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  • Game development: Pre-production stage

    - by piers
    I´m starting up a new project. It´s going to be a web browser game, developed using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. I have some general questions regarding the process of game developing. Should you know everything about your game by the time you start writing the first lines of code? I mean should you know all the details, all the things the player can and can not do? Basically: should you be done writing down new ideas before you begin coding? I understand the pre-production process is about documenting, doing research etc. What does that mean? Does it mean I should open up Word and write down everything about the game? For example what should happen when you click on different things etc. Thanks for your help!

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  • What to include in metadata?

    - by shyam
    I'm wondering if there are any general guidelines or best practices regarding when to split data into a metadata format, as oppose to directly embedding it within the data. (Specific example below). My understanding of metadata is that it describes data (without the need to actually look at the data), allowing for data to be quickly search/filtered for easy access. Let's take for example a simple 3D model format. The actual data file itself is a binary file containing vertices and colors. Things like creation date, modified data and author name would be things that describe the binary data, so I would say these belong as metadata (outside of the binary file). But what if the application had no need to search or filter by these fields? Would it be acceptable to embed these fields directly into the binary data itself? Could they be duplicated in both the binary data and the meta data, or would this be considered bad practice? What about more ambiguous fields such as the model name, which could be considered part of the data itself, but also as data describing the binary data?... How do you decide which data to embed in the actual binary file, as opposed to separating into a more flexible metadata format? Thanks!

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  • Variable declaration versus assignment syntax

    - by rwallace
    Working on a statically typed language with type inference and streamlined syntax, and need to make final decision about syntax for variable declaration versus assignment. Specifically I'm trying to choose between: // Option 1. Create new local variable with :=, assign with = foo := 1 foo = 2 // Option 2. Create new local variable with =, assign with := foo = 1 foo := 2 Creating functions will use = regardless: // Indentation delimits blocks square x = x * x And assignment to compound objects will do likewise: sky.color = blue a[i] = 0 Which of options 1 or 2 would people find most convenient/least surprising/otherwise best?

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  • Will a polled event system cause lag for a server?

    - by Milo
    I'm using a library called ENet. It is a reliable UDP library. The way it works is a polled event system like this: ENetEvent event; /* Wait up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. */ while (enet_host_service (client, & event, 1000) > 0) { switch (event.type) { case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_CONNECT: printf ("A new client connected from %x:%u.\n", event.peer -> address.host, event.peer -> address.port); /* Store any relevant client information here. */ event.peer -> data = "Client information"; break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_RECEIVE: printf ("A packet of length %u containing %s was received from %s on channel %u.\n", event.packet -> dataLength, event.packet -> data, event.peer -> data, event.channelID); /* Clean up the packet now that we're done using it. */ enet_packet_destroy (event.packet); break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_DISCONNECT: printf ("%s disconected.\n", event.peer -> data); /* Reset the peer's client information. */ event.peer -> data = NULL; } } It waits up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. If I'm hosting say 75 event driven card games and a lobby on the same thread as this code, will it cause any problems. If my understanding is correct, the process will simply sleep until there is an event, when there is one, it will process the event then come back here where potentially 5 or so events have queued up since so enet_host_services would return right away and not cause lag. I have been advised not to use multiple threads, will that be alright like this? Thanks

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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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  • Solid principles vs YAGNI

    - by KeesDijk
    When do the SOLID principles become YAGNI? As programmers we make trade-offs all the time, between complexity, maintainability, time to build and so forth. Amongst others, two of the smartest guidelines for making choices are in my mind the SOLID principles and YAGNI. If you don't need it; don't build it, and keep it clean. Now for example, when I watch the dimecast series on SOLID, I see it starts out as a fairly simple program, and ends up as a pretty complex one (end yes complexity is also in the eye of the beholder), but it still makes me wonder: when do SOLID principles turn into something you don't need? All solid principles are ways of working that enable use to make changes at a later stage. But what if the problem to solve is a pretty simple one and it's a throwaway application, then what? Or are the SOLID principles something that always apply? As asked in the comments: Solid Principles YAGNI

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  • What's the best Wireframing tool?

    - by Strae
    I'm looking for something similar to iPlotz or Mockup. I've found the Pencil Project, but it requires xulrunner-1.9 (which seems to be incompatible with xulrunner-1.9.2) in order to run as a standalone application. It can be used as a firefox plugin... but it is a bit slower. The error on my desktop (Ubuntu 10.04) is: Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9.1 and 1.9.2.* Does anyone know other software? Edit: Open-source software is preferred, and it doesn't matter whether or not it's free.

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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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  • Microkernel architectural pattern and applicability for business applications

    - by Pangea
    We are in the business of building customizable web applications. We have the core team that provides what we call as the core platform (provides services like security, billing etc.) on top of which core products are built. These core products are industry specific solutions like telecom, utility etc. These core products are later used by other teams to build customer specific solutions in a particular industry. Until now we have a loose separation between platform and core product. The customer specific solutions are build by customizing 20-40% of the core offering and re-packaging. The core-platform and core products are released together as monolithic apps (ear). I am looking to improvise the current situation so that there is a cleaner separation on these 3. This allows us to have evolve each of these 3 separately etc. I've read through the Mircokernel architecture and kind of felt that I can take apply the principles in my context. But most of my reading about this pattern is always in the context of operating systems or application servers etc. I am wondering if there are any examples on how that pattern was used for architecting business applications. Or you could provide some insight on how to apply that pattern to my problem.

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  • String patterns that can be used to filter and group files

    - by Louis Rhys
    One of our application filters files in certain directory, extract some data from it and export a document from the extracted data. The algorithm for extracting the data depends on the file, and so far we use regex to select the algorithm to be used, for example .*\.txt will be processed by algorithm A, foo[0-5]\.xml will be processed by algo B, etc. However now we need some files to be processed together. For example, in one case we need two files, foo.*\.xml and bar.*\.xml. Part of the information to be extracted exist in the foo file, and the other part in the bar file. Moreover, we need to make sure the wild card is compatible. For example, if there are 6 files foo1.xml foo23.xml bar1.xml bar9.xml bar23.xml foo4.xml I would expect foo1 and bar1 to be identified as a group, and foo23 and bar23 as another group. bar9 and foo4 has no pair, so they will not be treated. Now, since the filter is configured by user, we need to have a pattern that can express the above requirement. I don't think you can express meaning like above in standard regex. (foo|bar).*\.xml will match all 6 file above and we can't identify which file is paired for a particular file. Is there any standard pattern that can express it? Or any idea how to modify regex to support this, that can be implemented easily?

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  • Is my Document Type Definition Still Up to Date?

    - by Sam
    Hi folks, currently all my php generated rich html webpages start with this line, which I have been adding to my tempaltes YEARS ago... <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Am I still up to date and 2011-proof? or Should I be changing this into something fasterloaden/more agile/more flexible? I have heard of XHTML 1.1. When I remove this line all still works fine. Is it very much needed still? What are my alternatives? Thanks very much for your suggestions.

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  • Recommended method towards making custom maps for a 2d game?

    - by Qasim
    I am planning on making a 2D game, however different from my last personal projects I want this one to have enhanced graphics, with custom-designed levels. My previous 2d platformers were tile-based, in which I made a map editor for to create levels. However, I am wondering the best way to implement custom designed maps? For say, some grass is a litter higher than others, flowers here and there, cool drawings and structures along the way, etc. instead of just the same old tiles over and over again. I am thinking but I just can't grasp the idea of how to implement it. I have seen it done in other games and am interested to see how they accomplish it, but can't get my hands on some source code. :(

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  • Can someone recommend an appriopriate drawing tablet that fits my needs?

    - by Syg
    I'm looking for something that can help me to easily create small hand drawn graphics and mock-ups digitalize technical drawings I would normally draw on a whiteboard. I'm a developer, not a designer, so it doesn't have to be high-end I guess. Just something to help make it easier, more fun and more productive to quickly draw mockups etc. After a quick search I landed on the wacom site, but it's hard for me to tell the difference between the offerings never having used something like this. Is small too small? is it annoying? Other suggestion are also welcome ofcourse. Thanx for any help you can give me

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  • Which screen resolution should I target for modern mobile phones? [closed]

    - by tugberk
    Possible Duplicate: Building for different screen sizes I am developing a site which needs to work on mobiles as well. I avoid specifying width and height by pixel. Mostly I am using percent for that but sometimes I need a specific area. for example, 300px div element. Which screen resolution should I target for modern mobile phones in general? I know it varies but what is the higher number. Most of my concerns are iPhone, Windows Phone and Android.

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  • Java Desktop Application For Network users

    - by Motasem Abu Aker
    I'm developing a desktop application using Java. My application will run in a network environment where multiple users will access the same database through the application. There will be basic CRUD opreations (Insert, Update, Delete, & select), which means there will be chances of deadlock, or two users trying to update the same record at same time. I'm using the following Java Swing for Clients (MVC). MySQL Server for database (InnODB). Java Web start. Now, MySQL is centralized on the network, and all of the clients connect to it. The Application for ERP Purpose. I searched the internet to find a very good solution to ensure data integrity & to make sure that when updating one record from one client, other clients are aware of it. I read about Socket-server-client & RESTful web services. I don't want to go web application & don't want to use any extra libraries. So how can I handle this scenario: If User A updates a record: Is there a way to update User B's screen with the new value? If user A starts updating a record, how can I prevent other users from attempting to update the same record?

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  • Overloading interface buttons, what are the best practices?

    - by XMLforDummies
    Imagine you'll have always a button labeled "Continue" in the same position in your app's GUI. Would you rather make a single button instance that takes different actions depending on the current state? private State currentState = State.Step1; private ContinueButton_Click() { switch(currentState) { case State.Step1: DoThis(); currentState = State.Step2; break; case State.Step2: DoThat(); break; } } Or would you rather have something like this? public Form() { this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = false; } private ContinueStep1Button_Click() { DoThis(); this.ContinueStep1Button.Visible = false; this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = true; } private ContinueStep2Button_Click() { DoThat(); }

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  • Procedural terrains in 3D: what has been done ? Are there common algo and/or theories about it ?

    - by jokoon
    Besides programming, modeling an environment takes a great deal of time. I don't know about the work time involved, for example, in a WoW dungeon level, or other beautiful city-like, future environment, jungles, fantasy, etc, but this kind of work is made from scratch by artists. What are the techniques involved in the TorchLight level randomizer, and does other titles have similarities with this ? Is there a family name for such techniques ?

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  • Great Example of a Simple Cost-Benefit Analysis

    - by BuckWoody
    I saw a post the other day that you should definitely go check out. It’s a cost/benefit decision, and although the author gives it a quick treatment and doesn’t take all points in the decision into account, you should focus on the process he follows. It’s a quick and simple example of the kind of thought process we should have as data professionals when we pick a server, a process, or application and even platform software. The key is to include more than just the price of a piece of software or hardware. You need to think about the “other” costs in the decision, and then make the right one. Sometimes the cheapest option is the cheapest, and other times, well, it isn’t. I’ve seen this played out not only in the decision to go with a certain selection, but in the options or editions it comes in. You have to put all of the decision points in the analysis to come up with the right answer, and you have to be able to explain your logic to your team and your company. This is the way you become a data professional, not just a DBA. You can check out the post here – it deals with Azure, but the point is the process, not Azure itself: http://blogs.msdn.com/eugeniop/archive/2010/03/19/windows-azure-guidance-a-simplistic-economic-analysis-of-a-expense-migration.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • How to refactor and improve this XNA mouse input code?

    - by Andrew Price
    Currently I have something like this: public bool IsLeftMouseButtonDown() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonPressed() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonUp() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released; } public bool IsLeftMouseButtonReleased() { return currentMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && previousMouseSate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed; } This is fine. In fact, I kind of like it. However, I'd hate to have to repeat this same code five times (for right, middle, X1, X2). Is there any way to pass in the button I want to the function so I could have something like this? public bool IsMouseButtonDown(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonPressed(MouseButton button) { return currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && !previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonUp(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } public bool IsMouseButtonReleased(MouseButton button) { return !currentMouseState.IsPressed(button) && previousMouseState.IsPressed(button); } I suppose I could create some custom enumeration and switch through it in each function, but I'd like to first see if there is a built-in solution or a better way.. Thanks!

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  • What is the best way to generate income from mobile games?

    - by Thomas
    As the title states, what is the best way to get income from mobile games? (taking into consideration that creating the games only costs a lot of time and the games are relatively simple) As I see it, there are multiple ways of getting money from mobile games, Selling them for a fixed price (seems like a high threshold for potential buyers) In-game purchases (I can imagine this only works for several types of games, I don't see this working well for monopoly unless you like really fancy hotels ;) Ingame advertisements / sponsorships Which way will most likely bring the most profit?

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  • Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language

    - by Ricky Stewart
    Here's the deal: I'm looking at designing my own scripting/interpreted language for fun. I'm only in the planning stages right now; I want to make sure I have a very strong hold on exactly how I will implement everything before I start coding. What I'm currently struggling with is concurrency. It seems to me like an easy way to avoid the unpredictable performance that comes with garbage collection would be to put the garbage collector in its own thread, and have it run concurrently with the interpreter itself. (To be clear, I don't plan to allow the scripts to be multithreaded themselves; I would simply put a garbage collector to work in a different thread than the interpreter.) This doesn't seem to be a common strategy for many popular scripting languages, probably for portability reasons; I would probably write the interpreter in the UNIX/POSIX threading framework initially and then port it to other platforms (Windows, etc.) if need be. Does anyone have any thoughts in this issue? Would whatever gains I receive by exploiting concurrency be nullified by the portability issues that will inevitably arise? (On that note, am I really correct in my assumption that I would experience great performance gains with a concurrent garbage collector?) Should I move forward with this strategy or step away from it?

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  • Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?

    - by Matthew Scharley
    I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the for (.. in ..) loops so verbose. For example: for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) { alert("Index: " + x + "\nValue: " + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]); } It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning.

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  • Code Smell: Inheritance Abuse

    - by dsimcha
    It's been generally accepted in the OO community that one should "favor composition over inheritance". On the other hand, inheritance does provide both polymorphism and a straightforward, terse way of delegating everything to a base class unless explicitly overridden and is therefore extremely convenient and useful. Delegation can often (though not always) be verbose and brittle. The most obvious and IMHO surest sign of inheritance abuse is violation of the Liskov Substitution Principle. What are some other signs that inheritance is The Wrong Tool for the Job even if it seems convenient?

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  • Would you use UML if it kept stakeholders from requesting changes frequently?

    - by Huperniketes
    As much as programmers hate to document their code/system and draw UML (especially, Sequencing, Activity and State machine diagrams) or other diagramming notation, would you agree to do it if it kept managers from requesting a "minor change" every couple of weeks? IOW, would you put together visual models to document the system if it helped you demonstrate to managers what the effect of changes are and why it takes so long to implement them? (Edited to help programmers understand what type of answer I'm looking for.) 2nd edit: Restating my question again, "Would you be willing to use some diagramming notation, against your better nature as a programmer, if it helped you manage change requests?" This question isn't asking if there might be something wrong with the process. It's a given that there's something wrong with the process. Would you be willing to do more work to improve it?

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  • How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?

    - by IAE
    I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like: Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance) The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?

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