I'm always looking for a legitimate excuse to use a goto in my C++ code because I'm perverse. It's very rare to find one but this looks like it might be okay.
That's one thing I've noticed with my C++ code lately is that I'm writing const absolutely everywhere. Having mutability where you need it is awesome but it is interesting to see languages like Rust where immutability is the default.
I have done a bit of this too. The main downside in C++ is that you end up writing a few more ternary operators than you otherwise may have. But it is nice to be able to look at the first assignment of a variable and know it is the only one.
Yeah it kind of feels dirty having all these mutable variables around after doing any functional programming at all.
I've found using const a lot also goes hand-in-hand with raii. If a member of a class is const it must be initialized in the constructor, and it just seems to make me code a bit more "hygienically".
It's an interesting time for native development with all these languages making some serious attempts to dethrone C++ when in comes to combining high/low level in one language.
I'm still using C++ myself until the dust settles a bit, but I've found that my C++(11) code is trending towards being less stateful and more functionl-ish.
It's cool to see things changing in this space after feeling like it would be old style C or C++ forever.
I suppose my main gripes are that moving is not free, you can reuse moved-from objects, and there is no story for checked borrowing of unique_ptrs—you have to use raw pointers or weaken the ownership semantics to shared_ptr so that you can use weak_ptr for safe borrowing. Not to mention that shared_ptr is often semantically questionable and used as an inefficient alternative to a garbage collector.
It's all very interesting if true. I've always wondered why some people just seem to get nauseous so quickly when interacting in 3d environments.
In my anecdotal experience I've found adjusting things like depth-of-field of the viewport and increasing framerate to have a significant impact on simulator sickenss type effects.
It would be interesting to find what kind of minimum threshold of realistic lighting might be needed to help overcome the problem.
I've suffered pretty severe depression and anxiety for most of my adult life. While the idea that we should all just grow a thicker skin and 'just deal with it' is both understandable and practical given the nature of the internet - it just wont happen for me. I know myself well enough to have recognized that even a tiny drop of vitriol could have me questioning my every decision and shatter my self confidence for days or even weeks. So I simply write code and keep it to myself, and I'm sure there are plenty of others like me.
The idea of open sourcing our work is truly admirable however there are some of us out there who just can't stand the hate and Alpha-nerd jockeying, so we opt out. I don't think the world is missing out on much by my own lack of contribution but who knows how many truly brilliant yet fragile minds are self selecting out of the open source community because they just cannot cope?
please email tarballs to rektide+anongit@voodoowarez.com if you have code you have no aspirations for but wouldn't mind kicking out into the wild. i will eliminate author headers from the code and seed over p2p and make available. thank you for any sympathy you might have towards this request to let us syndicate your work.
Articles like this reduce games to some grey, by the numbers marketing exercise. The reason so many games on the app store sink like a rock is because they just plain aren't enjoyable experiences and treat their players very cynically. It's totally disappointing that micro transactions, sneaky psychological tricks and nagging the player at every stage is so actively encouraged in the mobile space.
Gameplay and designing experiences for the player is seen as some sort of afterthought.
Games can be such a wonderful immersive medium, but it's hard to get lost in another world while there's a bright bouncing icon asking for your credit card or facebook details every three seconds. Mobile games really could be so much better than this.
I for one would love to see more focus on building great things and less on monetization. Long live the indies and hats off to people like yourself who are out there pushing things forward.
I spent two years building an iOS game without any special psychological or monetization tricks. My goal was simply to make an interesting and engaging game, and charge people a few bucks up front to play it. But making a living doing this is not as simple as it seems.
My game (http://buttonbrigade.com) is completely unique and those that play it love it, but so far the market has shown very little interest, even for the free version. From this side of the fence, it seems much easier to market and make money off of a clone of an existing game.
I wish it were simply a matter of making a great game and enjoying success, but if I want to keep doing this for a living, it seems I need to put much more effort into marketing than actually making great games.
I can't recall if it required a cheat or not (secret stuff didn't show up on the map by default), but you could absolutely see every entity in the level from the map screen.
This included enemies, projectiles, powerups, bullet sparks and assorted decorations. Many of them were shown as little arrows indicating which direction they were facing.
The games that do float to the top tend to be reasonably solid (or at the very least they do what they say on the tin) but even then a lot of them just aren't that great.
It just seems like a lot of mobile game developers have resigned themselves to shallow one trick games, riddled with poor value paid DLC and without even attempting to capture any of the charm or depth of their console (or PC) contemporaries.
It would be great for there to be that sense of buzz and excitement about the latest 'cool' games like there is on other platforms. I'd really like to be amazed every now and then.
