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• Distributed Development Tools -- (Version control and Project Management)

  - by Macy Abbey

  I've recently become responsible for choosing which source control and project management software to use for a company that employs me. Currently it uses Jira (project management) and Subversion (version control). I know there are many other options out there -- the ones I know about are all in this article http://mashable.com/2010/07/14/distributed-developer-teams/ . I'm leaning towards recommending they just stay with what they have as it seems workable and any change would have to be worth the cost of switching to say github/basecamp or some other solution. Some details on the team: It's a distributed development shop. Meetings of the whole team in one room are rare. It's currently a very small development team (three developers). The project management software is used by developers and a product manager or two. What are you experiences with version control and project management web applications? Are there any you would recommend and you think are worth the switching cost of time to learn new services / implementing the change? Edit: After educating myself further on the options it appears DVCS offer powerful benefits that may be worth investing in now as opposed to later in the company's lifetime when the switching cost is higher: I'm a Subversion geek, why I should consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?

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• Most effective way to do daily standup meeting when a few people are remote

  - by Burhan Ali

  I am a software developer in a small team of seven. We are not an Agile (with a big 'A') team but are experimenting with some aspects of agile. One of these is the daily "standup" meeting. The difficulty here is that for two days of the week we have at least one person working from home so the full team isn't available in the same room. What is the best way to carry out a daily standup in this situation? Some facts that may be relevant: We all work in a single open plan room. We use Skype in our company. We don't have any video conferencing capability. We all work the same hours so there are no timezone complexities involved. The development manager is one of the people who works from home one day a week. Things we have tried: Conference call using Skype: This is tricky for those in the office because you can hear people speak in the room and then a split second later through the headset. This can e very distracting. Conference phone: Awful experience. Hard to get them to work and poor quality audio. Text-based updates using Skype. This is not as engaging and is no different than just firing off a status email in the morning. I have seen other questions about remote collaboration but they are mainly about completely remote teams and/or teams that span multiple time zones. We are not affected by either of these problems. What can we do to make our standup meetings better in these circumstances?

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• Trying to find a recent - PHP book - that utilizes SOLID principles! [closed]

  - by darga33

  Pulling my hair out! I have heard of Martin Fowler's book PoEAA and the other book Head First OOA OOD but those are not in PHP. I desperately want to read them, but ONLY in PHP utilizing the - SOLID acronym - principles! Does anyone know of the absolute best, most recent PHP book that utilizes the SOLID principles and GRASP, and all the other best practices? I want to learn from the best possible source! Not beginner books! I already understand OOP. This seems like an almost impossible question to find the answer to and so I thought, hey, might as well post on stackexchange!! Surely someone out there must know!!!!!!!!!! Or if noone happens to know, Maybe they know of an open source application that utilizes these principles that is relatively small that is not a framework. Something that I can go through every single class, and spend time understanding the insides and outs of how the program was developed. Thanks so much in advance! I really really really really appreciate it! Well it looks like we aren't supposed to ask about best books, so nevermind this question! Sorry about that!

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• DHCP-server doesn't start at boot because of wrong startup order

  - by stolsvik

  Apparently the isc-dhcp-server is started too early in the boot sequence, it states that it has nothing to do. If I just log directly in as root and start it using the init.d-script, it starts normally. My setup is basically an utterly standard router, with an eth0 on the inet side, and an eth1 on the lan side. However, I've defined a bridge instead of the eth1 for the lan-side. Thus, the lan-part of the network isn't up until the bridge is up. I currently believe that the dhcp server is brought up before the bridge is brought up, probably because the bridge is brought up with the 'networking' task, while the eth's are taken up with the 'network-interface' tasks - which are run earlier. (also, the bridge takes a small age to get up compared to the eth's). If I do take away the bridge config, instead using eth1 directly for the lan side, things work. (However, judging by syslog, things are still tight.) Ideas of how the get DHCP to start later? (The reason for the bridge, is to be able to use KVM with bridged networking..)

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• How does a CS student negotiate in/after a job interview?

  - by Billy ONeal

  Alright, I've gotten to the second step in the interview process. At this point I'm working under the assumption that I might be offered a position -- flying my butt to Redmond would be quite an expense if they weren't at least considering me for something (*crosses fingers*). So, if one is offered a position, how should a CS student negotiate? I've heard a few strategies about dealing with software companies when you are being considered for a hire, but most of them are considering the developer in a powerful position. In such examinations, (s)he has lots of job experience, and may even be overqualified for what the employer is looking for. (s)he is part of a small job market of qualified developers, because 99% of applications companies receive are from those who are woefully under qualified. I'm in a completely different position. I think I compare favorably to most of my fellow students, and I have been a programmer for almost 10 years, but often I still feel green compared to most of my coworkers. I'm in a position where the employer holds most of the chips; they'd be doing me quite a favor by hiring me. I think this scenario is considerably different than the targets for most of the advice I've seen. Above all, I don't want to be such a prick negotiating that it damages my chances to actually operate in a position, even if it means not negotiating at all. How should one approach a scenario like this? P.S. If this is off topic feel free to close it -- I think it's borderline and I'm of the opinion that it's better to ask and be closed than not ask at all ;)

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• Repeat use of Schema / Rich Snippets Markup i.e LocalBusiness Data

  - by bybe

  I am unable to find official wording and I'm hoping that some Rich Snippets/Schema Guru can give me some insight into proper usage of repeated content when it comes to using markup. I'm building a site that wants to use Schema as the markup type and the owner would like as much usage as possible. The business name, telephone and address will appear on every page now is it valid or even useful to use Rich Snippets on every page where this information is displayed. For example this information appears in the header, and footer of every page of the site and too give you an example of my current markup see below: <body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness"> <header> <a itemprop="url" href="http://www.domain.co.uk/"> <img itemprop="logo" src="image.png" alt="Company Name Logo" /> </a> <span itemprop="telephone">01202 000 000</span> </header> <div> This is where the content will go</div> <footer> <span itemprop="name">Company Name</span> <span itemprop="description"> A small little bit about this company</span> <div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"> <span itemprop="streetAddress">Address Goes here</span> <span itemprop="addressLocality">Area Here</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">Region Here</span> </div> </footer> </body> !-- Local Business Schema Now Closed --> So as you can see above this information will be displayed on every single page.... Is this valid or bad to repeat usage of this information in schema format...

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• Object pools for efficient resource management

  - by GameDevEnthusiast

  How can I avoid using default new() to create each object? My previous demo had very unpleasant framerate hiccups during dynamic memory allocations (usually, when arrays are resized), and creating lots of small objects which often contain one pointer to some DirectX resource seems like an awful lot of waste. I'm thinking about: Creating a master look-up table to refer to objects by handles (for safety & ease of serialization), much like EntityList in source engine Creating a templated object pool, which will store items contiguously (more cache-friendly, fast iteration, etc.) and the stored elements will be accessed (by external systems) via the global lookup table. The object pool will use the swap-with-last trick for fast removal (it will invoke the object's ~destructor first) and will update the corresponding indices in the global table accordingly (when growing/shrinking/moving elements). The elements will be copied via plain memcpy(). Is it a good idea? Will it be safe to store objects of non-POD types (e.g. pointers, vtable) in such containers? Related post: Dynamic Memory Allocation and Memory Management

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• Price Drop for Processor based License on Exalytics

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  ·       33% reduction in the list `per processor` license pricing for the Oracle BI Foundation Suite ·       New capacity-based licensing which allows customers to think big & start small, significantly lowering the entry price point for an Exalytics. Oracle BI Software List Price changes In response to new powerful platforms like the in-memory Oracle Exalytics with 40 cpu cores (counted under Oracle pricing policy as 20 “processors”), the list price of “Oracle BI Foundation Suite” (BIFS) is reduced by 33% from $450K per processor to $300K per processor. Capacity-based licensing on Exalytics (Trusted Partitions) “Capacity-based pricing” for the BIFS, Endeca, Essbase and Times Ten for Exalytics software is now available for Exalytics systems. This is delivered using “Oracle VM” (OVM).  We still ship a full Exalytics machine to all customers, but they may choose to only use and license a subset of the processors installed in the machine.   Customers can license Exalytics software in units of 5 “processors”: 5, 10, 15 or the full capacity 20.   As the customer’s implementation and workload increases, it is a simple matter to license additional processors and, using OVM, make them available to the BI or EPM application. Endeca Information Discovery now available on Exalytics Oracle has also announced the certification of “Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” (EID) on the Exalytics machine.    EID can be licensed alone or in combination with the BIFS & Times Ten for an Exalytics stack, and also participates in the capacity based pricing outlined above.   The Exalytics hardware is the perfect platform for EID, and provides superb power and performance for this in-memory hybrid text-search-analytics.   For more information : Oracle Price lists Oracle Partitioning Policy Discussion by Mark Rittman (Rittman Mead Consulting ltd.) on Oracle Trusted Partitions for Oracle Engineered Systems, Oracle Exalytics and Updated BI Foundation Pricing.

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• Alpha From PNGs Butchered

  - by ashes999

  I have a pretty vanilla Monogame game. I'm using PNG for all my sprites (made in Photoshop). I noticed that XNA is butchering the aliasing; no matter what I do, my graphics appear jaggedy. Below is a screenshot. The bottom half is what XNA shows me when I zoom in 2X using a Matrix on my GraphicsDevice (to make the effect more obvious). The top is when I pasted the same sprites from Photoshop and scaled them to 200%. Note that partially transparent pixels are turning whiteish. Is there a way to fix this? What am I doing wrong? Here's the relevant call to draw to the SpriteBatch: spriteBatch.Draw(this.texture, this.positionVector, null, Color.White, this.Angle, this.originVector, 1f, SpriteEffects.None, 0f); (this.positionVector can easily be Vector.Zero; Color.White as 100% alpha, I think; this.Angle can be a real angle (small > in the image) or zero (the orb itself).

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• System speakers not recognized

  - by Kyle Maxwell

  Since upgrading to Xubuntu 13.10, sound has not functioned properly (e.g. screeching when playing Skype notifications). Now, however, it does not function at all. pavucontrol only shows Dummy Output and does not recognize the built-in speakers on my Dell Precision M4600. Possibly related, the sound indicator applet does not come up when I click on it, only showing a small white bar underneath it. I have purged and reinstalled pulseaudio. lspci -v shows: 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Dell Precision M4600 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 56 Memory at f2560000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Subsystem: Dell Device 14a3 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 Memory at f0080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel The "Capabilities: <access denied" line makes me wonder if there's a permissions issue, as the Log Out applet now shows "Restart" and "Shutdown" grayed out. groups shows me in: kmaxwell adm dialout cdrom sudo dip plugdev fuse lpadmin netdev sambashare vboxusers

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• The MsC gray zone: How to deal with the "too unexperienced on engineering/too under-qualified for research" situation?

  - by Hunter2

  Last year I've got a MsC degree on CS. On the beginning of the MsC course, I was keen on moving on with research and go for a PhD. However, as the months passed, I started to feel the urge to write software that people would, well, actually use. The programming bug had bitten me, again. So, I decided that before deciding on getting a PhD degree, I would spend some time on the "real world", working as a software developer. Sadly, most companies here in Brazil are "services" companies that seem to be stuck on the 80s when it comes to software development. I have to fend off pushy managers, less-than-competent coworkers and outrageous software requirements (why does everyone seem to need a 50k Oracle license and a behemoth Websphere AS for their CRUD applications?) on a daily basis, and even though I still love software development, the situation is starting to touch a nerve. And, mind you, I'm already lucky for getting a job at a place that isn't a plain software sweatshop. Sure, there are better places around here or I could always try my luck abroad, but then I hit the proverbial brick wall: Sorry, you're too unexperienced as a developer and too under-qualified as a researcher I've already heard this, and variations of that, multiple times. Research position recruiters look for die-hard, publication-ridden, rockstar PhDs, while development position recruiters look for die-hard, experience-ridden, rockstar programmers. To most, my MsC degree seems like a minor bump on my CV (and an outright waste of time for some). Applying for abroad positions is even harder, since the employer would have to deal of the hassle of a VISA process, which I understand that, sometimes, is too much. Now I'm feeling I've reached a dead-end. I'm certain that development (and not research) is my thing, so should I just dismiss my MsC (or play it as a "trump card") and play the "big fish on a small pond" role while I gather some experience and contribute on some open-source projects as a plus? Is there a better way to handle this?

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• Should I modify an entity with many parameters or with the entity itself?

  - by Saeed Neamati

  We have a SOA-based system. The service methods are like: UpdateEntity(Entity entity) For small entities, it's all fine. However, when entities get bigger and bigger, to update one property we should follow this pattern in UI: Get parameters from UI (user) Create an instance of the Entity, using those parameters Get the entity from service Write code to fill the unchanged properties Give the result entity to the service Another option that I've experienced in previous experiences is to create semantic update methods for each update scenario. In other words instead of having one global all-encompasing update method, we had many ad-hoc parametric methods. For example, for the User entity, instead of having UpdateUser (User user) method, we had these methods: ChangeUserPassword(int userId, string newPassword) AddEmailToUserAccount(int userId, string email) ChangeProfilePicture(int userId, Image image) ... Now, I don't know which method is truly better, and for each approach, we encounter problems. I mean, I'm going to design the infrastructure for a new system, and I don't have enough reasons to pick any of these approaches. I couldn't find good resources on the Internet, because of the lack of keywords I could provide. What approach is better? What pitfalls each has? What benefits can we get from each one?

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• Optimal sprite size for rotations

  - by Panda Pajama

  I am making a sprite based game, and I have a bunch of images that I get in a ridiculously large resolution and I scale them to the desired sprite size (for example 64x64 pixels) before converting them to a game resource, so when draw my sprite inside the game, I don't have to scale it. However, if I rotate this small sprite inside the game (engine agnostically), some destination pixels will get interpolated, and the sprite will look smudged. This is of course dependent on the rotation angle as well as the interpolation algorithm, but regardless, there is not enough data to correctly sample a specific destination pixel. So there are two solutions I can think of. The first is to use the original huge image, rotate it to the desired angles, and then downscale all the reaulting variations, and put them in an atlas, which has the advantage of being quite simple to implement, but naively consumes twice as much sprite space for each rotation (each rotation must be inscribed in a circle whose diameter is the diagonal of the original sprite's rectangle, whose area is twice of that original rectangle, supposing square sprites). It also has the disadvantage of only having a predefined set of rotations available, which may be okay or not depending on the game. So the other choice would be to store a larger image, and rotate and downscale while rendering, which leads to my question. What is the optimal size for this sprite? Optimal meaning that a larger image will have no effect in the resulting image. This is definitely dependent on the image size, the amount of desired rotations without data loss down to 1/256, which is the minimum representable color difference. I am looking for a theoretical general answer to this problem, because trying a bunch of sizes may be okay, but is far from optimal.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 03, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 03, 2013Popular ReleasesuComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.9 binaries: Fixed issue with ICollectionView containg null values (AutoFilter issue)Community TFS Build Extensions: October 2013: The October 2013 release contains Scripts - a new addition to our delivery. These are a growing library of PowerShell scripts to use with VS2013. See our documentation for more on scripting. VS2010 Activities(target .NET 4.0) VS2012 Activities (target .NET 4.5) VS2013 Activities (target .NET 4.5.1) Community TFS Build Manager VS2012 Community TFS Build Manager VS2013 The Community TFS Build Managers for VS2010, 2012 and 2013 can also be found in the Visual Studio Gallery where upda...WMI Inventory Client: WMI Inventory Client: WMI Inventory Client ?????????????? ?????????????? ?? WMISuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6 stable: Changes included in this release: Process level isolation SuperSocket ServerManager (include server and client) Connect to client from server side initiatively Client certificate validation New configuration attributes "textEncoding", "defaultCulture", and "storeLocation" (certificate node) Many bug fixes http://docs.supersocket.net/v1-6/en-US/New-Features-and-Breaking-ChangesFile System Explorer: Beta 1: Try me and please give feedback via Discussions and issues Installation: Download the zip file Unblock it Unzip to a suitable location Just run Filesystemexplorer.exe Enjoy Updates: V1.1 Beta: Fixed some low level file search issuesBarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.1: Check Version History for more information about this release.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.1: v 2.1 Added the 'Should' class instead of the 'Validate' class. The 'Validate' class is now obsolete. Added 'Toolkit.Annotations' to support the Mugen MVVM Toolkit ReSharper plugin. Updated JetBrains annotations within the project. Added the 'GlobalSettings.DefaultActivationPolicy' property to represent the default activation policy. Removed the 'GetSettings' method from the 'ViewModelBase' class. Instead of it, the 'GlobalSettings.DefaultViewModelSettings' property is used. Updated...SharePoint User Permission Check: SP User Permission Check: Modified Current.Web.Title in output label.TFS Event Workflows: TFS Event Workflows 0.10.41576.0 - TFS 2012-2013: Supports TFS 2012 and TFS 2013 For a TFS 2010 version look at https://tfseventworkflows.codeplex.com/releases/view/102444 New Features multiple application tiers storage of workflows, configurations and activities in the version control support for async execution in TFS job agent selection of collection/project filters in config file simple disable in config file simplified configurationCrowd CMS: Crowd CMS FREE - Official Release: This is the original source files for Crowd CMS Free (v1.0.0) and is the latest stable release which has been bug-tested and fixed.Sea Dragon AJAX Viewer Web Part: Sea Dragon Ajax Web Part: The Seadragon Viewer WSP and companion literature. There are three seperate guides that explain how to get up and running: - Seadragon Viewer Web Part Installation Guide Creating Deep Zoom Images for Seadragon Viewer Bringing it all together These guides are currently very basic and are offered as guides for getting full usage out Seadragon. Please post any suggestions for further documentation in the discussions forumProject Nonnon: 2013_10_30: ----------==========----------==========----------==========---------- "No news is good news." ----------==========----------==========----------==========---------- Change Log 2013/10/30 BUGFIX win32/explorer.c n_explorer_path_get() : comment OLD : typo NEW : fixed Felis Win8 or latert : Link Maker OLD : not function in some cases NEW : fixed Nyaurism Formatter : byte count label : when resized OLD : text will be broken NEW : fixed NEW_FEATURE win...NAudio: NAudio 1.7: full release notes available at http://mark-dot-net.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/naudio-17-release-notes.htmlFormula Calculation Toolkit: FCT Library: Alfa release for Formula Calculation Toolkit.WebExtras: v1.3.0 Beta: Enh: Adding support for Bootstrap 3.x Enh: Adding support for Gumby 2.5.x Enh: Adding a new string extension Remove() to remove occurences of given string Enh: Adding a ToDictionary() for name value collections Enh: The dataTable sort extension is now a little more intelligent and robust Enh: General under the hood code enhancements Fix: Hyperlink extensions now handle MVC Areas Fix: Marking JsFunc as serializable otherwise when using the ASP.NET State Server, the object does no...DirectX Tool Kit: October 2013: October 28, 2013 Updated for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 SDK RTM Added DGSLEffect, DGSLEffectFactory, VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTexture, and VertexPositionNormalTangentColorTextureSkinning Model loading and effect factories support loading skinned models MakeSpriteFont now has a smooth vs. sharp antialiasing option: /sharp Model loading from CMOs now handles UV transforms for texture coordinates A number of small fixes for EffectFactory Minor code and project cleanup ...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0beta1: +2013-10-28 v4.0 beta1 +?????Collapsed???????????????。 -????：window/group_panel.aspx??，???????，???????，?????????。 +??????SelectedNodeIDArray???????????????。 -????：tree/checkbox/tree_checkall.aspx??，?????，?????，????????????。 -??TimerPicker???????（????、????ing）。 -??????????????????????（???）。 -?????????????，??type=text/css（??~`）。 -MsgTarget???MessageTarget，???None。 -FormOffsetRight?????20px??5px。 -?Web.config?PageManager??FormLabelAlign???。 -ToolbarPosition??Left/Right。 -??Web.conf...CODE Framework: 4.0.31028.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.New Projects.NET Site Storage: Write .NET code to use an abstract storage system that can work with a variety of storage, such as local file system and Azure blob.Asp.net Mvc Ajax Infinite Scroll: Asp.net Mvc 4 Ajax Json Infinite Scrollblueblue: tetCar: CArCSharp Generic Data Access: Yet another generic data access for .NETDotNet Manuals: DotNet Manuals aims to provide developers an easy way to create, manage and distribute manuals and various documentation for their applications and libraries.EIB Watcher .Net Library: .Net Library for EIB/NKX bus accessopenGamification: This intends to become an open source gamification framework based on TypeScript.PaginaWebCursoNetAcc: aSimple Person Manager: The application accepts POST requests with JSON data about a Person, stored the values in Azure Table Storage and accepts GET requests to retrieve it back.Stock Track: If you have a small retail store with simple stock management and tracking requirements, this program might work for you. Stock Track easily categorises your ptrapawebapp: testVisualStateManager: This is a simple, but quite powerful mechanism allowing you to separate the application UI from application logic in Windows Forms.Yet Another VirtualBox ToolSet: This is going to be another VirtualBox Toolset.Zodinet: Co ca ngua

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• Publishing a game -- any way to target both WP7 and Win8 Store?

  - by Rei Miyasaka

  I'm at a dilemma which seems should soon become an important issue for a lot of developers. If I build a game in XNA, I won't be able to publish it on the Windows 8 Store, as it would be a classic application -- and classic applications can't be sold on the store. If I build a game in Metro DirectX, I would be able to sell it on the Store, but porting it to Windows Phone would involve porting it to Reach XNA, which in fact would likely involve more effort even than porting to OS X or Android -- both of which support C++. Of all the WinRT API that is supported on C++/JS/.NET, DirectX can only be programmed from C++. It's also unlikely that Microsoft will update Windows 7 or Vista to support the new DirectX features, although that would make the Metro DirectX the first new version of DirectX to stop supporting the immediate predecessor OS. If I build a game in Pre-Win8 DirectX 9/10/11, I won't be able to sell it on the Windows Store or Windows Phone, but I could sell it on something like Steam. It would also involve the most amount of manual plumbing. In fact, DirectWrite, despite being part of DirectX 11, doesn't talk to Direct3D. I'm getting really tired of all these restrictions -- artificial and otherwise -- and I'm coming to a point where I'm considering switching to a platform with a less fragmented API, like Android or Mac/iOS. As far as bringing a game into market goes, excluding the actual market share of any platforms that I might consider, what other factors would help me in making a decision? Just a few years ago this question was a lot easier to answer: if you were primarily concerned with Windows platforms, all you had to answer was whether you wanted DirectX, XNA, or something like SlimDX. If you made the wrong decision, no biggie -- all you really would have lost is XBox and the fairly small Windows Phone market.

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• Progress bar in Super Hexagon using OpenGL ES 2 (Android)

  - by user16547

  I'm wondering how the progress bar in Super Hexagon was made. (see image, top left) Actually I am not very sure how to implement a progress bar at all using OpenGL ES 2 on Android, but I am asking specifically about the one used in Super Hexagon because it seems to me less straightforward / obvious than others: the bar changes its colour during game play. I think one possibility is to use the built-in Android progress bar. I can see from some Stackoverflow questions that you can change the default blue colour to whatever you want, but I'm not sure whether you can update it during the game play. The other possibility I can think of for implementing a progress bar is to have a small texture that starts with a scale of 0 and that you keep scaling until it reaches the maximum size, representing 100%. But this suffers from the same problem as before: you'll not be able to update the colour of the texture during run-time. It's fixed. So what's the best way to approach this problem? *I'm assuming he didn't use a particular library, although if he did, it would be interesting to know. I'm interested in a pure OpenGL ES 2 + Android solution.

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• Zoom Layer centered on a Sprite

  - by clops

  I am in process of developing a small game where a space-ship travels through a layer (doh!), in some situations the spaceship comes close to an enemy space ship, and the whole layer is zoomed in on the two with the zoom level being dependent on the distance between the ship and the enemy. All of this works fine. The main question, however, is how do I keep the zoom being centered on the center point between the two space-ships and make sure that the two are not off-screen? Currently I control the zooming in the GameLayer object through the update method, here is the code (there is no layer repositioning here yet): -(void) prepareLayerZoomBetweenSpaceship{ CGPoint mainSpaceShipPosition = [mainSpaceShip position]; CGPoint enemySpaceShipPosition = [enemySpaceShip position]; float distance = powf(mainSpaceShipPosition.x - enemySpaceShipPosition.x, 2) + powf(mainSpaceShipPosition.y - enemySpaceShipPosition.y,2); distance = sqrtf(distance); /* Distance > 250 --> no zoom Distance < 100 --> maximum zoom */ float myZoomLevel = 0.5f; if(distance < 100){ //maximum zoom in myZoomLevel = 1.0f; }else if(distance > 250){ myZoomLevel = 0.5f; }else{ myZoomLevel = 1.0f - (distance-100)*0.0033f; } [self zoomTo:myZoomLevel]; } -(void) zoomTo:(float)zoom { if(zoom > 1){ zoom = 1; } // Set the scale. if(self.scale != zoom){ self.scale = zoom; } } Basically my question is: How do I zoom the layer and center it exactly between the two ships? I guess this is like a pinch zoom with two fingers!

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• Go/Obj-C style interfaces with ability to extend compiled objects after initial release

  - by Skrylar

  I have a conceptual model for an object system which involves combining Go/Obj-C interfaces/protocols with being able to add virtual methods from any unit, not just the one which defines a class. The idea of this is to allow Ruby-ish open classes so you can take a minimalist approach to library development, and attach on small pieces of functionality as is actually needed by the whole program. Implementation of this involves a table of methods marked virtual in an RTTI table, which system functions are allowed to add to during module initialization. Upon typecasting an object to an interface, a Go-style lookup is done to create a vtable for that particular mapping and pass it off so you can have comparable performance to C/C++. In this case, methods may be added /afterwards/ which were not previously known and these new methods allow newer interfaces to be satisfied; while I like this idea because it seems like it would be very flexible (disregarding the potential for spaghetti code, which can happen with just about any model you use regardless). By wrapping the system calls for binding methods up in a set of clean C-compatible calls, one would also be able to integrate code with shared libraries and retain a decent amount of performance (Go does not do shared linking, and Objective-C does a dynamic lookup on each call.) Is there a valid use-case for this model that would make it worth the extra background plumbing? As much as this Dylan-style extensibility would be nice to have access to, I can't quite bring myself to a use case that would justify the overhead other than "it could make some kinds of code more extensible in future scenarios."

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• CMS for coding blog

  - by OrgnlDave

  I've got a server with a LAMP stack and such. I'd like to host a blog-type site (or if there's a free place good for this, that would be cool!) that covers a variety of tutorials, interesting content, etc. There are tons of CMS's out there but if you search for tips on ones that do programming type things well, you get tons of hits about web development. I'd like to know if anyone here has recommendations from actually using a CMS for this type of thing or, short of that, can recommend one - not based on generalities like "Joomla! is great!" I'm looking for the least setup time possible. I'm proficient with CSS and I can design a color scheme, so that's not a big problem. As you can expect, attaching files, pictures, and syntax highlighting are musts (C/C++ ish is good). Ability to group posts, perhaps use tags, etc. would be cool too, but not necessary. As I'm writing this, it almost sounds like it'd be easier to custom-code a small PHP site myself.

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• Using Mercurial repository inside a Git one: Feasible? Sane?

  - by Portablejim

  I am thinking on creating a Mercurial repository under a Git repository. e.g. ..../git-repository/directory/hg-repo/ The 2 repositories Is it possible to manage (keeping your sanity)? How similiar is it to this? I am a computer science student at University. I manage my work in Git, mainly as a distribution mechanism (after realizing that rsync fails when you have changes in more than one place) between my desktop and usb drive. I try use of Git as a VCS as I do work. I have finished a semester where I did a small group project to prepare for a larger group project next year. We had to use Subversion, and experienced the joys of a centralised VCS (including downtime). I tried to keep the subversion repository separate to my Git repository for the subject**, however it was annoying that it was seperate (not in the place where I store assignments). I therefore moved to using an Subversion repository inside my Git repository. As I think ahead (maybe I am thinking too far ahead) I realise that I will have to try and convince people to use a DVCS and Mercurial will probably be the one that is preferred (Windows and Mac GUI support, closer to Subversion). Having done some research into the whole Git vs Mercurial debate (however not used Mercurial at all) I still prefer Git. Can I have a Mercurial repository inside a Git one without going mad (or it ruining something)? Or is it something that I should not consider at all? (Or is it a bad question that should be deleted?) ** I think outside of Australia it is called a course

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• Lubuntu 12.04 on Acer laptop boots to blank blue screen

  - by WGCman

  My previous question on this was closed, but I am posting it again as the solution which my son eventually found may assist other users of the forum, or someone may be able to tweak the solution to improve the performance. Having installed Kubuntu 12.04.01 from a live USB onto my desktop, I wanted to do the same on my laptop, an Acer Aspire 1362 Laptop, which has 256MB RAM (actually 512 "on the box", but a good deal can be borrowed by the graphics!). I found Kubuntu wouldn't run on so little memory but downloaded: Lubuntu-12.04-alternate-i386.iso, which I understood was light enough to go. The laptop has one internal 40GB Toshiba hard drive divided into 3 partitions: C,19GB with Windows XP, Windows program files and some data, D, 19GB mostly data, and a small 2GB partition with some Acer software, which XP can't normally “see”. I transferred most of the contents of D to a memory stick, leaving 16GB free for Lubuntu. I did not want to dump XP yet, though it is painfully slow. I installed Lubuntu from then USB stick, accepting the default answers to most of the questions. The D: partition was further partitioned into a 500MB boot partition, 10GB for Linux, 2GB Swap and 6GB for data shareable between Linux and Windows. I had no error messages during installation, rebooted, was offered the choice of Ubuntu or XP, and selected the former. After a few minutes, I get a dark blue screen announcing Lubuntu with five dots underneath which lighten in turn. Eventually the lights stopped, and whatever I try the screen remains blank apart from “Lubuntu” I tried several solutions suggested on the forum for “identical” questions but without success.

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• What data should be cached in a multiplayer server, relative to AI and players?

  - by DevilWithin

  In a virtual place, fully network driven, with an arbitrary number of players and an arbitrary number of enemies, what data should be cached in the server memory, in order to optimize smooth AI simulation? Trying to explain, lets say player A sees player B to E, and enemy A to G. Each of those players, see player A, but not necessarily each other. Same applies to enemies. Think of this question from a topdown perspective please. In many cases, for example, when a player shoots his gun, the server handles the sound as a radial "signal" that every other entity within reach "hear" and react upon. Doing these searches all the time for a whole area, containing possibly a lot of unrelated players and enemies, seems to be an issue, when the budget for each AI agent is so small. Should every entity cache whatever enters and exits from its radius of awareness? Is there a great way to trace the entities close by without flooding the memory with such caches? What about other AI related problems that may arise, after assuming the previous one works well? We're talking about environments with possibly hundreds of enemies, a swarm.

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• Need to re-build an application - how?

  - by Tom

  For our main system, we have a small monitor application that sits outside our network and periodically tries to log in to verify the system still works. We have a problem with the monitor though in that the communications component set (Asta 3 inside Delphi applications) doesn't always connect through. Overall, I'd say it's about 95% reliable, but that other 5% kills the monitor since it will try to log in and hang on the connection attempt (no timeout in the component). This really isn't an issue on the client side of the system since the clients don't disconnect and reconnect repeatedly on the same application instance, but I need a way to make sure the monitor stays up and continues working even when the component fails on a run. I have a few ideas as to which way to have the program run, the main idea being to put the communications inside a threaded data module so that if one thread crashes then another thread can test later and the program keep going. Does this sound like a valid way to go? Any other ideas how to ensure a reliable monitoring application with a less than 100% reliable component? Thanks. P.S. Not sure these tags are the most appropriate. Tried including "system-reliability" as one, but not high enough rep to create.

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• Leveraging Code Across Platforms in Ever Bigger Games

  - by ashes999

  Summary: The same way that I continually build complex engines and libraries within a single platform and technology to allow me to build increasingly bigger and better games, how to continue this when development crosses into different platforms? If I switch platforms, how do I leverage past code and experiences? Games are hard to build. Big games are even harder to build. I've decided that to be able to make big games, I need to start building smaller games, and building up an asset base of code, assets (graphics, sounds), tools, and most importantly, game engines, so that I can eventually get there. One game at a time. Let me give an analogy. To build an MMO 3D RPG, I would approach this by building and releasing small games with increasingly more features. This could entail, for example: A simple 2D game A tile-based game A game with RPG elements (items, equipment, monsters, battle) A full-fledged RPG A 3D RPG The problem now is if I have to change platforms or tools, I don't know how to leverage past code-bases (and experience) to start with a mature product. Right now, I'm writing Silverlight (FlatRedBall) games. Let's say I stick with this for ten years, and then suddenly decide to write a PS6 game, which is in a different programming language entirely. Granted, I have ten years of game-development experience (and correspondingly ten years of professional software development experience from my day job) to back me up. But I would still like some way to transplant that 2D RPG engine into the new programming language, or else leverage it somehow. Is this even possible? What are my options?

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• Tell Us Once&ndash;Final Phase goes live

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  Yesterday the final phase of ‘Tell Us Once’ went live. This completes the 4 1/2 year journey Solidsoft started on this cross government project with the addition of full electronic distribution of data and the most import piece – access for the citizen to use the service on-line. Tell Us Once (TUO) is the award-winning, cross-government programme that lets people inform central government and local authorities just once of a birth or death. In service in over 95% of councils in England, Scotland and Wales, it provides a permanent solution to the long-standing and frustrating issue of people having to notify the government multiple times. Several years ago, research showed that people had to make up to 44 contacts when reporting a death to government bodies and their local authority. The TUO service is offered as a face-to-face interview by the local authority or by telephone to a dedicated telephony service run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). and a  now a TUO online service for death. From the bereavement section of the  Direct Gov web site the citizen is able to ‘enrich’ the standard death registration data to allow the ‘Tell Us Once’ system inform the various government departments about the death. These include the local council, DVLA, DWP, Passport service and HMRC. For the record this is an excellent example of how an SME working with a large SI partner can deliver success for government in a responsive and agile manner. For me personally it is a proud moment in which a vision I started with a very small team was followed through, extended and finally delivered by an excellent team at Solidsoft.

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