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  • Multiplayer in a game. How to design it object wise?

    - by Ninetou
    I was suggested on StackOverflow to ask this question here. I'm working on a simple game and I was thinking of adding multiplayer feature but I'm a bit stuck. I'm not sure what approach should I take, keeping in mind good programming practices. I have a Player object which is created for each player but then I have many other classes that would have to be able to access them. The thing is, if I initialise them in, let's say my main method, then I can't relate to different instances of player class from other classes. The only solution to my problem that comes to my mind is using some form of global objects but afaik using anything globally in apps is usually not a good practice. Any suggestions/ideas?

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  • How to get a good picture of the health of a level-based game from analytics?

    - by ADB
    I am designing a level-based game where the user completes the level 1, then 2, 3 and so on. There are 200 levels and each is rather short: 60-ish seconds. I am tracking Each played, completed (cleared for the first time), failed and cleared level Milestones: number of players to reach level 1, 5, 10, etc. Also for number of failed and played levels. Separate new players from returning ones. However, I still find it difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on from the stats. So what are the best practices for determining where I am losing players?

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  • Should my game handle collisions in the Player object?

    - by user1264811
    I'm making a 2D platform game. Right now I'm just working on making a very generic Player class. I'm wondering if it would be more efficient/better practice to have an ActionListener within the Player class to detect collisions with Enemy objects (also have an ActionListener) or to handle all the collisions in the main world. Furthermore, I'm thinking ahead about how I will handle collisions with the platforms themselves. I've looked into the double boolean arrays to see which tiles players can go to and which they can't. I don't understand how to use this class and the player class at the same time.

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  • Which countries have suitable laws for game development companies? [on hold]

    - by yoni0505
    Which countries are most suitable for game companies? By suitable I mean: Their laws let the business be more profitable. (for example: low taxes) Have less bureaucracy. (for example: creating a company, employment laws) Living there isn't expensive. (for example: rent and food prices) etc... In short - maximum revenue with minimum overhead. What other things do I have to consider when choosing the place to be in? Are there any articles about this subject? (I couldn't find any)

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  • error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'vertices'

    - by numerical25
    I would usually search for this error. But in VS C++ Express, this error comes up for just about every mistake you do. Any how I recieve this error below error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'vertices' everytime I add the following code at the top of my document // Create vertex buffer SimpleVertex vertices[] = { D3DXVECTOR3( 0.0f, 0.5f, 0.5f ), D3DXVECTOR3( 0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f ), D3DXVECTOR3( -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f ), }; below is the code in it's entirety. Cant figure out whats wrong. thanks // include the basic windows header file #include "D3Dapp.h" class MyGame: public D3Dapp { public: bool Init3d(); }; MyGame game; // Create vertex buffer SimpleVertex vertices[] = { D3DXVECTOR3( 0.0f, 0.5f, 0.5f ), D3DXVECTOR3( 0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f ), D3DXVECTOR3( -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f ), }; // the entry point for any Windows program int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { game.InitWindow(hInstance , nCmdShow); return game.Run(); } bool MyGame::Init3d() { D3Dapp::Init3d(); return true; }

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  • Is there a perfect algorithm for chess?

    - by Overflown
    Dear Stack Overflow community, I was recently in a discussion with a non-coder person on the possibilities of chess computers. I'm not well versed in theory, but think I know enough. I argued that there could not exist a deterministic Turing machine that always won or stalemated at chess. I think that, even if you search the entire space of all combinations of player1/2 moves, the single move that the computer decides upon at each step is based on a heuristic. Being based on a heuristic, it does not necessarily beat ALL of the moves that the opponent could do. My friend thought, to the contrary, that a computer would always win or tie if it never made a "mistake" move (however do you define that?). However, being a programmer who has taken CS, I know that even your good choices - given a wise opponent - can force you to make "mistake" moves in the end. Even if you know everything, your next move is greedy in matching a heuristic. Most chess computers try to match a possible end game to the game in progress, which is essentially a dynamic programming traceback. Again, the endgame in question is avoidable though. -- thanks, Allan Edit: Hmm... looks like I ruffled some feathers here. That's good. Thinking about it again, it seems like there is no theoretical problem with solving a finite game like chess. I would argue that chess is a bit more complicated than checkers in that a win is not necessarily by numerical exhaustion of pieces, but by a mate. My original assertion is probably wrong, but then again I think I've pointed out something that is not yet satisfactorily proven (formally). I guess my thought experiment was that whenever a branch in the tree is taken, then the algorithm (or memorized paths) must find a path to a mate (without getting mated) for any possible branch on the opponent moves. After the discussion, I will buy that given more memory than we can possibly dream of, all these paths could be found.

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  • iPhone programming - problem with CoreFoundation forking, PLEASE for the love of god help! lol

    - by Tom
    Hello all, I've been working on an iPhone for several months. It's a 2d shooting game akin to the old Smash TV type games. I'm doing everything alone and it has come out well so far, but now I am getting unpredictable crashes which seem to be related to CoreFoundation forking and not exec()ing, as the message THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONA LITY_YOU_MUST_EXEC__ always shows up somewhere in the debugger. Usually it shows up around a CFRunLoopRunSpecific and is related to either a timer firing or _InitializeTouchTapCount. I cannot figure out exactly what is causing the fork to occur. My main game loop is running on a timer, first updating all the logic and then drawing everything with openGL. There is nothing highly complex or unusual. I understand you cannot make CF calls on the childside of a fork, or access shared memory and things like that. I am not explicitly trying to fork anything. My question is: can anyone tell me what type of activity might cause CoreFoundation to randomly fork like this? I'd really like to finish this game and I don't know how to solve this problem. Thanks for any help.

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  • iPhone programming - problem with CoreFoundation forking

    - by Tom
    Hello all, I've been working on an iPhone for several months. It's a 2d shooting game akin to the old Smash TV type games. I'm doing everything alone and it has come out well so far, but now I am getting unpredictable crashes which seem to be related to CoreFoundation forking and not exec()ing, as the message __THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONA LITY___YOU_MUST_EXEC__ always shows up somewhere in the debugger. Usually it shows up around a CFRunLoopRunSpecific and is related to either a timer firing or _InitializeTouchTapCount. I cannot figure out exactly what is causing the fork to occur. My main game loop is running on a timer, first updating all the logic and then drawing everything with openGL. There is nothing highly complex or unusual. I understand you cannot make CF calls on the childside of a fork, or access shared memory and things like that. I am not explicitly trying to fork anything. My question is: can anyone tell me what type of activity might cause CoreFoundation to randomly fork like this? I'd really like to finish this game and I don't know how to solve this problem. Thanks for any help.

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  • Understanding byte order and functions like CFSwapInt32HostToBig

    - by Typeoneerror
    I've got an enumeration in my game. A simple string message with an appended PacketType is being sent with the message (so it knows what to do with the message) over GameKit WIFI connection. I used Apple's GKRocket sample code as a starting point. The code itself is working fantastically; I just want to understand what the line with CFSwapInt32HostToBig is doing. What on earth does that do? and why does it need to do it? My guess is that it's making sure the PacketType value can be converted to an unsigned integer so it can send it reliably, but that doesn't sound all that correct to me. The documentation states "Converts a 32-bit integer from big-endian format to the host’s native byte order." but I don't understand what the means really. typedef enum { PacketTypeStart, // packet to notify games to start PacketTypeRequestSetup, // server wants client info PacketTypeSetup, // send client info to server PacketTypeSetupComplete, // round trip made for completion PacketTypeTurn, // packet to notify game that a turn is up PacketTypeRoll, // packet to send roll to players PacketTypeEnd // packet to end game } PacketType; // .... - (void)sendPacket:(NSData *)data ofType:(PacketType)type { NSLog(@"sendPacket:ofType(%d)", type); // create the data with enough space for a uint NSMutableData *newPacket = [NSMutableData dataWithCapacity:([data length]+sizeof(uint32_t))]; // Data is prefixed with the PacketType so the peer knows what to do with it. uint32_t swappedType = CFSwapInt32HostToBig((uint32_t)type); // add uint to data [newPacket appendBytes:&swappedType length:sizeof(uint32_t)]; // add the rest of the data [newPacket appendData:data]; // Send data checking for success or failure NSError *error; BOOL didSend = [_gkSession sendDataToAllPeers:newPacket withDataMode:GKSendDataReliable error:&error]; if (!didSend) { NSLog(@"error in sendDataToPeers: %@", [error localizedDescription]); } }

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  • 'Bank Switching' Sprites on old NES applications

    - by Jeffrey Kern
    I'm currently writing in C# what could basically be called my own interpretation of the NES hardware for an old-school looking game that I'm developing. I've fired up FCE and have been observing how the NES displayed and rendered graphics. In a nutshell, the NES could hold two bitmaps worth of graphical information, each with the dimensions of 128x128. These are called the PPU tables. One was for BG tiles and the other was for sprites. The data had to be in this memory for it to be drawn on-screen. Now, if a game had more graphical data then these two banks, it could write portions of this new information to these banks -overwriting what was there - at the end of each frame, and use it from the next frame onward. So, in old games how did the programmers 'bank switch'? I mean, within the level design, how did they know which graphic set to load? I've noticed that Mega Man 2 bankswitches when the screen programatically scrolls from one portion of the stage to the next. But how did they store this information in the level - what sprites to copy over into the PPU tables, and where to write them at? Another example would be hitting pause in MM2. BG tiles get over-written during pause, and then get restored when the player unpauses. How did they remember which tiles they replaced and how to restore them? If I was lazy, I could just make one huge static bitmap and just grab values that way. But I'm forcing myself to limit these values to create a more authentic experience. I've read the amazing guide on how M.C. Kids was made, and I'm trying to be barebones about how I program this game. It still just boggles my mind how these programmers accomplisehd what they did with what they had. EDIT: The only solution I can think of would be to hold separate tables that state what tiles should be in the PPU at what time, but I think that would be a huge memory resource that the NES wouldn't be able to handle.

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  • Weird stuttering issues not related to GC.

    - by Smills
    I am getting some odd stuttering issues with my game even though my FPS never seems to drop below 30. About every 5 seconds my game stutters. I was originally getting stuttering every 1-2 seconds due to my garbage collection issues, but I have sorted those and will often go 15-20 seconds without a garbage collection. Despite this, my game still stutters periodically even when there is no GC listed in logcat anywhere near the stutter. Even when I take out most of my code and simply make my "physics" code the below code I get this weird slowdown issue. I feel that I am missing something or overlooking something. Shouldn't that "elapsed" code that I put in stop any variance in the speed of the main character related to changes in FPS? Any input/theories would be awesome. Physics: private void updatePhysics() { //get current time long now = System.currentTimeMillis(); //added this to see if I could speed it up, it made no difference Thread myThread = Thread.currentThread(); myThread.setPriority(Thread.MAX_PRIORITY); //work out elapsed time since last frame in seconds double elapsed = (now - mLastTime2) / 1000.0; mLastTime2 = now; //measures FPS and displays in logcat once every 30 frames fps+=1/elapsed; fpscount+=1; if (fpscount==30) { fps=fps/fpscount; Log.i("myActivity","FPS: "+fps+" Touch: "+touch); fpscount=0; } //this should make the main character (theoretically) move upwards at a steady pace mY-=100*elapsed; //increase amount I translate the draw to = main characters Y //location if the main character goes upwards if (mY<=viewY) { viewY=mY; } }

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  • License of popular dictionary word lists (e.g. SOWPODS, TWL)? Copyright? Trademarks?

    - by BobbyJim
    (I'm not sure if this off-topic. I found a lot of voted-up questions about software licenses and this is related. Plus, I'm sure many of us have had the situation that we need to use a dictionary in our code) I'm making a (maybe commercial) word game and need to use a good word dictionary for checking words. The most common dictionaries to use are the SOWPODS or TWL lists that are used Scrabble tournaments; see here: http://www.scrabblist.com/ (I have nothing to do with this site by the way). I've seen loads of websites offering these two dictionaries for download and loads of word games advertise that they use them. However, I cannot find any licensing terms attached to these dictionaries wherever I download them. For the players of my game, I'd want to say what dictionary I'm using (e.g. "this game uses SOWPODS"). However, I'm nervous about what I can do legally. Does anyone know about if you can copyright lists of words? Does anyone know the licenses of TWL and SOWPODS? TWL and SOWPODS don't seem to have trademarks on them but I'd like to know for sure. I cannot find any good sources for this information. EDIT: Great, now the top result for "SOWPODS license" is my stackoverflow question. :)

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  • Problem with movieclip animation for tiles-based game platform !

    - by user209636
    Hi everybody, I'm a new member of this forum. I have some problem and i want to ask you. Recently, I have a project game tiles-based platform. I have coded completed my project game with simple graphics represent for character animation. But when i create flash animation then attach to tiles-based character of my game's project i have a problem. Because of tiles-based game with fixed tile sizes and my character animation have each width and height size for each frame. When i attach animation to character code. Example , with my game if i press key to move character , then my character will playing "moving" frame , because of this frame animation have difference width and height then my game function check collisions fail , I want to ask you how can i solve this problem ?. I want to learn some good pratice for making game . Thank ! Sorry for my english skill , i am not good at this

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  • Single player 'pong' game

    - by Jam
    I am just starting out learning pygame and livewires, and I'm trying to make a single-player pong game, where you just hit the ball, and it bounces around until it passes your paddle (located on the left side of the screen and controlled by the mouse), which makes you lose. I have the basic code, but the ball doesn't stay on the screen, it just flickers and doesn't remain constant. Also, the paddle does not move with the mouse. I'm sure I'm missing something simple, but I just can't figure it out. Help please! Here's what I have: from livewires import games import random games.init(screen_width=640, screen_height=480, fps=50) class Paddle(games.Sprite): image=games.load_image("paddle.bmp") def __init__(self, x=10): super(Paddle, self).__init__(image=Paddle.image, y=games.mouse.y, left=10) self.score=games.Text(value=0, size=25, top=5, right=games.screen.width - 10) games.screen.add(self.score) def update(self): self.y=games.mouse.y if self.top<0: self.top=0 if self.bottom>games.screen.height: self.bottom=games.screen.height self.check_collide() def check_collide(self): for ball in self.overlapping_sprites: self.score.value+=1 ball.handle_collide() class Ball(games.Sprite): image=games.load_image("ball.bmp") speed=5 def __init__(self, x=90, y=90): super(Ball, self).__init__(image=Ball.image, x=x, y=y, dx=Ball.speed, dy=Ball.speed) def update(self): if self.right>games.screen.width: self.dx=-self.dx if self.bottom>games.screen.height or self.top<0: self.dy=-self.dy if self.left<0: self.end_game() self.destroy() def handle_collide(self): self.dx=-self.dx def end_game(self): end_message=games.Message(value="Game Over", size=90, x=games.screen.width/2, y=games.screen.height/2, lifetime=250, after_death=games.screen.quit) games.screen.add(end_message) def main(): background_image=games.load_image("background.bmp", transparent=False) games.screen.background=background_image paddle_image=games.load_image("paddle.bmp") the_paddle=games.Sprite(image=paddle_image, x=10, y=games.mouse.y) games.screen.add(the_paddle) ball_image=games.load_image("ball.bmp") the_ball=games.Sprite(image=ball_image, x=630, y=200, dx=2, dy=2) games.screen.add(the_ball) games.mouse.is_visible=False games.screen.event_grab=True games.screen.mainloop() main()

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  • Best way of storing an "array of records" at design-time

    - by smartins
    I have a set of data that I need to store at design-time to construct the contents of a group of components at run-time. Something like this: type TVulnerabilityData = record Vulnerability: TVulnerability; Name: string; Description: string; ErrorMessage: string; end; What's the best way of storing this data at design-time for later retrieval at run-time? I'll have about 20 records for which I know all the contents of each "record" but I'm stuck on what's the best way of storing the data. The only semi-elegant idea I've come up with is "construct" each record on the unit's initialization like this: var VulnerabilityData: array[Low(TVulnerability)..High(TVulnerability)] of TVulnerabilityData; .... initialization VulnerabilityData[0].Vulnerability := vVulnerability1; VulnerabilityData[0].Name := 'Name of Vulnerability1'; VulnerabilityData[0].Description := 'Description of Vulnerability1'; VulnerabilityData[0].ErrorMessage := 'Error Message of Vulnerability1'; VulnerabilityData[1]...... ..... VulnerabilityData[20]...... Is there a better and/or more elegant solution than this? Thanks for reading.

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  • Using Essential Use Cases to design a UI-centric Application

    - by Bruno Brant
    Hello all, I'm begging a new project (oh, how I love the fresh taste of a new project!) and we are just starting to design it. In short: The application is a UI that will enable users to model an execution flow (a Visio like drag & drop interface). So our greatest concern is usability and features that will help the users model fast and clearly the execution flow. Our established methodology makes extensive use of Use Cases in order to create a harmonious view of the application between the programmers and users. This is a business concern, really: I'd prefer to use an Agile Method with User Stories rather than User Cases, but we need to define a clear scope to sell the product to our clients. However, Use Cases have a number of flaws, most of which are related to the fact that they include technical details, like UI, etc, as can be seem here. But, since we can't use User Stories and a fully interactive design, I've decided that we compromise: I will be using Essential Use Cases in order to hide those details. Now I have another problem: it's essential (no pun intended) to have a clear description of UI interaction, so, how should I document it? In other words, how do I specify a application through the use of Essential Use Cases where the UI interaction is vital to it? I can see some alternatives: Abandon the use of Use Cases since they don't correctly represent the problem Do not include interface descriptions in the use case, but create another documentation (Story Boards) and link then to the Essential Use Cases Include UI interaction description to the Essential Use Cases, since they are part of the business rules in the perspective of the users and the application itself

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  • Starting out Silverlight 4 design

    - by Fermin
    I come from mainly a web development background (ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, XHTML, CSS etc) but have been tasked with creating/designing a Silverlight application. The application is utilising Bing Maps control for Silverlight, this will be contained in a user control and will be the 'main' screen in the system. There will be numerous other user controls on the form that will be used to choose/filter/sort/order the data on the map. I think of it like Visual Studio: the Bing Maps will be like the code editor window and the other controls will be like Solutions Explorer, Find Results etc. (although a lot less of them!) I have read up and I'm comfortable with the data side (RIA-Services) of the application. I've (kinda) got my head around databinding and using a view model to present data and keep the code behind file lite. What I do need some help on is UI design/navigation framework, specifically 2 aspects: How do I best implement a fluid design so that the various user controls which filter the map data can be resized/pinned/unpinned (for example, like the Solution Explorer in VS)? I made a test using a Grid with a GridSplitter control, is this the best way? Would it be best to create a Grid/Gridsplitter with Navigation Frames inside the grid to load the content? Since I have multiple user controls that basically use the same set of data, should I set the dataContext at the highest possible level (e.g. if using a grid with multiple frames, at the Grid level?). Any help, tips, links etc. will be very much appreciated!

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  • Single-player pong game

    - by Jam
    I am just starting out learning pygame and livewires, and I'm trying to make a single-player pong game, where you just hit the ball, and it bounces around until it passes your paddle (located on the left side of the screen and controlled by the mouse), which makes you lose. However, I keep getting the error: "Cannot have more than on Screen object", which I can find no references to online really, and I can't make sense of it. I want to eventually make the game more complicated, but I need to make it work first. Help please! Here's the code so far: from livewires import games games.init(screen_width=640, screen_height=480, fps=50) class Paddle(games.Sprite): image=games.load_image("paddle.bmp") def __init__(self): super(Paddle, self).__init__(image=Paddle.image, y=games.mouse.y, left=0) self.score=games.Text(value=0, size=25, top=5, right=games.screen.width-10) games.screen.add(self.score) def update(self): self.y=games.mouse.y self.check_collide() def check_collide(self): for ball in self.overlapping_sprites: self.score.value+=1 self.score.right=games.screen.width-10 ball.handle_collide() class Ball(games.Sprite): image=games.load_image("ball.bmp") speed=1 def __init__(self, x, y=90): super(Ball, self).__init__(image=Ball.image, x=x, y=y, dx=Ball.speed, dy=Ball.speed) def update(self): if self.left<0: self.end_game() self.destroy() def handle_collide(self): if self.right>games.screen.width: self.dx=-self.dx if self.bottom>games.screen.height or self.top<0: self.dy=-self.dy def ball_destroy(self): self.destroy() def main(): background_image=games.load_image("background.bmp", transparent=False) games.screen.background=background_image the_ball=Ball() games.screen.add(the_ball) the_paddle=Paddle() games.screen.add(the_paddle) games.mouse.is_visible=False games.screen.event_grab=True games.screen.mainloop() main()

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  • Bubble Breaker Game Solver better than greedy?

    - by Gregory
    For a mental exercise I decided to try and solve the bubble breaker game found on many cell phones as well as an example here:Bubble Break Game The random (N,M,C) board consists N rows x M columns with C colors The goal is to get the highest score by picking the sequence of bubble groups that ultimately leads to the highest score A bubble group is 2 or more bubbles of the same color that are adjacent to each other in either x or y direction. Diagonals do not count When a group is picked, the bubbles disappear, any holes are filled with bubbles from above first, ie shift down, then any holes are filled by shifting right A bubble group score = n * (n - 1) where n is the number of bubbles in the bubble group The first algorithm is a simple exhaustive recursive algorithm which explores going through the board row by row and column by column picking bubble groups. Once the bubble group is picked, we create a new board and try to solve that board, recursively descending down Some of the ideas I am using include normalized memoization. Once a board is solved we store the board and the best score in a memoization table. I create a prototype in python which shows a (2,15,5) board takes 8859 boards to solve in about 3 seconds. A (3,15,5) board takes 12,384,726 boards in 50 minutes on a server. The solver rate is ~3k-4k boards/sec and gradually decreases as the memoization search takes longer. Memoization table grows to 5,692,482 boards, and hits 6,713,566 times. What other approaches could yield high scores besides the exhaustive search? I don't seen any obvious way to divide and conquer. But trending towards larger and larger bubbles groups seems to be one approach Thanks to David Locke for posting the paper link which talks above a window solver which uses a constant-depth lookahead heuristic.

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  • Product Catalog Schema design

    - by FlySwat
    I'm building a proof of concept schema for a product catalog to possibly replace a very aging and crufty one we use. In our business, we sell both physical materials and services (one time and reoccurring charges). The current catalog schema has each distinct category broken out into individual tables, while this is nicely normalized and performs well, it is fairly difficult to extend. Adding a new attribute to a particular product involves changing the table schema and backpopulating old data. An idea I've been toying with has been something along the line of a base set of entity tables in 3rd normal form, these will contain the facts that are common among ALL products. Then, I'd like to build an Attribute-Entity-Value schema that allows each entity type to be extended in a flexible way using just data and no schema changes. Finally, I'd like to denormalize this data model into materialized views for each individual entity type. This views are what the application would access. We also have many tables that contain business rules and compatibility rules. These would join against the base entity tables instead of the views. My big concerns here are: Performance - Attribute-Entity-Value schemas are flexible, but typically perform poorly, should I be concerned? More Performance - Denormalizing using materialized views may have some risks, I'm not positive on this yet. Complexity - While this schema is flexible and maintainable using just data, I worry that the complexity of the design might make future schema changes difficult. For those who have designed product catalogs for large scale enterprises, am I going down the totally wrong path? Is there any good best practice schema design reading available for product catalogs?

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  • Programmer Puzzle: Encoding a chess board state throughout a game

    - by Andrew Rollings
    Not strictly a question, more of a puzzle... Over the years, I've been involved in a few technical interviews of new employees. Other than asking the standard "do you know X technology" questions, I've also tried to get a feel for how they approach problems. Typically, I'd send them the question by email the day before the interview, and expect them to come up with a solution by the following day. Often the results would be quite interesting - wrong, but interesting - and the person would still get my recommendation if they could explain why they took a particular approach. So I thought I'd throw one of my questions out there for the Stack Overflow audience. Question: What is the most space-efficient way you can think of to encode the state of a chess game (or subset thereof)? That is, given a chess board with the pieces arranged legally, encode both this initial state and all subsequent legal moves taken by the players in the game. No code required for the answer, just a description of the algorithm you would use. EDIT: As one of the posters has pointed out, I didn't consider the time interval between moves. Feel free to account for that too as an optional extra :) EDIT2: Just for additional clarification... Remember, the encoder/decoder is rule-aware. The only things that really need to be stored are the player's choices - anything else can be assumed to be known by the encoder/decoder. EDIT3: It's going to be difficult to pick a winner here :) Lots of great answers!

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  • Table Design For SystemSettings, Best Model

    - by Chris L
    Someone suggested moving a table full of settings, where each column is a setting name(or type) and the rows are the customers & their respective settings for each setting. ID | IsAdmin | ImagePath ------------------------------ 12 | 1          | \path\to\images 34 | 0          | \path\to\images The downside to this is every time we want a new setting name(or type) we alter the table(via sql) and add the new (column)setting name/type. Then update the rows(so that each customer now has a value for that setting). The new table design proposal. The proposal is to have a column for setting name and another column for setting. ID | SettingName | SettingValue ---------------------------- 12 | IsAdmin        | 1 12 | ImagePath   | \path\to\images 34 | IsAdmin        | 0 34 | ImagePath   | \path\to\images The point they made was that adding a new setting was as easy as a simple insert statement to the row, no added column. But something doesn't feel right about the second design, it looks bad, but I can't come up with any arguments against it. Am I wrong?

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  • SECURITY Flaws in this design for User authentication.

    - by Shao
    SECURITY Flaws in this design for User authentication. From: http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscookbook/Simple+Homegrown+Authentication Note: a. Project follows the MVC pattern. b. Only a user with a valid username and password is allowed submit something. Design: a. Have a base controller from which all controllers are derived from. b. Before any of the actions in the derived controllers are called the system calls a before action in the base controller. c. In each controller user hardcodes the actions that need to be verified in an array. d. The before action first looks in the array that has the actions that are protected and sees if a user is logged in or not by peaking into the session. If a user is present then user is allowed to submit otherwise user is redirected to login page. What do you think?

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  • Social Network News Feed Database & Design

    - by pws5068
    I'm designing a News Feed system using PHP/MySQL similar to facebook's. I have asked a similar question before but now I've changed the design and I'm looking for feedback. Example Notifications: User_A commented on User_B's new album. "Hey man nice picture!" User_B added a new Photo to [his/her] profile. [show photo thumbnail] Initially, I implemented this using excessive columns for Obj1:Type1 | Obj2:Type2 | etc.. Now the design is set up using a couple special keywords, and actor/receiver relationships. My database is designed for efficiency - using a table of messages joined on a table containing userid,actionid,receiverid,receiverObjectTypeID, Here's a condensed version of what it will look like once joined: News_ID | User_ID | Message | Timestamp 2643 A %a commented on %o's new %r. SomeTimestamp 2644 B %a added a new %r to [his/her] profile. SomeTimestamp %a = the User_ID of the person doing the action %r = the receiving object %o = the owner of the receiving object (for example the owner of the album) (NULL if %r is a user) Questions: Is this a smart (efficient/scalable) way to move forward? How can I show messages like: "User_B added 4 new photos to his profile."?

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  • PHP News Feed Database & Design

    - by pws5068
    I'm designing a News Feed system using PHP/MySQL similar to facebook's. I have asked a similar question before but now I've changed the design and I'm looking for feedback. Example News: User_A commented on User_B's new album. "Hey man nice pictures!" User_B added a new Photo to [his/her] profile. [show photo thumbnail] Initially, I implemented this using excessive columns for Obj1:Type1 | Obj2:Type2 | etc.. Now the design is set up using a couple special keywords, and actor/receiver relationships. My database uses a table of messages joined on a table containing userid,actionid,receiverid,receiverObjectTypeID, Here's a condensed version of what it will look like once joined: News_ID | User_ID | Message | Timestamp 2643 A %a commented on %o's new %r. SomeTimestamp 2644 B %a added a new %r to [his/her] profile. SomeTimestamp %a = the User_ID of the person doing the action %r = the receiving object %o = the owner of the receiving object (for example the owner of the album) (NULL if %r is a user) Questions: Is this a smart (efficient/scalable) way to move forward? How can I show messages like: "User_B added 4 new photos to his profile."?

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