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  • How much knowledge do I need to begin a project in Django

    - by Smock
    I started learning django about a month ago. I have an intermediate C, Java programming experience. I read the first 8 chapters of the django book . Afterwards, I picked up Practical Django Projects by James Bennett and did the first two projects: CMS & Web Blog. Although, I started getting lost when he got to the generic views part. I know that's important but I'm not sure how important that is when trying to implement a project. Anyway, I have a project in mind that I'd like to start; however, I'm nervous as to where to begin. I'm overwhelmed with the number of things that I'd like my project to do but no knowledge or minimal knowledge as to how e.g. how do i implement css and javascript in my project. Moreover, I am aware that some django packages exists to ease development but I don't know if I should use them or not. Anyway, I apologize for my length message. I just want some advice/encouragement. I have a project in mind but do you think I need to read more materials/tutorials or is it smart to just start working on my project based on the minimal knowledge i've gained from those books? Any information that can be provided is much appreciated. I really want to get good at this but I just need some direction.

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  • Using SQL tables for storing user created level stats. Is there a better way?

    - by Ivan
    I am developing a racing game in which players can create their own tracks and upload them to a server. Players will be able to compare their best track times to their friends and see world records. I was going to generate a table for each track submitted to store the best times of each player who plays the track. However, I can't predict how many will be uploaded and I imagine too many tables might cause problems, or is this a valid method? I considered saving each player's best times in a string in a single table field like so: level1:00.45;level2:00.43;level3:00.12 If I did this I wouldn't need a separate table for each level (each level could just have a row in a 'WorldRecords' table). However, this just causes another problem because the text would eventually reach the limit for varchar length. I also considered storing the times data in XML files. This would avoid database issues and server disk space can be increased if needed. But I imagine this would be very slow. To update one players best time on one level, I would have to check every node in the file to find their time record to update. Apologies for the wall of text. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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  • Reading OpenDocument spreadsheets using C#

    - by DigiMortal
    Excel with its file formats is not the only spreadsheet application that is widely used. There are also users on Linux and Macs and often they are using OpenOffice and other open-source office packages that use ODF instead of OpenXML. In this post I will show you how to read Open Document spreadsheet in C#. Importer as example My previous post about importers showed you how to build flexible importers support to your web application. This post introduces you practical example of one of my importers. Of course, sensitive code is omitted. We start with ODS importer class and we add new methods as we go. public class OdsImporter : ImporterBase {     public OdsImporter()     {     }       public override string[] SupportedFileExtensions     {         get { return new[] { "ods" }; }     }       public override ImportResult Import(Stream fileStream, long companyId, short year)     {         string contentXml = GetContentXml(fileStream);           var result = new ImportResult();         var doc = XDocument.Parse(contentXml);           var rows = doc.Descendants("{urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0}table-row").Skip(1);           foreach (var row in rows)         {             ImportRow(row, companyId, year, result);         }           return result;     } } The class given here just extends base class for importers (previous post uses interface but as I already told there you move to abstract base class when writing code for real projects). Import method reads data from *.ods file, parses it (it is XML), finds all data rows and imports data. As you may see then first row is skipped. This is because the first row on my sheet is always headers row. Reading ODS file Our import method starts with getting XML from *.ods file. ODS files like OpenXml files are zipped containers that contain different files. We need content.xml as all data is kept there. To get the contents of file we use SharpZipLib library to read uploaded file as *.zip file. private static string GetContentXml(Stream fileStream) {     var contentXml = "";       using (var zipInputStream = new ZipInputStream(fileStream))     {         ZipEntry contentEntry = null;         while ((contentEntry = zipInputStream.GetNextEntry()) != null)         {             if (!contentEntry.IsFile)                 continue;             if (contentEntry.Name.ToLower() == "content.xml")                 break;         }           if (contentEntry.Name.ToLower() != "content.xml")         {             throw new Exception("Cannot find content.xml");         }           var bytesResult = new byte[] { };         var bytes = new byte[2000];         var i = 0;           while ((i = zipInputStream.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)) != 0)         {             var arrayLength = bytesResult.Length;             Array.Resize<byte>(ref bytesResult, arrayLength + i);             Array.Copy(bytes, 0, bytesResult, arrayLength, i);         }         contentXml = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytesResult);     }     return contentXml; } If here is content.xml file then we stop browsing the file. We read this file to memory and return it as UTF-8 format string. Importing rows Our last task is to import rows. We use special method for this as we have to handle some tricks here. To keep files smaller the cell count on row is not always the same. If we have more than one empty cell one after another then ODS keeps only one cell for sequential empty cells. This cell has attribute called number-columns-repeated and it’s value is set to the number of sequential empty cells. This is why we use two indexers for cells collection. private void ImportRow(XElement row, ImportResult result) {     var cells = (from c in row.Descendants()                 where c.Name == "{urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0}table-cell"                 select c).ToList();       var dto = new DataDto();       var count = cells.Count;     var j = -1;       for (var i = 0; i < count; i++)     {         j++;         var cell = cells[i];         var attr = cell.Attribute("{urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:table:1.0}number-columns-repeated");         if (attr != null)         {             var numToSkip = 0;             if (int.TryParse(attr.Value, out numToSkip))             {                 j += numToSkip - 1;             }         }           if (i > 30) break;         if (j == 0)         {             dto.SomeProperty = cells[i].Value;         }         if (j == 1)         {             dto.SomeOtherProperty = cells[i].Value;         }         // some more data reading     }       // save data } You can define your own class for import results and add there all problems found during data import. Your application gets the results and shows them to user. Conclusion Reading ODS files may seem to complex task but actually it is very easy if we need only data from those documents. We can use some zip-library to get the content file and then parse it to XML. It is not hard to go through the XML but there are some optimization tricks we have to know. The code here is safe to use in web applications as it is not using any API-s that may have special needs to server and infrastructure.

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  • Converting a bounded knapsack problem to 0/1 knapsack problem

    - by Ants
    I ran across a problem where goal was to use dynamic programming (instead of other approaches). There is a distance to be spanned, and a set of cables of different lengths. What is the minimum number of cables needed to span the distance exactly? To me this looked like a knapsack problem, but since there could be multiples of a particular length, it was a bounded knapsack problem, rather than a 0/1 knapsack problem. (Treat the value of each item to be its weight.) Taking the naive approach (and not caring about the expansion of the search space), the method I used to convert the bounded knapsack problem into a 0/1 knapsack problem, was simply break up the multiples into singles and apply the well-known dynamic programming algorithm. Unfortunately, this leads to sub-optimal results. For example, given cables: 1 x 10ft, 1 x 7ft, 1 x 6ft, 5 x 3ft, 6 x 2ft, 7 x 1ft If the target span is 13ft, the DP algorithm picks 7+6 to span the distance. A greedy algorithm would have picked 10+3, but it's a tie for minimum number of cables. The problem arises, when trying to span 15ft. The DP algorithm ended up picking 6+3+3+3 to get 4 cables, while the greedy algorithm correctly picks 10+3+2 for only 3 cables. Anyway, doing some light scanning of converting bounded to 0/1, it seems like the well-known approach to convert multiple items to { p, 2p, 4p ... }. My question is how does this conversion work if p+2p+4p does not add up to the number of multiple items. For example: I have 5 3ft cables. I can't very well add { 3, 2x3, 4x3 } because 3+2x3+4x3 5x3. Should I add { 3, 4x3 } instead? [I'm currently trying to grok the "Oregon Trail Knapsack Problem" paper, but it currently looks like the approach used there is not dynamic programming.]

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  • When mapping the surface of a sphere with tiles, how might you deal with polar distortion?

    - by clweeks
    It's easy to deal with the way locations interact on a clean Cartesian grid. It's just vanilla math. And you can kind of ignore the geometry of the sphere's surface for a bunch of it if you want to just truncate the poles or something. But I keep coming up with ideas for games where the polar space matters. Geo-coded ARGs and global roguelikes and stuff. I want square(ish?) locations -- reasonably representable by square tiles of the same size across the globe, anyway. This has to be a solved problem, right? What are the solutions? ETA: At the equator -- and assuming that your square locations are reasonably small, it's close enough to true that you can get away with having one square in the rows north and south of the most equatorial row. And you could probably get away with that by just hand-waving the difference up to like 45-degrees or so. But eventually, you need to have fewer squares in a pole-ward circumferential row. If I reduce the length of the row by one and offset the squares by 1/2 then they're just like hexes and it's relatively easy to do the coding to keep track of the connections. But as you get pole-ward, it gets more and more extreme. Projecting the surface of the world onto the surface of a cube is tempting. But I figured there must be more elegant solutions already in use. If I did the cube thing (not dissecting it further through geodesy) Are there any pros and cons related to placing the pole at the center of a face or at the vertex of three sides?

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  • Why doesn't Firefox cache my images and CSS

    - by Richard A
    I am using IIS7, I have already set up the following. But when I run Firefox it seems not to cache any of my images even with "remember history" set. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <configuration> <system.webServer> <staticContent> <clientCache cacheControlCustom="public" cacheControlMode="UseMaxAge" cacheControlMaxAge="7.00:00:00" /> </staticContent> </system.webServer> </configuration> However when I use Firebug it still points to Firefox not caching images and CSS: public,max-age=604800 Content-Type text/css Content-Encoding gzip Last-Modified Mon, 27 Jun 2011 03:53:22 GMT Accept-Ranges bytes Etag "507968c27d34cc1:0" Vary Accept-Encoding Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-Powered-By ASP.NET Date Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:06:41 GMT Content-Length 5067 Request Headersview source Host www.xx.com User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1 Accept text/css,*/*;q=0.1 Accept-Language en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip, deflate Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive 115 Connection keep-alive Referer http://www.xx.com/ Cookie __utma=62996397.135679654.1309106351.1309159743.1309164158.8; __utmz=62996397.1309106351.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __utmc=62996397

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  • Thematic map contd.

    - by jsharma
    The previous post (creating a thematic map) described the use of an advanced style (color ranged-bucket style). The bucket style definition object has an attribute ('classification') which specifies the data classification scheme to use. It's values can be one of {'equal', 'quantile', 'logarithmic', 'custom'}. We use logarithmic in the previous example. Here we'll describe how to use a custom algorithm for classification. Specifically the Jenks Natural Breaks algorithm. We'll use the Javascript implementation in geostats.js The sample code above needs a few changes which are listed below. Include the geostats.js file after or before including oraclemapsv2.js <script src="geostats.js"></script> Modify the bucket style definition to use custom classification Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}    bucketStyleDef = {       numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes,       classification: 'custom', //'logarithmic',  // use a logarithmic scale       algorithm: jenksFromGeostats,       styles: theStyles,       gradient:  useGradient? 'linear' : 'off'     }; The function, which implements the custom classification scheme, is specified as the algorithm attribute value. It must accept two input parameters, an array of OM.feature and the name of the feature attribute (e.g. TOTPOP) to use in the classification, and must return an array of buckets (i.e. an array of or OM.style.Bucket  or OM.style.RangedBucket in this case). However the algorithm also needs to know the number of classes (i.e. the number of buckets to create). So we use a global to pass that info in. (Note: This bug/oversight will be fixed and the custom algorithm will be passed 3 parameters: the features array, attribute name, and number of classes). So createBucketColorStyle() has the following changes Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} var numClasses ; function createBucketColorStyle( colorName, colorSeries, rangeName, useGradient) {    var theBucketStyle;    var bucketStyleDef;    var theStyles = [];    //var numClasses ; numClasses = colorSeries[colorName].classes; ... and the function jenksFromGeostats is defined as Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} function jenksFromGeostats(featureArray, columnName) {    var items = [] ; // array of attribute values to be classified    $.each(featureArray, function(i, feature) {         items.push(parseFloat(feature.getAttributeValue(columnName)));    });    // create the geostats object    var theSeries = new geostats(items);    // call getJenks which returns an array of bounds    var theClasses = theSeries.getJenks(numClasses);    if(theClasses)    {     theClasses[theClasses.length-1]=parseFloat(theClasses[theClasses.length-1])+1;    }    else    {     alert(' empty result from getJenks');    }    var theBuckets = [], aBucket=null ;    for(var k=0; k<numClasses; k++)    {             aBucket = new OM.style.RangedBucket(             {low:parseFloat(theClasses[k]),               high:parseFloat(theClasses[k+1])             });             theBuckets.push(aBucket);     }     return theBuckets; } A screenshot of the resulting map with 5 classes is shown below. It is also possible to simply create the buckets and supply them when defining the Bucket style instead of specifying the function (algorithm). In that case the bucket style definition object would be    bucketStyleDef = {      numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes,      classification: 'custom',        buckets: theBuckets, //since we are supplying all the buckets      styles: theStyles,      gradient:  useGradient? 'linear' : 'off'    };

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  • Algorithmic problem - quickly finding all #'s where value %x is some given value

    - by Steve B.
    Problem I'm trying to solve, apologies in advance for the length: Given a large number of stored records, each with a unique (String) field S. I'd like to be able to find through an indexed query all records where Hash(S) % N == K for any arbitrary N, K (e.g. given a million strings, find all strings where HashCode(s) % 17 = 5. Is there some way of memoizing this so that we can quickly answer any question of this form without doing the % on every value? The motivation for this is a system of N distributed nodes, where each record has to be assigned to at least one node. The nodes are numbered 0 - (K-1) , and each node has to load up all of the records that match it's number: If we have 3 nodes Node 0 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==0 Node 1 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==1 Node 2 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==2 adding a 4th node, obviously all the assignments have to be recomputed - Node 0 loads all records where Hash % 4 ==0 ... etc I'd like to easily find these records through an indexed query without having to compute the mod individually. The best I've been able to come up with so far: If we take the prime factors of N (p1 * p2 * ... ) if N % M == I then p % M == I % p for all of N's prime factors e.g. 10 nodes : N % 10 == 6 then N % 2 = 0 == 6 %2 N % 5 = 1 == 6 %5 so storing an array of the "%" of N for the first "reasonable" number of primes for my data set should be helpful. For example in the above example we store the hash and the primes HASH PRIMES (array of %2, %3, %5, %7, ... ]) 16 [0 1 1 2 .. ] so looking for N%10 == 6 is equivalent to looking for all values where array[1]==1 and array[2] == 1. However, this breaks at the first prime larger than the highest number I'm storing in the factor table. Is there a better way?

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  • Bust Out these 13 Spooky Games for Halloween

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Looking for a suitably spooky board game for Halloween? This roundup includes everything from the light-hearted to the dark and challenging. Over at GeekDad they’ve rounded up 13 horror/Halloween themed board games to help you fill your holiday board gaming quota. The list includes classics like the in-depth and atmospheric Arkham Horror to more recent and kid-friendly GeistesBlitz. Although we think their list is rock solid and includes some great titles, we’re disappointed to see that Witch of Salem, a great lighter-weight alternative to Arkham Horror for those nights you want some cooperative H.P. Lovecraft inspired play without the massive setup and game length, didn’t make the list. To check out the full GeekDad list hit up the link below, for more boardgame-centric reading we highly recommend the excellent board gaming site BoardgameGeek. 13 Spooky Board Games for Your Halloween Game Night [GeekDad] What Is the Purpose of the “Do Not Cover This Hole” Hole on Hard Drives? How To Log Into The Desktop, Add a Start Menu, and Disable Hot Corners in Windows 8 HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn’t Use a Task Killer On Android

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  • Interpolation between two 3D points?

    - by meds
    I'm working with some splines which define a path a character follows (you can see a gameplay video here to get a better understanding of what's going on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BndobjOiZ6g). Basically the characters 'forward' look direction is set to the 'forward' direction of the spline and when players tilt their phone left and right the character is strafed along its 'right' coordinate. The issue with this is (rather obviously) in performance, interpolating over a spline to find the nearest position and tangent relative to the player is an incredibly costly operation. To get by this I cache a finite number of positions in what I call 'SplineDetails', the class is as follows: public class SplineDetails { public SplineDetails() { Forward = Vector3.forward; Position = Vector3.one * float.MaxValue; Alpha = -1; } public float Alpha; // [0,1] measured along length of spline where 0 is the initial point and 1 is the end point of the spline public Vector3 Position; // the point of the spline at this alpha public Vector3 Forward; // the forward tangent of the spline at this alpha } I populate this with say 30 coordinates and I can give a rough estimate of a coordinate and 'forward' based on a position past in. It's not as accurate but it's much faster. But now I'd like to make the system work better by estimating positions and 'forward' directions by interpolating between two of the cached points though I'm stuck trying to figure out some logic. My first problem is, how can I determine between which two points the object is? Given each point can be placed at different intervals along the spline it could mean that two points in front or behind the object can be closer to the object. The other problem is to figure out the proportion between the two paths it's between, i.e. if there is a point a at coordinate (0,0,0) and point b at coordinate (1,0,0) if the object is at position (0.5,0,0) then the result it should give is '0.5' (as it is equal distance away from point a and point b). That's a simple example, but what if the object is at coordinate (0.5,3,0) for example?

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  • Should we encourage coding styles in favor of developer's autonomy, or discourage it in favor of consistency?

    - by Saeed Neamati
    A developer writes if/else blocks with one-line code statements like: if (condition) // Do this one-line code else // Do this one-line code Another uses curly braces for all of them: if (condition) { // Do this one-line code } else { // Do this one-line code } A developer first instantiates an object, then uses it: HelperClass helper = new HelperClass(); helper.DoSomething(); Another developer instantiates and uses the object in one line: new HelperClass().DoSomething(); A developer is more easy with arrays, and for loops: string[] ordinals = new string[] {'First', 'Second', 'Third'}; for (i = 0; i < ordinals.Length; i++) { // Do something } Another writes: List<string> ordinals = new List<string>() {'First', 'Second', 'Third'}; foreach (string ordinal in ordinals) { // Do something } I'm sure that you know what I'm talking about. I call it coding style (cause I don't know what it's called). But whatever we call it, is it good or bad? Does encouraging it have an effect of higher productivity of developers? Should we ask developers to try to write code the way we tell them, so to make the whole system become style-consistent?

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  • Disappearring instances of VertexPositionColor using MonoGame

    - by Rosko
    I am a complete beginner in graphics developing with XNA/Monogame. Started my own project using Monogame 3.0 for WinRT. I have this unexplainable issue that some of the vertices disappear while doing some updates on them. Basically, it is a game with balls who collide with the walls and with each other and in certain conditions they explode. When they explode they disappear. Here is a video demonstrating the issue. I used wireframes so that it is easier to see how vertices are missing. The perfect exploding balls are the ones which are result by user input with mouse clicking. Thanks for the help. The situations is: I draw user primitives with triangle strips using like this graphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives<VertexPositionColor>(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, circleVertices, 0, primitiveCount); All of the primitives are in the z-plane (z = 0), I thought that it is the culling in action. I tried setting the culling mode to none but it did not help. Here is the code responsible for the explosion private void Explode(GameTime gameTime, ref List<Circle> circles) { if (this.isExploding) { for (int i = 0; i < this.circleVertices.Length; i++) { if (this.circleVertices[i] != this.circleCenter) { if (Vector3.Distance(this.circleVertices[i].Position, this.circleCenter.Position) < this.explosionRadius * precisionCoefficient) { var explosionVector = this.circleVertices[i].Position - this.circleCenter.Position; explosionVector.Normalize(); explosionVector *= explosionSpeed; circleVertices[i].Position += explosionVector * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; } else { circles.Remove(this); } } } } } I'd be really greatful if anyone has suggestions about how to fix this issue.

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  • Is there a canonical source supporting "all-surrogates"?

    - by user61852
    Background The "all-PK-must-be-surrogates" approach is not present in Codd's Relational Model or any SQL Standard (ANSI, ISO or other). Canonical books seems to elude this restrictions too. Oracle's own data dictionary scheme uses natural keys in some tables and surrogate keys in other tables. I mention this because these people must know a thing or two about RDBMS design. PPDM (Professional Petroleum Data Management Association) recommend the same canonical books do: Use surrogate keys as primary keys when: There are no natural or business keys Natural or business keys are bad ( change often ) The value of natural or business key is not known at the time of inserting record Multicolumn natural keys ( usually several FK ) exceed three columns, which makes joins too verbose. Also I have not found canonical source that says natural keys need to be immutable. All I find is that they need to be very estable, i.e need to be changed only in very rare ocassions, if ever. I mention PPDM because these people must know a thing or two about RDBMS design too. The origins of the "all-surrogates" approach seems to come from recommendations from some ORM frameworks. It's true that the approach allows for rapid database modeling by not having to do much business analysis, but at the expense of maintainability and readability of the SQL code. Much prevision is made for something that may or may not happen in the future ( the natural PK changed so we will have to use the RDBMS cascade update funtionality ) at the expense of day-to-day task like having to join more tables in every query and having to write code for importing data between databases, an otherwise very strightfoward procedure (due to the need to avoid PK colisions and having to create stage/equivalence tables beforehand ). Other argument is that indexes based on integers are faster, but that has to be supported with benchmarks. Obviously, long, varying varchars are not good for PK. But indexes based on short, fix-length varchar are almost as fast as integers. The questions - Is there any canonical source that supports the "all-PK-must-be-surrogates" approach ? - Has Codd's relational model been superceded by a newer relational model ?

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  • Sampling Heightmap Edges for Normal map

    - by pl12
    I use a Sobel filter to generate normal maps from procedural height maps. The heightmaps are 258x258 pixels. I scale my texture coordinates like so: texCoord = (texCoord * (256/258)) + (1/258) Yet even with this I am left with the following problem: As you can see the edges of the normal map still proves to be problematic. Putting the texture wrap mode to "clamp" also proved no help. EDIT: The Sobel Filter function by sampling the 8 surrounding pixels around a given pixel so that a derivative can be calculated in order to find the "normal" of the given pixel. The texture coordinates are instanced once per quad (for the quadtree that makes up the world) and are created as follows (it is quite possible that the problem results from the way I scale and offset the texCoords as seen above): Java: for(int i = 0; i<vertices.length; i++){ Vector2f coord = new Vector2f((vertices[i].x)/(worldSize), (vertices[i].z)/( worldSize)); texCoords[i] = coord; } the quad used for input here rests on the X0Z plane. 'worldSize' is the diameter of the planet. No negative texCoords are seen as the quad used for input for this method is not centered around the origin. Is there something I am missing here? Thanks.

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  • Whats a good way to do Collision with 2D Rectangles? can someone give me a tip?

    - by Javier
    using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace BreakOut { class Field { public static Field generateField() { List<Block> blocks = new List<Block>(); for (int j = 0; j < BlockType.BLOCK_TYPES.Length; j++) for (int i = 0; i < (Game1.WIDTH / Block.WIDTH); i++) { Block b = new Block(BlockType.BLOCK_TYPES[j], new Vector2(i * Block.WIDTH, (Block.HEIGHT + 2) * j + 5)); blocks.Add(b); } return new Field(blocks); } List<Block> blocks; public Field(List<Block> blocks) { this.blocks = blocks; } public void Update(GameTime gameTime, Ball b) { List<Block> removals = new List<Block>(); foreach (Block o in blocks) { if (o.BoundingBox.Intersects(new Rectangle((int)b.pos.X, (int)b.pos.Y, Ball.WIDTH, Ball.HEIGHT))) //collision with blocks { removals.Add(o); } } foreach(Block o in removals) blocks.Remove(o); //removes the blocks, but i need help hitting one at a time } public void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { foreach (Block b in blocks) b.Draw(gameTime); } } } My problem is that My collision in this sucks. I'm trying to add collision with a ball and hitting against a block and then one of the blocks dissapear. The problem i'm having is: When the ball hits the block, it removes it all in one instance. Please people don't be mean and say mean answers to me, im just in highschool, still a nooby and trying to learn more c#/XNA..

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  • 3d Picking under reticle

    - by Wolftousen
    i'm currently trying to work out some 3d picking code that I started years ago, but then lost interested the assignment was completed (this part wasn't actually part of the assignment). I am not using the mouse coords for picking, i'm just using the position in 3d space and a ray directly out from there. A small hitch though is that I want to use a cone and not a ray. Here are the variables i'm using: float iReticleSlope = 95/3000; //inverse reticle slope float baseReticle = 1; //radius of the reticle at z = 0 float maxRange = 3000; //max range to target Quaternion orientation; //the cameras orientation Vector3d position; //the cameras position Then I loop through each object in the world: Vector3d transformed; //object position after transformations float d, r; //holder variables for(i = 0; i < objects.length; i++) { transformed = position - objects[i].position; //transform the position relative to camera orientation.multiply(transformed); //orient the object relative to the camera if(transformed.z < 0) { d = sqrt(transformed[0] * transformed[0] + transformed[1] * transformed[1]); r = -transformed[2] * iReticleSlope + objects[i].radius; if(d < r && -transformed[2] - objects[i].radius <= maxRange) { //the object is under the reticle } else { //the object is not under the reticle } } else { //the object is not under the reticle } } Now this all works fine and dandy until the window ratio doesn't match the resolution ratio. Is there any simple way to account for that

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  • Visually and audibly unambiguous subset of the Latin alphabet?

    - by elliot42
    Imagine you give someone a card with the code "5SBDO0" on it. In some fonts, the letter "S" is difficult to visually distinguish from the number five, (as with number zero and letter "O"). Reading the code out loud, it might be difficult to distinguish "B" from "D", necessitating saying "B as in boy," "D as in dog," or using a "phonetic alphabet" instead. What's the biggest subset of letters and numbers that will, in most cases, both look unambiguous visually and sound unambiguous when read aloud? Background: We want to generate a short string that can encode as many values as possible while still being easy to communicate. Imagine you have a 6-character string, "123456". In base 10 this can encode 10^6 values. In hex "1B23DF" you can encode 16^6 values in the same number of characters, but this can sound ambiguous when read aloud. ("B" vs. "D") Likewise for any string of N characters, you get (size of alphabet)^N values. The string is limited to a length of about six characters, due to wanting to fit easily within the capacity of human working memory capacity. Thus to find the max number of values we can encode, we need to find that largest unambiguous set of letters/numbers. There's no reason we can't consider the letters G-Z, and some common punctuation, but I don't want to have to go manually pairwise compare "does G sound like A?", "does G sound like B?", "does G sound like C" myself. As we know this would be O(n^2) linguistic work to do =)...

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  • Calculate travel time on road map with semaphores

    - by Ivansek
    I have a road map with intersections. At intersections there are semaphores. For each semaphore I generate a red light time and green light time which are represented with syntax [R:T1, G:T2], for example: 119 185 250 A ------- B: [R:6, G:4] ------ C: [R:5, G:5] ------ D I want to calculate a car travel time from A - D. Now I do this with this pseudo code: function get_travel_time(semaphores_configuration) { time = 0; for( i=1; i<path.length;i++) { prev_node = path[i-1]; next_node = path[i]); cost = cost_between(prev_node, next_node) time += (cost/movement_speed) // movement_speed = 50px per second light_times = get_light_times(path[i], semaphore_configurations) lights_cycle = get_lights_cycle(light_times) // Eg: [R,R,R,G,G,G,G], where [R:3, G:4] lights_sum = light_times.green_time+light_times.red_light; // Lights cycle time light = lights_cycle[cost%lights_sum]; if( light == "R" ) { time += light_times.red_light; } } return time; } So for distance 119 between A and B travel time is, 119/50 = 2.38s ( exactly mesaured time is between 2.5s and 2.6s), then we add time if we came at a red light when at B. If we came at a red light is calculated with lines: lights_cycle = get_lights_cycle(light_times) // Eg: [R,R,R,G,G,G,G], where [R:3, G:4] lights_sum = light_times.green_time+light_times.red_light light = lights_cycle[cost%lights_sum]; if( light == "R" ) { time += light_times.red_light; } This pseudo code doesn't calculate exactly the same times as they are mesaured, but the calculations are very close to them. Any idea how I would calculate this?

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  • Making particle bounce off a line with friction

    - by Dlaor
    So I'm making a game and I need a particle to bounce off a line. I've got this so far: public static Vector2f Reflect(this Vector2f vec, Vector2f axis) //vec is velocity { Vector2f result = vec - 2f * axis * axis.Dot(vec); return result; } Which works fine, but then I decided I wanted to be able to change the bounciness and friction of the bounce. I got bounciness down... public static Vector2f Reflect(this Vector2f vec, Vector2f axis, float bounciness) //Bounciness goes from 0 to 1, 0 being not bouncy and 1 being perfectly bouncy { var reflect = (1 + bounciness); //2f Vector2f result = vec - reflect * axis * axis.Dot(vec); return result; } But when I tried to add friction, everything went to hell and back... public static Vector2f Reflect(this Vector2f vec, Vector2f axis, float bounciness, float friction) //Does not work at all! { var reflect = (1 + bounciness); //2f Vector2f subtract = reflect * axis * axis.Dot(vec); Vector2f subtract2 = axis * axis.Dot(vec); Vector2f result = vec - subtract; result -= axis.PerpendicularLeft() * subtract2.Length() * friction; return result; } Any physics guys willing to help me out with this? (if you're not sure what I mean with the friction of a bounce see this: http://www.metanetsoftware.com/technique/diagrams/A-1_particle_collision.swf)

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  • Index Check and Correct Character Display in a Console Hangman Game for Java

    - by Jen
    I have this problem wherein, I can not display the correct characters given by the character. Here's what I meant: String words, in; String replaced_words; Scanner s = new Scanner (System.in); System.out.println("Enter a line of words basing on an event, verse, place or a name of a person."); words = s.nextLine(); System.out.println("The words you just placed are now accepted."); //using char array method, we tried to place the words into a characters array. char [] c = words.toCharArray(); // we need to replace the replaced_words = words.replace(' ', '_').replaceAll("[^\\-]", "-"); for (int i = 0; i < replaced_words.length(); i++) { System.out.print(replaced_words.charAt(i) + " "); } System.out.println("Now, please input a character, guessing the words you just placed."); in = s.nextLine(); in that code, want that the user, when types a word (or should it be character?), any of the correct character the user inputs will be displayed, and changes the hyphen to it...(more like the hangman series of games). How can I achieve this?

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  • How to justify rewriting/revamping legacy software in a business case?

    - by sxthomson
    I work for a great little software company which makes good revenue from our main software package. The problem for me is that it's almost unmaintainable. It's written in Delphi 7 (has upgraded versions over time) and has been worked on by a lot of developers over the past 20 or so years. The software lacks any meaningful architecture - there's no object orientation whatsoever, horrible amounts of cyclical dependencies and an over-reliance on global variables to name just a few things. Another huge thing for me is Delphi 7 does NOT support 64-bit. The problem here for me is that my management team don't care about technical things, they want to know why they should care. Obviously that's expected, so what I'm asking here is for some guidance, or tales, or pitfalls about this kind of thing. There's a few things I would love to include, namely for me, the length of time taken to debug/write a feature in "legacy" code, versus coherent, well structured OO code. Does anyone know of any blog posts or the like where this is talked about? For us in the company this is a huge reason. Despite being decent developers we feel like writing a new feature is just piling more rubbish on top. On top of that, even for me who has a decent level of understanding of the code, changing things is infuriating - a small change can have a ridiculous domino effect. Anyone have any experiences they'd like to share?

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  • Employers and intellectual property 2

    - by Rick
    I have a question about intellectual property, I am currently a manager in a small manufacturing firm. The owners are driven by greed and don't appreciate the development process of complex machinery and are happy just to send things out half done. I on the other hand think that it should be done properly as breakdown in the field can be costly, embarrassing. They seem to have all of us running around doing most of the work out of hours using the attitude of "Be grateful to have a job" yet no one has a contract or any security or any agreement in place. For a couple of the projects i am using PLC's and doing the code in my own time and the testing during company time, and i am aware that they cannot support their own machines if i left, but as i created the code in my own time who owns it? The have asked my to put in a shutdown code for a maintenance request after a given length of time, could this be classed as criminal damage or anything illegal apart from immoral? (we sell the machines with 12 month warrantee, shut down after) But as time goes on I'm getting rather fed up of the companies attitude toward the client. I am considering keeping the clients as my own and get them to contact me directly In the shutdown code. By doing something like this is a trial version contact me for a full license? I wouldn't feel bad for my current employer as he is not afraid to S***t on people as he has been evolved in numerous law suits and has over 30 failed companies leaving people and customers high and dry, we have took the company this far on the reputation of the workers and and i can see things heading like all the other companies he has owned and taking our reputations with him. So i suppose now i have set the scene, if i code into it to contact me directly in the shutdown could there be any legal impact on me, as i rightly or wrongly think i own the code and designs? Cheers R

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  • String manipulation functions in SQL Server 2000 / 2005

    - by Vipin
    SQL Server provides a range of string manipulation functions. I was aware of most of those in back of the mind, but when I needed to use one, I had to dig it out either from SQL server help file or from google. So, I thought I will list some of the functions which performs some common operations in SQL server. Hope it will be helpful to you all. Len (' String_Expression' ) - returns the length of input String_Expression. Example - Select Len('Vipin') Output - 5 Left ( 'String_Expression', int_characters ) - returns int_characters characters from the left of the String_Expression.     Example - Select Left('Vipin',3), Right('Vipin',3) Output -  Vip,  Pin  LTrim ( 'String_Expression' ) - removes spaces from left of the input 'String_Expression'  RTrim ( 'String_Expression' ) - removes spaces from right of the input 'String_Expression' Note - To removes spaces from both ends of the string_expression use Ltrim and RTrim in conjunction Example - Select LTrim(' Vipin '), RTrim(' Vipin ') , LTrim ( RTrim(' Vipin ')) Output - 'Vipin ' , ' Vipin' , 'Vipin' (Single quote marks ' ' are not part of the SQL output, it's just been included to demonstrate the presence of space at the end of string.) Substring ( 'String_Expression' , int_start , int_length ) - this function returns the part of string_expression. Right ( 'String_Expression', int_characters ) - returns int_characters characters from the right of the String_Expression.

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  • Collision detection between a sprite and rectangle in canvas

    - by Andy
    I'm building a Javascript + canvas game which is essentially a platformer. I have the player all set up and he's running, jumping and falling, but I'm having trouble with the collision detection between the player and blocks (the blocks will essentially be the platforms that the player moves on). The blocks are stored in an array like this: var blockList = [[50, 400, 100, 100]]; And drawn to the canvas using this: this.draw = function() { c.fillRect(blockList[0][0], blockList[0][1], 100, 100); } I'm checking for collisions using something along these lines in the player object: this.update = function() { // Check for collitions with blocks for(var i = 0; i < blockList.length; i++) { if((player.xpos + 34) > blockList[i][0] && player.ypos > blockList[i][1]) { player.xpos = blockList[i][0] - 28; return false; } } // Other code to move the player based on keyboard input etc } The idea is if the player will collide with a block in the next game update (the game uses a main loop running at 60Htz), the function will return false and exit, thus meaning the player won't move. Unfortunately, that only works when the player hits the left side of the block, and I can't work out how to make it so the player stops if it hits any side of the block. I have the properties player.xpos and player.ypos to help here.

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  • Loading Entities Dynamically with Entity Framework

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Sometimes we may be faced with the need to load entities dynamically, that is, knowing their Type and the value(s) for the property(ies) representing the primary key. One way to achieve this is by using the following extension methods for ObjectContext (which can be obtained from a DbContext, of course): 1: public static class ObjectContextExtensions 2: { 3: public static Object Load(this ObjectContext ctx, Type type, params Object [] ids) 4: { 5: Object p = null; 6:  7: EntityType ospaceType = ctx.MetadataWorkspace.GetItems<EntityType>(DataSpace.OSpace).SingleOrDefault(x => x.FullName == type.FullName); 8:  9: List<String> idProperties = ospaceType.KeyMembers.Select(k => k.Name).ToList(); 10:  11: List<EntityKeyMember> members = new List<EntityKeyMember>(); 12:  13: EntitySetBase collection = ctx.MetadataWorkspace.GetEntityContainer(ctx.DefaultContainerName, DataSpace.CSpace).BaseEntitySets.Where(x => x.ElementType.FullName == type.FullName).Single(); 14:  15: for (Int32 i = 0; i < ids.Length; ++i) 16: { 17: members.Add(new EntityKeyMember(idProperties[i], ids[i])); 18: } 19:  20: EntityKey key = new EntityKey(String.Concat(ctx.DefaultContainerName, ".", collection.Name), members); 21:  22: if (ctx.TryGetObjectByKey(key, out p) == true) 23: { 24: return (p); 25: } 26:  27: return (p); 28: } 29:  30: public static T Load<T>(this ObjectContext ctx, params Object[] ids) 31: { 32: return ((T)Load(ctx, typeof(T), ids)); 33: } 34: } This will work with both single-property primary keys or with multiple, but you will have to supply each of the corresponding values in the appropriate order. Hope you find this useful!

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