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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of our favorite sites for discovering new music is Amie Street. Today we take a look at the Amie Street app for Boxee that allows you to access your favorite tunes from the Boxee interface. Amie Street is a cool site that allows you to discover a lot of cool music from independent artists. What makes Amie Street unique is that most of the music starts out free, then the price goes up incrementally as its popularity grows. The Amie Street App for Boxee let’s you access music and playlists you’ve created on the site, with more features are on the way. For this example we’re using the mouse and keyboard, but of course you can also get to each section using your remote if you have one. Or you can turn your iPod touch into a Boxee remote too. Amie Street in Boxee To access the Amie Street app, launch Boxee and click on Apps from the main menu. Under the Search Sidebar type in Amie Street and select it from the results field.   Then you can add it to the My Apps section…and double-click on the icon. Click on Start to begin using it. You’ll be be presented with a Welcome screen where you can sign into your account. If you don’t have an account yet, there is also an option to go to the Amie Street site and create one. Enter in your account credentials… Now you’ll be able to access your Library, Playlists, Search for new tunes, and check out your Recommended bands and artists. Hover the pointer over an album to get a bit more info about it such as the music genre. You’ll be able to play the songs from the playlists you created on the Amie Street site. You can browse through the history of the music you’ve played as well. Not all the features of this app seem to work as you’d expect them to, and some of the features are not yet available like the Browse feature.   Conclusion At the time of this writing we weren’t able to purchase music or get additional information about the artists. As development continues on Boxee and this app, you can expect more of a full user experience and the ability to purchase music. Even though some of the features are a bit buggy or not available, if you’re a Boxee user and a fan of Amie Street, this is cool app to add to your collection. Download Boxee for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Learn more about Amie Street on Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Amie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music EasierFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeGetting Started with Boxee 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like)

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• Are there any good music mixers available, equivalent to Windows "MP3 Tunes"?

  - by RobinJ

  In Windows my dad used to have a program called MP3 Tunes. I have tried running it with Wine, and it worked. But strange things kept happening to the program, so it's not a reliable way to play music. Basically I just want to have 2 players (in a single window) with these features: Preloading tracks in a player without immediately starting them. Fading from one track to the other. A timer on each player. These features are also desired, but not required: Microphone input. Prelistening before loading a song in a player (through a seperate sound card). Pitch/Tempo control. Just being able to browse folders in the filesystem (without things like a music library). Here are some screenshots of the program to clarify what I'm looking for:

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• Is there a procedural graphical programming environment?

  - by Marc

  I am searching for a graphical programming environment for procedural programming in which you can integrate some or all of the common sources of calculation procedures, such as Excel sheets, MATLAB scripts or even .NET assemblies. I think of something like a flowchart configurator in which you define the procedures via drag& drop using flow-statements (if-else, loops, etc.). Do you know of any systems heading in this direction?

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• Any advice for dynamic music control?

  - by Assembler

  I would like to be able to dynamically progress the score, and affect the volume levels of separate channels within the music. How could I do this? From my experience with mod music (olden days Amiga music, Mod Tracker, Scream Tracker, Fast Tracker II, Impulse Tracker etc etc), I believe this is the best way to tackle the problem, to allow the music to move from one loop to another, without anything mixed down. I want to do this in AS3, and am considering pulling apart Flod to make this happen

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• XSPF Web Music Player and restarting music in surfing

  - by Felicita

  I asked a question in this link; Streaming music background function music(){ $txt = '<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://***.com/slim.swf?&autoplay=true&repeat=true&shuffle=true&song_url=http: //***.com/music.mp3&" width="200" height="20"> <param name="movie" value="http://***.com/slim.swf?&autoplay=true&repeat=true&shuffle=true& song_url=http://***.com/music.mp3&" /> <img src="noflash.gif" width="0" height="0" alt="" /> </object>'; echo $txt; } I have added this player with a simple php fonction. Palyer working perfect but when page changes, the music restarts. I want that I will be continued. What is wrong in code?

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• What would cause Google Music Manager to report different amounts of music between iTunes and My Music?

  - by Thomas Owens

  If I set Google Music Manager to scan iTunes, it reports that there are 3997 songs (which is also indicated if I were to open iTunes and look at my collection). However, if set Google Music Manager to scan My Music folder, it detects 3999 songs. I even deleted all of my songs from iTunes and reimported my My Music folder. iTunes is still reporting 3997 songs. Is there an easy way to find out what is causing the difference between the two counts? I could probably add all of my songs to a playlist, export the playlist into a text or XML file using iTunes, and compare that list against everything in My Music folder to see if iTunes is missing music. However, I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on this before I did that...

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• Music server + Banshee

  - by slosd

  I'm currently trying to figure out some kind of set-up for my music collection. The music collection is located on my "main PC" and I'm using Banshee to play/manage the music. Since I'm often at a different location where I use my laptop I have a FTP server running on my main PC, use curlftpfs to mount the music in /home/username/Music and sync the Banshee DB/configuration via Dropbox. The problem at the moment is that Banshee skips songs very often when the connection is a little slower. I've been looking at some servers like Ampache but they are not really an option since they don't let me use Banshee (which means I have no ability to change metadata or rate songs). Syncing the whole collection to my laptop isn't an option either because of its size. It would be great if you had some ideas how to make my current set-up more reliable or maybe know an alternative.

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• Procedural landscape generation but not just fractals

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than cities plotted on the land based on the resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards?

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• Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than cities plotted on the land based on the resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards?

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• Transferring filesystem-structured music collection to ipod

  - by ansgri

  I have a rather large music collection organized like music/<artist>/<album>/<track>-<title>.<fmt>, mostly mp3. However, the tagging is rather inconsistent, as on the PC or with better old players (Cowon D2+) I don't care and use the filesystem view. However, in the iTunes this all gets messed up because it doesn't care about file locations and looks at tags. What's worse though, it consistently splits compilations into single-track artist-albums. So, is there a way to take the existing filesystem artist-album structure and bring it to the form compatible with iTunes/iPod? Again, I don't care about tags. Automated approach is most welcome, but at least please direct me to some document specifying all the little details about iTunes' metadata requirement for compilations.

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• How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you’re a Media Center user, you already know that it can play and manage your digital music collection. But, did you know you can also rip a music CD in Windows 7 Media Center and have it automatically added to your music library? Rip a CD in Windows 7 Media Center Place your CD into your optical drive. From within Windows Media Center, open the Music Library and select the CD. If you haven’t previously ripped a CD in Windows 7 with either Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player, you’ll be prompted to select whether or not you’d like to add copy protection. Click Next. By default, your CD will be ripped to .WMA format. The rip settings for Windows Media Center are pulled from Windows Media Player. So to change the rip settings, we’ll need to do so in Media Player. Click Finish. From within Windows Media Player, click on Tools from Menu bar, and select Options. If you are new to Windows Media Player 12, check out our beginner’s guide on how to manage your music with WMP 12. Select the Rip Music tab and choose your output format from the Format drop down list. You can also select the Audio quality (bit rate) by moving the slider bar under Audio quality. Click OK when you are finished.   Now, you are ready to rip your CD. Click on Rip CD. Click Yes to confirm you want to rip the CD. You can follow the progress as each track is being converted.    When the CD is finished you’re ready to start enjoying your music any time you wish in Windows 7 Media Center. Looking for some more tasks you can perform in Media Center with just a remote? Check out our earlier post on how to crop, edit, and print photos in Windows Media Center. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error

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• 3D Vector "End Point" Calculation for procedural Vector Graphics

  - by FrostFlame64

  Alright, So I need some help with some Vector Math. I've developing some game Engines that have Procedural Fractal Generation for Some Graphics, such as using Lindenmayer Systems for generating Trees and Plants. L-Systems, are drawn by using Turtle Graphics, which is a form of Vector graphics. I first created a system to draw in 2D Graphics, which works perfectly fine. But now I want to make a 3D equivalent, and I’ve run into an issue. For my 2D Version, I created a Method for quickly determining the “End Point” of a Vector-like movement. Given a starting point (X, Y), a direction (between 0 and 360 degrees), and a distance, the end point is calculated by these formulas: newX = startX + distance * Sin((PI * direction) / 180) newY = startY + distance * Cos((PI * direction) / 180) Now I need something Similarly Equivalent for performing this Calculation in 3D, But I haven’t been able to Google anything that could show me how to do this. I'm flexible enough to get whatever required information is needed for this method calculation, in any reasonable form (Vector3, Quaternion, ect). To summarize: Given a starting point/vector position in 3D space (X, Y, Z), a Direction in 3D space (Vector3, Quaternion, ect), and a Distance, I need to find the “End Point” in 3D Space. Thank you for your time and help.

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• Procedural world generation oriented on gameplay features

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game (that is, not for the sake of scenery, but for the sake of gameplay) needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than the natural way cities arise, scattered on the land based on resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards? The reason I'm asking is that I'd previously pondered taking existing maps from fantasy fiction (my own and others), putting the information into the system as a base point, and then generating a good world to play in from it. This seems covered by existing technology, that is, where the designer puts in all the necessary information such as the city populations, resources, biomes, road networks and rivers, then allows the PCG fill in the gaps. But now I'm wondering if it may be possible to have a content generator generate also the overall design. Generate the cities and population centres, balancing them so that there is a natural seeming need of commerce, then generate the positions and connectivity, then from the type of city produce the list of necessary resources that must be nearby, and only then, maybe given some rules on how to make the journey between cities both believable and interesting, generate the final content including the roads, the choke points, the bridges and tunnels, ferries and the terrain including the biomes and coastline necessary. If this has been done before, I'd like to know, and would like to know what went wrong, and what went right.

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• Algorithm for procedural city generation?

  - by Zove Games

  I am planning on making a (simple) procedural city generator using Java. I need ideas on whan algorithm to use for the layout, and the actual buildings. The city will mostly have skyscrapers, not really much complex stuff. For the layout I already have a simple algorithm implemented: Create a Map with java.awt.Point keys and Integer values. Fill it with all the points in the city's bounds with the value as -1 (unnassigned) Shuffle the map, and assign the 1st 10 of the keys IDs (from 1-10) Loop until all points have IDs: Loop though all points: Assign points next to an assigned point IDs of the point next to them, if 2 or more points border the point, then randomly choose which ID the point will get. You will end up with 10 random regions. Make roads bordering these regions. Fill the inside of each region with a randomly spaced and randomly rotated grid PROBLEM: This is not the fastest way to do it. What algorithm should I use for the layout. And what should I use to make each building's design? I don't even know how I'm going to do that yet (fractals maybe). I just need some ideas, not actual code.

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• Infinite detail inside Perlin noise procedural mapping

  - by Dave Jellison

  I am very new to game development but I was able to scour the internet to figure out Perlin noise enough to implement a very simple 2D tile infinite procedural world. Here's the question and it's more conceptual than code-based in answer, I think. I understand the concept of "I plug in (x, y) and get back from Perlin noise p" (I'll call it p). P will always be the same value for the same (x, y) (as long as the Perlin algorithm parameters haven't changed, like altering number of octaves, et cetera). What I want to do is be able to zoom into a square and be able to generate smaller squares inside of the already generated overhead tile of terrain. Let's say I have a jungle tile for overhead terrain but I want to zoom in and maybe see a small river tile that would only be a creek and not large enough to be a full "big tile" of water in the overhead. Of course, I want the same net effect as a Perlin equation inside a Perlin equation if that makes sense? (aka. I want two people playing the game with the same settings to get the same terrain and details every time). I can conceptually wrap my head around the large tile being based on an "zoomed out" coordinate leaving enough room to drill into but this approach doesn't make sense in my head (maybe I'm wrong). I'm guessing with this approach my overhead terrain would lose all of the cohesiveness delivered by the Perlin. Imagine I calculate (0, 0) as overhead tile 1 and then to the east of that I plug in (50, 0). OK, great, I now have 49 pixels of detail I could then "drill down" into. The issue I have in my head with this approach (without attempting it) is that there's no guarantee from my Perlin noise that (0,0) would be a good neighbor to (50,0) as they could have wildly different "elevations" or p/resultant values returning from the Perlin equation when I generate the overhead map. I think I can conceive of using the Perlin noise for the overhead tile to then reuse the p value as a seed for the "detail" level of noise once I zoom in. That would ensure my detail Perlin is always the same configuration for (0,0), (1,0), etc. ad nauseam but I'm not sure if there are better approaches out there or if this is a sound approach at all.

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• Why are my Unity procedural animations jerky?

  - by Phoenix Perry

  I'm working in Unity and getting some crazy weird motion behavior. I have a plane and I'm moving it. It's ever so slightly getting about 1 pixel bigger and smaller. It looks like the it's kind of getting squeezed sideways by a pixel. I'm moving a plane by cos and sin so it will spin on the x and z axes. If the planes are moving at Time.time, everything is fine. However, if I put in slower speed multiplier, I get an amazingly weird jerk in my animation. I get it with or without the lerp. How do I fix it? I want it to move very slowly. Is there some sort of invisible grid in unity? Some sort of minimum motion per frame? I put a visual sample of the behavior here. Here's the relevant code: public void spin() { for (int i = 0; i < numPlanes; i++ ) { GameObject g = planes[i] as GameObject; //alt method //currentRotation += speed * Time.deltaTime * 100; //rotation.eulerAngles = new Vector3(0, currentRotation, 0); //g.transform.position = rotation * rotationRadius; //sine method g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.x = g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().radiusX * (Mathf.Cos((Time.time*speed) + g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().startAngle)); g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.z = g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().radius * Mathf.Sin((Time.time*speed) + g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().startAngle); g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.y = g.GetComponent<Transform>().position.y; ////offset g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.z += 20; g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().posLerp.x = Mathf.Lerp(g.transform.position.x,g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.x, .5f); g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().posLerp.z = Mathf.Lerp(g.transform.position.z, g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().pos.z, .5f); g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().posLerp.y = g.GetComponent<Transform>().position.y; g.transform.position = g.GetComponent<PlaneSetup>().posLerp; } Invoke("spin",0.0f); } The full code is on github. There is literally nothing else going on. I've turned off all other game objects so it's only the 40 planes with a texture2D shader. I removed it from Invoke and tried it in Update -- still happens. With a set frame rate or not, the same problem occurs. Tested it in Fixed Update. Same issue. The script on the individual plane doesn't even have an update function in it. The data on it could functionally live in a struct. I'm getting between 90 and 123 fps. Going to investigate and test further. I put this in an invoke function to see if I could get around it just occurring in update. There are no physics on these shapes. It's a straight procedural animation. Limited it to 1 plane - still happens. Thoughts? Removed the shader - still happening.

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• What music manager are you using in linux

  - by solomongaby

  There are a few choices of music managers for linux. I am trying to decide on one also suports mp3player sync. Can you tell me what app are you using and what cons and pros did you find for that app. Thanks

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• music for an arcade game?

  - by user717572

  I'm thinking about music for my brick breaker game, but I don't know how to choose any. If I'd make a loop from a few seconds, I think it would get annoying very quickly. I also found some longer length tracks (about 2 minutes), but when this is over, it's going to be repeated anyway, just like when you'd select a new level, you'd have to listen to the same beginning of the song again. I can't put an hour of music in my application, so what would you recommend I'd do for the music?

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• Help finding good players that would display music library as folder structure

  - by cipricus

  I have a big music library. Nothing special here. But I very much dislike the way usually music library is displayed in most recommended players, according to Artist/Album/Year/Genre tags, ignoring my folder structure or making it hardly accessible. The problem is that not all my music is tagged according to genre etc, but all is perfectly ordered by folder structure which takes into account all characteristics handled by tags, as well as many others, which I can change and specify at any time. (I can decide ordering my music by country, inside a sub-category like "baroque music", for example). The advantage of using folder structure in displaying media library is that all the logical structure is displayed, with all sub-categories, which can vary and be changed, visible at the same time. Some Players, like Clementine and Quod Libet, can display folders, but when comes to displaying only the library, they still display it only by tags. I am looking for some plugins to good players that would provide a solution to this, and I am looking for different solutions to this. Therefore I'll display as my own answer some solutions that I have already found and welcome other answers with new and better ways to achieve the same purpose. (Most welcome are of course players that, beside having the capability discussed here, would include other elementary features like playlists in tabs, search, and so forth.)

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• Mobile music playback on android phone keeps buffering

  - by ianio

  I have copied some music to a ubuntu synced folder on my karmic machine. I have the Ubuntu One android app installed on android 2.2 phone. When listening to music I get frequent breaks whilst the music is buffering, even with full signal. every other music streaming servie such as last fm and bbc player are fine. What is going wrong? mp3s should not have trouble buffering over a good 3g signal. I have set cache size to 200mb but i cant find a buffer size. Is it my mp3s? they are usually in the order of 320kb/s this is a breaker for me if there is no solution which is a massive shame as i like the principal of the software. cheers

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• A music player that can handle multiple artist tags

  - by Keidax

  The mp3 format can handle multiple artists per track (in the form of "artist1\artist2"), and as far as I know other modern music formats can do the same thing. However, Rhythmbox (my default music player) seems to be capable of only reading the first artist. Are there any music players that can read and sort songs with multiple artists, or a plugin for Rhythmbox that can provide this functionality?

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• Procedural Generation of tile-based 2d World

  - by Matthias

  I am writing a 2d game that uses tile-based top-down graphics to build the world (i.e. the ground plane). Manually made this works fine. Now I want to generate the ground plane procedurally at run time. In other words: I want to place the tiles (their textures) randomised on the fly. Of course I cannot create an endless ground plane, so I need to restrict how far from the player character (on which the camera focuses on) I procedurally generate the ground floor. My approach would be like this: I have a 2d grid that stores all tiles of the floor at their correct x/y coordinates within the game world. When the players moves the character, therefore also the camera, I constantly check whether there are empty locations in my x/y map within a max. distance from the character, i.e. cells in my virtual grid that have no tile set. In such a case I place a new tile there. Therefore the player would always see the ground plane without gaps or empty spots. I guess that would work, but I am not sure whether that would be the best approach. Is there a better alternative, maybe even a best-practice for my case?

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• Differentiate procedural language(c) from oop languages(c++)

  - by niko

  I have been trying to differentiate c and c++(or oop languages) but I don't understand where the difference is. Note I have never used c++ but I asked my friends and some of them to differentiate c and c++ They say c++ has oop concepts and also the public, private modes for definition of variables and which c does not have though. Seriously I have done vb.net programming for a while 2 to 3 months, I never faced a situation to use class concepts and modes of definition like public and private. So I thought what could be the use for these? My friend explained me a program saying that if a variable is public, it can be accessed anywhere I said why not declare it as a global variable like in c? He did not get back to my question and he said if a variable is private it cannot be accessed by some other functions I said why not define it as a local variable, even these he was unable to answer. No matter where I read private variables cannot be accessed whereas public variables can be then why not make public as global and private as local whats the difference? whats the real use of public and private ? please don't say it can be used by everyone, I suppose why not we use some conditions and make the calls? I have heard people saying security reasons, a friend said if a function need to be accessed it should be inherited first. He explained saying that only admin should be able to have some rights and not all so that functions are made private and inherited only by the admin to use Then I said why not we use if condition if ( login == "admin") invoke the function he still did not answer these question. Please clear me with these things, I have done vb.net and vba and little c++ without using oop concepts because I never found their real use while I was writing the code, I'm a little afraid am I too back in oop concepts?

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• Procedural... house with rooms generator

  - by pek

  I've been looking at some algorithms and articles about procedurally generating a dungeon. The problem is, I'm trying to generate a house with rooms, and they don't seem to fit my requirements. For one, dungeons have corridors, where houses have halls. And while initially they might seem the same, a hall is nothing more than the area that isn't a room, whereas a corridor is specifically designed to connect one area to another. Another important difference with a house is that you have a specific width and height, and you have to fill the entire thing with rooms and halls, whereas with a dungeon, there is empty space. I think halls in a house is something in between a dungeon corridor (gets you to other rooms) and an empty space in the dungeon (it's not explicitly defined in code). More specifically, the requirements are: There is a set of predefined rooms I cannot create walls and doors on the fly. Rooms can be rotated but not resized Again, because I have a predefined set of rooms, I can only rotate them, not resize them. The house dimensions are set and has to be entirely filled with rooms (or halls) I.e. I want to fill a 14x20 house with the available rooms making sure there is no empty space. Here are some images to make this a little more clear: As you can see, in the house, the "empty space" is still walkable and it gets you from one room to another. So, having said all this, maybe a house is just a really really tightly packed dungeon with corridors. Or it's something easier than a dungeon. Maybe there is something out there and I haven't found it because I don't really know what to search for. This is where I'd like your help: could you give me pointers on how to design this algorithm? Any thoughts on what steps it will take? If you have created a dungeon generator, how would you modify it to fit my requirements? You can be as specific or as generic as you like. I'm looking to pick your brains, really.

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