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• Searching for the Perfect Developer&rsquo;s Laptop.

  - by mbcrump

  I have been in the market for a new computer for several months. I set out with a budget of around $1200. I knew up front that the machine would be used for developing applications and maybe some light gaming. I kept switching between buying a laptop or a desktop but the laptop won because: With a Laptop, I can carry it everywhere and with a desktop I can’t. I searched for about 2 weeks and narrowed it down to a list of must-have’s : i7 Processor (I wasn’t going to settle for an i5 or AMD. I wanted a true Quad-core machine, not 2 dual-core fused together). 15.6” monitor SSD 128GB or Larger. – It’s almost 2011 and I don’t want an old standard HDD in this machine. 8GB of DDR3 Ram. – The more the better, right? 1GB Video Card (Prefer NVidia) – I might want to play games with this. HDMI Port – Almost a standard on new Machines. This would be used when I am on the road and want to stream Netflix to the HDTV in the Hotel room. Webcam Built-in – This would be to video chat with the wife and kids if I am on the road. 6-Cell Battery. – I’ve read that an i7 in a laptop really kills the battery. A 6-cell or 9-cell is even better. That is a pretty long list for a budget of around $1200. I searched around the internet and could not buy this machine prebuilt for under $1200. That was even with coupons and my company’s 10% Dell discount. The only way that I would get a machine like this was to buy a prebuilt and replace parts. I chose the  Lenovo Y560 on Newegg to start as my base. Below is a top-down picture of it.   Part 1: The Hardware The Specs for this machine: Color :  GrayOperating System : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitCPU Type : Intel Core i7-740QM(1.73GHz)Screen : 15.6" WXGAMemory Size : 4GB DDR3Hard Disk : 500GBOptical Drive : DVD±R/RWGraphics Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730Video Memory : 1GBCommunication : Gigabit LAN and WLANCard slot : 1 x Express Card/34Battery Life : Up to 3.5 hoursDimensions : 15.20" x 10.00" x 0.80" - 1.30"Weight : 5.95 lbs. This computer met most of the requirements above except that it didn’t come with an SSD or have 8GB of DDR3 Memory. So, I needed to start shopping except this time for an SSD. I asked around on twitter and other hardware forums and everyone pointed me to the Crucial C300 SSD. After checking prices of the drive, it was going to cost an extra $275 bucks and I was going from a spacious 500GB drive to 128GB. After watching some of the SSD videos on YouTube I started feeling better. Below is a pic of the Crucial C300 SSD. The second thing that I needed to upgrade was the RAM. It came with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, but it was slow. I decided to buy the Crucial 8GB (4GB x 2) Kit from Newegg. This RAM cost an extra $120 and had a CAS Latency of 7. In the end this machine delivered everything that I wanted and it cost around $1300. You are probably saying, well your budget was $1200. I have spare parts that I’m planning on selling on eBay or Anandtech.  =) If you are interested then shoot me an email and I will give you a great deal mbcrump[at]gmail[dot]com. 500GB Laptop 7200RPM HDD 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2) faceVision HD 720p Camera – Unopened In the end my Windows Experience Rating of the SSD was 7.7 and the CPU 7.1. The max that you can get is a 7.9. Part 2: The Software I’m very lucky that I get a lot of software for free. When choosing a laptop, the OS really doesn’t matter because I would never keep the bloatware pre-installed or Windows 7 Home Premium on my main development machine. Matter of fact, as soon as I got the laptop, I immediately took out the old HDD without booting into it. After I got the SSD into the machine, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit. The BIOS was out of date, so I updated that to the latest version and started downloading drivers off of Lenovo’s site. I had to download the Wireless Networking Drivers to a USB-Key before I could get my machine on my wireless network. I also discovered that if the date on your computer is off then you cannot join the Windows 7 Homegroup until you fix it. I’m aware that most people like peeking into what programs other software developers use and I went ahead and listed my “essentials” of a fresh build. I am a big Silverlight guy, so naturally some of the software listed below is specific to Silverlight. You should also check out my master list of Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer. See a killer app that I’m missing? Feel free to leave it in the comments below. My Software Essential List. CPU-Z Dropbox Everything Search Tool Expression Encoder Update Expression Studio 4 Ultimate Foxit Reader Google Chrome Infragistics NetAdvantage Ultimate Edition Keepass Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Security Essentials 2  Mindscape Silverlight Elements Notepad 2 (with shell extension) Precode Code Snippet Manager RealVNC Reflector ReSharper v5.1.1753.4 Silverlight 4 Toolkit Silverlight Spy Snagit 10 SyncFusion Reporting Controls for Silverlight Telerik Silverlight RadControls TweetDeck Virtual Clone Drive Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate VS KB2403277 Update to get Feature Pack 2 to work. Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Windows Live Essentials 2011 Windows Live Writer Backup. Windows Phone Development Tools That is pretty much it, I have a new laptop and am happy with the purchase. If you have any questions then feel free to leave a comment below.  Subscribe to my feed

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• Basic shadow mapping fails on NVIDIA card?

  - by James

  Recently I switched from an AMD Radeon HD 6870 card to an (MSI) NVIDIA GTX 670 for performance reasons. I found however that my implementation of shadow mapping in all my applications failed. In a very simple shadow POC project the problem appears to be that the scene being drawn never results in a draw to the depth map and as a result the entire depth map is just infinity, 1.0 (Reading directly from the depth component after draw (glReadPixels) shows every pixel is infinity (1.0), replacing the depth comparison in the shader with a comparison of the depth from the shadow map with 1.0 shadows the entire scene, and writing random values to the depth map and then not calling glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT) results in a random noisy pattern on the scene elements - from which we can infer that the uploading of the depth texture and comparison within the shader are functioning perfectly.) Since the problem appears almost certainly to be in the depth render, this is the code for that: const int s_res = 1024; GLuint shadowMap_tex; GLuint shadowMap_prog; GLint sm_attr_coord3d; GLint sm_uniform_mvp; GLuint fbo_handle; GLuint renderBuffer; bool isMappingShad = false; //The scene consists of a plane with box above it GLfloat scene[] = { -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 1.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, -10.0, 0.0, -10.0, 0.5, 0.0, -10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 0.5, 0.5, 10.0, 0.0, 10.0, 1.0, 0.5, ... }; //Initialize the stuff used by the shadow map generator int initShadowMap() { //Initialize the shadowMap shader program if (create_program("shadow.v.glsl", "shadow.f.glsl", shadowMap_prog) != 1) return -1; const char* attribute_name = "coord3d"; sm_attr_coord3d = glGetAttribLocation(shadowMap_prog, attribute_name); if (sm_attr_coord3d == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind attribute %s\n", attribute_name); return 0; } const char* uniform_name = "mvp"; sm_uniform_mvp = glGetUniformLocation(shadowMap_prog, uniform_name); if (sm_uniform_mvp == -1) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not bind uniform %s\n", uniform_name); return 0; } //Create a framebuffer glGenFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); //Create render buffer glGenRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); //Setup the shadow texture glGenTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, s_res, s_res, 0, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, GL_FLOAT, NULL); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); return 0; } //Delete stuff void dnitShadowMap() { //Delete everything glDeleteFramebuffers(1, &fbo_handle); glDeleteRenderbuffers(1, &renderBuffer); glDeleteTextures(1, &shadowMap_tex); glDeleteProgram(shadowMap_prog); } int loadSMap() { //Bind MVP stuff glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(10.0, 10.0, 5.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), glm::vec3(0.0, 1.0, 0.0)); glm::mat4 projection = glm::ortho<float>(-10,10,-8,8,-10,40); glm::mat4 mvp = projection * view; glm::mat4 biasMatrix( 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1.0 ); glm::mat4 lsMVP = biasMatrix * mvp; //Upload light source matrix to the main shader programs glUniformMatrix4fv(uniform_ls_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(lsMVP)); glUseProgram(shadowMap_prog); glUniformMatrix4fv(sm_uniform_mvp, 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(mvp)); //Draw to the framebuffer (with depth buffer only draw) glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, fbo_handle); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, renderBuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex); glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, shadowMap_tex, 0); glDrawBuffer(GL_NONE); glReadBuffer(GL_NONE); GLenum result = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER); if (GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE != result) { printf("ERROR: Framebuffer is not complete.\n"); return -1; } //Draw shadow scene printf("Creating shadow buffers..\n"); int ticks = SDL_GetTicks(); glClear(GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Wipe the depth buffer glViewport(0, 0, s_res, s_res); isMappingShad = true; //DRAW glEnableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); glVertexAttribPointer(sm_attr_coord3d, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 5*4, scene); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 14*3); glDisableVertexAttribArray(sm_attr_coord3d); isMappingShad = false; glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, 0); printf("Render Sbuf in %dms (GLerr: %d)\n", SDL_GetTicks() - ticks, glGetError()); return 0; } This is the full code for the POC shadow mapping project (C++) (Requires SDL 1.2, SDL-image 1.2, GLEW (1.5) and GLM development headers.) initShadowMap is called, followed by loadSMap, the scene is drawn from the camera POV and then dnitShadowMap is called. I followed this tutorial originally (Along with another more comprehensive tutorial which has disappeared as this guy re-configured his site but used to be here (404).) I've ensured that the scene is visible (as can be seen within the full project) to the light source (which uses an orthogonal projection matrix.) Shader utilities function fine in non-shadow-mapped projects. I should also note that at no point is the GL error state set. What am I doing wrong here and why did this not cause problems on my AMD card? (System: Ubuntu 12.04, Linux 3.2.0-49-generic, 64 bit, with the nvidia-experimental-310 driver package. All other games are functioning fine so it's most likely not a card/driver issue.)

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• How do I prove or disprove "god" objects are wrong?

  - by honestduane

  Problem Summary: Long story short, I inherited a code base and an development team I am not allowed to replace and the use of God Objects is a big issue. Going forward, I want to have us re-factor things but I am getting push-back from the teams who want to do everything with God Objects "because its easier" and this means I would not be allowed to re-factor. I pushed back citing my years of dev experience, that I'm the new boss who was hired to know these things, etc, and so did the third party offshore companies account sales rep, and this is now at the executive level and my meeting is tomorrow and I want to go in with a lot of technical ammo to advocate best practices because I feel it will be cheaper in the long run (And I personally feel that is what the third party is worried about) for the company. My issue is from a technical level, I know its good long term but I'm having trouble with the ultra short term and 6 months term, and while its something I "know" I cant prove it with references and cited resources outside of one person (Robert C. Martin, aka Uncle Bob), as that is what I am being asked to do as I have been told having data from one person and only one person (Robert C Martin) is not good enough of an argument. Question: What are some resources I can cite directly (Title, year published, page number, quote) by well known experts in the field that explicitly say this use of "God" Objects/Classes/Systems is bad (or good, since we are looking for the most technically valid solution)? Research I have already done: I have a number of books here and I have searched their indexes for the use of the words "god object" and "god class". I found that oddly its almost never used and the copy of the GoF book I have for example, never uses it (At least according to the index in front of me) but I have found it in 2 books per the below, but I want more I can use. I checked the Wikipedia page for "God Object" and its currently a stub with little reference links so although I personally agree with that it says, It doesn't have much I can use in an environment where personal experience is not considered valid. The book cited is also considered too old to be valid by the people I am debating these technical points with as the argument they are making is that "it was once thought to be bad but nobody could prove it, and now modern software says "god" objects are good to use". I personally believe that this statement is incorrect, but I want to prove the truth, whatever it is. In Robert C Martin's "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#" (ISBN: 0-13-185725-8, hardcover) where on page 266 it states "Everybody knows that god classes are a bad idea. We don't want to concentrate all the intelligence of a system into a single object or a single function. One of the goals of OOD is the partitioning and distribution of behavior into many classes and many function." -- And then goes on to say sometimes its better to use God Classes anyway sometimes (Citing micro-controllers as an example). In Robert C Martin's "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" page 136 (And only this page) talks about the "God class" and calls it out as a prime example of a violation of the "classes should be small" rule he uses to promote the Single Responsibility Principle" starting on on page 138. The problem I have is all my references and citations come from the same person (Robert C. Martin), and am from the same single person/source. I am being told that because he is just one guy, my desire to not use "God Classes" is invalid and not accepted as a standard best practice in the software industry. Is this true? Am I doing things wrong from a technical perspective by trying to keep to the teaching of Uncle Bob? God Objects and Object Oriented Programming and Design: The more I think of this the more I think this is more something you learn when you study OOP and its never explicitly called out; Its implicit to good design is my thinking (Feel free to correct me, please, as I want to learn), The problem is I "know" this, but but not everybody does, so in this case its not considered a valid argument because I am effectively calling it out as universal truth when in fact most people are statistically ignorant of it since statistically most people are not programmers. Conclusion: I am at a loss on what to search for to get the best additional results to cite, since they are making a technical claim and I want to know the truth and be able to prove it with citations like a real engineer/scientist, even if I am biased against god objects due to my personal experience with code that used them. Any assistance or citations would be deeply appreciated.

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• Better documentation for tasks waiting on resources

  - by SQLOS Team

  The sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks DMV contains a wealth of useful information about tasks waiting on a resource, but until now detailed information about the resource being consumed - sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.resource_description - hasn't been documented, apart from a rather self-evident "Description of the resource that is being consumed."   Thanks to a recent Connect suggestion this column will get more information added. Here is a summary of the possible values that can appear in this column - Note this information is current for SQL Server 2008 R2 and Denali:   Thread-pool resource owner:•       threadpool id=scheduler<hex-address> Parallel query resource owner:•       exchangeEvent id={Port|Pipe}<hex-address> WaitType=<exchange-wait-type> nodeId=<exchange-node-id> Exchange-wait-type can be one of the following.•       e_waitNone•       e_waitPipeNewRow•       e_waitPipeGetRow•       e_waitSynchronizeConsumerOpen•       e_waitPortOpen•       e_waitPortClose•       e_waitRange Lock resource owner:<type-specific-description> id=lock<lock-hex-address> mode=<mode> associatedObjectId=<associated-obj-id>               <type-specific-description> can be:• For DATABASE: databaselock subresource=<databaselock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For FILE: filelock fileid=<file-id> subresource=<filelock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For OBJECT: objectlock lockPartition=<lock-partition-id> objid=<obj-id> subresource=<objectlock-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For PAGE: pagelock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id> subresource=<pagelock-subresource>• For Key: keylock  hobtid=<hobt-id> dbid=<db-id>• For EXTENT: extentlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For RID: ridlock fileid=<file-id> pageid=<page-id> dbid=<db-id>• For APPLICATION: applicationlock hash=<hash> databasePrincipalId=<role-id> dbid=<db-id>• For METADATA: metadatalock subresource=<metadata-subresource> classid=<metadatalock-description> dbid=<db-id>• For HOBT: hobtlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<hobt-subresource> dbid=<db-id>• For ALLOCATION_UNIT: allocunitlock hobtid=<hobt-id> subresource=<alloc-unit-subresource> dbid=<db-id> <mode> can be:• Sch-S• Sch-M• S• U• X• IS• IU• IX• SIU• SIX• UIX• BU• RangeS-S• RangeS-U• RangeI-N• RangeI-S• RangeI-U• RangeI-X• RangeX-S• RangeX-U• RangeX-X External resource owner:•       External ExternalResource=<wait-type> Generic resource owner:•       TransactionMutex TransactionInfo Workspace=<workspace-id>•       Mutex•       CLRTaskJoin•       CLRMonitorEvent•       CLRRWLockEvent•       resourceWait Latch resource owner:•       <db-id>:<file-id>:<page-in-file>•       <GUID>•       <latch-class> (<latch-address>)   Further Information Slava Oks's weblog: sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks.Informit.com: Identifying Blocking Using sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks - Ken Henderson   - Guy

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• SQLAuthority News – 7th Anniversary of Blog – A Personal Note

  - by Pinal Dave

  Special Day Today is a very special day – seven years ago I blogged for the very first time.  Seven years ago, I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to blog, or even what a blog was or what to write.  I was working as a DBA, and I was trying to solve a problem – at my job, there were a few issues I had to fix again and again and again.  There were days when I was rewriting the same solution over and over, and there were times when I would get very frustrated because I could not write the same elegant solution that I had written before.  I came up with a solution to this problem – posting these solutions online, where I could access them whenever I needed them.  At that point, I had no idea what a blog was, or even how the internet worked, I had no idea that a blog would be visible to others.  Can you believe it? Google it on Yahoo! After a few posts on this “blog,” there was a surprise for me – an e-mail saying that someone had left me a comment.  I was surprised, because I didn’t even know you could comment on a blog!  I logged on and read my comment.  It said: “I like your script,but there is a small bug.  If you could fix it, it will run on multiple other versions of SQL Server.”  I was like, “wow, someone figured out how to find my blog, and they figured out how to fix my script!”  I found the bug, I fixed the script, and a wrote a thank you note to the guy.  My first question for him was: how did you figure it out – not the script, but how to find my blog?  He said he found it from Yahoo Search (this was in the time before Google, believe it or not). From that day, my life changed.  I wrote a few more posts, I got a few more comments, and I started to watch my traffic.  People were reading, commenting, and giving feedback.  At the end of the day, people enjoyed what I was writing.  This was a fantastic feeling!  I never thought I would be writing for others.  Even today, I don’t feel like I am writing for others, but that I am simply posting what I am learning every day.  From that very first day, I decided that I would not change my intent or my blog’s purpose. 72 Million Views – 2600 Posts – 57000 comments – 10 books – 9 courses Today, this blog is my habit, my addiction, my baby.  Every day I try to learn something new, and that lesson gets posted on the blog.  Lately there have been days where I am traveling for a full 24 hours, but even on those days I try to learn something new, and later when I have free time, I will still post it to the blog.  Because of this habit, this blog has over 72 millions views, I have written more than 2600 posts, and there are 57,000 comments and counting.  I have also written 10 books, 9 courses, and learned so many things.  This blog has given me back so much more than I ever put it into it.  It gave me an education, a reason to learn something new every day, and a way to connect to people.  I like to think of it as a learning chain, a relay where we all pass knowledge from one to another. Never Ending Journey When I started the blog, I thought I would write for a few days and stop, but now after seven years I haven’t stopped and I have no intention of stopping!  However, change happens, and for this blog it will start today.  This blog started as a single resource for SQL Server, but now it has grown beyond, to Sharepoint, Personal Development, Developer Training, MySQL, Big Data, and lots of other things.  Truly speaking, this blog is more than just SQL Server, and that was always my intention.  I named it “SQL Authority,” not “SQL Server Authority”!  Loudly and clearly, I would like to announce that I am going to go back to my roots and start writing more about SQL, more about big data, and more about the other technology like relational databases, MySQL, Oracle, and others.  My goal is not to become a comprehensive resource for every technology, my goal is to learn something new every day – and now it can be so much more than just SQL Server.  I will learn it, and post it here for you. I have written a very long post on this anniversary, but here is the summary: Thank You.  You all have been wonderful.  Seven years is a long journey, and it makes me emotional.  I have been “with” this blog before I met my wife, before we had our daughter.  This blog is like a fourth member of the family.  Keep reading, keep commenting, keep supporting.  Thank you all. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: About Me, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL

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• MSSQL: Copying data from one database to another

  - by DigiMortal

  I have database that has data imported from another server using import and export wizard of SQL Server Management Studio. There is also empty database with same tables but it also has primary keys, foreign keys and indexes. How to get data from first database to another? Here is the description of my crusade. And believe me – it is not nice one. Bugs in import and export wizard There is some awful bugs in import and export wizard that makes data imports and exports possible only on very limited manner: wizard is not able to analyze foreign keys, wizard wants to create tables always, whatever you say in settings. The result is faulty and useless package. Now let’s go step by step and make things work in our scenario. Database There are two databases. Let’s name them like this: PLAIN – contains data imported from remote server (no indexes, no keys, no nothing, just plain dumb data) CORRECT – empty database with same structure as remote database (indexes, keys and everything else but no data) Our goal is to get data from PLAIN to CORRECT. 1. Create import and export package In this point we will create faulty SSIS package using SQL Server Management Studio. Run import and export wizard and let it create SSIS package that reads data from CORRECT and writes it to, let’s say, CORRECT-2. Make sure you enable identity insert. Make sure there are no views selected. Make sure you don’t let package to create tables (you can miss this step because it wants to create tables anyway). Save package to SSIS. 2. Modify import and export package Now let’s clean up the package and remove all faulty crap. Connect SQL Server Management Studio to SSIS instance. Select the package you just saved and export it to your hard disc. Run Business Intelligence Studio. Create new SSIS project (DON’T MISS THIS STEP). Add package from disc as existing item to project and open it. Move to Control Flow page do one of following: Remove all preparation SQL-tasks and connect Data Flow tasks. Modify all preparation SQL-tasks so the existence of tables is checked before table is created (yes, you have to do it manually). Add new Execute-SQL task as first task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'DELETE FROM ?' GO   Save task. Add new Execute-SQL task as last task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command:   EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO   Save task Now connect first Execute-SQL task with first Data Flow task and last Data Flow task with second Execute-SQL task. Now move to Package Explorer tab and change connections under Connection Managers folder. Make source connection to use database PLAIN. Make destination connection to use database CORRECT. Save package and rebuilt the project. Update package using SQL Server Management Studio. Some hints: Make sure you take the package from solution folder because it is saved there now. Don’t overwrite existing package. Use numeric suffix and let Management Studio to create a new version of package. Now you are done with your package. Run it to test it and clean out all the errors you find. TRUNCATE vs DELETE You can see that I used DELETE FROM instead of TRUNCATE. Why? Because TRUNCATE has some nasty limits (taken from MSDN): “You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint; instead, use DELETE statement without a WHERE clause. Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger. TRUNCATE TABLE may not be used on tables participating in an indexed view.” As I am not sure what tables you have and how they are used I provided here the solution that should work for all scenarios. If you need better performance then in some cases you can use TRUNCATE table instead of DELETE. Conclusion My conclusion is bitter this time although I am very positive guy. It is A.D. 2010 and still we have to write stupid hacks for simple things. Simple tools that existed before are long gone and we have to live mysterious bloatware that is our only choice when using default tools. If you take a look at the length of this posting and the count of steps I had to do for one easy thing you should treat it as a signal that something has went wrong in last years. Although I got my job done I would be still more happy if out of box tools are more intelligent one day. References T-SQL Trick for Deleting All Data in Your Database (Mauro Cardarelli) TRUNCATE TABLE (MSDN Library) Error Handling in SQL 2000 – a Background (Erland Sommarskog) Disable/Enable Foreign Key and Check constraints in SQL Server (Decipher)

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• How to store a shmup level?

  - by pek

  I am developing a 2D shmup (i.e. Aero Fighters) and I was wondering what are the various ways to store a level. Assuming that enemies are defined in their own xml file, how would you define when an enemy spawns in the level? Would it be based on time? Updates? Distance? Currently I do this based on "level time" (the amount of time the level is running - pausing doesn't update the time). Here is an example (the serialization was done by XNA): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <XnaContent xmlns:level="pekalicious.xanor.XanorContentShared.content.level"> <Asset Type="level:Level"> <Enemies> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/smallenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT0S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>60</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.2S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/secondenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT0S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>10</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.5S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/secondenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT20S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>10</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.5S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/boss1</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT30S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>1</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> </Enemies> </Asset> </XnaContent> Each Enemy element is basically a wave of specific enemy types. The type is defined in EnemyType while SpawnTime is the "level time" this wave should appear. NumberOfSpawns and SpawnOffset is the number of enemies that will show up and the time it takes between each spawn respectively. This could be a good idea or there could be better ones out there. I'm not sure. I would like to see some opinions and ideas. I have two problems with this: spawning an enemy correctly and creating a level editor. The level editor thing is an entirely different problem (which I will probably post in the future :P). As for spawning correctly, the problem lies in the fact that I have a variable update time and so I need to make sure I don't miss an enemy spawn because the spawn offset is too small, or because the update took a little more time. I kinda fixed it for the most part, but it seems to me that the problem is with how I store the level. So, any ideas? Comments? Thank you in advance.

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• Open World Day 3

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me!  I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite.  I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here.  These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority.  They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers.  However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades.  This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily.  It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage.  This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth.  ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure.  The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content.  So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter.   Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer.  I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW.  I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box.  They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well!  Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night.  I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial.  I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop.  One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”!  It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia.  It was good to catch up with him.  As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK.  After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories.  2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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• Great event : Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch @ Microsoft TechEd Blore

  - by sathya

  Great event : Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Launch @ Microsoft TechEd Blore   I was really excited on attending the day 1 of Microsoft TechEd 2010 in Bangalore. This is the first Teched that am attending. The event was really fun filled with lot of knowledge sharing sessions and lots of goodies and gifts by the partners Initially the Event Started by Murthy's Session. He explained about the Developers relating to the 5 elements of nature (Pancha Boothaas) 1. Fire - Passion 2. Wave (Water) - Catch the right wave which we need to apply. 3. Earth - Connections and lots of opportunities around the world 4. Air -  Its whatever we breathe. Developers.. Without them nothing is possible. they are like the air 5. Sky - Cloud based applications   Next the Keynote and the announcement of Visual Studio by SomaSegar. List of things that he delivered his speech on : 1. Announcement of Visual Studio 2010 2. Announcement of .NET 4.0 3. Announcement of Silverlight later this week 4. What is the current Trend? Microsoft has done a research with many developers across the globe and have got the following feedback from the users. Get Lost (interrupted) - When we do some work and somebody is calling or interrepting by someother way we lose track of what we were doing and we need to do from the start Falling Behind- Technology gets updated  phenomenally over a period of time and developers always have a scenario like they are not in the state of the art technology and they always have a doubt whether they are staying updated. Lack of Collobaration - When a Manager asks a person what the team members have done and some might be done and some might not be and finally all are into a state like we dont know where we are. So they have addressed these 3 points in the VS 2010 by the following features : Get Lost - Some cool features which could overcome this. We have some Graphical interface. which could show what we have done and where we are. Some Zoom features in the code level. Falling Behind - Everything is based on .NET language base. 2010 has been built in such a way that if developers know the native language that's enough for building good applications. Lack of Collobaration - Some Dashboard Features which would show where exactly the project is. And a graphical user interface is shown on clicking which it directly drills down even to the code level. 5. An overview on all new features in VS 2010. 6. Some good demos of new features in VS 2010 by Polita and one more girl. Some of the new features included : 1. Team Explorer 2. Zoom in Code 3. Ribbon Development 4. Development in Single Platform for Windows Phone, XBox, Zune, Azure, Web Based and Windows based applications 5. Sequence Diagram Generation directly from code 6. Dashboards to show project status 7. Javascript and JQuery intellisense 8. Native support for JQuery 9. Packaging feature while deploying. 10. Generation of different versions of web.config like Web.Config.Production, Web.Config.Staging, etc. 11. IntelliTrace - Eliminating the "Not Reproducible" statement. 12. Automated User Interface Testing. At last in the closing of the day we had a great event called Demo Extravaganza, where lot of cool projects that were launched by Microsoft and also the projects that are under research were also shown. I got a lot of info about Bing today. BING really rocks!!! It has the following : 1. Visual Search 2. Product based search. For each product different menu filters were provided to make an advanced search 3. BING Maps was awesome!! It zoomed in to the street level and we can assume that we are the persons who are walking or running on the road and we can see the real objects like buildings moving by our side. 4. PhotoSynth was used in BING to show up all the images taken around the globe in a 3D format. 5. Formula - If we give some formula it automatically gives the value for the variable or derivation of expression Also some info about some kool touch apps which does an authentication and computation of Teched Attendee's Points that they have scored and the sessions attended. One guy won an XBOX in lucky draw as a gift. There were lot of Partner Stalls like Accenture,Intel,Citrix,MicroFocus,Telerik,infragistics,Sapient etc. Some Offers were provided for us like 50% off on Certifications, 1 free Elearning Course, etc. Stay tuned!! Wil update you on other events too..

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• Silverlight Cream for June 01, 2010 -- #874

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Alan Beasley and Michael Washington, Miroslav Miroslavov, Max Paulousky, Teresa and Ronald Burger, Laurent Duveau, Tim Heuer, Jeff Brand, Mike Snow, and John Papa. Shoutouts: To pay homage to the Advanced Options button in Expression Blend, Adam Kinney posted: Expression Blend Advanced Options square wallpaper SilverLaw stood his drag and drop ripple on it's head for this one: Silver Soccer - A Case Study for the Flexible Surface Effect (Silverlight 4) From SilverlightCream.com: Expression Blend DataStore - A Powerful Tool For Designers Michael Washington dug into the documentation and with some Microsoft assistance has figured out how to use the SetDataStoreAction in SketchFlow... good tutorial and a game to demonstrate it's use. Windows Phone 7 View Model Style Video Player Alan Beasley and Michael Washington teamed up again to produce a ViewModel-Style Video Player for WP7 ... very nice interface I might add... very detailed tutorial and all the code... oh, and did you notice it uses MVVMLight... on WP7? ... just thought I'd mention that :) Navigation in 3D world of 2D objects In part 7 of the CompleteIT code explenation, Miroslav Miroslavov is discussing some of the very cool animation they did... 3D, moving camera... cool stuff! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his Silverlight 4 and SEO series up. In part 2 he's discussing sitemaps and html content providing. He also has good links showing where to submit your sitemaps and information. Mousin’ down the PathListBox Teresa and Ronald Burger (not sure which) has a post up about the PathListBox and how they drew the path that they ended up using, and the code used to enable animation. Dynamically apply and change Theme with the Silverlight Toolkit We've all had fun playing with themes, but Laurent Duveau has an example up of letting your users change the theme at run-time. Microsoft Translator client library for Silverlight Tim Heuer has been playing with the Microsoft Translator for Silverlight and he has a "Works on My Machine" license on what he's making available .. but considering his access to resources... I'd say go for it :) Custom Per-Page Transitions in Windows Phone 7 Jeff Brand has a follow-on to his other WP7 post about page transitions and is now discussing per-page transitions Silverlight Tip of the Day #26 – Changing the Startup Class Mike Snow's latest 'tip' is a little more involved than a tip ... changing the startup class and actually removing (in his example), the page and app classes... code and xaml! I've seen this before but never explained as clean... fun stuff. Behaviors in Blend 4 (Silverlight TV #30) Episode 30 of Silverlight TV (now a tag at Silverlight Cream) finds John Papa talking to Adam Kinney about Behaviors in Blend 4... not only using them but creating a custom one. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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• Encode two integers into colour values and compare them in a HLSL shader

  - by Ben Slinger

  I am writing a 2D point and click adventure game in Monogame, and I'd like to be able to create an image mask for every room which defines which parts of the background a character can walk behind, and at which Y value a character needs to be at for the background to be drawn above the character. I haven't done any shader work before but after doing some reading I thought the following solution should work: Create a mask for the room with different walk behind areas painted in a colour that defines the baseline Y value (Walk Behind Mask) Render all objects to a RenderTarget2D (Base Texture) Render all objects to a different RenderTarget2D, but changing every pixel of each object to a colour that defines its Y value (Position Mask) Pass these two textures plus the image mask into the shader, and for each pixel compare the colour of the image mask to the colour of the Position Mask to the Walk Behind Mask - if the Position Mask pixel is larger (thus lower on the screen and closer to the camera) than the Walk Behind Mask, draw the pixel from the Base Texture, otherwise draw a transparent pixel (allowing the background to show through). I've got it mostly working, but I'm having trouble packing and unpacking the Y values into colours and retrieving them correctly in the shader. Here are some code examples of how I'm doing it so far: (When drawing to the Position Mask RenderTarget2D) Color posColor = new Color(((int)Position.Y >> 16) & 255, ((int)Position.Y >> 8) & 255, (int)Position.Y & 255); So as far as I can tell, this should be taking the first 3 bytes of the position integer and encoding them into a 4 byte colour (ignoring the alpha as the 4th byte). This seems to work fine, as when my character is at Y = 600, the resulting Color from this is: {[Color: R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, PackedValue=4283957760]}. I then have an area in my Walk Behind Mask that I only want the character to be displayed behind if his Y value is lower than 655, so I've painted it with R=0, G=2, B=143, A=255. Now, I think I have the shader OK as well, here's what I have: sampler BaseTexture : register(s0); sampler MaskTexture : register(s1); sampler PositionTexture : register(s2); float4 mask( float2 coords : TEXCOORD0 ) : COLOR0 { float4 color = tex2D(BaseTexture, coords); float4 maskColor = tex2D(MaskTexture, coords); float4 positionColor = tex2D(PositionTexture, coords); float maskCompare = (maskColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (maskColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (maskColor.b * pow(2,8)); float positionCompare = (positionColor.r * pow(2,24)) + (positionColor.g * pow(2,16)) + (positionColor.b * pow(2,8)); return positionCompare < maskCompare ? float4(0,0,0,0) : color; } technique Technique1 { pass NoEffect { PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 mask(); } } This isn't working, however - currently all characters are displayed behind the walk behind area, regardless of their Y value. I tried printing out some debug info by grabbing the pixel from both the Position Mask and the Walk Under Mask under the current mouse position, and it seems like maybe the colours aren't being rendered to the Position Mask correctly? When calculating the colour in that code above I'm getting R=0, G=2, B=88, A=255, but when I mouseover my character I get R=0, G=0, B=30, A=255. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? It seems like maybe I'm losing some information when rendering to the RenderTarget2D, but I'm now knowledgeable enough to figure out what's happening. Also, I should probably ask, is this an efficient way to do this? Will there be a performance impact? Edit: Whoops, turns out there was a bug that I'd introduced myself, I was drawing out the Position Mask with the position Color, left over from some early testing I was doing. So this solution is working perfectly, though I'm still interested in whether this is an efficient solution performance wise.

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• First-Time GLSL Shadow Mapping Problems

  - by Locke

  I'm working on building out a 2.5D engine and having massive problems getting my shadows working. I'm at a point where I'm VERY close. So, let's see a picture to see what I have: As you can see above, the image has lighting -- but the shadow map is displaying incorrectly. The shadow map is shown in the bottom left hand side of the screen as a normal 2D texture, so we can see what it looks like at any given time. If you notice, it appears that the shadows are generating backwards in the wrong direction -- I think. But the problem is a little more deep -- I'm just plotting the shadow onto the screen, which I know is wrong -- I'm ignoring the actual test to see if we NEED to show a shadow. The incoming parameters all appear to be correct -- so there has to be something wrong with my shader code somewhere. Here's what my code looks like: VERTEX: uniform mat4 LightModelViewProjectionMatrix; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { Normal = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_Normal); LightDirection = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_LightSource[0].position.xyz); LightCoordinate = LightModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex; LightCoordinate.xy = ( LightCoordinate.xy * 0.5 ) + 0.5; gl_Position = ftransform(); gl_TexCoord[0] = gl_MultiTexCoord0; } FRAGMENT: uniform sampler2D DiffuseMap; uniform sampler2D ShadowMap; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { vec4 Texel = texture2D(DiffuseMap, vec2(gl_TexCoord[0])); // Directional lighting //Build ambient lighting vec4 AmbientElement = gl_LightSource[0].ambient; //Build diffuse lighting float Lambert = max(dot(Normal, LightDirection), 0.0); //max(abs(dot(Normal, LightDirection)), 0.0); vec4 DiffuseElement = ( gl_LightSource[0].diffuse * Lambert ); vec4 LightingColor = ( DiffuseElement + AmbientElement ); LightingColor.r = min(LightingColor.r, 1.0); LightingColor.g = min(LightingColor.g, 1.0); LightingColor.b = min(LightingColor.b, 1.0); LightingColor.a = min(LightingColor.a, 1.0); LightingColor *= Texel; //Everything up to this point is PERFECT // Shadow mapping // ------------------------------ vec4 ShadowCoordinate = LightCoordinate / LightCoordinate.w; float DistanceFromLight = texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ).z; float DepthBias = 0.001; float ShadowFactor = 1.0; if( LightCoordinate.w > 0.0 ) { ShadowFactor = DistanceFromLight < ( ShadowCoordinate.z + DepthBias ) ? 0.5 : 1.0; } LightingColor.rgb *= ShadowFactor; //gl_FragColor = LightingColor; //Yes, I know this is wrong, but the line above (gl_FragColor = LightingColor;) produces the wrong effect gl_FragColor = LightingColor * texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ); } I wanted to make sure the coordinates were correct for the shadow map -- so that's why you see it applied to the image as it is below. But the depth for each point seems to be wrong -- the shadows SHOULD be opposite (look at how the image is -- the shaded areas from normal lighting are facing the opposite direction of the shadows). Maybe my matrices are bad or something going in? They're isolated and appear to be correct -- nothing else is going in unusual. When I view from the light's view and get the MVP matrices for it, they're correct. EDIT: Added an image so you can see what happens when I do the correct command at the end of the GLSL: That's the image when the last line is just glFragColor = LightingColor; Maybe someone has some idea of what I screwed up?

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• Converting openGl code to DirectX

  - by Fredrik Boston Westman

  First of all, this is kind of a follow up question on @byte56 excellent anwser on this question concerning picking algorithms. I'm trying to convert one of his code examples to directX 11 however I have run in to some problems ( I can pick but the picking is way off), and I wanted to make sure I had done it rigth before moving on and checking the rest of my code. I am not that familiar with openGl but I can imagine openGl has diffrent coordinations systems, and functions that alters how you must implement to code abit. This is his code example: public Ray GetPickRay() { int mouseX = Mouse.getX(); int mouseY = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight() - Mouse.getY(); float windowWidth = WORLD.Byte56Game.getWidth(); float windowHeight = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight(); //get the mouse position in screenSpace coords double screenSpaceX = ((float) mouseX / (windowWidth / 2) - 1.0f) * aspectRatio; double screenSpaceY = (1.0f - (float) mouseY / (windowHeight / 2)); double viewRatio = Math.tan(((float) Math.PI / (180.f/ViewAngle) / 2.00f))* zoomFactor; screenSpaceX = screenSpaceX * viewRatio; screenSpaceY = screenSpaceY * viewRatio; //Find the far and near camera spaces Vector4f cameraSpaceNear = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * NearPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * NearPlane), (float) (-NearPlane), 1); Vector4f cameraSpaceFar = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * FarPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * FarPlane), (float) (-FarPlane), 1); //Unproject the 2D window into 3D to see where in 3D we're actually clicking Matrix4f tmpView = Matrix4f(view); Matrix4f invView = (Matrix4f) tmpView.invert(); Vector4f worldSpaceNear = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceNear, worldSpaceNear); Vector4f worldSpaceFar = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceFar, worldSpaceFar); //calculate the ray position and direction Vector3f rayPosition = new Vector3f(worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceNear.z); Vector3f rayDirection = new Vector3f(worldSpaceFar.x - worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceFar.y - worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceFar.z - worldSpaceNear.z); rayDirection.normalise(); return new Ray(rayPosition, rayDirection); } All rigths reserved to him of course This is my DirectX 11 code : void GraphicEngine::pickRayVector(float mouseX, float mouseY,XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpacePos, XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpaceDir) { float PRVecX, PRVecY; float nearPlane = 0.1f; float farPlane = 200.0f; floar viewAngle = 0.4 * 3.14; PRVecX = ((( 2.0f * mouseX) / ClientWidth ) - 1 ) * tan((viewAngle)/2); PRVecY = (1-(( 2.0f * mouseY) / ClientHeight)) * tan((viewAngle)/2); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceNear = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * nearPlane,PRVecY * nearPlane, -nearPlane, 1.0f); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceFar = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * farPlane,PRVecY * farPlane, -farPlane, 1.0f); // Transform 3D Ray from View space to 3D ray in World space XMMATRIX invMat; XMVECTOR matInvDeter; invMat = XMMatrixInverse(&matInvDeter, cam->getCameraView()); //Inverse of View Space matrix is World space matrix XMVECTOR worldSpaceNear = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceNear, invMat); XMVECTOR worldSpaceFar = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceFar, invMat); pickRayInWorldSpacePos = worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = worldSpaceFar-worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = XMVector3Normalize(pickRayInWorldSpaceDir); } A couple of notes: The mouse coordinates are already converted so that the top left corner of the client window would be (0,0) and the bottom rigth (800,600) ( or whatever resolution you would have) I hadn't used any far or near plane before, so i just made some arbitrary number up for them. To my understanding it shouldnt matter as long as the object you are trying to pick is in between the range of thoese numbers The viewAngle is the same angle that I used when setting the camera view with XMMatrixPerspectiveFovLH , I just hadn't made it a member variable of my Camera class yet. I removed the variable aspectRation and zoomFactor because I assumed that they where related to some specific function of his game. Now I'm not sure, but I think the problems lies either withing the mouse to viewspace conversion, maby that we use diffrent coordinations systems. Either that or how i transform the matrixes in the the end, because i know order is important when it comes to matrixes. Any help is appriciated! Thanks in advance. Edit: One more note, my code is in c++

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• How to build a great relationship with your colleagues

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When you start new job, you worry about your performance, about being able to do what the manager asks you to do, but you also worry about the relations with your colleagues. How will you get along with them? What if they don’t like you? Have you ever felt you’re „the new guy” and your colleagues have already their own way of talking one to each other, their own jokes? It’s a common feeling and can actually become stressful. I am Norbert, Middleware Presales Intern in Hungary and I’ve been working within Oracle for only 1 month. Joining such a big company has been a challenge from many perspectives. One of them was adapting with the environment and getting to know all my colleagues. You know it’s quite difficult to introduce yourself, to try to liaise with them and find some common topics, so I felt very lucky and comfortable when my manager introduced me to all of my colleagues. It was easier to accommodate and we basically we had a starting point for our discussions. We started to talk about what my position means, for how many years they’ve been within Oracle, other Oracle related topics, but also more personal stuff like what they do after work. Having this opportunity of talking with all of them helped me introduce myself in a proper way and actually I told them many things about myself. Networking wasn’t my best skill, but these first days were really helpful from a network point of view. What else can you do to get along with your colleagues? One second thing I consider as being really helpful in networking is asking work-related questions. For instance, when you don’t know how to do something or don’t understand it, asking one of your colleagues will also help you to make a connection with him and you could easily continue the discussion with some other topics which are more personal. It’s a very effective strategy and in a company like Oracle people are very willing to help you with your tasks and perform at a high level. If you see your colleagues going to lunch, you should join them. It will help you become part of their community, finding out what’s new in their lives, you’ll, step-by-step, take part in their conversations and be up to date with the hot topics they talk about. One other opportunity of becoming part of your colleagues’ community are the internal events. Subscribing to the local free time activities mailing list is very useful for finding out information about when they’re going out and have a drink or attending all sorts of events. For instance, this is how I’ve found out about a party within Oracle that most of the employees here attend. It’s a wonderful opportunity for chatting and make a stronger connection to some of them. How important is attending these events? Think about how much time you spend at work. You’d like to enjoy your work and the environment, so getting along with your colleagues is a nice thing to have. I recently attended a corporate party whose purpose was to facilitate the interaction and communication between employees. It was a real success and we had a lot of fun, especially because it was a costume party.  All the fancy dresses and funny clothes we wore made the atmosphere really enjoyable. It was easy to liaise with colleague with whom I had never interacted with before. There was a friendly spirit among us, chatting about personal stuff and about various pleasant things. Working in an international company is not an easy thing because you interact with many people and they have different styles, but all these opportunities of informal interaction are a good way to adapt to the new working environment.

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• How can I fix my keyboard layout?

  - by Scott Severance

  For a long time, I've had my keyboard configured to use the layout currently known as "English (international AltGr dead keys)." I like this layout because without any modifier keys, it's identical to the US English keyboard, but when I hold Right Alt I can get accented letters and other characters not available on a standard US English keyboard. In Oneiric, however, the layout is messed up. Right Alt+N produces "ñ" as expected. And another method works: Right Alt+`, E produces "è", also as expected. But there's no way to type "é", which is probably the accented letter I type the most. I expect Right Alt+A, E to do the trick. But instead of a dead key for the acute accent, it uses a method for combining characters to create the hybrid "´e". This hybrid looks like the proper "é" in some settings, but it isn't the same character and doesn't always work. (For example, in the text input box as I type this, it looks the same as the proper character, but when displayed on the site for all so see, it looks very wrong--at least on my machine.) Ditto for all other characters with an acute accent, though some are available directly as pre-composed characters: For example, Right Alt+I yields "í". How can I change the acute accent on the A key to a proper dead key? Perhaps the more general version of this is: How can I tweak my keyboard layout? Update I just tested this on my other machine, also running Oneiric, but upgraded from previous versions. I have no problems with the second machine. The problem machine was a fresh install of Oneiric, but I kept my old $HOME when I did the fresh install. Clarification Even if an answer doesn't address my specific examples, I would still accept it if it provided enough detail for me to find the layout and tweak it according to my needs. Major Update After working through the information gained through Jim C's and Chascon's helpful replies, I've learned something new: The problem isn't with the layout itself, but with the fact that the selected layout isn't being applied. When I look at the definition in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us of the layout I've been running for a long time, I found that the definition doesn't match what I get when I type. In addition, the keyboard layout dialog that's supposed to show the current layout looks different from the way the layout is defined in the file I mentioned, and matches what actually happens when I type. Following Jim C's suggestion, I created a new layout in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us containing some modifications to the layout I want. I can select my layout from the keyboard properties, and I can use in on the console following Chascon's post, but the layout I get when typing is unchanged. Apparently, there's a different layout defined somewhere that's overriding what I've set. Where is that layout hiding? This problem occurs in Unity (3D and 2D), but I was able to get the correct layout set in Xfce. In case it's relevant, this problem has occurred since I installed Oneiric fresh on this machine (though I preserved my $HOME). I don't recall whether this problem occurred before the reinstall. Also, in case it's relevant, I also run iBus so I can type Korean. I have a few difficulties with iBus, but I doubt they're related.

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• .NET development on a Retina MacBook Pro with Windows 8

  - by Jeff

  I remember sitting in Building 5 at Microsoft with some of my coworkers, when one of them came in with a shiny new 11” MacBook Air. It was nearly two years ago, and we found it pretty odd that the OEM’s building Windows machines sucked at industrial design in a way that defied logic. While Dell and HP were in a race to the bottom building commodity crap, Apple was staying out of the low-end market completely, and focusing on better design. In the process, they managed to build machines people actually wanted, and maintain an insanely high margin in the process. I stopped buying the commodity crap and custom builds in 2006, when Apple went Intel. As a .NET guy, I was still in it for Microsoft’s stack of development tools, which I found awesome, but had back to back crappy laptops from HP and Dell. After that original 15” MacBook Pro, I also had a Mac Pro tower (that I sold after three years for $1,500!), a 27” iMac, and my favorite, a 17” MacBook Pro (the unibody style) with an SSD added from OWC. The 17” was a little much to carry around because it was heavy, but it sure was nice getting as much as eight hours of battery life, and the screen was amazing. When the rumors started about a 15” model with a “retina” screen inspired by the Air, I made up my mind I wanted one, and ordered it the day it came out. I sold my 17”, after three years, for $750 to a friend who is really enjoying it. I got the base model with the upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM. It feels solid for being so thin, and if you’ve used the third generation iPad or the newer iPhone, you’ll be just as thrilled with the screen resolution. I’m typically getting just over six hours of battery life while running a VM, but Parallels 8 allegedly makes some power improvements, so we’ll see what happens. (It was just released today.) The nice thing about VM’s are that you can run more than one at a time. Primarily I run the Windows 8 VM with four cores (the laptop is quad-core, but has 8 logical cores due to hyperthreading or whatever Intel calls it) and 8 gigs of RAM. I also have a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM I spin up when I need to test stuff in a “real” server environment, and I give it two cores and 4 gigs of RAM. The Windows 8 VM spins up in about 8 seconds. Visual Studio 2012 takes a few more seconds, but count part of that as the “ReSharper tax” as it does its startup magic. The real beauty, the thing I looked most forward to, is that beautifully crisp C# text. Consolas has never looked as good as it does at 10pt. as it does on this display. You know how it looks great at 80pt. when conference speakers demo stuff on a projector? Think that sharpness, only tiny. It’s just gorgeous. Beyond that, everything is just so responsive and fast. Builds of large projects happen in seconds, hundreds of unit tests run in seconds… you just don’t spend a lot of time waiting for stuff. It’s kind of painful to go back to my 27” iMac (which would be better if I put an SSD in it before its third birthday). Are there negatives? A few minor issues, yes. As is the case with OS X, not everything scales right. You’ll see some weirdness at times with splash screens and icons and such. Chrome’s text rendering (in Windows) is apparently not aware of how to deal with higher DPI’s, so text is fuzzy (the OS X version is super sharp, however). You’ll also have to do some fiddling with keyboard settings to use the Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts. Overall, it’s as close to a no-compromise development experience as I’ve ever had. I’m not even going to bother with Boot Camp because the VM route already exceeds my expectations. You definitely get what you pay for. If this one also lasts three years and I can turn around and sell it, it’s worth it for something I use every day.

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• Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

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• Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

  - by Hazzard

  I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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• Upgrade issues due to broken "dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic" error

  - by tsukune1791

  okay, I've recently upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 and I've been having some issues. I don't know if its a bug or not, but I thought I would submit it here. Okay here's a little background; I ran the distro update from the update manager and got a couple errors that I didn't catch. the computer restarted, and when I logged the Launcher and my top bar of the Ubuntu desktop didn't load. While it was trying to load a couple error messages came up, I think they were called "apport", saying they couldn't send the bug information for some reason. I believe it said somethings wrong with my internet connection, but nothing's wrong with it. Anyway I tried running some things in terminal, namely sudo apt-get -f install sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and keep getting the following errors; dustin@marceau-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade [sudo] password for dustin: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y Setting up initramfs-tools (0.99ubuntu13) ... update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Setting up linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic (3.2.0-24.37) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-runlilo 3.2.0-24-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic Fatal: No images have been defined. run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-runlilo exited with return code 1 Failed to process /etc/kernel/postinst.d at /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic.postinst line 1010. dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic: linux-image-generic depends on linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic; however: Package linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-image-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-generic: linux-generic depends on linux-image-generic (= 3.2.0.24.26); however: Package linux-image-generic is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing linux-generic (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic Fatal: No images have been defined. run-parts: /etc/initramfs/post-update.d//runlilo exited with return code 1 dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-3.2.0-24-generic linux-image-generic linux-generic initramfs-tools localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/locale: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/man: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/gnome/help: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/omf: 0 KiB localepurge: Disk space freed in /usr/share/doc/kde/HTML: 0 KiB Total disk space freed by localepurge: 0 KiB E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) And my Ubuntu desktop is still not working. I can log into Gnome and Ubuntu 2D but the Launcher, I think it's call, doesn't load. Can someone help me fix these error, or point me in the right direction to get them fixed? It is much appriciated.

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• Vertical Scrolling In Tile Based XNA Platformer

  - by alec100_94

  I'm making a 2D platformer in XNA 4.0. I have created a working tile engine, which works well for my purposes, and Horizontal Scrolling works flawlessly, however I am having great trouble with Vertical scrolling. I Basically want the camera to scroll up (world to scroll down) when the player reaches a certain Y co-ordinate, and I would also like to automatically scroll back down if coming down, and that co-ordinate is passed. My biggest problem is I have no real way of detecting the direction the player is moving in using only the Y Co-ord. Here Is My Code Code For The Camera Class (which appears to be a very different approach to most camera classes I have seen). using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Marvin { class Camera : TileEngine { public static bool startReached; public static bool endReached; public static void MoveRight(float speed = 2) { //Moves The Position of Each Tile Right foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.X -= speed; } } } public static void MoveLeft(float speed = 2) { //Moves The Position of Each Tile Right foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.X += speed; } } } public static void MoveUp(float speed = 2) { foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.Y += speed; } } } public static void MoveDown(float speed = 2) { foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.Y -= speed; } } } public static void Restrain() { if(tiles.Last().position.X<Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-tiles.Last().size.X) { MoveLeft(); endReached = true; } else { endReached = false; } if(tiles[1].position.X>0) { MoveRight(); startReached = true;} else { startReached = false; } } } } Here is My Player Code for Left and Right Scrolling/Moving if (Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { Camera.MoveRight(); if(Camera.endReached) { MoveRight(2); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().X!=Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-(marvin.GetRectangle().X+marvin.GetRectangle().Width)) { MoveRight(2); Camera.MoveLeft(); } } } if(Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { Camera.MoveLeft(); if(Camera.startReached) { MoveLeft(2); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().X!=Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-(marvin.GetRectangle().X+marvin.GetRectangle().Width)) { MoveLeft(2); Camera.MoveRight(); } } } Camera.Restrain(); if(marvin.GetRectangle().X>Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-marvin.GetRectangle().Width) { MoveLeft(2); } if(marvin.GetRectangle().X<0) { MoveRight(2); } And Here Is My Player Jumping/Falling Code which may cause some conflicts with the vertical camera movement. if (!jumping) { if(!TileEngine.TopOfTileCollidingWith(footBounds)) { MoveDown(5); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().Y != TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()-marvin.GetRectangle().Height) { float difference = (TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()-marvin.GetRectangle().Height) - (marvin.GetRectangle().Y); marvin.SetRectangle(marvin.GetRectangle().X,(int)(marvin.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); armR.SetRectangle(armR.GetRectangle().X,(int)(armR.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); armL.SetRectangle(armL.GetRectangle().X,(int)(armL.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); eyeL.SetRectangle(eyeL.GetRectangle().X,(int)(eyeL.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); eyeR.SetRectangle(eyeR.GetRectangle().X,(int)(eyeR.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); } } } if (Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && Main.previousKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Up) && TileEngine.TopOfTileCollidingWith(footBounds)) { jumping = true; } if(jumping) { if(TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()>0 && (TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop() - footBounds.Bottom)<120) { MoveUp(5); } else { jumping = false; } } All player code I have tried for vertical movements has failed, or caused weird results (like falling through platforms), and most have been a variation on the method I described above, hence I have not included it. I would really appreciate some help implementing a simple vertical scrolling into this game, Thanks.

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• OpenGL textures trigger error 1281 if SFML is not called

  - by user3714670

  I am using SOIL to apply textures to VBOs, without textures i could change the background and display black (default color) vbos easily, but now with textures, openGL is giving an error 1281, the background is black and some textures are not applied. but the first texture IS applied (nothing else is working though). The strange thing is : if i create a dummy texture with SFML in the same program, all other textures do work. So i guess there is something i forgot in the texture creation/application, if someone could enlighten me. Here is the code i use to load textures, once loaded it is kept in memory, it mostly comes from the example of SOIL : texture = SOIL_load_OGL_single_cubemap( filename, SOIL_DDS_CUBEMAP_FACE_ORDER, SOIL_LOAD_AUTO, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS | SOIL_FLAG_DDS_LOAD_DIRECT ); if( texture > 0 ) { glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T ); glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_GEN_R ); glTexGeni( GL_S, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glTexGeni( GL_T, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glTexGeni( GL_R, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_REFLECTION_MAP ); glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP, texture ); std::cout << "the loaded single cube map ID was " << texture << std::endl; } else { std::cout << "Attempting to load as a HDR texture" << std::endl; texture = SOIL_load_OGL_HDR_texture( filename, SOIL_HDR_RGBdivA2, 0, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS ); if( texture < 1 ) { std::cout << "Attempting to load as a simple 2D texture" << std::endl; texture = SOIL_load_OGL_texture( filename, SOIL_LOAD_AUTO, SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID, SOIL_FLAG_POWER_OF_TWO | SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS | SOIL_FLAG_DDS_LOAD_DIRECT ); } if( texture > 0 ) { // enable texturing glEnable( GL_TEXTURE_2D ); // bind an OpenGL texture ID glBindTexture( GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture ); std::cout << "the loaded texture ID was " << texture << std::endl; } else { glDisable( GL_TEXTURE_2D ); std::cout << "Texture loading failed: '" << SOIL_last_result() << "'" << std::endl; } } and how i apply it when drawing : GLuint TextureID = glGetUniformLocation(shaderProgram, "myTextureSampler"); if(!TextureID) cout << "TextureID not found ..." << endl; // glEnableVertexAttribArray(TextureID); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); if(SFML) sf::Texture::bind(sfml_texture); else { glBindTexture (GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); // glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGB, 1024, 768, 0, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &texture); } glUniform1i(TextureID, 0); I am not sure that SOIL is adapted to my program as i want something as simple as possible (i used sfml's texture object which was the best but i can't anymore), but if i can get it to work it would be great.

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• Projective texture and deferred lighting

  - by Vodácek

  In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. I am trying to apply this technique in light pass. (my projector doesn't affect albedo). I have this projector View a Projection matrix: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(-halfWidth * Scale, halfWidth * Scale, -halfHeight * Scale, halfHeight * Scale, 1, 100000); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, Target, Vector3.Up); Where halfWidth and halfHeight is are half of the texture's width and height, Position is the Projector's position and target is the projector's target. This seems to be ok. I am drawing full screen quad with this shader: float4x4 InvViewProjection; texture2D DepthTexture; texture2D NormalTexture; texture2D ProjectorTexture; float4x4 ProjectorViewProjection; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { texture = <DepthTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D normalSampler = sampler_state { texture = <NormalTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D projectorSampler = sampler_state { texture = <ProjectorTexture>; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; float viewportWidth; float viewportHeight; // Calculate the 2D screen position of a 3D position float2 postProjToScreen(float4 position) { float2 screenPos = position.xy / position.w; return 0.5f * (float2(screenPos.x, -screenPos.y) + 1); } // Calculate the size of one half of a pixel, to convert // between texels and pixels float2 halfPixel() { return 0.5f / float2(viewportWidth, viewportHeight); } struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position :POSITION0; float4 PositionCopy : TEXCOORD1; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = input.Position; output.PositionCopy=output.Position; return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float2 texCoord =postProjToScreen(input.PositionCopy) + halfPixel(); // Extract the depth for this pixel from the depth map float4 depth = tex2D(depthSampler, texCoord); //return float4(depth.r,0,0,1); // Recreate the position with the UV coordinates and depth value float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x * 2 - 1; position.y = (1 - texCoord.y) * 2 - 1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1.0f; // Transform position from screen space to world space position = mul(position, InvViewProjection); position.xyz /= position.w; //compute projection float3 projection=tex2D(projectorSampler,postProjToScreen(mul(position,ProjectorViewProjection)) + halfPixel()); return float4(projection,1); } In first part of pixel shader is recovered position from G-buffer (this code I am using in other shaders without any problem) and then is tranformed to projector viewprojection space. Problem is that projection doesn't appear. Here is an image of my situation: The green lines are the rendered projector frustum. Where is my mistake hidden? I am using XNA 4. Thanks for advice and sorry for my English. EDIT: Shader above is working but projection was too small. When I changed the Scale property to a large value (e.g. 100), the projection appears. But when the camera moves toward the projection, the projection expands, as can bee seen on this YouTube video.

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• Why Executives Need Enterprise Project Portfolio Management: 3 Key Considerations to Drive Value Across the Organization

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} By: Guy Barlow, Oracle Primavera Industry Strategy Director Over the last few years there has been a tremendous shift – some would say tectonic in nature – that has brought project management to the forefront of executive attention. Many factors have been driving this growing awareness, most notably, the global financial crisis, heightened regulatory environments and a need to more effectively operationalize corporate strategy. Executives in India are no exception. In fact, given the phenomenal rate of progress of the country, top of mind for all executives (whether in finance, operations, IT, etc.) is the need to build capacity, ramp-up production and ensure that the right resources are in place to capture growth opportunities. This applies across all industries from asset-intensive – like oil & gas, utilities and mining – to traditional manufacturing and the public sector, including services-based sectors such as the financial, telecom and life sciences segments are also part of the mix. However, compounding matters is a complex, interplay between projects – big and small, complex and simple – as companies expand and grow both domestically and internationally. So, having a standardized, enterprise wide solution for project portfolio management is natural. Failing to do so is akin to having two ERP systems, one to manage “large” invoices and one to manage “small” invoices. It makes no sense and provides no enterprise wide visibility. Therefore, it is imperative for executives to understand the full range of their business commitments, the benefit to the company, current performance and associated course corrections if needed. Irrespective of industry and regardless of the use case (e.g., building a power plant, launching a new financial service or developing a new automobile) company leaders need to approach the value of enterprise project portfolio management via 3 critical areas: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} 1. Greater Financial Discipline – Improve financial rigor and results through better governance and control is an imperative given today’s financial uncertainty and greater investment scrutiny. For example, as India plans a US$1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure how do companies ensure costs are managed? How do you control cash flow? Can you easily report this to stakeholders? 2. Improved Operational Excellence – Increase efficiency and reduce costs through robust collaboration and integration. Upwards of 66% of cost variances are driven by poor supplier collaboration. As you execute initiatives do you have visibility into the performance of your supply base? How are they integrated into the broader program plan? 3. Enhanced Risk Mitigation – Manage and react to uncertainty through improved transparency and contingency planning. What happens if you’re faced with a skills shortage? How do you plan and account for geo-political or weather related events? In summary, projects are not just the delivery of a product or service to a customer inside a predetermined schedule; they often form a contractual and even moral obligation to shareholders and stakeholders alike. Hence the intimate connection between executives and projects, with the latter providing executives with the platform to demonstrate that their organization has the capabilities and competencies needed to meet and, whenever possible, exceed their customer commitments. Effectively developing and operationalizing corporate strategy is the hallmark of successful executives and enterprise project and portfolio management allows them to achieve this goal. Article was first published for Manage India, an e-newsletter, PMI India.

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