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  • How or why would this mechanic (not) work to bring game balance to a singleplayer RPG? [closed]

    - by 0xFFF1
    Mechanic details The player, the monsters, and the merchants act as three separate parties. The player needs to beat up monsters for exp points and resources to sell and to buy potions from merchants to continue to fight. The monsters need healing and reviving to survive (also bought from merchants) and the merchants need potion ingredients from the player and the monsters to make potions to sell. These potions are only able to be processed in such bulk by merchants thus their potions would be cheaper than making them yourself. Only the monsters can farm ingredients in bulk. Only the player is or has to be overly aggressive (in bulk). Monsters can farm and produce "Level up candies" that do the work of exp. they are eaten right away after they are made and are never stockpiled or held for fear of the player and merchants who want to sell to the player. The monsters will defend themselves. Reviving is very expensive. The merchants can be found either with a concerned expression or a grinning expression based on how much profit they are making compared to their morale standing. The economies of each monster town and merchant city are distinct but interconnected. Magic Swords are worth a lot. So what I need to know is what concerns would there be to design a game around this mechanic and/or design this mechanic around a developing game. which would fare better? Is game balance an issue here? (how strong the monsters get or how quickly they die off based on the player's input into the system), Or is game balance solely in the hands of the player? (he decides if he overkills monsters or get underleveled.) What do I need to think about to make sure it isn't too easy or too hard to swing the amount/strength of monsters compared to the player and the amount of profit the merchants get vs the player. Would indicating how out of whack things are getting in game help with this?

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  • Discount Multilingual Day in the Life of User Experience

    - by ultan o'broin
    Super article by the WikiMedia Foundation engineering folks about Designing for the Multilingual Web using the Wikipedia Universal Language Selector user interface as an example. Great ideas about tools that are available, as well as covering the basics of wireframing (mockups), prototyping, and user testing. Lots of inspiration there for developers and builders of apps who want to ensure their user experience (UX) really delivers for a global audience. Check out the use of the Firefox-based Pencil, how to translate your mockups, and how to perform remote user testing using Google+ Hangouts. Paul Giner demonstrates how to translate mockups. A little clunky and homespun in parts (I would prefer if tools such as Pencil or Balsamiq MockUps, and so on, could roundtrip directly from SVG to XLIFF for example, and Pencil doesn't work yet with the latest versions for Firefox) and I am not sure how it can really scales to enterprise-level use. However, the UX methodology is basically sound, and reinforces the importance of designing and testing in more that one language. The most powerful message for me is that you do not need special resources, training or expensive tools to deliver great-looking usable apps if you're a developer. Definitely worth considering if you're building apps out there in the community.

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  • Generating Deep Arrays: Shallow to Deep, Deep to Shallow or Bad idea?

    - by MobyD
    I'm working on an array structure that will be used as the data source for a report template in a web app. The data comes from relatively complex SQL queries that return one or many rows as one dimensional associative arrays. In the case of many, they are turned into two dimensional indexed array. The data is complex and in some cases there is a lot of it. To save trips to the database (which are extremely expensive in this scenario) I'm attempting to get all of the basic arrays (1 and 2 dimension raw database data) and put them, conditionally, into a single, five level deep array. Organizing the data in PHP seems like a better idea than by using where statements in the SQL. Array Structure Array of years( year => array of types( types => array of information( total => value, table => array of data( index => db array ) ) ) ) My first question is, is this a bad idea. Are arrays like this appropriate for this situation? If this would work, how should I go about populating it? My initial thought was shallow to deep, but the more I work on this, the more I realize that it'd be very difficult to abstract out the conditionals that determine where each item goes in the array. So it seems that starting from the most deeply nested data may be the approach I should take. If this is array abuse, what alternatives exist?

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  • Is there a way to legally create a game mod?

    - by Rodrigo Guedes
    Some questions about it: If I create a funny version of a copyrighted game and sell it (crediting the original developers) would it be considered a parody or would I need to pay royalties? If I create a game mod for my own personal use would it be legal? What if I gave it for free to a friend? Is there a general rule about it or it depends on the developer will? P.S.: I'm not talking about cloning games like this question. It's all about a game clearly based on another. Something like "GTA Gotham City" ;) EDIT: This picture that I found over the internet illustrate what I'm talking about: Just in case I was not clear: I never created a mod game. I was just wondering if it would be legally possible before trying to do it. I'm not apologizing piracy. I pay dearly for my games (you guys have no idea how expensive games are in Brazil due to taxes). Once more I say that the question is not about cloning. Cloning is copy something and try to make your version look like a brand new product. Mods are intended to make reference to one or more of its source. I'm not sure if it can be done legally (if I knew I wasn't asking) but I'm sure this question is not a duplicate. Even so, I trust in the moderators and if they close my question I will not be offended - at least I had an opportunity to explain myself and got 1 good answer (by the time I write this, maybe some more will be given later).

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  • 2D animations frames vs 3D animation for small indie project: timing considerations

    - by mm24
    pretty lame question but was wondering.. I am developing a 2D game using Cocos2D for iOS. The art work till now is all 2D (is a shooter game) but some of the characters would benefit of complex animations (eg. 20 frames). I feel a bit stupid because I came across only now that there is the chance to do 3D to 2D frames exporting and then to use them in Cocos2D. The thing that put me off on 3D gaming at first was that it takes more than one person in a team to do so properly (Illustrator, 3D modeller, 3D animator and programmer). Now I feel a bit stupid because having a 3D model I could do and modify the poses whenever I wanted (I should ask to the 3D animator which I guess would be time expensive). Instead now is me and two illustrators (as I require many frames per character). Is my impression that it would have been much longer right or not? Are there any other project management considerations that can be done on this? Sorry if for some this might be trivial but is my first "indie game developer experience".

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  • Self Service Reporting With PowerPivot

    - by blakmk
    There are so many cool new features in Sql 2008 release 2 it was difficult for me to pick a topic for T-SQL Tuesday . But the one that I am now a secret fan of, I once resented for its creation. Let me explain, for years I have encountered reporting systems cobbled together in tools like Access and Excel built by "database hobbyists" who had no formal training in database design or best practices. They would take their monstrosities as far as they could go before ultimatley it stopped working or the person that wrote it left the company. At that point it would become the resident DBA's problem to support it as a Live application. So when I first heard of Power Pivot, a sense of Deja Vu overtook me and I felt like the guy in the Ausin Powers movie , knowing the inevitable is coming but somehow unsure how to get out of the way. But when I eventually saw it in action, I quickly realised that it is a very powerful tool. It has a much smaller "time to market" than traditional BI architectures. Combined with the new features of Excel, some pretty impressive dashboards can be produced.Of course PowerPivot is not a magic bullet and along with potential scalability issues there are the usual issues such as master data management and data quality that cannot be overcome easily with power pivot. As a tool though, it has potential. Traditional BI is expensive, both in terms of time and the amount of resources it takes to deliver the system. The time lag between an analyst or a commercial accountant requesting reports and the report being delivered can make a huge commercial difference. I have observed companies where empowered end users become extremely productive when allowed to plough in to various disperate datasets. It may not be the correct way or the most sustainable but its cheap and quick. In these times when budgets are being slashed and we are forced to deliver more with less, why not empower the end user in a tool that is designed for exactly this task.... @blakmk  

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  • How do I pick which agency to go through?

    - by RoboShop
    I work in a town where the majority of work comes from the government. As a contractor, I generally have to apply for work through agencies which are on the government's preferred vendor's list. Most jobs are publicly listed and to apply for them, you generally need an agency to represent you by submitting your application with a rate which is usually your rate plus their commission. I've been trying to figure out what the agencies do, and it seems a large part of what they do is 1) get on that preferred vendor's list and 2) forward resumes. So right now, my policy is that since their commission affects how expensive I am, one - I don't work with companies that do not disclose their margin. And two, I go for the agency that takes the least amount of commission for the job I want to apply for. IS that the best approach? I would think applying for a job with the most competitive rate is the best approach but I also wonder whether which agency you're applying through actually matter? I know some agencies actually build personal relationships with senior managers but how do I know which one? How do I know that actually affect my job prospects? What criteria should I use to decide which agent I go through for the job?

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  • Oracle Developer Day, Romania, 2012

    - by Geertjan
    I'm on the way back from a great experience in Cluj, Romania: the Oracle Developer Day that was held here today. After the Oracle Developer Day in Warsaw, two days ago, I flew to Bucharest and then had to wait about 6 hours for the flight to Cluj. So I spent several of those hours in a taxi, with a very nice driver who showed me all over the place in Bucharest, such as the Palace of Parliament (according to Wikipedia, "the world's largest civilian building, most expensive administrative building, and heaviest building"): He also taught me a lot of Romanian. (My current phonetic-based vocabulary can be admired and/or ridiculed here.) Meeting Emilian Bold (third on the right below) from the NetBeans Dream Team was a definite highlight: The above shows the three speakers on the Java Track "preparing" for their sessions; me, Lukas Jungmann, and Emilian Bold. In Oracle's Gregor Rayman's keynote, this particular slide responded well to my NetBeans heart: The "Java Track" had sessions on Java EE 6, the NetBeans Platform, and Java Web Services, as well as "What's New in NetBeans IDE 7.1", where Emilian, shown in action below, outlined the NetBeans community, e.g., the NetBeans Dream Team and the NetBeans governance board. (But it was all in Romanian so I'm not really sure what was said exactly!) Finally, there was time to recover from the whole day, right before my trip back to Bucharest: All in all a great day! Looking forward to remaining in touch with the many people I met today.

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  • Cross platform development query

    - by Ian
    I'm a Microsoft developer mainly, but there are a couple of small-ish projects I'd like to fiddle with which would benefit from being cross platform. The platforms I want to target are: Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and preferably iPhone, web (running in a browser). I need 3D (Around the level of support seen in something like Minecraft (I'm not writing Minecraft)), some networking. I'm pretty certain Java would work on all except iPhone. Looking at the "related questions" above it's offered up QT (no browser or phone afaik) and also HTML/CSS/Javascript (3D? package for desktop?) The other alternative is to have seperate versions for seperate platforms, developed with some common code where possible. That option isn't something I know anything about. Does anyone have experience of this sort of conundrum? I figured here was better than SO, because I imagine there are compromises which extend beyond technical choice. Finally, this is not a commercial operation, so some of the very expensive cross platform tools are out of the question unless they offer some sort of community edition. Thanks for your time.

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  • Displaying possible movement tiles

    - by Ash Blue
    What's the fastest way to highlight all possible movement tiles for a player on a square grid? Players can only move up, down, left, right. Tiles can cost more than one movement, multiple levels are available to move, and players can be larger than one tile. Think of games like Fire Emblem, Front Mission, and XCOM. My first thought was to recursively search for connecting tiles. This quickly demonstrated many shortcomings when blockers, movement costs, and other features were added into the mix. My second thought was to use an A* pathfinding algorithm to check all tiles presumed valid. Presumed valid tiles would come from an algorithm that generates a diamond of tiles from the player's speed (see example here http://jsfiddle.net/truefreestyle/Suww8/9/). Problem is this seems a little slow and expensive. Is there a faster way? Edit: In Lua for Corona SDK, I integrated the following movement generation controller. I've linked to a Gist here because the solution is around 90 lines of code. https://gist.github.com/ashblue/5546009

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  • Developing games using virtualization on macOS (or Linux) [on hold]

    - by zpinner
    From what I've seen, most of the gamedev tools and engines (that could generate cross platform games) are not supported on Mac. Havok/Project Anarchy, UDK, GameMaker, e.g. . Basically, the only options I found are: Unity3d and monogame + xamarin. Unity is nice and I've been playing with it for some time, but the free version is quite limited when we're talking about shaders, that made me consider that as an indie developer, I might want more freedom to experiment new things, without paying the expensive unity license. I didn't try monogame + xamarin yet, and altough XNA is a very nice game framework, I'd like to have more freedom to experiment and finish a game first before paying for the IDE, which is not possible with the current Xamarin business model. That leaves me with the thought that I must go back to windows, which I'd preferably do it partially, if it's possible. Using BootCamp is something that I'd like to avoid, since it's a pain to reboot when changing OS and that would probably force me to become a 100% windows user. Is there anyone actually developing a game using virtualization solutions like parallels or vmwareFusion? How was your experience?

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  • Simple monitoring of a Raspberry Pi powered screen - Part 2

    - by Chris Houston
    If you have read my previous blog post Raspberry Pi entrance signed backed by Umbraco - Part 1 which describes how we used a Raspberry Pi to drive an Entrance sign for QV Offices you will have seen I mentioned a follow up post about monitoring the sign.As the sign is mounted in the entrance of the building on the ground floor and the reception is on the 1st floor, this meant that if there was a fault of any kind showing on the screen, the first person to see this was inevitably one of QV Offices' clients as they walked into the building.Although the QV Offices' team were able to check the Umbraco website address that the sign uses, this did not always mean that everything was working as expected. We noticed a couple of times that the sign had Wifi issues (it is now hard wired) and this caused the Chromium browser to render a 404 error when it tried to refresh the screen.The simple monitoring solutionWe added the following line to our refresh script, so that after the sign had been refreshed a screen shot of the Raspberry Pi would be taken:import -display :0 -window root ~/screenshot.jpgFinally we wrote a small Crontab task that ran on a QV Offices Mac that grabs this screen shot and saved it on the desktop, admittedly we have used a package that it not mega secure, but in reality this is an internal system that only runs an office sign, so we are not to concerned about it being hacked.*/5 * * * * /usr/local/bin/sshpass -p 'password' /usr/bin/scp [email protected]:screenshot.jpg Desktop/QVScreenShot.jpgAs the file icon updates, if the image changes, this gives a quick visual indication of the status of the sign, if for some reason the icon does not look correct the QV Offices administrator can just click on the file to see the exact image currently displayed on the sign.Sometimes a quick and easy solution is better than a more complex and expensive one.

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  • Designing a flexible tile-based engine

    - by Vee
    I'm trying to create a flexible tile-based game engine to make all sorts of non-realtime puzzle games, just as Bejeweled, Civilization, Sokoban, and so on. The first approach I had was to have a 2D array of Tile objects, and then have classes inheriting from Tile that represented the game objects. Unfortunately that way I couldn't stack more game elements on the same Tile without having a 3D array. Then I did something different: I still had the 2D array of Tile objects, but every Tile object contained a List where I put and different entities. This worked fine until 20 minutes ago, when I realized that it's too expensive to do many things, look at this example: I have a Wall entity. Every update I have to check the 8 adjacent Tiles, then check all of the entities in the Tile's List, check if any of those entities is a Wall, then finally draw the correct sprite. (This is done to draw walls that are next to each other seamlessly) The only solution I see now is having a 3D array, with many layers, that could suit every situation. But that way I can't stack two entities that share the same layer on the same tile. Whenever I want to do that I have to create a new layer. Is there a better solution? What would you do?

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  • How to go from Mainframe to the Cloud?

    - by Ruma Sanyal
    Running applications on IBM mainframes is expensive, complex, and hinders IT responsiveness. The high costs from frequent forced upgrades, long integration cycles, and complex operations infrastructures can only be alleviated by migrating away from a mainframe environment.  Further, data centers are planning for cloud enablement pinned on principles of operating at significantly lower cost, very low upfront investment, operating on commodity hardware and open, standards based systems, and decoupling of hardware, infrastructure software, and business applications. These operating principles are in direct contrast with the principles of operating businesses on mainframes. By utilizing technologies such as Oracle Tuxedo, Oracle Coherence, and Oracle GoldenGate, businesses are able to quickly and safely migrate away from their IBM mainframe environments. Further, running Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Coherence on Oracle Exalogic, the first and only integrated cloud machine on the market, Oracle customers can not only run their applications on standards-based open systems, significantly cutting their time to market and costs, they can start their journey of cloud enabling their mainframe applications. Oracle Tuxedo re-hosting tools and techniques can provide automated migration coverage for more than 95% of mainframe application assets, at a fraction of the cost Oracle GoldenGate can migrate data from mainframe systems to open systems, eliminating risks associated with the data migration Oracle Coherence hosts transactional data in memory providing mainframe-like data performance and linear scalability Running Oracle software on top of Oracle Exalogic empowers customers to start their journey of cloud enabling their mainframe applications Join us in a series of events across the globe where you you'll learn how you can build your enterprise cloud and add tremendous value to your business. In addition, meet with Oracle experts and your peers to discuss best practices and see how successful organizations are lowering total cost of ownership and achieving rapid returns by moving to the cloud. Register for the Oracle Fusion Middleware Forum event in a city new you!

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  • Is using multiple canvas objects a good practice?

    - by user1818924
    We're developing a jump and run game with HTML5 and JavaScript and have to build an own game framework for this. Here we have some difficulties and would like to ask you for some advice: We have a "Stage" object, which represents the root of our game and is a global div-wrapper. The stage can contain multiple "Scenes", which are also div-elements. We would implement a Scene for the playing task, for pause, etc. and switch between them. Each scene can therefore contain multiple "Layers", representing a canvas. These Layer contain "ObjectEntities", which represent images or other shapes like rectangles, etc. Each Objectentity has its own temporaryCanvas, to be able to draw images for one entity, whereas another contains a rectangle. We set an activeScene in our Stage, so when the game is played, just the active scene is drawn. Calling activeScene.draw(), calls all sublayers to draw, which draw their entities (calling drawImage(entity.canvas)). But is this some kind of good practice? Having multiple canvas to draw? Each game loop every layer-context is cleared and drawn again. E.g. we just have a still Background-Layer, … wouldn't it be more useful to draw this once and not to clear it every time and redraw it? Or should we use a global canvas for example in the Stage and just use this canvas to draw? But we thought this would be to expensive...

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  • Customer retention - why most companies have it wrong

    - by Michel Adar
    At least in the US market it is quite common for service companies to offer an initially discounted price to new customers. While this may attract new customers and robe customers from competitors, it is my argument that it is a bad strategy for the company. This strategy gives an incentive to change companies and a disincentive to stay with the company. From the point of view of the customer, after 6 months of being a customer the company rewards the loyalty by raising the price. A better strategy would be to reward customers for staying with the company. For example, by lowering the cost by 5% every year (compound discount so it does never get to zero). This is a very rational thing to do for the company. Acquiring new customers and setting up their service is expensive, new customers also tend to use more of the common resources like customer service channels. It is probably true for most companies that the cost of providing service to a customer of 10 years is lower than providing the same service in the first year of a customer's tenure. It is only logical to pass these savings to the customer. From the customer point of view, the competition would have to offer something very attractive, whether in terms of price or service, in order for the customer to switch. Such a policy would give an advantage to the first mover, but would probably force the competitors to follow suit. Overall, I would expect that this would reduce the mobility in the market, increase loyalty, increase the investment of companies in loyal customers and ultimately, increase competition for providing a better service. Competitors may even try to break the scheme by offering customers the porting of their tenure, but that would not work that well because it would disenchant existing customers and would be costly, assuming that it is costlier to serve a customer through installation and first year. What do you think? Is this better than using "save offers" to retain flip-floppers?

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  • How to Change the Cmd+Q Shortcut Key in OS X (to Stop Accidentally Closing Apps)

    - by The Geek
    If you’ve spent any time using Mac OS X, you’ve figured out that the Cmd+W shortcut key closes a window or tab, while the Cmd+Q key quits the entire app. The problem? The keys are right next to each other, and way too easy to accidentally hit! Here’s how to change it. This problem is compounded even more when you’re using an application like Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, where you’re opening or closing tabs all the time, and probably using the Cmd+W key to close just the current tab. If you aren’t careful, you’ll accidentally hit Cmd+Q instead, and your entire browser gets closed. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Awesome WebGL Demo – Flight of the Navigator from Mozilla Sunrise on the Alien Desert Planet Wallpaper Add Falling Snow to Webpages with the Snowfall Extension for Opera [Browser Fun] Automatically Keep Up With the Latest Releases from Mozilla Labs in Firefox 4.0 A Look Back at 2010 Through Infographics Monitor the Weather with the Weather Forecast Extension for Opera

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  • Augmenting functionality of subclasses without code duplication in C++

    - by Rob W
    I have to add common functionality to some classes that share the same superclass, preferably without bloating the superclass. The simplified inheritance chain looks like this: Element -> HTMLElement -> HTMLAnchorElement Element -> SVGElement -> SVGAlement The default doSomething() method on Element is no-op by default, but there are some subclasses that need an actual implementation that requires some extra overridden methods and instance members. I cannot put a full implementation of doSomething() in Element because 1) it is only relevant for some of the subclasses, 2) its implementation has a performance impact and 3) it depends on a method that could be overridden by a class in the inheritance chain between the superclass and a subclass, e.g. SVGElement in my example. Especially because of the third point, I wanted to solve the problem using a template class, as follows (it is a kind of decorator for classes): struct Element { virtual void doSomething() {} }; // T should be an instance of Element template<class T> struct AugmentedElement : public T { // doSomething is expensive and uses T virtual void doSomething() override {} // Used by doSomething virtual bool shouldDoSomething() = 0; }; class SVGElement : public Element { /* ... */ }; class SVGAElement : public AugmentedElement<SVGElement> { // some non-trivial check bool shouldDoSomething() { /* ... */ return true; } }; // Similarly for HTMLAElement and others I looked around (in the existing (huge) codebase and on the internet), but didn't find any similar code snippets, let alone an evaluation of the effectiveness and pitfalls of this approach. Is my design the right way to go, or is there a better way to add common functionality to some subclasses of a given superclass?

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  • Prepared statement alternatives for this middle-man program?

    - by user2813274
    I have an program that is using a prepared statement to connect and write to a database working nicely, and now need to create a middle-man program to insert between this program and the database. This middle-man program will actually write to multiple databases and handle any errors and connection issues. I would like advice as to how to replicate the prepared statements such as to create minimal impact to the existing program, however I am not sure where to start. I have thought about creating a "SQL statement class" that mimics the prepared statement, only that seems silly. The existing program is in Java, although it's going to be networked anyways so I would be open to writing it in just about anything that would make sense. The databases are currently MySQL, although I would like to be open to changing the database type in the future. My main question is what should the interface for this program look like, and does doing this even make sense? A distributed DB would be the ideal solution, but they seem overly complex and expensive for my needs. I am hoping to replicate the main functionality of a distributed DB via this middle-man. I am not too familiar with sql-based servers distributing data (or database in general...) - perhaps I am fighting an uphill battle by trying to solve it via programming, but I would like to make an attempt at least.

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  • Is using the student version of 3DS Max and Unity3d legal?

    - by SubZeron
    I am developing an indie game together with my friend using Unity3D engine. I bought "Silo 3D" for modeling two month ago and for texturing I use 3D coat. We plan to sell our game in the future. For the animations I work with 3DS max (only animation part). My question is, can I work with a students license? The license for the original version is too expensive for me. I am still at the university and I can not buy the 3DS Max license which costs 4000 €. As an alternative I have the choice beetween Blender (can´t work with this software and don't have time to invest for learning a new program) and Truespace (can´t export fbx animation and specially with bones) so for me, 3DS Max is the best choice to be effective and quick. Is it possible to prove it when I export my fbx characters from 3DS Max to Unity3D? I mean can they find out that I have used the students license of 3DS Max for the animations after the release of the game? Maybe with help of DRM? Can I solve that problem when I export the fbx from 3DS Max to Blender and after that export the same fbx to Unity3D?

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  • Do you keep your ideas secret? and why?

    - by MainMa
    I believe any programmer has several ideas that she/he considers as innovative or at least valuable. It may be an idea of a new product which will make this world better or a new development approach, etc. But a great idea must be implemented and promoted/advertised. This requires a lot of work (proofs of concept, prototypes, technology previews, etc.) and a lot of money (appropriate advertisement, marketing, etc.). So months later, the idea stays in our heads, but nothing else is done, because it's difficult, long and expensive, sometimes even impossible for a single developer. On the other hand, it would be painful to share our ideas, and see a medium-size company which has enough resources making something useful from it and having success and money. So what do you do with your ideas you can hardly implement or patent? Do you talk freely about them in discussion boards and with other developers? Do you keep them like a precious thing without never talking about them to anybody? If you keep your ideas, why are you doing so? Is it just because you hope that one day, you will be able to implement them and have a huge success, while you know very well by experience that it's an utopia?

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  • Sorting objects before rendering

    - by dreta
    I'm trying to implement a scene graph and in all the articles i've come across there is talk about object sorting. So you'd sort your objects by "material" for example. Now untill i sat down and started implementing it, i kind of took this for granted, because it made sense. But now i'm wondering what does sorting actually change? In my engine, i have a manager for UBOs, i use those to store data that'll be shared between programs, at the moment that only involves time, camera and projection matrices and lights (i'm not worrying about managing which lights affect which objects ATM). Now for each model i have to change the model to world matrix uniform, no sorting is going to change that. So is the jump from changing this matrix to also setting a material for each object that bad? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that each time you change something in the pipeline, it has to get flushed and that can cause performance issues. But for each drawing call i'm setting up a model to world matrix anyway, so what sense does it make to ever be concerned about this? BTW is there any information about whether changing a uniform and calling glBufferSubData is more (or less) expensive.

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  • Managing products on a an ecommerce site [closed]

    - by John
    I've had a site that sells widgets for many years. I do not inventory my widgets, but the cost of adding them to the site and makings sure the site is current is becoming cost prohibitive. Here are the facts: I sell a single class of widget. I have about 50,000 widgets on my site. I have about 100 vendors that create and dropship the products when they get an order from me via email. Each vendor carries from 50 to 5000 types of widgets. Vendors all have websites with images and descriptions of their products. Each widget is produced in limited supply and usually sell out in 1-5 years. Prices of the widget often go up, sometimes more than 50% before they sell out. My vendors aren't very tech sophisticated. They have websites with their products, but most can't supply an api or database dump. Their websites usually display retail prices to the public, but I login or refer to a price list (usually excel) for wholesale prices. As it stands now, I hire local people to add and describe each widget to our website. It usually takes a person 4 minutes to add a widget to the site. This doesn't include moving to a new vendor. I feel like the upload/edit process is as good as it can get via a form/website. The problem is that it is getting very expensive to upload and keep the widget inventory current. I often get orders for something after it's sold out from the vendor or the price is wrong. This seems like it would be a problem in many industries. Can anyone suggest the cheapest way to upload inventory and ensure prices are current from my vendors? I'm assuming it will involve outsourcing, but I would like ideas on how to setup the compensation model.

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  • What can be done against language inertia?

    - by gerrit
    Often, projects use programming language X, but would use programming language Y if they were started from scratch. For example, big numerical models may be written entirely in Fortran. Whereas this might be a reasonable choice for the components that need to run fast (alternative would be C or C++), it might be a poor choice for components that either do not need to run fast (such as things dealing with human input or simple visualisations), or where runtime is not the limiting factor (such as I/O, particularly when from the network). Another example may be when a project is built using a propriety language (such as Matlab; no, FOSS clones are not good enough) and was started at a time when FOSS alternatives were not viable, but ten years later, they are; and it would be beneficial to migrate. However, due to language inertia, a migration does not happen. Code that works should not be touched, porting code is a time-consuming, expensive process, and programmers are familiar in language X but not necessarily in language Y. Still, in the long term, a migration would likely be beneficial. Can anything be done to mitigate the problems associated with language inertia? Are there any notable examples of big projects that have successfully overcome this problem? Or is a project bound to stick forever with the initial choices?

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  • Raspberry Pi Now Shipping with 512MB RAM; Still Only $35

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Fans of the tiny Raspberry Pi will be pleased to hear the new version of their Model B board now ships with 512MB of RAM (up from the previous 256MB). The best part about the upgrade? The price point stays at $35 a board. From the official Raspberry Pi blog: One of the most common suggestions we’ve heard since launch is that we should produce a more expensive “Model C” version of Raspberry Pi with extra RAM. This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently, and would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB. The downside of this suggestion for us is that we’re very attached to $35 as our highest price point. With this in mind, we’re pleased to announce that from today all Model B Raspberry Pis will ship with 512MB of RAM as standard. If you have an outstanding order with either distributor, you will receive the upgraded device in place of the 256MB version you ordered. Units should start arriving in customers’ hands today, and we will be making a firmware upgrade available in the next couple of days to enable access to the additional memory. We’re excited to get our hands on a new board and try out Raspbmc with that extra RAM. HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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