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• What are the best strategies for selling Android apps?

  - by Rob S.

  I'm a young developer hoping to sell my apps I made for Android soon. My applications are basically 99% finished so I'm investigating what would be the best marketing strategy to use to sell my apps. I'm sure the brilliant minds here can give me some great advice. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the following points (especially from experienced Android developers): Is it more profitable to sell an app for free with ads or to sell an app without ads for a price? Perhaps a combination of a free ad version and a paid ad-free version? If you give away an app for free with ads on it is it ethical to decline bending over backwards to support it? How much does piracy actually affect potential sales? Should any effort be put towards preventing it? Can you still make a profit off your application if you make it open source? Could you perhaps make more of a profit from the attention you would get by doing so? Is Google's Android Marketplace really the best place to release Android apps? It is worthwhile enough to maintain a developer blog or website to keep users updated on your development progress and software releases? Any other suggestions you could give me to maximize profit meanwhile keeping users happy and coming back for more would also be greatly appreciated. While I appreciate general tips and tricks, I'd like to ask that if possible you please go the extra step and show how they specifically apply to selling Android apps. Marketing statistics, developer retrospect, and any additional experience you can share from your time selling Android apps is what I would love to see most. Thank you very much in advance for your time. I truly appreciate all the responses I receive.

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• HDMI video output not working for external monitor

  - by user291852

  I have installed from scratch ubuntu GNOME 14.04 with gnome-flashback on my old HP HDX 16 laptop (core 2 duo p8600 + nvidia GT9600M + 4GB of ram) and I have problems with the HDMI output (I use it to extend my desktop on a dell U2412M 1920x1200 monitor). In the following I summarize the configurations that I have tried: Using the open source nouveau drivers, only the laptop monitor works, no signal from the external monitor connected to the HDMI output. However, the output of the xrandr command show that the HDMI output is connected with the correct resolution 1920x1200 (I find this thing really weird). Nouveau drivers with VGA connection works without problems on the external monitor, but the image is blurry compared to the HDMI connection. Using the nvidia drivers (I have tried different versions: nvidia-331-updates and the xorg-edgers versions nvidia-334 and nvidia-337) the HDMI output works, but I have system instabilities, random crashes and display freezes. I can't even enter in terminal mode with ctrl-alt-f1, so I have to manually shut down the laptop with the power button. I really would like to use the HDMI output with the nouveau drivers to avoid the system instabilities that I experienced with the nvidia drivers, but I can't figure out how to make it works. Alessandro

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• Understanding Visitor Pattern

  - by Nezreli

  I have a hierarchy of classes that represents GUI controls. Something like this: Control-ContainerControl-Form I have to implement a series of algoritms that work with objects doing various stuff and I'm thinking that Visitor pattern would be the cleanest solution. Let take for example an algorithm which creates a Xml representaion of a hierarchy of objects. Using 'classic' approach I would do this: public abstract class Control { public virtual XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = document.CreateElement(this.GetType().Name); // Create element, fill it with attributes declared with control return xml; } } public abstract class ContainerControl : Control { public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document); // Use forech to fill XmlElement with child XmlElements return xml; } } public class Form : ContainerControl { public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document) { XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document); // Fill remaining elements declared in Form class return xml; } } But I'm not sure how to do this with visitor pattern. This is the basic implementation: public class ToXmlVisitor : IVisitor { public void Visit(Form form) { } } Since even the abstract classes help with implementation I'm not sure how to do that properly in ToXmlVisitor. Perhaps there is a better solution to this problem. The reason that I'm considering Visitor pattern is that some algorithms will need references not available in project where the classes are implemented and there is a number of different algorithms so I'm avoiding large classes. Any thoughts are welcome.

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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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• Blur gets displaced compared to original image

  - by user1294203

  I have implemented a SSAO and I'm using a blur step to smooth it out. The problem is that the blurred texture is slightly displaced compared to the original. I'm blurring using a 4x4 kernel since that was my noise kernel in SSAO. The following is the blurring shader: float result = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++){ for(int j = 0; j < 4; j++){ vec2 offset = vec2(TEXEL_SIZE.x * i, TEXEL_SIZE.y * j); result += texture(aoSampler, TexCoord + offset).r; } } out_AO = vec4(vec3(0.0), result * 0.0625); Where TEXEL_SIZE is one over my window resolution. I was thinking that this is was an error based on how OpenGL counts the Texel center, so I tried displacing the texture coordinate I was using by 0.5 * TEXEL_SIZE, but there was still a slight displacement. The texture input to my blur shader, has wrap parameters: glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP); When I tell the blur shader to just output the the value of the pixel, the result is not displaced, so it must have something to do with how neighboring pixels are sampled. Any thoughts?

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• Hardware compatibility on H97 chipset/hardware support

  - by user3238850

  I am aware that there is documentation about compatibility but it is way out dated. I am also aware that there is a hardware compatibility page on Ubuntu website, but that one is focused on the whole box rather than a single piece of hardware. I have some experience with Linux OS, and some experience playing Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine, but never worked on a machine that lives in the real internet. I am building a home server with an Intel H97 chipset motherboard. I have looked at several models and none of them has Linux in the supported OS category. I have the experience of installing Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 on my 4-years-old lap top, and except for some system errors on start up, there is not too much I can complain about, so I guess I should be fine. However, this time I am going to install Ubuntu Server 14.04 on a relatively new piece of hardware(I went to http://linux-drivers.org/ but found nothing really helpful). For example the ASUS motherboard has M.2 socket and Intel LAN I218V chip, the Gigabyte motherboard has two LAN chips(Intel LAN WGI217V and ATHEROS AR8161-BL3A-R). So I really want to make sure everything will work. Usually I would just trust Ubuntu and buy all hardware I need, but basing on my past experience with the Ubuntu Desktop version on my lap top, I am not so convinced. There is an easily noticeable difference: when the system is idle, the fan runs much more frequently and longer under Ubuntu. This leads to my suspicion that generally hardware will have worse support for Ubuntu, which is no surprising at all but enough for me to put this post here. And as far as I know, some Intel CPU features come with software that usually will not run under Linux. Any help, idea or thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

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• MVP Pattern Philsophical Question - Security Checking in UI

  - by Brian

  Hello, I have a philosophical question about the MVP pattern: I have a component that checks whether a user has access to a certain privilege. This privilege turns on or off certain UI features. For instance, suppose you have a UI grid, and for each row that gets bound, I do a security check to see if certain features in the grid should be enabled or disabled. There are two ways to do this: have the UI/view call the component's method, determine if it has access, and enable/disable or show/hide. The other is have the view fire an event to the presenter, have the presenter do the check and return the access back down to the view through the model or through the event arg. As per the MVP pattern, which component should security checks fit into, the presenter or the view? Since the view is using it to determine its accessibility, it seems more fitting in the view, but it is doing database checks and all inside this business component, and there is business logic there, so I can see the reverse argument too. Thoughts? Thanks.

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• Inconsistent accessibility error in xna.

  - by Tom

  Hey all, you may remember me asking a question regarding a snake game I was creating about two weeks ago. Well I'm quite far now into making the game (thanks to a brilliant tutorial I found). But I've come across the error described named above. So heres my problem; I have a SnakeFood class that has a method called "Reposition". In the game1 class I have a method called "UpdateInGame" which calls the reposition method to load an orange that spawns in a random place every second. My latest piece of code changed the reposition method to allow the snake I have on the screen to not be overlapped by the orange that randomly spawns. Now I get the error (in full): Error 1 Inconsistent accessibility: parameter type 'TheMathsSnakeGame.Snake' is less accessible than method 'TheMathsSnakeGame.SnakeFood.Reposition(TheMathsSnakeGame.Snake)' C:\Users\Tom\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TheMathsSnakeGame\TheMathsSnakeGame\SnakeFood.cs 33 21 TheMathsSnakeGame I understand what the errors trying to tell me but having changed the accessiblity of the methods, I still can't get it to work. Sorry about the longwinded question. Thanks in advance :) Edit: Code I'm using (Game1 Class) private void UpdateInGame(GameTime gameTime) { //Calls the oranges "reposition" method every second if (gameTime.TotalGameTime.Milliseconds % 1000 == 0) orange.Reposition(sidney); sidney.Update(gameTime); } (SnakeFood Class) public void Reposition(Snake snake) { do { position = new Point(rand.Next(Grid.maxHeight), rand.Next(Grid.maxWidth)); } while (snake.IsBodyOnPoint(position)); }

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• Should I pick up a functional programming language?

  - by Statement

  I have recently been more concerned about the way I write my code. After reading a few books on design patterns (and overzealous implementation of them, I'm sure) I have shifted my thinking greatly toward encapsulating that which change. I tend to notice that I write less interfaces and more method-oriented code, where I love to spruce life into old classes with predicates, actions and other delegate tasks. I tend to think that it's often the actions that change, so I encapsulate those. I even often, although not always, break down interfaces to a single method, and then I prefer to use a delegate for the task instead of forcing client code to create a new class. So I guess it then hit me. Should I be doing functional programming instead? Edit: I may have a misconception about functional programming. Currently my language of choice is C#, and I come from a C++ background. I work as a game developer but I am currently unemployed. I have a great passion for architecture. My virtues are clean, flexible, reusable and maintainable code. I don't know if I have been poisoned by these ways or if it is for the better. Am I having a refactoring fever or should I move on? I understand this might be a question about "use the right tool for the job", but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should I pick up a functional language? One of my fear factors is to leave the comfort of Visual Studio.

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• Should Professional Development occur on company time?

  - by jshu

  As a first-time part-time software developer at a small consulting company, I'm struggling to organise time to further my own software development knowledge - whether that's reading a book, keeping up with the popular questions on StackOverflow, researching a technology we're using in-depth, or following the front page of Hacker News. I can see results borne from my self-allocated study time, but listing and demonstrating the skills and knowledge gained through Professional Development is difficult. The company does not have any defined PD policy, and there's a lot of pressure to get something deliverable done now! when working for consultants. I've checked what my coworkers do, and they don't appear to allocate any time to self-improvement; they just work at the problems they're given, looking up specific MSDN references, code samples, and the like as they need them. I realise that PD policy is going to vary across companies of different size and culture, and a company like my own is probably a bit of an edge case. I'd love to hear views and experiences from more seasoned developers; especially those who have to make the PD policy choices in their team or company. I'd also like to learn about the more radical approaches to PD, even if they're completely out there; it's always interesting to see what other people are trying. Not quite a summary, but what I'm trying to ask: Is it common or recommended for companies to allocate PD time? Whose responsibility is it to ensure a developer's knowledge and skills are up to date? Should a part-time work schedule inspire a lower ratio of PD time : work? How can a developer show non-developer coworkers that reading blogs and books is net productive? Is reading blogs and books actually net productive? (references welcomed) Is writing blogs effective as a way of PD? (a recent theme on Hacker News) This is sort of a broad question because I don't know exactly which questions I need to ask here, so any thoughts on relevant issues I haven't addressed are very welcome.

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• Calculating collision force with AfterCollision/NormalImpulse is unreliable when IgnoreCCD = false?

  - by Michael

  I'm using Farseer Physics Engine 3.3.1 in a very simple XNA 4 test game. (Note: I'm also tagging this Box2D, because Farseer is a direct port of Box2D and I will happily accept Box2D answers that solve this problem.) In this game, I'm creating two bodies. The first body is created using BodyFactory.CreateCircle and BodyType.Dynamic. This body can be moved around using the keyboard (which sets Body.LinearVelocity). The second body is created using BodyFactory.CreateRectangle and BodyType.Static. This body is static and never moves. Then I'm using this code to calculate the force of collision when the two bodies collide: staticBody.FixtureList[0].AfterCollision += new AfterCollisionEventHandler(AfterCollision); protected void AfterCollision(Fixture fixtureA, Fixture fixtureB, Contact contact) { float maxImpulse = 0f; for (int i = 0; i < contact.Manifold.PointCount; i++) maxImpulse = Math.Max(maxImpulse, contact.Manifold.Points[i].NormalImpulse); // maxImpulse should contain the force of the collision } This code works great if both of these bodies are set to IgnoreCCD=true. I can calculate the force of collision between them 100% reliably. Perfect. But here's the problem: If I set the bodies to IgnoreCCD=false, that code becomes wildly unpredictable. AfterCollision is called reliably, but for some reason the NormalImpulse is 0 about 75% of the time, so only about one in four collisions is registered. Worse still, the NormalImpulse seems to be zero for completely random reasons. The dynamic body can collide with the static body 10 times in a row in virtually exactly the same way, and only 2 or 3 of the hits will register with a NormalImpulse greater than zero. Setting IgnoreCCD=true on both bodies instantly solves the problem, but then I lose continuous physics detection. Why is this happening and how can I fix it? Here's a link to a simple XNA 4 solution that demonstrates this problem in action: http://www.mediafire.com/?a1w242q9sna54j4

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• Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• Friday Fun: Abduction

  - by Mysticgeek

  Finally another Friday has arrived and it’s time to waste the afternoon on company time playing a flash game. Today we take a look at a fun game called Abduction. Abduction Abduction is a neat game where you snatch people and livestock to sell them on the intergalactic market.   The controls are basic using the arrow keys or W,A,S,D and the left mouse button. Here is the tutorial that you can play first to get the hang of it. While you’re abducting hillbillies, they throw pitch forks and other objects at your craft so you need to avoid them.   The game has several levels to keep you distracted until quitting time. Play Abduction at FreeWebArcade Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Take Screenshots in Firefox the Easy WayFriday Fun: Portal, the Flash VersionFriday Fun: Play Bubble QuodFriday Fun: Gravitee 2Friday Fun: Compulse TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet

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• Efficient mapping layout in 2D side-scroller, and collisions between character and the world

  - by Jack

  I haven't touched Visual Studio for a couple months now, but I was playing a game from the '90s toady and had an epiphany: I was looking for something what i didn't need, and I wasn't using what I knew correctly. One of those realizations was collision, so let me tell you a bit about my project that I was working on. The project's graphics looks like Mario or Dangerous Dave, etc., you get the idea - old-school pixels. So anyway I remember trying to think of something else than AABB for character form, but I couldn't think of anything. Perhaps I could get a suggestion for this? Another thing is the world - I don't want it to be just linear world, I want mountains, etc.. My idea is to use triangles, and no idea yet what to do if I want just part of the cube, say 3/4 or 2/4 or whatever. Hard-coding such things seems inefficient. P.S. I am not looking at the precision level offered by Box2D. Actually I remember trying to implement it at first, but I failed as my understanding of C++ wasn't advanced enough, as it'll be mentioned below. P.P.S. I am programming in C++, and I haven't done it for a couple months now. I have no means of testing it either, as my PC is broken down, and this one can barely run games from late '90s, not to speak about a compiler or a program with inefficient resource management... I am also not an expert (obviously), I don't even know if I can consider myself an average programmer. In short, I am simply curious about my thoughts and my past experience when programming the game. I may come back to it when my PC is fixed, I'm already filling a note about these things.

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• Python or Ruby in 2011.

  - by Sleeper Smith

  What I'm really asking is, in the current services and technologies provided, which is a more "useful" language? Which one has more opportunity? Some background info first. I'm a .net C# dev for 5 years. Having done a few projects on Amazon AWS, I'm looking to start a few projects of my own. But Azure's too expensive, and AWS has too much management overhead. My current choice is Google App Engine and Python. Logical enough. But what I want to ask here is this: In Linux world, which is more useful? Recently heard about Heroku for Ruby. How viable is this? Looking at the pricing model indicates that it's more expensive. Which one has more up-to-date and exciting open source projects? For instance Trac is just plain out dated compared to Redmine. One of the big reason pulling me for Ruby is Redmine. Implementations? IronPython/IronRuby/JRuby etc etc. Which one is more standardised and more implementation agnostic? Which one is easier to port between Windows/Linux? Anyway, your input and thoughts are greatly appreciated. thanks.

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• The Science Behind Salty Airline Food

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  In this collection, Artist Signe Emma combines a scientific overview of the role salt plays in airline food with electron microscope scans of salt crystals arranged to look like the views from an airplane–a rather clever and visually stunning way to deliver the message. Attached to the collection is this explaination of why airlines load their snacks and meals with salt: White noise consists of a random collection of sounds at different frequencies and scientists have demonstrated that it is capable of diminishing the taste of salt. At low-pressure conditions, higher taste and odour thresholds of flavourings are generally observed. At 30.000 feet the cabin humidity drops by 15%, and the lowered air pressure forces bodily fluids upwards. With less humidity, people have less moisture in their throat, which slows the transport of odours to the brains smell and taste receptors. That means that if a meal should taste the same up in the air, as on ground it needs 30% of extra salt. To combat the double assault on our sense of taste, the airlines boost the salt content to compensate. For more neat microscope scans as high-altitude view photographs, hit up the link below. How to Play Classic Arcade Games On Your PC How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8

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• Microsoft IntelliMouse episodic pauses

  - by Rob Hills

  I have a Microsoft IntelliMouse connected via USB to a computer (directly, NOT via hub) currently running Ubuntu 11.10, but this problem also existed before we upgraded from 10.10. Every now and then (apparently randomly) the computer "pauses" for anything up to a few seconds. This usually occurs after a mouse movement and during the pause, the computer is completely unresponsive to mouse or keyboard. lsusb shows: Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0409:0058 NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05e3:0605 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB 2.0 Hub [ednet] Bus 003 Device 013: ID 045e:001e Microsoft Corp. IntelliMouse Explorer Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04a9:1097 Canon, Inc. PIXMA iP5000 Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0a5c:200a Broadcom Corp. Bluetooth dongle Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0911:1c57 Philips Speech Processing Bus 001 Device 008: ID 04a9:2219 Canon, Inc. CanoScan 9950F so the mouse appears to be correctly identified. Syslog episodically shows the following sequence: Jan 15 11:48:32 kayes-computer kernel: [10588.512036] usb 3-1: USB disconnect, device number 10 Jan 15 11:48:33 kayes-computer kernel: [10589.248026] usb 3-1: new low speed USB device number 11 using uhci_hcd Jan 15 11:48:33 kayes-computer mtp-probe: checking bus 3, device 11: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb3/3-1" Jan 15 11:48:33 kayes-computer kernel: [10589.448596] input: Microsoft Microsoft IntelliMouse® Explorer as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input11 Jan 15 11:48:33 kayes-computer kernel: [10589.448706] generic-usb 0003:045E:001E.000B: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft IntelliMouse® Explorer] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1/input0 Jan 15 11:48:33 kayes-computer mtp-probe: bus: 3, device: 11 was not an MTP device though I can't confirm if these are directly associated with the "pauses". Any thoughts on what might be causing this or what else I can do to diagnose the problem?

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• How to correctly export UV coordinates from Blender

  - by KlashnikovKid

  Alright, so I'm just now getting around to texturing some assets. After much trial and error I feel I'm pretty good at UV unwrapping now and my work looks good in Blender. However, either I'm using the UV data incorrectly (I really doubt it) or Blender doesn't seem to export the correct UV coordinates into the obj file because the texture is mapped differently in my game engine. And in Blender I've played with the texture panel and it's mapping options and have noticed it doesn't appear to affect the exported obj file's uv coordinates. So I guess my question is, is there something I need to do prior to exporting in order to bake the correct UV coordinates into the obj file? Or something else that needs to be done to massage the texture coordinates for sampling. Or any thoughts at all of what could be going wrong? (Also here is a screen shot of my diffused texture in blender and the game engine. As you can see in the image, I have the same problem with a simple test cube not getting correct uv's either) http://www.digitalinception.net/blenderSS.png http://www.digitalinception.net/gameSS.png

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• can't spot the error. Trying to increment

  - by Kevin Jensen Petersen

  I really can't spot the error, or the misspelling. This script should increase the variable currentTime with 1 every second, as long as i am holding the Space button down. This is Unity C#. using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class GameTimer : MonoBehaviour { //Timer private bool isTimeDone; public GUIText counter; public int currentTime; private bool starting; //Each message will be shown random each 20 seconds. public string[] messages; public GUIText msg; //To check if this is the end private bool end; void Update () { counter.guiText.text = currentTime.ToString(); if(Input.GetKey(KeyCode.Space)) { if(starting == false) { starting = true; } if(end == false) { if(isTimeDone) { StartCoroutine(timer()); } } else { msg.guiText.text = "You think you can do better? Press 'R' to Try again!"; if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.R)) { Application.LoadLevel(Application.loadedLevel); } } } if(!Input.GetKey(KeyCode.Space) & starting) { end = true; } } IEnumerator timer() { isTimeDone = false; yield return new WaitForSeconds(1); currentTime++; isTimeDone = true; } }

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• What's a good Game development platform for a platformer game with these characteristics?

  - by Joe

  Yes, I know, the best way to make an indie game is to learn to code. I've got some scripting experience, but I want to do worldbuilding with already-existing tools (and communities surrounding those tools), and I've been really impressed with games like An Untitled Story that were made with pre-packaged toolsets at their core, like Game Maker. :) So I'm planning to make my game using either Game Maker or something like it. The basic parameters of my planned game: -2D platformer. -Physics/speed akin to Sonic the Hedgehog. -Large, non-linear world, flowing as seamlessly as possible -- think Super Metroid, but without the forced screen transitions. The first two points have me leaning toward Game Maker -- Plenty of 2D platformers have been made with it, and there are serviceable, openly available Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style physics engines for it that could be adapted to my needs with minimal muss and fuss. But the third makes me antsy -- from what limited information I hear, Game Maker has problems with large levels/boards/screens/whateveryoucallthem, thus necessitating transitions between screens. I want to avoid that if at all possible -- it would, I believe, fundamentally alter the flow of the game. I understand that generally speaking, the more you have loaded into memory the more things are going to chug (especially for a one-size-fits-all game development platform that isn't a model of efficient coding), but I'm hoping there are systems that can un-load objects that are sufficiently far offscreen and thus better produce seamlessness. Any thoughts, people? :) The sooner I can get a basic pre-fab physics engine and world-building program up and running, the sooner I can start prototyping areas and generally tooling around. Should I be looking at Game Maker, or elsewhere? (My current plan is to more-or-less build the game prototype-style, then worry about art and sound at the very end once the damn thing is playable.)

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• Animating DOM elements vs refreshing a single Canvas

  - by mgibsonbr

  A few years ago, when the HTML Canvas element was still kinda fresh, I wrote a small game in a rather "unusual" way: each game element had its own canvas, and frequently animated elements even had multiple canvases, one for each animation sprite. This way, the translation would be done by manipulating the DOM position of the canvases, while the sprite animation would consist of altering the visibility of the already drawn canvases. (z-indexes, of course, were the tricky part) It worked like a charm: even in IE6 with excanvas it showed a decent performance, and everything was rather consistent between browsers, including some smartphones. Now I'm thinking in writing a larger game engine in the same fashion, so I'm wondering whether it would be a good idea to do so in the current context (with all the advances in browsers and so on). I know I'm trading memory for time, so this needs to be customizable (even at runtime) for each machine the game will be running. But I believe using separate canvases would also help to avoid the game "freezing" on CPU spikes, since the translation would still happen even if the redraws lag for a while. Besides, the browsers' rendering engines are already optimized in may ways, so I'm guessing this scheme would also reduce the load on the CPU (in contrast to doing everything in JavaScript - specially the less optimized ones). It looks good in my head, but I'd like to hear the opinion of more experienced people before proceeding further. Is there any known drawback of doing this? I'm particulartly unexperienced in dealing with the GPU, so I wonder whether this "trick" would nullify any benefit of using a single, big canvas. Or maybe on modern devices it's overkill (though I'm skeptic about the claims that canvas+js - especially WebGL - will ever be a good alternative to native code). Any thoughts?

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• Gödel, Escher, Bach - Gödel's string

  - by Brad Urani

  In the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, the author gives us a representation of the precursor to Gödel's string (Gödel's string's uncle) as: ~Ea,a': (I don't have the book in front of me but I think that's right). All that remains to get Gödel's string is to plug the Gödel number for this string into the free variable a''. What I don't understand is how to get the Gödel number for the functions PROOF-PAIR and ARITHMOQUINE. I understand how to write these functions in a programming language like FlooP (from the book) and could even write them myself in C# or Java, but the scheme that Hofstadter defines for Gödel numbering only applies to TNT (which is just his own syntax for natural number theory) and I don't see any way to write a procedure in TNT since it doesn't have any loops, variable assignments etc. Am I missing the point? Perhaps Gödel's string is not something that can actually be printed, but rather a theoretical string that need not actually be defined? I thought it would be neat to write a computer program that actually prints Gödel's string, or Gödel's string encoded by Gödel numbering (yes, I realize it would have a gazillion digits) but it seems like doing so requires some kind of procedural language and a Gödel numbering system for that procedural language that isn't included in the book. Of course once you had that, you could write a program that plugs random numbers into variable "a" and run procedure PROOF-PAIR on it to test for theoromhood of Gödel's string. If you let it run for a trillion years you might find a derivation that proves Gödel's string.

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• Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language

  - by Ricky Stewart

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

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• Which software to keep track of my project?

  - by Exa

  I'm about to start the first real phase of my game development which will consist of the acquisition of information, resources and the definition of where I want to go and what I will need for that. I just want to make sure that I'm prepared as best as possible before I actually start development. I don't like the thought of using Microsoft Word or Excel for my project management... I already worked with MS Project but I don't think it fits my needs. I need a software where I can easily maintain project steps, milestones, important issues, information about technologies and engines I use, as well as simple notes and thoughts I just want to write down. I usually prefer a whiteboard for stuff like that but unfortunately it's not a persistent way of storing. ;) Also writing it down the old-school way is something I can think of, but only for quick notes... Which software do you use for that? Are there commonly used programs? Is there any free software at all?

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• How often does Dreamhost change IP Addresses

  - by pjreddie

  So I just migrated our site to dreamhost because they are free for non-profits. However, right after I switched the nameservers over to them they changed the IP address of the site. So first they propagated out IP address x.x.x.180, then they switched it to x.x.x.178 and had to propagate that out. Point being it meant a lot of downtime since a lot of big DNS servers (like google) thought the address was still x.x.x.180 for up to 5 hours after they switched it. This is compounded by the fact that most our visitors to the site live here in Unalaska and we have local DNS servers that take a LONG time to update (like a day or more) since we get all our internet over satellite. So every time Dreamhost changes our IP address it can mean a day of downtime for us in our community. So my question is, how often do these changes take place? I asked Dreamhost support and they gave me a vague response: I wish I could say, however those changes happen at random times. They're not that frequent, maybe even months between updates, but there's no way to know for sure. First, I hardly believe that they don't know their own system well enough to give me at least some estimate or average. Second, is it worth looking at other providers so that I can get a static IP address? We were hosting the site here originally and hadn't run into this problem since we have a static IP here. We don't get a ton of traffic but usually around 500 hits a day or so, sometimes more if our stories are featured on statewide or national news broadcasts. So hours of downtime every time Dreamhost "randomly" decides to move our server location can be bad for our readership.

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