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• SQLAuthority News – A Conversation with an Old Friend – Sri Sridharan

  - by pinaldave

  Sri Sridharan is my old friend and we often talk on GTalk. The subject varies from Life in India/USA, movies, musics, and of course SQL. We have our differences when we talk about food or movie but we always agree when we talk about SQL. Yesterday while chatting with him we talked about SQLPASS and the conversation lasted for a long time. Here is the conversation between us on GTalk. I have removed a few of the personal talks and formatted into paragraphs as GTalk often shows stuff out of formatting. Pinal: Sri, Congrats on running for the PASS BoD again. You were so close last year. What made you decide to run again this year? Sri: Thank you Pinal for your leadership in the PASS India Community and all the things you do out there. After coming so close last year, there was no doubt in my mind that I will run again. I was truly humbled by the support I got from the community. Growing up in India for over 25 years, you are brought up in a very competitive part of the world. Right from the pressure of staying in the top of the class from kindergarten to your graduation, the relentless push from your parents about studying and getting good grades (and nothing else matters), you land up essentially living in a pressure cooker. To survive that relentless pressure, you need to have a thick skin, ability to stand up for who you really are , what you want to accomplish and in the process stay true those values. I am striving for a greater cause, to make PASS an organization that can help people with their SQL Server careers, to make PASS relevant to its chapter members, to make PASS an organization that every SQL professional in the world wants to be connected with. Just because I did not get elected or appointed last year does not mean that these causes are not worth fighting. Giving up upon failing the first time is simply not in me. If I did that, what message would I send to those who voted for me? What message would I send to my kids? Pinal: As someone who has such strong roots in India, what can the Indian PASS Community expect from you? Sri: First of all, I think fostering a regional leadership is something PASS must encourage as part of its global growth plan. For PASS global being able to understand all the issues in a region of the world and make sound decisions will be a tough thing to do on a continuous basis. I expect people like you, chapter leaders, regional mentors, MVPs of the region start playing a bigger role in shaping the next generation of PASS. That is something I said in my campaign and I still stand by it. I would like to see growth in the number of chapters in India. The current count does not truly represent the full potential of that region. I was pretty thrilled to see the Bangalore SQLSaturday happen early this year. I would like to see more of SQLSaturday events, at least in the major metro cities. I know the issues in India are very different from the rest of the world. So the formula needs to be tweaked a little for it to work better in India. Once the SQLSaturday model is vetted out, maybe there could be enough justification to have SQLRally India. PASS needs to have a premier SQL event in that region. Going to USA or Europe for that matter is incredibly hard due to VISA issues etc. So this could be a case of where PASS comes closer to where the community is. Pinal: What portfolio would take on if you are elected to the PASS Board? Sri: There are some very strong folks on the PASS Board today. The President discusses the portfolios with the group and makes the final call on the portfolios. I am also a fan of having a team associated with the portfolios. In that case, one person is the primary for a portfolio but secondary on a couple of other portfolios. This way people on the board have a direct vested interest in a few portfolios. Personally, I know I would these portfolios good justice – Chapters, Global Growth and Events (SQLSat, SQLRally). I would try to see if we can get a director to focus on Volunteers.  To me that is very critical for growth in the international regions. Pinal: This is an interesting conversation with you Sri. I know you so long time but this is indeed inspiring to many. India is a big country and we appreciate your thoughts. Sri: Thank you very much for taking time to chat with me today. Cheers. There are pretty strong candidates for SQLPASS Board of Elections this year. I know all of them in person and honestly it is going to be extremely difficult to not to vote for anybody. I am indeed in a crunch right now how to pick one over another. Though the choice is difficult, I encourage you to vote for them. I am extremely confident that the new board of directors will all have the same goal – Better SQL Server Community. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, DBA, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Starting to make 2D games in C++

  - by Ashley

  I'm fairly experienced with C and C#, but I've only ever created console/windows applications. I'm also experienced with AS3 and I've made some flash games. I want to make proper 2D games in C++, but I have no idea where to begin with graphics. There are entire books devoted to game development in C++ that only work with console applications and I'm finding the lack of resources and tutorials for proper 2D games frustrating... I'm also not particularly interested in using existing engines because I want total control of what I create. I've heard of the Allegro library; is it something important/popular that I should look into? How will I use DirectX? Any resources or links to tutorials or information is greatly appreciated.

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• Kepler orbit : get position on the orbit over time

  - by Artefact2

  I'm developing a space-simulation related game, and I am having some trouble implementing the movement of binary stars, like this: The two stars orbit their centroid, and their trajectories are ellipses. I basically know how to determine the angular velocity at any position, but not the angular velocity over time. So, for a given angle, I can very easily compute the stars position (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_equation). I'd want to get the stars position over time. The parametric equations of the ellipse works but doesn't give the correct speed : { X(t) = a×cos(t) ; Y(t) = b×sin(t) }. Is it possible, and how can it be done?

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• Vector Graphics in DirectX

  - by Doug

  I'm curious as to people's thoughts on the best way to use vector graphics in a directX game instead of rasterized textures(think Super Meat Boy). I want to remain resolution independent and don't want to downscale/upscale rasterized graphics. Also the idea would be for all assets to be vector graphics(again think Super Meat Boy). I've looked at Valve's paper "Improved Alpha-Tested Magnification for Vector Textures and Special Effects" and also looked at using shaders http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch25.html. Wondering if anyone has done something similar or an alternate approach. Cheers

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• How to stop camera from rotating in 2.5d platformer

  - by Artem Suchkov

  I'm stuck with a problem: I can not make my camera stop rotating after character. What I already have tried: using empty game object with rigid body and locked rotation and make it parent of camera, while player being the parent of object. Also, I've tried using few scripts from web, that did not help. Right now I'm bad with using JS in Unity (can handle JS on website, but I dont know how to integrate it for now) and practicing the basics, making easy 2.5d platformer with basic features, so I can not write code for now.

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• How can I create a 3D model in Java without using modeling software?

  - by Galen Nare

  I am a lightly experienced game developer and this is my first time trying 3D objects in Java for the first time. I have been recently creating and updating games using AWT, Swing, and Graphics, but I want to delve farther into Java. I have looked into Java3D, but it's not what I want. I want to use Images and then crop the Image and place the respective textures in their respective places. I already know how to do the cropping and 2D Image editing, but how do I go 3D?

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• How are realistic 3D faces created and animated in video games?

  - by Anton

  I'm interested in being able to create realistic faces and facial expressions for the 3D characters of a game I'm working on. Think something similar to the dialog scenes in games like Mass Effect. Unfortunately I'm not sure where to begin. I'm sure the faces/animations are created through 3D Modeling software, but otherwise I am lost. Do facial animations use the same "bones" that normal body animation uses? Is there any preferred 3D software for realistic faces and animations? Is there a preferred format to export these faces and animations in?

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• 2D Platformer Collision Handling

  - by defender-zone

  Hello, everyone! I am trying to create a 2D platformer (Mario-type) game and I am some having some issues with handling collisions properly. I am writing this game in C++, using SDL for input, image loading, font loading, etcetera. I am also using OpenGL via the FreeGLUT library in conjunction with SDL to display graphics. My method of collision detection is AABB (Axis-Aligned Bounding Box), which is really all I need to start with. What I need is an easy way to both detect which side the collision occurred on and handle the collisions properly. So, basically, if the player collides with the top of the platform, reposition him to the top; if there is a collision to the sides, reposition the player back to the side of the object; if there is a collision to the bottom, reposition the player under the platform. I have tried many different ways of doing this, such as trying to find the penetration depth and repositioning the player backwards by the penetration depth. Sadly, nothing I've tried seems to work correctly. Player movement ends up being very glitchy and repositions the player when I don't want it to. Part of the reason is probably because I feel like this is something so simple but I'm over-thinking it. If anyone thinks they can help, please take a look at the code below and help me try to improve on this if you can. I would like to refrain from using a library to handle this (as I want to learn on my own) or the something like the SAT (Separating Axis Theorem) if at all possible. Thank you in advance for your help! void world1Level1CollisionDetection() { for(int i; i < blocks; i++) { if (de2dCheckCollision(ball,block[i],0.0f,0.0f)==true) { int up = 0; int left = 0; int right = 0; int down = 0; if(ball.coords[0] < block[i].coords[0] && block[i].coords[0] < ball.coords[2] && ball.coords[2] < block[i].coords[2]) { left = 1; } if(block[i].coords[0] < ball.coords[0] && ball.coords[0] < block[i].coords[2] && block[i].coords[2] < ball.coords[2]) { right = 1; } if(ball.coords[1] < block[i].coords[1] && block[i].coords[1] < ball.coords[3] && ball.coords[3] < block[i].coords[3]) { up = 1; } if(block[i].coords[1] < ball.coords[1] && ball.coords[1] < block[i].coords[3] && block[i].coords[3] < ball.coords[3]) { down = 1; } cout << left << ", " << right << ", " << up << ", " << down << ", " << endl; if (left == 1) { ball.coords[0] = block[i].coords[0] - 16.0f; ball.coords[2] = block[i].coords[0] - 0.0f; } if (right == 1) { ball.coords[0] = block[i].coords[2] + 0.0f; ball.coords[2] = block[i].coords[2] + 16.0f; } if (down == 1) { ball.coords[1] = block[i].coords[3] + 0.0f; ball.coords[3] = block[i].coords[3] + 16.0f; } if (up == 1) { ball.yspeed = 0.0f; ball.gravity = 0.0f; ball.coords[1] = block[i].coords[1] - 16.0f; ball.coords[3] = block[i].coords[1] - 0.0f; } } if (de2dCheckCollision(ball,block[i],0.0f,0.0f)==false) { ball.gravity = -0.5f; } } } To explain what some of this code means: The blocks variable is basically an integer that is storing the amount of blocks, or platforms. I am checking all of the blocks using a for loop, and the number that the loop is currently on is represented by integer i. The coordinate system might seem a little weird, so that's worth explaining. coords[0] represents the x position (left) of the object (where it starts on the x axis). coords[1] represents the y position (top) of the object (where it starts on the y axis). coords[2] represents the width of the object plus coords[0] (right). coords[3] represents the height of the object plus coords[1] (bottom). de2dCheckCollision performs an AABB collision detection. Up is negative y and down is positive y, as it is in most games. Hopefully I have provided enough information for someone to help me successfully. If there is something I left out that might be crucial, let me know and I'll provide the necessary information. Finally, for anyone who can help, providing code would be very helpful and much appreciated. Thank you again for your help!

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• monotouch 2d pixel with correct resolution

  - by acidzombie24

  I am writing up a game that is size sensitive. It needs to be pixel perfect. I believe the resolution is 480x320 pixels with the iphone being twice the width and height. My code is grid based with images exactly 16x16pixels. I found samples of opengl in the past but I never found any good tutorial that had 0,0 the top left and was the correct size in resolution (which made images look terrible) What can I use? I'd like to write the code in C# (or C++ but C# is preferred) and use monotouch. I don't know any libraries for 2d graphics. I'll figure out sound and such afterwards and I seen documentation on monotouch for input.

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• Determine percentage of screen covered by an object without using frustum culling

  - by Meltac

  On the CPU-side of an 3D first-person / ego perspective game I need to check whether what the players currently sees on screen is the inside of a box object defined by world space coordinates (the player might be outside of that box but on screen sees only/mostly the inside of the box, or vice-versa, looks from within the box to the outside). The "casual" way of performing such a check would incorporate frustum culling but such an approach would be hard to achieve with my given set of engine parameters which I'd like to avoid if there is a simpler way. What I actually have at the point where I would like to do the check (high-level script on CPU, not GPU side): Camera world position Camera direction Camera FOV Two Box corner world coordinates (left-bottom-front, right-top-back) What I do not have right away: View frustrum definition (near/far plane or say 6 planes defining frustum) Any specific pixel information (uv, view space position, depth or the like) What I would like to calculate: Percentage of screen "covered" by box. Any hints on how to perform such calculation?

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• Learning to optimize with Assembly

  - by niktehpui

  I am a second year student of Computer Games Technology. I recently finished my first prototype of my "kind" of own pathfinder (that doesn't use A* instead a geometrical approach/pattern recognition, the pathfinder just needs the knowledge about the terrain that is in his view to make decisions, because I wanted an AI that could actually explore, if the terrain is already known, then it will walk the shortest way easily, because the pathfinder has a memory of nodes). Anyway my question is more general: How do I start optimizing algorithms/loops/for_each/etc. using Assembly, although general tips are welcome. I am specifically looking for good books, because it is really hard to find good books on this topic. There are some small articles out there like this one, but still isn't enough knowledge to optimize an algorithm/game... I hope there is a modern good book out there, that I just couldn't find...

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• Simulating an object floating on water

  - by Aaron M

  I'm working on a top down fishing game. I want to implement some physics and collision detection regarding the boat moving around the lake. I would like for be able to implement thrust from either the main motor or trolling motor, the effect of wind on the object, and the drag of the water on the object. I've been looking at the farseer physics engine, but not having any experience using a physics engine, I am not quite sure that farseer is suitable for this type of thing(Most of the demos seem to be the application of gravity to a vertical top/down type model). Would the farseer engine be suitable? or would a different engine be more suitable?

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• Is there a global "low resolution" filter for OpenGL?

  - by Ian Henry

  I'm trying to learn a little about OpenGL, so I'm making a simple 2D game (with OpenTK), and so far it's coming along well. I thought it would be fun to give it that, for lack of a better word, retropixelated look of games from the early nineties. I figured it would be an easy thing to do -- simply draw everything at half its normal size and scale up with no anti-aliasing. But I can't find any resources on how to do this. I can set the min/mag filters of my textures to nearest and that works fine for my sprites, but I'm using lots of primitives and I'd like the effect to apply to them as well. The one idea I had was to draw everything at half size, then somehow copy the render buffer to a texture, then render that texture full-size, but I don't know how to do that, and it seems like there must be a better way. Can anyone help me out?

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• Problems in exporting terrain from autodesk 3ds

  - by Jatin Kumar

  i am trying to make small counter strike sort of game and for the terrain part i have exported the terrain in 3ds format from Autodesk 3ds-max and imported the same in opengl using lib3ds. Its working fine but with few problems: The terrain is mainly made up of some cubical boxes with texture on them and placed on a big flat surface with boundary wall. In opengl i have enabled anti aliasing but still there is too much aliasing on the boundaries (visible when rotating the camera). I have tiled the floor with some image but in opengl it is just the single image stretched over the complete surface. I have exported animated model (Skelton+mesh+material+animation) from 3ds and used cal3d library for reading the same. Model has a gun also which is not appearing in opengl and it too has too much of aliasing problem. I have googled around but couldn't find any relevant solutions. Thanks in advance

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• How do I Fallback to Older DirectX Versions?

  - by smoth190

  I had a feeling that it would be easier to tackle this problem before I got too deep into development (unless, of course if that's a bad idea/the hard way, please inform me...). I'm creating my game to be run ideally on DirectX 11, however, I want to offer it on DirectX 10, and I'm unsure if it is worth offering it for DirectX 9 for XP users. I'm not too sure how this fallback even works, as I can't find many articles on the internet. If someone could give me an in-depth article, that would be great. I've read a little about how since DirectX11 is completely absent on XP, it is hard to even check for support. Someone mentioned having multiple applications for each version, is this a good idea? Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction here.

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• cross resolution level design advice [on hold]

  - by Mike

  I was looking for some beginner advice regarding level design across multiple resolutions. I believe the answer is likely "it depends", but any input from anyone with real experience is very appreciated. Basically, I am building a 2D Super Metroid type game. If rooms/levels are to be a tiled grid, what are some general best practices for designing rooms when taking into account different resolutions? Since more or less tiles could fit vertically on a single screen depending on the resolution, is it better to design towards possibly having more of the room visible depending on the screen (with a bare minimum needed for gameplay), or should I fix the design at a certain tile height and scale the graphics?

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• 2D basic map system

  - by Cyril

  i'm currently coding a 2D game in Java, and I would like to have some clues on how-to build this system : the screen is moving on a grander map, for instance, the screen represent 800*600 units on a 100K*100K map. When you command your unit to go to another position, the screen move on this map AND when you move your mouse on a side or another of the screen, you move the screen on the map. Not sure that i'm clear, but we can retrieve this system in most RTS games (warcraft/starcraft for example). I'm currently using Slick 2D. Any idea ? Thanks.

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• Exporting XNA class library as a DLL file

  - by Will Bagley

  I have downloaded an open source project that I intend to use with my current game. The download came with all the class files from the original project as well as a pre-compiled DLL file representing the project. I was able to easily link this DLL with my current project and get it working just fine, no problems there. The problem I now have is that I want to make a couple of changes to the original libraries (extend its functionality a bit to better suit my needs) and re-export the class library as a DLL again, but I have no clue how to do this. Is there some simple way in VS where I can just take the class library and export/compile it as a DLL file again or is there more to it than that? This seems like something that should be pretty simple but my efforts to find an answer have so far come up with nothing. Thanks in advance.

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• Xna Loading Screens

  - by Cyral

  I'm making a 2D XNA game. I'd like to implement loading screens when stuff has to load for a while. Like when I login to an account, connect to the server, and generate worlds. I'm pretty sure it needs to be multithreaded, because I want to be able to do something like "Generating World 10%...11%...". GenerateWorld() { //Call StartLoading("Generating World"); or something //Starter generating, Updating progress... //End loading screen and fade into world } Help appreciated, I'm new.

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• How do I export physique animations without breaking them?

  - by Paul Ferris

  I've been trying to export a simple footstep animation that I made in 3ds Max, but its either failed to export or broken (imported into unity sans a few frames, or appearing to have imported but not playing) every single time. I've tried .fbx and .3ds, but neither works. I'd rather not use the Skin modifier, because it would require starting from scratch and learning a new system. Any ideas? EDIT: I found a workaround, here it is if you're curious: Create your biped, and make sure it lines up with your mesh. Animate it Export the mesh without Physique (or with Physique turned off), then delete it (the mesh) Export the biped Recombine in Unity (or whatever your game engine of choice is)

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• Do I really need to "learn" C# for XNA if I know Java?

  - by CJ Sculti

  so I want to start developing in XNA. As of now, I do not know C#, but I would consider myself "good" at Java. I have looked at some C# code and it looks almost IDENTICAL to Java... After looking at this, http://www.harding.edu/fmccown/java_csharp_comparison.html it looks like they are basically the same. Obviously some function names are going to be different, but I think I can handle it. Now if I want to learn game development in XNA, do I really need to "learn" and master C#, or can I just jump right in and learn along the way? I should also mention, I also know PHP which looks very similar...

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• Which are the cons of using only non-member functions and POD?

  - by Miro

  I'm creating my own game engine. I've read these articles and this question about DOD and it was written to not use member functions and classes. I also heard some criticism to this idea. I can write it using member functions or non-member functions it would be similar. So what are the benefits/cons of that approach or when the project grows, does any of these approaches give clearer and better manageable code? With POD & non-member functions I don't have to make struct members public I can still use object id outside of engine like OpenGL does with all it's stuff, so It's not about encapsulation. POD - plain old data DOD - data oriented design

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• Why do meshes show up as bones in the Model class?

  - by Itamar Marom

  Right now I'm working on a 3D game and I've come across something very weird. When I created the model in Blender, I added an armature named "MyBone" to the stage and attached a cube ("MyCube") to it, so that when I move the armature, the cube moves with it. I exported this as an FBX and loaded it as a Model object. What I expected to see was: But what I got was this: I'm really confused. Why is the mesh I created showing up in the bone list? And what's Root Node? Here are the .blend and .fbx files: here or here. Thanks.

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• Is SharpDX mature enough to adopt yet or should I just start using SlimDX right now?

  - by Gavin Williams

  I'm about to stop my game-project in XNA because from what I can gather it's development is coming to an end (and it's already behind current technology). Therefore, I need to adopt a new framework or API. I have just spent 2 days looking at C++ and decided it's really not for me - however I do find the raw access to DirectX appealing. SharpDX sounds like a good place to start, but it has no documentation and no code comments. I feel like it's not quite ready for use. I'm interested in the opinions of people that have used either or both of these frameworks, to help me decide for sure which one I should learn? Thanks for any advice.

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