₦airaland Forum

@djsholi: Unity3d is the engine we chose for the game project we are working on here on nairaland. We've made two demos, stored on sourceforge. I lost the source to the most recent one and all my work when my hard drive 303d/died.

I'm currently rebuilding some of my old work but concentrating more on learning game related math, physics and AI for now but I'll be happy to help whenever I can.

A tip: Removing the map could be more fun if the player had more things to do or more challenges to face early on. Simple graphic way pointers can also replace the need for a map.

@teemy: yes you're right. I've already done it. I just want to know which way is faster.

The question in simple terms:

Is it better to store all the IDs of users to be notified in one file [mysql TEXT] or is it better to do a search and retrieve the IDs? its basically a space vs time question.

@*dhtml: This one wey u dey jonz my question  I go report to Seun o.

Try making the menu respond to mouse clicks.

The character animation [ salute ] seems incomplete and loops continuously. You should wait till the player gets within a certain distance.

Anyways, good luck.

Hows your math and AI?

Cool!!!

Did you use a custom game engine and plugin?

Edit: Seems like it's unity. Still Awesome

lolz 

I guess I haven't providing enough detail.

Assume I have four tables like this:

USERS:
fields: ID, NAME

ACTIVITIES:
fields: ID, USER_ID, ENTRY, DATE

COMMENTS:
fields: ID, USER_ID, ACTIVITY_ID, ENTRY, DATE

NOTIFICATIONS:
fields: ID, USER_ID, MESSAGE, VIEWED, DATE

Now imagine a user has written a status. This is added to the ACTIVITIES table along with other details.

Next: friends of the user post comments to the same status, each is added to the COMMENTS table.

The user including his/her friends who have commented on the status could be said to have participated in an activity.

Now, we want to notify each participant every time a new comment is made. There are two ways to do this:

The First way: Have a PARTICIPANTS field [saved as TEXT] in the ACTIVITIES table so that the USER_ID of each friend who comments on the status as well as that of the user is added to it.

An entry looks like '2 | 1 | 5 | 6 '. Note '|' is a delimiter and the entries will have to be parsed using a function such as explode('|', $IDS);

2 is the ID of the user (status poster) and other numbers refer to those of other participants.

All I have to do now is just retrieve this field, parse it (separate items using '|' as delimiter) enter the IDs in an array and send notifications to everyone while making sure I don't send to the person who makes the newest comment.

Second Way: I could search COMMENTS for entries whose ACTIVITY_ID is the ID of the user's status since if you think about it, each corresponding USER_ID is already of that a participant and store them in an array. Before storing them though, I also sure the USER_ID is not that of the person making this new comment.


Now the question is which way is faster? Storing as TEXT using the PARTICIPANTS field [cost = space] or just searching the COMMENTS table [ cost = time]?

@*dhtml: Is it better to store something in mysql TEXT format (eg IDs of participants in an activity such as people who comment on a status[activity]) when there are other ways of retrieving the data? The same data (user ID) can be retrieved(searched) from comments table but this might take time depending on the number of users who have commented. If I store their IDs in text format along with the original status, I get to save time but space might be used up.

Hello guys!

Lost all my work last year but I'm rebuilding everything and making some changes along the way.

In one of my projects, I had a participants field [saved as TEXT] under my activity table. this field held the IDs of people who commented on a status or topic using '|' as the delimiter for each.  The aim being to easily notify people of new comments and stuff.

This approach seems convenient as I don't have to do any other search after I select the activity but it is costly in terms of SPACE.

Another possible approach is to search for all comments related to an activity and retrieve the user IDs, join the main poster's ID to the list if it isn't already there and send notifications. This way, I save space but the SEARCH might take time depending on the number of people who have commented or participated in another way.

Which approach do you recommend and why?

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@*dhtml: The blocks each agent/team can walk on, made up of a start block, end block and all the blocks between them. E.G yellow team agents can walk on certain blocks in a clockwise direction, starting from a particular one till it reaches an end block from which it diverts into the castle.

@*dhtml: sup?

How are you creating the agent/team path for the ludo game you're creating? I don't want to use a manual array of predefined paths but I haven't been able to come up with the algorithm for the path either.

@omo_to_dun: Nice tutorial. Could you do one on springs?

I'm looking for ideas on implementing rope swings and grapple hooks in games.

PS: If you also have links to legally free books given by their authors, post here: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-848424.0.html I've posted two on vectors and trigonometry.

Hello guys,

I've come across some free ebooks given by the authors themselves. They're mathematical books - specifically for vectors and trigonometry.

I thought we should have a topic for legal book links - Please no scribd link unless you're sure the book was posted there by the author himself or released under GNU or similar licenses.

Please post yours. Please make sure the books or topics covered are in some way related to game programming

Here are the two books:

Vectors: http://mecmath.net/calc3book.pdf

Trigonometry: http://www.mecmath.net/trig/trigbook.pdf

Author: Michael Corral
Author site: http://www.mecmath.net/

@i-guru, sub5: According to mocality, Google kenya went through their directory and started contacting businesses listed on it to get them to sign up on Google's get [country] online program. Google Kenya even went as far as lying to the businesses that they were working with mocality.

It is against business ethics and especially worse considering Google's 'Dont be evil' motto.

http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/

Here's part of the conclusion of the blog post on mocality's blog:

Conclusion

Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.

Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.

When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.

I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.

Fulll: http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/

Awesome and all but we are still fighting the wrong battle.

For starters, the country should vote on government salaries henceforth. We cannot allow crooks to decide their own salaries and allowances anymore. Governance is voluntary service not voluntary enslavement of the people.

first post of 2012: sweet pawn for president.

Hello guys.

#my_last_post_for_2011

http://www.khanacademy.org/

I know a lot of us don't have fast internet connections and stuff but anytime you find yourself able to watch videos on the net, make sure you're watching something on Khan Academy.

#Knowledge_FTW

Lessons are grouped into categories such as calculus, arithmetic, statistics, physics etc. and the site navigation is quite easy so you won't spend too much time searching for what you want to learn.

I hate blackberry devices but I use one because let's face it, when it comes to communication, they're the best communication option we've got in Nigeria and most of Africa.

They SUCK at every other thing.

Hello people!

I've been thinking for days about the sanity of the attempt of certain people to legalize gay persecution in Nigeria. On what grounds do you think this is right?

Is this not a case of the majority using their power to protect their interests? Is it not the same as the church persecuting men like Galileo for practicing science? Is it any different from the killing of twins in Calabar? Is the use of one's religion as the basis of what should be law the right thing to do?

A lot of people are threatened by homosexuality and the thought of how it affects their environmental institutions but they are just being ignorant. Is culture stagnant? Do traditions not change, Do they not realize that this is just social evolution?

Thorstein Veblen once described institutions as nothing but the widely prevalent habits and customs of people which are the current outcome of an age long acquisition of human experience. The acceptance of gay people in society is the next outcome. Like it or not, it will occur.

Me thinks this is just a display of ignorance, fear and foolishness from those who propose and support it? Can anyone prove otherwise?

If you want to argue based on religion, then prove to me that your God actually supports gay persecution by first proving that your religion is the basis by which all men should live and then proving that your God actually exists and your religion is not just the aggregation of your society's subjective tendencies brought about by ignorance.

No man is subject to another man's spiritual inclinations and no one should be persecuted based on subjective tendencies of another man.

Nice job guys! Looking forward to it.

I now have a bookmarks folder for Nigerian games Big ups!!!

@titi_tilap: cool. nice screenshot also.

@omo_to_dun: somewhat true. The lack of seriousness on this thread is one of the reasons I opened the second one. Most people don't even bother reading so they miss important notifications and stuff like the announcement of the new page and the multiplayer demo amongst other things.

Anyways, how's u doing?

I've had some rough time lately, specifically my hdd going 303 aka went dead. All my files are gone and my ipod where I stored most of my visual and textual notes is missing. Still trying to remember and write down the structure of my stuff and hoping they call off the strike asap.

Hello guys!

Anybody know how I can get my files on an hdd with 303 error? Windows is still loading but gets stuck before showing the logon prompt. Recovery disk does the same.
The laptop is also overheating!

@lugan: blender is easy to use once you get a grip of the interface and know the shortcuts to frequently used tools. I just updated to 2.6 from 2.49b and I'm trying to learn the new interface but skool is keeping me away from my PC

GTA is at best a satirical view of society. I have no problem with satires. What I have a problem with is victimisation. Victimisation is what we will be doing with the current storyline.

On second thought, I don't think using the niger delta in any game that involves fighting against militants is a good idea.

I think Worldbest suggested something similar last year or so but we decided to change it because the issue is a sensitive one.

Video tutorials on youtube and written tutorials on some blogs. I'll check my bookmarks and list some of the sites when I get home.
I also use the documentation a lot as it contains code examples.

@rJones: nice and simple storyline. I like the idea.

I don't think the pm function is available for users. Maybe you should drop your mail or something.

Hi guys!

I've uploaded an alpha version of the Multiplayer FPS to the project page on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/naijadev/files/NETWORK_TEST/NETWORK_TEST.7z/download

Hi guys.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/naijadev/files/NETWORK_TEST/NETWORK_TEST.7z/download

Just finished the doing some work on the game. I'm still trying to figure out how to create a lobby so users can find game on LAN and over the net.

You can open two instances of the game to test it.

Note that some pose animations will not work till you've cycled the weapons twice or so. Dunno why. I'm still trying to fix it.

Controls: Q to change weapon, left mouse button or ctrl to shoot.

Concept: I have two concepts in mind for the game. One is a gangster style shooter and the other an African shooter with new kinds of weapons, levels and gameplay. The basic multiplayer code is usable for both concepts but graphic resources have to be made which is one of the issues delaying the game as well as other projects we're working on.

Interested people who want to participate in the development can sign up here: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-769009.0.html

Finally starting to understand the networking aspect of unity3d, Multiplayer shooter in a few,

@keji oj: welcome to the team. please visit the new project page @https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-769009.0.html

@Bulldog: Almost done with a multiplayer shooter. please if you're not busy, can you help with the sounds? It's a simple game with gang-like characters and urban elements. I'm trying to find a good soundtrack to set the tone of the game.