tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post504420018869582878..comments2013-03-19T05:06:07.465-07:00Comments on Weird Science: there is unrest in the forestAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16909294074810837780noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-39461668212139531412012-04-11T08:15:23.413-07:002012-04-11T08:15:23.413-07:00Oh man, tell me about it...i worked for two compan...Oh man, tell me about it...i worked for two companies that had the foresight to hire technical writers and they more than paid for themselves. In fact, i'm not sure they were getting paid what they actually deserved!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16909294074810837780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-74017434492088648152012-04-11T02:09:07.843-07:002012-04-11T02:09:07.843-07:00This is why the position known as "Technical ...This is why the position known as "Technical Writer" exists and are hard to fill properly. Just like "technical artist" it takes someone special to both understand WHAT it does, AND explain it to others in a useful, intelligent form.-Vhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12301344462627181814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-6039000290803592792012-04-10T21:00:18.564-07:002012-04-10T21:00:18.564-07:00The maxscript documentation is horribly guilty of ...The maxscript documentation is horribly guilty of this as well, with the added awesomeness of completely inconsistent method naming (even within the same struct!).LoTekKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00851348018380004421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-74929267170835262872012-04-10T20:14:12.375-07:002012-04-10T20:14:12.375-07:00Yeah it seems to be a trend in software/api docume...Yeah it seems to be a trend in software/api documentation across the industry, definitely calling out Maya there too:<br /><br />"fairly_descriptive_name"<br />Description:<br />"does_exactly_what_it_sounds_like_it_should"<br /><br />The other thing that really irked me about the Terrain API is that it seems very purpose built, so i feel like fleshing out the documentation a bit is almost a necessity at that point because yeah alot of my experimentation was just getting all the numbers to flow in and out properly...argh!!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16909294074810837780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-44427236808546141972012-04-10T20:12:50.660-07:002012-04-10T20:12:50.660-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16909294074810837780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-45379494193297579242012-04-10T20:04:32.327-07:002012-04-10T20:04:32.327-07:00The Terrain APIs are an extreme case in my opinion...The Terrain APIs are an extreme case in my opinion--they're some of the worst in the engine. For example, you probably discovered on your own that trees use homogenous coordinates, that map indices are row-major, how detail resolution works, etc., etc. Thankfully I think they at least added documentation in 3.5 indicating that detail textures added at runtime must be uncompressed in order to properly get packed into an atlas texture (or at least they told me they would last beta cycle). Slowly but surely getting better...you get the picture ;)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15315824425534298248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4878514937553811165.post-69409185898150891982012-04-10T19:57:35.045-07:002012-04-10T19:57:35.045-07:00Captain AnalRetentive to the rescue! You missed an...Captain AnalRetentive to the rescue! You missed an open parenthesis in your Start method :p<br /><br />void Start) <--<br /><br />I definitely feel your pain vis-a-vis the documentation. There are a lot of things in there that look exactly like (or worse!) than your GetHeight() example.<br /><br />One thing you might want to do with the code is to cache your terrain width and height to a variable before the for loop. The execution speed might not differ /too/ much (I think Aras gave some numerical examples a while back), but for a larger script it might (also easier to read! :D).<br /><br />I know you already pointed it out, but just for posterity, I'd also add in some minor variation to the placement and scale (Random.insideUnitCircle, Random.Range()).LoTekKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00851348018380004421noreply@blogger.com