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• Multiplayer online game engine/pipeline

  - by Slav

  I am implementing online multiplayer game where client must be written in AS3 (Flash) to embed game into browser and server in C++ (abstract part of which is already written and used with other games). Networking models may differ from each other, but currently I'm looking toward game's logic run on both client and server parts but they're written on different languages while it's not the main problem. My previous game (pretty big one - was implemented with efforts of ~5 programmers in 1.5 years) was mainly "written" within electronic tables as structured objects with implemented inheritance: was written standalone tool which generated AS3 and C++ (languages of platforms to which the game was published) using specified electronic tables file (.xls or .ods). That file contained ~50 tables with ~50 rows and ~50 columns each and was mainly written by game designers which do not know any programming languages. But that game was single-player. Having declared problem with my currently implementing MMO, I'm looking toward some vast pipeline, where will be resolved such problems like: game objects descriptions (which starships exist within game, how much HP they have, how fast move, what damage deal...) actions descriptions (what players or NPCs can do: attack each other, collect resources, build structures, move, teleport, cast spells) - actions are transmitted through server between clients influences (what happens when specified action applied on specified object, e.i "Ship A attacked Ship B: field "HP" of Ship B reduced by amount of field "damage" of Ship A" Influences can be much more difficult, yes, e.i. "damage is twice it's size when Ship has =5 allies around him in a 200 units range during night" and so on. If to be able to write such logic within some "design document" it will be easily possible to: let designers to do their job without programmer's intervention or any bug-prone programming validate described logic transfer (transform, convert) to any programming language where it will be executed Did somebody worked on something like that? Is there some tools/engines/pipelines which concernes with it? How to handle all of this problems simultaneously in a best way or do I properly imagine my tasks and problems to myself?

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• how to make a continuous machine gun sound-effect

  - by Jan

  I am trying to make an entity fire one or more machine-guns. For each gun I store the time between shots (1.0 / firing rate) and the time since the last shot. Also I've loaded ~10 different gun-shot sound-effects. Now, for each gun I do the following: function update(deltatime): timeSinceLastShot += deltatime if timeSinceLastShot >= timeBetweenShots + verySmallRandomValue(): timeSinceLastShot -= timeBetweenShots if gunIsFiring: displayMuzzleFlash() spawnBullet() selectRandomSound().play() But now I often get a crackling noise (which I assume is when two or more guns are firing at the same time and confuse the sound-device). My question is whether A) This a common problem and there is a well-known solution, maybe to do with the channels or something, or B) I am using a completely wrong approach to the task. I had a look at some sound-assets for other games and they used complete burst with multiple shots. I suppose I could try that, but I would like to have organic little hickups in the gun-fire (that's what the random value is for) to make the game more gritty and dirty. I am using Panda3D, but I had the exact same problem in PyGame and SDL. [edit] Thanks a lot for the answers so far! One more problem with faking it though: Now how do I stop the sound? Let's say I have an effect with 5 bangs... *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* *bang* And I magically manage to loop it so that there's no gap or overlap if the player fires more than 5 shots. Now, what do I do if the player stops firing halfway through the third bang? How do I know how long to keep playing the sample so that the third bang is completed and I can start playing the rumbling echo of the last shot? Of course I can look up the shot/pause timing of that sound-sample and code accordingly, but it feels extremely hacky.

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• How to configure ubuntu ldap client to get password policies from server?

  - by Rafaeldv

  I have a ldap server on CentOS, 389-ds. I configured the client, ubuntu 12.04, to authenticate on that base and it works very well. But it don't gets the password policies from server. For example, if i set the policy to force user to change the password on first login, ubuntu ignores it and logs him in, always. How can i setup the client to get the policies? Here are the client files: /etc/nsswitch.conf passwd: files ldap group: files ldap shadow: files ldap hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 networks: files protocols: db files services: db files ethers: db files rpc: db files netgroup: nis sudoers: ldap files common-auth auth [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so nullok_secure auth [success=1 default=ignore] pam_ldap.so use_first_pass auth requisite pam_deny.so auth required pam_permit.so auth optional pam_cap.so common-account account [success=2 new_authtok_reqd=done default=ignore] pam_unix.so account [success=1 default=ignore] pam_ldap.so account requisite pam_deny.so account required pam_permit.so common-password password requisite pam_cracklib.so retry=3 minlen=8 difok=3 password [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so obscure use_authtok try_first_pass sha512 password [success=1 user_unknown=ignore default=die] pam_ldap.so use_authtok try_first_pass password requisite pam_deny.so password required pam_permit.so password optional pam_gnome_keyring.so common-session session [default=1] pam_permit.so session requisite pam_deny.so session required pam_permit.so session optional pam_umask.so session required pam_unix.so session optional pam_ldap.so session optional pam_ck_connector.so nox11 session optional pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel umask=0022 /etc/ldap.conf base dc=a,dc=b,dc=c uri ldaps://a.b.c/ ldap_version 3 rootbinddn cn=directory manager pam_password md5 sudoers_base ou=SUDOers,dc=a,dc=b,dc=c pam_lookup_policy yes pam_check_host_attr yes nss_initgroups_ignoreusers avahi,avahi-autoipd,backup,bin,colord,daemon,games,gnats,hplip,irc,kernoops,libuuid,lightdm,list,lp,mail,man,messagebus,news,proxy,pulse,root,rtkit,saned,speech-dispatcher,sshd,sync,sys,syslog,usbmux,uucp,whoopsie,www-data /etc/ldap/ldap.conf BASE dc=a,dc=b,dc=c URI ldaps://a.b.c/ ssl on use_sasl no tls_checkpeer no sudoers_base ou=SUDOers,dc=a,dc=b,dc=c sudoers_debug 2 pam_lookup_policy yes pam_check_host_attr yes pam_lookup_policy yes pam_check_host_attr yes TLS_CACERT /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt TLS_REQCERT never

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• Navigation in Win8 Metro Style applications

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  In Windows 8, Touch is, as they say, a first class citizen. Now, to be honest: they also said that in Windows 7. However in Win8 this is actually true. Applications are meant to be used by touch. Yes, you can still use mouse, keyboard and pen and your apps should take that into account but touch is where you should focus on initially. Will all users have touch enabled devices? No, not in the first place. I don’t think touchscreens will be on every device sold next year. But in 5 years? Who knows? Don’t forget: if your app is successful it will be around for a long time and by that time touchscreens will be everywhere. Another reason to embrace touch is that it’s easier to develop a touch-oriented app and then to make sure that keyboard, nouse and pen work as doing it the other way around. Porting a mouse-based application to a touch based application almost never works. The reverse gives you much more chances for success. That being said, there are some things that you need to think about. Most people have more than one finger, while most users only use one mouse at the time. Still, most touch-developers translate their mouse-knowledge to the touch and think they did a good job. Martin Tirion from Microsoft said that since Touch is a new language people face the same challenges they do when learning a new real spoken language. The first thing people try when learning a new language is simply replace the words in their native language to the newly learned words. At first they don’t care about grammar. To a native speaker of that other language this sounds all wrong but they still will be able to understand what the intention was. If you don’t believe me: try Google translate to translate something for you from your language to another and then back and see what happens. The same thing happens with Touch. Most developers translate a mouse-click into a tap-event and think they’re done. Well matey, you’re not done. Not by far. There are things you can do with a mouse that you cannot do with touch. Think hover. A mouse has the ability to ‘slide’ over UI elements. Touch doesn’t (I know: with Pen you can do this but I’m talking about actual fingers here). A touch is either there or it isn’t. And right-click? Forget about it. A click is a click.  Yes, you have more than one finger but the machine doesn’t know which finger you use… The other way around is also true. Like I said: most users only have one mouse but they are likely to have more than one finger. So how do we take that into account? Thinking about this is really worth the time: you might come up with some surprisingly good ideas! Still: don’t forget that not every user has touch-enabled hardware so make sure your app is useable for both groups. Keep this in mind: we’re going to need it later on! Now. Apps should be easy to use. You don’t want your user to read through pages and pages of documentation before they can use the app. Imagine that spotter next to an airfield suddenly seeing a prototype of a Concorde 2 landing on the nearby runway. He probably wants to enter that information in our app NOW and not after he’s taken a 3 day course. Even if he still has to download the app, install it for the first time and then run it he should be on his way immediately. At least, fast enough to note down the details of that unique, rare and possibly exciting sighting he just did. So.. How do we do this? Well, I am not talking about games here. Games are in a league of their own. They fall outside the scope of the apps I am describing. But all the others can roughly be characterized as being one of two flavors: the navigation is either flat or hierarchical. That’s it. And if it’s hierarchical it’s no more than three levels deep. Not more. Your users will get lost otherwise and we don’t want that. Flat is simple. Just imagine we have one screen that is as high as our physical screen is and as wide as you need it to be. Don’t worry if it doesn’t fit on the screen: people can scroll to the right and left. Don’t combine up/down and left/right scrolling: it’s confusing. Next to that, since most users will hold their device in landscape mode it’s very natural to scroll horizontal. So let’s use that when we have a flat model. The same applies to the hierarchical model. Try to have at most three levels. If you need more space, find a way to group the items in such a way that you can fit it in three, very wide lanes. At the highest level we have the so called hub level. This is the entry point of the app and as such it should give the user an immediate feeling of what the app is all about. If your app has categories if items then you might show these categories here. And while you’re at it: also show 2 or 3 of the items itself here to give the user a taste of what lies beneath. If the user selects a category you go to the section part. Here you show several sections (again, go as wide as you need) with again some detail examples. After that: the details layer shows each item. By giving some samples of the underlaying layer you achieve several things: you make the layer attractive by showing several different things, you show some highlights so the user sees actual content and you provide a shortcut to the layers underneath. The image below is borrowed from the http://design.windows.com website which has tons and tons of examples: For our app we’ll use this layout. So what will we show? Well, let’s see what sorts of features our app has to offer. I’ll repeat them here: Note planes Add pictures of that plane Notify friends of new spots Share new spots on social media Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down the runway they take I am sure you can think of some more items but for now we'll use these. In the hub we’ll show something that represents “Spots”, “Friends”, “Social”. Apparently we have an inner list of spotter-friends that are in the app, while we also have to whole world in social. In the layer below we show something else, depending on what the user choose. When they choose “Spots” we’ll display the last spots, last spots by our friends (so we can actually jump from this category to the one next to it) and so on. When they choose a “spot” (or press the + icon in the App bar, which I’ll talk about next time) they go to the lowest and final level that shows details about that spot, including a picture, date and time and the notes belonging to that entry. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to organize your app this way. If you don’t have enough room in these three layers you probably could easily get away with grouping items. Take a look at our hub: we have three completely different things in one place. If you still can’t fit it all in in a logical and consistent way, chances are you are trying to do too much in this app. Go back to your mission statement, determine if it is specific enough and if your feature list helps that statement or makes it unclear. Go ahead. Give it a go! Next time we’ll talk about the look and feel, the charms and the app-bar….

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• Effect of using dedicated NVidia card instead of Intel HD4000

  - by Sman789

  Short version: Can someone please advise me of the effect of adding a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M card to an Ubuntu laptop in terms of power consumption and performance gains/losses when doing general productivity tasks and booting up. Also, how good are the closed source, open source, and Bumblebee drivers for these newer cards compared to support for the Intel HD4000? Long version/Background, if any info here is helpful: I'm thinking of ordering a laptop from PC Specialist (a UK company who actually sell machines without Windows pre-installed) with the following specifications: Genesis IV: 15.6" AUO Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3210M (2.50GHz) 3MB 4GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB) 120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW) Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH Now, as I want this laptop mainly for work and not for games, I would be more than content with the HD4000 integrated chip which comes with the processor. However, for compatibility reasons, I am not able to get the specs I want unless I choose a NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M 1GB graphics card, which I don't have a great deal of use for. I'm willing to buy it, however, as it's still cheaper than any other laptop with the specs I want. However, I know that Linux power management isn't fantastic with open-source graphics drivers, and I don't much about Bumblebee. Basically, whilst I'm happy to 'tolerate' the card being there, I don't want to experience any negative effects on the rest of my system (battery, performance etc) and if there are likely to be any, I might reconsider my purchase. So if anyone can advise me on the effects, I would be very grateful, since I doubt I can just turn the card off. Thankyou for any assistance :)

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• Loadbalancing Questions

  - by Van Holtz

  I have been learning networking for about 4 months. Wrote a single standalone Multiplayer server and succeeded with authoritative approach. Now I want to extend it by splitting the single server into clusters to allow even more players to log in to avoid latency issues. Now I have protyped the Loadbalancing server and its running pretty good so far. This is my architecture, I have a master server which acts as a proxy, every sub servers(chat, login, game) connect to the master server as well as all the clients. when a client connects, Client Request: Send Request - MS(Master) - Decides which SS(SubServer) to forward to - Forwards Request to SS - SS - Analyze Message - Send Response to MS - Decides which Client to forward to - Forwards Response to Client Well, it looks like its going through lots of stages. it takes double the time to process the message than a single server approach. i feel like my model isnt the best or i may be wrong. is there any better model or the one they use in professional games? I still want a Master-SubServer approach. I just want to clarify that I'm going in the right direction before writing all my codes. Thanks for any answer :)

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• I have discovered a fundamental truth about TV shows and plots

  - by Steve Loethen

  For years, we have all known (okay, maybe I give people too much credit) that there is a very small finite number of plots.  I propose a project.  Let’s use the blogosphere to catalog those plotlines, and then find and document the episodes of shows that use them, including the show title. As evidence, how many shows have used the following plot line:? The standard “evil twin” plotline?  Once relegated to soaps, it has show up in crime shows, with the twist of DNA.  Step one, concentrate one this one.  Tell me about every show you recall that has used this plot.  I will collect and document the shows on my website (www.loethen.net) and we can build a database of the plots. Step two, what other common themes should I offer up?  How about the bigamist plot line?  The “bad guy was dead” plot line (revenge from the dead"?  The “vast government conspiracy” plotline? Let the games begin….

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• Putting Together a Game Design Team?

  - by Kaia

  I'm attempting to put together a game design team that is willing to help me design/program, test, and somewhat produce the game we make to the public. I need anyone who knows anything about programming/coding, designing, etc. Once we get it up and running and out into the world (over dramatic maybe? haha) I have ideas of generating a profit from it so there is a possibility of payment. My thinking on it (so far) is this: 2D (possibly. I haven't decided if I want it 2D or 3D. It really depends on what is easier) 3rd person. Adventure (I want there to be a point to it, but like a point with no real end) I want there to be a story to it. If you've ever played Dofus, think like that. There is a story to the game, but no real end. I want (if possible) to include mini-games. These could end up becoming a possible way for a player to aquire in-game money, quest items, etc. If anyone is interested in helping me create the story line/script (which we will finsih first, before creating the game) please contact me. I want to get this completed as soon as possible.

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• Problem graphics with ATI Radeon x1270 (RS690M) on Ubuntu 12.04

  - by Giuseppe Della Corte

  I'm Italian and so I apologize for my English! I'm a beginner to Ubuntu and I tried it on my desktop PC and it's fantastic, fast and fun! I decided to try it on my netbook Packard Bell DOT M/A and this is the configuration: AMD Athlon L110 1.2GHz 2GB of RAM ATI Radeon x1270 (RS690M) 150GB Hard Disk I installed Ubuntu 12.04 with Wubi (dualboot Windows 7 + Ubuntu 12.04), because the netbook does not have a DVD player! During the installation everything is OK, after it was installed I see mistakes in the graphical display! I see objects that are seen in different colors and moving (buttons, mouse pointer, text bar ... etc ...) At one point came not to see anything, such as this screenshot: The drivers are open, that is already installed in Ubuntu. Windows 7 video card runs fine, can run well Aero (transparent window effects), I can watch movies in HD and play some games with the Catalyst drivers from AMD. Now I ask a favor, you can help me solve this problem? Is there a fix for this driver or drivers different on the Internet? Thanks for your attention, good bye!

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• Where I'll Be At JavaOne 2012

  - by Geertjan

  Fun and games for me at JavaOne 2012. Below are the sessions/BOFs/tutorials I'll be attending. The items in red are the sessions and BOFs where I'll be speaking, either as the main/only speaker or as a supporting speaker in someone else's presentation, while the other items (except for the NetBeans booth duties and mini presentations, which are included below) are items I'm interested in and so will be sitting in the audience: Sunday: NetBeans Day Monday: 10:00 - 12:00 TUT4801: Make Your Clients Richer: JavaFX and the NetBeans Platform 12:20 - 12:30 Mini Presentation in OTN Lounge: What's New in NetBeans IDE? 13:00 - 14:00 CON7050: How My Life Would Have Been So Much Better If We Had Used the NetBeans Platform 14:30 - 14:40 Mini Presentation in OTN Lounge: NetBeans and Java EE 15:00 - 16:00 CON4038: Project EASEL: Developing and Managing HTML5 in a Java World 16:30 - 17:15 BOF6151: NetBeans.Next: The Roadmap Ahead 17:30 - 18:15 BOF3332: Lessons Learned in Writing a PDF-to-JavaFX Converter for NetBeans 18:30 - 19:15 BOF4920: Runtime Class Reloading for Dummies Tuesday: 9:30 - 11:30 NetBeans Booth 11:30 - 12:30 CON6139: Lessons Learned in Building Enterprise and Desktop Applications with the NetBeans IDE 13:00 - 14:00 CON4387: Bringing Mylyn to NetBeans and OSGi, Bridging Their Worlds 14:30 - 14:40 Mini Presentation in OTN Lounge: NetBeans Java Editor 15:30 - 17:30 NetBeans Booth 17:30 - 18:15 BOF3665: Custom Static Code Analysis 18:30 - 19:15 BOF5806: Doing JSF Development in the NetBeans IDE  Wednesday: 8:30 - 9:30 CON5132: NetBeans Plug-in Development: JRebel Experience Report 10:00 - 11:00 CON2987: Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform 11:30 - 12:30 CON10140: Delivering Bug-Free, More Efficient Code for the Java Platform 13:00 - 14:00 CON3826: Patterns for Modularity: What Modules Don’t Want You to Know 14:30 - 14:40 Mini Presentation in OTN Lounge: NetBeans Platform 15:00 - 16:00 CON3160: Dynamic Class Reloading in the Wild with Javeleon Thursday: 12:30 - 13:30 CON4952: NetBeans Platform Panel Discussion 14:00 - 15:00 CON11879: Getting Started with the NetBeans Platform There are several sessions/BOFs I would have liked to be able to attend, but because of clashes with other sessions that I need to see slightly more urgently, I won't be able to attend those, unfortunately. Will be a busy but interesting time, as always! The entire list of NetBeans-oriented sessions can be found here: http://netbeans.org/community/articles/javaone/2012/index.html

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• How to deal with OpenGL and Fullscreen on OS X

  - by Armin Ronacher

  I do most of my development on OS X and for my current game project this is my target environment. However when I play games I play on Windows. As a windows gamer I am used to Alt+Tab switching from within the game to the last application that was open. On OS X I currently can't find either a game that supports that nor can I find a way to make it possible. My current project is based on SDL 1.3 and I can see that cmd+tab is a sequence that is sent directly to my application and not intercepted by the operating system. Now my first attempt was to hide the rendering window on cmd+tab which certainly works, but has the disadvantage that a hidden OpenGL window in SDL cannot be restored when the user tabs back to the application. First of all, there is no event fired for that or I can't find it, secondly the core problem is that when that application window is hidden, my game is still the active application, just that the window disappeared. That is incredible annoying. Any ideas how to approximate the windows / linux behavior for alt+tab?

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• How do you run XBMC on nvidia dual screen and stop it from taking over the keyboard and mouse?

  - by Paul Swartout

  I have set up dual screen under Ubuntu 12.04. I have a GeForce 8500 GT and have used the nVidia control panel to set up dual screen in "Separate screen mode". Here's the resulting xorg.conf # nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings # nvidia-settings: version 295.33 (buildd@zirconium) Fri Mar 30 13:38:49 UTC 2012 Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" Option "Xinerama" "0" EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" EndSection Section "Monitor" # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Maxdata/Belinea B1925S1W" HorizSync 31.0 - 83.0 VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Monitor" # HorizSync source: builtin, VertRefresh source: builtin Identifier "Monitor1" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "CRT-1" HorizSync 28.0 - 55.0 VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce 8500 GT" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 0 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device1" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce 8500 GT" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "0" Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" # Removed Option "metamodes" "CRT-1: 1280x768 +0+0" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Device1" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "0" Option "metamodes" "CRT-1: 1360x768_60 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection All well and good and I have a nice blank XWindow displayed on my TV (the 2nd monitor). I then fire up XBMC from a terminal on the PC monitor using DISPLAY=:0.1 xbmc XBMC fires up quite nicely on the TV however I can no longer use the main PC monitor / mouse / keyboard as XBMC on the TV screen seems to have focus. I was hoping to have XBMC running on the TV and let the kids use the MCE remote whilst I get on with my work on the PC monitor. Does anyone have any idea how to overcome this? I'm presuming there's some xorg.conf fun and games needed but I've no idea where to start to be honest.

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• What's a way to implement a flexible buff/debuff system?

  - by gkimsey

  Overview: Lots of games which RPG-like statistics allow for character "buffs", ranging from simple "Deal 25% extra damage" to more complicated things like "Deal 15 damage back to attackers when hit." The specifics of each type of buff aren't really relevant. I'm looking for a (presumably object-oriented) way to handle arbitrary buffs. Details: In my particular case, I have multiple characters in a turn-based battle environment, so I envisioned buffs being tied to events like "OnTurnStart", "OnReceiveDamage", etc. Perhaps each buff is a subclass of a main Buff abstract class, where only the relevant events are overloaded. Then each character could have a vector of buffs currently applied. Does this solution make sense? I can certainly see dozens of event types being necessary, it feels like making a new subclass for each buff is overkill, and it doesn't seem to allow for any buff "interactions". That is, if I wanted to implement a cap on damage boosts so that even if you had 10 different buffs which all give 25% extra damage, you only do 100% extra instead of 250% extra. And there's more complicated situations that ideally I could control. I'm sure everyone can come up with examples of how more sophisticated buffs can potentially interact with each other in a way that as a game developer I may not want. As a relatively inexperienced C++ programmer (I generally have used C in embedded systems), I feel like my solution is simplistic and probably doesn't take full advantage of the object-oriented language. Thoughts? Has anyone here designed a fairly robust buff system before?

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• How can I improve the "smoothness" of a 2D side-scrolling iPhone game?

  - by MrDatabase

  I'm working on a relatively simple 2D side-scrolling iPhone game. The controls are tilt-based. I use OpenGL ES 1.1 for the graphics. The game state is updated at a rate of 30 Hz... And the drawing is updated at a rate of 30 fps (via NSTimer). The smoothness of the drawing is ok... But not quite as smooth as a game like iFighter. What can I do to improve the smoothness of the game? Here are the potential issues I've briefly considered: I'm varying the opacity of up to 15 "small" (20x20 pixels) textures at a time... Apparently varying the opacity in this manner can degrade drawing performance I'm rendering at only 30 fps (via NSTimer)... Perhaps 2D games like iFighter are rendered at a higher frame rate? Perhaps the game state could be updated at a faster rate? Note the acceleration vales are updated at 100 Hz... So I could potentially update part of the game state at 100 hz All of my textures are PNG24... Perhaps PNG8 would help (due to smaller size etc)

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• What are all the components of a "Facebook App"?

  - by pnongrata

  I am a developer who has never personally partaken in social media (in any form) for reasons completely outside the scope of this question. I am "off the grid" (no Facebook, Twitter, etc accounts). I'm currently building a web app and would like the app to have a presence on Facebook, and possibly even "port" my app over as a Facebook app. My understanding of Facebook Apps is that they're just normal web apps that get <iframe>d into a Facebook page. The app is actually hosted on your server (not FB's servers). But this got me thinking: Don't Facebook Apps have "profile pages"? Is there anything developers can do to customize the behavior of their own profile pages? Do apps have the ability to do things like MySpace themes used to do (i.e., customize and interact with User profile pages, Groups, etc.)? Do Facebook Apps gain any sort of extra capabilities (inside of Facebook) that a normal web app would not have? It seems to me like if all a Facebook App is, is an iframed-web app, that it would still need to communicate with Facebook via its many APIs, just like a normal app would have to, right? If it's not possible to write an app that can customize the UI or behavior of user profiles and other pages, then how do games like "Farmville" interact with User profiles so that you see updates to profiles like "John Smith reached level 2 of Farmville"? Basically, I'm asking any battle-worn Facebook app developers if my understanding of Facebook Apps is correct, or if I'm missing anything big here. It's my understanding that for security reasons (obviously) Facebook doesn't allow apps to customize anything outside of the iframe it lives in. So if I want my app to appear like it's "interacting" with its Facebook users, it looks like I just need to publish stuff to the users' news feeds to try and encourage people to use my app (please correct me if I'm wrong here!). Thanks in advance for any corrections, clarifications, advice or suggestions!

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• Index Check and Correct Character Display in a Console Hangman Game for Java

  - by Jen

  I have this problem wherein, I can not display the correct characters given by the character. Here's what I meant: String words, in; String replaced_words; Scanner s = new Scanner (System.in); System.out.println("Enter a line of words basing on an event, verse, place or a name of a person."); words = s.nextLine(); System.out.println("The words you just placed are now accepted."); //using char array method, we tried to place the words into a characters array. char [] c = words.toCharArray(); // we need to replace the replaced_words = words.replace(' ', '_').replaceAll("[^\\-]", "-"); for (int i = 0; i < replaced_words.length(); i++) { System.out.print(replaced_words.charAt(i) + " "); } System.out.println("Now, please input a character, guessing the words you just placed."); in = s.nextLine(); in that code, want that the user, when types a word (or should it be character?), any of the correct character the user inputs will be displayed, and changes the hyphen to it...(more like the hangman series of games). How can I achieve this?

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• How to plan/manage multi-platform (mobile) products?

  - by PhD

  Say I've to develop an app that runs on iOS, Android and Windows 8 Mobile. Now all three platforms are technically in different program languages. The only 'reuse' that I can see is that of the boxes-and-lines drawings (UML :) charts and nothing else. So how do companies/programmers manage the variation of the same product across different platforms especially since the implementation languages differ? It's 'easier' in the desktop world IMO given the plethora of languages and cross-platform libraries to make your life easier. Not so in the mobile world. More so, product line management principles don't seem to be all that applicable - what is same and variant doesn't really matter - the application is the same (conceptually) and the implementation is variant. Some difficulties that come to mind: Bug Fixing: Applications maybe designed in a similar manner but the bug identification and fixing would be radically different. A bug on iOS may/may-not be existent for that on Android. Or a bug fix approach on one platform may not be the same on another (unless it's a semantic bug like a!=b instead of a==b which would require the same 'approach' to fixing in essence Enhancements: Making a change on one platform would be radically different than on another Code-Design Divergence: They way the code is written/organized, the class structures etc., could be very different given the different implementation environments - leading to further reuse of the (above) UML models. There are of course many others - just keeping the development in sync and making sure all applications are up to the same version with the same set of features etc. Seems the effort is 3x that of a single application. So how exactly does one manage this nightmarish situation? Some thoughts: Split application to client/server to minimize the effect to client side only (not always doable) Use frameworks like Unity-3D that could take care of the cross-platform problem (mostly applicable to games and probably not to other applications etc.) Any other ways of managing a platform line? What are some proven approaches to managing/taming the effects?

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• How can I draw crisp per-pixel images with OpenGL ES on Android?

  - by Qasim

  I have made many Android applications and games in Java before, however I am very new to OpenGL ES. Using guides online, I have made simple things in OpenGL ES, including a simple triangle and a cube. I would like to make a 2D game with OpenGL ES, but what I've been doing isn't working quite so well, as the images I draw aren't to scale, and no matter what guide I use, the image is always choppy and not the right size (I'm debugging on my Nexus S). How can I draw crisp, HD images to the screen with GL ES? Here is an example of what happens when I try to do it: And the actual image: Here is how my texture is created: //get id int id = -1; gl.glGenTextures(1, texture, 0); id = texture[0]; //get bitmap Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), R.drawable.ball); //parameters gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, id); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_NEAREST); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); gl.glTexEnvf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL10.GL_REPLACE); GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bitmap, 0); //crop image mCropWorkspace[0] = 0; mCropWorkspace[1] = height; mCropWorkspace[2] = width; mCropWorkspace[3] = -height; ((GL11) gl).glTexParameteriv(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL11Ext.GL_TEXTURE_CROP_RECT_OES, mCropWorkspace, 0);

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• How do I separate model positions from view positions in MVC?

  - by tieTYT

  Using MVC in games (as opposed to web apps) always confuses me when it comes to the view. How am I supposed to keep the model agnostic of how the view is presenting things? I always end up giving the Model a position that holds x and y but invariably, these values end up being in units of pixels and that feels wrong. I can see the advantage* of avoiding that but how am I supposed to? This idea was suggested: Don't think of it in units of pixels, think of them in arbitrary distance units that just happen map to pixels at a 1:1 ratio. Oh, the resolution is half of what it was? We are now taking the x/y coordinates at 50% value for screen display, and your spells casting range is still 300 units long, which now is 150 pixels. But those numbers conveniently work out. What do I do if the numbers divide in such a way that I get decimal places? Floating points are unsafe. I think allowing decimal places would eventually cause really weird bugs in my game. *It'd let me write the model once and write different views depending on the device.

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• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  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 ! EDIT: Just a little more information about the game. It is intended to be a very complex game with several functionalities, making some functionalities a "program" inside the program. It is not an usual game, like FPS or RPG but I intend on having a lot of users using these many different "programs" inside the game. If I wasn't clear enough, I'd really appreciate people that have already developed games with java client/server architecture, how they communicated, any frameworks, apis, messaging systems, etc. It is not a question of lack of knowledge of language, more a question for advice, so I don't end up creating something that works, but in the later stages will have to be rewriten for any kind of limiting reason. PS: sorry if my english is not perfect...

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• Could these people get arrested? [closed]

  - by Vinicius Horta

  I have seen many of what is called 'private servers' mmorpg (multiplayer online games), which uses stolen sources,modified executable, clients and server. People launch up their own server using VPS or dedicated server and distribute online service among players disclaiming it has educational purposes only, saying they are studying the game engine and selling items for players disclaming it as 'donations', so it seems like they are getting donations to keep studying. We all know it's a comercial method. All of it is copyrighted material from enterprise ABCD. (ABCD = Fictional name, I'm not mentioning names). At their website they include the following: "Private Server XXXX" does not allow/support any conection to any company/organization associated with the game "XXXX". If you are anyway affiliated with enterprise "XXXXXXX", or any other company/organization associated with the game "XXXX" you may not view/open/read/execute/play/download any part of "Private Server XXXX" nor view "Private Server XXXX" website, if any company/organization requests you to investigate our website/server, you may not view "Private SERVER XXXX" or execute any action mentioned above. Any person caught disobeting this disclaimer will be punish to the fulleste extent of law. Can this guys get arrested? Do they disclaimer works? If I'm owner of enterprise X and I know people stole my source and are using them but they have such disclaimer I'm not allowed to investigate them?

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• Checking for collisions on a 3D heightmap

  - by Piku

  I have a 3D heightmap drawn using OpenGL (which isn't important). It's represented by a 2D array of height data. To draw this I go through the array using each point as a vertex. Three vertices are wound together to form a triangle, two triangles to make a quad. To stop the whole mesh being tiny I scale this by a certain amount called 'gridsize'. This produces a fairly nice and lumpy, angular terrain kind of similar to something you'd see in old Atari/Amiga or DOS '3D' games (think Virus/Zarch on the Atari ST). I'm now trying to work out how to do collision with the terrain, testing to see if the player is about to collide with a piece of scenery sticking upwards or fall into a hole. At the moment I am simply dividing the player's co-ordinates by the gridsize to find which vertex the player is on top of and it works well when the player is exactly over the corner of a triangle piece of terrain. However... How can I make it more accurate for the bits between the vertices? I get confused since they don't exist in my heightmap data, they're a product of the GPU trying to draw a triangle between three points. I can calculate the height of the point closest to the player, but not the space between them. I.e if the player is hovering over the centre of one of these 'quads', rather than over the corner vertex of one, how do I work out the height of the terrain below them? Later on I may want the player to slide down the slopes in the terrain.

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• techniques for displaying vehicle damage

  - by norca

  I wonder how I can displaying vehicle damage. I am talking about an good way to show damage on screen. Witch kind of model are common in games and what are the benefits of them. What is state of the art? One way i can imagine is to save a set of textures (normal/color/lightmaps, etc) to a state of the car (normal, damage, burnt out) and switch or blending them. But is this really good without changing the model? Another way i was thinking about is preparing animations for different locations on my car, something like damage on the front, on the leftside/rightside or on the back. And start blending the specific animation. But is this working with good textures? Whats about physik engines? Is it usefull to use it for deforming vertexdata? i think losing parts of my car (doors, sirens, weapons) can looks really nice. my game is a kind of rts in a top down view. vehicles are not the really most importend units (its no racing game), but i have quite a lot in. thx for help

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• Where is he now?

  - by Chris G. Williams

  A couple months ago, I announced I was leaving Magenic in order to take a break from consulting. I figured I'd post an update as to what I'm doing now, since I haven't exactly been slacking off.1) I accepted a position as a Lead Developer with RealPage. I work on a number of internal use applications for a subsidiary known as LevelOne. The majority of my work is in ASP.NET, a surprising amount of VB.NET, some C# and I'm picking up a few new tools for my belt... specifically Python, MongoDB and Perl.2) I am still the owner of Big Robot Games, a retail game store / coffee shop in the South Carolina upstate region. I'm not as involved in the day to day activity as I was, but I'm there most nights and weekends, when I'm not off doing other things, like #3.3) I am on the staff of Rock Revolt Magazine as a journalist, covering live performances as well as interviewing bands, providing album & video game reviews, fixing the website and the occasional prison ink. (Just kidding on that last one.)4) In whatever time is leftover, I still manage to bang out a little code on Heroic Adventure! (aka HA!) and talk about Windows Phone, XNA and whatever else suits me, wherever they'll let me.I guess that's about it.

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• Line Intersection from parametric equation

  - by Sidar

  I'm sure this question has been asked before. However, I'm trying to connect the dots by translating an equation on paper into an actual function. I thought It would be interesting to ask here instead on the Math sites (since it's going to be used for games anyway ). Let's say we have our vector equation : x = s + Lr; where x is the resulting vector, s our starting point/vector. L our parameter and r our direction vector. The ( not sure it's called like this, please correct me ) normal equation is : x.n = c; If we substitute our vector equation we get: (s+Lr).n = c. We now need to isolate L which results in L = (c - s.n) / (r.n); L needs to be 0 < L < 1. Meaning it needs to be between 0 and 1. My question: I want to know what L is so if I were to substitute L for both vector equation (or two lines) they should give me the same intersection coordinates. That is if they intersect. But I can't wrap my head around on how to use this for two lines and find the parameter that fits the intersection point. Could someone with a simple example show how I could translate this to a function/method?

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