Loren Pechtel

581 reputation

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	location	Las Vegas, NV
	age	47
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I can be reached at lorenpechtel @ hotmail . com

	581 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	2 years, 6 months
26 badges		location	Las Vegas, NV		seen	9 hours ago

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31 Comments

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May 17	comment	How do I protect my game with CD key / serial number? @Vishnu I know as a user who types in keys I would much prefer to have some check info per group even if that meant typing a longer key.
May 15	comment	Minimax for Bomberman My limited experience with playing it is that you usually have to place multiple bombs to kill a competent opponent--a strategy needs to take this into consideration. I've played against AIs with approximately your strategy, they're quite ineffective at killing you unless you can get cornered.
May 14	comment	Minimax for Bomberman Minimax is simply not useful in a situation with as many choices as Bomberman. You'll exhaust your ability to search before going far enough to see if a move is sensible or not.
May 11	comment	How do I protect my game with CD key / serial number? One minor point--while a totally random key provides the maximum keyspace (and is perfectly workable if you're validating against a database of issued keys) it's not user-friendly. Put some validation into the key itself so that most mistypes are caught before you try to hit the server.
Apr 10	comment	How can I find a projectile's launch angle? Note that in most cases there are two valid solutions. Assuming no drag or the like max range is attained when the projectile is fired at a 45 degree angle. Going higher OR lower will lower the range--thus unless you need every bit of oomph from your gun there will be both a higher and a lower solution.
Apr 10	comment	How to remove floating terrain when generated with 3D Perlin Noise? Terrain might only be connected through the adjoining chunk if it's an overhang from there.
Mar 23	comment	Scrambling word into least recognizable form Something to keep in mind: If you have some rules that define an exact transform your players might learn them and be able to quickly unscramble words that way.
Dec 25	comment	Forward Compatibility of Save Files I used to use that approach. I have since switched to putting version numbers on the data elements themselves. It makes the changes have far more confined effects.
Dec 22	comment	Float or int for currency? It's game. Accounting isn't going to lynch you for a rounded off penny and thus the normal reasons against using floating point for currency don't matter.
Nov 26	comment	Gigantic 2d maps? @Philipp: Are you thinking of Supreme Commander 2? That is 3D--and has MUCH smaller maps also.
Nov 25	comment	Gigantic 2d maps? Supreme Commander had a huge 2D map and it worked fine--you could simply zoom in and out. (System performance was another matter, though...)
Nov 4	comment	2D pathfinding - finding smooth paths You'll have to have fractional coordinates within a tile to get what you want. No possible path without this would work--carrying the fractions but not displaying them would make your unit move straight/diagonal/straight/diagonal.
May 16	comment	Distribute XNA as a standalone zip or exe (no installer needed)? Yup, I've sent an XNA "game" as a zip before, it wouldn't load until both .net and xna were installed but then it worked fine.
Sep 15	comment	When would I use “scripts” or “scripting” in a game, as opposed to the core language? @Brian Reindel: In general, yes.
Sep 12	comment	Spawning units in a world made by Perlin noise? Your revision doesn't help. Two points on a convex curve will never have a legal straight line between them, period. More divisions won't help.
Sep 11	comment	Spawning units in a world made by Perlin noise? This doesn't work. Look at the bottom right, specifically the blob in the red area. It's entirely convex so there's no change to cause another color to be used but clearly no straight line exists from the bottom of the red on the right edge to the rightmost part of the red on the bottom edge.
Aug 5	comment	How'd they do it: Millions of tiles in Terraria @MindWorX: Doing all the updates when it reloads wouldn't always work--suppose you have a whole bunch of barren area and then grass. You go away for ages and then walk towards the grass. When the block with the grass loads it catches up and it spreads in that block but it won't spread into the closer blocks that are already loaded. Such things progress MUCH slower than the game, though--check only a small subset of the tiles in any one update cycle and you can make distant terrain live without loading down the system.
Jul 20	comment	How to calculate falling and accelerating velocity? @Beska: Your rocket engine isn't limited in acceleration, it's limited in thrust. The ratio of thrust/acceleration will change as the tanks get used. A rocket with full tanks is a lot less responsive than one that's nearly empty.
Jul 16	comment	How to calculate falling and accelerating velocity? @Patrick Hughes: Shuttle gross weight: 240,000lb. Total liftoff weight: 4,500,000lb. Admittedly, that includes 58,500 pounds of tank & 400,000lb of SRB. Still, though, you'll get more than 10x the acceleration from the last pound of fuel than from the first.
Jul 16	comment	How to calculate falling and accelerating velocity? @Patrick Hughes: The amount of fuel carried by any true rocket lander (I'm not counting the Mars aerobrake/rocket hybrid cases) is a substantial portion of it's total weight. Assuming the fuel:acceleration ratio to be fixed will produce a very wrong answer.