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  • What data to send when tracking clicks with Google Analytics events (and how)?

    - by user359650
    When tracking clicks on links, there are 3 items I'm interested in: link location in the page by grabbing the id of the closest parent: to see influence of location on click-through link text: to see influence of text on click-through link href attribute value: to see where people go when leaving my website The problem when using Google Analytics to track those clicks is that events only have 3 available text fields, one of which being the category, which if you use to store one of the above items will create a mess in your Event reporting because you will have as many categories as item values. Therefore if you assign a predefined value to the category (e.g. clicks), then you're left with only 2 event fields (action, label) to store 3 items (location, text, href). That in itself isn't the end of the world because you can concatenate 2 items into 1 event field, then use the reporting or the API to filter things out. Accordingly what I plan on doing is this: category: clicks action: {location_on_page} ¦ {text} label: {href} where {__} are variable values related to the clicked links With this I can easily create some reports directly via the GUI: downloads: include only events where label ends with .pdf click outs to particular domains: include only events where label contains domain And for more complex tasks I need to export the data (or use the API): influence of location on clicks: for each location in the design, count number of events that have that location in the action, then corroborate with pageviews of the corresponding pages. Whilst this looks good I'm wondering if there is a better approach, hence the following questions: Q1: Can you foresee any particular issues with this particular setup (e.g. things I won't be able to report on)? Q2: Can you think of other data that would be interesting to include in the event?

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

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

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  • Capitalizing on JavaScript's prototypal inheritance

    - by keithjgrant
    JavaScript has a class-free object system in which objects inherit properties directly from other objects. This is really powerful, but it is unfamiliar to classically trained programmers. If you attempt to apply classical design patterns directly to JavaScript, you will be frustrated. But if you learn to work with JavaScript's prototypal nature, your efforts will be rewarded. ... It is Lisp in C's clothing. -Douglas Crockford What does this mean for a game developer working with canvas and HTML5? I've been looking over this question on useful design patterns in gaming, but prototypal inheritance is very different than classical inheritance, and there are surely differences in the best way to apply some of these common patterns. For example, classical inheritance allows us to create a moveableEntity class, and extend that with any classes that move in our game world (player, monster, bullet, etc.). Sure, you can strongarm JavaScript to work that way, but in doing so, you are kind of fighting against its nature. Is there a better approach to this sort of problem when we have prototypal inheritance at our fingertips?

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  • Oracle Delivers Special Recognition for Specialized Partners

    - by michaela.seika(at)oracle.com
    Since announcing Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialized (OPN Specialized) in October 2009, Oracle has been focused on building a program that first enables solution providers to become highly skilled Oracle partners who deliver value to customers and that then recognizes and rewards their achievements in a meaningful way. Today the company unveiled new benefits reserved for partners who have achieved one or more of the over 50 specializations currently available. The benefits demonstrate Oracle's commitment to showcase these valued partners to three key audiences: customers, other partners, and Oracle employees.With today's launch of www.oracle.com/specialized Oracle has taken what IDC believes is a first of its kind approach to putting top partners front and center with customers and prospects. While most vendors offer a business partner finder tool on their website none has gone as far as Oracle with the creation of this new site dedicated to the promotion of Specialized Partners. The tag lines - "Recognized by Oracle, Preferred by Customers" and "Specialized. Recognized. Preferred." gets right to the point - these are the solution providers with which customers should choose to engage. The contents of the page offer multiple proof points to justify the marketing phrases.One of the benefits Oracle offers its Specialized Partners is video creation and placement. While Oracle works with partners to create informal or "guerilla" videos which often are placed on YouTube to generate awareness and buzz, the company also produces professional videos for its partners. The greatest value the partner receives from this benefit isn't the non-trivial production costs that Oracle covers but instead the prominent exposure Oracle gives the finished product. Partner videos are featured on www.oracle.com/specialized, used as part of monthly OPN Specialized Partners monthly webcasts, placed on a customer facing website, the Oracle Media Network, which includes several partner sites such as PartnerCast. A solution provider gains a great deal of credibility when they can send a prospect to an Oracle website where they are featured. Read the full article here.

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  • What web technology could I use which would support a decision tree?

    - by Rami Alhamad
    I am a big game development fan but I haven't done any commercial work in the past. I have been asked by a non-profit to look at developing a game similar to the award-winning www.playspent.org They want the following features: support 5 scenarios mobile isn't important but compatibility with older browsers would be a big bonus they want it to be visual and audible bonus is to have it easily modifiable support 4 languages I don't have much knowledge of Flash and would rather avoid using it as a solution. I started breaking down the problem into segments that I will need to examine, they are as follows: ability to read the game flow from a file that they can produce (xml, etc.) db design to store decision tree language challenge browser compatibility I am leaning towards an Google app engine/GWT solution but I am not sure what technology is best for this. I am really hoping to get your opinion/recommendation on my approach and on what technology is best. A special thanks (and beer if you live in Toronto) will be awarded to anyone who can help give me a ballpark estimate on how much such a game should go for. I know it's tough to estimate but any rough figure will help (how much would you charge for building something like playspent.org?) Thanks in advance

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  • Why, in WPF, do we set an object to Stretch via its Alignment properties instead of Width/Height?

    - by Jonathan Hobbs
    In WPF's XAML, we can tell an element to fill its container like this: <Button HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> Why is it that when we set an element to Stretch, we do it via the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties? Why did the WPF design team decide to take this approach over having Width="Stretch" and Height="Stretch"? I presume it was a calculated decision, and I'm curious about the reasoning. CSS, among other technologies, follows the convention that stretching is done via the width and height properties, and that alignment affects positioning exclusively. This seems intuitive enough: stretching the element is manipulating its width and height, after all! Using the corresponding alignment property to stretch an element seems counter-intuitive and unusual in comparison. This makes me think they didn't just pick this option for no reason: they made a calculated decision and had reasons behind it. Width and Height use the double data type, which would ordinarily mean assigning it a string would be silly. However, WPF's Window objects can take Width="Auto", which gets treated as double.NaN. Couldn't Width="Stretch" be stored as double.PositiveInfinity or some other value?

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  • New way of integrating Openfeint in Cocos2d-x 0.12.0

    - by Ef Es
    I am trying to implement OpenFeint for Android in my cocos2d-x project. My approach so far has been creating a button that calls a static java method in class Bridge using jnihelper functions (jnihelper only accepts statics). Bridge has one singleton attribute of type OFAndroid, that is the class dynamically calling the Openfeint Api methods, and every method in the bridge just forwards it to the OFAndroid object. What I am trying to do now is to initialize the openfeint libraries in the main java class that is the one calling the static C++ libraries. My problem right now is that the initializing function void com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(Context ctx, OpenFeintSettings settings, OpenFeintDelegate delegate) is not accepting the context parameter that I am giving him, which is a "this" reference to the main class. Main class extends from Cocos2dxActivity but I don't have any other that extends from Application. Any suggestions on fixing it or how to improve the architecture? EDIT: I am trying a new solution. Make the bridge class into an Application child, is called from Main object, initializes OpenFeint when created and it can call the OpenFeint functions instead of needing an additional class. The problem is I still get the error. 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.content.ContextWrapper.getPackageManager(ContextWrapper.java:85) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.validateManifest(OpenFeintInternal.java:885) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initializeWithoutLoggingIn(OpenFeintInternal.java:829) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initialize(OpenFeintInternal.java:852) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(OpenFeint.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.NuroFeint.onCreate(NuroFeint.java:23) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.FastFish.onCreate(FastFish.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1069) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2751)

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  • PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, NetBeans IDE (Part 3)

    - by Geertjan
    To complete the picture, let's use the traditional (that is, old) Hibernate mechanism, i.e., via XML files, rather than via the annotations shown yesterday. It's definitely trickier, with many more places where typos can occur, but that's why it's the old mechanism. I do not recommend this approach. I recommend the approach shown yesterday. The other players in this scenario include PostgreSQL, as outlined in the previous blog entries in this series. Here's the structure of the module, replacing the code shown yesterday: Here's the Employee class, notice that it has no annotations: import java.io.Serializable; import java.util.Date; public class Employees implements Serializable {         private int employeeId;     private String firstName;     private String lastName;     private Date dateOfBirth;     private String phoneNumber;     private String junk;     public int getEmployeeId() {         return employeeId;     }     public void setEmployeeId(int employeeId) {         this.employeeId = employeeId;     }     public String getFirstName() {         return firstName;     }     public void setFirstName(String firstName) {         this.firstName = firstName;     }     public String getLastName() {         return lastName;     }     public void setLastName(String lastName) {         this.lastName = lastName;     }     public Date getDateOfBirth() {         return dateOfBirth;     }     public void setDateOfBirth(Date dateOfBirth) {         this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;     }     public String getPhoneNumber() {         return phoneNumber;     }     public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) {         this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;     }     public String getJunk() {         return junk;     }     public void setJunk(String junk) {         this.junk = junk;     } } And here's the Hibernate configuration file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"     "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-configuration>     <session-factory>         <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">org.postgresql.Driver</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/smithdb</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.username">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.password">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.pool_size">1</property>         <property name="hibernate.default_schema">public"</property>         <property name="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory</property>         <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</property>         <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>         <property name="hibernate.show_sql">true</property>         <mapping resource="org/db/viewer/employees.hbm.xml"/>     </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Next, the Hibernate mapping file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"       "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-mapping>     <class name="org.db.viewer.Employees"            table="employees"            schema="public"            catalog="smithdb">         <id name="employeeId" column="employee_id" type="int">             <generator class="increment"/>         </id>         <property name="firstName" column="first_name" type="string" />         <property name="lastName" column="last_name" type="string" />         <property name="dateOfBirth" column="date_of_birth" type="date" />         <property name="phoneNumber" column="phone_number" type="string" />         <property name="junk" column="junk" type="string" />             </class>     </hibernate-mapping> Then, the HibernateUtil file, for providing access to the Hibernate SessionFactory: import java.net.URL; import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration; import org.hibernate.SessionFactory; public class HibernateUtil {     private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;         static {         try {             // Create the SessionFactory from standard (hibernate.cfg.xml)             // config file.             String res = "org/db/viewer/employees.cfg.xml";             URL myURL = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource(res);             sessionFactory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure(myURL).buildSessionFactory();         } catch (Throwable ex) {             // Log the exception.             System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);             throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);         }     }         public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {         return sessionFactory;     }     } Finally, the "createKeys" in the ChildFactory: @Override protected boolean createKeys(List list) {     Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();     Transaction transac = null;     try {         transac = session.beginTransaction();         Query query = session.createQuery("from Employees");         list.addAll(query.list());     } catch (HibernateException he) {         Exceptions.printStackTrace(he);         if (transac != null){             transac.rollback();         }     } finally {         session.close();     }     return true; } Note that Constantine Drabo has a similar article here. Run the application and the result should be the same as yesterday.

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  • Testcase runner for parametrized testcases

    - by Razer
    Let me explain my situation. I'm planning a kind of test case runner for doing testcases on external devices, which are microcontroller based. Lets consider the devices: Device 1 Device 2 There exist a lot of test cases which can be run with one of the devices above. For example: Testcase 1 Testcase 2 The main reason that all the testcases can be run with any device is, that the testcases validates some standard and this software should be extensible for future devices. The testcases itself must be runnable with changing parameters. For example Testcase 1 does some Timing Verification the testcase needs as input parameter the datarate: 4800, 9600, 19200. Now hoping you understand the situation, let me explain my design questions. For implementing the test cases I thought about an Attribute based approach, like nunit does it. The more complicated problem is, how to define the parametrized testcases? Like this: Device 1: Testcase 1: datarate: 4800, 9600, 19200 Testcase 2: supply: 1, 2, 3 Device 2: Testcase 1: datarate: 9600, 19200, 38400 Testcase 2: supply: 3, 4, 5 How would you design such a framework? I've done a similar desin in python where I had for every device a XML containing the testcase definitions like: <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=4800/> <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=9600/> <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=19200/>

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  • Common way of animating 'motion' for walk cycle animations

    - by Ben Hymers
    I've just posted this at the Blender artists' forums before realising I would probably get a better response from a more game development-specific audience, so apologies for cross-posting! It's for the right reasons :) I'm a programmer trying to animate a character walking for a game project, using Ogre. I've made a very simple walk cycle in Blender and exported it to Ogre, and it plays just fine. By fine, I mean it works, but there's terrible foot sliding. This is because I just animated the walk in-place (at the origin) in Blender, and of course I don't know what "speed of walk" that corresponds to, so when I move the character in-game the motion doesn't necessarily match up with the movement of the feet in the animation. So my question is: what's the normal approach for this kind of thing? At work we use Maya, and the animators either animate a special 'moveTrans' node that represents the "position" of the character (or have the exporter generate it for them from the movement of the root node), then the game can read this to know how fast the animation moves the character. So in the Maya file, the character will walk forward for one cycle and this extra node will follow along with them by their feet. I've not seen anything like this in open-source land, and there's certainly no provision for that in the Ogre Exporter script. What do you chaps normally do for this?

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  • responsibility for storage

    - by Stefano Borini
    A colleague and I were brainstorming about where to put the responsibility of an object to store itself on the disk in our own file format. There are basically two choices: object.store(file) fileformatWriter.store(object) The first one gives the responsibility of serialization on the disk to the object itself. This is similar to the approach used by python pickle. The second groups the representation responsibility on a file format writer object. The data object is just a plain data container (eventually with additional methods not relevant for storage). We agreed on the second methodology, because it centralizes the writing logic from generic data. We also have cases of objects implementing complex logic that need to store info while the logic is in progress. For these cases, the fileformatwriter object can be passed and used as a delegate, calling storage operations on it. With the first pattern, the complex logic object would instead accept the raw file, and implement the writing logic itself. The first method, however, has the advantage that the object knows how to write and read itself from any file containing it, which may also be convenient. I would like to hear your opinion before starting a rather complex refactoring.

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  • Splitting big request in multiple small ajax requests

    - by Ionut
    I am unsure regarding the scalability of the following model. I have no experience at all with large systems, big number of requests and so on but I'm trying to build some features considering scalability first. In my scenario there is a user page which contains data for: User's details (name, location, workplace ...) User's activity (blog posts, comments...) User statistics (rating, number of friends...) In order to show all this on the same page, for a request there will be at least 3 different database queries on the back-end. In some cases, I imagine that those queries will be running quite a wile, therefore the user experience may suffer while waiting between requests. This is why I decided to run only step 1 (User's details) as a normal request. After the response is received, two ajax requests are sent for steps 2 and 3. When those responses are received, I only place the data in the destined wrappers. For me at least this makes more sense. However there are 3 requests instead of one for every user page view. Will this affect the system on the long term? I'm assuming that this kind of approach requires more resources but is this trade of UX for resources a good dial or should I stick to one plain big request?

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  • Source-control your BI Publisher reports

    - by Dmitry Nefedkin
    Version control systems (VCS) like Subversion, Git and the others has been widely adopted and became the must-have tool in any software development project. Source artifacts and checked out, modified, checked in, all the history of changes is tracked by the VCS.  But what if the development tool stores the source/configuration artifacts not in your laptop's hard drive, but in some shared repository instead? Well, we definitely need a way for export/import our artifacts from/to this repository.   Oracle BI Publisher report development approach is based on such a shared repository model (catalog), and starting from BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 Oracle ships Catalog Utility, which can be utilized to export/import the reports from the command line.  To start using the BI Publisher Catalog Utility you should: Go to the file system of the server where BI Publisher binaries has been installed and locate the following file: <MW_HOME>/Oracle_BI1/clients/bipublisher/BIPCatalogUtil.zip Copy the file to your local filesystem and unzip it. I will refer to this unzipped directory as <BIP_CLIENT_DIR> below If you do not want to pass server BI Publisher server URL, username and password during each invocation, modify the corresponding values inside <BIP_CLIENT_DIR>/config/xmlp-client-config.xml Open the terminal window and go to <BIP_CLIENT_DIR>/bin Make sure that the following environment variables are set: JAVA_HOME, ORACLE_HOME Now it's time to run the utility: if you are on Linux - just run BIPCatalogUtil.sh and pass the parameters according to the utility documentation if you are on MS Windows the bad news are that the command script for MS Windows is missing, and support.oracle.com note 1333726.1 says that a temporary solution is "create a .cmd file by setting up a classpath and copying the same commands from the .sh script". The good news are that I've created this script already,  please download the it from GitHub Hope you will find this utility useful during you day-by-day BI Publisher development. 

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  • Should I make the Cells in a Tiledmap as null when my player hits it

    - by Vishal Kumar
    I am making a Tile Based game using Libgdx. I took the idea from SuperKoalio platformer demo by Mario Zencher. When I wanted to implement Collectables in my game , I simply draw the coins using Tiled Map Editor. When my player hits that, I use to set that cell as null. Someday on this site suggested me not to do so... never use null. I agreed. What can be any other way. If I am using layer.setCell(x,y) to set the cell to any other cell... even if an transparent one .. my player seems to be stopped by an invisible object/hurdle. This is my code: for (Rectangle tile : tiles) { if (koalaRect.overlaps(tile)) { TiledMapTileLayer layer = (TiledMapTileLayer) map.getLayers().get(1); try{ type = layer.getCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType").toString(); } catch(Exception e){ System.out.print("Exception in Tiles Property"+e); type="nonbreakable"; } //Let us destroy this cell if(("award".equals(type))){ layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, null); listener.coin(); score+=100; test = ""+layer.getCell(0, 0).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType"); } //DOING THIS GIVES A BAD EFFECT if(("killer".equals(type))){ //player.health--; //layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, layer.getCell(20,0)); } // we actually reset the player y-position here // so it is just below/above the tile we collided with // this removes bouncing :) if (player.velocity.y > 0) { player.position.y = (tile.y - Player.height); } Is this a right approach? OR I should create separate Sprite Class called Coin.

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  • What does your Lisp workflow look like?

    - by Duncan Bayne
    I'm learning Lisp at the moment, coming from a language progression that is Locomotive BASIC - Z80 Assembler - Pascal - C - Perl - C# - Ruby. My approach is to simultaneously: write a simple web-scraper using SBCL, QuickLisp, closure-html, and drakma watch the SICP lectures I think this is working well; I'm developing good 'Lisp goggles', in that I can now read Lisp reasonably easily. I'm also getting a feel for how the Lisp ecosystem works, e.g. Quicklisp for dependencies. What I'm really missing, though, is a sense of how a seasoned Lisper actually works. When I'm coding for .NET, I have Visual Studio set up with ReSharper and VisualSVN. I write tests, I implement, I refactor, I commit. Then when I'm done enough of that to complete a story, I write some AUATs. Then I kick off a Release build on TeamCity to push the new functionality out to the customer for testing & hopefully approval. If it's an app that needs an installer, I use either WiX or InnoSetup, obviously building the installer through the CI system. So, my question is: as an experienced Lisper, what does your workflow look like? Do you work mostly in the REPL, or in the editor? How do you do unit tests? Continuous integration? Packaging & deployment? When you sit down at your desk, steaming mug of coffee to one side and a framed photo of John McCarthy to the other, what is it that you do? Currently, I feel like I am getting to grips with Lisp coding, but not Lisp development ...

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  • Where is a good place to start to learn about custom caching in .Net

    - by John
    I'm looking to make some performance enhancements to our site, but I'm not sure exactly where to begin. We have some custom object caching, but I think that we can do better. Our Business We aggregate news stories on a news type of web site. We get approximately 500-1000 new stories per week. We have index pages that show various lists of the items and details pages that show the individual stories. Our Current Use case: Getting an Individual Story User makes a request The Data Access Layer(DAL) checks to see if the item is in cache and if item is fresh (15 minutes). If the item is not in cache or is not fresh, retrieve the item from SQL Server, save to cache and return to user. Problems with this approach The pull nature of caching means that users have to pay the waiting cost every time that the cache is refreshed. Once a story is published, it changes infrequently and I think that we should replace the pull model with something better. My initial thoughts My initial thought is that stories should ALL be stored locally in some type of dictionary. (Cache or is there another, better way?). If the story is not found, then make a trip to the database, update the local dictionary and send the item back. Since there may be occasional updates to stories, this should be an entirely process from the user. I watched a video by Brent Ozar, How StackOverflow Scales SQL Server, in which Brent states "the fastest database query is the one that you don't make". Where do I start? At this point, I don't know exactly what the solution is. Is it caching? Is there a better way of using local storage? Do I use a Dictionary, OrderedDictionary, List ? It seems daunting and I'm just looking for some good starting points to learn more about how to do this type of optimization.

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  • How do I use depth testing and texture transparency together in my 2.5D world?

    - by nbolton
    Note: I've already found an answer (which I will post after this question) - I was just wondering if I was doing it right, or if there is a better way. I'm making a "2.5D" isometric game using OpenGL ES (JOGL). By "2.5D", I mean that the world is 3D, but it is rendered using 2D isometric tiles. The original problem I had to solve was that my textures had to be rendered in order (from back to front), so that the tiles overlapped properly to create the proper effect. After some reading, I quickly realised that this is the "old hat" 2D approach. This became difficult to do efficiently, since the 3D world can be modified by the player (so stuff can appear anywhere in 3D space) - so it seemed logical that I take advantage of the depth buffer. This meant that I didn't have to worry about rendering stuff in the correct order. However, I faced a problem. If you use GL_DEPTH_TEST and GL_BLEND together, it creates an effect where objects are blended with the background before they are "sorted" by z order (meaning that you get a weird kind of overlap where the transparency should be). Here's some pseudo code that should illustrate the problem (incidentally, I'm using libgdx for Android). create() { // ... // some other code here // ... Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); } render() { Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); // ... // bind texture and create vertices // ... } So the question is: How do I solve the transparency overlap problem?

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  • How to go from mainstream to indie development?

    - by Salano Software
    I'm currently working as a game programmer for a AAA-level developer and publisher - which falls into the 'nice problem to have' category, I know, except that I'm growing more and more disenchanted with the direction of both the company and the AAA portion of the industry as a whole. I don't see any games on the studio's calendar for the next several years that I'm actually interested in working on; it looks like a continuing parade of sequels, license extensions and largely-derivative work. Which isn't to say that there won't be interesting things to do on those projects; but more and more I find myself wanting to do something fundamentally different. It seems like the market's never been better for smaller-scale projects, and I'd love to jump into that (and I've done small demos for Android and have started digging into iOS), but I obviously can't put anything out while I'm working for the company, and I'm concerned that I shouldn't even do substantial development in my spare time on anything I'd eventually like to release on my own. At the same time, I'm leery of leaving the job I've got for hopefully-obvious reasons, especially without a specific plan in place. Has anyone out there got experience with 'going indie' out of a mainstream job, and does anyone have specific suggestions as to what the best approach is and what I should specifically be thinking about or be careful of?

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  • best way to enlarge system partition

    - by yuvi
    I have a problem - I need to enlarge my system partition. I mean - when I initially installed Ubuntu, I split the partition so I have 15GB for system and the rest (around 400) pointed at /home/. This is very useful if anything goes wrong someday and I want to format and completely re-install Ubuntu without losing any of my actual data. The problem is, 15GB isn't enough, so it seems. I already moved /var/ and /opt/ folder to /home/, adding symlinks at root, but I'm still at 86% usage and I'm having performance issues (mostly when booting or running a VM). I can use Ubuntu on a flash drive and externally enlarge the partition, but I'm really afraid with going forward with that plan. Also, despite what I said before, I'd like to avoid re-installing the system if at all possible. Any advice, suggestions or ideas on how to best approach this? Any warnings I should heed? Thanks in advance! update Here's the gparted screenshot - as you can see, there's windows on dual boot (sda1-5 are all related to the windows system), then I have a linux swap, 14GB (so uh... not even 15) of system and 435 of for /home.

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  • How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

    - by Songo
    I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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  • Jump handling and gravity

    - by sprawl
    I'm new to game development and am looking for some help on improving my jump handling for a simple side scrolling game I've made. I would like to make the jump last longer if the key is held down for the full length of the jump, otherwise if the key is tapped, make the jump not as long. Currently, how I'm handling the jumping is the following: Player.prototype.jump = function () { // Player pressed jump key if (this.isJumping === true) { // Set sprite to jump state this.settings.slice = 250; if (this.isFalling === true) { // Player let go of jump key, increase rate of fall this.settings.y -= this.velocity; this.velocity -= this.settings.gravity * 2; } else { // Player is holding down jump key this.settings.y -= this.velocity; this.velocity -= this.settings.gravity; } } if (this.settings.y >= 240) { // Player is on the ground this.isJumping = false; this.isFalling = false; this.velocity = this.settings.maxVelocity; this.settings.y = 240; } } I'm setting isJumping on keydown and isFalling on keyup. While it works okay for simple use, I'm looking for a better way handle jumping and gravity. It's a bit buggy if the gravity is increased (which is why I had to put the last y setting in the last if condition in there) on keyup, so I'd like to know a better way to do it. Where are some resources I could look at that would help me better understand how to handle jumping and gravity? What's a better approach to handling this? Like I said, I'm new to game development so I could be doing it completely wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Automatic Appointment Conflict Resolution

    - by Thomas
    I'm trying to figure out an algorithm for resolving appointment times. I currently have a naive algorithm that pushes down conflicting appointments repeatedly, until there are no more appointments. # The appointment list is always sorted on start time appointment_list = [ <Appointment: 10:00 -> 12:00>, <Appointment: 11:00 -> 12:30>, <Appointment: 13:00 -> 14:00>, <Appointment: 13:30 -> 14:30>, ] Constraints are that appointments: cannot be after 15:00 cannot be before 9:00 This is the naive algorithm for i, app in enumerate(appointment_list): for possible_conflict in appointment_list[i+1:]: if possible_conflict.start < app.end: difference = app.end - possible_conflict.start possible_conflict.end += difference possible_conflict.start += difference else: break This results in the following resolution, which obviously breaks those constraints, and the last appointment will have to be pushed to the following day. appointment_list = [ <Appointment: 10:00 -> 12:00>, <Appointment: 12:00 -> 13:30>, <Appointment: 13:30 -> 14:30>, <Appointment: 14:30 -> 15:30>, ] Obviously this is sub-optimal, It performs 3 appointment moves when the confict could have been resolved with one: if we were able to push the first appointment backwards, we could avoid moving all the subsequent appointments down. I'm thinking that there should be a sort of edit-distance approach that would calculate the least number of appointments that should be moved in order to resolve the scheduling conflict, but I can't get the a handle on the methodology. Should it be breadth-first or depth first solution search. When do I know if the solution is "good enough"?

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  • How to present a stable data model in a public API that allows internal data structures to be changed without breaking the public view of the data?

    - by Max Palmer
    I am in the process of developing an application that allows users to write C# scripts. These scripts allow users to call selected methods and to access and manipulate data in a document. This works well, however, in the development version, scripts access the document's (internal) data structures directly. This means that if we were to change the internal data model/structure, there is a good chance that someone's script will no longer compile. We obviously want to prevent this breaking change from happening, but still want to allow the user to write sensible C# code (whilst not restricting how we develop our internal data model as a result). We therefore need to decouple our scripting API and its data structures from our internal methods and data structures. We've a few ideas as to how we might allow the user to access a what is effectively a stable public version of the document's internal data*, but I wanted to throw the question out there to someone who might have some real experience of this problem. NB our internal document's data structure is quite complex and it could be quite difficult to wrap. We know we want to expose as little as possible in our public API, especially as once it's out there, it's out there for good. Can anyone help? How do scripting languages / APIs decouple their public API and data structures from their internal data structures? Is there no real alternative to having to write a complex interaction layer? If we need to do this, what's a good approach or pattern for wrapping complex data structures that include nested objects, including collections? I've looked at the API facade pattern, which looks like it's trying to address these kinds of issues, but are there alternatives? *One idea is to build a data facade that is kept stable across versions of our application. The facade exposes a set of facade data objects that are used in the script code. These maintain backwards compatibility and wrap access to our internal document's data model.

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  • session management: verifying a user's log-in state

    - by good_computer
    I am storing sessions in my database. Everytime a user logs in, I create a new row corresponding to the new session, generate a new session id and send it as a cookie to the browser. My session data looks something like this: { 'user_id': 1234 'user_name': 'Sam' ... } When a request comes, I check whether a cookie with a session id is sent. If it is, I fetch session data from my database (or memcache) corresponding to that session id. When the user logs out, I remove the session data from my database (and memcache), and delete the cookie from the user's browser too. Notice that in my session data, I don't have something like logged_in: true. This is because if I find a session record in the database (or memcache) I deduce that the user is logged in, and if there is no session record found, the user is not logged in. My question is: is this the right approach? Should I have a logged_in key in my session data? Is there any possibility that a session record may be present on the server where the corresponding user is actually NOT logged in? Are there any security implications in having or not having such a key?

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  • Multiple sites with the same codebase in Python

    - by Jimmy
    I am trying to run a large amount of sites which share about 90% of their code. They are simply designed to query an API and return the results. They will have a common userbase / database but will be configured slightly different and will have different CSS (perhaps even different templating). My initial idea was to run them as separate applications with a common library but I have read about the sites framework which would allow them to run from a single instance of Django which may help to reduce memory usage. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/sites/ Is the site framework the right approach to a problem like this, and does it have real benefits over running separate applications? Initially I thought it was, but now I think otherwise. I have heard the following: Your SITE_ID is set in settings.py, so in order to have multiple sites, you need multiple settings.py configurations, which means multiple distinct processes/instances. You can of course share the code base between them, but each site will need a dedicated worker / WSGIDaemon to serve the site. This effectively removes any benefit of running multiple sites under one hood, if each site needs a UWSGI instance running. Alternative ideas of systems: https://github.com/iivvoo/django_layers https://github.com/shestera/django-multisite I don't know what route to be taking with this.

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