel at a constant velocity. it might not be visible, though. i've corrected this issue since recording this, but i'm just too lazy to re-record and upload. I've also increased the threat distance for towers so that they'll shoot at enemies from greater distances - more action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puQmEJ-s-JM

that is cool I can not even manage to use microsoft paint but you are doing 3d crap/ programming.

[truste1]

2nd semester of Physics started today. A in the lecture and the lab last session, I'm pleased.

[warz]

... now, bullets peform collision detection and reduce the health of the first enemy they collide with. This introduces an interesting dynamic into the gameplay, I think. Towers are not guaranteed to hit a target. For example, a tower with a slower type of projectile shooting at a fast moving enemy far away will most likely miss. Also, towers with an AOE type projectile can spray a barrage of bullets (or flame, liquid, whatever) and it'll hit multiple targets.

So, now I've basically got the complete workings of a very basic tower defense game. I've written everything to be very customizable, though, so adding new tower types, weapons, enemy types, etc, is just a matter of extending a base class. There's only 1 enemy in this video, but towers aim at the closest enemy initially, and will fire at that enemy until he moves out of range. They don't freak out with more than one enemy in range. Notice how bullets will miss, and fly past the enemy. Bullets hitting the enemy simply disappear - there's no particle effects, or anything, yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwfw8cTUv68

Edit:
They come in waves now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcQ0-aL-k8Q

[Newby]

Speech recognition is a bitch.