Brent Taylor

Is this new in C++11? I've never come across this before. Either I missed it or it's new. Either way, I'm thankful for the info. Very useful. ---- Resource on move constructor: http://msdn.microsof...y/dd293665.aspx EDIT: After a quick google search, it appears it is indeed a C++11 feature.

Or if you don't know the length of the container ahead of time. The last thing you want is lag spike when your data is being copied due to your array or std::vector being re-sized. Assuming your data being housed is large enough to be an issue of course.

I've not tried at all. But I would assume that 7zip does encrypt the zip archive correctly. WinRar probably does as well.

I'd recommend either WinRar or 7zip. 7zip is free, WinRar has the infinite trial setup winzip did.

@Josh, I've got a better idea. Kick back for a moment, just a moment, and enjoy the fact you have your own office now. Wonderful feeling isn't it?

Congrats dude! As someone who also works from home, having a dedicated place to get work done that is as far removed from home life as possible is a God send. It was a huge boon to my productivity, at least while I had it. Currently working on cleaning out and renovating a storage room in my garage, turning it into a dedicated office. It's a fun home improvement project. Are you the only one there, or do you have the guys working on the iOS and Android ports there with you as well?

While I don't necessarily agree with Josh's conclusions (I'd want to do significantly more research than just what has been posted here, as I'm sure Josh has done), this isn't any better. If anything you're helping prove his point. It's a lot easier to justify $1 for a mobile game that you're likely to enjoy than $60 for a new Xbox 360 game that you'll beat quickly. Just as it's easier spending $10-$30 for a used game for the 360 than spending $60 for a new copy (VIP passes not withstanding).

Both of which are for .NET applications, not standard C++ applications. @Josh, I think it may just have been phrased oddly, but ActiveX is IE only if I'm not mistaken. You'll have to write an entirely different plugin for Firefox, Chrome, IE and assuming you're supporting it, Safari*. ---- * Being as Safari and Chrome both use webkit, the plugin architecture might be identical. I'm not sure.

The only thing we know that is fact is that LE2 + LE3 upgrade will be cheaper than LE3 outright. No upgrade price has been announced. All current pricing is for LE2 as is without an LE3 upgrade.

Agreed. But I do also admit that over saturation is certainly a problem. It's all about proper marketing at that point.

Again, I'd look into design patterns an OO Design. I'm not sure you're really grasping the difference between an object (class) and a function or a method. In addition, as I said before, make games not engines. It's pretty clear you don't know what you need yet. I understand you're trying to get a job working with DirectX. You don't need to write a game engine to do that. In fact the chances of you actually working at that low a level are extremely slim. As a developer, all of that will be abstracted away from you. If you still want the experience, make a game with DirectX, not an engine. You'll get the same experience, except you might actually learn something and finish a project. There are no shortcuts when it comes to game development, only setbacks.

I'm going to give the best advice ever. Make games, not engines. No matter how much planning you put into this, until you have a number of games under your belt you just simply won't have the experience necessary to design an extensible engine for practical use. You just won't know what you need from an engine. Also, I'd highly recommend brushing up on design patterns an OO Design. Right now it looks like you're still in your "C with Classes" stage of learning C++. I'd recommend these two books: Code Complete Design Patterns And for good measure, The Pragmatic Programmer Recommended reading for ANY developer. Rockstar or beginner.

I don't have any real personal preference on this. I simply want to see the corresponding data for the previous console generation before linking cause with correlation. I certainly do not disagree that mobile gaming is on the rise (and by leaps and bounds). I'm just not positive that it's also driving down console sales. I'm curious if the current data also mirrors the tail end of the last console generation life cycle.

That figure is not real nor hypothetical. Josh has been very specific in that he is not announcing a cost yet for LE3. Any price thrown around about LE3 is strictly a made up number by someone on this forum and has no real grounding in reality.

Except that MSFT has now largely hidden the Indie Games section on the dashboard. It's still there, but very few are just going to run across it. Now that said, what with Win8 having an App store along with Windows Phone 7 (WP7)...and MSFT consolidating their Metro UI across all their devices, I get the feeling this is going to change "soon". I expect we'll have one large store front accessible from any of MSFT's platforms. Considering the amount of money Apple is pulling in indie and AAA app purchases on their store's, MSFT would be foolish to do otherwise in the long term. EDIT: @Josh, I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion of Consoles losing popularity to mobile devices. I don't disagree that mobile device usage is on the rise, I just don't necessarily think it's mobile device usage that is causing the decline in console and console game sales. Correlation != Causation. I'd very much like to see the same data on the previous generation consoles at the tail end of their life cycle as well before I'd make that conclusion.

Generally they don't use OpenGL for the final render. Usually something akin to Mental Ray or a Renderman compliant renderer is used. It's all CPU bound, though there is the possibility of this changing in the future due to things like CUDA. Dreamworks uses their own Renderer based on the REYES architecture. It's all done on the CPU, no OpenGL to it. All their tools however, probably use OpenGL.

This, a thousand times, this. Especially for any of Daz's so called "tools".

This really comes down to two viewpoints. Naughty Alien certainly has a point here. LE3 will not magically make your game come alive. That's entirely down to your leadership and drive. If you can't make the cut, no engine out there, be it real or theoretical, is going to make your game happen. The other viewpoint is that from a tech standpoint...LE2 is vastly behind it's competition in terms of feature set and ease of use. Compared to Unity or the UDK, LE is showing it's age, especially at the price point*. Unity Free/Indy is just as capable as LE in terms of what it can accomplish. It's also cross-platform and runs in the browser. It even runs on Linux at this point. And this is all free. It's also arguably easier to use with a shorter learning curve. UDK can do significantly more out of the box than LE can. After the learning curve you can also accomplish more much more quickly as well. It's cross platform, running on OS X, Windows and iOS (android support coming soon). The editor is top notch and it's got a very healthy community with a vast amount of support. It's also $100 per title*. Do I like LE? Yes. I mainly use it for small prototypes or fiddling around however. It just doesn't have the toolset to compete with the competition. Especially when I need licenses for my entire team. ---- *I'm aware that in the long run LE is cheaper than Unity or the UDK. However, this is true only under the condition that a game I sell makes a significant amount of money. At that point, having to pay a little extra is what I call a Good Problem™. I've already made enough that I have the cash on hand to cover it and then some. It's also true that Unity or the UDK are more expensive in the long run provided that the given toolset does NOT cut down on my development time. In practice, this isn't the case, especially with the UDK. I'm not trying to bring down LE or anything. I was asked a question and I'm just trying to answer it seriously and honestly. I think LE has a lot of potential, but it is not there yet.

*sighs* I really am tired of this FUD, especially since it didn't originate from Microsoft to begin with, but from the community that didn't understand the implications. The Vista OpenGL scare was a non-issue to begin with. What Microsoft had stated is that they were no longer going to maintain, support or include the OpenGL _SOFTWARE_ driver or runtime for OpenGL. It has _ALWAYS_ been the job of the video card manufacturer's to provide the hardware accelerated driver. Windows 2000 was an excellent example of this. It didn't ship with the OpenGL software driver either. Nor did NT. Both were perfectly capable of OpenGL hardware acceleration once the proper drivers were installed from the video card vendor.

Considering he's here because of 3DWS and the fact that there was a 3DWS forum here until relatively recently, I have to say I can understand his confusion. I'd have to agree that it makes little sense to require an LE license to get access to a 3DWS forum. Speaking of which... @Josh What DID happen to the 3DWS forum?

Specifically how it's implemented. How are you breaking down the scene into chunks? For something like a minecraft inspired game or clone, you are likely going to want a little more control than you'd get in a generic implementation.

Any information on the implementation?

Sounds like you're inspired by Minecraft. Yes, instancing is a must for this. In addition you're going to want to organize everything into a sparse voxel octree. A quick google search should give you a lot of information on this.

Normally I'd refute this, site articles and resources, even do a bit of logical reasoning to explain why Meta's wrong here. However, I'm just tired of dealing with the BS. I'm just going to leave it here and label it as a typical baseless Meta response. It's not worth my time anymore.

I can already tell I'm going to regret asking this, but what do you mean Apple made it impossible to use OS X with an Apple computer?