Sun
24
Jul 2011

Yesterday I attended two events related to my interests. First was about collision detection in JavaScript games, organized by Marek Pawłowski from devmeetings.pl. During this almost 12-hour workshop we could learn about JavaScript, as well as some theory of 2D collision detection and space partitioning techniques. Nothing new for me, but I liked formula of this workshop. We could learn some theory from slides, but most of the time we had some tasks to code on our laptops - first to implement a simple library for aspects in JavaScript and then to code Asteroids game, including precise collision detection and QuadTree. Most of the code for this game was ready - we were given a framework, as well as libraries with math and a class for QuadTree. Our task was to just to connect it together. I think it's a good way of teaching programming in practice.

Web technologies are not my main interest, but I like JavaScript. I even think  it's the most beautiful scripting language in terms of syntax. Being able to freely draw 2D (using HTML Canvas) as well as 3D graphics (using WebGL) makes it a good technology for learning and prototyping geometry or gameplay algorithms. Marek also pointed on the DevMeeting an interesting conclusion that it's very easy to port algorithms from C/C++ to JavaScript. But on the other hand, Dab reminded me today that Lua is a scripting language with very similar features, but faster and more lightweight interpreter, so it's still better choice as a scripting language embedded in high-performance software like games.

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Second event was Noc z Demosceną - Demoscene Night. It took place in Fabryka Kotłów club (former No Mercy). During that night we could see some olschool, as well as newschool demos presented on a a big screen and, what is most important, meet some nice people there. Thanks Voyager for organizing this event! It was great especially because the 3-day demoscene party RiverWash, which took place here in Warsaw in last 2 years, this year is in Łódź and I can't attend it. This night was very inspiring and now I feel like developing a technology to make a demo :)

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