Nicol Bolas

15,812 reputation

13160

bio	website	arcsynthesis.org/gltut
	location	Los Angeles, CA
	age	36
visits	member for	1 year, 11 months
	seen	2 hours ago
stats	profile views	1,523

I am a game developer with a fairly broad knowledgebase in the fields of animation and graphics, with a touch of AI.

Projects:

A series of tutorials/eBook on graphics programming
The Unofficial OpenGL Software Development Kit
The OpenGL Loader Generator, a much better alternative to GLEW

	15,812 reputation	bio	website	arcsynthesis.org/gltut	visits	member for	1 year, 11 months
13160 badges		location	Los Angeles, CA		seen	2 hours ago

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1d	comment	Get world-position in Vertex shader There is no such thing as "glTransform". And if you meant `glTranslate`, that doesn't work with GLSL (unless you're using legacy stuff). So what are you talking about?
2d	comment	What are the available libraries for C? "in a very oldschool and "john-carmackian way" just because I love C and I'm philosophically against OOP." And yet, John Carmack programmed in OOP. In C. Just look at the Id Tech engines; there are objects, and functions which operate on those objects. Just because there is no explicit support for OOP in the C language doesn't mean you can't use OOP with C. And indeed, most C libraries are object oriented to some degree.
May 17	comment	What is a Fragment Pipe? There's no such thing as a "fragment pipe". That's a nonsense term someone made up. It probably references real hardware, but it's not clear what exactly that real hardware is.
May 17	comment	How to break the feeling of busywork in a game Best first-post ever.
May 17	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome "this is why there was a big backlash against Quick Time Events (QTEs)." No. The backlash against QTEs are because they're terrible, Dragon's Lair gameplay, where the only way to get better is through rout memorization.
May 16	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome @Andrey: I've died enough times from random stuff in FTL to know that's not true at all. Permadeath is hardly a guarantee of someone using rare items in desperate situations, if for no other reason than that a situation may not seem desperate until it's too late. And the fact that, because it's rare, you may not even remember you have it until it's too late. That's why forming that habit is important.
May 16	comment	Correct way to calculate Perspective Matrix What makes you think that those are any different mathematically?
May 16	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome @daviewales: The whole point of making it rechargeable is to encourage it's use. And the point of giving it finite charges is to ensure that the user can't use it too often in a given dungeon. It's like a tactical nuke: you use it on stuff that's clearly big enough to be worth using it on. Making it require substantial effort to get simply means that players will use conventional weapons. They won't get into the habit of using this thing, and they won't endure some pointless sidequest just to get a charge for it.
May 16	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome @daviewales: "If you make a super-powered weapon that is rechargeable, but insanely difficult to recharge, then you almost have a one use only weapon, but people will still use it." How is that functionally different from a rare, one-shot item? Both this and a rare, one-shot have limited uses. In both cases, the user knows that the chance to get another one will only happen rarely if ever. And therefore, they're going to wait to use it until they need to. Which will be never because they'll find a way to deal with threats with conventional weapons.
May 16	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome @chris: If the point of them is solely to collect them, then don't give them a gameplay function.
May 15	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome And that would make me stop playing the game. Giving me an item that inhibits my ability to play is not fun.
May 15	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome Note that a cooldown is only appropriate for games where time is a factor.
May 15	comment	How to prevent the “Too awesome to use” syndrome Yeah, all of those would make me throw it away, not use it.
May 15	comment	Best game engine design? I'm sorry you were directed to GameDev.SE from StackOverflow for this question. It's not appropriate here either. Such open-ended questions are not appropriate anywhere on the Stack Exchange network. We prefer more concrete questions.
May 15	comment	What should I know to start in game development? @Tbi45: "But there is no better place to ask something like this" How is there not a better place to ask for something than a place where you're not allowed to ask for that? By definition, anywhere must be a better place than the place where you can't ask for it.
May 13	comment	What's happening with Unity boards? Because it's about a forum. That forum may be a game development forum, but it's still ultimately about someone else's forum.
May 13	comment	Slow glReadPixels @DaleyPaley: Occlusion queries aren't going to be that much faster, since you're still going to have to synchronize to read the values back.
May 12	comment	What's happening with Unity boards? The state of the forum of some other site has nothing to do with game development. Even if that other site itself is about game development.
May 12	comment	How do I animate images with OpenGL? @feribaco: Welcome to GameDev.SE. "Is this the best way" type questions are not acceptable here. Thank you.
May 8	comment	How closely can a game resemble another game without legal problems @tugs: Wow, you mean an answer wasn't able to keep pace with legal rules that happened two years after it was written?