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• Writing a dynamic achievement system without hardcoding rules into the application

  - by imaginative

  I really enjoyed the solution provided here for groundwork on writing an achievement framework. The problem I have is I have game designers that would like to be able to insert achievements into a CMS at runtime. In a way, it sounds insane and complex to do this, but is it really? I think the concept of having to do a hard push of the application for every new achievement is cumbersome. I would love to be able to give our designers the capability to put together new achievements by entering them into a database. It shouldn't matter what tool I'm using, but for those interested, my backend is being written in JRuby (Ruby on top of the JVM). What are some possible ways of going about abstracting the logic in the aforementioned link even further so that rules can be interpreted at runtime?

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• EAV - is it really bad in all scenarios?

  - by Giedrius

  I'm thinking to use EAV for some of the stuff in one of the projects, but all questions about it in stackoverflow end up to answers calling EAV an anti pattern. But I'm wondering, if is it that wrong in all cases? Let's say shop product entity, it has common features, like name, description, image, price, etc., that take part in logic many places and has (semi)unique features, like watch and beach ball would be described by completely different aspects. So I think EAV would fit for storing those (semi)unique features? All this is assuming, that for showing product list, it is enough info in product table (that means no EAV is involved) and just when showing one product/comparing up to 5 products/etc. data saved using EAV is used. I've seen such approach in Magento commerce and it is quite popular, so may be there are cases, when EAV is reasonable?

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• De-facto standards for customer information record

  - by maasg

  I'm currently evaluating a potential new project that involves creating a DB for typical customer information (userid, pwd, first & last name, email, adress, telfnr ...). At this point, requirements are only roughly defined. The customer DB is expected in the O(millions) of records. In order to calculate some back-of-the-envelope numbers for DB sizing and evaluate potential DB options & architectures, I'm looking for some de-facto standards for these kind of records. In particular, the std size of every field (first name, last name, address,...) or typical avg for a simple customer record would be great info. With so many e-commerce websites out there, there should be some kind of typical config that can be reused and avoid re-inventing the wheel. Any ideas?

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• iOS + cocos2d: how to account for sprite's position for the different device dimensions in an universal app?

  - by fuzzlog

  All the questions I've seen regarding iOS universal apps (with or without cocos2d) deal with the "how to add graphics to a universal app". My question is, how does the code need to be written to ensure that the sprites appear appropriately on the screen (given that an iPhone 5's resolution is not proportional to an iPad's resolution)? Is it just a bunch of "if" statements and duplicate code or do iOS/cocos2d provide common function calls that will place the sprites at an appropriate position?

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• Avoiding null in a controller

  - by Kevin Burke

  I'm trying to work through how to write this code. def get(params): """ Fetch a user's details, or 404 """ user = User.fetch_by_id(params['id']) if not user: abort(404) # Render some template for the user... What's the best way to handle the case where the lookup fails? One principle says you should avoid returning null values from functions. These lead to mistakes and AttributeErrors etc. later on in the file. Another idea is to have fetch_by_id raise a ValueError or similar if no user exists with that id. However there's a general principle that you shouldn't use exceptions for control flow, either, which doesn't help much. What could be done better in this case?

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• How do I deal with the problems of a fast side-scroller?

  - by Ska

  I'm making a side scrolling airplane game and when I begin going very fast I begin to experience some problems as a player: Elements are not distinguishable, like power-ups from bullets, etc I start to feel dizzy and uncomfortable There isn't enough time to see what's coming How can I sort this out? Do I use less details in all the grahpics? Tiny Wings has the same horizontal movement speed as in my game but it doesn't suffer from these problems. Are there any other really fast side-scrollers I could take as a reference?

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• Collision Systems Implementation

  - by hrr4

  Just curious what might be a good way to implement a decent collision system. As a class inherited by a base Entity class? Currently I'm stuck and could just use a couple better ideas than my own. Any help is appreciated! Edit: Sorry, it's 2D Collisioning but honestly, I'm not looking for specific collision methods. I'm looking more about the lines of implementation. Just curious of some of the common methods of how to implement collision systems such as: Should the entire collision system be it's own class? What, if anything, should be inheritable? These are some of my questions. Sorry for the confusion.

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• Styling specific columns and rows

  - by hattenn

  I'm trying to style some specific parts of a 5x4 table that I create. It should be like this: Every even numbered row and every odd numbered row should get a different color. Text in the second, third, and fourth columns should be centered. I have this table: <table> <caption>Some caption</caption> <colgroup> <col> <col class="value"> <col class="value"> <col class="value"> </colgroup> <thead> <tr> <th id="year">Year</th> <th>1999</th> <th>2000</th> <th>2001</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr class="oddLine"> <td>Berlin</td> <td>3,3</td> <td>1,9</td> <td>2,3</td> </tr> <tr class="evenLine"> <td>Hamburg</td> <td>1,5</td> <td>1,3</td> <td>2,0</td> </tr> <tr class="oddLine"> <td>München</td> <td>0,6</td> <td>1,1</td> <td>1,0</td> </tr> <tr class="evenLine"> <td>Frankfurt</td> <td>1,3</td> <td>1,6</td> <td>1,9</td> </tr> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr class="oddLine"> <td>Total</td> <td>6,7</td> <td>5,9</td> <td>7,2</td> </tr> </tfoot> </table> And I have this CSS file: table, th, td { border: 1px solid black; border-collapse: collapse; padding: 0px 5px; } #year { text-align: left; } .oddLine { background-color: #DDDDDD; } .evenLine { background-color: #BBBBBB; } .value { text-align: center; } And this doesn't work. The text in the columns are not centered. What is the problem here? And is there a way to solve it (other than changing the class of all the cells that I want centered)? P.S.: I think there's some interference with .evenLine and .oddLine classes. Because when I put "background: black" in the class "value", it changes the background color of the columns in the first row. The thing is, if I delete those two classes, text-align still doesn't work, but background attribute works perfectly. Argh...

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• Is it relevant to warn about truncating real constants to 32 bits?

  - by zneak

  I'm toying around with LLVM and looking at what it would take to make yet another strongly-typed language, and now that I'm around the syntax, I've noticed that it seems to be a pet peeve of strongly typed language to warn people that their constants won't fit inside a float: // both in Java and C# float foo = 3.2; // error: implicitly truncating a double into a float // or something along these lines Why doesn't this work in Java and C#? I know it's easy to add the f after the 3.2, but is it really doing anything useful? Must I really be that aware that I'm using single-precision reals instead of double-precision reals? Maybe I'm just missing something (which, basically, is why I'm asking). Note that float foo = [const] is not the same thing as float foo = [double variable], where requiring the cast seems normal to me.

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• Structuring cascading properties - parent only or parent + entire child graph?

  - by SB2055

  I have a Folder entity that can be Moderated by users. Folders can contain other folders. So I may have a structure like this: Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 Folder 4 I have to decide how to implement Moderation for this entity. I've come up with two options: Option 1 When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a moderator relationship between Folder 1 and User 1. No other relationships are added to the db. To determine if the user can moderate Folder 3, I check and see if User 1 is the moderator of any parent folders. This seems to alleviate some of the complexity of handling updates / moved entities / additions under Folder 1 after the relationship has been defined, and reverting the relationship means I only have to deal with one entity. Option 2 When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a new relationship between User 1 and Folder 1, and all child entities down to the grandest of grandchildren when the relationship is created, and if it's ever removed, iterate back down the graph to remove the relationship. If I add something under Folder 2 after this relationship has been made, I just copy all Moderators into the new Entity. But when I need to show only the top-level Folders that a user is Moderating, I need to query all folders that have a parent folder that the user does not moderate, as opposed to option 1, where I just query any items that the user is moderating. I think it comes down to determining if users will be querying for all parent items more than they'll be querying child items... if so, then option 1 seems better. But I'm not sure. Is either approach better than the other? Why? Or is there another approach that's better than both? I'm using Entity Framework in case it matters.

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• What options are there for splitting UI layout from code logic using a markup language?

  - by Daenyth

  What tools similar to GWT's UIBinder exist in other languages? By this I mean a system where you can define your UI layout in a markup language (preferably html+css) and attach the functionality to the layout using the code. I'm most interested in anything for python, but answers in other languages would interest me as well. I'm interested because the benefits of having a non-programmer work directly on the layout without needing to touch the code and adjust a bunch of UI toolkit method calls is very productive. I'm aware of Flex for flash, but is there anything else out there? What search terms might I use to find such frameworks? I've looked around but I haven't found anything concrete.

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• What are the advantages of storing xml in a relational database?

  - by Chris

  I was poking around the AdventureWorks database today and I noticed that a number of tables (HumanResources.JobCandidate and Sales.Individual for example) have a column which is storing xml data. What I would to know is, what is the advantage of storing basically a database table row's worth of data in another table's column? Doesn't this make it difficult to query off of this information? Or is the assumption that the data won't need to be queried and just needs to be stored?

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• IoC containers and service locator pattern

  - by TheSilverBullet

  I am trying to get an understanding of Inversion of Control and the dos and donts of this. Of all the articles I read, there is one by Mark Seemann (which is widely linked to in SO) which strongly asks folks not to use the service locator pattern. Then somewhere along the way, I came across this article by Ken where he helps us build our own IoC. I noticed that is is nothing but an implementation of service locator pattern. Questions: Is my observation correct that this implementation is the service locator pattern? If the answer to 1. is yes, then Do all IoC containers (like Autofac) use the service locator pattern? If the answer to 1. is no, then why is this differen? Is there any other pattern (other than DI) for inversion of control?

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• Are null references really a bad thing?

  - by Tim Goodman

  I've heard it said that the inclusion of null references in programming languages is the "billion dollar mistake". But why? Sure, they can cause NullReferenceExceptions, but so what? Any element of the language can be a source of errors if used improperly. And what's the alternative? I suppose instead of saying this: Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman"); // returns null if not found if (c != null) { Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } You could say this: if (Customer.ExistsWithLastName("Goodman")) { Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName("Goodman") // throws error if not found Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName + " is awesome!"); } else { Console.WriteLine("There was no customer named Goodman. How lame!"); } But how is that better? Either way, if you forget to check that the customer exists, you get an exception. I suppose that a CustomerNotFoundException is a bit easier to debug than a NullReferenceException by virtue of being more descriptive. Is that all there is to it?

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• Should an object know its own ID?

  - by xenoterracide

  obj.id seems fairly common and also seems to fall within the range of something an object could know about itself. I find myself asking why should my object know its own id? It doesn't seem to have a reason to have it? One of the main reason for it existing is retrieve it, and so my repositories need to know it, and thus use it for database interaction. I also once encountered a problem where I wanted to serialize an object to JSON for a RESTful API where the id did not seem to fit in the payload, but only the URI and including it in the object made that more difficult. Should an object know it's own id? why or why not?

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• Is there a pattern or logical structure I can follow for Event Log Numbers?

  - by makerofthings7

  What are some ideas or structure I can use when assigning EventID to events that will be saved to the Event Log? Some options I've considered Sequential (0... int.Max) Multiple of 10, where the "0" is replaced with how noisy the debugLevel is set. xxx0 may represent exceptions, critical information, start, stop etc. ...? What numbering approach gives you the most insight when a user describes the event in an email or phone? What is the most useful to support staff?

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• I have an "amoeba" game mechanic. Any idea on how to implement it?

  - by Jason

  Outside of a tetris clone, a crappy 2D top-down shooter, and some messing around with stuff like Unity and Flixel, I realize that I have yet to complete a single, polished, bells-and-whistles game. I want to change this, and I have an idea for my next project. The idea is that you're an amoeba. Amoebas have these eye-like cores (or something like that, I don't know biology), and you have two of 'em. You control one with WASD and the other with IJKL. There has to be a constant radius of stuff around each of the cores: And the area of the amoeba has to stay constant. So if you move a core in one direction, you increase the amoeba's area, but that increase is compensated by a decrease somewhere else: Aaaaaand I'd like to implement a vagination mechanic. You absorb things by engulfing them, like a boss. Maybe even an extra core, or a needle that pops you and causes all your inner stuff to start gushing out: But here's the problem: I don't know how to make this. However, I would like some ideas on how to implement it. Should I explore physics libraries like Box2D? Or maybe something involving fluid physics? Any help would be much appreciated. P.S. Feel free to steal this idea. I have plenty of ideas. If you do, please tell me how you made it so I can try it myself.

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• How much game dev does $x amount of money get you?

  - by Frank

  How much a game costs to make gets asked often and is always answered with it depends or varies on the quality of the game. Well this is basically the same question but is a bit more precise. I'm wonder what quality of game you can make with varying degrees of funds. Lets say 500k, 1m, 2m, 5m, 10m, 15m, and 20m. Let's assume you don't do any of it yourself and it only covers development only... no advertising or manufacturing.

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• User input and Automated input seperation

  - by tpaksu

  I have a mysql db and I have an automation script which modifies the data inside once a day. And, these columns may have changed by an user manually. What is the best approach to make the system only update the automated data, not the manually edited ones? I mean yes, flagging the cell which is manually edited is one way to do it, but I want to know if there's another way to accomplish this? Just curiosity.

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• Using 'new' in a projection?

  - by davenewza

  I wish to project a collection from one type (Something) to another type (SomethingElse). Yes, this is a very open-eneded question, but which of the two options below do you prefer? Creating a new instance using new: var result = query.Select(something => new SomethingElse(something)); Using a factory: var result = query.Select(something => SomethingElse.FromSomething(something)); When I think of a projection, I generally think of it as a conversion. Using new gives me this idea that I'm creating new objects during a conversion, which doesn't feel right. Semantically, SomethingElse.FromSomething() most definitely fits better. Although, the second option does require addition code to setup a factory, which could become unnecessarily compulsive.

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• Material System

  - by Towelie

  I'm designing Material/Shader System (target API DX10+ and may be OpenGL3+, now only DX10). I know, there was a lot of topics about this, but i can't find what i need. I don't want to do some kind of compilation/parsing scripts in real-time. So there some artist-created material, written at some analog of CG. After it compiled to hlsl code and after to final shader. Also there are some hard-coded ConstantBuffers, like cbuffer EveryFrameChanging { float4x4 matView; float time; float delta; } And shader use shared constant buffers to get parameters. For each mesh in the scene, getting needs and what it can give (normals, binormals etc.) and finding corresponding permutation of shader or calculating missing parts. Also, during build calculating render states and the permutations or hash for this shader which later will be used for sorting or even giving the ID from 0 to ShaderCount w/o gaps to it for sorting. FinalShader have only 1 technique and one pass. After it for each Mesh setting some shader and it's good to render. some pseudo code SetConstantBuffer(ConstantBuffer::PerFrame); foreach (shader in FinalShaders) SetConstantBuffer(ConstantBuffer::PerShader, shader); SetRenderState(shader); foreach (mesh in shader.GetAllMeshes) SetConstantBuffer(ConstantBuffer::PerMesh, mesh); SetBuffers(mesh); Draw(); class FinalShader { public: UUID m_ID; RenderState m_RenderState; CBufferBindings m_BufferBindings; } But i have no idea how to create this CG language and do i really need it?

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• Upgrading an app to support iOS5, 6 and 7

  - by drekka

  We are looking at an app that needs an upgrade. Currently it runs on iOS4, 5 & 6. The upgrade will move to iOS5, 6 & 7. It will also involve some UI changes and new features. I've been reading stuff on iOS7 and looking at things like auto-layout. What we are trying to figure out is the best way to handle the differences between the various iOS versions. Auto-layout seems like a good idea, but it's not available on iOS 5. There are also API changes to consider between all 3 versions and other new features of iOS7. So the questions: How would you handle auto layout given iOS5 does not have it? Are there any significant differences between the SDKs that you think would cause issues? Would we be better off with separate code bases?

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• python factory function best practices

  - by Jason S

  Suppose I have a file foo.py containing a class Foo: class Foo(object): def __init__(self, data): ... Now I want to add a function that creates a Foo object in a certain way from raw source data. Should I put it as a static method in Foo or as another separate function? class Foo(object): def __init__(self, data): ... # option 1: @staticmethod def fromSourceData(sourceData): return Foo(processData(sourceData)) # option 2: def makeFoo(sourceData): return Foo(processData(sourceData)) I don't know whether it's more important to be convenient for users: foo1 = foo.makeFoo(sourceData) or whether it's more important to maintain clear coupling between the method and the class: foo1 = foo.Foo.fromSourceData(sourceData)

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• Programming Languages

  - by Shannon

  I realize this will be a very vague question, but please bear with me. I have a concept for an open-world game, hand to hand combat, with a fairly open storyline, but there is an issue. I'm not sure which programming language to use, as I'm fairly new to programming. I am considering c++, but I would like to hear your opinions on which language you believe would support this type of game most efficiently. Pros and cons would be appreciated.

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• What kind of graphics would you like better? [ pictures ] [closed]

  - by Roger Travis

  I am looking forward to make an android game, something angrybirds style. I've already made my own engine and now have to decide what kind of graphics should I make. It could be either realistic, like that or a doodle-style like this Right now the first one looks more appealing to me... on the other hand, doodle-graphics are very easy to draw and their transparency doesn't seem to slow down the engine much. What do you think?

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