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  • What data to send when tracking clicks with Google Analytics events (and how)?

    - by user359650
    When tracking clicks on links, there are 3 items I'm interested in: link location in the page by grabbing the id of the closest parent: to see influence of location on click-through link text: to see influence of text on click-through link href attribute value: to see where people go when leaving my website The problem when using Google Analytics to track those clicks is that events only have 3 available text fields, one of which being the category, which if you use to store one of the above items will create a mess in your Event reporting because you will have as many categories as item values. Therefore if you assign a predefined value to the category (e.g. clicks), then you're left with only 2 event fields (action, label) to store 3 items (location, text, href). That in itself isn't the end of the world because you can concatenate 2 items into 1 event field, then use the reporting or the API to filter things out. Accordingly what I plan on doing is this: category: clicks action: {location_on_page} ¦ {text} label: {href} where {__} are variable values related to the clicked links With this I can easily create some reports directly via the GUI: downloads: include only events where label ends with .pdf click outs to particular domains: include only events where label contains domain And for more complex tasks I need to export the data (or use the API): influence of location on clicks: for each location in the design, count number of events that have that location in the action, then corroborate with pageviews of the corresponding pages. Whilst this looks good I'm wondering if there is a better approach, hence the following questions: Q1: Can you foresee any particular issues with this particular setup (e.g. things I won't be able to report on)? Q2: Can you think of other data that would be interesting to include in the event?

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  • Where is a good place to start to learn about custom caching in .Net

    - by John
    I'm looking to make some performance enhancements to our site, but I'm not sure exactly where to begin. We have some custom object caching, but I think that we can do better. Our Business We aggregate news stories on a news type of web site. We get approximately 500-1000 new stories per week. We have index pages that show various lists of the items and details pages that show the individual stories. Our Current Use case: Getting an Individual Story User makes a request The Data Access Layer(DAL) checks to see if the item is in cache and if item is fresh (15 minutes). If the item is not in cache or is not fresh, retrieve the item from SQL Server, save to cache and return to user. Problems with this approach The pull nature of caching means that users have to pay the waiting cost every time that the cache is refreshed. Once a story is published, it changes infrequently and I think that we should replace the pull model with something better. My initial thoughts My initial thought is that stories should ALL be stored locally in some type of dictionary. (Cache or is there another, better way?). If the story is not found, then make a trip to the database, update the local dictionary and send the item back. Since there may be occasional updates to stories, this should be an entirely process from the user. I watched a video by Brent Ozar, How StackOverflow Scales SQL Server, in which Brent states "the fastest database query is the one that you don't make". Where do I start? At this point, I don't know exactly what the solution is. Is it caching? Is there a better way of using local storage? Do I use a Dictionary, OrderedDictionary, List ? It seems daunting and I'm just looking for some good starting points to learn more about how to do this type of optimization.

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  • What web technology could I use which would support a decision tree?

    - by Rami Alhamad
    I am a big game development fan but I haven't done any commercial work in the past. I have been asked by a non-profit to look at developing a game similar to the award-winning www.playspent.org They want the following features: support 5 scenarios mobile isn't important but compatibility with older browsers would be a big bonus they want it to be visual and audible bonus is to have it easily modifiable support 4 languages I don't have much knowledge of Flash and would rather avoid using it as a solution. I started breaking down the problem into segments that I will need to examine, they are as follows: ability to read the game flow from a file that they can produce (xml, etc.) db design to store decision tree language challenge browser compatibility I am leaning towards an Google app engine/GWT solution but I am not sure what technology is best for this. I am really hoping to get your opinion/recommendation on my approach and on what technology is best. A special thanks (and beer if you live in Toronto) will be awarded to anyone who can help give me a ballpark estimate on how much such a game should go for. I know it's tough to estimate but any rough figure will help (how much would you charge for building something like playspent.org?) Thanks in advance

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  • responsibility for storage

    - by Stefano Borini
    A colleague and I were brainstorming about where to put the responsibility of an object to store itself on the disk in our own file format. There are basically two choices: object.store(file) fileformatWriter.store(object) The first one gives the responsibility of serialization on the disk to the object itself. This is similar to the approach used by python pickle. The second groups the representation responsibility on a file format writer object. The data object is just a plain data container (eventually with additional methods not relevant for storage). We agreed on the second methodology, because it centralizes the writing logic from generic data. We also have cases of objects implementing complex logic that need to store info while the logic is in progress. For these cases, the fileformatwriter object can be passed and used as a delegate, calling storage operations on it. With the first pattern, the complex logic object would instead accept the raw file, and implement the writing logic itself. The first method, however, has the advantage that the object knows how to write and read itself from any file containing it, which may also be convenient. I would like to hear your opinion before starting a rather complex refactoring.

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  • What does your Lisp workflow look like?

    - by Duncan Bayne
    I'm learning Lisp at the moment, coming from a language progression that is Locomotive BASIC - Z80 Assembler - Pascal - C - Perl - C# - Ruby. My approach is to simultaneously: write a simple web-scraper using SBCL, QuickLisp, closure-html, and drakma watch the SICP lectures I think this is working well; I'm developing good 'Lisp goggles', in that I can now read Lisp reasonably easily. I'm also getting a feel for how the Lisp ecosystem works, e.g. Quicklisp for dependencies. What I'm really missing, though, is a sense of how a seasoned Lisper actually works. When I'm coding for .NET, I have Visual Studio set up with ReSharper and VisualSVN. I write tests, I implement, I refactor, I commit. Then when I'm done enough of that to complete a story, I write some AUATs. Then I kick off a Release build on TeamCity to push the new functionality out to the customer for testing & hopefully approval. If it's an app that needs an installer, I use either WiX or InnoSetup, obviously building the installer through the CI system. So, my question is: as an experienced Lisper, what does your workflow look like? Do you work mostly in the REPL, or in the editor? How do you do unit tests? Continuous integration? Packaging & deployment? When you sit down at your desk, steaming mug of coffee to one side and a framed photo of John McCarthy to the other, what is it that you do? Currently, I feel like I am getting to grips with Lisp coding, but not Lisp development ...

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  • Why, in WPF, do we set an object to Stretch via its Alignment properties instead of Width/Height?

    - by Jonathan Hobbs
    In WPF's XAML, we can tell an element to fill its container like this: <Button HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> Why is it that when we set an element to Stretch, we do it via the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties? Why did the WPF design team decide to take this approach over having Width="Stretch" and Height="Stretch"? I presume it was a calculated decision, and I'm curious about the reasoning. CSS, among other technologies, follows the convention that stretching is done via the width and height properties, and that alignment affects positioning exclusively. This seems intuitive enough: stretching the element is manipulating its width and height, after all! Using the corresponding alignment property to stretch an element seems counter-intuitive and unusual in comparison. This makes me think they didn't just pick this option for no reason: they made a calculated decision and had reasons behind it. Width and Height use the double data type, which would ordinarily mean assigning it a string would be silly. However, WPF's Window objects can take Width="Auto", which gets treated as double.NaN. Couldn't Width="Stretch" be stored as double.PositiveInfinity or some other value?

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  • PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, NetBeans IDE (Part 3)

    - by Geertjan
    To complete the picture, let's use the traditional (that is, old) Hibernate mechanism, i.e., via XML files, rather than via the annotations shown yesterday. It's definitely trickier, with many more places where typos can occur, but that's why it's the old mechanism. I do not recommend this approach. I recommend the approach shown yesterday. The other players in this scenario include PostgreSQL, as outlined in the previous blog entries in this series. Here's the structure of the module, replacing the code shown yesterday: Here's the Employee class, notice that it has no annotations: import java.io.Serializable; import java.util.Date; public class Employees implements Serializable {         private int employeeId;     private String firstName;     private String lastName;     private Date dateOfBirth;     private String phoneNumber;     private String junk;     public int getEmployeeId() {         return employeeId;     }     public void setEmployeeId(int employeeId) {         this.employeeId = employeeId;     }     public String getFirstName() {         return firstName;     }     public void setFirstName(String firstName) {         this.firstName = firstName;     }     public String getLastName() {         return lastName;     }     public void setLastName(String lastName) {         this.lastName = lastName;     }     public Date getDateOfBirth() {         return dateOfBirth;     }     public void setDateOfBirth(Date dateOfBirth) {         this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;     }     public String getPhoneNumber() {         return phoneNumber;     }     public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) {         this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;     }     public String getJunk() {         return junk;     }     public void setJunk(String junk) {         this.junk = junk;     } } And here's the Hibernate configuration file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"     "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-configuration>     <session-factory>         <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class">org.postgresql.Driver</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/smithdb</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.username">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.password">smith</property>         <property name="hibernate.connection.pool_size">1</property>         <property name="hibernate.default_schema">public"</property>         <property name="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory</property>         <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</property>         <property name="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</property>         <property name="hibernate.show_sql">true</property>         <mapping resource="org/db/viewer/employees.hbm.xml"/>     </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Next, the Hibernate mapping file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC       "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"       "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd"> <hibernate-mapping>     <class name="org.db.viewer.Employees"            table="employees"            schema="public"            catalog="smithdb">         <id name="employeeId" column="employee_id" type="int">             <generator class="increment"/>         </id>         <property name="firstName" column="first_name" type="string" />         <property name="lastName" column="last_name" type="string" />         <property name="dateOfBirth" column="date_of_birth" type="date" />         <property name="phoneNumber" column="phone_number" type="string" />         <property name="junk" column="junk" type="string" />             </class>     </hibernate-mapping> Then, the HibernateUtil file, for providing access to the Hibernate SessionFactory: import java.net.URL; import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration; import org.hibernate.SessionFactory; public class HibernateUtil {     private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;         static {         try {             // Create the SessionFactory from standard (hibernate.cfg.xml)             // config file.             String res = "org/db/viewer/employees.cfg.xml";             URL myURL = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResource(res);             sessionFactory = new AnnotationConfiguration().configure(myURL).buildSessionFactory();         } catch (Throwable ex) {             // Log the exception.             System.err.println("Initial SessionFactory creation failed." + ex);             throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);         }     }         public static SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {         return sessionFactory;     }     } Finally, the "createKeys" in the ChildFactory: @Override protected boolean createKeys(List list) {     Session session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();     Transaction transac = null;     try {         transac = session.beginTransaction();         Query query = session.createQuery("from Employees");         list.addAll(query.list());     } catch (HibernateException he) {         Exceptions.printStackTrace(he);         if (transac != null){             transac.rollback();         }     } finally {         session.close();     }     return true; } Note that Constantine Drabo has a similar article here. Run the application and the result should be the same as yesterday.

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  • Source-control your BI Publisher reports

    - by Dmitry Nefedkin
    Version control systems (VCS) like Subversion, Git and the others has been widely adopted and became the must-have tool in any software development project. Source artifacts and checked out, modified, checked in, all the history of changes is tracked by the VCS.  But what if the development tool stores the source/configuration artifacts not in your laptop's hard drive, but in some shared repository instead? Well, we definitely need a way for export/import our artifacts from/to this repository.   Oracle BI Publisher report development approach is based on such a shared repository model (catalog), and starting from BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 Oracle ships Catalog Utility, which can be utilized to export/import the reports from the command line.  To start using the BI Publisher Catalog Utility you should: Go to the file system of the server where BI Publisher binaries has been installed and locate the following file: <MW_HOME>/Oracle_BI1/clients/bipublisher/BIPCatalogUtil.zip Copy the file to your local filesystem and unzip it. I will refer to this unzipped directory as <BIP_CLIENT_DIR> below If you do not want to pass server BI Publisher server URL, username and password during each invocation, modify the corresponding values inside <BIP_CLIENT_DIR>/config/xmlp-client-config.xml Open the terminal window and go to <BIP_CLIENT_DIR>/bin Make sure that the following environment variables are set: JAVA_HOME, ORACLE_HOME Now it's time to run the utility: if you are on Linux - just run BIPCatalogUtil.sh and pass the parameters according to the utility documentation if you are on MS Windows the bad news are that the command script for MS Windows is missing, and support.oracle.com note 1333726.1 says that a temporary solution is "create a .cmd file by setting up a classpath and copying the same commands from the .sh script". The good news are that I've created this script already,  please download the it from GitHub Hope you will find this utility useful during you day-by-day BI Publisher development. 

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  • In Scrum, should you split up the backlog in a functional backlog and a technical backlog or not?

    - by Patrick
    In our Scrum teams we use a backlog, which mostly contains functional topics, but also sometimes contains technical topics. The advantage of having 1 backlog is that it becomes easy to choose the topics for the next sprint, but I have some questions: First, to me it seems more logical to have a separate technical backlog, where developers themselves can add pure technical items, like: we could improve performance in this method, this class lacks some technical documentation, ... By having one backlog, all developers always have to pass via the product owner to have their topics added to the backlog, which seems additional, unnecessary work for the product owner. Second, if you have a product owner that only focuses on the pure-functional items, the pure-technical items (like missing technical documentation, code that erodes and should be refactored, classes that always give problems during debugging because they don't have a stable foundation and should be refactored, ...) always end up at the end of the list because "they don't serve the customer directly". By having a separate technical backlog, and time reserved in every sprint for these pure technical items, we can improve the applications functionally, but also keep them healthy inside. What is the best approach? One backlog or two?

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  • New way of integrating Openfeint in Cocos2d-x 0.12.0

    - by Ef Es
    I am trying to implement OpenFeint for Android in my cocos2d-x project. My approach so far has been creating a button that calls a static java method in class Bridge using jnihelper functions (jnihelper only accepts statics). Bridge has one singleton attribute of type OFAndroid, that is the class dynamically calling the Openfeint Api methods, and every method in the bridge just forwards it to the OFAndroid object. What I am trying to do now is to initialize the openfeint libraries in the main java class that is the one calling the static C++ libraries. My problem right now is that the initializing function void com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(Context ctx, OpenFeintSettings settings, OpenFeintDelegate delegate) is not accepting the context parameter that I am giving him, which is a "this" reference to the main class. Main class extends from Cocos2dxActivity but I don't have any other that extends from Application. Any suggestions on fixing it or how to improve the architecture? EDIT: I am trying a new solution. Make the bridge class into an Application child, is called from Main object, initializes OpenFeint when created and it can call the OpenFeint functions instead of needing an additional class. The problem is I still get the error. 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.content.ContextWrapper.getPackageManager(ContextWrapper.java:85) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.validateManifest(OpenFeintInternal.java:885) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initializeWithoutLoggingIn(OpenFeintInternal.java:829) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.internal.OpenFeintInternal.initialize(OpenFeintInternal.java:852) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at com.openfeint.api.OpenFeint.initialize(OpenFeint.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.NuroFeint.onCreate(NuroFeint.java:23) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at nurogames.fastfish.FastFish.onCreate(FastFish.java:47) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1069) 03-30 14:39:22.661: E/AndroidRuntime(9029): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2751)

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  • Splitting big request in multiple small ajax requests

    - by Ionut
    I am unsure regarding the scalability of the following model. I have no experience at all with large systems, big number of requests and so on but I'm trying to build some features considering scalability first. In my scenario there is a user page which contains data for: User's details (name, location, workplace ...) User's activity (blog posts, comments...) User statistics (rating, number of friends...) In order to show all this on the same page, for a request there will be at least 3 different database queries on the back-end. In some cases, I imagine that those queries will be running quite a wile, therefore the user experience may suffer while waiting between requests. This is why I decided to run only step 1 (User's details) as a normal request. After the response is received, two ajax requests are sent for steps 2 and 3. When those responses are received, I only place the data in the destined wrappers. For me at least this makes more sense. However there are 3 requests instead of one for every user page view. Will this affect the system on the long term? I'm assuming that this kind of approach requires more resources but is this trade of UX for resources a good dial or should I stick to one plain big request?

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  • Should I make the Cells in a Tiledmap as null when my player hits it

    - by Vishal Kumar
    I am making a Tile Based game using Libgdx. I took the idea from SuperKoalio platformer demo by Mario Zencher. When I wanted to implement Collectables in my game , I simply draw the coins using Tiled Map Editor. When my player hits that, I use to set that cell as null. Someday on this site suggested me not to do so... never use null. I agreed. What can be any other way. If I am using layer.setCell(x,y) to set the cell to any other cell... even if an transparent one .. my player seems to be stopped by an invisible object/hurdle. This is my code: for (Rectangle tile : tiles) { if (koalaRect.overlaps(tile)) { TiledMapTileLayer layer = (TiledMapTileLayer) map.getLayers().get(1); try{ type = layer.getCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType").toString(); } catch(Exception e){ System.out.print("Exception in Tiles Property"+e); type="nonbreakable"; } //Let us destroy this cell if(("award".equals(type))){ layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, null); listener.coin(); score+=100; test = ""+layer.getCell(0, 0).getTile().getProperties().get("tileType"); } //DOING THIS GIVES A BAD EFFECT if(("killer".equals(type))){ //player.health--; //layer.setCell((int) tile.x, (int) tile.y, layer.getCell(20,0)); } // we actually reset the player y-position here // so it is just below/above the tile we collided with // this removes bouncing :) if (player.velocity.y > 0) { player.position.y = (tile.y - Player.height); } Is this a right approach? OR I should create separate Sprite Class called Coin.

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  • How do I use depth testing and texture transparency together in my 2.5D world?

    - by nbolton
    Note: I've already found an answer (which I will post after this question) - I was just wondering if I was doing it right, or if there is a better way. I'm making a "2.5D" isometric game using OpenGL ES (JOGL). By "2.5D", I mean that the world is 3D, but it is rendered using 2D isometric tiles. The original problem I had to solve was that my textures had to be rendered in order (from back to front), so that the tiles overlapped properly to create the proper effect. After some reading, I quickly realised that this is the "old hat" 2D approach. This became difficult to do efficiently, since the 3D world can be modified by the player (so stuff can appear anywhere in 3D space) - so it seemed logical that I take advantage of the depth buffer. This meant that I didn't have to worry about rendering stuff in the correct order. However, I faced a problem. If you use GL_DEPTH_TEST and GL_BLEND together, it creates an effect where objects are blended with the background before they are "sorted" by z order (meaning that you get a weird kind of overlap where the transparency should be). Here's some pseudo code that should illustrate the problem (incidentally, I'm using libgdx for Android). create() { // ... // some other code here // ... Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); Gdx.gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); } render() { Gdx.gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); Gdx.gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); // ... // bind texture and create vertices // ... } So the question is: How do I solve the transparency overlap problem?

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  • How to go from mainstream to indie development?

    - by Salano Software
    I'm currently working as a game programmer for a AAA-level developer and publisher - which falls into the 'nice problem to have' category, I know, except that I'm growing more and more disenchanted with the direction of both the company and the AAA portion of the industry as a whole. I don't see any games on the studio's calendar for the next several years that I'm actually interested in working on; it looks like a continuing parade of sequels, license extensions and largely-derivative work. Which isn't to say that there won't be interesting things to do on those projects; but more and more I find myself wanting to do something fundamentally different. It seems like the market's never been better for smaller-scale projects, and I'd love to jump into that (and I've done small demos for Android and have started digging into iOS), but I obviously can't put anything out while I'm working for the company, and I'm concerned that I shouldn't even do substantial development in my spare time on anything I'd eventually like to release on my own. At the same time, I'm leery of leaving the job I've got for hopefully-obvious reasons, especially without a specific plan in place. Has anyone out there got experience with 'going indie' out of a mainstream job, and does anyone have specific suggestions as to what the best approach is and what I should specifically be thinking about or be careful of?

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  • Testcase runner for parametrized testcases

    - by Razer
    Let me explain my situation. I'm planning a kind of test case runner for doing testcases on external devices, which are microcontroller based. Lets consider the devices: Device 1 Device 2 There exist a lot of test cases which can be run with one of the devices above. For example: Testcase 1 Testcase 2 The main reason that all the testcases can be run with any device is, that the testcases validates some standard and this software should be extensible for future devices. The testcases itself must be runnable with changing parameters. For example Testcase 1 does some Timing Verification the testcase needs as input parameter the datarate: 4800, 9600, 19200. Now hoping you understand the situation, let me explain my design questions. For implementing the test cases I thought about an Attribute based approach, like nunit does it. The more complicated problem is, how to define the parametrized testcases? Like this: Device 1: Testcase 1: datarate: 4800, 9600, 19200 Testcase 2: supply: 1, 2, 3 Device 2: Testcase 1: datarate: 9600, 19200, 38400 Testcase 2: supply: 3, 4, 5 How would you design such a framework? I've done a similar desin in python where I had for every device a XML containing the testcase definitions like: <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=4800/> <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=9600/> <Testcase="Testcase 1" datarate=19200/>

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  • Jump handling and gravity

    - by sprawl
    I'm new to game development and am looking for some help on improving my jump handling for a simple side scrolling game I've made. I would like to make the jump last longer if the key is held down for the full length of the jump, otherwise if the key is tapped, make the jump not as long. Currently, how I'm handling the jumping is the following: Player.prototype.jump = function () { // Player pressed jump key if (this.isJumping === true) { // Set sprite to jump state this.settings.slice = 250; if (this.isFalling === true) { // Player let go of jump key, increase rate of fall this.settings.y -= this.velocity; this.velocity -= this.settings.gravity * 2; } else { // Player is holding down jump key this.settings.y -= this.velocity; this.velocity -= this.settings.gravity; } } if (this.settings.y >= 240) { // Player is on the ground this.isJumping = false; this.isFalling = false; this.velocity = this.settings.maxVelocity; this.settings.y = 240; } } I'm setting isJumping on keydown and isFalling on keyup. While it works okay for simple use, I'm looking for a better way handle jumping and gravity. It's a bit buggy if the gravity is increased (which is why I had to put the last y setting in the last if condition in there) on keyup, so I'd like to know a better way to do it. Where are some resources I could look at that would help me better understand how to handle jumping and gravity? What's a better approach to handling this? Like I said, I'm new to game development so I could be doing it completely wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Designing Content-Based ETL Process with .NET and SFDC

    - by Patrick
    As my firm makes the transition to using SFDC as our main operational system, we've spun together a couple of SFDC portals where we can post customer-specific documents to be viewed at will. As such, we've had the need for pseudo-ETL applications to be implemented that are able to extract metadata from the documents our analysts generate internally (most are industry-standard PDFs, XML, or MS Office formats) and place in networked "queue" folders. From there, our applications scoop of the queued documents and upload them to the appropriate SFDC CRM Content Library along with some select pieces of metadata. I've mostly used DbAmp to broker communication with SFDC (DbAmp is a Linked Server provider that allows you to use SQL conventions to interact with your SFDC Org data). I've been able to create [console] applications in C# that work pretty well, and they're usually structured something like this: static void Main() { // Load parameters from app.config. // Get documents from queue. var files = someInterface.GetFiles(someFilterOrRegexPattern); foreach (var file in files) { // Extract metadata from the file. // Validate some attributes of the file; add any validation errors to an in-memory // structure (e.g. List<ValidationErrors>). if (isValid) { // Upload using some wrapper for an ORM an someInterface.Upload(meta.Param1, meta.Param2, ...); } else { // Bounce the file } } // Report any validation errors (via message bus or SMTP or some such). } And that's pretty much it. Most of the time I wrap all these operations in a "Worker" class that takes the needed interfaces as constructor parameters. This approach has worked reasonably well, but I just get this feeling in my gut that there's something awful about it and would love some feedback. Is writing an ETL process as a C# Console app a bad idea? I'm also wondering if there are some design patterns that would be useful in this scenario that I'm clearly overlooking. Thanks in advance!

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  • Leveraging .Net 4.0 Framework Tools For Encrypting Web Configuration Sections

    - by Sam Abraham
    I would like to share a few points with regards to encrypting web configuration sections in .Net 4.0. This information is also applicable to .Net 3.5 and 2.0. Two methods can work perfectly for encrypting connection strings in a Web project configuration file:   1-Do It All Yourself! In this approach, helper functions for encrypting/decrypting configuration file content are implemented. Program would explicitly retrieve appropriate content from configuration file then decrypt it appropriately.  Disadvantages of this implementation would be the added overhead for maintaining the encryption/decryption code as well the burden of always ensuring sections are appropriately decrypted before use and encrypted appropriately whenever edited.   2- Leverage the .Net 4.0 Framework (The Way to go!) Fortunately, all needed tools for protecting configuration files are built-in to the .Net 2.0/3.5/4.0 versions with very little setup needed. To encrypt connection strings, one can use the ASP.Net IIS Registration Tool (Aspnet_regiis.exe). Note that a 64-bit version of the tool also exists under the Framework64 folder for 64-bit systems. The command we need to encrypt our web.config file connection strings is simply the following:   Aspnet_regiis –pe “connectionstrings” –app “/sampleApplication” –prov “RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider”   To later decrypt this configuration section:   Aspnet_regiis –pd “connectionstrings” –app “/SampleApplication”   The following is a brief description of the command line options used in the example above. Aspnet_regiis supports many more options which you can read about in the links provided for reference below.   Option Description -pe  Section name to encrypt -pd  Section name to decrypt -app  Web application name -prov  Encryption/Decryption provider   ASP.Net automatically decrypts the content of the Web.Config file at runtime so no programming changes are needed.   Another tool, aspnet_setreg.exe is to be used if certain configuration file sections pertinent to the .Net runtime are to be encrypted. For more information on when and how to use aspnet_setreg, please refer to the references below.   Hope this helps!   Some great references concerning the topic:   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff650037.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zhhddkxy.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dtkwfdky.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/68ze1hb2.aspx

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  • IT Optimization Plan Pays Off For UK Retailer

    - by [email protected]
    I caught this article in ComputerworldUK yesterday. The headline talks about UK-based supermarket chain Morrisons is increasing their IT spend...OK, sounds good. Even nicer that Oracle is a big part of that. But what caught my eye were three things: 1) Morrison's truly has a long term strategy for IT. In this case, modernizing and optimizing how they use IT for business advantage. 2) Even in a tough economic climate, Morrison's views IT investments as contributing to and improving the bottom line. Specifically, "The investment in IT contributed to a 21 percent increase in Morrison's underlying profit.." 3) The phased, 3-year "Optimization Plan" took a holistic approach to their business--from CRM and Supply Chain systems to the underlying application infrastructure. On the infrastructure front, adopting a more flexible Service-Oriented Architecture enabled them to be more agile and adapt their business and Identity Management helped with sometimes mundane (but costly) issues like lost passwords and being able to document who has access to what. Things don't always turn out so rosy. And I know it was a long and difficult process...but it's nice to see a happy ending every once in a while.

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  • best way to enlarge system partition

    - by yuvi
    I have a problem - I need to enlarge my system partition. I mean - when I initially installed Ubuntu, I split the partition so I have 15GB for system and the rest (around 400) pointed at /home/. This is very useful if anything goes wrong someday and I want to format and completely re-install Ubuntu without losing any of my actual data. The problem is, 15GB isn't enough, so it seems. I already moved /var/ and /opt/ folder to /home/, adding symlinks at root, but I'm still at 86% usage and I'm having performance issues (mostly when booting or running a VM). I can use Ubuntu on a flash drive and externally enlarge the partition, but I'm really afraid with going forward with that plan. Also, despite what I said before, I'd like to avoid re-installing the system if at all possible. Any advice, suggestions or ideas on how to best approach this? Any warnings I should heed? Thanks in advance! update Here's the gparted screenshot - as you can see, there's windows on dual boot (sda1-5 are all related to the windows system), then I have a linux swap, 14GB (so uh... not even 15) of system and 435 of for /home.

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  • How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

    - by Songo
    I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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  • What's the best project management software for internal dev. 5 man shop

    - by P.Brian.Mackey
    I work for a large corporation, but we do small intranet web application development. Our project management tracking sucks. Its custom software built by a jr. intern. For what its worth, our development style is akin to agile, but there's nothing set in stone...very customer oriented approach. I need project tracking that meets the criteria: Intranet, internal products. Mostly maintenance, some new development. 5 developers 12 products 1 hands-off manager. He really just wants to know estimated man hours, due date for dev, QA and release. Along with a short description of the project. Free or super cheap. Bonus Simple pretty UI. Think pretty charts. Hope I covered everything. Please ask for any clarification. If you read dreaming in code, the company uses some project tracking software that sounds pretty sweet. Note, we do have Team Foundation Server. I already tried pushing its use as PM tracking, but its too complicated. I can't get people to sit and train. So this software has to be easy.

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  • Didatic approaches to teach versioning with Git

    - by Herberth Amaral
    I have already taught versioning with Git, but I think it could be more enjoyable for the guys I teach if I use another approach to teach them. The guys I mentioned before were used to working with SVN and I tried to teach Git based on SVN. Not such a good idea. It seems that some guys/teams which use SVN need a re-education on version control when they're learning Git or another DCVCS. In another attempt, I tried to show a scenario where a development team try to work without a (D)VCS and then I showed how their lives could be easier if they used a (D)VCS. I had the impression that part of the audience left the presentation without a clue what I was talking about. I've taught other classes on other subjects without problems, so I think this is not a issue with me as a teacher, but with my method. I know Git and versioning as well I know the other subjects I've presented to the other classes. So, basically, how to teach Git/DCVCS? Start with some diffs/patches and manual versioning and then teach how it can be more productive with Git? Start with Git object model? Or try to start with some pretty commands and try to save some time? To be clear: I'm looking for approaches on how to teach DCVCS (focusing on Git) effectively, based on real experiences.

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  • New partnership allows auto-transposition of client/server application to Windows Azure

    - by Webgui
    The economics of IT is changing rapidly, and organizations are searching to widen and secure availability of their systems and at the same time lower costs which is exactly what the cloud meant to do. Running your systems on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud for example would improve and secure the availability, accessibility and scalability (both up and down) of your systems and support the new IT economics. However, in order to take advantage of the cloud's promise of lower cost of ownership, the applications must be built or adjusted to work on that platform and in most cases this is not a simple task.  Even existing web applications cannot always be transferred to Azure without some changes, and for client/server applications, the task is way more challenging even to the point where it seems impossible. The reason is the gaps between the client/server desktop technology and the cloud's. For that reason, most of the known methodologies to migrate existing client/server applications actually involve rewrite of the desktop systems for the cloud. A unique approach is introduced by Visual WebGui which creates a virtualization layer atop ASP.Net web server, it moves the transformed or generated .Net code to that layer, and then using a patent pending protocol it renders a user interface within a plain browser. The end result is pure .NET code that is a base code for a pure rich web application and now due to a collaboration with Microsoft Windows Azure Visual WebGui provides the shortest path from client/server to the Azure cloud by being able to handle close to 95% of the transformation to the cloud platform in an automatic way. Application Migration to Azure without migraines More information about the Instant CloudMove Azure solution here.

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  • Dependency injection: what belongs in the constructor?

    - by Adam Backstrom
    I'm evaluating my current PHP practices in an effort to write more testable code. Generally speaking, I'm fishing for opinions on what types of actions belong in the constructor. Should I limit things to dependency injection? If I do have some data to populate, should that happen via a factory rather than as constructor arguments? (Here, I'm thinking about my User class that takes a user ID and populates user data from the database during construction, which obviously needs to change in some way.) I've heard it said that "initialization" methods are bad, but I'm sure that depends on what exactly is being done during initialization. At the risk of getting too specific, I'll also piggyback a more detailed example onto my question. For a previous project, I built a FormField class (which handled field value setting, validation, and output as HTML) and a Model class to contain these fields and do a bit of magic to ease working with fields. FormField had some prebuilt subclasses, e.g. FormText (<input type="text">) and FormSelect (<select>). Model would be subclassed so that a specific implementation (say, a Widget) had its own fields, such as a name and date of manufacture: class Widget extends Model { public function __construct( $data = null ) { $this->name = new FormField('length=20&label=Name:'); $this->manufactured = new FormDate; parent::__construct( $data ); // set above fields using incoming array } } Now, this does violate some rules that I have read, such as "avoid new in the constructor," but to my eyes this does not seem untestable. These are properties of the object, not some black box data generator reading from an external source. Unit tests would progressively build up to any test of Widget-specific functionality, so I could be confident that the underlying FormFields were working correctly during the Widget test. In theory I could provide the Model with a FieldFactory() which could supply custom field objects, but I don't believe I would gain anything from this approach. Is this a poor assumption?

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