It's hard to understand why things don't work sometimes. For example, I tried integer division today without typecasting. Meaning, all of the calculations for my dungeon crawler battle system went completely tits up. I've still not figured out how to get it completely sorted yet. Which is why there is no download for it at the bottom of this page. Fingers crossed, by next week, I will have sorted it and moved on to making a boss and an end message and the game will be all yours to mock and deride.
Integer Division
The way I understand it is, when you divide using integers, they always round down to the nearest whole number. Even if your answer is 3.9999999 it will return 3. This creates problems now and again which can be solved by typecasting, which I understand to be temporarily changing a variable type to another type, for example making an integer act like a float (a decimal number, to me and you).
Note: I wholeheartedly welcome anyone wanting to correct my limited understanding of the matter in the comments, as I said this is my understanding of it and if I'm wrong I will happily hold my hands up and be corrected.
“Why would you ever use integers then?", I hear you mumble in a kind of 'uninterested-but-you-have-to-ask-the-question' kind of way. Well, what about if you wanted to store the number of people in a country. You can't have 3/5ths of a person... can you?
Note: I wholeheartedly welcome anyone wanting to correct my limited understanding of the matter in the comments, as I said this is my understanding of it and if I'm wrong I will happily hold my hands up and be corrected.
“Why would you ever use integers then?", I hear you mumble in a kind of 'uninterested-but-you-have-to-ask-the-question' kind of way. Well, what about if you wanted to store the number of people in a country. You can't have 3/5ths of a person... can you?
Image Credit: http://americanvision.org/
Erm... This is awkward.
Anyway, if you declare the variable like this
int numberOfPeople;
It will always be a whole number; it will never return a decimal value (unless it is typecast) and when we assign a value to it, it must be an integer value. I know this may all seem simplistic and easy, but trust me, when you have giant sprawling programs with numerous classes you made, just because you learned how to make a class so you do it all of the fucking time now, it can be easy to forget what type of variable “heightOfCheeseBlock” is. So, when your compiler throws up a stupid error at you, it becomes really annoying. Maybe more experienced and more skilled programmers don't have these issues, but I do.
int numberOfPeople;
It will always be a whole number; it will never return a decimal value (unless it is typecast) and when we assign a value to it, it must be an integer value. I know this may all seem simplistic and easy, but trust me, when you have giant sprawling programs with numerous classes you made, just because you learned how to make a class so you do it all of the fucking time now, it can be easy to forget what type of variable “heightOfCheeseBlock” is. So, when your compiler throws up a stupid error at you, it becomes really annoying. Maybe more experienced and more skilled programmers don't have these issues, but I do.
Coursera
I've been doing the Beginning Game Programming in C# course on this website. So far, the course material has not been too taxing for me. I handed in my first assignment a day after it was given and next week I should find out just how rampaging way off the mark I was with my code. I won't be too upset about it though; I'm all about the learning. I want to do well, obviously, but if I get everything perfect and don't struggle with any of the topics, it means I have wasted my time.
I won't have learnt anything. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of time trying to improve at something and finding out you knew everything anyway. Except maybe Rastamouse. Or finally convincing your favourite lap dancer to do unprotected anal and catching AIDS.
I won't have learnt anything. There is nothing worse than spending a lot of time trying to improve at something and finding out you knew everything anyway. Except maybe Rastamouse. Or finally convincing your favourite lap dancer to do unprotected anal and catching AIDS.
Image Components: mackinnonandsaunders.com, stripclubtrappintour.com
I should not have been okay about Photoshopping this. - Mike
Dungeon Crawler
As I mentioned earlier, my latest practice project is a dungeon crawler. It is text based and has pre determined dungeons set out. It's not fancy, it's literally just to practice using arrays as a means to do (very) primitive collision detection. I know that there are much better ways of doing this, but using arrays and lists are something I haven't done a lot of, and I wanted to use this project to do something new and practice using one of those a bit.
To my surprise, it worked very well. My dungeon has walls that cannot be passed through, random battles, experience levels, skills that improve the more you use them and a shop. All it needs is for me to fix the battle system, so that when your attack skills improve it doesn't break and add in a final boss battle and it will be all yours to play through and pick apart its many faults.
To my surprise, it worked very well. My dungeon has walls that cannot be passed through, random battles, experience levels, skills that improve the more you use them and a shop. All it needs is for me to fix the battle system, so that when your attack skills improve it doesn't break and add in a final boss battle and it will be all yours to play through and pick apart its many faults.
By The Cunt
Email The Cunt
A hidden face of the crew, The Cunt is main coder for the Foul Entertainment Gaming department. He is currently documenting the progress of our game, Foul Fantasy, in his dev blogs.
Email The Cunt
A hidden face of the crew, The Cunt is main coder for the Foul Entertainment Gaming department. He is currently documenting the progress of our game, Foul Fantasy, in his dev blogs.