gamedevlists-general — List for discussing general game development issues

[GD-General] Photoshop CS3 question

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Hoping this list is still alive -- my last message is from 11/20/06...

I'm trying out the Photoshop CS3 version. It appears that useful 
functions, like "load selection from transparency" have disappeared. Is 
this another "TGA is all fuxxored" snafu? I can't find another way to do 
that.

The reason is that I have a bunch of PNGs that contain mostly 
transparent alpha, but lots of useful color information in the color 
channels. It used to be simple to convert the transparency part to an 
alpha channel after opening in CS2, but I can't figure out how to do it 
in CS3. Any help?

Cheers,

          / h+


-- 
-- Revenge is the most pointless and damaging of human desires.

Re: [GD-General] Representable range mini-rant

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Thatcher Ulrich wrote:
> I'm not sure if that is any use whatsoever, but it's kind of interesting.
>   

Combined with arithmetic coding, perhaps. Or maybe that's just a red 
herring :-) I'll let my thoughts spin on that for a while.

Cheers,

          / h+

Re: [GD-General] Representable range mini-rant

[Thatcher U. <tu...@tu...>]

On 10/3/06, Jon Watte <hp...@mi...> wrote:
> This is about representation of data, specifically with respects to
> closed intervals, and using fixed point representation.
>
> For example, representing components for normals, you need the range
> [-1,1]. (let's ignore the dropping of components for compression reasons
> for now) Same thing with various tree coordinates (if you allow the
> topmost coordinate value), vertex components, and pretty much any other
> quantity. This gets annoying when you are dealing with fixed point data.
>
> This is perhaps made most famous with the color->byte conversion, where
> 255 means 1.0. The problem with this is that you can't exactly represent
> the midpoint (0.5 maps to 127.5, in this case). If all you want to do is
> representing the midpoint, you can throw away the top value, and
> represent 1.0 using 254, and thus 0.5 as 127. For example, with sound
> samples, and geo-measurement data, it's common to make -32768 mean "no
> data" or "invalid", and normalize -32767 to 32767 as the peak-to-peak
> range. However, then you run into the same problem with mid-midpoints,
> which isn't so much a problem for colors (or audio samples), but a whole
> other kettle of fish for trees of various kinds, or vertex values that
> need to quantize into some tree-based structure.
>
> What I find myself doing is repersenting the midpoint and the two
> endpoints, and throwing away almost a whole bit of precision. For
> example, to represent 0..1 using 8 bits, I'd represent 0 as 0, and 1 as
> 128, and then "throwing away" data in the range 129-255. For data that
> needs more precision, I'd represent it using 16 bits, with 32768 being
> 1.0 and 0 being 0.0, and ignoring values 32769 through 65535.
>
> It just annoys me that I leave almost a whole bit (6 dB!) of dynamic
> range un-used, but for these cases (closed ranges, must support
> subdivision) I really don't see any better option.
>
> Comments?

Interesting, I guess this is the problem of labelling the boundaries
between units, rather than the units themselves.  The only thought I
have at the moment is, for subdivision, using a different base than 2.
 E.g. to label the boundaries between units in a complete tree, you
need (base^levels + 1) labels for base^levels units.

For a binary tree, it's optimally bad.  For other tree bases, it might
be good, depending on how many bits you have:

units          labels
-----          ------

2-ary
1          --> 2
2          --> 3
4          --> 5
etc

3-ary
1          --> 2
3          --> 4   *
9          --> 10
27         --> 28  *
81         --> 82
243        --> 244 *

5-ary
1
5          --> 6   *
25         --> 26  *
125        --> 126 *
625        --> 626

6-ary
1
6          --> 7   *
36         --> 37
216        --> 217 *
1296       --> 1297

I've put stars next to the ones that don't waste so much code space in binary.

I'm not sure if that is any use whatsoever, but it's kind of interesting.

-T

[GD-General] Check This Out!

[john s. <hil...@ho...>]

Hey everyone! You all know how much I freakin hate chain mails, so i'd never
send ya one if I got one.. I always just delete them ;P (sorry all of you
who send em to me, now you know! lol)...
Anyway, my friend Tyler from work just got a free 30 Gig iPod for signing up
with eBay through one of ebay promotional sites.
I know we've all seen these win a free iPod spam mails.. but i check tis one
out on eBay's website and it's legit. AND it's pretty hard to argue when my
friends wavin the free iPod in my face :P
All you have to do is click this link, www.genxmedia.net/ebay
Then you just register a free account on ebay, and they put your email into
the draw...
If you already have an account, just make another :P it's a free iPod! it
takes 2 mins! :P
AND you can turn around and sell it on ebay for more than $200 if ya don't
wanna keep it...
Anyway, this is the first iPod giveaway thingy i've found that is REAL, so i
just thought i'd pass it along! :)
Feel free to forward this to all your friends and stuff before the promo
ends!...

[GD-General] Check This Out!

[john s. <hil...@ho...>]

Hey everyone! You all know how much I freakin hate chain mails, so i'd never
send ya one if I got one.. I always just delete them ;P (sorry all of you
who send em to me, now you know! lol)...
Anyway, my friend Tyler from work just got a free 30 Gig iPod for signing up
with eBay through one of ebay promotional sites.
I know we've all seen these win a free iPod spam mails.. but i check tis one
out on eBay's website and it's legit. AND it's pretty hard to argue when my
friends wavin the free iPod in my face :P
All you have to do is click this link, www.genxmedia.net/ebay
Then you just register a free account on ebay, and they put your email into
the draw...
If you already have an account, just make another :P it's a free iPod! it
takes 2 mins! :P
AND you can turn around and sell it on ebay for more than $200 if ya don't
wanna keep it...
Anyway, this is the first iPod giveaway thingy i've found that is REAL, so i
just thought i'd pass it along! :)
Feel free to forward this to all your friends and stuff before the promo
ends!...

Re: [GD-General] Assessing candidates when you don't have the skills

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Brett Bibby (Research) wrote:
> The general answer is you hire consultant/professional to "work" for you and 
> help screen the applicants. Here in Malaysia it's easy; for your specific 
>   
Initially, I thought this sounded a lot like the "agency" solution, but 
you're right, it is different. Especially if the guy doesn't work on 
contingency. You still have a little bit of trouble in how you evaluate 
the consultant, but at least getting one step removed will help a bit.

> Finally, we have found students near graduation, or looking for internships, 
> to be invaluable in this regard. We interned the 21 year old son of the 
>   
I can relate to that, too -- if you get the right student. I guess 
cultivating contacts with the student body would let you start fishing 
through that contact net.

Good suggestions; thanks for the reply!

Cheers,

             / h+

Re: [GD-General] Assessing candidates when you don't have the skills

[Brett B. \(Research\) <res...@ga...>]

Jon,
The general answer is you hire consultant/professional to "work" for you and 
help screen the applicants. Here in Malaysia it's easy; for your specific 
problem, we would go to the Chinese embassy and get their list of approved 
translators. Then, we would interview a few of those with the purpose of 
selecting someone who can help us recruit: develop ad, look through resumes, 
come to the interview etc. So if your priority is to translate the ood or 
feeling rather than the acutal text, you want a consultant who is up on 
pop-culture and can evaluate the candidate's ability to come up with the 
correct slang of the day, whereas if you need accuracy in the meaning, that 
is a different skill.

Finally, we have found students near graduation, or looking for internships, 
to be invaluable in this regard. We interned the 21 year old son of the 
Mexican ambassdor to help us with a Spanish translation and he was able to 
do an awesome job, he had a great time, and went on to graduate an work in 
the game industry in Austin as a programmer after graduation.

The real key though is always to have somebody on your side of the table who 
you pay to represent your interests, just like hiring a lawyer, accountant, 
etc.

Cheers,
Brett


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jon Watte" <hp...@mi...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 12:16 PM
Subject: [GD-General] Assessing candidates when you don't have the skills


>I believe firmly in only hiring real quality talent. This doesn't mean a
> team of divas; teamwork is also a quality, as is the ability to deliver
> working code even though you may not be the best at inventing same code.
> This means that hiring at our company is a process of many steps (resume
> screen; written test; phone screen; second phone screen; one big or two
> sizable on-site interviews, ...)
>
> However, this all assumes that we know how to judge the quality of those
> we screen. What if you're looking for a totally different kind of skill,
> so you don't know how to screen for that? How do you ensure solid
> quality within that field? Here is a thought experiment:
>
> Say, for example, that I wanted to hire someone to translate my product
> to Chinese. The product is fairly technical, and it's already generally
> i18n aware, so this has more to do with proper use of the Chinese
> language than anything technical. Unforunately, for this example, I
> don't know Chinese, nor does anyone else at the company. So... how would
> we screen candidates to find the top quality talent, who knows how to
> efficiently translate English UI, documentation and verbiage into
> appropriate Chinese customs, with particular attention to high polish?
>
> Ideally, you'd know someone who's already good -- but in this case, I
> don't. Or you'd go for someone that someone you trust recommends highly
> -- but in this case, I'm an early adopter; none of my retrograde
> stick-in-the-mud friends have done this yet. How do you seed the web of
> trust?
>
> I would loathe going with agencies, because for the agencies we've used,
> almost all the candidates have been barely literate, and they've been
> still billed as "the best we have." (There have been exceptions, of
> course) Agencies seem to run a cursory keyword match, maybe check a
> reference, and then throw what they have at you, hoping something sticks
> so they can collect their commission. There might be an agent or two who
> actually spend the time to develop quality candidates and only place
> them at properly aligned companies -- if so, I'd like to hear about
> those, too :-)
>
> For the problem at hand: Maybe you can hear from a friend of a friend
> about some agency that specializes in Chinese translators, and is
> supposed to have good candidate selection and high standards, and you
> can go from there. That seems kind-of tentative, though.
>
> So... any ideas?
>
> Cheers,
>
>          / h+
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=557 

[GD-General] Assessing candidates when you don't have the skills

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

I believe firmly in only hiring real quality talent. This doesn't mean a 
team of divas; teamwork is also a quality, as is the ability to deliver 
working code even though you may not be the best at inventing same code. 
This means that hiring at our company is a process of many steps (resume 
screen; written test; phone screen; second phone screen; one big or two 
sizable on-site interviews, ...)

However, this all assumes that we know how to judge the quality of those 
we screen. What if you're looking for a totally different kind of skill, 
so you don't know how to screen for that? How do you ensure solid 
quality within that field? Here is a thought experiment:

Say, for example, that I wanted to hire someone to translate my product 
to Chinese. The product is fairly technical, and it's already generally 
i18n aware, so this has more to do with proper use of the Chinese 
language than anything technical. Unforunately, for this example, I 
don't know Chinese, nor does anyone else at the company. So... how would 
we screen candidates to find the top quality talent, who knows how to 
efficiently translate English UI, documentation and verbiage into 
appropriate Chinese customs, with particular attention to high polish?

Ideally, you'd know someone who's already good -- but in this case, I 
don't. Or you'd go for someone that someone you trust recommends highly 
-- but in this case, I'm an early adopter; none of my retrograde 
stick-in-the-mud friends have done this yet. How do you seed the web of 
trust?

I would loathe going with agencies, because for the agencies we've used, 
almost all the candidates have been barely literate, and they've been 
still billed as "the best we have." (There have been exceptions, of 
course) Agencies seem to run a cursory keyword match, maybe check a 
reference, and then throw what they have at you, hoping something sticks 
so they can collect their commission. There might be an agent or two who 
actually spend the time to develop quality candidates and only place 
them at properly aligned companies -- if so, I'd like to hear about 
those, too :-)

For the problem at hand: Maybe you can hear from a friend of a friend 
about some agency that specializes in Chinese translators, and is 
supposed to have good candidate selection and high standards, and you 
can go from there. That seems kind-of tentative, though.

So... any ideas?

Cheers,

          / h+

Re: [GD-General] Representable range mini-rant

[Andras B. <and...@gm...>]

This is the exact same problem you face with regular grid subdivision. The  
grid resolution always has to be (2^n)+1... I don't think there's anything  
you can do with that, it's just the nature of the beast :)


Andras

[GD-General] Representable range mini-rant

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

This is about representation of data, specifically with respects to 
closed intervals, and using fixed point representation.

For example, representing components for normals, you need the range 
[-1,1]. (let's ignore the dropping of components for compression reasons 
for now) Same thing with various tree coordinates (if you allow the 
topmost coordinate value), vertex components, and pretty much any other 
quantity. This gets annoying when you are dealing with fixed point data.

This is perhaps made most famous with the color->byte conversion, where 
255 means 1.0. The problem with this is that you can't exactly represent 
the midpoint (0.5 maps to 127.5, in this case). If all you want to do is 
representing the midpoint, you can throw away the top value, and 
represent 1.0 using 254, and thus 0.5 as 127. For example, with sound 
samples, and geo-measurement data, it's common to make -32768 mean "no 
data" or "invalid", and normalize -32767 to 32767 as the peak-to-peak 
range. However, then you run into the same problem with mid-midpoints, 
which isn't so much a problem for colors (or audio samples), but a whole 
other kettle of fish for trees of various kinds, or vertex values that 
need to quantize into some tree-based structure.

What I find myself doing is repersenting the midpoint and the two 
endpoints, and throwing away almost a whole bit of precision. For 
example, to represent 0..1 using 8 bits, I'd represent 0 as 0, and 1 as 
128, and then "throwing away" data in the range 129-255. For data that 
needs more precision, I'd represent it using 16 bits, with 32768 being 
1.0 and 0 being 0.0, and ignoring values 32769 through 65535.

It just annoys me that I leave almost a whole bit (6 dB!) of dynamic 
range un-used, but for these cases (closed ranges, must support 
subdivision) I really don't see any better option.

Comments?

Cheers,

          / h+

Re: [GD-General] Frame Capture

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Gaël LEQUEUX wrote:
>
> Several years ago I was confronted to this problem with a rendering 
> based PVS system. At that time my best solution was to write a memcpy 
> using movaps from AGP Memory to System mem but I'm sure there is 
> faster solutions. FRAPS for example is doing great (~30 FPS how ?).
>
> So the basic question is: "how should I transfer my render target to 
> system memory".
>

First, make sure you have a PCI-Express system and card. PCI-Express is 
much faster than AGP for read-back.

Second, make sure you benchmark the readback performance of various 
cards, as various models and various vendors have different implementations.

Third, the actual transfer method is likely to mostly be dependent on 
the system and the hardware, rather than the specific calls you're 
making. That being said, I would benchmark the difference between 
locking a render target and doing memcpy() (ideally using 64-bit reads, 
i e use doubles or better for copying), versus using 
IDirect3DDevice9::GetFrontBufferData(), versus using 
IDirect3DDevice::GetRenderTargetData().

It's also likely to be useful to double-buffer the getting -- i e, start 
render the backbuffer, and only call GetFrontBufferData() right before 
you Present() the back buffer, and similar for the other methods (which 
may require creating multiple render targets).

So, get a PCI-Express machine, get a GeForce 7950 GX and a Radeon X1900 
(or whatever the latest and greatest is), code up the three different 
paths, and benchmark each combination. Please post back your result :-)

Cheers,

          / h+

[GD-General] Frame Capture

[<gle...@ma...>]

Hello,

This question may seem DirectX only but there is also HW considerations =
so I
put it in the general list.

I'm trying to improve my DX9 Engine with a video file recorder; it will =
be
used offline, to build video for a Video DVD, a huge amount of video. So =
I
want it to be as fast as possible (faster than real time if able).=20

Several years ago I was confronted to this problem with a rendering =
based
PVS system. At that time my best solution was to write a memcpy using =
movaps
from AGP Memory to System mem but I'm sure there is faster solutions. =
FRAPS
for example is doing great (~30 FPS how ?).

So the basic question is: "how should I transfer my render target to =
system
memory".=20

=20

And I have a second question, when I'll have my solution, how will =
Hardware
impact on capture performances. ATI or NVidia? GDRAM Frequency is =
important?

RAMDAC? Chipset? I'll have to assemble the perfect machine for frame
capturing so these questions are also important

=20

Do you have any ideas?

Ga=EBl.

=20

Re: [GD-General] Data format for terrain

[Jim M. <jim...@ub...>]

Have you looked at geometry clipmaps?  Hugues Hoppe and Arul Asirvatham
have an excellent article in GPU Gems #2.  They allow for high
resolution height maps giving more control to artists.  PTC can compress
the height map to 100:1.  There is a lot of work to making geometry
clipmaps work within a game, but it's worth a look.

Re: [GD-General] Data format for terrain

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Michael Varlik wrote:
> A third approach would be not to use a heightmap at all.
> Instead one could model the whole terrain using 3D Studio
> or something similar. Of course, this would use lots of
> memory since the model file could become extremely lage
> (consider a world like the one of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. which
> is incredibly large).
>   

We are just embarking on an update to our terrain system. We store the 
entire Earth, in a multi-resolution database format, where some parts 
(the ocean) are stored at extremely low resolution (a sample per 
kilometer, or worse), and other parts (like a city) are stored at much 
higher resolution. Currently, we store the database as a heightmap 
(based on a spherical geoid) with cultural models for buildings, 
vegetation, etc. We're looking into moving to a more flexible system, 
where different parts can be stored in different ways (i e, sculpt a 
cave with tunnels in 3dsmax; then layer a heightmap on top of that).

However, if you look at the amount of terrain data used by games such as 
Oblivion, World of Warcraft, etc, they don't mind putting more than a 
gigabyte of terrain data in their install -- so storing things as meshes 
is certainly possible. Interestingly, if you look at how those games 
render their terrain, they use tiles that are pieces of a heightmap -- 
then they add a lot of decoration on top. Oblivion, especially, goes in 
hard-core for the trees and ground cover, using the SpeedTree RT 
middleware package. Also, those games don't have a very far viewing 
distance -- out to a kilometer, at most. They compensate for this by 
using a wide-angle camera, so that the visible world still "looks" 
large. In our system, we currently have a viewing distance of 10 
kilometers, but instead have to trade off on detail.

I'll likely be able to publish some of the work we're doing on terrain 
now, so if you're hanging tight for another six months, I might be able 
to tell you in more detail :-)

Cheers,

             / h+

[GD-General] Data format for terrain

[Michael V. <M.V...@gm...>]

Hello,

I was thinking about data formates which can be used for
large terrains like those, used in games like "Gothic"
or "The Elder Scrolls Oblivion". Of course, a heightmap
might be a good solution to store terrain data but the
disadvantage of a heightmap is that you don't have too
much control over the terrain. Another disadvantage is
that one cannot store additional information like normal
maps or other objects which are only used for small parts 
of the terrain (e.g. water surfaces, trees, buildings, etc) 
inside the heightmap.

A different approach would be to use a file format which
stores the heightmap data and all additional data in one
file.

A third approach would be not to use a heightmap at all.
Instead one could model the whole terrain using 3D Studio
or something similar. Of course, this would use lots of
memory since the model file could become extremely lage
(consider a world like the one of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. which
is incredibly large).

So, what do you think?

MfG
Michael
-- 


Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

Re: [GD-General] Future trends for commercial game engines

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

jakovo _r wrote:
> What are the future trends for commercial game engines? Will there be 
> a time were game studios will no longer create their own home-made 
> game engines and buy existing licenses (as we do today with 
> Maya/3DSM)?  Will there be a day were it won't be worth for students to

This is very similar to how, in the '60s, it was possible for an 
application developer to "code to the metal" and write their own OS for 
a machine to run their application. (That happened again with the micros 
in the late '70s and early '80s). These days, you pretty much pick an OS 
(or a few) and use that for all your machine abstraction needs, and 
instead focus on higher-level details. There are some people who still 
make OS-es, but it's not a requirement for application development. If 
you like making an OS, you go to a school specializing in that, and then 
take a job for an OS-making company.

> And if so… how soon or how far do you think we are until that day comes?

We're seeing it happen right now.

Cheers,

             / h+

Re: [GD-General] Future trends for commercial game engines

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

Ing. Jacobo R=EDos wrote:
> With the more and more complex technology for games has become over=20
> time, the decreasing interest of students/amateurs wanting to get into=20
> game industry to learn DirectX/OpenGL and preferring to use an=20
> existing game engine instead, the increasing popularity and=20
> accessibility of TorqueEngine, CrystalSpace, etc among=20
> students/amateurs/indies, and big corporate companies like EA, etc.=20
> licensing UnrealEngine3 for their next-gen games...
>
> What are the future trends for commercial game engines? Will there be=20
> a time were game studios will no longer create their own home-made=20
> game engines and buy existing licenses (as we do today with=20
> Maya/3DSM)?  Will there be a day were it won't be worth for students=20
> to learn Dx/Ogl and how to create their own engine?, and where game=20
> development schools will focus on teaching how to use a specific game=20
> engine like UE3 (as there are animation schools today to teach=20
> Maya/3DSM) and focus their curricula on other areas of game=20
> development not game-engine-related? Can eventually this day come=20
> someday?
>
> And if so=85 how soon or how far do you think we are until that day com=
es?
Basically, the question is what's cost effective? These days, major=20
market games are expected to do a lot. Thousands of objects, millions of=20
particles, physics, intelligent AI, realistic animation, brilliant=20
graphics, 3D sound...

If you're going to build all of that into your game, you'd almost be=20
foolish to build it all yourself, unless it's more your business to=20
build a better game engine rather than to build a great game. And there=20
will continue to be people who do that. But if your budget is growing=20
north of $10 Million and you're building a game that "fits" into one of=20
the existing engines, you'd be wise to spend a million of that on a good=20
game engine.

If your game doesn't feet neatly into one of those categories, or you're=20
building a game with a different emphasis than on technology, you may=20
find it worthwhile to build your own engine, or to start from a=20
different place.

In an industry that changes as fast as ours, building education programs=20
that rely on a particular technology is foolish. I don't care whether=20
it's Maya or Unreal or Max, I want artists to be able to create in 3D --=20
who cares what tool they use? The same can be said of programming=20
languages. Hell, it can be said of human languages. Wouldn't it be nice=20
if we'd all just settle on English so we could drop language education=20
in our schools?

I think your desire is to get the discussion away from the engine and=20
technology and more toward the gameplay, and that's not a bad desire.=20
Because the complexity of game engines is getting so high, for education=20
to start students off with game engines is generally good, because it=20
lets you concentrate more on some of the gameplay issues and less on=20
blitting rectangles to the screen. But expecting a fast-changing=20
technology industry to settle on one target platform isn't gonna happen.=20
There'll be a steady increase in the complexity of the foundation tools=20
(we don't use assembler much anymore in this business), but I don't ever=20
want the schools to get too comfortable with one technology.

    Kent

[GD-General] Future trends for commercial game engines

[<ja...@vj...>]

With the more and more complex technology for games has become over time,
the decreasing interest of students/amateurs wanting to get into game
industry to learn DirectX/OpenGL and preferring to use an existing game
engine instead, the increasing popularity and accessibility of TorqueEngine=
,
CrystalSpace, etc among students/amateurs/indies, and big corporate
companies like EA, etc. licensing UnrealEngine3 for their next-gen games...

What are the future trends for commercial game engines? Will there be a tim=
e
were game studios will no longer create their own home-made game engines an=
d
buy existing licenses (as we do today with Maya/3DSM)?  Will there be a day
were it won't be worth for students to learn Dx/Ogl and how to create their
own engine?, and where game development schools will focus on teaching how
to use a specific game engine like UE3 (as there are animation schools toda=
y
to teach Maya/3DSM) and focus their curricula on other areas of game
development not game-engine-related? Can eventually this day come someday?

And if so=85 how soon or how far do you think we are until that day comes?

jakovo

[GD-General] Future trends for commercial game engines

[jakovo _. <ja...@gm...>]

With the more and more complex technology for games has become over time,
the decreasing interest of students/amateurs wanting to get into game
industry to learn DirectX/OpenGL and preferring to use an existing game
engine instead, the increasing popularity and accessibility of TorqueEngine=
,
CrystalSpace, etc among students/amateurs/indies, and big corporate
companies like EA, etc. licensing UnrealEngine3 for their next-gen games...

What are the future trends for commercial game engines? Will there be a tim=
e
were game studios will no longer create their own home-made game engines an=
d
buy existing licenses (as we do today with Maya/3DSM)?  Will there be a day
were it won't be worth for students to learn Dx/Ogl and how to create their
own engine?, and where game development schools will focus on teaching how
to use a specific game engine like UE3 (as there are animation schools toda=
y
to teach Maya/3DSM) and focus their curricula on other areas of game
development not game-engine-related? Can eventually this day come someday?

And if so=85 how soon or how far do you think we are until that day comes?


jakovo

Re: [GD-General] API for enabling TV out ?

[Ignacio C. <ica...@nv...>]

> I suggest just mailing the NVIDIA developer relations people.=20
> This kind of thing is what they are there for!

Exactly. Jason, feel free to email me directly and I'll explain what you =
have to do.

Thanks!

--
Ignacio Casta=F1o
ica...@nv...=20

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gam...@li...=20
> [mailto:gam...@li...]=20
> On Behalf Of Jon Watte
> Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:44 AM
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: Re: [GD-General] API for enabling TV out ?
>=20
> I suggest just mailing the NVIDIA developer relations people.=20
> This kind of thing is what they are there for!
>=20
> Cheers,
>=20
>           / h+
>=20
>=20
> Jason Rennie wrote:
> > The nView application has a "Force TV detection" checkbox=20
> which forces TV
> > out to be enabled.. I'd like to be able to 'check that box'
> > programmatically.. Struggling to find any way to do this=20
> though.. It looks
> > like I can set it in the registry but I suspect that will=20
> only be enacted
> > upon at startup..=20
> >  =20
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Re: [GD-General] API for enabling TV out ?

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

I suggest just mailing the NVIDIA developer relations people. This kind 
of thing is what they are there for!

Cheers,

          / h+


Jason Rennie wrote:
> The nView application has a "Force TV detection" checkbox which forces TV
> out to be enabled.. I'd like to be able to 'check that box'
> programmatically.. Struggling to find any way to do this though.. It looks
> like I can set it in the registry but I suspect that will only be enacted
> upon at startup.. 
>   

Re: [GD-General] API for enabling TV out ?

[Jason R. <jr...@im...>]

Hi Alec,

You're right - It is handled as another monitor in GDI. The worry is =
that
the graphics adaptor fails to detect the TV and no output appears. =20

The nView application has a "Force TV detection" checkbox which forces =
TV
out to be enabled.. I'd like to be able to 'check that box'
programmatically.. Struggling to find any way to do this though.. It =
looks
like I can set it in the registry but I suspect that will only be =
enacted
upon at startup..=20

The other issue that I discovered yesterday is that I need to give the =
user
control over whether the output is in PAL, NTSC, svideo, composite,
component etc.. Its not auto detecting the screen type correctly even =
when
it does detect a TV.

I had someone suggest investigating the Microsoft Media Centre =
Certification
programme. Apparently there's an API that the OEMs have to adhere to.=20

Thanks for your help !

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Alen Ladavac [mailto:ale...@cr...]=20
Sent: 21 August 2006 16:50
To: Jason Rennie
Cc: gam...@li...
Subject: Re: [GD-General] API for enabling TV out ?

> Is there a way to  enable TV out without using the nView application =
?=20
> Is there a=A0API for this  kind of thing ? Is it maybe included in=20
> DirectX and I've just not found it in  the docs ?

Isn't this a multi-monitor issue in fact? How is enabling the TV =
different
than enabling a second monitor? I don't have the mm code at hand, but I =
have
a "disable the second monitor" code snippet at work.
I can send it over to you tomorrow, if that will do. But it is =
Win32-only,
of course. Not sure if gd-general is exactly the right list for this...

Cheers,
Alen


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~=
=20
Imerge Limited                          Tel :- +44 (0)1954 783600=20
Unit 6 Bar Hill Business Park           Fax :- +44 (0)1954 783601=20
Saxon Way                               Web :- http://www.imerge.co.uk=20
Bar Hill=20
Cambridge=20
CB3 8SL=20
United Kingdom=20
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~=
=20

Re: [GD-General] cross platform 64bit lock free FIFO?

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
  <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
<br>
George Warner wrote:
<blockquote cite="midC10F2F07.2E4BD%25g...@ap..." type="cite">
  <pre wrap="">On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:26:20 -0700, Jon Watte <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:hp...@mi...">&lt;hp...@mi...&gt;</a> wrote:
  </pre>
  <blockquote type="cite">
    <pre wrap="">Here is the implementation, an all its simplicity:

// Lock-free FIFO by Jon Watte.
// Size must be power of 2.
    </pre>
  </blockquote>
  <pre wrap=""><!---->
This restriction could be removed by using a modulus operation instead of
the AND. (Probably a safe assumption that this restriction was done as a
compromise to speed (Not necessary on PPC)). At the least I'd add an assert
to verify that Size is a power of 2.
  </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Actually, in the case where you've put enough elements through that the
counter wraps, you cannot safely use a modulus. You have to use a power
of two for that case to work. Been there, done that, once burned, ...
:-)<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midC10F2F07.2E4BD%25g...@ap..." type="cite">
  <pre wrap="">Other than that this code is really only useful for a single provider &amp;
consumer. There's a race condition between the full/empty tests and the
tail/head increments that wouldn't work with multiple writers/readers.
  </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, that's the whole point. If you need multiple readers or multiple
writers, then you need locking unless you have larger-than-machine-word
atomic operations. Luckily, in 95% of the cases where you have a need
for a lock-free FIFO, you have exactly one reader and one writer.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midC10F2F07.2E4BD%25g...@ap..." type="cite">
  <pre wrap="">I'd also add code to optionally block on the failure cases (read-empty &amp;
write-full) and when a thread is blocked signal a wakeup when the failure
case is invalidated (queue goes non-empty when a reader is blocked or queue
goes non-full when a writer is blocked).
  </pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Then it's not a lock-free FIFO. You might as well go with a standard
FIFO instead, which is a different beast.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; / h+<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>

Re: [GD-General] Totally Safe lock-free FIFO for arbitrary-sized items.

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

Andras Balogh wrote:
> Now, the other barrier after the increment is the one that is not needed,  
> because it doesn't really matter if the head has been incremented or not.  
> In the worst case, the receiver won't know that there's a new element in  
> the queue until later, but it will by no means result in data loss or  
> corrupton, no matter what architecture you are running on.
>   

There may be architectures where the other side wouldn't learn about the 
change until the following happens:

1) the cache line with the update gets evicted
2) the other side attempts to modify the cache line that was evicted (so 
it's re-loaded)

This is more likely in "NUMA" or "multiple bus master shared memory" 
architectures, than traditional SMP. Call it AMP for asymmetric 
multi-processing :-)

Without the second barrier, such an architecture could get into 
live-lock. The barrier in that case serves as an explicit notification.

Cheers,

          / h+

Re: [GD-General] cross platform 64bit lock free FIFO?

[George W. <ge...@ap...>]

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:26:20 -0700, Jon Watte <hp...@mi...> wrote:
> Here is the implementation, an all its simplicity:
>
> // Lock-free FIFO by Jon Watte.
> // Size must be power of 2.

This restriction could be removed by using a modulus operation instead of
the AND. (Probably a safe assumption that this restriction was done as a
compromise to speed (Not necessary on PPC)). At the least I'd add an assert
to verify that Size is a power of 2.

assert( !(Size & ( Size - 1 ) );    // only zero for exact powers of 2

Other than that this code is really only useful for a single provider &
consumer. There's a race condition between the full/empty tests and the
tail/head increments that wouldn't work with multiple writers/readers.

(Yes, validating race conditions acerbates my schizophrenia. ;-)

I'd also add code to optionally block on the failure cases (read-empty &
write-full) and when a thread is blocked signal a wakeup when the failure
case is invalidated (queue goes non-empty when a reader is blocked or queue
goes non-full when a writer is blocked).

For the single provider/consumer case you still wouldn't need the lock; Just
a condition variable for signaling.

-- 
Enjoy,
George Warner,
Schizophrenic Optimization Scientist
Apple Developer Technical Support (DTS)