Sure

My only goal is to learn to enjoy the process of drawing. If I can achieve that this year, I think the rest will naturally follow.

I've always wanted to learn how to draw, but the actual process of learning is soul destroying. I would rather put a 9V on my tongue than sit through DrawABox's "draw 1000 boxes" exercises.

Every piece that I've made in a classroom setting has come out better than I anticipated. It's still terrible, but at least semi finished. But it just means that outside of an environment where I literally have no other option but to draw, I would rather give up and do something else instead.

Contrast that with programming / gamedev or something where - even though the luster has waned for me the past few years - I wanted to do nothing but that when I was first starting out. It was just that enchanting to me at the time.

I don't know how to cultivate that same sense of enthusiasm and wonder, but I know it's possible. I'd managed to do that when I was learning french and japanese, and both of those involved me attempting and giving up several times before having it finally click.

Merry christmas!

Hmm I dunno, I think there was a chat published as a game about 10-12 years ago when the Newgrounds Chat was briefly removed so it should be okay to submit it, but I don't really see what the point of doing so would be if it's only a chat app.

What do you mean - like a chat (with other users) or like a visual novel?

Premature optimization is always good. And I'm not talking about choosing the right algorithm for the job, I'm talking about agonizingly unrolling loops manually, running loops in reverse order, doing wacky bitwise operations and obscure string manipulation.

I don't care about the AI usage one way or the other because it's a non-issue at this point (the grounds for disqualification seem more like lawyering than actually enforcing the spirit of the rule). I'm just curious as to why people say it's not an indie game just because it has a big budget - No Man's Sky had a publisher and a huge budget and as far as I know it was touted as an indie game at the time of its release as well.

You're moving the character faster and faster as you move the mouse further; I don't know if that's intentional because a more common method would be to use if() statements to move them at a fixed pace depending on the direction. This will also allow you to change the direction by setting _xscale to 100 or -100. Assuming that the character normally faces right, then -100 would face left. For example:

onClipEvent(enterFrame) {
    if(_root._xmouse > _x) {
        //move right
        _x += 5;
        _xscale = 100;
        gotoAndStop(2);
    } else if(_root._xmouse < _x) {
        //move left
        _x -= 5;
        _xscale = -100;
        gotoAndStop(2);
    } else {
        //go to idle frame
        gotoAndStop(1);
    }
}

But, assuming you want to move it faster based on the distance, you can still do that by defining a region where the character doesn't move:

onClipEvent(enterFrame) {
    var sqdist:Number = (_root._xmouse - _x)*(_root._xmouse - _x)
    if(sqdist < 100) {
        //idle if mouse within 10px of character
        gotoAndStop(1);
    } else {
        //moving, play move animation
        gotoAndStop(2);
        _x += (_root._xmouse - _x) / 10;
        //decide orientation based on mouse position
        if(_root._xmouse > _x) {
            _xscale = 100;
        } else {
            _xscale = -100;
        }
    }
}

The reason why a "tolerance" of sqdist is required is because checking if _root._xmouse == _x won't pass as both are real numbers, and they will be infinitesimally close to each other but not the exact same (i.e. 1.00000023 != 1.0). To the computer it's completely different, but to us it's insignificant enough to not matter. The smaller the sqdist the lower the tolerance.

Knock on wood I haven't had any problems as a player, but I guess any unreliability / inconsistency is intolerable when dealing with save games.

If mcGuy is the player character, I think you should have the mcGuy movieClip in the root timeline rather than inside the mcMain timeline. That way you can keep the mcGuy stationary while moving the mcMain, to simulate a fixed camera. That is, all the Key.isDown events move mcMain rather than mcGuy.

If you want an "elastic" camera (where the camera moves vertically only when the player crosses a certain _y when they jump up) then you'll need to have the player's _y and mcMain's _y change together when the player jumps, but only if the player's moving downwards while jumping (i.e. on the apogee of the jump). This should produce an effect kind of like how jumps are handled in the game Icy Tower. In effect, kind of how you're handling it now but by moving the two movieClips manually instead of moving _root itself.

That's because you can't compare movieClip X and Y values directly without also accounting for transformation-induced offsets. That is, if you translate (move along the X or Y axis) or transform (scale, rotate, skew) a movieClip, then their internal coordinate systems no longer directly correspond to each other. When you set mcMain to (0, 0) and it has _xscale and _yscale as 100, then (100, 100) on _root is equivalent to (100, 100) for any movieClips inside mcMain. If you move mcMain to e.g. (50, 50) then (100, 100) on _root would be equivalent to (50, 50) on mcMain, since you need to add (50, 50) to mcMain's _x and _y to get (100, 100). But if you checked (100, 100) directly without translating it to mcMain's coordinate system first, then your collision checks won't work since (100, 100) inside mcMain is actually (150, 150) on _root.

Thankfully to solve this problem you don't need to consider the various transforms you applied - there is an inbuilt function, localToGlobal and globalToLocal which does this for you. Like its name suggests, localToGlobal converts an internal coordinate system to the _root's coordinate system, and globalToLocal converts _root's coordinate system to your movieClip's internal coordinate system.

Which is to say that if you want to check collisions for two movieClips which are nested in completely different movieClips (e.g. A contains B and C contains D, and you want to check for collisions between B and D) then you need to transform B's _x and _y coordinates to the global coordinates using localToGlobal, and then convert it to D's coordinates using globalToLocal.

It accepts a Point, though, not _x and _y, so it might be a bit slow to call those functions several times per frame. But as with everything else, profile first and then decide to optimize next.

I can't see anything off in the loops here at the moment, so it might be the ctrlMobFuncs themselves. But I might be misunderstanding what the problem is, because I didn't notice anything off when I was testing the game.

Could it be due to size limits imposed by the browser? (Also, it seems like total localStorage is limited to 50% of the user's disk, which is unlikely but can cause it to be cleared aggressively if it crosses that threshold)

I'm not sure if IndexedDB could be a better choice (it has a higher limit at 80% but is more complex) as some browsers like Safari clear cookies, localStorage, indexedDB and sessionStorage after 7 days of visiting a site.

The only fool-proof option would be to let the user download their save files as a backup.

How are you making the character follow the mouse currently?

You can set _xscale to -100 to flip the character and 100 to set them back to their original X orientation.

Which features of Windows 10 did you get used to?

Nice, which distro?

I don't think you can compare Elden Ring's open world to Skyrim's, and definitely not to Ubisoft lmao.

A big part of the open world gameplay aspect comes from feeling like you can explore anywhere in the world and discover things without being limited by quests, etc. Exploring without the discovery isn't a very good open world because there's no surprises and no novelty.

Ubisoft games are terrible at this because they pack the map with whatever's there to discover. It's like if the entire map was covered in yellow paint. Skyrim is also not quite as good at this because of its compass which tells you where to go, but at least it's better than Ubisoft.

I haven't played Elden Ring but from what I can tell, there is no hand holding so it's up to you to discover what's out there in the world. That's not for everyone but it is a welcome change for those who are tired of being treated like kids in other open world games.

There are other more invisible aspects of open world (e.g. level design to influence the player to go to a particular place rather than telling them to go there) but when done right you don't notice them, and while I don't think Elden Ring is perfect at this it does have many of those elements present.

I've found sometimes that if I open the notifications and then quickly close the page, then it'll remain instead of having disappeared. But I don't get the issue you're facing. Also, I'm pretty sure you get no notification if someone mentions you in the supporter forum when you're not a supporter.

If you're new to programming, then maybe Unreal with Blueprints might be worth a try. Or maybe Unity or Godot otherwise.

I haven't worked with 3D so I can't say which one would be easiest to work with. They're all good, though. From my understanding 3D is much harder than 2D, but maybe Unreal/Unity/Godot make it easier, idk.

Both are good, but AS2 will lock you in to ruffle or the NG player if you want to publish on NG. JS shares similarities with AS2 so you can switch without having to start from scratch. But learning the APIs would take some time.

Yep if you can get a 2070 or above for around the same price as a 1070 then leap at it. Here I find secondhand 1070s for $50-80 but 2070s are three times the price

In that case, you could try getting a desktop with a 1070 at most, you likely won't need anything much beefier than that. I will wager that 99% of the time it will not be at 100% utilization, because even 3d modeling in blender is child's play for the 1070 for 99.99% of tasks, at least, stuff that will be done by any individual. If it involved larger files made by teams (entire scenes with complex objects, etc.) then it might be a different matter.

I haven't used blender so I don't know whether it's really the case, but judging from the fact that websites seem to recommend 8GB of VRAM (which the 1070 has) and that my 1070 can churn through VR games like butter, I'd wager it's great (even overkill) for most 3d modeling tasks.

Good luck with that, because it seems insanely difficult to convert a side gig into a full time thing unless you've already got clients waiting at the door.

If it's 2D games then realistically speaking any AMD laptop should be good enough. I was making 2D games on a shitbox 2012 Toshiba Satellite C850D netbook, which was both slower and had less memory than my phone at the time.

The reason I say AMD is because their iGPUs like Ryzen are pretty damn good for 2D and even 3D, you don't need a beefed up computer for that. It might even do 3D - like, my Ryzen 3 can play GTA5, and I highly doubt you need to create anything "flashier" than GTA5 starting out (apples to oranges comparison, but you get the point.)

Intel recently stepped up their iGPU game but IMO AMD is still superior and more cost-effective.

Save your money and upgrade as necessary. You'll find a little goes a looong way.

It's honestly crazy how cheap electronics are, especially on the second hand market in NA. Even in Canada people seem to upgrade their devices a lot more than necessary rather than holding on to them until they break/etc. Granted with the global economy the way it is right now I think that's probably going to change.

And that's not even counting tariffs on electronics which artificially inflate the price...

It's not just RAM, it's also SSDs since their source material (NAND flash) is getting costlier. For better or for worse, though, AI-induced demand is primarily for the cheaper QLC cells, so maybe the SLC Samsung EVOs might remain the same price (but it's gonna be wack if TLC, QLC reach the same price as SLC- at that point even SLC would increase in cost to compensate)

Upgrade that RAM as soon as possible, if news of the RAM shortage is anything to go by. I know it's the same panic-buying mindset that leads people to hoard toilet paper, but when memory companies like Micron are shifting away production from DDR4/5 to HBM for AI, and they have a ...history of colluding with each other, it's not good if you can't ride out the upgrade for the next 4 years.

If you need that RAM within the next 4 years, I don't see prices going down very quickly. It's already gone up around me when I search facebook marketplace, lmao. I can't predict the future so I can't say whether it'll go down or not next year, so it's up to you to determine how important the speed of upgrade is. The above video is quite exaggerated for comedic effect, but the end result is still increased prices regardless.

I was advised to wait until spring to upgrade from 32 to 64 GB if I really needed it. I don't need it at the moment, so I'm holding off - but mostly because all the listings around me are already insane. The only RAM that's actually cheap now is DDR2 or 3 which nobody wants.

Dunno bout wacom but maybe get some new tips instead? Or if you're going to replace the tablet, might be worth looking at secondhand - plenty of people buy tablets and don't use them as much as they think they would have and end up selling them on facebook marketplace or similar.

Also

iGPUs became lowkey great for most laptop tasks after 2012 or so, especially due to AMD. Intel iGPUs sucked ass until recently, which is fair since they're mostly a CPU not a GPU company. AMD acquiring ATI helped a lot in their iGPUs it feels like.

If you follow Linus Tech Tips he mentions it a few times, its apparently a laptop built around modularity and easy repair or something like that

neat!

If you are using Adobe Animate then it can import SVG, if you are using older versions then it can import .AI files. Some have suggested renaming the .svg to .ai and then importing it but I haven't tested if that works or not. Alternatively if you are using Flash CS4 then it can import .eps files apparently, and that is already produced as an output by potrace - so instead of importing .svg, just import the .eps files instead.

Or you can convert the svg files to .png and then import it into flash if the above methods don't work.

I think potrace generates black-and-white / transparent SVG files, if not then you can do a find-and-replace on the SVG to replace the white color (#ffffffff) with transparent (#00000000) via a script.

I think you are misunderstanding. The entire point of command line is to avoid typing constantly!

Create a file "convert.bat" and paste the following commands:

@echo on
mkdir .\processed
.\potrace.exe *.bmp -s
move *.bmp processed/
echo "Moved all BMP files to 'processed' dir. Output is: "
dir *.svg
pause

Then whenever you run the .bat file it should process ALL the bmp files in the folder and move them, doesn't matter whether there are 3, 33 or 100. And because the output is the same as the input but in svg fomat you should be able to import them directly after that.

I got a new (used) workstation! It's a Dell Precision Tower 5810 with a Xeon E5 26xx series CPU with 14 cores and 28 threads. I wanted to get it for some work-related stuff (running multiple VMs at the same time) but I wonder what else I can do with it. I don't have a good GPU for it (just the nvidia NVS 295 which the guy threw in for free) but maybe one day I could get something if I really wanted to run DL tasks or something locally (which might or might not end up happening, dunno).

It currently has W11 unofficially running on it, but I dunno if I should set up Proxmox VE on it or not. Maybe running Virtualbox might be good enough, but idk.

If you want a good server-class machine then (at least in North America) these go for pretty cheap considering their initial price. I see 22-core 2699s for $50-100! These Xeon E5s are really something. They're overkill for most tasks and guzzle power like a beast (45W at idle, 100+ under load) but for running a homelab, it's probably well worth it (since running those devices individually might use the same amount of power).

As for the Tapo smart lights I got a couple months ago, unfortunately laziness got the best of me and it didn't help that the Lightbulb app had some issues with my system, so I silently ditched that idea lol

What hauls did you get recently?

What problems do you face with the command line interface? If you run

./potrace a.bmp b.bmp c.bmp d.bmp -s 

Where a.bmp, b.bmp, c.bmp and d.bmp are the files you want to trace, then it should trace them all out to SVG files which you can then import to flash using the flash2svg plugin.

Maybe Flash is not the best tool for the job here if you are dealing with the images in bulk. It would be far more convenient to trace the images externally automatically, and then import the transparent images in bulk into Flash.

There seems to be a tool called Potrace that does this via the command line. You could try using it in a loop over all the files, if you know they are all black and white and they are fairly regular then it might do a good enough job without needing much parameter tweaking.

(That is not the only software available, that is just the first one I found. One drawback with it is that it only takes in BMP images, which are not used much these days.)