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• Is it a good idea to use a formula to balance a game's complexity, in order to keep players in constant flow?

  - by user1107412

  I read a lot about Flow theory and its applications to video games, and I got an idea sticking in my mind. If a number of weight values are applied to different parameters of a certain game level (i.e. the size of the level, the number of enemies, their overal strength, the variance in their behavior, etc), then it should be technically possible to find an overal score mechanism for each level in the game. If a constant ratio of complexity increase were empirically defined, for instance 1,3333, or say, the Golden Ratio, would it be a good idea to arrange the levels in such an order that the increase of overal complexity tends to increase that much? Has somebody tried it?

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• Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

  - by eagerMoose

  I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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• Constructor should generally not call methods

  - by Stefano Borini

  I described to a colleague why a constructor calling a method can be an antipattern. example (in my rusty C++) class C { public : C(int foo); void setFoo(int foo); private: int foo; } C::C(int foo) { setFoo(foo); } void C::setFoo(int foo) { this->foo = foo } I would like to motivate better this fact through your additional contribute. If you have examples, book references, blog pages, or names of principles, they would be very welcome. Edit: I'm talking in general, but we are coding in python.

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• How does Python compile some its code in C?

  - by Howcan

  I read that some constructs of Python are more efficient because they are compiled in C. https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonSpeed/PerformanceTips Some of the examples used were map() and filter(). I was wondering how Python is able to do this? It's generally interpreted, so how does some of the code get compiled while another is interpreted - and in a different language? Why not just compile the whole thing?

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• What are some general guidelines for setting up an iOS project I will want to personally publish but sell in the future?

  - by RLH

  I have an idea for a personal iOS project that I would like to write and release to the iOS store. I'm the type of developer who enjoys developing and publishing. I want to write quality software and take care of my customers. Assuming that I wrote an application that had reasonable success, there is a fair chance that I would want to sell the ownership rights of the app to another party and I'd use the proceeds to develop my next personal project which, in turn, I'd probably want to sell in the future. With that said, what are some general guidelines for creating, making and publishing an iOS project that I will eventually want to transfer to another company/developer? I know this is a bit of a broad question, but I request that the given advice be a general list of tips, suggestions and pitfalls to avoid. If any particular bullet point on your list needs more explanation, I'll either search for the answer or post a new question specific to that requirement. Thank you! Note Regarding this Question I am posting this question on Programmers.SO because I think that this is an issue of software architecting, seeking advice for setting a new application project and publishing a project to the Apple iOS store-- all within the requirements for questions on this site.

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• Help with converting an XML into a 2D level (Actionscript 3.0)

  - by inzombiak

  I'm making a little platformer and wanted to use Ogmo to create my level. I've gotten everything to work except the level that my code generates is not the same as what I see in Ogmo. I've checked the array and it fits with the level in Ogmo, but when I loop through it with my code I get the wrong thing. I've included my code for creating the level as well as an image of what I get and what I'm supposed to get. EDIT: I tried to add it, but I couldn't get it to display properly Also, if any of you know of better level editors please let me know. xmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, LoadXML); xmlLoader.load(new URLRequest("Level1.oel")); function LoadXML(e:Event):void { levelXML = new XML(e.target.data); xmlFilter = levelXML.* for each (var levelTest:XML in levelXML.*) { crack = levelTest; } levelArray = crack.split(''); trace(levelArray); count = 0; for(i = 0; i <= 23; i++) { for(j = 0; j <= 35; j++) { if(levelArray[i*36+j] == 1) { block = new Platform; s.addChild(block); block.x = j*20; block.y = i*20; count++; trace(i); trace(block.x); trace(j); trace(block.y); } } } trace(count);

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• Programming Language vs. Game Engine [on hold]

  - by hunteroatway17

  I understand that this question has been asked multiple times before. I am just asking this quick and simple question. I have been learning programming in C#, Java and C++ for the past 6 months; Just experimenting with each. I think that C++ is the one that I like most. What I would like to know and am wondering about is should I learn a programming language and use a 2D framework like Allegro; Or should I learn Unity and make 2D games in that because it is probably faster and easier. I want to learn something that I can get pretty good at, seeing as I am pursuing a career in indie game development. I also have a programmer's mind set and I am a left brain thinker so learning a language is not a issue. I just want to best and most future proof choice. Thanks.

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• Algorithms for rainfall + river creation in procedurally generated terrain

  - by Peck

  I've recently become fascinated by the things that can be done with procedurally terrain and have started experimenting with world building a bit. I'd like to be able to make worlds something like Dwarf fortress with biomes created from meshing together various maps. So first step has been done. Using the diamond-square algorithm I've created some nice hieghtmaps. Next step is I would like to add some water features and have them somewhat realistically generated with rainfall. I've read about a few different approaches such as starting at the high points of the map, and "stepping" down to the lowest neighboring point, pooling/eroding as it works its way down to sea level. Are there any documented algorithms with this or are they more off the cuff? Would love any advice/thoughts.

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• How to do a multishot in xna?

  - by DeVonte

  I am trying to simulate a gun in which shoots multiple bullets at the same time(similar to a spread out shot). I am thinking I have to create another bullet array then do the same as I have below but in a different direction. Here is what I have so far: foreach (GameObject bullet in bullets) { // Find a bullet that isn't alive if (!bullet.alive) { //And set it to alive bullet.alive = true; if (flip == SpriteEffects.FlipHorizontally) //Facing right { float armCos = (float)Math.Cos(arm.rotation - MathHelper.PiOver2); float armSin = (float)Math.Sin(arm.rotation - MathHelper.PiOver2); // Set the initial position of our bullets at the end of our gun arm // 42 is obtained by taking the width of the Arm_Gun texture / 2 // and subtracting the width of the Bullet texture / 2. ((96/2)=(12/2)) bullet.position = new Vector2( arm.position.X + 42 * armCos, arm.position.Y + 42 * armSin); // And give it a velocity of the direction we're aiming. // Increae/decrease speed by changeing 15.0f bullet.Velocity = new Vector2( (float)Math.Cos(arm.rotation - MathHelper.PiOver4 + MathHelper.Pi + MathHelper.PiOver2), (float)Math.Sin(arm.rotation - MathHelper.PiOver4 + MathHelper.Pi + MathHelper.PiOver2)) * 15.0f; } else //Facing left { float armCos = (float)Math.Cos(arm.rotation + MathHelper.PiOver2); float armSin = (float)Math.Sin(arm.rotation + MathHelper.PiOver2); //Set the initial position of our bullet at the end of our gun arm //42 is obtained be taking the width of the Arm_Gun texture / 2 //and subtracting the width of the Bullet texture / 2. ((96/2)-(12/2)) bullet.position = new Vector2( arm.position.X - 42 * armCos, arm.position.Y - 42 * armSin); //And give it a velocity of the direction we're aiming. //Increase/decrease speed by changing 15.0f bullet.Velocity = new Vector2( -armCos, -armSin) * 15.0f; } return; }// End if }// End foreach

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• What would most games benefit from having?

  - by Phil

  I think I've seen "questions" like this on stackoverflow but sorry if I'm overstepping any bounds. Inspired by my recent question and all the nice answers (Checklist for finished game?) I think every gamedev out there has something he/she thinks that almost every game should have. That knowledge is welcome here! So this is probably going to be an inspirational subjective list of some sorts and the point is that anyone reading this question will see a point or two that they've overlooked in their own development and might benefit from adding. I think a good example might be: "some sort of manual or help section. Of course it should be proportional to how advanced the game is. Some users won't need it and won't go looking for it but the other ones that do will become very frustrated if they can't remember how to do something specific that should be in the manual". A bad example might be "good gameplay". Of course every game benefits from this but the answer is not very helpful.

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• Why are most websites optimized for viewing in portrait mode?

  - by NVM

  I simply cannot figure this out. Almost all monitors have an aspect ratio where width is much bigger than the height and yet almost all websites are designed exactly for the other way round? I am not really a web developer and am just experimenting stuff at the moment but this madness baffles me!!! Edit: The point is not that I would like to limit the height of a website. The point is that I'd wat it to somehow fill all available space when I have my 1920x1080 in landscape mode. Edit 2: See this to understand what I am saying

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• How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy?

  - by Tetrad

  With your typical MMORPG, players can usually farm the world for raw materials essentially forever. Monsters/mineral veins/etc are usually on some respawn timer so, other than time, there really isn't a good way to limit the amount of new currency entering the system. So that really only leaves money sinks to try to take money out of the system. What are some strategies to prevent inflation of the in-game currency?

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• How can you predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines in a cluster to communicate?

  - by Dokkat

  I am trying to develop a computing application which needs a lot of memory (500gb). Buying a single machine for that is overly expensive. I can, though, buy ~100 small instances on Digital Ocean or similar, divide the memory in blocks and use TCP to emulate shared memory between the instances. Now, my question is: how can I measure/predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines like that to share information, in comparison to IPC and shared memory? Are there rules of thumb? I don't want exact values, but knowing more or less how much faster one is would be very helpful in visualising the feasibility of this approach.

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• Prefer class members or passing arguments between internal methods?

  - by geoffjentry

  Suppose within the private portion of a class there is a value which is utilized by multiple private methods. Do people prefer having this defined as a member variable for the class or passing it as an argument to each of the methods - and why? On one hand I could see an argument to be made that reducing state (ie member variables) in a class is generally a good thing, although if the same value is being repeatedly used throughout a class' methods it seems like that would be an ideal candidate for representation as state for the class to make the code visibly cleaner if nothing else. Edit: To clarify some of the comments/questions that were raised, I'm not talking about constants and this isn't relating to any particular case rather just a hypothetical that I was talking to some other people about. Ignoring the OOP angle for a moment, the particular use case that I had in mind was the following (assume pass by reference just to make the pseudocode cleaner) int x doSomething(x) doAnotherThing(x) doYetAnotherThing(x) doSomethingElse(x) So what I mean is that there's some variable that is common between multiple functions - in the case I had in mind it was due to chaining of smaller functions. In an OOP system, if these were all methods of a class (say due to refactoring via extracting methods from a large method), that variable could be passed around them all or it could be a class member.

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• How do you save/export changes made in Firebug?

  - by blunders

  Using Firebug to edit CSS, how do I save/export changes made to the CSS? TOOLS: Firefox, Firebug MAJOR UPDATE: If you know of a way to lock the forward/back/refresh on a FireFox tab, please let me know. Otherwise, I've given up on using FireBug/FireDiff as an IDE for CSS, it's nice, but lol... press backspace at the wrong time and ALL your work is gone... funny. So, really like the browser highlighting to CSS/HTML in Firebug. Know any good CSS editors that do this? Really had hope FireBug would work, but for now only see it as being good for ad-hoc inspection and test; meaning using it for what it's made for. UPDATES: @Lèse majesté: Just as an update, "Web Developer add-on" does let you edit CSS, but it does not let you edit/save CSS changes made by Firebug. Meaning you use Firebug to ID and maybe test changes, but it does not let you save the changes from Firebug. Here's a "how to" covering how to use them together: FF + FB + WD @Lèse majesté: Still playing around with FireDiff. It works okay, found one bug already (although I'm just working around it), and there's no "how to" I've been able to find, so I'm just trying every feature and clicking around... (for example, to export a diff you must be over the last item in the list, right click, and select as "Save Diff". The ".diff" is just a text file, no idea why at this point the ext is .diff.

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• Is it illegal to use content in such a way?

  - by MHZ

  I have a couple of questions about the legality of the content of some websites. I am currently working on two websites and I would like to make sure I am not breaking any laws, by using some content like I am... Do I need to get a license to use images from the Internet (such as google.images.com) in my site, assuming they aren't a company logo belonging to another company? If not, am I allowed to use it after I modify it with a image editing software? If content such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses, website addresses, and text from websites can be found for free online, and I gather this information for a search engine based site that I am working on and offering this information on a paid basis (similar to google, but more specialized), is something that is legal? Note: I am not 'copying' or redirecting business from anywhere, to my site. The exact opposite, the site I am working on actually helps advertise businesses and make it easier for customers to find them.

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• What are the common character animation techniques used in tile based hack&slash games?

  - by Gorky

  I wonder what kind of animation techniques are used for creature and character animation in modern hack&slash type tile based games? Keyframing for different actions may be one option. Skeletal framing may be another. But how about the physics? Or do they use a totally hybrid system of inverse kinematics supported with a skeleton,physics and mixed with interpolated keyframing for more realistic animations? If so, how and for what reasons? I can think of many different solutions for the issues below but I wonder what's used and best suited for issues like: Walking or moving on an uneven terrain Combat interaction, combat physics and collisions Attaching rigid items to character and their iteractions ih physics world Soft body dynamics like hair, vegetation, clothes and fabric in line with animations and iteractions.

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• How stable are Single Page Application (SPA) build with Microsoft .Net for enterprise application [on hold]

  - by Husrat Mehmood

  Imagine a situation where you have your data loading to your application via REST Api,you are building a responsive application(ajax request) for an Enterprise. What potential problems might I run into for a single page application(SPA) using Microsoft Asp.Net Web application build using MVC template? Are there advantages to just designing a multi-page application using asp.net mvc 5 remember I am using SPA for an Enterprise Application where there are role based views for the users.?

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• Truly useful UML diagrams

  - by eversor

  UML has a jungle of Diagrams. Profile Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Package Diagrams... However, (IMH-and-not-too-experienced-O) I quite see that doing each and every diagram is overkill. Therefore, which UML Diagrams are more suitable in a web context, more expecificly a blog (we want to build it from scratchs). I understand that just because I used UML Diagrams does not imply that our code would be great and brilliant... but, it certainly would be better than just unplanified code...

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• How to copy or replicate a complex website to local file and modify then

  - by Andre Chenier

  I am not good at designing the visual side of a website. I found a website which I gave 10 over 10 because its functionality suits my aims and also it seems very esthetical. I know HTML, PHP, mySQL and some degree of CSS. I don't know JS, Ajax, Jquery. So I want to replicate this web site (save completely) on my local and then modify it. (content, colors, icons etc.) I saved this web site in Chrome and IE. After clicking the site from my local folder, a saw an ugly & non-working site. My aim is to understand the functions of the parts that I don't know. For example when I delete a js in its page what will happen as the result of the deletion operation. Since the page is too complex it has lots of css, js files to download inside. I don't want to deal it manually. Is there any alternative and easy way to get the web page completely to my local which also works like a charm from local? regards

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• Creating a shared library that might be used with desktop applications and web projects

  - by dreza

  I have been involved in a number of MVC.NET and c# desktop projects in our company over the last year or so while also managing to kept my nose poked into other projects (in a read-only learning capacity of course). From this I've noticed that across the various projects and teams there is a-lot of functionality that has been well designed against good interfaces and abstractions. Because we tend to like our own work at times, I noticed a couple of projects had the exact same class, method copied into it as it had obviously worked on one and so was easily moved to a new project (probably by the same developer who originally wrote it) I mentioned this fact in one of our programmer meetings we have occasionally and suggested we pull some of this functionality into a core company library that we can build up over time and use across multiple projects. Everyone agreed and I started looking into this possibility. However, I've come across a stumbling block pretty early on. Our team primarily focuses on MVC at the moment and we have projects mainly in 2.0 but are starting to branch to 3.0. We also have a number of desktop applications that might benefit from some shared classes and basic helper methods. Initially when creating this DLL I included some shared classes that could be used across any project type (Web, Client etc) but then I started looking at adding some shared modules that would be useful in our MVC applications only. However this meant I had to include a reference to some Microsoft Web DLL's in order to leverage some of the classes I was creating (at this stage MVC 2.0). Now my issue is that we have a shared DLL that has references to web specific libraries that could also possibly be used in a client application. Not only that, our DLL referenced initially MVC 2.0 and we will eventually move onto MVC 3.0 for all projects. But alot of the classes in this library I expect to still be relevant to MVC 3 etc Our code within this DLL is separated into it's own namespaces such as: CompanyDLL.Primitives CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc CompanyDLL.Helpers etc etc So, my questions are: Is it OK to do a shared library like this, or if we have web specific features in it should we create a separate web DLL only targeted at a specific framework or MVC version? If it's OK, what kind of issues might we face when using the library that references MVC 2 in a MVC 3 project for example. I would be thinking that we might run into some sort of compatibility issue, or even issues where the developers using the library doesn't realize they need MVC 2.0 libraries. They might only want to use some of the generic classes etc The concept seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm starting to think maybe it's not really a practical solution. But the number of times I've seen copied classes and methods across projects because they are proven tested code is a bit unnerving to be perfectly honest!

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• I've been told that Exceptions should only be used in exceptional cases. How do I know if my case is exceptional?

  - by tieTYT

  My specific case here is that the user can pass in a string into the application, the application parses it and assigns it to structured objects. Sometimes the user may type in something invalid. For example, their input may describe a person but they may say their age is "apple". Correct behavior in that case is roll back the transaction and to tell the user an error occurred and they'll have to try again. There may be a requirement to report on every error we can find in the input, not just the first. In this case, I argued we should throw an exception. He disagreed, saying, "Exceptions should be exceptional: It's expected that the user may input invalid data, so this isn't an exceptional case" I didn't really know how to argue that point, because by definition of the word, he seems to be right. But, it's my understanding that this is why Exceptions were invented in the first place. It used to be you had to inspect the result to see if an error occurred. If you failed to check, bad things could happen without you noticing. Without exceptions every level of the stack needs to check the result of the methods they call and if a programmer forgets to check in one of these levels, the code could accidentally proceed and save invalid data (for example). Seems more error prone that way. Anyway, feel free to correct anything I've said here. My main question is if someone says Exceptions should be exceptional, how do I know if my case is exceptional?

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• How to verify the Liskov substitution principle in an inheritance hierarchy?

  - by Songo

  Inspired by this answer: Liskov Substitution Principle requires that Preconditions cannot be strengthened in a subtype. Postconditions cannot be weakened in a subtype. Invariants of the supertype must be preserved in a subtype. History constraint (the "history rule"). Objects are regarded as being modifiable only through their methods (encapsulation). Since subtypes may introduce methods that are not present in the supertype, the introduction of these methods may allow state changes in the subtype that are not permissible in the supertype. The history constraint prohibits this. I was hoping if someone would post a class hierarchy that violates these 4 points and how to solve them accordingly. I'm looking for an elaborate explanation for educational purposes on how to identify each of the 4 points in the hierarchy and the best way to fix it. Note: I was hoping to post a code sample for people to work on, but the question itself is about how to identify the faulty hierarchies :)

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• Code Line Delimiter [closed]

  - by John Isaiah Carmona

  Possible Duplicate: Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons? I just found out that R Programming Language, which is somewhat belong to the C family (I'm not sure about this but it uses {} instead of begin end), uses a new line as a delimiter for a new line of code instead of the semi-colon ;. Why is some programming language designed to use a new line instead of a symbol like semi-colon which I think will make the code more readable? Phyton total = item_one + \ item_two + \ item_three C total = item_one + item_two + item_three;

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• Expiring timed actions a good idea?

  - by Bart van Heukelom

  We have an online game where players sometimes have to wait a while (say 30 minutes) before a process they intiated completes. This encourages them to come back later. An example of this is growing crops in Farmville or basically any action in the Sims Play4Free. Now, however, there is the idea to let these processes expire, so if the player doesn't 'reap' them in time (e.g. within 4 hours) they are aborted. I'm a bit sceptical about this. How will this make players come back more often? Is not the reward of reaping the process enough for that? Can we expect players to fit their daily schedule around our game, maybe even set the alarm clock at night? Won't this just cause players to give up on starting these processes in the first place? I realise this may be too subjective for this site, so I'll end with a concrete question: Do (m)any other online free-to-play games employ this technique?

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