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• What's the best way to create animations when doing Android development?

  - by Adam Smith

  I'm trying to create my first Android game and I'm currently trying to figure out (with someone that will do the drawings and another programmer) what the best way to create animation is. (Animations such as a character moving, etc.) At first, the designer said that she could draw objects/characters and animate them with flash so she didn't have to draw every single frame of an action. The other programmer and I don't know Flash too much so I suggested extracting all the images from the Flash animation and making them appear one after the other when the animation is to start. He said that would end up taking too much resource on the CPU and I tend to agree, but I don't really see how we're supposed to make smooth animations without it being too hard on the hardware and, if possible, not have the designer draw every single frame on Adobe Illustrator. Can an experienced Android game developper help me balance this out so we can move on to other parts of the game as I have no idea what the best way to create animations is.

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• How to decide how much to charge for development?

  - by rik

  So two other friends and I are a very small game dev studio. So far we haven't released a game but we have 2 games almost ready to launch. A bigger studio saw our work and now they want to work with us; they need people to develop mobile games for them (iOS, Android). They want us to set the price for the projects (can't tell the specifics we signed a NDA). They will give us all the assets (graphics/sound) so we only have to code. And because they only work with Unity3D we have to learn it. How do we decide how much to charge for the projects?

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• Where can I find Cinema4D for game development tutorials ?

  - by George Profenza

  Hi, I started to learn Cinema 4D. I've noticed it's really easy to use for motion graphics, but I want to use it for modeling for games/realtime 3d engines. Before I used 3dsmax and it was easy to estimate how a model would look/behave in a 3d engine. The two main things I did was displaying Polygon triangles and displaying the Polygon Count. I've found the Total Polygons tick in HUD settings in Cinema 4D, but I can't find any display mode that will show triangles. Is there there a way to display triangle faces/not quads in Cinema4D ? If so how ? There is a Triangulate function, but I'd rather not Triangulate/Untriangulate all the time, especially since it's converting back and forth between the two doesn't always produce the same result. I imagine I'm asking for old school techniques, but I plan to use these to make low poly models for web(canvas/webGL) and mobile.

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• Best resources to learn Game Development from a Java background?

  - by Julio

  Hi guys, I'm an enterprise Java programmer, however something I've been interested in and what got me into the whole programming thing was the idea of being able to create a game. Just wondering if anybody could offer any advice, or book recommendations. The side I am most interested in is game engine design and implementation. People may say "ahh but plenty exist why write your own" - its purely for learning purposes, seeing how things work and so on. So far I've taken a look at LWJGL, but achieved nothing too serious. Thanks.

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• Game Development In C Only. Is it possible?

  - by Ishan Sharma

  I am a first year college student in India and want to make a small game as a this semester project. I am quite good at C and am learning it rapidly but I wanted to ask if developing a game entirely in C(no C++ or C#m I'd love to use these but for college projects, we have strict requirements of using only C). What I am looking for is a simple top view driving game. It won't have anything fancy and even the visual things will be powered by simple characters. For example, user controlled car can be represented by ¦ and edges of road by series of |'s. What do you think?

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• Best resources to learn Game Development from a Java background?

  - by Julio

  I'm an enterprise Java programmer, however something I've been interested in and what got me into the whole programming thing was the idea of being able to create a game. Just wondering if anybody could offer any advice, or book recommendations. The side I am most interested in is game engine design and implementation. People may say "ahh but plenty exist why write your own" - its purely for learning purposes, seeing how things work and so on. So far I've taken a look at LWJGL, but achieved nothing too serious. Thanks.

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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• What frameworks are available for cross device 2d game development?

  - by kim3er

  Hi, I'm about to embark on a 2D gaming project. Initially, I'll be targeting iPhone and Facebook, but would like to expand the rollout to include Android (and possibly Windows Phone) in a future phase. Flash and Unity seem to be the most likely suspects, but is one better than the other? Are there pros/cons that may not be obvious at first glance? Are there frameworks that I have not considered? I am primarily a .NET developer, so the Unity C# integration is appealling. But I also have experience with AS3, JavaScript and Objective-C. Rich

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• What frameworks are available for cross device 2d game development?

  - by kim3er

  I'm about to embark on a 2D gaming project. Initially, I'll be targeting iPhone and Facebook, but would like to expand the rollout to include Android (and possibly Windows Phone) in a future phase. Flash and Unity seem to be the most likely suspects, but is one better than the other? Are there pros/cons that may not be obvious at first glance? Are there frameworks that I have not considered? I am primarily a .NET developer, so the Unity C# integration is appealling. But I also have experience with AS3, JavaScript and Objective-C. Rich

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• Game Development In C Only. Is it possible?

  - by Ishan Sharma

  I am a first year college student in India and want to make a small game as a this semester project. I am quite good at C and am learning it rapidly but I wanted to ask if developing a game entirely in C (no C++ or C#) I'd love to use these but for college projects, we have strict requirements of using only C. What I am looking for is a simple top view driving game. It won't have anything fancy and even the visual things will be powered by simple characters. For example, user controlled car can be represented by ¦ and edges of road by series of |'s. What do you think?

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• Android Game Development. Async Task. Loading Bitmap Images Sounds

  - by user2534694

  Im working on this game for android. And wanted to know if my thread architecture was right or wrong. Basically, what is happening is, i am loading All the bitmaps,sounds etc in the initializevariables() method. But sometimes the game crashes and sometimes it doesnt. So i decided to use async task. But that doesnt seem to work either (i too loads at times and crashes at times) @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setFullScreen(); initializeVariables(); new initVariables().execute(); // setContentView(ourV); } private void setFullScreen() { requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE); getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN); getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON ); } private void initializeVariables() { ourV=new OurView(this); stats = getSharedPreferences(filename, 0); ballPic = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.ball5); platform = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.platform3); gameB = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.game_back2); waves = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.waves); play = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.play_icon); pause = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.pause_icon); platform2 = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.platform4); countdown = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.countdown); bubbles = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.waves_bubbles); backgroundMusic = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.music); jump = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.jump); click = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.jump_crack); sm = (SensorManager) getSystemService(SENSOR_SERVICE); acc = sm.getDefaultSensor(Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER); sm.registerListener(this, acc, SensorManager.SENSOR_DELAY_GAME); ourV.setOnTouchListener(this); dialog = new Dialog(this,android.R.style.Theme_Translucent_NoTitleBar_Fullscreen); dialog.setContentView(R.layout.pausescreen); dialog.hide(); dialog.setOnDismissListener(this); resume = (Button) dialog.findViewById(R.id.bContinue); menu = (Button) dialog.findViewById(R.id.bMainMenu); newTry = (Button) dialog.findViewById(R.id.bNewTry); tv_time = (TextView) dialog.findViewById(R.id.tv_time); tv_day = (TextView) dialog.findViewById(R.id.tv_day); tv_date = (TextView) dialog.findViewById(R.id.tv_date); resume.setOnClickListener(this); menu.setOnClickListener(this); newTry.setOnClickListener(this); } @Override protected void onResume() { //if its running the first time it goes in the brackets if(firstStart) { ourV.onResume(); firstStart=false; } } Now what onResume in ourV does is , its responsible for starting the thread //this is ourV.onResume public void onResume() { t=new Thread(this); isRunning=true; t.start(); } Now what I want is to initialise all bitmaps sounds etc in the async background method public class initVariables extends AsyncTask<Void, Integer, Void> { ProgressDialog pd; @Override protected void onPreExecute() { pd = new ProgressDialog(GameActivity.this); pd.setProgressStyle(ProgressDialog.STYLE_HORIZONTAL); pd.setMax(100); pd.show(); } @Override protected Void doInBackground(Void... arg0) { synchronized (this) { for(int i=0;i<20;i++) { publishProgress(5); try { Thread.sleep(89); } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } } } return null; } @Override protected void onProgressUpdate(Integer... values) { pd.incrementProgressBy(values[0]); } @Override protected void onPostExecute(Void result) { pd.dismiss(); setContentView(ourV); } } Now since I am new to this. You could tellme maybe if async is not required for such stuff and there is another way of doing it normally.

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• Where to get PNG icons/graphics for game development for kids? [closed]

  - by at.

  Possible Duplicate: Where can I find free sprites and images? I'm teaching kids to program using Ruby and the gaming framework Gosu/Chingu. Kids love it, including the part where they have to look for the icons/graphics for their game objects. I direct them to iconarchive.com, but the selection is sometimes very limited, the graphics aren't always with transparent backgrounds and sometimes the art requires payment. I don't mind paying for an educational license of some sort, but I want the kids to easily select graphics they can use in their games. Is there another resource better suited for this purpose? I don't have a good solution for this, but would also love a site they can get cool background images for their games.

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• How long till HTML5 canvas becomes a viable game development platform?

  - by Shouvik

  So I have been working on web application. So invariably what it boils down to is making simple games which were previously based on flash or openGL. Now I know apple was moving away from flash because its proprietary unlike their stance that its got "pathetic performance"! Not true, try playing a canvas game, I can assure you at any point of time (including when its idle) it will use up a fair bit of processing power just to redraw the UI. Now I do understand that this is my fault because when the game is not active I should not be redrawing the canvas, but honestly its a lot of work and I suppose there should be libraries which should be able to assist me with that! So, how much will it be before I see a decent canvas library which handles these "tiny" issues for me? I can't honestly expect Steve Jobs to be doing anything more for HTML5! I someone knows of a good library, I am all ears...! :) PS: I use mootools and am presently using Mootools Canvas Library.

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• How to gun shots sounds right in game development?

  - by G3tinmybelly

  So I am now trying to find sounds for my guns but when I grab a gun sound effect and play it in my game a lot of the sounds are either terrible sounding or have this horrible echoing effect because as a gun shoots sometimes the previous sound is playing still. public void shoot(float x, float y, float direction){ if(empty){ PlayHUD.message = "No more bullets!"; return; } if(reloading){ return; } if(System.currentTimeMillis() - lastShot < fireRate){ //AssetsLoader.lmgSound.stop(); return; } float dx = (float) (-13 * Math.cos(direction) + 75 * Math.sin(direction)); float dy = (float) (-14 * -Math.sin(direction) + 75 * Math.cos(direction)); float dx1 = (float) (-13 * Math.cos(direction) + 75 * Math.sin(direction)); float dy1 = (float) (-14 * -Math.sin(direction) + 75 * Math.cos(direction)); PlayState.effects.add(new MuzzleFlashEffect(x + dx1, y + dy1, (float) Math.toDegrees(-direction))); PlayState.projectiles.add(new Bullet(this, x + dx, y + dy, (float) (direction + (Math.toRadians(MathUtils.random(-accuracy, accuracy)))))); if(OptionState.soundOn){ AssetsLoader.lmgSound.play(OptionState.volume); } bulletsInClip--; lastShot = System.currentTimeMillis(); } Here is the code for where the sound plays. Every time this method is called the sound is called but it happens so often in this case that there is this terrible echoing. Any idea on how to fix this?

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• What online games would let me practice AI development?

  - by Myn

  I am working on a project experimenting with Artificial Intelligence design methodologies for online world avatars. Online world here is quite open to interpretation; Second Life is just as applicable as Counter Strike, for example. To carry out these experiments, I must first develop an intelligent agent for the world in question. However, I am honestly quite stuck as to which game I could use for this. My preference was to develop an intelligent "bot" to play an MMORPG, but the legal restrictions of such games prevent me. Likewise with most FPS games the use of an intelligent agent in place of a human player is considered cheating. The alternative, of course, is to create an NPC bot; an intelligent agent that populates the world alongside the player(s) rather than replacing a particular player. However, I'm struggling to find a game that would enable me to create an intelligent opponent either. I suppose the main requirements would be a game allows a third party program to use the function calls usually utilised by players and read feedback on the state of the world. Quake III and Unreal Tournament have been suggested before, but they have already been the subject of work on this research project. Short of writing my own online game from scratch, what games would allow me, through middleware, an API, or otherwise, to create either an artificially intelligent player or a bot?

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• Beginner flash game development: Start with framework or from scratch?

  - by captaincomic

  I want to write some simple flash games (as a hobby). I have a lot of programming experience, but no experience with Flash/ActionScript. My question is: As a beginner, is it a good idea to start with a framework like Flixel, FlashPunk or PushButton or would it be better to write my first games from scratch? Also, if you vote for using a framework, which one would you recommend? What are the differences? And another question: What about Flex, would you recommend using it?

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• Is there any online programmer's community, focusing on core game development?

  - by kasperov

  I am looking for a stricktly/mostly programming oriented game community, focusing on core graphics, middleware, and research. Any suggestions? Edit: I am specifically looking for people/community/group, having expertise in core game engine design/programming, directx/opengl reservoir.(And specifically targetting the programming part only).(The platforms can be anything from PC to xbox360/ps3/wii and even 3ds.)

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• Good way of handling class instances in game development?

  - by Bugster

  I'm a new indie game developer, and I've made a few games, but often times when coding I wonder "Is this the way most people do it? Am I doing it wrong?" because I'd like to become a game developer some day, and I really want to get rid of bad practices in time. The way I'm doing it right now is like this: #include <some libraries> #include "Some classes" int main() { Class1 a; Class2 b; Class3 c; a.init(); b.init(); c.init(); // game logic; } Now as I see the game grow, I have more and more classes to initialize and create instances of. This is clean but I'm not sure if this is standard practice. Is this a regular way of creating instances of your game classes or is there a cleaner and more efficient way to do it?

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• Which countries have suitable laws for game development companies? [on hold]

  - by yoni0505

  Which countries are most suitable for game companies? By suitable I mean: Their laws let the business be more profitable. (for example: low taxes) Have less bureaucracy. (for example: creating a company, employment laws) Living there isn't expensive. (for example: rent and food prices) etc... In short - maximum revenue with minimum overhead. What other things do I have to consider when choosing the place to be in? Are there any articles about this subject? (I couldn't find any)

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• Setting up Virtual Hosts with Apache on Windows 2008 server for multiple sites. Complicated setup,

  - by Roeland

  Hey guys! I am setting up apache on my windows 2008 server at my home. It will serve 2 functions. Subversion hosting to allow me and some others to manage company documents with version control Local website hosting for web development. Will need to run several websites since I generally work on more then one site at a time. Heres what I have done so far. I set up subversion and apache 2.2 using some walk troughs. I changed the default port to 1337. (im a nerd) Using dyndns.com I created a domain to forward to my home ip which is dynamic. ( company.gotdns.org) I then went into my DNS for my company.com and added a record to point repo.company.com to company.gotdns.org At this point people who need access to my file repository can access by going to repo.company.com/repo which is good so far. My question comes on the next step, setting up virtual hosts with apache. Ideally I would like to have my local website be viewable by some others in the company from their homes. So, say I am working on site1, I would like to have them be able to view this by going site1.roeland.bythepixel.com. At the same time, I would like to have site10.wouter.bythepixel.com go to his local setup for site10. What I have done for this: I went into my DNS for company.com and added a record to point roeland.company.com to company.gotdns.org (which translates to my ip). I added code to my httpd-vhosts.conf (listed at bottom) I added code to my host file (listed at bottom) Hah, so of course this doenst work as excepted.. going to site1.roeland.bythepixel.com doesnt bring up my test1 site. Could anyone point me where I may be going wrong? Thanks! hosts: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com ::1 localhost httpd-vhosts.conf: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "F:/Current Projects/sensenich.com" ServerName sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com ErrorLog "logs/sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com-error.log" CustomLog "logs/sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com-access.log" common </VirtualHost>

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• Setting up Virtual Hosts with Apache on Windows 2008 server for multiple sites. Complicated setup, including subversion

  - by Roeland

  I am setting up apache on my windows 2008 server at my home. It will serve 2 functions. Subversion hosting to allow me and some others to manage company documents with version control Local website hosting for web development. Will need to run several websites since I generally work on more then one site at a time. Heres what I have done so far. I set up subversion and apache 2.2 using some walk troughs. I changed the default port to 1337. (im a nerd) Using dyndns.com I created a domain to forward to my home ip which is dynamic. ( company.gotdns.org) I then went into my DNS for my company.com and added a record to point repo.company.com to company.gotdns.org At this point people who need access to my file repository can access by going to repo.company.com/repo which is good so far. My question comes on the next step, setting up virtual hosts with apache. Ideally I would like to have my local website be viewable by some others in the company from their homes. So, say I am working on site1, I would like to have them be able to view this by going site1.roeland.bythepixel.com. At the same time, I would like to have site10.wouter.bythepixel.com go to his local setup for site10. What I have done for this: I went into my DNS for company.com and added a record to point roeland.company.com to company.gotdns.org (which translates to my ip). I added code to my httpd-vhosts.conf (listed at bottom) I added code to my host file (listed at bottom) Hah, so of course this doenst work as excepted.. going to site1.roeland.bythepixel.com doesnt bring up my test1 site. Could anyone point me where I may be going wrong? Thanks! hosts: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com ::1 localhost httpd-vhosts.conf: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "F:/Current Projects/sensenich.com" ServerName sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com ErrorLog "logs/sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com-error.log" CustomLog "logs/sensenich.roeland.bythepixel.com-access.log" common </VirtualHost>

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• Can My Personal GMail Query A Remote LDAP Server?

  - by Maarx

  I have a personal GMail account, from which I frequently send e-mail to a great many various users of a specific business. The corporation has been kind enough to provide me with the credentials to access their LDAP server, with which I would like my GMail web client to be able to auto-complete partial addresses or names for which that LDAP server has an entry. Is there any way I can get a personal GMail account (or it's corresponding entire Google account) account to incorporate an LDAP server into it's Contacts? If I cannot get it to query dynamically and on-demand, is there an idiot-proof way (assuming the client permits, which they may not) to query the LDAP server for it's entire database, save it, and bulk import it to GMail? Perhaps, even, something I could set to repeat periodically (weekly, perhaps), without human interaction? If I did the latter, I assume it would be trivial to import all of these contacts under a single category that could be easily manipulated from within the GMail web-based client. I have been a staunch user and supporter of the GMail web-based client since it's instantiation, but this one is kind of a deal-breaker for me. If it's impossible, what do you suggest I do?

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• Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

  - by David V. Corbin

  Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points)         int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; }   Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!)  Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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• I'd like to learn how to do mobile development - which competitions can I join to help me learn?

  - by Oscar

  I want to start learning mobile device development, but I am someone that gets much more motivated when there is some goal to reach. Because of that, I would like to join a competition. I know about Microsoft Imagine Cup, which is a very nice competition. Are there any another mobile development competition with a deadline in the next 6~8 months? I have been googling for them, but I could not find any, maybe someone knows about something that I couldn't find.

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• Visual Studio 2010 RC &ndash; Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA Services Development - Updates from MIX Anno

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  MIX is happening and there is a lot of excitement around the various releases such as the Windows Phone 7 Developer Preview, IE9 Platform Preview and few other announcements that have been made.  Clearly, the Windows Phone 7 Developer Preview has generated the maximum interest and opened a plethora of opportunities for .NET Developers.  It also takes the mobile development to a new generation and doesn’t force developers to learn different programming language. Along with this, few other releases have been out.  The most anticipated Silverlight 4 RC is out and its corresponding templates are also out there for you to download.  Once VS 2010 RC was released, it was much of a disappointment that it doesn’t support SL4 development as well as the SL4 Business Application Development (a.k.a. WCF RIA Services).   There were few workarounds though nothing concrete.  Earlier I had written about how the WCF RIA Services Preview does work with ASP.NET Development using VS 2010 RC. However, with the release of SL4 RC and the corresponding tooling updates, one can develop for both SL4 as well as SL4 + WCF RIA Services using VS 2010 RC.  This is kind of important and keeps the continuum going until VS 2010 RTMs.  So, the purpose of this post is to quickly give the updates and links to install the relevant tools. Silverlight 4 RC Runtime Windows Runtime or the Mac Runtime Silverlight 4 RC Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2010 RC Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 (this would install the Runtime as well automatically) Expression Blend 4 Beta Expression Blend 4 Beta If you install the SL4 RC Developer Tools, it also installs the WCF RIA Services Preview automatically.  You just need to install the WCF RIA Services Toolkit that can be downloaded from Install the WCF RIA Services Toolkit Of course you can also just install the WCF RIA Services for VS 2010 RC separately (without SL4 Tools) from here Kindly note, all the above mentioned links are with respect to Visual Studio 2010 RC edition.  If you are developing with VS 2008, then you can just target SL3 (as I write this, there seems to be no official support for developing SL4 with VS 2008) and the related tools can be downloaded from http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/ Basically you need to download SL 3 Runtime, SDK, Expression Blend 3 and the Silverlight Toolkit.  All the links for the download are available in the above mentioned page. Also, a version of WCF RIA Services that is supported in VS 2008 is available for download at WCF RIA Services Beta for VS 2008 I know there are far too many things to keep in mind.  So, I put a flowchart that could help with depicting it pictorial.  Note that this is just my own imagination and doesn’t cover all scenarios.  for example, if you are neither developing for Webform, Silverlight, you end up nowhere whereas in actual scenario you may want to develop Desktop, Services, Console, Game and what not.  So, keep in mind this is just Web. Cheers !!!

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