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• Oracle Traffic Director – download and check out new cool features in 11.1.1.7.0 by Frances Zhao

  - by JuergenKress

  As Oracle's strategic layer-7 software load balancer product, Oracle Traffic Direct is fast, reliable, secure, easy-to-use and scalable; that you can deploy as the reliable entry point for all TCP, HTTP and HTTPS traffic to application servers and web servers in your network. The latest release Oracle Traffic Director 11.1.1.7.0 is available for ExaLogic and Database Appliance! For download and details please visit the Traffic Director OTN website. It this release, we have introduced some major new functionality and improvements. Web application firewall. Oracle Traffic Director supports web application firewalls. A web application firewall (WAF) is a filter or server plugin that applies a set of rules, called rule sets, to an HTTP request. Using a web application firewall, users can inspect traffic and deny requests to protect back-end applications from CSRF vulnerabilities and common attacks such as cross-site scripting. WebSocket Connections. Oracle Traffic Director handles WebSocket connections by default. WebSocket connections are long-lived and allow support for live content, games in real-time, video chatting, and so on. Support for LDAP/T3 Load Balancing. Oracle Traffic Director now supports basic LDAP/T3 load balancing at layer 7, where requests are handled as generic TCP connections for traffic tunneling. It works in full-NAT mode. Please download and try it out. For more information, check out the data sheet and the documentation. For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: traffic director,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Windows 7 Phone Developer Tools CTP download

  - by mbcrump

  For those that don’t know, you can download the W7 Phone developer tools now. It is available here. I have installed it and wanted to share my experience so far. You can read the pre-release documentation here. First, here is what it comes with the install: The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP includes the following: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP Windows Phone Emulator CTP Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP First impressions: No ISO image install (Bad for me because I use multiple machine and have to install from a bootstrapper. Its around 228mb download. I already have the VS2010 RC, but it still makes me install the VS2010 Express Edition. Windows Phone Emulator will only work with VS2010. No support for 05/08. Need at least a DX10 graphics compatible card. Final Word: (you are probably going to need this info) To start a new project, go to Installed Templates and select Silverlight for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Application. Use Silverlight for WPF style applications or XNA for W7 Games.

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• OpenGL ES 2.0 texture distortion on large geometry

  - by Spruce

  OpenGL ES 2.0 has serious precision issues with texture sampling - I've seen topics with a similar problem, but I haven't seen a real solution to this "distorted OpenGL ES 2.0 texture" problem yet. This is not related to the texture's image format or OpenGL color buffers, it seems like it's a precision error. I don't know what specifically causes the precision to fail - it doesn't seem like it's just the size of geometry that causes this distortion, because simply scaling vertex position passed to the the vertex shader does not solve the issue. Here are some examples of the texture distortion: Distorted Texture (on OpenGL ES 2.0): http://i47.tinypic.com/3322h6d.png What the texture normally looks like (also on OpenGL ES 2.0): http://i49.tinypic.com/b4jc6c.png The texture issue is limited to small scale geometry on OpenGL ES 2.0, otherwise the texture sampling appears normal, but the grainy effect gradually worsens the further the vertex data is from the origin of XYZ(0,0,0) These texture issues do not occur on desktop OpenGL (works fine under Windows XP, Windows 7, and Mac OS X) I've only seen the problem occur on Android, iPhone, or WebGL(which is similar to OpenGL ES 2.0) All textures are power of 2 but the problem still occurs Scaling the vertex data - The values of a vertex's X Y Z location are in the range of: -65536 to +65536 floating point I realized this was large, so I tried dividing the vertex positions by 1024 to shrink the geometry and hopefully get more accurate floating point precision, but this didn't fix or lessen the texture distortion issue Scaling the modelview or scaling the projection matrix does not help Changing texture filtering options does not help Disabling mipmapping, or using GL_NEAREST/GL_LINEAR does nothing Enabling/disabling anisotropic does nothing The banding effect still occurs even when using GL_CLAMP Dividing the texture coords passed to the vertex shader and then multiplying them back to the correct values in the fragment shader, also does not work precision highp sampler2D, highp float, highp int - in the fragment or the vertex shader didn't change anything (lowp/mediump did not work either) I'm thinking this problem has to have been solved at one point - Seeing that OpenGL ES 2.0 -based games have been able to render large-scale, highly detailed geometry

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• How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7

  - by The Geek

  Wireless network settings in Windows 7 are global across all users, but there’s a little-known option that lets you switch them to per-user, so each user has access to only the networks they are allowed to connect to. Here’s how it all works. How is this useful? Maybe you want to prevent a particular user from accessing the internet—if you don’t give them the wireless password, they won’t be able to get online. This could be very useful if you’ve got mini-people playing games on the family PC, but you don’t want them getting online Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker Google Sky Map Turns Your Android Phone into a Digital Telescope Walking Through a Seaside Village Wallpaper

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• Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points?

  - by George

  One of the struggles I've always had in game development is deciding how to implement experience points attributed to gaining a level. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to gaining a level in many of the games I've played, so I assume they have a static dictionary table which contains experience points vs. the level. e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 175 3 280 4 800 5 ...There isn't a rhyme or reason why 280 points is equal to level 4, it just is. I'm not sure how those levels are decided, but it certainly wouldn't be dynamic. I've also thought about the possibility of exponential levels, as not to have to keep a separate lookup table, e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 200 3 400 4 800 5 1600 6 3200 7 6400 8 ...but that seems like it would grow out of control rather quickly, as towards the upper levels, the enemies in the game would have to provide a whopping amount of experience to level -- and that would be to difficult to control. Leveling would become an impossible task. Does anyone have any pointers, or methods they use to decide how to level a character based on experience? I want to be fair in leveling and I want to stay ahead of the players as not to worry about constantly adding new experience/level lookups.

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• Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game (that is, not for the sake of scenery, but for the sake of gameplay) needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than the natural way cities arise, scattered on the land based on resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards? The reason I'm asking is that I'd previously pondered taking existing maps from fantasy fiction (my own and others), putting the information into the system as a base point, and then generating a good world to play in from it. This seems covered by existing technology, that is, where the designer puts in all the necessary information such as the city populations, resources, biomes, road networks and rivers, then allows the PCG fill in the gaps. But now I'm wondering if it may be possible to have a content generator generate also the overall design. Generate the cities and population centres, balancing them so that there is a natural seeming need of commerce, then generate the positions and connectivity, then from the type of city produce the list of necessary resources that must be nearby, and only then, maybe given some rules on how to make the journey between cities both believable and interesting, generate the final content including the roads, the choke points, the bridges and tunnels, ferries and the terrain including the biomes and coastline necessary. If this has been done before, I'd like to know, and would like to know what went wrong, and what went right.

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• Displaying possible movement tiles

  - by Ash Blue

  What's the fastest way to highlight all possible movement tiles for a player on a square grid? Players can only move up, down, left, right. Tiles can cost more than one movement, multiple levels are available to move, and players can be larger than one tile. Think of games like Fire Emblem, Front Mission, and XCOM. My first thought was to recursively search for connecting tiles. This quickly demonstrated many shortcomings when blockers, movement costs, and other features were added into the mix. My second thought was to use an A* pathfinding algorithm to check all tiles presumed valid. Presumed valid tiles would come from an algorithm that generates a diamond of tiles from the player's speed (see example here http://jsfiddle.net/truefreestyle/Suww8/9/). Problem is this seems a little slow and expensive. Is there a faster way? Edit: In Lua for Corona SDK, I integrated the following movement generation controller. I've linked to a Gist here because the solution is around 90 lines of code. https://gist.github.com/ashblue/5546009

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• GDM locale problems

  - by Simón

  I have two problems with GDM on Ubuntu 10.04. The first is with locales. In my system I have defined: $ cat /etc/environment PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games" LANG="es_ES.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="es_ES:es:en_US:en" $ cat /etc/default/locale LANG="es_ES.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="es_ES:es:en_US:en" $ cat /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local es_ES UTF-8 es_ES.UTF-8 UTF-8 en_US UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 But when I enter in gnome desktop: $ locale LANG=es_ES LANGUAGE=es_ES:es:en_US:en LC_CTYPE="es_ES" LC_NUMERIC="es_ES" LC_TIME="es_ES" LC_COLLATE="es_ES" LC_MONETARY="es_ES" LC_MESSAGES="es_ES" LC_PAPER="es_ES" LC_NAME="es_ES" LC_ADDRESS="es_ES" LC_TELEPHONE="es_ES" LC_MEASUREMENT="es_ES" LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_ES" LC_ALL= I have deleted ~/.dmrc and I have restarted the system but nothing. GDM login screen also doesn't permit change this setting. However, in the text terminals (tty1,...): $ locale LANG=es_ES.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=es_ES:es:en_US:en LC_CTYPE="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_NUMERIC="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_TIME="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_MONETARY="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_MESSAGES="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_PAPER="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_NAME="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_ADDRESS="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_TELEPHONE="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_MEASUREMENT="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_ES.UTF-8" LC_ALL= The solution to problem is to edit .drmc file, but I think this isn't the right way. Why doesn't GDM read/apply the system locales? Why don't I see, in GDM login screen, the box to change the locale?

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• Is there an alternative to HTML Web Sockets, now that Firefox 4 has disabled them?

  - by Pino

  I've been checking out some of the latest multiplayer engines in HTML all supporting multi-user games (Very nice) - I believe all these engines use Web Sockets for communication. That’s why we’ve decided to disable support for WebSocket in Firefox 4, starting with beta 8 due to a protocol-level security issue. Beta 7 of Firefox has support for the -76 version of the protocol, the same version that’s included with Chrome and Safari. Beta 8 of Firefox 4 will remove that support. Anne van Kesteren of Opera also announced that Opera are dropping Websocket support. We are confident that other browser developers will follow. Source: Websockets Disabled in FireFox 4 I've just come accross the above, so no sockets in Firefox 4 or Opera.... thats big. Is anyone aware of an alternate or is it Chrome or do we need to just sit and wait for the next release of the major browsers. More info : Rocket Engine appears to work with all browsers including IE8 (http://rocketpack.fi/engine/) what will it be using as a method of communication?

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• How to visually "connect" skybox edges with terrain model

  - by David

  I'm working on a simple airplane game where I use skybox cube rendered using disabled depth test. Very close to the bottom side of the skybox is my terrain model. What bothers me is that the terrain is not connected to the skybox bottom. This is not visible while the plane flies low, but as it gets some altitude, the terrain looks smaller because of the perspective. Since the skybox center is always same as the camera position, the skybox moves with the plane, but the terrain goes into the distance. Ok, I think you understand the problem. My question is how to fix it. It's an airplane game so limiting max altitude is not possible. I thought about some way to stretch terrain to always cover whole bottom side of the skybox cube, but that doesn't feel right and I don't even know how would I calculate new terrain dimensions every frame. Here are some screenshot of games where you can clearly see the problem: (oops, I cannot post images yet) darker brown is the skybox bottom here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/iMsAf.png untextured brown is the skybox bottom here: http://i.stack.imgur.com/9oZr7.png

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 15, 2012Popular ReleasesMVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.6: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. Added features to the Membership provider, a "lock out" feature to help fight brute force hacking of accounts. After a set number of log in attempts, the account is locked for a set time. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!Home Access Plus+: v8.4: This release only contains fixes for the 97576 release, you can download the v8.3 release files which aren't in this release from 97576 Changes: Fixed: Setup.aspx wrong jquery reference Fixed: Issue with loading the user's photo Changed: The JSON Urls to use a number of a date rather than a string Added: Code to hopefully, finally, fix the AD Browser not working some times File Changes: ~/bin/hap.ad.dll ~/bin/hap.web.dll ~/bin/hap.web.configuration.dll ~/bin/hap.web.livetiles.dl...OnTopReplica: Release 3.4: Update to the 3 version with major fixes and improvements. Compatible with Windows 8. Now runs (and requires) .NET Framework v.4.0. Added relative mode for region selection (allows the user to select regions as margins from the borders of the thumbnail, useful for windows which have a variable size but fixed size controls, like video players). Improved window seeking when restoring cloned thumbnail or cloning a window by title or by class. Improved settings persistence. Improved co...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.4: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...JSLint for Resharper: 0.2.4701 (Resharper 7.1): Added settings dialog. May now prioritize before Resharper JS messages JSLint settings may be set as default. (For example browser: true, indent: 2) Added support for JSLint directives in mixed language files. Upgraded to Resharper 7.1.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.3.5: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features Attachable Behaviors AwaitableUI extensions Controls Converters Debugging helpers Extension methods Imaging helpers IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes Docum...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.6.1): This new version includes: - Fixes for some reported bugs. To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2...SoftRenderer: SoftRenderer v0.2: SPONZA DEMO SoftRender is a CPU based renderer. It render 3D scene only on CPU. It's a project for learning purpose. SoftRender ????????，??????????。 http://i3.codeplex.com/Download?ProjectName=sr&DownloadId=528732 ?????????????，???compilehwshader.bat???????shader SoftRenderer.exe?vc10???????bin?? SoftRenderer_avx.exe?intel????????avx???cpu?????bin??WallSwitch: WallSwitch 1.2.1: Version 1.2.1 Changes: Improved collage image distribution to overlap older images first. Set default collage background blur distance to 4 (provides a more gradual effect). Fixed issue where wallpaper not displayed on Windows Vista when Cross-Fade transitions enabled. Fixed issue with duplicated themes not updating history view correctly.????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releasehttpclient?????????: httpclient??????? 1.0: httpclient??????? （1）?????????? （2）????????? （3）??2012-11-06??，???????。VidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadNew ProjectsCreatorRSS: CreatorRSS - A Simple Desktop tray RSS Reader This is a simple desktop RSS reader that will help in managing your feeds and get notifications. CreatorRSS is based on .NET framework 2.0 and is coded in C#. This was tested only on Windows Xp Professional Sp2 but it should work on any Windows operating systems that support .NET framework. Extensions Library: Extension Library adds several helpful extensions to your project including: - SharePoint Logging - Event Viewer Logging - Exception Handling - .Net ExtensionsHoliday Calendar: This project contains a holiday calendar user control to be used in Windows Form applications.InputSQL: C# InputSQLInstall Visual Basic 6 in Windows 8: Please see the home page.KaartenSolution: A very simple card game.MezanmiNet_TaxiReviews: just a review application on the mobile platformMSHelpMeHD: A Windows 8 Store App.ProjectSocial: This is just a project to try coding.Rabbit MQ Client for Windows Store apps: rabbitmq client support for windows apps storeRFC 822 DateTime: Parse or write a date and time formatted according to the RFC 822 specification. RxJS TypeScript difinition: TypeScript d.ts files for RxJS(ReactiveExtensions for JavaScript)Samurai Blades - Webapp: A mimic of a classic board game (Shogun) created for web using HTML5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 (including the new typescript js compiler). servicehook: testSIMS Bulk Import: SIMS .net is the most popular MIS system used by schools across the UK. This tool allows you to bulk import email addresses and information into UDF fields.SpaceFlight: This project is a browser for the SloanDigital Sky Survey Data sets that allows for unconstrained movement within the data set.Sparse matrix format converter: Convert matrix market files to CSR0, CSR1 format. SPAutoSuggestion: A JavaScript application to show auto-suggestions in SharePoint search site's text boxes like in Google.SpreadsheetLight by Vincent Tan: For the latest release of SpreadsheetLight always go to http://www.spreadsheetlight.com, Anele MbangaSSTU: SSTU - this is simple client for Russian "Saratov State Technical University" web-site.Username generator library: Helps generate usernamesVideoStream: First attempt at a Windows Store Style App, aims to make it easy to browse videos from links provided in social media streams.WP8 Async WebClient: Provides async/await (TPL) capability to WebClient within Windows Phone 8wsccprototype: this is a prototype of what the main website will look like. Every other customization will be made in time.wsubi: A spiced-up way to manage scripts. This is a Windows port of the the 'sub' project from 37signals (https://github.com/37signals/sub).??C#????????: ?????????????ROYcms?????????！ 1.?????????，?????? 2.????????，?????????? 3.?????，?????，????????????????,??????????? 4.???????????，????

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• Multi-Resolution Mobile Development

  - by user2186302

  I'm about to start development on my first game for mobile phone (I already have a flash prototype completed so it's jsut a matter of "porting" it to mobile and fixing up the code) and plan on hopefully being able to get the game working on iphones and most android devices. I am using Haxe along with OpenFL and HaxeFlixel for development. My question is: What resolution should I design the game in initially and/or what is the best way to develop a game for multiple resolutions. I have found multiple different methods, the best, in my opinion, being strategy 3 on this page: http://wiki.starling-framework.org/manual/multi-resolution_development. However I have some questions about this. First, what would the best base resolution to use be, the guide suggests 240*320 which seems alright to me, although if I chose to use pixel graphics as I most probably will given I'm using HaxeFlixel, I'm not sure if they'll look too blocky on larger screens which I'm not even sure is a problem as it might still look alright. (Honestly, not sure about that and if anyone has any examples of games that use this method and look nice). Finally, please feel free to share whatever methods you use and think is best. For example, HaxeFlixel has a scaling feature that scales the game to fit the exact screen size, but I'm afraid that would lead to blurry and improperly scaled graphics since it would scale by non-integers. But, I'm not sure how noticeable a problem that may or may not be. Although from experience I'm pretty sure it won't look nice and currently I do not think I'm going to go for this option. So, I would really appreciate any help on this subject. Thank you in advance.

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• Kids and programming: ScratchKara

  - by Mike Pagel

  Ever now and then I kept wondering how to share with my kids the excitement of creating something with your computer. Of course, today this is a bit more difficult, as they have seen 3D animation games and well-edited websites. I guess that's why they weren't all that hyped when I found my first computer model at our local recycling facilities (an 8-bit Laser VZ-200 with rubber keys). When I finally got it up and running with an old analog TV set they finally asked whether we could play soccer on it. Needless to say that my showing them how it remembers some BASIC commands and lists and executes them did not make any impression. So the question is for real: How do you get today's kids excited about programming? And just recently I looked again for environments that allow even young kids (mine are 7 and 9 years old now) to do something and have fun. Obviously any real, text-oriented programming language wouldn't work well. To cut it short: Something really nice was built by University of Oldenburg: ScratchKara. It is the perfect mixture of Kara, a simulation of a little ladybug and Scratch, an authoring environment from MIT. ScratchKara allows kids to initially simply explore how the bug moves and turns by pressing the action buttons, then move towards sequencing commands through drag & drop, and eventually end up building algorithms with procedures and functions. Even through it is built for kids and beginners, the environment comes with debugging and refactoring, which I found more than amazing. My kids love it and I have to admit I keep thinking about how to solve a bit more advanced problems with this language, which does not allow you to store any state information (other than your call stack). Yes, I am hooked, too... Once the language is understood you can then move to one of the original Kara versions, where you can define the bug's behavior through finite statemachines, Turing tables, Java and other textual languages. And from there, anything is possible.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for October 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for October 2012. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (known as the A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Clustering ODI11g for High-Availability Part 1: Introduction and Architecture | Richard Yeardley "JEE agents can be deployed alongside, or instead of, standalone agents," says Rittman Meade's Richard Yeardley. "But there is one key advantage in using JEE agents and WebLogic – when you deploy JEE agents as part of a WebLogic cluster they can be configured together to form a high availability cluster." Learn more in Yeardley's extensive post. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." -- Irving Wladawsky-Berger Eventually, 90% of tech budgets will be outside IT departments | ZDNet Another interesting post from ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick about changing roles in IT. ADF Mobile - Login Functionality | Andrejus Baranovskis "The new ADF Mobile approach with native deployment is cool when you want to access phone functionality (camera, email, sms and etc.), also when you want to build mobile applications with advanced UI," reports Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. Podcast: Are You Future Proof? - Part 2 In Part 2, practicing architects and Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) discuss re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what's truly valuable. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript — iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. Oracle Solaris 11.1 update focuses on database integration, cloud | Mark Fontecchio TechTarget editor Mark Fontecchio reports on the recent Oracle Solaris 11.1 release, with comments from IDC's Al Gillen. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself this question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article) Thought for the Day "I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Which Open Source Licenses can address concerns for an Open Source Game Engine?

  - by Chris

  I am on a team that is looking to open source an engine we are building. It's intended as an engine for Online RPG style games. We're writing it to work on both desktops and android platforms. I've been over to the OSI http://opensource.org/licenses/category to check out the most common licenses. However, this will be my first time going into an open source project and I wanted to know if the community had some insight into which licenses might be best suited. Key licensing concerns: Removing or limiting our liability (most already seem to cover this, but stating for completeness). We want other developers to be able to take part or all of our project and use it in their own projects with proper accreditation to our project. Licensing should not hinder someone's ability to quickly use the engine. They should be able to download a release and start using it without needing to wait on licensing issues. Game content (gfx, sound, etc.) that is not part of the engine should be allowed to be licensed separately. If someone is using our engine, they can retain full copy right of their content, including engine generated data. Our primary goal is exposure, which is why we're going open source to start with. Both for the project and for the individuals developing it. Are there any licenses that can require accreditation visible to players? While I'd put our primary goal as exposure, for licensing the accreditation is less of a concern. From what I've read through (and have been able to understand) it doesn't seem like any of the licenses cover anything that is produced by the licensed software. Are there any that state this specifically, or does simply not mentioning it leave it open for other licensing? Are there any other concerns that we should consider? Has anyone had any issues using any of these licenses?

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• Designing a flexible tile-based engine

  - by Vee

  I'm trying to create a flexible tile-based game engine to make all sorts of non-realtime puzzle games, just as Bejeweled, Civilization, Sokoban, and so on. The first approach I had was to have a 2D array of Tile objects, and then have classes inheriting from Tile that represented the game objects. Unfortunately that way I couldn't stack more game elements on the same Tile without having a 3D array. Then I did something different: I still had the 2D array of Tile objects, but every Tile object contained a List where I put and different entities. This worked fine until 20 minutes ago, when I realized that it's too expensive to do many things, look at this example: I have a Wall entity. Every update I have to check the 8 adjacent Tiles, then check all of the entities in the Tile's List, check if any of those entities is a Wall, then finally draw the correct sprite. (This is done to draw walls that are next to each other seamlessly) The only solution I see now is having a 3D array, with many layers, that could suit every situation. But that way I can't stack two entities that share the same layer on the same tile. Whenever I want to do that I have to create a new layer. Is there a better solution? What would you do?

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• Why can't I create direct3d objects?

  - by quakkels

  I've been programming professionally for years using languages like VBScript, JavaScript, and C#. As a hobby, I'm getting into some c/c++ and games programming with DirectX. I am running into an issue where I cannot create direct3d objects. I am using Visual C++ 2010 Express. After I installed vc++2010express I then installed the June 2010 release of DirectX. I am trying to include DirectX via #pragma statements. This is the code I have so far in my winmain.cpp source file: #include <Windows.h> #include <d3d11.h> #include <time.h> #include <iostream> using namespace std; #pragma comment(lib, "d3d11.lib") #pragma comment(lib, "d3dx11.lib") // program settings const string AppTitle = "Direct3D in a Window"; const int ScreenWidth = 1024; const int ScreenHeight = 768; // direct3d objects LPDIRECT3D11 d3d = NULL; // this line is showing an error The type LPDIRECT3D11 is showing an error: Error: Identifier "LPDIRECT3D11" is undefined Am I missing something here to get VC++2010Express to recognize and load the DirectX libs? Thanks for any help.

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• School vs Self-Taught [duplicate]

  - by Joan Venge

  This question already has an answer here: Do I need a degree in Computer Science to get a junior Programming job? [closed] 8 answers Do you think university is a good learning environment or is it better to be autodidact? [closed] 3 answers Do you think formal education is necessary to gain strong programming skills? There are a lot of jobs that aren't programming but involves programming, such as tech artists in games, fx tds in film for example. I see similar patterns in the people I work where the best ones I have seen were self-taught, because of being artists primarily. But I also see that while the software, programming knowledge is varied and deep, hardware knowledge is very basic, including me, again due to lack of formal education. But I also work with a lot of programmers who possess both skills in general (software and hardware). Do you think it's necessary to have a formal education to have great programming skills? Would you think less of someone if he didn't have a degree in computer science, or software engineering, etc in terms of job opportunities? Would you trust him to do a software engineering job, i.e. writing a complex tool? Basically I feel the self-taught programmer doesn't know a lot of things, i.e. not knowing a particular pattern or a particular language, etc. But I find that the ability to think outside the box much more powerful. As "pure" programmers what's your take on it?

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• Running multiple box2D world objects on a server

  - by CharbelAbdo

  I'm creating a multiplayer game using LibGdx (with Box2d) and Kryonet. Since this is the first time I work on multiplayer games, I read a bit about server - client implementations, and it turns out that the server should handle important tasks like collision detection, hits, characters dying etc... Based on some articles (like the excellent Gabriel Gambetta Fast paced multiplayer series), I also know that the client should work in parallel to avoid the lag while the server responds to commands. Physics wise, each game will have 2 players, and any projectiles fired. What I'm thinking of doing is the following: Create a physics world on the client When the game is signaled to start, I create the same physics world on the server (without any rendering obviously). Whenever the player issues a command (move or fire), I send the command to the server and immediately start processing it on the client. When the server receives the command, it applies it on the server's world (set velocity etc...) Each 100ms, the server sends the new state to the client which corrects what was calculated locally. Any critical action (hit, death, level up) is calculated only on the server and sent to the client. Essentially, I would have a Box2d World object running on the server for each game in progress, in sync with the worlds running on the clients. The alternative would be to do my own calculations on the server instead of relying on Box2D to do them for me, but I'm trying to avoid that. My question is: Is it wise to have, for example, 1000 instances of the World object running and executing steps on the server? Tomcat used around 750 MBytes of memory when trying it without any object added to the world. Anybody tried that before? If not, is there any alternative? Google did not help me, are there any guidelines to use when you want to have physics on both the client and the server? Thanks for any help.

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• How to Transfer All Your Information to a New PS3

  - by Justin Garrison

  The PlayStation 3 now costs half the price, has double the storage, and uses half the power. If you need another reason to upgrade, Sony also makes it easy to transfer all of your information to a new console. Transferring all of your games, data, and settings is easier than ever, and all you need is an ethernet cable. Read on as we walk you through the whole process of setting up your new PS3 and wiping all your information off the old one. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions Hack Apart a Highlighter to Create UV-Reactive Flowers [Science] Add a “Textmate Style” Lightweight Text Editor with Dropbox Syncing to Chrome and Iron Is the Forcefield Really On or Not? [Star Wars Parody Video] Google Updates Picasa Web Albums; Emphasis on Sharing and Showcasing Uwall.tv Turns YouTube into a Video Jukebox Early Morning Sunrise at the Beach Wallpaper

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• The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

  - by The Geek

  The Apple iPad is an amazing tablet, and to help you get the most out of it, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of every tip, trick, and tutorial for you. Read on for more. Note: This article was originally published earlier this year, but we’ve updated it with a real lot more content since then, so we’re republishing it for you. We’ll be keeping this page updated as we find more great articles, so you should bookmark this page for future reference Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• Non-Obvious Topics to Learn for Game Development

  - by ashes999

  I've been writing games for around 10 years now (from QBasic to C# and everything in-between). I need to start stretching my skills into different areas. What are other, surprising topics I should read up on? Expected topics would include the usual suspects: Programming language of your choice Scripting language Source control Project management (or Agile) Graphics API Maybe some AI (A* path-finding?) Physics (projectile physics) Unit testing (automated testing) I'm looking for more esoteric topics; things that you don't expect to need to know, but if you do know them, they make a difference. This could include things like: Art skills (drawing, lighting, colouring, layout, etc.) Natural language processing The physics of sound (sound-waves, doppler effect, etc.) Personally, I feel that having technical art skills (eg. can make decent art-work if you can only come up with ideas; or, following Photoshop/GIMP tutorials) was the most beneficial for me. This is not intended to be an open-ended question; I'm looking for specific skills that helped you and you expect will continue to benefit you in the short- and long-term.

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• Is there an application that converts a PC into a video game kiosk/arcade machine?

  - by Rahil627

  Sorry to make the question so vague. What I ultimately want is software that allows people to play independent video games on a PC and not have to worry about maintaining it. Imagine a game that was made in a few hours that does not have a restart button and crashes often. It should be able to handle these kinds of things and do more! The software should: allow the game to be restarted manually handle game crashes (likely by restarting the game) restrict the user from doing anything crazy later... offer a UI to select the game from a list handle pre-configured key bindings cross-platform (start with windows) I just want to know if this exists already before I start creating one. As of now AutoHotKey is being used to do this sloppily. If such software does not exist then perhaps someone could recommend a general open source Kiosk software? Open Kiosk? I'll take anything. (I also could not find a related tag. Not even sure if this question should be here rather than stackoverflow)

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• Electronics 101 for kids: littleBits review

  - by Daniel Cazzulino

  I'm always on the lookout for cool toys that can empower my kids (9, 6 and 2yo) to be creative and break the mold of being just consumers of other's ideas. I recently came across littleBits while watching a TED video of their creator. I was immediately hooked. It seemed like the perfect blend of simplicity and self-learning that I was looking to get my kids into electronics. So I went ahead and purchased the kit from SparkFun and a bunch of standalone parts (&quot;bits&quot;) from the site itself. There are also a bunch of videos and pictures on their site to get a better idea of what they are, as well as multitude YouTube videos. This weekend I gave them to my kids, and coincidentally, we also travelled to my hometown and they got to share them too with their cousins. Man, what a blast it was! I decided to approach this &quot;toy&quot; just like one of the iPod/iPad games I buy for them: &quot;How it's used? I've no idea! I just heard it was great, you go figure it out!&quot;. And figure it out they did....Read full article

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• Mouse doesn't work & internet connection not made in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  - by David Skare

  Yesterday, Nov 15, 2012, I booted into my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system. It has resided on a Crucial 128 GB SSD with about 90% free space since early summer. I also have Windows 7 loaded on another Crucial 256 GB SSD. Ubuntu has set up a dual boot system for me even though each OS has its own SSD. I have been using this setup without problems since summer. Yesterday, when the boot process finished, my Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 did not work and there was a message that Ubuntu was not connected to the internet. So w/o the mouse I was forced to turn the machine off manually. About 4 days ago Ubuntu worked fine and booting into Win 7 also works fine. I have a backup machine with the same style mouse on it so I swapped the mouse onto this system. Same results. But both mice work when booting into Win 7. Today I removed both SSDs and installed my Ubuntu 12.04 HD which has not been used since I moved Ubuntu to the SSD from it. Same results. Between the last time I used Ubuntu 12.04 on the SSD and when I tried to use it again I made no changes to my machine, either hardware or software. My machines specs are: AMD FX-6100, MSI 990FXA-GD65 AM3+ format with latest BIOS (Ver 19.9), Corsair Vengeance 1866 MHz memory - 16 GB (4GB X 4 sticks), MSI N580GTX video card (nVidia 306.97 drivers), Sony Bravia 32" HD TV as a monitor, Pioneer BluRay DVD-RW, DSL connection to internet thru a router (10 mps), Crucial 128 GB SSD (90% free space), Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000 I try to maintain current BIOS and drivers for all devices. I mostly use my Ubuntu system for programming in GCC and OpenCOBOL, surfing the internet and e-mailing. No games are installed. I'm stumped! If anyone has experienced this same problem I'd appreciate knowing how you solved it. TIA, Dave

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