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• Can you shade a specific section of a sprite? If so, how?

  - by l5p4ngl312

  I have been working on an isometric minecraft-esque game engine for a strategy game I plan on making. As you can see, it really needs some sort of shading. It is difficult to distinguish between separate elevations when the camera is facing away from the slope because everything is the same shade. So my question is: can I shade just a specific section of a sprite? All of those blocks are just sprites, so if I shaded the entire image, it would shade the whole block. I am using LWJGL. Heres a link to a screenshot from the engine: http://i44.tinypic.com/qxqlix.jpg

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• Books or guides regarding secure key storage and database encryption

  - by Matty

  I have an idea for a SaaS product I want to create, however, this product will store extremely sensitive data that needs to be encrypted at rest. The trouble is not so much the encryption, but the problem of securely storing the keys so that in the event the server was somehow compromised, the keys couldn't just be recovered and used to decrypt the database. Are there any decent books to guides regarding database encryption, and in particular secure key storage? This seems to be a less than straightforward topic and something that is difficult to get right. I'm seeing multiple ways to attack such a system, but unable to come up with one that is secure enough to store highly confidential information.

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• Ogre3D : seeking advices about game files management

  - by Tibor

  I'm working on a new game, and its related level editor, based on Ogre3D. I was thinking about how i could manage the game files, knowing that Ogre use .mesh files for models, .material for materials/texture information etc... . At first i thought about a common .zip folder decompressed at runtime (the same way Torchlight and Ogre samples do). But this way the game assets become a monolithic archive, loading takes time, and could be difficult to eventually patch them. So, let's say i have a game object named "Cube" i want to load in my program. Going for modularity, what if i create a compressed file (using zlib compression routines) named Cube.extname, containing its sub-files Cube.mesh, Cube.material and so on ? Are there any alternatives or should i stick with compressed objects? PS: Just to clear things, the answer is unrelated to my program code, at the moment i'm using "resources.cfg" pointing to the OgreSDK media directory.

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• How to Take Control and Customize Google Calendar Reminders

  - by Justin Garrison

  Google calendar has great flexibility with reminders, but the defaults are often useless without tweaking the settings. Here are some common notification settings you may want to change to suit your needs better Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Hack a Wireless Doorbell into a Snail Mail Indicator Enjoy Clutter-Free YouTube Video Viewing in Opera with CleanTube Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic]

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• Alternatives to Project Euler for improving Excel ability

  - by Jonathan Deamer

  I've recently been enjoying using the mathematical problems listed at Project Euler to learn Python. My Excel ability is better than my Python, but I think I'd still benefit from the sort of inductive learning that comes with solving a series of increasingly difficult puzzles using a particular tool. I know Project Euler can be completed using Excel, but are there any other puzzle series similar to this or The Python Challenge specifically tailored for people trying to increase their knowledge of Excel and what it can do? NB. I'm not looking for a "tutorial", I know there are plenty of these. And apologies if this isn't completely appropriate for programmers.SE.com - some of the folks at SuperUser suggested it was a better fit here than there!

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• How can I easily create cloud texture maps?

  - by EdwardTeach

  I am making 3d planets in my game; these will be viewed as "globes". Some of them will need cloud layers. I looked at various Blender tutorials for creating "earth", and for their cloud layers they use earth cloud maps from NASA. However I will be creating a fictional universe with many procedurally-generated planets. So I would like to use many variations. I'm hoping there's a way to procedurally generate cloud maps such as the NASA link. I will also need to create gas giants, so I will also need other kinds of cloud texture maps. If that is too difficult, I could fall back to creating several variations of cloud maps. For example, 3 for earth-like, 3 for gas giants, etc. So how do I statically create or programmatically generate such cloud maps?

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• Simple 3D Physics engine as a part of graduation project [on hold]

  - by Eugene Kolesnikov

  I am working on my graduation project and one part of it is to simulate the motion of a rigid body in 3D space. I can use either already written physics engine or to write it myself. It's quite an interesting challenge for me, so I would like to do it myself. I am able to use either C++ or Java for programming (prefer C++). I am using Mac OS X and Debian 7. Could you suggest any guides or tutorials how to do it, can't find it anywhere... More precisely, I need a very simple engine, without collision detection, and many other things that I do not know, I just need to calculate the forces and move my body, depending on the resultant force. If you think that this task is still very difficult or there is no such tutorial, please suggest me some good and simple engine.

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• Naming conventions used for variables and functions in C

  - by Zel

  While coding a large project in C I came upon a problem. If I keep on writing more code then there will be a time when it will be difficult for me to organize the code. I mean that the naming for functions and variables for different parts of the program may seem to be mixed up. So I was thinking whether there are useful naming conventions that I can use for C variables and functions? Most languages suggest a naming convention. But for C the only thing I have read so far is the names should be descriptive for code readability. EDIT: Examples of some examples of suggested naming conventions: Python's PEP 8 Java Tutorial I read some more naming conventions for java somewhere but couldn't remember where.

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• C: What is a good source to teach standard/basic code conventions to someone newly learning the language ?

  - by shan23

  I'm tutoring someone who can be described as a rank newcomer in C. Understandably, she does not know much about coding conventions generally practiced, and hence all her programs tend to use single letter vars, mismatched spacing/indentation and the like, making it very difficult to read/debug her endeavors. My question is, is there a link/set of guidelines and examples which she can use for adopting basic code conventions ? It should not be too arcane as to scare her off, yet inclusive enough to have the basics covered (so that no one woulc wince looking at the code). Any suggestions ?

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• Moving from XNA/C# to DirectX/C++ quite confused

  - by misiMe

  I made some game with XNA/C# for Windows Phone and Windows 8, since XNA is dead and Visual studio doesn't support it (I have to target Windows Phone 7.1 to build with XNA), I want to start learning something more "consistent in time" and improve my skills. I'm a little confused about the possibilities, because C++/DirectX alone seems difficult, so I found some high-level classes to help: DirectX Toolkit Cocos2D My questions are: What will happen when they will "die" like XNA? Is C++'s approces more "professional" than C#/XNA and why? Is C++'s approces more "portable"? Is C++'s approces more resistant in terms of time? Is there any consideration about DirectX TK and Cocos2D in terms of performance? I ask that because I found that every Game software house in my country looks for skilled C++ programmers.

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• Serious Forum Design Issue

  - by John

  I want to launch a school forum for a country. I'm in dilemma as to how to design this forum. Country will have many states, each state will have cities, each city will have many schools. Each school will have many classes( 1st - 12th). It looks like this: States - Cities - Schools - Classes I want to make each class as forum. Now the biggest problems are two fold: If I were to list even 1000 schools it will create huge number of forums and I don't think forum softwares(PHPBB, MyBB) are designed to support these many Secondly creating and maintaining huge forums is also very difficult. Ideally I'd like to duplicate existing forum hierarchy to new one. I've done lot of search and I've found that such type of forums are infeasible and such designs don't work. Leave alone the fact the nobody uses such a forum. Keeping in mind this, how should I go about designing this forum?

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• What is the simplest human readable configuration file format?

  - by Juha

  Current configuration file is as follows: mainwindow.title = 'test' mainwindow.position.x = 100 mainwindow.position.y = 200 mainwindow.button.label = 'apply' mainwindow.button.size.x = 100 mainwindow.button.size.y = 30 logger.datarate = 100 logger.enable = True logger.filename = './test.log' This is read with python to a nested dictionary: { 'mainwindow':{ 'button':{ 'label': {'value':'apply'}, ... }, 'logger':{ datarate: {'value': 100}, enable: {'value': True}, filename: {'value': './test.log'} }, ... } Is there a better way of doing this? The idea is to get XML type of behavior and avoid XML as long as possible. The end user is assumed almost totally computer illiterate and basically uses notepad and copy-paste. Thus the python standard "header + variables" type is considered too difficult. The dummy user edits the config file, able programmers handle the dictionaries. Nested dictionary is chosen for easy splitting (logger does not need or even cannot have/edit mainwindow parameters).

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• Level and Player objects - which should contain which?

  - by Thane Brimhall

  I've been working on a several simple games, and I've always come to a decision point where I have to choose whether to have the Level object as an attribute of the Player class or the Player as an attribute of the Level class. I can see arguments for both: The Level should contain the player because it also contains every other entity. In fact it just makes sense this way: "John is in the room." It makes it a bit more difficult to move the player to a new level, however, because then each level has to pass its player object to an upcoming level. On the other hand, it makes programming sense to me to leave the player as the top-level object that is persistent between levels, and the environment changes because the player decides to change his level and location. It becomes very easy to change levels, because all I have to do is replace the level variable on the player. What's the most common practice here? Or better yet, is there a "right" way to architecture this relationship?

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• Project Management Tool for developers and sysadmins: shared or separate?

  - by David

  Should a team of system administrators who are on a software development project share a project management tool with the developers or use their own separate one? We use Trac and I see the benefit in sharing since inter-team tasks can be maintained by a single system where there may be cross-over or misfiled bugs (e.g. an apparent bug which turns out to be a server configuration issue or a development cycle which needs a server to be configured before it can start) However sharing could be difficult since many system administration tasks don't coincide with a single development milestone if at all. So should a system administration team use a separate PM Tool or share the same one with the developers? If they should share, then how?

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• How do I install the Intel 82845 graphics driver -- videos are really slow?

  - by Mahesh Bhat

  I installed lubuntu on my machine and seems Intel 82845 graphics wasn't installed. Videos are showing frame by frame. Many says ubuntu kernel has built in support for it. but seems it is not. There is a website www.intellinuxgraphics.org has drivers for many kinds of linux distributions. But I find it difficult how to install them on my lubuntu. Can anyone elabroate on how that can be installed ? Output of the command dmesg http://paste.ubuntu.com/1058720/ Output of the command lsmod http://paste.ubuntu.com/1058724/

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• Creating a SOLID Visual Studio Solution

  The SOLID acronym describes five object-oriented design principles that, when followed, produce code that is cleaner and more maintainable. The last principle, the Dependency Inversion Principle, suggests that details depend upon abstractions. Unfortunately, typical project relationships in .NET applications can make this principle difficult to follow. In this article, I'll describe how one can structure a set of projects in a Visual Studio solution such that DIP can be followed, allowing for the creation of a SOLID solution. You can download the sample solution and use it as a starting point for your new solutions if you like.

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• Are there existing FOSS component-based frameworks?

  - by Tesserex

  The component based game programming paradigm is becoming much more popular. I was wondering, are there any projects out there that offer a reusable component framework? In any language, I guess I don't care about that. It's not for my own project, I'm just curious. Specifically I mean are there projects that include a base Entity class, a base Component class, and maybe some standard components? It would then be much easier starting a game if you didn't want to reinvent the wheel, or maybe you want a GraphicsComponent that does sprites with Direct3D, but you figure it's already been done a dozen times. A quick Googling turns up Rusher. Has anyone heard of this / does anyone use it? If there are no popular ones, then why not? Is it too difficult to make something like this reusable, and they need heavy customization? In my own implementation I found a lot of boilerplate that could be shoved into a framework.

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• Display launcher over a GNOME panel (instead of under)

  - by Greg Treleaven

  I've set up my desktop so that I have a classic style gnome-panel at the bottom to show my active applications with a main menu button on the side. The problem is that the panel stretches across the whole width of the screen and over the launcher, making it difficult to access the icons at the bottom. I could untick the expand option in the panel's properties, but there's no way to resize it so it takes up the rest of the right part of the screen, which is what I want. And if enough applications are open it stretches all the way anyway. I don't want to auto-hide it either. What I'd like to do is make the launcher go over the top of the panel so I can fully access both the launcher and the panel at the same time. If it's possible, how do I do this?

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• Photo Gallery Software - reads from a local directory - watches folder- user and group permissions

  - by Darkflare

  Use Case: Photos are organised in a folder structure by date (by software lightroom/picasa) Want to run a local webserver to host a web gallery from (already know how to run lamp etc) I want to be able to attach metadata to the photos (probably through a database not residing in the photos folder) such that they can be tagged/categoried/albumed without affecting the original photos I want to be able to assign permissions to different albums to set users I want the software to watch the photo source folder for changes so that new photos are indexed ready for applying metadata and albums. I'd like the software to handle the rendering of numerous file types (photo formats) as well as video formatts I am language agnostic so php/python heck even c#, just want software that forfills the requirements. The main reason I am asking this question here as I am unsure what this software would even be called so google searching is quite difficult! Thanks for reading.

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• How do I tackle top down RPG movement?

  - by WarmWaffles

  I have a game that I am writing in Java. It is a top down RPG and I am trying to handle movement in the world. The world is largely procedural and I am having a difficult time tackling how to handle character movement around the world and render the changes to the screen. I have the world loaded in blocks which contains all the tiles. How do I tackle the character movement? I am stumped and can't figure out where I should go with it. EDIT: Well I was abstract with the issue at hand. Right now I can only think of rigidly sticking everything into a 2D array and saving the block ID and the player offset in the Block or I could just "float" everything and move about between tiles so to speak.

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• The Most Important Person Is the One that Keeps Your PC Running [Comic]

  - by The Geek

  Fixing people’s computers usually makes them appreciate you more, though this might be a little too far. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic] Asian Temple in the Snow Wallpaper 10 Weird Gaming Records from the Guinness Book

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• Top 10 Transact-SQL Statements a SQL Server DBA Should Know

  Microsoft SQL Server is a feature rich database management system product, with an enormous number of T-SQL commands. With each feature supporting its own list of commands, it can be difficult to remember them all. MAK shares his top 10 T-SQL statements that a DBA should know. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

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• How do you forcibly unmount a disk when you press the eject button on an optical drive?

  - by Michael Curran

  When upgrading my hardware, I also upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10. On my previous system (with 10.04 and earlier) when I ejected a disk from the optical drive, the subfolder in the /media directory was automatically removed. In my new 10.10 system, if I don't eject the disk using the "eject" command within the system, the disk remains mounted, even after a new disk is installed. The new drive is a Blu Ray drive, but I haven't noticed any other problems from it. Normally, this isn't a problem, but it makes installing applications that are spread over multiple CDs more difficult in many cases (i.e. Wine). Any advice?

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• Testing To Prevent Cascading Bugs

  - by jfrankcarr

  Yesterday, Twitter was hit with a "Cascading Bug" as described in this blog post: A “cascading bug” is a bug with an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element, but rather its effect “cascades” into other elements as well. I've seen this kind of bug, on a smaller scale of course, on some projects I've worked on. They can be difficult to identify in dev/test environments, even within a test driven development environment. My questions are... What are some strategies you use, beyond the basic TDD and standard regression testing, to identify and prevent the potential trouble points that might only occur in the production environment? Does the presence of such problems indicate a breakdown in the software development process or simply a by-product of complex software systems?

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