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  • Spritebatch drawing sprite with jagged borders

    - by Mutoh
    Alright, I've been on the making of a sprite class and a sprite sheet manager, but have come across this problem. Pretty much, the project is acting like so; for example: Let's take this .png image, with a transparent background. Note how it has alpha-transparent pixels around it in the lineart. Now, in the latter link's image, in the left (with CornflowerBlue background) it is shown the image drawn in another project (let's call it "Project1") with a simpler sprite class - there, it works. The right (with Purple background for differentiating) shows it drawn with a different class in "Project2" - where the problem manifests itself. This is the Sprite class of Project1: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace WindowsGame2 { class Sprite { Vector2 pos = new Vector2(0, 0); Texture2D image; Rectangle size; float scale = 1.0f; // --- public float X { get { return pos.X; } set { pos.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return pos.Y; } set { pos.Y = value; } } public float Width { get { return size.Width; } } public float Height { get { return size.Height; } } public float Scale { get { return scale; } set { if (value < 0) value = 0; scale = value; if (image != null) { size.Width = (int)(image.Width * scale); size.Height = (int)(image.Height * scale); } } } // --- public void Load(ContentManager Man, string filename) { image = Man.Load<Texture2D>(filename); size = new Rectangle( 0, 0, (int)(image.Width * scale), (int)(image.Height * scale) ); } public void Become(Texture2D frame) { image = frame; size = new Rectangle( 0, 0, (int)(image.Width * scale), (int)(image.Height * scale) ); } public void Draw(SpriteBatch Desenhista) { // Desenhista.Draw(image, pos, Color.White); Desenhista.Draw( image, pos, new Rectangle( 0, 0, image.Width, image.Height ), Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0 ); } } } And this is the code in Project2, a rewritten, pretty much, version of the previous class. In this one I added sprite sheet managing and, in particular, removed Load and Become, to allow for static resources and only actual Sprites to be instantiated. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { // Actually, I might desconsider this, and instead use static AnimationLocation[] and instanciated ID and Frame; // For determining the starting frame of an animation in a sheet and being able to iterate through // the Rectangles vector of the Sheet; class AnimationLocation { public int Location; public int FrameCount; // --- public AnimationLocation(int StartingRow, int StartingColumn, int SheetWidth, int NumberOfFrames) { Location = (StartingRow * SheetWidth) + StartingColumn; FrameCount = NumberOfFrames; } public AnimationLocation(int PositionInSheet, int NumberOfFrames) { Location = PositionInSheet; FrameCount = NumberOfFrames; } public static int CalculatePosition(int StartingRow, int StartingColumn, SheetManager Sheet) { return ((StartingRow * Sheet.Width) + StartingColumn); } } class Sprite { // The general stuff; protected SheetManager Sheet; protected Vector2 Position; public Vector2 Axis; protected Color _Tint; public float Angle; public float Scale; protected SpriteEffects _Effect; // --- // protected AnimationManager Animation; // For managing the animations; protected AnimationLocation[] Animation; public int AnimationID; protected int Frame; // --- // Properties for easy accessing of the position of the sprite; public float X { get { return Position.X; } set { Position.X = Axis.X + value; } } public float Y { get { return Position.Y; } set { Position.Y = Axis.Y + value; } } // --- // Properties for knowing the size of the sprite's frames public float Width { get { return Sheet.FrameWidth * Scale; } } public float Height { get { return Sheet.FrameHeight * Scale; } } // --- // Properties for more stuff; public Color Tint { set { _Tint = value; } } public SpriteEffects Effect { set { _Effect = value; } } public int FrameID { get { return Frame; } set { if (value >= (Animation[AnimationID].FrameCount)) value = 0; Frame = value; } } // --- // The only things that will be constantly modified will be AnimationID and FrameID, anything else only // occasionally; public Sprite(SheetManager SpriteSheet, AnimationLocation[] Animations, Vector2 Location, Nullable<Vector2> Origin = null) { // Assign the sprite's sprite sheet; // (Passed by reference! To allow STATIC sheets!) Sheet = SpriteSheet; // Define the animations that the sprite has available; // (Passed by reference! To allow STATIC animation boundaries!) Animation = Animations; // Defaulting some numerical values; Angle = 0.0f; Scale = 1.0f; _Tint = Color.White; _Effect = SpriteEffects.None; // If the user wants a default Axis, it is set in the middle of the frame; if (Origin != null) Axis = Origin.Value; else Axis = new Vector2( Sheet.FrameWidth / 2, Sheet.FrameHeight / 2 ); // Now that we have the axis, we can set the position with no worries; X = Location.X; Y = Location.Y; } // Simply put, draw the sprite with all its characteristics; public void Draw(SpriteBatch Drafter) { Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, Sheet.Rectangles[Animation[AnimationID].Location + FrameID], // Find the rectangle which frames the wanted image; _Tint, Angle, Axis, Scale, _Effect, 0.0f ); } } } And, in any case, this is the SheetManager class found in the previous code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { class SheetManager { protected Texture2D SpriteSheet; // For storing the sprite sheet; // Number of rows and frames in each row in the SpriteSheet; protected int NumberOfRows; protected int NumberOfColumns; // Size of a single frame; protected int _FrameWidth; protected int _FrameHeight; public Rectangle[] Rectangles; // For storing each frame; // --- public int Width { get { return NumberOfColumns; } } public int Height { get { return NumberOfRows; } } // --- public int FrameWidth { get { return _FrameWidth; } } public int FrameHeight { get { return _FrameHeight; } } // --- public Texture2D Texture { get { return SpriteSheet; } } // --- public SheetManager (Texture2D Texture, int Rows, int FramesInEachRow) { // Normal assigning SpriteSheet = Texture; NumberOfRows = Rows; NumberOfColumns = FramesInEachRow; _FrameHeight = Texture.Height / NumberOfRows; _FrameWidth = Texture.Width / NumberOfColumns; // Framing everything Rectangles = new Rectangle[NumberOfRows * NumberOfColumns]; int ID = 0; for (int i = 0; i < NumberOfRows; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < NumberOfColumns; j++) { Rectangles[ID] = new Rectangle ( _FrameWidth * j, _FrameHeight * i, _FrameWidth, _FrameHeight ); ID++; } } } public SheetManager (Texture2D Texture, int NumberOfFrames): this(Texture, 1, NumberOfFrames) { } } } For even more comprehending, if needed, here is how the main code looks like (it's just messing with the class' capacities, nothing actually; the result is a disembodied feet walking in place animation on the top-left of the screen and a static axe nearby): using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using System.Threading; namespace Mobby_s_Adventure { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; static List<Sprite> ToDraw; static Texture2D AxeSheet; static Texture2D FeetSheet; static SheetManager Axe; static Sprite Jojora; static AnimationLocation[] Hack = new AnimationLocation[1]; static SheetManager Feet; static Sprite Mutoh; static AnimationLocation[] FeetAnimations = new AnimationLocation[2]; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; this.TargetElapsedTime = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(100); this.IsFixedTimeStep = true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // Loading logic ToDraw = new List<Sprite>(); AxeSheet = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sheet"); FeetSheet = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Feet Sheet"); Axe = new SheetManager(AxeSheet, 1); Hack[0] = new AnimationLocation(0, 1); Jojora = new Sprite(Axe, Hack, new Vector2(100, 100), new Vector2(5, 55)); Jojora.AnimationID = 0; Jojora.FrameID = 0; Feet = new SheetManager(FeetSheet, 8); FeetAnimations[0] = new AnimationLocation(1, 7); FeetAnimations[1] = new AnimationLocation(0, 1); Mutoh = new Sprite(Feet, FeetAnimations, new Vector2(0, 0)); Mutoh.AnimationID = 0; Mutoh.FrameID = 0; } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // Update logic Mutoh.FrameID++; ToDraw.Add(Mutoh); ToDraw.Add(Jojora); base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Purple); // Drawing logic spriteBatch.Begin(); foreach (Sprite Element in ToDraw) { Element.Draw(spriteBatch); } spriteBatch.Draw(Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sheet"), new Rectangle(50, 50, 55, 60), Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } Please help me find out what I'm overlooking! One thing that I have noticed and could aid is that, if inserted the equivalent of this code spriteBatch.Draw( Content.Load<Texture2D>("Image Location"), new Rectangle(X, Y, images width, height), Color.White ); in Project2's Draw(GameTime) of the main loop, it works. EDIT Ok, even if the matter remains unsolved, I have made some more progress! As you see, I managed to get the two kinds of rendering in the same project (the aforementioned Project2, with the more complex Sprite class). This was achieved by adding the following code to Draw(GameTime): protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Purple); // Drawing logic spriteBatch.Begin(); foreach (Sprite Element in ToDraw) { Element.Draw(spriteBatch); } // Starting here spriteBatch.Draw( Axe.Texture, new Vector2(65, 100), new Rectangle ( 0, 0, Axe.FrameWidth, Axe.FrameHeight ), Color.White, 0.0f, new Vector2(0, 0), 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0f ); // Ending here spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } (Supposing that Axe is the SheetManager containing the texture, sorry if the "jargons" of my code confuse you :s) Thus, I have noticed that the problem is within the Sprite class. But I only get more clueless, because even after modifying its Draw function to this: public void Draw(SpriteBatch Drafter) { /*Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, Sheet.Rectangles[Animation[AnimationID].Location + FrameID], // Find the rectangle which frames the wanted image; _Tint, Angle, Axis, Scale, _Effect, 0.0f );*/ Drafter.Draw( Sheet.Texture, Position, new Rectangle( 0, 0, Sheet.FrameWidth, Sheet.FrameHeight ), Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0 ); } to make it as simple as the patch of code that works, it still draws the sprite jaggedly!

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  • Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

    - by andrewbrust
    Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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  • Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

    - by Michael B. McLaughlin
    There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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  • .NET Code Evolution

    - by Alois Kraus
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2013/07/24/153504.aspxAt my day job I do look at a lot of code written by other people. Most of the code is quite good and some is even a masterpiece. And there is also code which makes you think WTF… oh it was written by me. Hm not so bad after all. There are many excuses reasons for bad code. Most often it is time pressure followed by not enough ambition (who cares) or insufficient training. Normally I do care about code quality quite a lot which makes me a (perceived) slow worker who does write many tests and refines the code quite a lot because of the design deficiencies. Most of the deficiencies I do find by putting my design under stress while checking for invariants. It does also help a lot to step into the code with a debugger (sometimes also Windbg). I do this much more often when my tests are red. That way I do get a much better understanding what my code really does and not what I think it should be doing. This time I do want to show you how code can evolve over the years with different .NET Framework versions. Once there was  time where .NET 1.1 was new and many C++ programmers did switch over to get rid of not initialized pointers and memory leaks. There were also nice new data structures available such as the Hashtable which is fast lookup table with O(1) time complexity. All was good and much code was written since then. At 2005 a new version of the .NET Framework did arrive which did bring many new things like generics and new data structures. The “old” fashioned way of Hashtable were coming to an end and everyone used the new Dictionary<xx,xx> type instead which was type safe and faster because the object to type conversion (aka boxing) was no longer necessary. I think 95% of all Hashtables and dictionaries use string as key. Often it is convenient to ignore casing to make it easy to look up values which the user did enter. An often followed route is to convert the string to upper case before putting it into the Hashtable. Hashtable Table = new Hashtable(); void Add(string key, string value) { Table.Add(key.ToUpper(), value); } This is valid and working code but it has problems. First we can pass to the Hashtable a custom IEqualityComparer to do the string matching case insensitive. Second we can switch over to the now also old Dictionary type to become a little faster and we can keep the the original keys (not upper cased) in the dictionary. Dictionary<string, string> DictTable = new Dictionary<string, string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase); void AddDict(string key, string value) { DictTable.Add(key, value); } Many people do not user the other ctors of Dictionary because they do shy away from the overhead of writing their own comparer. They do not know that .NET has for strings already predefined comparers at hand which you can directly use. Today in the many core area we do use threads all over the place. Sometimes things break in subtle ways but most of the time it is sufficient to place a lock around the offender. Threading has become so mainstream that it may sound weird that in the year 2000 some guy got a huge incentive for the idea to reduce the time to process calibration data from 12 hours to 6 hours by using two threads on a dual core machine. Threading does make it easy to become faster at the expense of correctness. Correct and scalable multithreading can be arbitrarily hard to achieve depending on the problem you are trying to solve. Lets suppose we want to process millions of items with two threads and count the processed items processed by all threads. A typical beginners code might look like this: int Counter; void IJustLearnedToUseThreads() { var t1 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t1.Start(); var t2 = new Thread(ThreadWorkMethod); t2.Start(); t1.Join(); t2.Join(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception("Hmm " + Counter + " != " + 2 * Increments); } const int Increments = 10 * 1000 * 1000; void ThreadWorkMethod() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counter++; } } It does throw an exception with the message e.g. “Hmm 10.222.287 != 20.000.000” and does never finish. The code does fail because the assumption that Counter++ is an atomic operation is wrong. The ++ operator is just a shortcut for Counter = Counter + 1 This does involve reading the counter from a memory location into the CPU, incrementing value on the CPU and writing the new value back to the memory location. When we do look at the generated assembly code we will see only inc dword ptr [ecx+10h] which is only one instruction. Yes it is one instruction but it is not atomic. All modern CPUs have several layers of caches (L1,L2,L3) which try to hide the fact how slow actual main memory accesses are. Since cache is just another word for redundant copy it can happen that one CPU does read a value from main memory into the cache, modifies it and write it back to the main memory. The problem is that at least the L1 cache is not shared between CPUs so it can happen that one CPU does make changes to values which did change in meantime in the main memory. From the exception you can see we did increment the value 20 million times but half of the changes were lost because we did overwrite the already changed value from the other thread. This is a very common case and people do learn to protect their  data with proper locking.   void Intermediate() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Action acc = ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate; var ar1 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); var ar2 = acc.BeginInvoke(null, null); ar1.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); ar2.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Intermediate did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Intermediate() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { lock (this) { Counter++; } } } This is better and does use the .NET Threadpool to get rid of manual thread management. It does give the expected result but it can result in deadlocks because you do lock on this. This is in general a bad idea since it can lead to deadlocks when other threads use your class instance as lock object. It is therefore recommended to create a private object as lock object to ensure that nobody else can lock your lock object. When you read more about threading you will read about lock free algorithms. They are nice and can improve performance quite a lot but you need to pay close attention to the CLR memory model. It does make quite weak guarantees in general but it can still work because your CPU architecture does give you more invariants than the CLR memory model. For a simple counter there is an easy lock free alternative present with the Interlocked class in .NET. As a general rule you should not try to write lock free algos since most likely you will fail to get it right on all CPU architectures. void Experienced() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Experienced did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Experienced() { for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Interlocked.Increment(ref Counter); } } Since time does move forward we do not use threads explicitly anymore but the much nicer Task abstraction which was introduced with .NET 4 at 2010. It is educational to look at the generated assembly code. The Interlocked.Increment method must be called which does wondrous things right? Lets see: lock inc dword ptr [eax] The first thing to note that there is no method call at all. Why? Because the JIT compiler does know very well about CPU intrinsic functions. Atomic operations which do lock the memory bus to prevent other processors to read stale values are such things. Second: This is the same increment call prefixed with a lock instruction. The only reason for the existence of the Interlocked class is that the JIT compiler can compile it to the matching CPU intrinsic functions which can not only increment by one but can also do an add, exchange and a combined compare and exchange operation. But be warned that the correct usage of its methods can be tricky. If you try to be clever and look a the generated IL code and try to reason about its efficiency you will fail. Only the generated machine code counts. Is this the best code we can write? Perhaps. It is nice and clean. But can we make it any faster? Lets see how good we are doing currently. Level Time in s IJustLearnedToUseThreads Flawed Code Intermediate 1,5 (lock) Experienced 0,3 (Interlocked.Increment) Master 0,1 (1,0 for int[2]) That lock free thing is really a nice thing. But if you read more about CPU cache, cache coherency, false sharing you can do even better. int[] Counters = new int[12]; // Cache line size is 64 bytes on my machine with an 8 way associative cache try for yourself e.g. 64 on more modern CPUs void Master() { var time = Stopwatch.StartNew(); Task t1 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, 0); Task t2 = Task.Factory.StartNew(ThreadWorkMethod_Master, Counters.Length - 1); t1.Wait(); t2.Wait(); Counter = Counters[0] + Counters[Counters.Length - 1]; if (Counter != 2 * Increments) throw new Exception(String.Format("Hmm {0:N0} != {1:N0}", Counter, 2 * Increments)); Console.WriteLine("Master did take: {0:F1}s", time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds); } void ThreadWorkMethod_Master(object number) { int index = (int) number; for (int i = 0; i < Increments; i++) { Counters[index]++; } } The key insight here is to use for each core its own value. But if you simply use simply an integer array of two items, one for each core and add the items at the end you will be much slower than the lock free version (factor 3). Each CPU core has its own cache line size which is something in the range of 16-256 bytes. When you do access a value from one location the CPU does not only fetch one value from main memory but a complete cache line (e.g. 16 bytes). This means that you do not pay for the next 15 bytes when you access them. This can lead to dramatic performance improvements and non obvious code which is faster although it does have many more memory reads than another algorithm. So what have we done here? We have started with correct code but it was lacking knowledge how to use the .NET Base Class Libraries optimally. Then we did try to get fancy and used threads for the first time and failed. Our next try was better but it still had non obvious issues (lock object exposed to the outside). Knowledge has increased further and we have found a lock free version of our counter which is a nice and clean way which is a perfectly valid solution. The last example is only here to show you how you can get most out of threading by paying close attention to your used data structures and CPU cache coherency. Although we are working in a virtual execution environment in a high level language with automatic memory management it does pay off to know the details down to the assembly level. Only if you continue to learn and to dig deeper you can come up with solutions no one else was even considering. I have studied particle physics which does help at the digging deeper part. Have you ever tried to solve Quantum Chromodynamics equations? Compared to that the rest must be easy ;-). Although I am no longer working in the Science field I take pride in discovering non obvious things. This can be a very hard to find bug or a new way to restructure data to make something 10 times faster. Now I need to get some sleep ….

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  • Can WD SmartWare be used on multiple computers?

    - by Matt
    I am wondering if I can use my portable Western Digital 1 tb drive and it's WD Smartware on 2 different computers (I have a desktop and a laptop) at the same time. So in essence, could it run two separate backups? I would even be happy if the portable external combined both data, as long as I had backups of each computer. Can anyone share some insight? Thank you.

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  • Network Error: no buffer space available

    - by braindump
    After some time of running fine, one of our Windows XP SP3 machines does not open some(!) new TCP/IP connections anymore. Putty says "Network Error: no buffer space available", IE won't open any new connections but e.g. network drive mappings still work, even new ones can be established. netstat does not show more open connections that usual, ping and dns lookups work fine. Any hints?

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  • Sony PCG-252L white screen help

    - by rm
    I have a PCG-252L All-in-one desktop. Last week it downloaded some updates, restarted, and even since then is shows nothing but a white screen. I can hear the beeps on startup, screen changes from white to black a couple of times, and then stays white. There's no VGA or HDMI port on the computer, so I can't plug it into the external monitor. Any ideas?

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  • How to export skype history

    - by Peter Štibraný
    Is it possible to export skype chat history into some readable plain-text format? (txt, xml, html) Alternatively, is it possible to backup/restore skype chat history? (I wouldn't mind backup to Gmail, or to readable plain-text format). I have found numerous tools on the internet and even tried some of them, but they don't seem to work as advertised :-( Please answer only if you have good experience with some tool. I'm using Skype v4.

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  • Programmatically add an ISAPI extension dll in IIS 7 using ADSI?

    - by fretje
    I apologize beforehand, this is a cross post of this SO question. I thought I'd ask it there first, but apparently it doesn't harvest any answers there. I hope it will get more attention here. When I have an answer somewhere, I'll delete the other one. I'm trying to programmatically add an ISAPI extension dll in IIS using ADSI. This has been working for ages on previous versions of IIS, but it seems to fail on IIS 7. I am using similar code like shown in this question: var web = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT/specificVirtualDirectory"); var maps = web.ScriptMaps.toArray(); map[maps.length] = ".aaa,c:\\path\\to\\isapi\\extension.dll,1,GET,POST"; web.ScriptMaps = maps.asDictionary(); web.SetInfo(); After executing that code, I do see an "AboMapperCustom-12345678" entry for that specific dll in the "Handler mappings" of the specific virtual directory in which I added the script map. But when I try to use that extension in a browser, I always get HTTP Error 404.2 Not Found The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the ISAPI and CGI Restriction list settings on the Web server. Even after adding an entry to allow that specific dll in the "ISAPI and CGI restrictions", I keep getting that error. To make it actually work, I first have to undo these steps (encountering the same issue like the OP of the question mentioned above: after deleting the script map entry from the IIS manager GUI, I also have to programmatically delete it using ADSI before it's actually gone from the metabase). And then manually add an entry like this: inetmgr - webserver - website - virtual directory - handler mappings - add script map... path = *.dll, executable = <path to dll>, name = <doesn't matter, but it's mandatory> click "yes" on the question "do you want to allow this ISAPI extension?" When I compare the 2 entries, they are exactly the same, except for the "Entry Type" which seems to be "Inherited" for the programmatically added one and "Local" for the one added manually. The strange thing is, even though it says "Inherited", I don't see it anywhere in IIS on a higher level. Where is it inheriting from? In my code, I do add the script map to the specific virtual directory so it should be "Local" as well. Maybe there is the problem, but I don't know how to add a "Local" Script Map using ADSI. I really would like to keep using the ADSI method, as otherwise I will have to use different methods in our setup when working with IIS 7 or previous versions, and I would like to avoid that. To recap: How can I programmatically add a script map entry and its companion CGI and ISAPI restrictions entry to IIS 7 using ADSI? Anybody who can shed some light on this? Any help appreciated.

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  • What does pidgin mean by "Host unknown"?

    - by Mr. Jefferson
    Pidgin is telling me my XMPP account was disconnected; the error message is "Host Unknown". What specifically does this indicate? Can it not find the server it's supposed to connect to (one in my office)? I can ping the server in the "Domain" account setting (under Basic) without a problem, and I even tried specifying an IP address in the "Connect server" account setting (under Advanced) without success.

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  • how to create a wind rose in excel 2007

    - by Patrick
    I am attempting to create a wind rose graph (i.e.- here or here). My data is wind speed and cardinal wind direction in separate columns: Wind (mph) Wind Direction 3.66 SE 2.69 SE 2.62 SW 2.76 SW 2.11 NW 3.13 NW 3.55 SW 3.62 W My final goal is to actually create the graph with a VBA macro, but I am unsure how to even create the graph manually. I can, if need be, convert the cardinal directions to degrees. Any help is greatly appreciated

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  • SCCM 2007 R2 missing boot.wim files from OSD\Boot folder

    - by JohnyV
    I have just installed SCCM 2007 R2 and when I went to deploy an OS i found that there is a problem with the boot.wim...There isnt one in the osd\ folder on the SCCM server. I then tried to use other WIM files and they all failed with "Error: Errors You can not import this boot image. Only finalized boot images are supported" I even tried to recreate the wim with DISM and it still would not accept it. Any ideas.

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  • SQL Server Agent was not running on Server Dynamics CRM 2013

    - by No1_Melman
    I'm trying to install Dynamics CRM 2013 on a server. This server is on a VM. There are several other VMs, an ADDS & DNS, a MSSQL and a WebServer VM. Each server is a Windows Server 2012 R2. The SQL Server is 2012 Enterprise. Each VM is part of the main Domain, set by the ADDS & DNS. NSLookup confirms I can see the computer at the right IP address. Each separate VM has its own static IP, the DNS is set to the ADDS & DNS. I use the domain administrator to log into all the servers, and make the that domain administrator a local administrator. I've set up all the domain users for the CRM and gave them appropriate permissions, I have also added the accounts to the appropriate places, such that the CRM Deployment user is in the SQL security. The SQL Agent is running. SQL server configuration manager has SQL server network configuration TCP/IP enabled to allow remote connections. The SQL server has the domain user as a administrator, which is the same user being used to install the CRM. In the CRM setup i point to the [Servername]\[Instance] and I have also tried just the [Servername]. to make this easier I called the server MSSQL and left the instance name to the default. I even install the MSSQL instance as the domain administrator. CRM can find the ReportServer url. I have enable all the ports required, including: 135, 1433, 1434, 2382, 2383, 4022. 1434 UDP. I feel like I have absolutely done everything, I have google many times and tried all the different methods, and for the life of me I cant seem to get the CRM setup to find the SQL server agent. It passes everything else perfectly fine. I can even ping the MSSQL server. What is the problem, why does the CRM still keep giving the error: SQLSERVERAGENT (SQLSERVERAGENT) service is not running on the server MSSQL On the MSSQL server, the name of the sql server agent service is: SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER)

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  • on SSH login, get message 'Could not chdir to home directory"

    - by joachim
    I am SSHing into a Mac OS X server running Tiger. When I log in I get put in the root directory and shown this message: Could not chdir to home directory : No such file or directory My $HOME variable seems to be empty. I've googled the problem and found a mailing list thread which suggests using dscl to set up the home directory, but I've done that and the problem still persists even though now dscl correctly reports: $ dscl . -read /users/me NFSHomeDirectory NFSHomeDirectory: /Users/me

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  • Taming XCode's auto-complete options

    - by Nippysaurus
    I am fairly new to XCode and the Objective-C language. When I am instantiating a class, for example an NSMutableArray, XCode will provide a whole lot of auto-complete options. Even for an empty class which simply extends an NSObject has many options, most of which seem completely useless. What is the reason for having so many auto-complete options, or can they be "tamed" in the preferences?

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  • Finding the definition of a bash function

    - by pythonic metaphor
    I work in an environment that has a lot of legacy shell script magic lying around. One thing used heavy from the command line are bash functions that get sourced from some file included from some file included from some file ... included in my .bash_profile. Is there a way to get the definition or even better the location of the definition of these functions without tracking them down through 5 levels of includes?

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  • Will logging debugging incur a performance hit if I don't turn debugging on?

    - by romandas
    On a Cisco device, I know that enabling debugging can incur a performance hit since debugging has such a high priority on the CPU. I know that to log debugging, you have to set logging up to the debugging level (logging buffered 4096 debugging, for example) and also enable debugging on some feature. Does configuring the logging debugging incur the performance hit even if you don't enable debugging on some feature, or would it be safe (assuming you want and can handle all the logging events via syslog) to configure 'logging buffered 4096 debugging' to have maximum logging available if/when someone uses debug?

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  • VMware Player loses internet connectivity

    - by Martha
    Periodically, the internet simply stops working in my virtual machine, and the only way I can get it working again is to restart the host computer. Since I use the virtual machine specifically for testing web pages, this is, shall we say, a bother. Details: I have Windows XP Pro running in VMware Player (v. 3.0.0 build-203739) on a Windows 7 host. It's set to NAT (shared IP address) because the firewall won't allow a bridged connection. Every couple of days or so, first the internet slows down to a crawl, then eventually it stops working altogether. Both VMWare and the virtual OS report that they are connected, everything looks just peachy, I can reach the internet from the host, but on the VM, all web pages time out and/or report that the server could not be found. (Browser-independent; tried with IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.) When this happens, the only way I've found to restore the internet connectivity is to restart the host machine. Restarting the VM doesn't help, nor does refreshing network connections on either the host or the guest. (Although I'm not entirely sure I've found the proper way to refresh a network connection in Windows 7...) I have not noticed any predictability about when the problem occurs, i.e. it's not immediately after I do anything special. It seems to occur mostly after putting the host to sleep once or twice, but it has happened even if the host has been in continuous use. It also seems independent of when I start using the VM - sometimes, I wake up the VM and the internet is really slow in it, then eventually stops working altogether; other times, I wake up the VM, use it perfectly happily for a while, then suddenly the internet is gone. Does anyone know why this is occurring? Failing that, is there a workaround that's less drastic than restarting the host? (Windows 7 startup times are blazingly fast compared to previous versions of Windows, but it's still a hassle to close all my programs and reopen them again.) Edit: while badges overall are nice, the Tumbleweed badge isn't helping me to solve my problem. Hasn't anyone encountered anything even remotely similar?

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  • Office 2010 silent activation after unattended installation

    - by MarkM
    I've created an unattended install of Office 2010 using the OCT. We are using a MAK rather than KMS (not my decision). Is there a way to activate Office 2010 after the install? Even though the key is set during the install, it does not activate. I don't want the users to be prompted to activate since this is going to be in a lab environment.

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  • Using an ATA-100 Hard Drive with a Thermaltake BlacX External Hard Drive Dock

    - by Joe
    Is it possible for a Thermaltake BlacX HDD Dock to connect to and recognize an ATA-100 Hard Drive? I know that the specifications for the BlacX say that it only supports SATA & SATAII, but I was hoping for one of three things: 1) for it to still work even though it isn't supported 2) for there to be some sort of workaround to make this possible 3) for there to be another part of some sort that I could purchase to make this work

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  • PostgreSQL service doesn't start on Windows 7

    - by Mehrdad
    (Not sure if this should be on Stack Overflow or Super User... please move if needed.) When I start the PostgreSQL service on Windows 7 x64, it immediately stops. When I check my log folder (C:\PostgreSQL\9.1\data\pg_log\), I see new but empty log files. The Event Viewer doesn't tell me anything other than the fact that the server did not respond. I've even tried turning off my firewall (I don't have any antivirus or anything else), but nothing helps. The setup works fine when I'm on Windows XP (32-bit) (same computer, different partition). I can't figure out what's wrong, even though I've tried tracing the system calls. Is PostgreSQL compatible with Windows 7 x64 at all? Any ideas what the issue might be? More info: This problem also happens at the end of installation -- the service starts, then stops immediately, before the installer can do anything. Installation log: Starting the database server... Executing cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\startserver.vbs" postgresql-x64-9.1 Script exit code: 0 Script output: Starting postgresql-x64-9.1 Service postgresql-x64-9.1 started successfully // <==== NOT REALLY!! It stops! startserver.vbs ran to completion Script stderr: Loading additional SQL modules... Executing cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\loadmodules.vbs" "postgres" "****" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\data" 5432 Script exit code: 2 Script output: Installing the adminpack module in the postgres database... Executing 'C:\Users\HOMEUS~1\AppData\Local\Temp\rad6C20D.bat'... psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused (0x0000274D/10061) Is the server running on host "localhost" (::1) and accepting TCP/IP connections on port 5432? could not connect to server: Connection refused (0x0000274D/10061) Is the server running on host "localhost" (127.0.0.1) and accepting TCP/IP connections on port 5432? Failed to install the 'adminpack' module in the 'postgres' database loadmodules.vbs ran to completion Script stderr: Program ended with an error exit code Error running cscript //NoLogo "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\installer\server\loadmodules.vbs" "postgres" "****" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.1\data" 5432 : Program ended with an error exit code

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  • What disk image should I use with VirtualBox, VDI, VMDK, VHD or HDD?

    - by Sorin Sbarnea
    Latest versions of VirtualBox supports several formats for virtual disks, but they forgot to provide a comparison between them. VDI VMDK VHD HDD Now, I am interested about a recommendation or comparison that considers the following: be able to use dynamic sizing be able to have snapshots be able to move my virtual machine to another OS or even another free virtualization solution with minimal effort (probably something that would run fine on Ubuntu). performance

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  • Problem connecting a 3Com 2952-Plus switch to a Cisco 3750 switch

    - by Noel
    Connected a 3Com 2952-SFP Plus switch to a Cisco 3750 switch via fibre. There is a light on the 3Com end, but nothing at the Cisco end, and no traffic will flow. Have swapped SFP's, have swapped fibre cables, have used a different port on the Cisco, have even swapped the 3Com switch, but still no joy. When I connect a 3Com 2948 switch over fibre that works OK. Any ideas?

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  • php-cgi memory usage higher than php's memory limit

    - by Josh Nankin
    I'm running apache with a worker MPM and php with fastcgi. the following are my mpm limits: StartServers 5 MinSpareThreads 5 MaxSpareThreads 10 ThreadLimit 64 ThreadsPerChild 10 MaxClients 10 MaxRequestsPerChild 2000 I've also setup my php-cgi with the following: PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=5 PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=500 I'm noticing that my average php-cgi process is using around 200+mb of RAM, even as soon as they are started. However, my php memory_limit is only 128M. How is this possible, and what can I do to lower the php-cgi memory consumption?

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