Taconite

@taconite

Game Dev and Math Nerd. Making a couple projects: Dark-Fantasy Ancient-Greek Retro-FPS Meditative game about canoeing the Great Lakes Goofy Off-Road Rum-Running game

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Taconite@taconite· 6d

Finally worked through all of the math! We can now move between analytical (ellipse, anomaly) and numeric (pos, vel) as required. Still need to figure out a good arch, but I've at least got all the equations working! #gamedev #indiegame #solodev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· 10d

Modified "this kills the crab" meme, it now says "this kills the bug" and a pair of slashes had been added over the scissors

Taconite@taconite· 11d

NGL, this isn't meant to be a real-life accurate simulation, so I'm cutting some corners by design. My reason for trying to fix the precession was to keep the orbits as close to the initial elliptical estimate. I think I've basically got an adaptive quadrature, but I'm using distance as a shorthand

Screen capture from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_quadrature#General_scheme

Line 2 is the issue; if I could analytically calculate Q I wouldn't need a numeric integrator?

Taconite@taconite· 11d

Further work on the orbital sim - Variable step size for improved stability - Support for multiple gravity wells - Variable simulation speed for FF and slow-mo Next steps are to improve the scheduling, it's still kinda locked to the wall time... #gamedev #indiegame #solodev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· 12d

Please consider controller support for maximum immersion

Taconite@taconite· 13d

Tbh, I don't really do the math, I just go visually...

Screenshot of C# code:

/// <summary>
/// Samples the distribution specified by the given quantile function curve.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="quantileCurve">Quantile curve for the desired distribution.</param>
/// <returns>Sample pulled from the distribution. [0,1] </returns>
public static float SampleDistribution(AnimationCurve quantileCurve)
{
return quantileCurve.Evaluate(Random.Range(0f, 1f));
}

Screenshot of unity editor showing a debug view of an AnimationCurve and histogram from the resulting distribution. The curve has two keyframes that push the distribution higher near those points. Correspondingly, the histogram shows two sharp peaks.

Note: the histogram is scaled relative to the largest bucket, the important factor is the relative depth of the valleys

Screenshot of unity editor showing a debug view of an AnimationCurve and histogram from the resulting distribution. The curve has a single keyframe in the middle that pushes the slope steeper, the histogram has a corresponding valley. The first keyframe has had it's slope lowered somewhat, the histogram shows the highest density at the leftmost edge.

Note: the histogram is scaled relative to the largest bucket, the important factor is the relative depth of the valleys

Taconite@taconite· 14d

Noticed some error with highly eccentric orbits; the acceleration vector changes a lot between each step. Taking multiple steps when close to the gravity well keeps the orbits much more stable! It's a good thing I was already using Verlet integration, Euler integrators were acting weird

Taconite@taconite· 14d

Screenshot of the unity editor showing a debug visualization of an unstable orbit. Something is wrong with this one numerically, and it's created a very tight doughnut of orbits.

Taconite@taconite· 14d

Be not afraid

Screenshot of unity editor showing a trace of an unstable orbit. The orbit itself rotates around the gravity well, creating a wing like structure.

I'm pushing the integrators to find out where they struggle and testing out solutions for long term stability.

Taconite@taconite· 14d

Doing some math for fun Visualizing different quantities over the course of an orbit to see what I can use. Probably should just learn this stuff for real, but I like to "see how the things behaves" first, you know? #gamedev #indiegame #solodev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· 17d

More physics experiments; orbital debris simulated via compute shader. Each object knows it's closest neighbor, in support of collision detection. Will probably need some chunking in the future, but this runs smoothly up to 16k so far! #gamedev #indiegame #solodev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· 21d

Caves of Qud

Photo of socks in a store with a label that says; "socks that plant trees"

Taconite@taconite· 23d

Screenshot of "Mare" enemy from Lunacid; a floating black horse head with glowing eyes

Taconite@taconite· Jul 12

Screen capture of donkey kong tv show; dk sitting by the sea, booty sticking out, single finger raised

Taconite@taconite· Jul 6

Best result after a bit of messing about I don't think splines are the right way to approach this problem. At a minimum, the timing and shape of each step should be determined on the fly. No one path/cadence will work for all speeds, just do it all programmatically! #gamedev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· Jul 2

Little bit of characterization for the narrator, there

Screenshot of Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_sorcery

"Such a story combines the color and dash of the historical costume romance with the atavistic supernatural thrills of the weird, occult, or ghost story. When well done, it provides the purest fun of fiction of any kind. It is escape fiction wherein one escapes clear out of the real world into one where all men are strong, all women beautiful, all life adventurous, and all problems simple, and nobody even mentions the income tax or the dropout problem or socialized medicine."

Taconite@taconite· Jul 2

Horse from first principles Contactors attempt to trace a path relative to the body, reciprocal forces move the body whilst contact is maintained. Need a better way to author cadences/gaits, time to learn a bunch of new words! #gamedev #unity3d

Taconite@taconite· Jul 2

Screenshot of Wikipedia article for Wang tiles:

Wang tiles (or Wang dominoes), first proposed by mathematician, logician, and philosopher Hao Wang in 1961, is a class of formal systems. They are modeled visually by square tiles with a color on each side. A set of such tiles is selected, and copies of the tiles are arranged side by side with matching colors, without rotating or reflecting them.

Taconite@taconite· Jul 2

Image taken from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_number

A table of numbers classifying them into different types; composite, abundant, perfect, deficient, weird

Taconite@taconite· Jun 27

I know how to save the game industry

Screenshot of eXistenZ (1999) showing a video game called "HIT BY A CAR, the game that puts you in the driver's seat!"

Taconite@taconite· Jun 20

Can't fool me

Taconite@taconite· Jun 18

Screenshot from:
https://fredmhaynes.com/2019/09/22/taconite/

Taconite@taconite· Jun 14

I wonder what nitro bread will turn out to be

Screen capture of video, showing a motorbike mid-flip. The landing ramp has the words "nitro circus" on it.

Taconite@taconite· Jun 4

It's like poetry, they rhyme

Photo of Jack Quaid doing mocap for the new GoW game, he's in a black suit with a cube of white pipes hanging off his shoulders like a bankruptcy barrel.

Screenshot of "train hat" from fallout 3, an NPC is "wearing" a train car as a hat, so as to make it move with the scripting available.

Taconite@taconite· Jun 3

Why his hat veiny?

Screenshot of the evil bishop from Ladyhawke (1985)

Taconite@taconite· Jun 1

Notably, the study doesn't mention cardinals

Screenshot of linked article:

The activity was sometimes accompanied by wing flapping and vocalisations not typically heard from the birds. Asked if they showed any signs of self-loathing or Catholic guilt, Heys thought not. “I don’t want to say satisfied, but they do look different after they finish. It’s obviously doing something for them.”

Taconite@taconite· Jun 1

I'm glad we're mostly out of the magic numbers era...

Screenshot of an article found here: https://research.swtch.com/divmult

"Division by constants that aren't powers of two are a little harder. Jim Blinn dedicated his November 1995 column (“Three Wrongs Make a Right”; subscription required) in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications to tricks for computing x/255 for 16-bit x (a common computation during alpha compositing). Since 1/255 is approximately the same as 257/65536, you can get pretty close to x/255 by computing x*257/65536 (aka (x*257)>>16)). 257/65536 is a tiny bit bigger smaller than 1/255, so the approximation is sometimes too small by 1. Adding 257/65536 to nudge the values slightly upward results in a perfect approximation: for unsigned 16-bit x, x/255 = (x*257+257)>>16. No division!"

Taconite@taconite· May 27

Found a place

Photo of an end cap (7 shelves at the end of an aisle) full of lao ganma

Taconite@taconite· May 27

Way to zoomed in screenshot of that just says:

"...mitting your appli..."
"...xpect to hear bac from us a ..."
"...eeks of the application dead ..."

Taconite@taconite· May 24

Back in undergrad, I read a paper about an addressing scheme the A* lattice and coded up a space tree based on the described methods. Spent a while messing about, seeing what kind of fractals I could get just by walking the tree

$A black and white screenshot of a hexagonal fractal; 6 arms branch off a central tile, each arm then branches 5 times repeatedly. The overall shape matches the Gosper curve, helping reveal to me the inherent connection between space-trees and space-filling-curves$