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• How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

  - by Mark Knol

  I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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• As a tooling/automation developer, can I be making better use of OOP?

  - by Tom Pickles

  My time as a developer (~8 yrs) has been spent creating tooling/automation of one sort or another. The tools I develop usually interface with one or more API's. These API's could be win32, WMI, VMWare, a help-desk application, LDAP, you get the picture. The apps I develop could be just to pull back data and store/report. It could be to provision groups of VM's to create live like mock environments, update a trouble ticket etc. I've been developing in .Net and I'm currently reading into design patterns and trying to think about how I can improve my skills to make better use of and increase my understanding of OOP. For example, I've never used an interface of my own making in anger (which is probably not a good thing), because I honestly cannot identify where using one would benefit later on when modifying my code. My classes are usually very specific and I don't create similar classes with similar properties/methods which could use a common interface (like perhaps a car dealership or shop application might). I generally use an n-tier approach to my apps, having a presentation layer, a business logic/manager layer which interfaces with layer(s) that make calls to the API's I'm working with. My business entities are always just method-less container objects, which I populate with data and pass back and forth between my API interfacing layer using static methods to proxy/validate between the front and the back end. My code by nature of my work, has few common components, at least from what I can see. So I'm struggling to see how I can better make use of OOP design and perhaps reusable patterns. Am I right to be concerned that I could be being smarter about how I work, or is what I'm doing now right for my line of work? Or, am I missing something fundamental in OOP? EDIT: Here is some basic code to show how my mgr and api facing layers work. I use static classes as they do not persist any data, only facilitate moving it between layers. public static class MgrClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Perform logic to validate or apply biz logic // call APIClass to do the work return APIClass.PowerOnVM(VMName); } } public static class APIClass { public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName) { // Calls to 3rd party API to power on a virtual machine // returns true or false if was successful for example } }

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• .Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse

  - by Martaver

  I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re-usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB. I would code on the assumption that the tables exist, calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for application developing outside of the application, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

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• Self-Executing Anonymous Function vs Prototype

  - by Robotsushi

  In Javascript there are a few clearly prominent techniques for create and manage classes/namespaces in javascript. I am curious what situations warrant using one technique vs. the other. I want to pick one and stick with it moving forward. I write enterprise code that is maintained and shared across multiple teams, and I want to know what is the best practice when writing maintainable javascript ? I tend to prefer Self-Executing Anonymous Functions however I am curious what the community vote is on these techniques. Prototype : function obj() { } obj.prototype.test = function() { alert('Hello?'); }; var obj2 = new obj(); obj2.test(); Self-Closing Anonymous Function : //Self-Executing Anonymous Function (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var isHot = true; //Public Property skillet.ingredient = "Bacon Strips"; //Public Method skillet.fry = function() { var oliveOil; addItem( "\t\n Butter \n\t" ); addItem( oliveOil ); console.log( "Frying " + skillet.ingredient ); }; //Private Method function addItem( item ) { if ( item !== undefined ) { console.log( "Adding " + $.trim(item) ); } } }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //Public Properties console.log( skillet.ingredient ); //Bacon Strips //Public Methods skillet.fry(); //Adding Butter & Fraying Bacon Strips //Adding a Public Property skillet.quantity = "12"; console.log( skillet.quantity ); //12 //Adding New Functionality to the Skillet (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var amountOfGrease = "1 Cup"; //Public Method skillet.toString = function() { console.log( skillet.quantity + " " + skillet.ingredient + " & " + amountOfGrease + " of Grease" ); console.log( isHot ? "Hot" : "Cold" ); }; }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //end of skillet definition try { //12 Bacon Strips & 1 Cup of Grease skillet.toString(); //Throws Exception } catch( e ) { console.log( e.message ); //isHot is not defined } I feel that I should mention that the Self-Executing Anonymous Function is the pattern used by the jQuery team. Update When I asked this question I didn't truly see the importance of what I was trying to understand. The real issue at hand is whether or not to use new to create instances of your objects or to use patterns which do not require constructors of the use of the new keyword. I added my own answer, because in my opinion we should make use of patterns which don't use the new keyword. For more information please see my answer.

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• Identifying which pattern fits better.

  - by Daniel Grillo

  I'm developing a software to program a device. I have some commands like Reset, Read_Version, Read_memory, Write_memory, Erase_memory. Reset and Read_Version are fixed. They don't need parameters. Read_memory and Erase_memory need the same parameters that are Length and Address. Write_memory needs Lenght, Address and Data. For each command, I have the same steps in sequence, that are something like this sendCommand, waitForResponse, treatResponse. I'm having difficulty to identify which pattern should I use. Factory, Template Method, Strategy or other pattern. Edit I'll try to explain better taking in count the given comments and answers. I've already done this software and now I'm trying to refactoring it. I'm trying to use patterns, even if it is not necessary because I'm taking advantage of this little software to learn about some patterns. Despite I think that one (or more) pattern fits here and it could improve my code. When I want to read version of the software of my device, I don't have to assembly the command with parameters. It is fixed. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To read a portion of the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters Len and Address. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To write a portion in the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters Len, Address and Data. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. I think that I could use Template Method because I have almost the same algorithm for all. But the problem is some commands are fixes, others have 2 or 3 parameters. I think that parameters should be passed on the constructor of the class. But each class will have a constructor overriding the abstract class constructor. Is this a problem for the template method? Should I use other pattern?

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• correct pattern to handle a lot of entities in a game

  - by lezebulon

  In my game I usually have every NPC / items etc being derived from a base class "entity". Then they all basically have a virtual method called "update" that I would class for each entity in my game at every frame. I am assuming that this is a pattern that has a lot of downsides. What are some other ways to manage different "game objects" throughout the game? Are there other well-known patterns for this? My game is a RPG if that changes anything

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• Choosing the right Design Pattern

  - by Carl Sagan

  I've always recognized the importance of utilizing design patterns. I'm curious as to how other developers go about choosing the most appropriate one. Do you use a series of characteristics (like a flowchart) to help you decide? For example: If objects are related, but we do not want to specify concrete class, consider Abstract When instantiation is left to derived classes, consider Factory Need to access elements of an aggregate object sequentially, try Iterator or something similar?

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• Motivating yourself to actually write the code after you've designed something

  - by dpb

  Does it happen only to me or is this familiar to you too? It's like this: You have to create something; a module, a feature, an entire application... whatever. It is something interesting that you have never done before, it is challenging. So you start to think how you are going to do it. You draw some sketches. You write some prototypes to test your ideas. You are putting different pieces together to get the complete view. You finally end up with a design that you like, something that is simple, clear to everybody, easy maintainable... you name it. You covered every base, you thought of everything. You know that you are going to have this class and that file and that database schema. Configure this here, adapt this other thingy there etc. But now, after everything is settled, you have to sit down and actually write the code for it. And is not challenging anymore.... Been there, done that! Writing the code now is just "formalities" and makes it look like re-iterating what you've just finished. At my previous job I sometimes got away with it because someone else did the coding based on my specifications, but at my new gig I'm in charge of the entire process so I have to do this too ('cause I get payed to do it). But I have a pet project I'm working on at home, after work and there is just me and no one is paying me to do it. I do the creative work and then when time comes to write it down I just don't feel like it (lets browse the web a little, see what's new on P.SE, on SO etc). I just want to move to the next challenging thing, and then to the next, and the next... Does this happen to you too? How do you deal with it? How do you convince yourself to go in and write the freaking code? I'll take any answer.

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• Database backup regardless of backup made through a control panel?

  - by developer

  I know that all CMS or CMC platforms have some sort of walkthrough for their users to fully backup and restore the database or the whole website. While we all can perform such backups (and there are even plugins which automate the whole procedure) and restore them in necessity (such as when we migrate to a new server), one can also backup the whole website by means of such control panels as Directadmin or Cpanel. Now, I just want to know if it is necessary for us to do database or website backups the way they are described by a specific CMC or CMS developer even after we perform a whole website backup in a control panel such as DA? An example of such CMS platforms is moodle. Moodle Docs describes how we can backup and restore moodle in here. So do we, out of necessity, have to make the backup the way described, or we can simply do it the Control panel way? Thanks

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• Adding RSS to tags in Orchard

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  A year ago, I wrote a scary post about RSS in Orchard. RSS was one of the first features we implemented in our CMS, and it has stood the test of time rather well, but the post was explaining things at a level that was probably too abstract whereas my readers were expecting something a little more practical. Well, this post is going to correct this by showing how I built a module that adds RSS feeds for each tag on the site. Hopefully it will show that it's not very complicated in practice, and also that the infrastructure is pretty well thought out. In order to provide RSS, we need to do two things: generate the XML for the feed, and inject the address of that feed into the existing tag listing page, in order to make the feed discoverable. Let's start with the discoverability part. One might be tempted to replace the controller or the view that are responsible for the listing of the items under a tag. Fortunately, there is no need to do any of that, and we can be a lot less obtrusive. Instead, we can implement a filter: public class TagRssFilter : FilterProvider, IResultFilter .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } On this filter, we can implement the OnResultExecuting method and simply check whether the current request is targeting the list of items under a tag. If that is the case, we can just register our new feed: public void OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext filterContext) { var routeValues = filterContext.RouteData.Values; if (routeValues["area"] as string == "Orchard.Tags" && routeValues["controller"] as string == "Home" && routeValues["action"] as string == "Search") { var tag = routeValues["tagName"] as string; if (! string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(tag)) { var workContext = _wca.GetContext(); _feedManager.Register( workContext.CurrentSite + " – " + tag, "rss", new RouteValueDictionary { { "tag", tag } } ); } } } The registration of the new feed is just specifying the title of the feed, its format (RSS) and the parameters that it will need (the tag). _wca and _feedManager are just instances of IWorkContextAccessor and IFeedManager that Orchard injected for us. That is all that's needed to get the following tag to be added to the head of our page, without touching an existing controller or view: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="VuLu - Science" href="/rss?tag=Science"/> Nifty. Of course, if we navigate to the URL of that feed, we'll get a 404. This is because no implementation of IFeedQueryProvider knows about the tag parameter yet. Let's build one that does: public class TagFeedQuery : IFeedQueryProvider, IFeedQuery IFeedQueryProvider has one method, Match, that we can implement to take over any feed request that has a tag parameter: public FeedQueryMatch Match(FeedContext context) { var tagName = context.ValueProvider.GetValue("tag"); if (tagName == null) return null; return new FeedQueryMatch { FeedQuery = this, Priority = -5 }; } This is just saying that if there is a tag parameter, we will handle it. All that remains to be done is the actual building of the feed now that we have accepted to handle it. This is done by implementing the Execute method of the IFeedQuery interface: public void Execute(FeedContext context) { var tagValue = context.ValueProvider.GetValue("tag"); if (tagValue == null) return; var tagName = (string)tagValue.ConvertTo(typeof (string)); var tag = _tagService.GetTagByName(tagName); if (tag == null) return; var site = _services.WorkContext.CurrentSite; var link = new XElement("link"); context.Response.Element.SetElementValue("title", site.SiteName + " - " + tagName); context.Response.Element.Add(link); context.Response.Element.SetElementValue("description", site.SiteName + " - " + tagName); context.Response.Contextualize(requestContext => link.Add(GetTagUrl(tagName, requestContext))); var items = _tagService.GetTaggedContentItems(tag.Id, 0, 20); foreach (var item in items) { context.Builder.AddItem(context, item.ContentItem); } } This code is resolving the tag content item from its name and then gets content items tagged with it, using the tag services provided by the Orchard.Tags module. Then we add those items to the feed. And that is it. To summarize, we handled the request unobtrusively in order to inject the feed's link, then handled requests for feeds with a tag parameter and generated the list of items for that tag. It remains fairly simple and still it is able to handle arbitrary content types. That makes me quite happy about our little piece of over-engineered code from last year. The full code for this can be found in the Vandelay.TagCloud module: http://orchardproject.net/gallery/List/Modules/ Orchard.Module.Vandelay.TagCloud/1.2

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• Code Generation and IDE vs writing per Hand

  - by sytycs

  I have been programming for about a year now. Pretty soon I realized that I need a great Tool for writing code and learned Vim. I was happy with C and Ruby and never liked the idea of an IDE. Which was encouraged by a lot of reading about programming.[1] However I started with (my first) Java Project. In a CS Course we were using Visual Paradigm and encouraged to let the program generate our code from a class diagram. I did not like that Idea because: Our class diagram was buggy. Students more experienced in Java said they would write the code per hand. I had never written any Java before and would not understand a lot of the generated code. So I took a different approach and wrote all methods per Hand (getter and Setter included). My Team-members have written their parts (partly generated by VP) in an IDE and I was "forced" to use it too. I realized they had generated equal amounts of code in a shorter amount of time and did not spend a lot of time setting their CLASSPATH and writing scripts for compiling that son of a b***. Additionally we had to implement a GUI and I dont see how we could have done that in a sane matter in Vim. So here is my Problem: I fell in love with Vim and the Unix way. But it looks like for getting this job done (on time) the IDE/Code generation approach is superior. Do you have equal experiences? Is Java by the nature of the language just more suitable for an IDE/Code generated approach? Or am I lacking the knowledge to produce equal amounts of code "per Hand"? [1] http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/eclipse.html

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• Writing Web "server less" applications

  - by crodjer

  TL;DR What are the prospects of write applications which are completely based on a REST database server (CouchDB) and web applications which directly access the DB instead of having a web server in between? I recently started looking up some NoSQL databases. MongoDB seems to be a popular choices. I also liked the project. But I personally liked the REST interface of CouchDB. So what I wanted to know is if there was the possibility of applications (maybe cached apps in web browser, a chrome extension etc.) which could just just query the database directly with no requirement of a webserver in between. All the computational logic would reside in the client application and the database will do what it does, CRUD. Since mostly (I don't know which doesn't) client frameworks support REST quaries, it could be a good way writing applications well optimized for respective framework. These applications though won't be doing complicated computation, but still provide enough functionality which could replace lots of conventional applications. Are existing resources and projects which would help me move towards writing such applications and also the scope and moving towards developing in this way? Are their any technical/security issues with this? This post will help me decide to look into project like CouchDB (and maybe Dive into Erlang later) or stay with the conventional frameworks (like django) and SQL databases. Update A specific point of such apps I had in mind is creation of offline applications just by replicating couchdb data on client.

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• Writing a DB Python or Ruby

  - by WojonsTech

  I am planning on writing a database. I know it's crazy and people will tell me there is no good reason to do so. I am really using it to get better at programming overall, this database wont be used in production. I am planning on writing it Ruby or Python. I have some experience with both languages, but no job or large project experience. I don't want this to be a this is better than that randomly I really need some facts. The things that I need to know are which of the language are better at the following things. Searching arrays/hashes? Sorting? Threading? Sockets? Memory management? Disk Reads/Writes? base64 encode/decode? Again this is just a project for myself. I will port it on github for the hell of it, but I don't expect it to be amazing or going up against mysql or mongodb any day.

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• Writing Acceptance test cases

  - by HH_

  We are integrating a testing process in our SCRUM process. My new role is to write acceptance tests of our web applications in order to automate them later. I have read a lot about how tests cases should be written, but none gave me practical advices to write test cases for complex web applications, and instead they threw conflicting principles that I found hard to apply: Test cases should be short: Take the example of a CMS. Short test cases are easy to maintain and to identify the inputs and outputs. But what if I want to test a long series of operations (eg. adding a document, sending a notification to another user, the other user replies, the document changes state, the user gets a notice). It rather seems to me that test cases should represent complete scenarios. But I can see how this will produce overtly complex test documents. Tests should identify inputs and outputs:: What if I have a long form with many interacting fields, with different behaviors. Do I write one test for everything, or one for each? Test cases should be independent: But how can I apply that if testing the upload operation requires that the connect operation is successful? And how does it apply to writing test cases? Should I write a test for each operation, but each test declares its dependencies, or should I rewrite the whole scenario for each test? Test cases should be lightly-documented: This principles is specific to Agile projects. So do you have any advice on how to implement this principle? Although I thought that writing acceptance test cases was going to be simple, I found myself overwhelmed by every decision I had to make (FYI: I am a developer and not a professional tester). So my main question is: What steps or advices do you have in order to write maintainable acceptance test cases for complex applications. Thank you.

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• Why does Android make good coding so difficult?

  - by metacircle

  my daily work is writing tools in C#/WPF. After over more than 1 year on the job now, I came to love MVVM, IoC Containers, XAML (and more). It's pure fun to write code, since simple, maintainable and extendable code just comes naturally when you follow a few basic patterns. In my free time I really want to write some apps, mainly for my own personal use. I want to write apps for fun and not to make money or anything, that being said, paying an annual fee to be allowed to use my own apps on my own device is a total no-go for me. So I am not able to code for Windows Phone and am also not able to use Xamarin on Android (which is sad since Visual Studio + Resharper is programmers heaven). So I am stuck with Android "classic" Java development. Everytime I sit down at home to create an app, or improve some of the code I have already written I get annoyed very quick because getting good, decoupled code is just so hard to accomplish. It feels like everything you have to do in Android to create a good architecture is a workaround instead of being the way things are meant to be. Writing the UI in xml is fine, but everything else is one big code mess. Even all the tutorials do all their coding in the code behind. For 'hello world' this is fine, but for anything bigger this gets messy very very quick. This is where the fun for me ends. It's just no fun anymore because I just spend 90% of my time refactoring and thinking of workarounds how to make my code more maintainable with all the restrictions Android puts on me. Am I missing a crucial part or is this just the way Android is meant to be? Do you have any suggestions how to learn 'the fun way' of Android programming.

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• What is involved with writing a lobby server?

  - by Kira

  So I'm writing a Chess matchmaking system based on a Lobby view with gaming rooms, general chat etc. So far I have a working prototype but I have big doubts regarding some things I did with the server. Writing a gaming lobby server is a new programming experience to me and so I don't have a clear nor precise programming model for it. I also couldn't find a paper that describes how it should work. I ordered "Java Network Programming 3rd edition" from Amazon and still waiting for shipment, hopefully I'll find some useful examples/information in this book. Meanwhile, I'd like to gather your opinions and see how you would handle some things so I can learn how to write a server correctly. Here are a few questions off the top of my head: (may be more will come) First, let's define what a server does. It's primary functionality is to hold TCP connections with clients, listen to the events they generate and dispatch them to the other players. But is there more to it than that? Should I use one thread per client? If so, 300 clients = 300 threads. Isn't that too much? What hardware is needed to support that? And how much bandwidth does a lobby consume then approx? What kind of data structure should be used to hold the clients' sockets? How do you protect it from concurrent modification (eg. a player enters or exists the lobby) when iterating through it to dispatch an event without hurting throughput? Is ConcurrentHashMap the correct answer here, or are there some techniques I should know? When a user enters the lobby, what mechanism would you use to transfer the state of the lobby to him? And while this is happening, where do the other events bubble up? Screenshot : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/sansrewyh.png/

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• How to avoid the GameManager god object?

  - by lorancou

  I just read an answer to a question about structuring game code. It made me wonder about the ubiquitous GameManager class, and how it often becomes an issue in a production environment. Let me describe this. First, there's prototyping. Nobody cares about writing great code, we just try to get something running to see if the gameplay adds up. Then there's a greenlight, and in an effort to clean things up, somebody writes a GameManager. Probably to hold a bunch of GameStates, maybe to store a few GameObjects, nothing big, really. A cute, little, manager. In the peaceful realm of pre-production, the game is shaping up nicely. Coders have proper nights of sleep and plenty of ideas to architecture the thing with Great Design Patterns. Then production starts and soon, of course, there is crunch time. Balanced diet is long gone, the bug tracker is cracking with issues, people are stressed and the game has to be released yesterday. At that point, usually, the GameManager is a real big mess (to stay polite). The reason for that is simple. After all, when writing a game, well... all the source code is actually here to manage the game. It's easy to just add this little extra feature or bugfix in the GameManager, where everything else is already stored anyway. When time becomes an issue, no way to write a separate class, or to split this giant manager into sub-managers. Of course this is a classical anti-pattern: the god object. It's a bad thing, a pain to merge, a pain to maintain, a pain to understand, a pain to transform. What would you suggest to prevent this from happening?

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• Writing better timesheet

  - by gunbuster363

  Recently, my company started to require us to fill out a monthly timesheet, writing down everything you do in office. A timesheet contain 29-31 days, depends on the number of days of the month. I need to write the things I did in every row of the excel file, which represent a day. This timesheet embarrasses me, because something like this can happen: I spent Monday writing a program, and the program was done. Because my boss didn't give me other program to write, basically I am just sitting there and pretending I am busy in the following days before my boss gives me another assignment. Of course I should not write it in the timesheet as it is. I can write it in the timesheet that I write the program using 4 days, but it makes me feel very inefficient. I can separate the process into 1) write the program, 2)deploy the program, 3)test the program, but that can make the process so long like 3 weeks, really. Have you encountered such a situation? How would you deal with this? EDIT: some people said I should be more proactive about asking for more assignments, but here is the situation: the boss of my boss gives some jobs to my boss, then my boss gives the jobs to me, sometimes I can also see my boss being quite less busy. One of my colleagues said that I should not ask for another assignment in a proactive manner, because it would be a headache for my boss to think a job out of nowhere for me. I don't want the things turn out like that, really.

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• Magento - Integrating Wordpress into Magento for the homepage

  - by Nick

  I currently have a Magento store where I'm using a CMS page as the homepage. I want to integrate my wordpress blog (hosted on the same server) into this CMS page. It would show the latest blog post and preferably have the comment function available on the front page. The first thing I considered was using the Wordpress Loop on the Magento CMS page, but it doesn't seem like it allows PHP. One other thought I had was to create the homepage using modules or blocks. To be honest, I've never created a module or block so I'm not all that familiar with what is involved. The CMS page that I had created is simply an image slider/carousel (nivo-slider) and some photos with links. None of the content actually needs to be done with CMS, it just needs to be presented within my Magento theme/framework. All homepage updates will be handled by myself, so I can bypass the CMS system all together and just update modules if it turns out that the modules solution will allow me to have both the Wordpress blog and nivo-slider on the same page. Any thoughts?

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• Is there an easy way to type in common math symbols?

  - by srcspider

  Disclaimer: I'm sure someone is going to moan about easy-of-use, for the purpose of this question consider readability to be the only factor that matters So I found this site that converts to easting northing, it's not really important what that even means but here's how the piece of javascript looks. /** * Convert Ordnance Survey grid reference easting/northing coordinate to (OSGB36) latitude/longitude * * @param {OsGridRef} gridref - easting/northing to be converted to latitude/longitude * @returns {LatLonE} latitude/longitude (in OSGB36) of supplied grid reference */ OsGridRef.osGridToLatLong = function(gridref) { var E = gridref.easting; var N = gridref.northing; var a = 6377563.396, b = 6356256.909; // Airy 1830 major & minor semi-axes var F0 = 0.9996012717; // NatGrid scale factor on central meridian var f0 = 49*Math.PI/180, ?0 = -2*Math.PI/180; // NatGrid true origin var N0 = -100000, E0 = 400000; // northing & easting of true origin, metres var e2 = 1 - (b*b)/(a*a); // eccentricity squared var n = (a-b)/(a+b), n2 = n*n, n3 = n*n*n; // n, n², n³ var f=f0, M=0; do { f = (N-N0-M)/(a*F0) + f; var Ma = (1 + n + (5/4)*n2 + (5/4)*n3) * (f-f0); var Mb = (3*n + 3*n*n + (21/8)*n3) * Math.sin(f-f0) * Math.cos(f+f0); var Mc = ((15/8)*n2 + (15/8)*n3) * Math.sin(2*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(2*(f+f0)); var Md = (35/24)*n3 * Math.sin(3*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(3*(f+f0)); M = b * F0 * (Ma - Mb + Mc - Md); // meridional arc } while (N-N0-M >= 0.00001); // ie until < 0.01mm var cosf = Math.cos(f), sinf = Math.sin(f); var ? = a*F0/Math.sqrt(1-e2*sinf*sinf); // nu = transverse radius of curvature var ? = a*F0*(1-e2)/Math.pow(1-e2*sinf*sinf, 1.5); // rho = meridional radius of curvature var ?2 = ?/?-1; // eta = ? var tanf = Math.tan(f); var tan2f = tanf*tanf, tan4f = tan2f*tan2f, tan6f = tan4f*tan2f; var secf = 1/cosf; var ?3 = ?*?*?, ?5 = ?3*?*?, ?7 = ?5*?*?; var VII = tanf/(2*?*?); var VIII = tanf/(24*?*?3)*(5+3*tan2f+?2-9*tan2f*?2); var IX = tanf/(720*?*?5)*(61+90*tan2f+45*tan4f); var X = secf/?; var XI = secf/(6*?3)*(?/?+2*tan2f); var XII = secf/(120*?5)*(5+28*tan2f+24*tan4f); var XIIA = secf/(5040*?7)*(61+662*tan2f+1320*tan4f+720*tan6f); var dE = (E-E0), dE2 = dE*dE, dE3 = dE2*dE, dE4 = dE2*dE2, dE5 = dE3*dE2, dE6 = dE4*dE2, dE7 = dE5*dE2; f = f - VII*dE2 + VIII*dE4 - IX*dE6; var ? = ?0 + X*dE - XI*dE3 + XII*dE5 - XIIA*dE7; return new LatLonE(f.toDegrees(), ?.toDegrees(), GeoParams.datum.OSGB36); } I found that to be a really nice way of writing an algorythm, at least as far as redability is concerned. Is there any way to easily write the special symbols. And by easily write I mean NOT copy/paste them.

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• What Patterns Should I Apply to ASP.NET MVC Areas?

  - by DaveDev

  What is the best way to model MVC Areas for my Application? Can I manage these Areas dynamically? What is the best usage of them? Thanks

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• What are the best design patterns books you have read?

  - by Svet

  What are your favorite ones?

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• Are there any design-patterns specifically useful for game-development?

  - by Baelnorn

  This question's been bugging me for a long time. I've always wondered how game developers were solving certain problems or situations that are quite common in certain genres. For example, how would one implement the quests of a typical role-playing game (e.g. BG or TES)? Or how would you implement weapons with multiple stacking effects in a first-person shooter (e.g. the Shrink-gun or Freezer from DN3D)? How would you implement multiple choice options with a possibly intricate decision tree leading to several different outcomes (e.g. the mission trees in WC)? Are there any examples or other resources for that? Blogs? Books? Sourcecode?

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• Patterns: Local Singleton vs. Global Singleton?

  - by Mike Rosenblum

  There is a pattern that I use from time to time, but I'm not quite sure what it is called. I was hoping that the SO community could help me out. The pattern is pretty simple, and consists of two parts: A singleton factory, which creates objects based on the arguments passed to the factory method. Objects created by the factory. So far this is just a standard "singleton" pattern or "factory pattern". The issue that I'm asking about, however, is that the singleton factory in this case maintains a set of references to every object that it ever creates, held within a dictionary. These references can sometimes be strong references and sometimes weak references, but it can always reference any object that it has ever created. When receiving a request for a "new" object, the factory first searches the dictionary to see if an object with the required arguments already exits. If it does, it returns that object, if not, it returns a new object and also stores a reference to the new object within the dictionary. This pattern prevents having duplicative objects representing the same underlying "thing". This is useful where the created objects are relatively expensive. It can also be useful where these objects perform event handling or messaging - having one object per item being represented can prevent multiple messages/events for a single underlying source. There are probably other reasons to use this pattern, but this is where I've found this useful. My question is: what to call this? In a sense, each object is a singleton, at least with respect to the data it contains. Each is unique. But there are multiple instances of this class, however, so it's not at all a true singleton. In my own personal terminology, I tend to call the factory method a "global singleton". I then call the created objects "local singletons". I sometimes also say that the created objects have "reference equality", meaning that if two variables reference the same data (the same underlying item) then the reference they each hold must be to the same exact object, hence "reference equality". But these are my own invented terms, and I am not sure that they are good ones. Is there standard terminology for this concept? And if not, could some naming suggestions be made? Thanks in advance...

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• PHP OOP Design Patterns: Should I Create two seperate classes for registration and form validation?

  - by Joshua Poshua

  So here's my problem: I have two types of registration, registration A and registration B, each will have some of the same fields and some different fields. I was going to create abstract class registration and both A and B would have their own classes that extend from registration. My question is, should I create a seperate Validation class with seperate A and B validation classes that extend? or is there a better pattern to use for something like this? Thanks

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