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• Calculating the "power" of a player in a "Defend Your Castle" type game

  - by Jesse Emond

  I'm a making a "Defend Your Castle" type game, where each player has a castle and must send units to destroy the opponent's castle. It looks like this (and yeah, this is the actual game, not a quick paint drawing..): Now, I'm trying to implement the AI of the opponent, and I'd like to create 4 different AI levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardcore. I've never made any "serious" AI before and I'd like to create a quite complete one this time. My idea is to calculate a player's "power" score, based on the current health of its castle and the individual "power" score of its units. Then, the AI would just try to keep a score close to the player's one(Easy would stay below it, Normal would stay near it and Hard would try to get above it). But I just don't know how to calculate a player's power score. There are just too many variables to take into account and I don't know how to properly use them to create one significant number(the power level). Could anyone help me out on this one? Here are the variables that should influence a player's power score: Current castle health, the unit's total health, damage, speed and attack range. Also, the player can have increased Income(the money bag), damage(the + Damage) and speed(the + speed)... How could I include them in the score? I'm really stuck here... Or is there an other way that I could implement AI for this type of game? Thanks for your precious time.

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• Making fonts render similarly across browsers

  - by Zach L.

  I am building a website for a client, and we had hoped to use plain text, not images in the navigation bar. The font we are using is Century Gothic (I believe that this font is available on the majority of PCs and Macs) The problem is, that on different browsers the font renders significantly differnt. In Chrome we got it looking the way we want, but in firefox the text is smaller and bolder. Aside from writing browser specific javascript to alter the font properties, are there any other options to standardize the way the fonts are rendered cross-browser. Perhaps some library or API? Maybe its a matter of being more specific in declaring font properties? Honestly I am stuck and need help.

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• Is Paypal the best solution for payment gateway for a website?

  - by Pennf0lio

  I have a realty website that needs a payment gateway for their property reservation. The reservation fee range from $500-$600 and about 5-6 people per month. I was wondering if Paypal is the best solution for accepting Payment. What will be the Pros and Cons using Paypal. Paypal was my first choice because It's easy to integrate on my existing website and I wouldn't be minding so much on the security. P.S. It's not a part of the question, But If you can site some realty website that accept payment and would be a good inspiration. It would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

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• Should all foreign table references use foreign key constraints

  - by TecBrat

  Closely related to: Foreign key restrictions -> yes or no? I asked a question on SO and it led me to ask this here. If I'm faced with a choice of having a circular reference or just not enforcing the restraint, which is the better choice? In my particular case I have customers and addresses. I want an address to have a reference to a customer and I want each customer to have a default billing address id and a default shipping address id. I might query for all addresses that have a certain customer ID or I might query for the address with the ID that matches the default shipping or billing address ids. I'm not sure yet how the constraints (or lack of) will effect the system as my application and it's data age.

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• DDD and Value Objects. Are mutable Value Objects a good candidate for Non Aggr. Root Entity?

  - by Tony

  Here is a little problem Have an entity, with a value object. Not a problem. I replace a value object for a new one, then nhibernate inserts the new value and orphan the old one, then deletes it. Ok, that's a problem. Insured is my entity in my domain. He has a collection of Addresses (value objects). One of the addresses is the MailingAddress. When we want to update the mailing address, let's say zipcode was wrong, following Mr. Evans doctrine, we must replace the old object for a new one since it's immutable (a value object right?). But we don't want to delete the row thou, because that address's PK is a FK in a MailingHistory table. So, following Mr. Evans doctrine, we are pretty much screwed here. Unless i make my addressses Entities, so i don't have to "replace" it, and simply update its zipcode member, like the old good days. What would you suggest me in this case? The way i see it, ValueObjects are only useful when you want to encapsulate a group of database table's columns (component in nhibernate). Everything that has a persistence id in the database, is better off to make it an Entity (not necessarily an aggregate root) so you can update its members without recreating the whole object graph, specially if that's a deep-nested object. Do you concur? Is it allowed by Mr. Evans to have a mutable value object? Or is a mutable value object a candidate for an Entity? Thanks

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• Logarithmic spacing of FFT bins

  - by Mykel Stone

  I'm trying to do the examples within the GameDev.net Beat Detection article ( http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/programming/features/beatdetection/index.html ) I have no issue with performing a FFT and getting the frequency data and doing most of the article. I'm running into trouble though in the section 2.B, Enhancements and beat decision factors. in this section the author gives 3 equations numbered R10-R12 to be used to determine how many bins go into each subband: R10 - Linear increase of the width of the subband with its index R11 - We can choose for example the width of the first subband R12 - The sum of all the widths must not exceed 1024 He says the following in the article: "Once you have equations (R11) and (R12) it is fairly easy to extract 'a' and 'b', and thus to find the law of the 'wi'. This calculus of 'a' and 'b' must be made manually and 'a' and 'b' defined as constants in the source; indeed they do not vary during the song." However, I cannot seem to understand how these values are calculated...I'm probably missing something simple, but learning fourier analysis in a couple of weeks has left me Decimated-in-Mind and I cannot seem to see it.

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• How is game development different from other software development?

  - by Davy8

  For a solid general purpose software developer, what specifically is different about game development, either fundamentally or just differences in degree? I've done toy games like Tic-tac-toe, Tetris, and a brute-force sudoku solver (with UI) and I'm now embarking on a mid-sized project (mid-sized for being a single developer and not having done many games) and one thing I've found with this particular project is that separation of concerns is a lot harder since everything affects state, and every object can interact with every other object in a myriad of ways. So far I've managed to keep the code reasonably clean for my satisfaction but I find that keeping clean code in non-trivial games is a lot harder than it is for my day job. The game I'm working on is turn-based and the graphics are going to be fairly simple (web-based, mostly through DOM manipulation) so real time and 3d work aren't really applicable to me, but I'd still be interested in answers regarding those if they're interesting. Mostly interested in general game logic though. P.S. Feel free to retag this, I'm not really sure what tags are applicable.

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• what making a good soundtrack for social game

  - by Maged

  there are many successful social games in Facebook and other social sites like brain buddies, who has the biggest brain and word challenge.both of them have a great soundtrack while playing and in the beginning of the game . my question is how to find a good soundtrack or what's i should look for to find a good soundtrack like this that's help to attract the user specially for games that need concentration ?

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• Balancing game difficulty against player progression

  - by Raven Dreamer

  It seems that the current climate of games seems to cater to an obvious progression of player power, whether that means getting a bigger, more explosive gun in Halo, leveling up in an RPG, or unlocking new options in Command and Conquer 4. Yet this concept is not exclusive to video or computer games -- even in Dungeons and Dragons players can strive to acquire a +2 sword to replace the +1 weapon they've been using. Yet as a systems designer, the concept of player progression is giving me headache after headache. Should I balance around the players exact capabilities and give up on a simple linear progression? (I think ESIV:Oblivion is a good example of this) Is it better to throw the players into an "arms race" with their opponents, where if the players don't progress in an orderly manner, it is only a matter of time until gameplay is unbearably difficult? (4th Edition DnD strikes me as a good example of this) Perhaps it would make most sense to untether the core gameplay mechanics from progression at all -- give them flashier, more interesting (but not more powerful!) ways to grow?

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• Create Outlook Appointments from PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  I've been toying around with a script to create a special set of calendar objects in Outlook that show when my SQL Server Agent Jobs are scheduled to run. I haven't finished yet, but I thought I would share the part that creates the Outlook Appointments.I have yet to fill a variable with the start and end times, and then loop through that to create the appointments. I'm thinking I'll make the script below into a function, and feed it those variables in a loop. The script below creates a whole new Calendar Folder in Outlook called "SQL Server Agent Jobs". I also use categories quite a bit, so you'll see that too. Caution: If you plan to play with this script, do it on an isolated workstation, not on your "regular" Outlook calendar. Otherwise, you'll have lots of appointments in there that you don't care about!  # Add a new calendar item to a new Outlook folder called "SQL Server Agent Jobs" $outlook = new-object -com Outlook.Application $calendar = $outlook.Session.folders.Item(1).Folders.Item("SQL Server Agent Jobs") $appt = $calendar.Items.Add(1) # == olAppointmentItem $appt.Start = [datetime]"03/11/2010 11:00" $appt.End = [datetime]"03/11/2009 12:00" $appt.Subject = "JobName" $appt.Location = "ServerName" $appt.Body = "Job Details" $appt.Categories = "SQL server Agent Job" $appt.Save()   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Is there a more intelligent way to do this besides a long chain of if statements or switch?

  - by Harrison Nguyen

  I'm implementing an IRC bot that receives a message and I'm checking that message to determine which functions to call. Is there a more clever way of doing this? It seems like it'd quickly get out of hand after I got up to like 20 commands. Perhaps there's a better way to abstract this? public void onMessage(String channel, String sender, String login, String hostname, String message){ if (message.equalsIgnoreCase(".np")){ // TODO: Use Last.fm API to find the now playing } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith(".register")) { cmd.registerLastNick(channel, sender, message); } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith("give us a countdown")) { cmd.countdown(channel, message); } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith("remember am routine")) { cmd.updateAmRoutine(channel, message, sender); } }

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• Why not expose a primary key

  - by Angelo Neuschitzer

  In my education I have been told that it is a flawed idea to expose actual primary keys (not only DB keys, but all primary accessors) to the user. I always thought it to be a security problem (because an attacker could attempt to read stuff not their own). Now I have to check if the user is allowed to access anyway, so is there a different reason behind it? Also, as my users have to access the data anyway I will need to have a public key for the outside world somewhere in between. Now that public key has the same problems as the primary key, doesn't it?

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• The next next C++ [closed]

  - by Roger Pate

  It's entirely too early for speculation on what C++ will be like after C++0x, but idle hands make for wild predictions. What features would you find useful and why? Is there anything in another language that would fit nicely into the state of C++ after 0x? What should be considered for the next TC and TR? (Mostly TR, as the TC would depend more on what actually becomes the next standard.) Export was removed, rather than merely deprecated, in 0x. (It remains a keyword.) What other features carry so much baggage to also be more harmful than helpful? ISO Standards' process I'm not involved in the C++ committee, but it's also a mystery, unfortunately, to most programmers using C++. A few things worth keeping in mind: There will be 10 years between standards, barring extremely exceptional circumstances. The standard can get "bug fixes" in the form of a Technical Corrigendum. This happened to C++98 with TC1, named C++03. It fixed "simple" issues such as making the explicit guarantee that std::vector stores items contiguously, which was always intended. The committee can issue reports which can add to the language. This happened to C++98/03 with TR1 in 2005, which introduced the std::tr1 namespace.

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• Object behaviour or separate class?

  - by Andrew Stephens

  When it comes to OO database access you see two common approaches - the first is to provide a class (say "Customer") with methods such as Retrieve(), Update(), Delete(), etc. The other is to keep the Customer class fairly lightweight (essentially just properties) and perform the database access elsewhere, e.g. using a repository. This choice of approaches doesn't just apply to database access, it can crop up in many different OOD scenarios. So I was wondering if one way is preferable over the other (although I suspect the answer will be "it depends")! Another dev on our team argues that to be truly OO the class should be "self-contained", i.e. providing all the methods necessary to manipulate and interact with that object. I personally prefer the repository approach - I don't like bloating the Customer class with all that functionality, and I feel it results in cleaner code having it elsewhere, but I can't help thinking I'm seriously violating core OO concepts! And what about memory implications? If I retrieve thousands of Customer objects I'm assuming those with the data access methods will take up a lot more memory than the property-only objects?

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• Merge two different API calls into One

  - by dhilipsiva

  I have two different apps in my django project. One is "comment" and an other one is "files". A comment might save some file attached to it. The current way of creating a comment with attachments is by making two API calls. First one creates an actual comment and replies with the comment ID which serves as foreign key for the Files. Then for each file, a new request is made with the comment ID. Please note that file is a generic app, that can be used with other apps too. What is the cleanest way of making this into one API call? I want to have this as a single API call because I am in a situation where I need to send user an email with all the files as attachment when a comment is made. I know Queueing is the ideal way to do it. But I don't have the liberty to add queing to our stack now. So this was the only way I could think of.

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• What is the diffference between "data hiding" and "encapsulation"?

  - by john smith optional

  I'm reading "Java concurrency in practice" and there is said: "Fortunately, the same object-oriented techniques that help you write well-organized, maintainable classes - such as encapsulation and data hiding -can also help you crate thread-safe classes." The problem #1 - I never heard about data hiding and don't know what it is. The problem #2 - I always thought that encapsulation is using private vs public, and is actually the data hiding. Can you please explain what data hiding is and how it differs from encapsulation?

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• Developing an ELO like point system for a multiplayer gaming site

  - by Alejandro Piad

  I'm currently working on a gaming site where users will submit virtual players for different games, like Chess, Nash, Backgammon, Go, etc. The idea is that users don't compete themselves, but through their virtual players. There will be leagues, tournaments, and other competition formats. The question is which would be a good rating system for users in this environment. Take into account that every user may have many different virtual players playing in many different games. As a general guideline I would like to guarantee the following properties: Users who have a lot of mediocre players should not score higher than users with a few very good players. A user with a high rating should not be penalized if he adds a new bad player, until he has had enough time to improve his player. Users who don't play often should not score higher than users who play every day. Thanks in advance.

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• Algorithm for tracking progress of controller method running in background

  - by SilentAssassin

  I am using Codeigniter framework for PHP on Windows platform. My problem is I am trying to track progress of a controller method running in background. The controller extracts data from the database(MySQL) then does some processing and then stores the results again in the database. The complete aforesaid process can be considered as a single task. A new task can be assigned while another task is running. The newly assigned task will be added in a queue. So if I can track progress of the controller, I can show status for each of these tasks. Like I can show "Pending" status for tasks in the queue, "In Progress" for tasks running and "Done" for tasks that are completed. Main Issue: Now first thing I need to find is an algorithm to track the progress of how much amount of execution the controller method has completed and that means tracking how much amount of method has completed execution. For instance, this PHP script tracks progress of array being counted. Here the current state and state after total execution are known so it is possible to track its progress. But I am not able to devise anything analogous to it in my case. Maybe what I am trying to achieve is programmtically not possible. If its not possible then suggest me a workaround or a completely new approach. If some details are pending you can mention them. Sorry for my ignorance this is my first post here. I welcome you to point out my mistakes. EDIT: Database outline: The URL(s) and keyword(s) are first entered by user which are stored in a database table called link_master and keyword_master respectively. Then keywords are extracted from all the links present in this table and compared with keywords entered by user and their frequency is calculated which is the final result. And the results are stored in another table called link_result. Now sub-links are extracted from the domain links and stored in a table called sub_link_master. Now again the keywords are extracted from these sub-links and the corresponding results are stored in a table called sub_link_result. The number of records cannot be defined beforehand as the number of links on any web page can be different. Only the cardinality of *link_result* table can be known which will be equal to multiplication of number of keyword(s) and URL(s) . I insert multiple records at a time using this resource. Controller outline: The controller extracts keywords from a web page and also extracts keywords from all the links present on that page. There is a method called crawlLink. I used Rolling Curl to extract keywords and web page content. It has callback function which I used for extracting keywords alongwith generating results and extracting valid sub-links. There is a insertResult method which stores results for links and sub-links in the respective tables. Yes, the processing depends on the number of records. The more the number of records, the more time it takes to execute: Consider this scenario: Number of Domain Links = 1 Number of Keywords = 3 Number of Domain Links Result generated = 3 (3 x 1 as described in the question) Number of Sub Links generated = 41 Number of Sub Links Result = 117 (41 x 3 = 123 but some links are not valid or searchable) Approximate time taken for above process to complete = 55 seconds. The above result is for a single link. I want to track the progress of the above results getting stored in database. When all results are stored, the task is complete. If results are getting stored, the task is In Progress. I am not clear how can I track this progress.

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• How to approach big developer companies if I have a killer game idea? (for mobile devices)

  - by Balázs Dávid

  I have an idea for a game that has a potential, but I'm not a programmer. How to tell this to development companies without being my idea stolen? All I want from the company is first to watch a 3-minute long video presentation about my idea and if they see fantasy in it then we can talk about the details. I have already sent an e-mail to several big companies that have the expertise needed to code the game, they haven't answer me. Actually the idea is nothing fancy, no 3D, but fun and unique.

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• Switch vs Polymorphism when dealing with model and view

  - by Raphael Oliveira

  I can't figure out a better solution to my problem. I have a view controller that presents a list of elements. Those elements are models that can be an instance of B, C, D, etc and inherit from A. So in that view controller, each item should go to a different screen of the application and pass some data when the user select one of them. The two alternatives that comes to my mind are (please ignore the syntax, it is not a specific language) 1) switch (I know that sucks) //inside the view controller void onClickItem(int index) { A a = items.get(index); switch(a.type) { case b: B b = (B)a; go to screen X; x.v1 = b.v1; // fill X with b data x.v2 = b.v2; case c: go to screen Y; etc... } } 2) polymorphism //inside the view controller void onClickItem(int index) { A a = items.get(index); Screen s = new (a.getDestinationScreen()); //ignore the syntax s.v1 = a.v1; // fill s with information about A s.v2 = a.v2; show(s); } //inside B Class getDestinationScreen(void) { return Class(X); } //inside C Class getDestinationScreen(void) { return Class(Y); } My problem with solution 2 is that since B, C, D, etc are models, they shouldn't know about view related stuff. Or should they in that case?

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• Good free CSS Sprite for icons

  - by Saif Bechan

  I am working on a small project where I need some of the basic icons: edit, favorite, delete. You know them. Now i can download them all seperate, and put them together in a sprite, but I was wondering if there are ready to download sprites which I can use. Now I am working on an accounting app, so it would be nice if the icons were not too childish. A little but of fancy business type icons. Thanks

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• Help with this optimization

  - by Milo

  Here is what I do: I have bitmaps which I draw into another bitmap. The coordinates are from the center of the bitmap, thus on a 256 by 256 bitmap, an object at 0.0,0.0 would be drawn at 128,128 on the bitmap. I also found the furthest extent and made the bitmap size 2 times the extent. So if the furthest extent is 200,200 pixels, then the bitmap's size is 400,400. Unfortunately this is a bit inefficient. If a bitmap needs to be drawn at 500,500 and the other one at 300,300, then the target bitmap only needs to be 200,200 in size. I cannot seem to find a correct way to draw in the components correctly with a reduced size. I figure out the target bitmap size like this: float AvatarComposite::getFloatWidth(float& remainder) const { float widest = 0.0f; float widestNeg = 0.0f; for(size_t i = 0; i < m_components.size(); ++i) { if(m_components[i].getSprite() == NULL) { continue; } float w = m_components[i].getX() + ( ((m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() / 2.0f) * m_components[i].getScale()) / getWidthToFloat()); float wn = m_components[i].getX() - ( ((m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() / 2.0f) * m_components[i].getScale()) / getWidthToFloat()); if(w > widest) { widest = w; } if(wn > widest) { widest = wn; } if(w < widestNeg) { widestNeg = w; } if(wn < widestNeg) { widestNeg = wn; } } remainder = (2 * widest) - (widest - widestNeg); return widest - widestNeg; } And here is how I position and draw the bitmaps: int dw = m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth() * m_components[i].getScale(); int dh = m_components[i].getSprite()->getHeight() * m_components[i].getScale(); int cx = (getWidth() + (m_remainderX * getWidthToFloat())) / 2; int cy = (getHeight() + (m_remainderY * getHeightToFloat())) / 2; cx -= m_remainderX * getWidthToFloat(); cy -= m_remainderY * getHeightToFloat(); int dx = cx + (m_components[i].getX() * getWidthToFloat()) - (dw / 2); int dy = cy + (m_components[i].getY() * getHeightToFloat()) - (dh / 2); g->drawScaledSprite(m_components[i].getSprite(),0.0f,0.0f, m_components[i].getSprite()->getWidth(),m_components[i].getSprite()->getHeight(),dx,dy, dw,dh,0); I basically store the difference between the original 2 * longest extent bitmap and the new optimized one, then I translate by that much which I would think would cause me to draw correctly but then some of the components look cut off. Any insight would help. Thanks

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• Use Those Schemas, People!

  - by BuckWoody

  Database Schemas are just containers – they aren’t users or anything else – think of a sub-directory on the hard drive. In early versions of SQL Server we “hid” schemas, placing all objects under “dbo”, which gave the erroneous perception that Schemas are users. In SQL Server 2005, we “un-hid” or re-introduced schemas within the database. Users can have a default schema (a place where their new objects go), you can add new schemas and transfer objects between them, and they have many other benefits. But I still see a lot of applications, developed by shops I know as well as vendors, that don’t make use of a Schema. Everything is piled under dbo. I completely understand this – since permissions can be granted to a schema, they feel a lot like a user, so it’s just easier not to worry about both users and schemas when you create a database. But if you’ll use them properly you can make your application more understandable and portable. You should at least take a few minutes and read more about them – you owe it to your users: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190387.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Collision Resolution

  - by ultifinitus

  Hey all, I'm making a simple side-scrolling game, and I would appreciate some input! My collision detection system is a simple bounding box detection, so it's really easy to implement. However my collision resolution is ridiculous! Currently I have a little formula like this: if (colliding(firstObject,secondObject)) firstObject.resolve_collision(yAxisOffset); if (colliding(firstObject,secondObject)) firstObject.resolve_collision(xAxisOffset); where yAxisOffset is only set if the first object's previous y position was outside the second object's collision frame, respectively xAxisOffset as well. Now this is working great, in general. However there is a single problem. When I have a stack of objects and I push the first object against that stack, the first object get's "stuck," on the stack. What's I think is happening is the object's collision system checks and resolves for collisions based on creation time, so If I check one axis, then the other, the object will "sink" object directly along the checking axis. This sinking action causes the collision detection routine to think there's a gap between our position and the other object's position, and when I finally check the object that I've already sunk into, my object's position is resolved to it's original position... All this is great, and I'm sure if I bang my head against a wall long enough i'll come up with a working algorithm, but I'd rather not =). So what in the heck do you think I should do? How could I change my collision resolution system to fix this? Here's the program (temporary link, not sure how long it'll last) (notes: arrow keys to navigate, click to drop block, x to jump) I'd appreciate any help you can offer!

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• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  Hi, basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks !

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