Peter Taylor

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Worked as a computer game designer and developer for five years. Most proud of Torquing!

Now working in other fields of software, but still aim to participate in the Java4k game contest each year.

	1,229 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	2 years, 3 months
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73 Comments

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May 14	comment	How much is java used in 2d/3d indie games? (before/after Minecraft) @JCM, it will still be using Java on the back end, and I wouldn't be surprised if the JS/WebGL front end is produced by source-to-source translation from Java (à la GWT, but given Jagex's NIH culture probably not actually GWT).
May 7	comment	Is it legal to reuse a 3D model as long as it has a new texture? That's still technically a derived work.
May 3	comment	What is the rationale behind this method of computing the w-component from MD5 mesh files? @pcapp, you could add logging to that branch, but I think it's less about mitigating bad input and more about not getting `NaN` when rounding causes t to be something like `-1E-9`.
Apr 16	comment	Minimax for Bomberman Yes, you're missing a few things, but you won't thank me for pointing them out because they make it worse. There aren't 5 basic actions. Some squares have 5 "moves" (4 directions and stay still); others have 3 (because they're blocked in two directions); on average it's 4. But you can drop a bomb while running, so on average the branching factor is 8. And someone with a high-speed powerup can fit in more moves, effectively pushing up their branching factor.
Apr 1	comment	How to simulate early politics? I would start by examining what happens when an Allosaurus enters contemporary politics: irregularwebcomic.net/…
Feb 5	comment	How do I detect the intersection of a curve with itself? Ok, I'll take a step back. Have you written the code to draw your line? If so, could you edit the question to add it?
Feb 4	comment	How do I detect the intersection of a curve with itself? @dennmat, it's not the only viable solution. As you observe, a list of points is another; I could add that some curves can be drawn by Bresenham's algorithm or variants, or by marching squares.
Feb 4	comment	How do I detect the intersection of a curve with itself? Paul Manta's question still isn't really answered. Are the lines simple chains of straight line segments, or are you doing something more complicated? If they're simple chains of straight line segments, do you know how to check whether two straight line segments intersect?
Jan 24	comment	Derive a algorithm to match best position Looks like a trivial generalisation of the knapsack problem
Dec 20	comment	“Super meatboy”-ish replay To save on the position you can also delta-encode, although that ends up being subsumed under the key-frame approach.
Dec 18	comment	*Should pathfinder in A hold closedSet and openedSet or each object should hold its sets?** Why a static function or a method on a graph? Surely it should be an implementation of a path-finding interface which can be used as a strategy?
Dec 13	comment	How can I use iteration to lead targets? If your quadratic doesn't have any roots then surely the best you can do is simple to take the extremum, which will be as close as possible to an actual hit? So you still don't gain anything by using an iterative approximation.
Nov 17	comment	What different ways are there to model restitution in a physics engine? @MikaelHögström, a brick wall is fairly elastic relative to sand. Unless you're thinking about forces on the order of driving a car into it, you can probably assume it won't take damage.
Nov 17	comment	What different ways are there to model restitution in a physics engine? @MikaelHögström, it's about hardness in the sense of elasticity vs plasticity. I suppose that if you really want to simulate rather than approximate you could calculate forces and use tables of yield strength... PS I've e-mailed the author of that thesis to notify him of the broken links.
Nov 17	comment	Writing a Master's Thesis on evaluating visual scripting systems Where is the evaluation side going to come from? Are you going to recruit a hundred arts students, split them in two groups, ask the first group to use PlayMaker to make a game and then do the same with your tool, the other group to do it the other way round, time them, measure their game quality against some criteria, and interview them about the relative difficulty? That seems a significant enough project without actually implementing your tool - which means that you probably can't fit it in.
Nov 8	comment	Legal considerations when starting a game development team Why can't you create a company? (And put the answer in the question, not at the end of a list of comments where no-one will see it).
Nov 5	comment	Guitar hero clone and music Before anyone can attempt to answer this question, you need to supply more details. Specifically, at minimum: 1) which jurisdictions are relevant? 2) What does the contract you've signed with the artists say about royalties?
Oct 20	comment	Why is this 8 puzzle unsolvable? @Ashwin, to be more precise, their notation is dodgy. If you look at the goal state, the blank tile should be `9` rather than `0`.
Oct 20	comment	How does a one-man developer do its games' sounds? @Sidar, music in the public domain (i.e. most classical music) doesn't have copyright. That's the point!
Oct 19	comment	How does a one-man developer do its games' sounds? @Sidar, creating digital copies doesn't take talent, but creating original work does. Surely?