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  • How can I perform 2D side-scroller collision checks in a tile-based map?

    - by bill
    I am trying to create a game where you have a player that can move horizontally and jump. It's kind of like Mario but it isn't a side scroller. I'm using a 2D array to implement a tile map. My problem is that I don't understand how to check for collisions using this implementation. After spending about two weeks thinking about it, I've got two possible solutions, but both of them have some problems. Let's say that my map is defined by the following tiles: 0 = sky 1 = player 2 = ground The data for the map itself might look like: 00000 10002 22022 For solution 1, I'd move the player (the 1) a complete tile and update the map directly. This make the collision easy because you can check if the player is touching the ground simply by looking at the tile directly below the player: // x and y are the tile coordinates of the player. The tile origin is the upper-left. if (grid[x][y+1] == 2){ // The player is standing on top of a ground tile. } The problem with this approach is that the player moves in discrete tile steps, so the animation isn't smooth. For solution 2, I thought about moving the player via pixel coordinates and not updating the tile map. This will make the animation much smoother because I have a smaller movement unit per frame. However, this means I can't really accurately store the player in the tile map because sometimes he would logically be between two tiles. But the bigger problem here is that I think the only way to check for collision is to use Java's intersection method, which means the player would need to be at least a single pixel "into" the ground to register collision, and that won't look good. How can I solve this problem?

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  • Managing the Domino Effect (with Tutor Publisher Reports)

    - by [email protected]
    When an organization upgrades their business application or improves a process, it triggers changes that will reverberate throughout an organization, like a falling row of dominoes standing on end. A tangible and repeatable way to communicate change is with updated process documentation. But how do organizations get their arms around all the documents that are impacted by an application upgrade or process improvement? A small change in one place will trigger subsequent changes in other areas. A simple domino chain of questions can go like this. What screens have changed? Do the new screens change the process in place? In what procedural documents are the screens referenced? Who uses the screens and must be notified of the changes? What other documents are affected? Will the change affect current company policy? Tutor Publisher compiles focused, easy to read impact analysis reports of your process documentation library that answer these tough questions. Tutor reports make it easy to quickly target the information and documents that require updating. In turn, the updated documents are used to communicate the change. The Tutor writing methodology and Publisher reports provide organizations the means to confidently keep documentation in sync with the way the business runs. Start managing the domino effect in your organization. Get a grip on it here!

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  • How or why would this mechanic (not) work to bring game balance to a singleplayer RPG? [closed]

    - by 0xFFF1
    Mechanic details The player, the monsters, and the merchants act as three separate parties. The player needs to beat up monsters for exp points and resources to sell and to buy potions from merchants to continue to fight. The monsters need healing and reviving to survive (also bought from merchants) and the merchants need potion ingredients from the player and the monsters to make potions to sell. These potions are only able to be processed in such bulk by merchants thus their potions would be cheaper than making them yourself. Only the monsters can farm ingredients in bulk. Only the player is or has to be overly aggressive (in bulk). Monsters can farm and produce "Level up candies" that do the work of exp. they are eaten right away after they are made and are never stockpiled or held for fear of the player and merchants who want to sell to the player. The monsters will defend themselves. Reviving is very expensive. The merchants can be found either with a concerned expression or a grinning expression based on how much profit they are making compared to their morale standing. The economies of each monster town and merchant city are distinct but interconnected. Magic Swords are worth a lot. So what I need to know is what concerns would there be to design a game around this mechanic and/or design this mechanic around a developing game. which would fare better? Is game balance an issue here? (how strong the monsters get or how quickly they die off based on the player's input into the system), Or is game balance solely in the hands of the player? (he decides if he overkills monsters or get underleveled.) What do I need to think about to make sure it isn't too easy or too hard to swing the amount/strength of monsters compared to the player and the amount of profit the merchants get vs the player. Would indicating how out of whack things are getting in game help with this?

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  • Ubuntu's security, Gaming, X server, situation [closed]

    - by ShortCircuit
    Little background story. So when I first heard about the NSA spying on people I wasn't surprised, it also was the reason why I switched to Ubuntu. (Full time) It had it's disadvantages when comparing to Windows and it's AAA games and other stuff. My best friend is somewhat upset about me, using full time Ubuntu, because we play a game named "Dayz (an addon for Arma II)" and WineHQ wasn't of any help. Not to mention that he keeps asking me if WineHQ can run Dayz, but he clearly doesn't understand the situation of WineHQ, that it's free, that you have to be happy with what you got at the moment. (I'm not going to dual boot because, how else is gaming on Ubuntu/Linux going to happen?) But whenever I was in a nasty situation where I could do something so simply on Windows and not/hard on Ubuntu, I always thought "It's almost virus free, It's free, No one is spying on me." My Questions: My English isn't all that good, so could some one simplify/explain what the hell is going on the below standing link? Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html When will gaming on Linux/Ubuntu be a real thing? I've heard that the X server's code is a mess and that Wayland will replace X server. When/will this come reality? (I might have understood this wrong.)

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  • NDC Oslo

    - by Alan Smith
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/asmith/archive/2013/06/14/153136.aspx2013 has been a hectic year for conference presentations so far, NDC in Oslo has been the 6th conference I have attended, and my session there was my 11th conference presentation this year. I have been meaning to make the short trip over from Stockholm to NDC for a few years, and this was the first time I made it. I have heard a lot of great things about the event, and was impressed with the location, the sessions, and most of all the atmosphere around the event boots and during the party on Thursday evening. The session I was delivering was my “Grid Computing with 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles & Kinect” demo, which I have delivered at many events over the past 12 months. The demo went fine. I’m always a little nervous when I try to scale out the application to 256 worker roles, it almost always works well and the application will scale in minutes, but very occasionally there can be a longer delay due to the provisioning process in the Windows Azure data centers. This would not be an issue for many scenarios, but when standing on stage in front of a room full of developers you really want things to run smoothly. A number of people have suggested that I should pre-provision an environment so that it is guaranteed to be there when I run the demo during a session. For me the aim has always been to show the rapid scalability on cloud-based platforms live on stage. Pre-provisioning an environment may make for a more reliable demo but to me that would be cheating, and not half as much fun!

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  • Particle and Physics problem.

    - by Quincy
    This was originally a forum post so I hope you guys don't mind it being 2 questions in one. I am making a game and I got some basic physics implemented. I have 2 problems, 1 with particles being drawn in the wrong place and one with going through walls while jumping in corners. Skip over to about 15 sec video showing the 2 problems : http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tm9nfWsWfiM So the problem with the particles seems to be coming from the removal, as soon as I remove that piece of code it instantly works, but there shouldn't be a problem since they shouldn't even draw when their energy gets to 0 (and then they get removed) So my first question is, how are these particles getting warped all over the screen ? Relevant code : Particle class : class Particle { //Physics public Vector2 position = new Vector2(0,0); public float direction = 180; public float speed = 100; public float energy = 1; protected float startEnergy = 1; //Visual public Sprite sprite; public float rotation = 0; public float scale = 1; public byte alpha = 255; public BlendMode blendMode { get { return sprite.BlendMode; } set { sprite.BlendMode = value; } } public Particle() { } public virtual void Think(float frameTime) { if (energy - frameTime < 0) energy = 0; else energy -= frameTime; position += new Vector2((float)Math.Cos(MathHelper.DegToRad(direction)), (float)Math.Sin(MathHelper.DegToRad(direction))) * speed * frameTime; alpha = (byte)(255 * energy / startEnergy); sprite.Rotation = rotation; sprite.Position = position; sprite.Color = new Color(sprite.Color.R, sprite.Color.G, sprite.Color.B, alpha); } public virtual void Draw(float frameTime) { if (energy > 0) { World.camera.DrawSprite(sprite); } } // Basic particle implementation class BasicSprite : Particle { public BasicSprite(Sprite _sprite) { sprite = _sprite; } } Emitter : class Emitter { protected static Random rand = new Random(); protected List<Particle> particles = new List<Particle>(); public BaseEntity target = null; public Vector2 position = new Vector2(0, 0); public bool Active = true; public float timeAlive = 0; public int particleCount = 0; public int ParticlesPerSeccond { get { return (int)(1 / particleSpawnTime); } set { particleSpawnTime = 1 / (float)value; } } public float dieTime = float.MaxValue; float particleSpawnTime = 0.05f; float spawnTime = 0; public Emitter() { } public virtual void Think(float frametime) { spawnTime += frametime; if (dieTime != float.MaxValue) { timeAlive += frametime; if (timeAlive >= dieTime) Active = false; } if (Active) { if (target != null) position = target.Position; while (spawnTime > particleSpawnTime) { spawnTime -= particleSpawnTime; AddParticle(); particleCount++; } } for (int i = 0; i < particles.Count; i++) { particles[i].Think(frametime); if (particles[i].energy <= 0) { particles.Remove(particles[i]); // As soon as this is removed, it works particleCount--; } } } public virtual void AddParticle() { } public virtual void Draw(float frametime) { foreach (Particle particle in particles) { particle.Draw(frametime); } } } class BloodEmitter : Emitter { Image image; public BloodEmitter() { image = new Image(@"Content/Particles/TinyCircle.png"); image.CreateMaskFromColor(new Color(255, 0, 255, 255)); this.dieTime = 0.5f; this.ParticlesPerSeccond = 100; } public override void AddParticle() { Sprite sprite = new Sprite(image); sprite.Color = new Color((byte)(rand.NextDouble() * 255), (byte)(rand.NextDouble() * 255), (byte)(rand.NextDouble() * 255)); BasicSprite particle = new BasicSprite(sprite); particle.direction = (float)rand.NextDouble() * 360; particle.position = position; particle.blendMode = BlendMode.Alpha; particles.Add(particle); } } The seccond problem is the physics problem, for some reason I can get through the right bottom corner while jumping. I think this is coming from me switching animations but I thought I made it compensate for that. Relevant code : PhysicsEntity : class PhysicsEntity : BaseEntity { // Horizontal movement constants protected const float maxHorizontalSpeed = 1000; protected const float horizontalAcceleration = 15; protected const float horizontalDragAir = 0.95f; protected const float horizontalDragGround = 0.95f; // Vertical movement constants protected const float maxVerticalSpeed = 1000; protected const float verticalAcceleration = 20; // Everything needed for movement and correct animations protected float movement = 0; protected bool onGround = false; protected Vector2 Velocity = new Vector2(0, 0); protected float maxSpeed = 0; float lastThink = 0; float thinkTime = 1f/60f; public PhysicsEntity(Vector2 position, Sprite sprite) : base(position, sprite) { } public override void Draw(float frameTime) { base.Draw(frameTime); } public override void Think(float frameTime) { CalculateMovement(frameTime); base.Think(frameTime); } protected void CalculateMovement(float frameTime) { lastThink += frameTime; while (lastThink > thinkTime) { onGround = false; Velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(Velocity.X + horizontalAcceleration * movement, -maxHorizontalSpeed, maxHorizontalSpeed); if (onGround) Velocity.X *= horizontalDragGround; else Velocity.X *= horizontalDragAir; if (maxSpeed < Velocity.X) maxSpeed = Velocity.X; Velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(Velocity.Y + verticalAcceleration, -maxVerticalSpeed, maxVerticalSpeed); lastThink -= thinkTime; DoCollisions(thinkTime); DoAnimations(thinkTime); } } public virtual void DoAnimations(float frameTime) { } public void DoCollisions(float frameTime) { Position.Y += Velocity.Y * frameTime; Vector2 tileCollision = GetTileCollision(); if (tileCollision.X != -1 || tileCollision.Y != -1) { Vector2 collisionDepth = CollisionRectangle.DepthIntersection( new Rectangle( tileCollision.X * World.tileEngine.TileWidth, tileCollision.Y * World.tileEngine.TileHeight, World.tileEngine.TileWidth, World.tileEngine.TileHeight ) ); Position.Y += collisionDepth.Y; if (collisionDepth.Y < 0) onGround = true; Velocity.Y = 0; } Position.X += Velocity.X * frameTime; tileCollision = GetTileCollision(); if (tileCollision.X != -1 || tileCollision.Y != -1) { Vector2 collisionDepth = CollisionRectangle.DepthIntersection( new Rectangle( tileCollision.X * World.tileEngine.TileWidth, tileCollision.Y * World.tileEngine.TileHeight, World.tileEngine.TileWidth, World.tileEngine.TileHeight ) ); Position.X += collisionDepth.X; Velocity.X = 0; } } public void DoCollisions(Vector2 difference) { CollisionRectangle.Y = Position.Y - difference.Y; CollisionRectangle.Height += difference.Y; Vector2 tileCollision = GetTileCollision(); if (tileCollision.X != -1 || tileCollision.Y != -1) { Vector2 collisionDepth = CollisionRectangle.DepthIntersection( new Rectangle( tileCollision.X * World.tileEngine.TileWidth, tileCollision.Y * World.tileEngine.TileHeight, World.tileEngine.TileWidth, World.tileEngine.TileHeight ) ); Position.Y += collisionDepth.Y; if (collisionDepth.Y < 0) onGround = true; Velocity.Y = 0; } CollisionRectangle.X = Position.X - difference.X; CollisionRectangle.Width += difference.X; tileCollision = GetTileCollision(); if (tileCollision.X != -1 || tileCollision.Y != -1) { Vector2 collisionDepth = CollisionRectangle.DepthIntersection( new Rectangle( tileCollision.X * World.tileEngine.TileWidth, tileCollision.Y * World.tileEngine.TileHeight, World.tileEngine.TileWidth, World.tileEngine.TileHeight ) ); Position.X += collisionDepth.X; Velocity.X = 0; } } Vector2 GetTileCollision() { int topLeftTileX = (int)(CollisionRectangle.TopLeft.X / World.tileEngine.TileWidth); int topLeftTileY = (int)(CollisionRectangle.TopLeft.Y / World.tileEngine.TileHeight); int BottomRightTileX = (int)(CollisionRectangle.DownRight.X / World.tileEngine.TileWidth); int BottomRightTileY = (int)(CollisionRectangle.DownRight.Y / World.tileEngine.TileHeight); if (CollisionRectangle.DownRight.Y % World.tileEngine.TileHeight == 0) // If your exactly against the tile don't count that as being inside the tile BottomRightTileY -= 1; if (CollisionRectangle.DownRight.X % World.tileEngine.TileWidth == 0) // If your exactly against the tile don't count that as being inside the tile BottomRightTileX -= 1; for (int i = topLeftTileX; i <= BottomRightTileX; i++) { for (int j = topLeftTileY; j <= BottomRightTileY; j++) { if (World.tileEngine.TileIsSolid(i, j)) { return new Vector2(i, j); } } } return new Vector2(-1, -1); } } Player : enum State { Standing, Running, Jumping, Falling, Sliding, WallSlide } class Player : PhysicsEntity { private State state { get { return currentState; } set { if (currentState != value) { currentState = value; animationChanged = true; } } } private State currentState = State.Standing; private BasicEmitter basicEmitter = new BasicEmitter(); public bool flipped; public bool animationChanged = false; protected const float jumpPower = 600; AnimationManager animationManager; Rectangle DrawRectangle; public override Rectangle CollisionRectangle { get { return new Rectangle( Position.X - DrawRectangle.Width / 2f, Position.Y - DrawRectangle.Height / 2f, DrawRectangle.Width, DrawRectangle.Height ); } } public Player(Vector2 position, Sprite sprite) : base(position, sprite) { // Only posted the relevant bit DrawRectangle = animationManager.currentAnimation.drawingRectangle; } public override void Draw(float frameTime) { World.camera.DrawSprite( Sprite, Position + new Vector2(DrawRectangle.X, DrawRectangle.Y), animationManager.currentAnimation.drawingRectangle ); } public override void Think(float frameTime) { //I only posted the relevant stuff if (animationChanged) { // if the animation has changed make sure we compensate for the change in with and height animationChanged = false; DoCollisions(animationManager.getSizeDifference()); } DoCustomMovement(); base.Think(frameTime); if (!onGround && Velocity.Y > 0) { state = State.Falling; } } void DoCustomMovement() { if (onGround) { if (World.renderWindow.Input.IsKeyDown(KeyCode.W)) { Velocity.Y = -jumpPower; state = State.Jumping; } } } public override void DoAnimations(float frameTime) { string stateName = Enum.GetName(typeof(State), state); if (!animationManager.currentAnimationIs(stateName)) { animationManager.PlayAnimation(stateName); } animationManager.Think(frameTime); DrawRectangle = animationManager.currentAnimation.drawingRectangle; Sprite.Center = new Vector2( DrawRectangle.X + DrawRectangle.Width / 2, DrawRectangle.Y + DrawRectangle.Height / 2 ); Sprite.FlipX(flipped); } So why am I warping through walls ? I have given this some thought but I just can't seem to find out why this is happening. Full source if needed : source : http://www.mediafire.com/?rc7ddo09gnr68zd (download link)

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  • Python in Finance by Yuxing Yan, Packt Publishing Book Review

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/04/python-in-finance-by-yuxing-yan-packt-publishing-book-review.aspx I picked Python in Finance from Packt Publishing to review expecting to bore myself with complex algorithms and senseless formulas while seeing little actual Python in action, indeed at 400 pages plus it may seem so. But, it turned out to be quite the opposite. I learned a lot about practical implementations of various Python modules as SciPy, NumPy and several more, I think they empower a developer a lot. No wonder Python is on the track to become a de-facto scientist language of choice! But I am not going to compromise the truth, the book does discuss numerous financial terms, many of them, and this is where the enormous power of this book is coming from: it is like standing on the shoulders of a giant. Python is that giant - flexible and powerful, yet very approachable. The TOC is very detailed thanks to Packt, any one can see what financial algorithms are covered, I am only going to name a few which I had most fun with (though all of them are covered in enough details): Fama*, Fat Tail, ARCH, Monte-Carlo and of course the volatility smile! I am under an impression this book is best suited for students in Finance, especially those who are about to join the workforce, but I suspect the material in this book is very well suited for mature Financists, an investor who has some programming skills and wants to benefit from it, or even a programmer, or a mathematician who already knows Python or any other language, but wants to have fun in Quantitative Finance and earn a few buck! Pure fun, real results, tons of practical insight from reading data from a file to downloading trade data from Yahoo! Lastly, I need to complement Yuxing – he is a talented teacher, this book could not be what it is otherwise. It is a 5 out of 5 product. Disclaimer: I received a  free copy of this book for review purposes from the publisher.

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  • JUnit Testing in Multithread Application

    - by e2bady
    This is a problem me and my team faces in almost all of the projects. Testing certain parts of the application with JUnit is not easy and you need to start early and to stick to it, but that's not the question I'm asking. The actual problem is that with n-Threads, locking, possible exceptions within the threads and shared objects the task of testing is not as simple as testing the class, but testing them under endless possible situations within threading. To be more precise, let me tell you about the design of one of our applications: When a user makes a request several threads are started that each analyse a part of the data to complete the analysis, these threads run a certain time depending on the size of the chunk of data (which are endless and of uncertain quality) to analyse, or they may fail if the data was insufficient/lacking quality. After each completed its analysis they call upon a handler which decides after each thread terminates if the collected analysis-data is sufficient to deliver an answer to the request. All of these analysers share certain parts of the applications (some parts because the instances are very big and only a certain number can be loaded into memory and those instances are reusable, some parts because they have a standing connection, where connecting takes time, ex.gr. sql connections) so locking is very common (done with reentrant-locks). While the applications runs very efficient and fast, it's not very easy to test it under real-world conditions. What we do right now is test each class and it's predefined conditions, but there are no automated tests for interlocking and synchronization, which in my opionion is not very good for quality insurances. Given this example how would you handle testing the threading, interlocking and synchronization?

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  • Good 2D Platformer Physics

    - by Joe Wreschnig
    I have a basic character controller set up for a 2D platformer with Box2D, and I'm starting to tweak it to try to make it feel good. Physics engines have a lot of knobs to tweak, and it's not clear to me, writing with a physics engine for the first time, which ones I should use. Should jumping apply a force for several ticks? An impulse? Directly set velocity? How do I stop the avatar from sticking to walls without taking away all its friction (or do I take away all the friction, but only in the air)? Should I model the character as a capsule? A box with rounded corners? A box with two wheels? Just one big wheel? I feel like someone must have done this before! There seem to be very few resources available on the web that are not "baby's first physics", which all cut off where I'm hoping someone has already solved the issues. Most examples of physics engines for platformers have floaty-feeling controls, or in-air jumps, or easily exploitable behavior when temporary penetration is too high, etc. Some examples of what I mean: A short tap of jump jumps a short distance; a long tap jumps higher. Short skidding when stopping or reversing directions at high velocity. Standing stably on inclines (but maybe sliding down them when ducking). Analog speed when using an analog controller. All the other things that separate good platformers from bad platformers. Dare I suggest, stable moving platforms? I'm not really looking for "hey, do this." Obviously, the right thing to do is dependent on what I want in the game. But I'm hoping someone somewhere has gone through the possibilities and said "well technique A does feature X well, technique B does Y well, but that doesn't work with C", or has some worked examples beyond "if (key == space) character.impulse(0, 1)"

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  • Change order of monitors without changing fullscreen"size"

    - by user171489
    I have a dual monitor setup. My primary monitor is a 22" with a max resolution of 1680x1050 and my secondary is a 19" with a max resolution of 1280x1024. The secondary is standing on the left side of the primary one. My problem now is, that, if I change the order of the monitors in my nvidia x-server settings, so that my secondary is the first one (or the one on the left), the fullscreen mode in flash in scaled up to my secondary monitor, even if it´s displayed on my primary one. Meaning that i get a 1280x1024 "fullscreen" window on my bigger primary monitor. When I configure my x-server settings so the secondary monitor is the one on the right, I don´t have this problem. The only thing then is, that I have to scroll out on the right to get to my monitor on the right. I can´t move my secondary monitor on the right side of my primary due to lack of space and my belief that there must be a software solution. ;) Thanks in advance.

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  • Report from OpenWorld Shanghai

    - by jmorourke
    Oracle OpenWorld Shanghai 2013 was held July 22nd – 25th at the International Expo Center in Shanghai, China. The conference drew over 19,000 attendees from 44 countries. In addition, 580 CxOs attended the Executive Edge program, and 430+ partners attended the Oracle Partner Network Exchange. The conference included a number of sessions on Big Data, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management delivered by Oracle, our partners and customers.  I had the pleasure to attend the conference and delivered three sessions focused on Oracle’s Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) applications. Each of my sessions was well-attended, and in a few cases was standing room only, so there is clearly a lot of interest in the China market in EPM. The EPM and BI demo pods in the DemoGrounds at the conference also received a lot of traffic. In addition to the conference sessions I delivered, I had several meetings with customers and partners in Shanghai.These sessions and meetings I attended made clear the interest that customers in China have in improving their planning, management reporting, financial reporting, and profitability management processes. In fact, with the China Ministry of Finance now standardizing on XBRL for annual reporting across multiple agencies in China, there is a great opportunity here for our disclosure management application. One interesting finding is that the China market may not be ready for cloud-based applications as many companies are state-owned and have security concerns, so on-premise applications are likely to see continued demand.  For more information about the Oracle OpenWorld China 2013 conference, please check the web  site:  http://www.oracle.com/events/apac/cn/en/openworld/index.htmlAnd don’t forget, Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco 2013 is just around the corner in September of 2013. Please check the web site for registration and content information: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html

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  • Tell Us Once&ndash;Final Phase goes live

    - by BizTalk Visionary
    Yesterday the final phase of ‘Tell Us Once’ went live. This completes the 4 1/2 year journey Solidsoft started on this cross government project with the addition of full electronic distribution of data and the most import piece – access for the citizen to use the service on-line. Tell Us Once (TUO) is the award-winning, cross-government programme that lets people inform central government and local authorities just once of a birth or death. In service in over 95% of councils in England, Scotland and Wales, it provides a permanent solution to the long-standing and frustrating issue of people having to notify the government multiple times. Several years ago, research showed that people had to make up to 44 contacts when reporting a death to government bodies and their local authority. The TUO service is offered as a face-to-face interview by the local authority or by telephone to a dedicated telephony service run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). and a  now a TUO online service for death. From the bereavement section of the  Direct Gov web site the citizen is able to ‘enrich’ the standard death registration data to allow the ‘Tell Us Once’ system inform the various government departments about the death. These include the local council, DVLA, DWP, Passport service and HMRC. For the record this is an excellent example of how an SME working with a large SI partner can deliver success for government in a responsive and agile manner. For me personally it is a proud moment in which a vision I started with a very small team was followed through, extended and finally delivered by an excellent team at Solidsoft.

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  • Problem inserting pre-ordered values to quadtree

    - by Lucas Corrêa Feijó
    There's this string containing B, W and G (standing for black, white and gray). It defines the pre-ordered path of the quadtree I want to build. I wrote this method for filling the QuadTree class I also wrote but it doesn't work, it inserts correctly until it reaches a point in the algorithm it needs to "return". I use math quadrants convention order for insertion, such as northeast, northwest, southwest and southeast. A quadtree has all it's leafs black or white and all the other nodes gray The node used in the tree is called Node4T and has a char as data and 4 references to other nodes like itself, called, respectively NE, NW, SW, SE. public void insert(char val) { if(root==null) { root = new Node4T(val); } else { insert(root, val); } } public void insert(Node4T n, char c) { if(n.data=='G') // possible to insert { if(n.NE==null) { n.NE = new Node4T(c); return; } else { insert(n.NE,c); } if(n.NW==null) { n.NW = new Node4T(c); return; } else { insert(n.NW,c); } if(n.SW==null) { n.SW = new Node4T(c); return; } else { insert(n.SW,c); } if(n.SE==null) { n.SE = new Node4T(c); return; } else { insert(n.SE,c); } } else // impossible to insert { } } The input "GWGGWBWBGBWBWGWBWBWGGWBWBWGWBWBGBWBWGWWWB" is given a char at a time to the insert method and then the print method is called, pre-ordered, and the result is "GWGGWBWBWBWGWBWBW". How do I make it import the string correctly? Ignore the string reading process, suppose the method is called and it has to do it's job.

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  • Monitoring Baseline

    - by Grant Fritchey
    Knowing what's happening on your servers is important, that's monitoring. Knowing what happened on your server is establishing a baseline. You need to do both. I really enjoyed this blog post by Ted Krueger (blog|twitter). It's not enough to know what happened in the last hour or yesterday, you need to compare today to last week, especially if you released software this weekend. You need to compare today to 30 days ago in order to begin to establish future projections. How your data has changed over 30 days is a great indicator how it's going to change for the next 30. No, it's not perfect, but predicting the future is not exactly a science, just ask your local weatherman. Red Gate's SQL Monitor can show you the last week, the last 30 days, the last year, or all data you've collected (if you choose to keep a year's worth of data or more, please have PLENTY of storage standing by). You have a lot of choice and control here over how much data you store. Here's the configuration window showing how you can set this up: This is for version 2.3 of SQL Monitor, so if you're running an older version, you might want to update. The key point is, a baseline simply represents a moment in time in your server. The ability to compare now to then is what you're looking for in order to really have a useful baseline as Ted lays out so well in his post.

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  • Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle (AFPO)

    - by Lionel Dubreuil
    The Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle (AFPO) is a pre-built, tested reference application, common services framework and development accelerator for Oracle’s Fusion Middleware 11g product suite that can help to reduce development time and cost by up to 30 percent. AFPO is a unique accelerator that includes documentation, day one deliverables and quick start virtual machine images, along with access to a skilled team of resources, to reduce risk and cost while improving project quality. It can be delivered all at once or in stages, on-site, hosted, or as a cloud solution. Accenture recently released AFPO v5 for use with their clients. Accenture added significant updates in v5 including Day 1 images & documentation for Webcenter & ADF Mobile that are integrated with 30 other Oracle Middleware products that signifigantly reduced the services aspect to standing these products up. AFPO v5 also features rapid configuration and implementation capabilities for SOA/BPM integrated with Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Identity Management and Oracle ADF Mobile.  AFPO v5 also delivers a starter kit for Oracle SOA Suite which builds upon the integration methodology, leading practices and extended tooling contained within the Oracle Foundation Pack. The combination of the AFPO starter kit and Foundation Pack jump-start and streamline Oracle SOA Suite implementation initiatives, helping to reduce the risk of deploying new technologies and making architectural decisions, so clients can ultimately reduce cost, risk and the time needed for an implementation.  You'll find more information at: Accenture's website:  www.accenture.com/afpo YouTube AFPO Telestration:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x429DcHEJs Press Release Brochure  Contacts: [email protected] Patrick J Sullivan (Accenture – Global Oracle Technology Lead), [email protected]

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  • Learning node.js

    - by john smith
    I am not sure if this is the right place to ask but, I thought this was the most suitable. I recently graduated from university. Learned the full php stack; basically all the LAMP stuff, obviously without counting all the other subjects. Not even got my degree and this whole node.js booming out of nowhere. You can imagine how one can feel about this, the story is always the same: you never end learning, and studying. So I recently got my hands on node.js; reading books, tutorials, and everything imaginable on the internet. The problem is one and simple: this is nowhere near to having a teacher standing near you helping you understanding and solving your problems, especially when all you can do is post your doubts on a website and patiently wait for replies. It's not that it isn't good, it's just much slower than what I just expressed above. So, in short words: is there a place where one can find someone willing to teach you about such contents? This would obviously done via remote means, like skype and such. Can anyone here point me into the right direction? Or just downvote me for being in the wrong website? Thanks in advance.

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  • Why is the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) so taboo?

    - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt
    I am an independent contractor and, as such, I interview 3-4 times a year for new gigs. I am in the midst of that cycle now and got turned down for an opportunity even though I felt like the interview went well. The same thing has happened to me a couple of times this year. Now, I am not a perfect guy and I don't expect to be a good fit for every organization. That said, my batting average is lower than usual so I politely asked my last interviewer for some constructive feedback, and he delivered! The main thing, according to the interviewer, was that I seemed to lean too much towards the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) rather than towards lower-level, organically grown algorithms. On the surface, this makes sense--in fact, it made the other rejections make sense too because I blabbed about LINQ in those interviews as well and it didn't seem that the interviewers knew much about LINQ (even though they were .NET guys). So now I am left with this question: If we are supposed to be "standing on the shoulders of giants" and using abstractions that are available to us (like LINQ), then why do some folks consider it so taboo? Doesn't it make sense to pull code "off the shelf" if it accomplishes the same goals without extra cost? It would seem to me that LINQ, even if it is an abstraction, is simply an abstraction of all the same algorithms one would write to accomplish exactly the same end. Only a performance test could tell you if your custom approach was better, but if something like LINQ met the requirements, why bother writing your own classes in the first place? I don't mean to focus on LINQ here. I am sure that the JAVA world has something comparable, I just would like to know why some folks get so uncomfortable with the idea of using an abstraction that they themselves did not write. UPDATE As Euphoric pointed out, there isn't anything comparable to LINQ in the Java world. So, if you are developing on the .NET stack, why not always try and make use of it? Is it possible that people just don't fully understand what it does?

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  • HCM is Alive and Well in APAC

    - by Row Henson
    I just returned from a 5 country tour on “Rethinking HR” where Oracle hosted breakfast and lunch executive seminars to the most senior HR practitioners in 5 cities in these major markets in APAC. While I have done many of these “road shows” in the past, I was most impressed with the response we received during this trip. I’m sure the execution of our marketing and sales teams had lots to do with the turnout, but I’d also like to think that this region is primed for applications that help with the talent dilemma faced by many organizations today in this part of the world and are excited about the offerings Oracle provides to help our customers attract, develop, retain and analyze their human capital. For these type of events, we normally expect 25-30 companies in attendance with a drop-off rate of around 15%. In all 5 cities, we had standing room only with an average attendance of 50 people from 30+ companies. Interestingly enough, in 3 of the 5 cities we had people show up that were turned down during registration, for lack of room – so we actually exceeded our registration. This was the case in Canberra – Australia’s capital – with over 70 attendees. Unusual indeed! During my presentation I referenced several studies which highlight how this region is primed for support in looking at talent in the future as high growth creates talent shortages and talented workers see opportunities outside of their current employers. A Deloitte study shows that 61% of respondents in APAC expect significant or moderate talent shortages over the next year (compared to 45% and 31% for the Americas and EMEA respectively). Please accept my thanks to all who arranged and orchestrated this time in APAC. While my body was quite tired from the hectic schedule, my mind was energized with the interest and interaction.

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  • WebCenter at Oracle Day Toronto

    - by Lance Shaw
    The Oracle Day event took place in Toronto yesterday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown.  Attendance was excellent and it was standing room only at the keynote sessions.   Anytime the venue has to bring in chairs to handle the overflow crowd, you know there is a lot of interest! This year, WebCenter was featured prominently as part of the Fusion Middleware session track.  What was interesting to see was just how many customers are interested in consolidating and simplifying their existing infrastructure.  So many companies are still struggling with information silos such as file shares, SharePoint Sites and a myriad of departmental or process-centric repositories.  Naturally, these get more and more expensive to manage over time so there is a high level of interest in reducing the size, scope and cost of this infrastructure.  When companies see how they can use Fusion Middleware and related technologies to integrate with WebCenter Content, Imaging and other solutions to centralize content delivery across business applications, they quickly realize that there are significant cost savings to be had. Oracle Day Events are happening all over the world and there is likely going to be one near you.  To check out the full list and to register, visit the Event page here.  It is a great way to not only hear about WebCenter and how it can be used to your advantage, but also a great way to learn about the broader set of related products in the Fusion Middleware portfolio that are available to extend and enhance the power of your particular business solutions. If you cannot make it, or missed the event in your area, be sure to visit our new WebCenter Content page with a variety of informative assets all in one simple location.  It's a new page designed to provide you with easy access to customer stories, videos, whitepapers, webcasts and more.  We hope you find it valuable!

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  • How to control an actor movement in UDK

    - by Mikalichov
    This might be very basic, but I couldn't find something relevant to what I need (see below). I am working on a very basic thing: a 3D environment with some buildings, and actors walking inside it. It looks like following: I mainly want to manage to have one actor standing around, idling, and another walking around the area. Right now, this is done through matinee + skeletal mesh groups, and forcing a looped animation on the actors: But I realize this is super caveman-level. So I've build an AnimTree, linking the idling and directional animations to the corresponding nodes. But then, I'm stuck. I added the AnimTree in the actors properties, but nothing happens. I've tried MoveToActor, but no success - is there a thing to set to allow an actor to move? Also, I place the actors on the map manually (they are supposed to be unique), should I spawn them instead? Every tutorial I find explains how to use an AnimTree for the player character, which is not what I want. I need a way to move the actors. I tried to look for AI tutorials, but only found UT3 bots-modifications, which is not what I need either. Since I have so much trouble finding how to do this through Kismet, I'm starting to suspect this has to be done through scripting/coding, but I would like to be sure there is no way to do it through Kismet before going that route. Every bit of answer about how to tell an actor something along the lines of "go in that direction as much as you can, then when you hit a wall turn 45° and continue" would be awesome. I'll be happy to move/edit the question if there is any problem with it

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  • The advantages & disadvantages to be had from using a Web Framework?

    - by JHarley1
    Hello, This question is focused on extracting the advantages and disadvantages of using Web based Frameworks: such as Cake PHP, Zend, jQuery, ASP.NET). This question is completely language agnostic. Let me start with the notion of "Standing on the shoulders of Giants". Advantages: Empowers Developers - by taking features that would have previously have taken 100's of lines of code and compressing them into one simple function call empowers developers to integrate more complex features into their Web Sites. Allow for Quicker development of applications - this is very relevant for people that need websites created in a very small window (has anyone any examples of this?) Lower Costs - allows programmers to pass cost savings onto the customer, a whole new range of customers generated that wanted a website but previously could not afford the higher development costs. Disadvantages: Lost Understanding - by relying on the features of a framework a developer is in danger of loosing understanding on how things work (underneath the hood). The configuration cliff - once you go further than the configuration of your framework your productivity drops right off, it can be difficult to implement features outside of a frameworks configuration. Developer tramlines - you (the developer) has to do things the way that the developer want you to do things. Security issues - giving people these tools to develop professional looking websites fast is a potential risk, people can quickly create professional looking websites for fraudulent companies. I wonder what people make of my points, and whether any body disagrees with them? Also if people have additional points I would be grateful. Many Thanks, J

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  • How to implement behavior in a component-based game architecture?

    - by ghostonline
    I am starting to implement player and enemy AI in a game, but I am confused about how to best implement this in a component-based game architecture. Say I have a following player character that can be stationary, running and swinging a sword. A player can transit to the swing sword state from both the stationary and running state, but then the swing must be completed before the player can resume standing or running around. During the swing, the player cannot walk around. As I see it, I have two implementation approaches: Create a single AI-component containing all player logic (either decoupled from the actual component or embedded as a PlayerAIComponent). I can easily how to enforce the state restrictions without creating coupling between individual components making up the player entity. However, the AI-component cannot be broken up. If I have, for example, an enemy that can only stand and walk around or only walks around and occasionally swing a sword, I have to create new AI-components. Break the behavior up in components, each identifying a specific state. I then get a StandComponent, WalkComponent and SwingComponent. To enforce the transition rules, I have to couple each component. SwingComponent must disable StandComponent and WalkComponent for the duration of the swing. When I have an enemy that only stands around, swinging a sword occasionally, I have to make sure SwingComponent only disables WalkComponent if it is present. Although this allows for better mix-and-matching components, it can lead to a maintainability nightmare as each time a dependency is added, the existing components must be updated to play nicely with the new requirements the dependency places on the character. The ideal situation would be that a designer can build new enemies/players by dragging components into a container, without having to touch a single line of engine or script code. Although I am not sure script coding can be avoided, I want to keep it as simple as possible. Summing it all up: Should I lob all AI logic into one component or break up each logic state into separate components to create entity variants more easily?

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  • Influence Maps for Pathfinding?

    - by james
    I'm taking the plunge and am getting into game dev, it's been going well but I've got stuck on a problem. I have a maze that is 100x100 with 0,1 to indicate if its a path or a wall. Within the maze I have 300 or so enemies and a player. The outcome I'm looking for is all the enemies work their way towards the player position. Originally I did this using an A* path finding algorithm but with 300 enemies it was taking forever to path find each one individually. After some research I found that an influence map / collaborative diffusion would be the best way to go. But I'm having a real hard time working out how this is actually done. Firstly.. How do you create a influence map? From what I understand each of my walls with have a scent of 0 so that makes them impassable.. then basically a radial effect from my player position to each other cell (So my player starts at 100 and then going outwards from that each other cell will be reduced value) Is that correct? If so,.. How would you do that (Math magic?) My next problem is if that is correct how would my "enemies" stop from getting stuck if they have gone down the wrong way? As say if my player was standing on the otherside of a wall if the enemy is just looking for larger numbers wont it keep getting stuck? I'm doing this in JavaScript so performance is key. Thanks for any help! EDIT: Or if anyones got a better solution? I've been reading about navmeshs, steering pathing, pre calculating all paths on load etc etc

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  • Best Practices PHP mvc routing

    - by dukeofweatherby
    I have a custom MVC framework that is in a constant state of evolution. There's a long standing debate with a co-worker how the routing should work. Considering the following directory structure: /core/Router.php /mvc/Controllers/{Public controllers} /mvc/Controllers/Private/{Controllers requiring valid user} /mvc/Controllers/CMS/{Controllers requiring valid user and specific roles} The question is: "Where should the current User's authentication be established: in the Router, when choosing which controller/directory to load, or in each Controller?" My argument is that when authenticating in the Router, an Error Controller is created instead of the requested Controller, informing you of your mishap; And the directory structure clearly indicates the authentication required. His argument is that a router should do routing and only routing. Leave it to the Controller to handle it on a case by case basis. This is more modular and allows more flexibility should changes need to be made by the router. PHP MVC - Custom Routing Mechanism alluded to it, but the topic was of a different nature. Alternative suggestions would be welcomed as well.

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  • Cloning from a given point in the snapshot tree

    - by Fat Bloke
    Although we have just released VirtualBox 4.3, this quick blog entry is about a longer standing ability of VirtualBox when it comes to Snapshots and Cloning, and was prompted by a question posed internally, here in Oracle: "Is there a way I can create a new VM from a point in my snapshot tree?". Here's the scenario: Let's say you have your favourite work VM which is Oracle Linux based and as you installed different packages, such as database, middleware, and the apps, you took snapshots at each point like this: But you then need to create a new VM for some other testing or to share with a colleague who will be using the same Linux and Database layers but may want to reconfigure the Middleware tier, and may want to install his own Apps. All you have to do is right click on the snapshot that you're happy with and clone: Give the VM that you are about to create a name, and if you plan to use it on the same host machine as the original VM, it's a good idea to "Reinitialize the MAC address" so there's no clash on the same network: Now choose the Clone type. If you plan to use this new VM on the same host as the original, you can use Linked Cloning else choose Full.  At this point you now have a choice about what to do about your snapshot tree. In our example, we're happy with the Linux and Database layers, but we may want to allow our colleague to change the upper tiers, with the option of reverting back to our known-good state, so we'll retain the snapshot data in the new VM from this point on: The cloning process then chugs along and may take a while if you chose a Full Clone: Finally, the newly cloned VM is ready with the subset of the Snapshot tree that we wanted to retain: Pretty powerful, and very useful.  Cheers, -FB 

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