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• What resources do I need to start developing games? [on hold]

  - by Matt

  I'm in a unique situation here. I'm only just now a sophomore in high school and I've had a passion for gaming and technology since I was a child. I picked up python at age 9 and have learned 3 other languages since then. I never was good at art or such things, but I can imagine amazing logic devices to carry out game elements I would like to try. I've been researching and finding very vague advice on what needs to be present in order for me to develop. I've attempted at many things, but they never become more than a text-based mess. What education in specific would I need to advance in the game industry? Workflows are never clear to me. I've watched videos on Valve, Zenimax, and many others on how to get from an idea to a product. I've never gotten a finished product, but I've always had the idea clearly in my head.

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• Is a warning about IAP in freemium games on iOS required?

  - by user1282931

  When I launch the successful iOS game "Clash of Clans", right in the beginning I get the following message in an iOS info pop-up: "Clash of Clans is free to play, but you can speed up your progress with in-app purchases. If desired, purchases can be disabled in the general settings of your device." What's the reason the developer shows this message right in the beginning? Is there any legal obligation to do so?

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• To canvas, or not to canvas, when building browser-based games?

  - by Letharion

  Background: I have extensive development background, but the last time I coded a game was many years ago. My Javascript skills are quite limited, and I intend to improve them by building a simple game — Tetris, Pac-man, or something of that complexity level. Question: It seems to me that a fundamental choice I need to make is whether I should render on a <canvas> element or not. With a canvas, I have basic tools for rendering points, lines, and more complex things on top of that. Presumably there are, or will be, also various frameworks to help with this. Without a canvas, I could keep my objects in the DOM-tree, like a regular webpage, only quite complex, with many overlapping elements. Is one approach better than the other? Are they mutually exclusive? How do I know which to pick?

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• Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based MMO games?

  - by black_puppydog

  I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such. Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be "staff" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little "book smart" beforehand. So the question is: Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on? Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that?

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• Is there an AIR native extension to use GameCenter APIs for turn-based games?

  - by Phil

  I'm planning a turn based game using the iOS 5 GameCenter (GameKit) turn-based functions. Ideally I would program the game with AIR (I'm a Flash dev), but so far I can't seem to find any already available native extension that offers that (only basic GameCenter functions), so my questions are: Does anyone know if that already exists? And secondly how complex a task would it be to create an extension that does that? Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of etc.? ** UPDATE ** There does not seem a solution to the above from Adobe. For anyone who is interested check out the Adobe Gaming SDK. It contains a Game Center ANE which I've read contains options for multiplayer but not turn-based multiplayer, at least it's a start. Comes a bit late for me as I've already learned Obj-c!

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• Is Java a good choice for cross-platform games?

  - by CommunistPancake

  I'm looking to create a game in Java and would like it to work on Windows, Linux, and Mac. I'm pretty sure C# is a bad choice for this, and I don't have enough experience in C or C++. I want to stay away from Flash. Therefore, Is Java a good choice for me? Mostly, I use C#, and think that Java is similar, so I assume it won't be that hard to learn. But is it fast enough? Is there a language more suited for my needs than Java?

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• Google doesn't index a subdomain. What can be the problem and what can be done?

  - by fudge

  I have a domain, let's call it example.com, which has a subdomain, games.example.com. I maintain a games forum using phpbbseo which is located at games.example.com/forum. The problem is that the forum is not being crawled. I used Google's webmaster tools and tested that the page is seen by google. P.S. There is a link from games.example.com to games.example.com/forum. What can I do? How can I make google crawl my forum?

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• What problem does double or triple buffering solve in modern games?

  - by krokvskrok

  I want to check if my understanding of the causes for using double (or triple) buffering is correct: A monitor with 60Hz refresh's the monitor-display 60 times per second. If the monitor refresh the monitor-display, he updates pixel for pixel and line for line. The monitor requests the color values for the pixels from the video memory. If I run now a game, then this game is constantly manipulating this video memory. If this game don't use a buffer strategy (double buffering etc.) then the following problem can happen: The monitor is now refreshing his monitor-display. At this moment the monitor had refreshed the first half monitor-display already. At the same time, the game had manipulated the video memory with new data. Now the monitor accesses for the second half monitor-display this new manipulated data from the video memory. The problems can be tearing or flickering. Is my understanding of cases of using buffer strategy correct? Are there other reasons?

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• GamingUnity Organizes Your Game Collections

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re having trouble keeping track of your game collection GamingUnity will help you get things on organizational lock down–add games from any console, view them with a nice bookshelf interface, and quickly sort them. Sign up for a free account, start searching, and click “Add to collection” until you’ve worked your way through your games. In addition to just cataloging your existing games you can mark games as completed or add future games to your wish list. Hit up the link below to browse the archives and sign up for a free account. GamingUnity Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked

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• Where to find current information on quality of released games as software products?

  - by Tom

  As a gamer, one thing I have learned I need to be savvy about is knowing whether SomeBigGame is actually unstable or otherwise problematic as a piece of software (riddled with invasive DRM products, only runs well on a particular video driver version, crashes on non-English-language systems, etc.). I know that game news media can sometimes be relied upon to report on some problems, but I doubt they bother to cover smaller or indie titles. An example: I've started playing Transformice on Kongregate, and I'm considering installing the downloadable client (it is an online multiplayer game). The part of me that cares about data privacy and maintaining a clean-and-healthy PC wants to know whether there is a place I can check to find out more about a title-as-software than "it is not a literal virus." Put another way: where would you not want to see your game receive lots of attention?

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• Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based games?

  - by black_puppydog

  I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such. Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be "staff" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little "book smart" beforehand. So the question is: Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on? Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that? EDIT: After reading the first answers I am under the impression of having made a mistake when including the "MMO" part into the title. The game will not be all fancy (i.e. 3D or such) on the client side and the logic will completely exist on the server. That is, apart from basic form validation for the user which will also be mirrored on the server side. So the target toolset will be HTML5, JavaScript, probably JQuery(UI). My question is more related to the software architecture/design of a system that enforces certain rules. Separation of ruleset and presentation One problem I am having is that I want to separate the game rules from the presentation. The first step would be to make an own module for the game "engine" that only exposes an interface that allows all actions to be taken in a clean way. If an action fails with regard to some pre/post condition, the engine throws an exception which is then presented to the user like "you cannot sell something you do not own" or "after that you would end up in a situation which is not a valid game state." The problem here is that I would like to be able to not even present invalid action in the first place or grey out the corresponding UI elements. Changing and tweaking the ruleset Another big thing is the ruleset. It will probably evolve over time and most definitely must be tweaked. What's more, it should be possible (to a certain extent) to build a ruleset that fits a specific game round, i.e. choosing different kinds of behaviours in different aspects of the game. This would do something like "we play it with extension A today but we throw out extension B." For me, this screams "Architectural/Design pattern" but I have no idea on who might have published on something like this, not even what to google for.

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• Best way to generate pieces in match-3 games, and then tracking them?

  - by JonLim

  I've been working on a match-3 style game in Actionscript using Flixel, and so far, I've been able to build the core mechanics of the game, including board generation, piece generation, piece swapping and movement, and checking algorithms. However, I am now running into issues with clearing out pieces and letting the above pieces fall down and generating new pieces. The reason I'm running into these issues is that when all of the pieces are generated, the pertinent values (position, sprite ID, and sprite object) are pushed into an array that helps me track everything, all the time. When pieces are moved, I swap the values of the corresponding arrays and life goes on. And that array is the core of my problem: if a row in the middle of the board clears out, ideally, all of the pieces above the cleared pieces should fall down to take their place and new pieces are generated at the top and also fall into place. Except if I try to do that now, all the pieces can fall down, but then I'd have to bump all of their values into the right arrays (oh god my head) and then generate new pieces and fit THOSE into the correct place in the array. Am I overthinking this? Or is there a far better way to track these pieces? Thanks guys!

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• Is it possible to create an "impossible" rooms in games?

  - by qwerty3000

  Forgive me my lack of knowlegde, but for quite a long time I asked myself whether it was possible to create a continous game space that some player could walk inside and so on, that would be absolutely impossible in reality, e.g. you have a very small house that allows you to go around it to see all sides and the full dimensions, and then, when you enter, it is like a giant hall, without any loading screen or (internal) "model change" and so on. I'm no game designer and I never needed to learn 3D-modelling, so I don't know what is possible and what isn't. And is this the same as Is the "impossible object" possible in computer graphics? this? Or is it just the same category, but not exactly the same question? Thanks.

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• In some games, we just let the main() loop be the Player object or Table object?

  - by ????

  I was thinking that let's say if there is a game of Blackjack or MasterMind, then we should have a class called Dealer or ComputerPal, which is how the computer interact with us (as a dealer for Blackjack or as the person giving hints for MasterMind). And then there should be a Player object, and the way to play one game is aPlayer.playGame but I noticed that a book was just using the main() loop to act as the player (or as the Controller of the game), calling the Dealer methods to dealer the cards, ask for player's action, etc... 1) Is this just a lazy way to model all the proper objects? 2) If more objects are to be added, who should call the aDealer.dealCards and then ask for aPlayer.askForAction? (because it is strange to let the Player handle all the logical steps). Should there be a Table object that handle all these logic and then to play one round of game, use aTable.playGame? What is a good object design for such game?

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• C# - How to make a custom installer for games, etc?

  - by Dodi300

  Hello. Can anyone tell me how to create a custom installer to 'install' games. I say custom meaning I don't want the user to have the option where the game is installed. I want it to be a straight forward process, maybe with just one loading bar. The program I'm developing is a 'center' for game playing, which includes a community and other features, such as a timer that records how long a game is played for. I just thought that installing each game in one place, with a simple installer would make the program easier to use. It also will allow me to do other features as the games will all be installed in one place. No need for the user to specify where the game is installed. Would this be possible? Thanks.

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• How to make a custom installer for games, etc?

  - by Dodi300

  Hello. Can anyone tell me how to create a custom installer to 'install' games. I say custom meaning I don't want the user to have the option where the game is installed. I want it to be a straight forward process, maybe with just one loading bar. The program I'm developing is a 'center' for game playing, which includes a community and other features, such as a timer that records how long a game is played for. I just thought that installing each game in one place, with a simple installer would make the program easier to use. It also will allow me to do other features as the games will all be installed in one place. No need for the user to specify where the game is installed. Would this be possible?

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• How do I disable other monitors while running games in Wine?

  - by Michael Cheng

  My current setup is: * Dual GTS 250 video cards * 3 Monitors * Used nvidia-settings to run each monitor as a separate x session * This is all running on Linux Mint Debian Edition When running games (Starcraft II) in Wine via PlayOnLinux, I've found that the mouse does not get locked. I already tried various solutions littered across the web and none work so I'd rather just disable my other two monitors while playing. Does anyone know of a method where I can turn off my other two monitors (not my primary monitor) while running Wine and then turn then back on afterwards? I don't mind having to manually run a script before and after gaming. Thanks.

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• What makes a game a game vs something else like a puzzle or a toy?

  - by Shannon John Clark

  Famously the Sims and similar games have been described by some designers as Toys and not "really" games. I'm curious if there is a good answer to what makes something a game. For example many companies sell Sudoku games - EA has an iPhone one, IronSudoku offers a great web based one, and there are countless others on most platforms. Many newspapers publish Sudoku puzzles in their print editions and often online. What differentiates a game from a puzzle? (or are all Sudoku "games" misnamed?) I'm not convinced there is a simple or easy answer - but I'd love to be proven wrong. I've seen some definitions and emphasize "rules" as core to something being a game (vs. "real life") but puzzles have rules as well - as do many other things. I'm open to answers that either focus only on computer games (on any platform) or which expand to include games and gameplay across many platforms. Here to I'm not fully convinced the lines are clear - is a "game" of D&D played over a virtual tabletop with computer dice rollers, video & audio chat a computer game or something else? (I'd lean towards something else - but where do you draw that line?)

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• Fight for your rights as a video gamer.

  - by Chris Williams

  Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether to hear a case that could have a lasting impact on computer and video games. The case before the Court involves a law passed by the state of California attempting to criminalize the sale of certain computer and video games. Two previous courts rejected the California law as unconstitutional, but soon the Supreme Court could have the final say. Whatever the Court's ruling, we must be prepared to continue defending our rights now and in the future. To do so, we need a large, powerful movement of gamers to speak with one voice and show that we won't sit back while lawmakers try to score political points by scapegoating video games and treating them differently than books, movies, and music. If the Court decides to hear the case, we're going to need thousands of activists like you who can help defend computer and video games by writing letters to editors, calling into talk radio stations, and educating Americans about our passion for and appreciation of computer and video games. You can help build this movement right now by inviting all your friends and fellow gamers to join the Video Game Voters Network. Use our simple tool to send an email to everyone you know asking them to stand up for gaming rights: http://videogamevoters.org/movement You can also help spread the word through Facebook and Twitter, or you can simply forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to sign up at videogamevoters.org. Time after time, courts continue to reject politicians' efforts to restrict the sale of computer and video games. But that doesn't mean the politicians will stop trying anytime soon -- in fact, it means they're likely to ramp up their efforts even more. To stop them, we must make it clear that gamers will continue to stand up for free speech -- and that the numbers are on our side. Help make sure we're ready and able to keep fighting for our gaming rights. Spread the word about the Video Game Voters Network right now: http://videogamevoters.org/movement Thank you. -- Video Game Voters Network

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• Distributing an Android game with plugins via the market

  - by Peter Serwylo

  I'm new to Android development, and was wondering how the following could be achieved within the confines of the Android market as a distribution channel: One main application, which handles the main menu, networking, high scores, etc. Several games which can be launched from the main menu, which all work within the same eco system. The main application is not just a pseudo launcher for other games, these different games will share high scores and other achievements/preferences. In a traditional package management system such as apt, pacman or yum, this could be handled quite happily through dependencies. This does not appear to be possible via the Android market. The closest I've seen is when apps scan to check if the required app is installed, and if not, launches the market and asks the user to download the app. This sounds like a very messy solution. It also begs the question, would they download the game (plugin) first, which then downloads the main shell application? Or would they download the main shell application, and when they navigate to a menu item which says "Play game", then it scans for any installed games, and if none exist, redirects to the market? Also, I'm not even sure if it is possible to dig up the package from another application on the device, and start invoking classes from within (e.g. when you want to launch the game (plugin)) A final option is just to have a 3rd component which is a .jar that each game includes, which effectively contains the entire shell application. Then each game would appear to have the same menu, but it would become a nightmare as soon as you want to update the menu component and have to re-release each game. It would be especially worse if other people released games (plugins) based on the same framework and didn't update them. Is there any other options which I haven't thought of? Has anyone else solved this or seen a solution in any apps they've installed (doesn't have to be games)? cheers.

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• What do you upgrade to make games load faster? [on hold]

  - by Superbest

  Let's say you have a relatively modern game like Shogun 2. The loading screens take several minutes. This bothers you and you'd like to improve it. What is actually going on when loading screens are up? I'm guessing assets are being loaded into memory from disk, and possibly being decompressed first. However, what is actually causing the slow down? The memory? Mainboard? CPU? HDD? If you had $100 to spend on upgrades and your only goal is to speed up loading screens without reducing other performance, what component of the computer does it make sense to upgrade for maximum benefit? If your answer is "it depends on the existing setup", what sort of benchmarks would you run to determine what is causing the bottleneck? What if you had $500 instead? I give the two budgets for context. I am not asking for actual recommendations about which component to buy (nor are the numbers supposed to be rigid limits), but what features are important when shopping for components with small and large budgets (a large budget could allow buying multiple components which are not so good on their own, but work particularly well together). I mention Shogun 2 as an example, but I'm asking about reducing overall loading times, across all games, not just one game. Therefore, "put it on a solid state disk" probably won't be good solution, because putting every game on your SDD will quickly fill it up.

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• Optimal video resolution and encoding for recording games for YouTube?

  - by Rookie

  I want to record video from games, therefore I cannot use very large video resolution, but I still want to make the large video view to look as sharp as the original encoded video before upload. I tried to use YouTube's recommended 854x640 resolution, but it wasn't possible with h264 and the encoding software I used (Handbrake) converted it to a width of the nearest multiple of 4, which I think is a limitation of the h264 format. The video I encoded was sharp and fine quality, but when I uploaded it to YouTube, it lost a lot of quality and the preferred large video view looks almost as bad as a 320p video. I tried to wait a few days but it never got sharper (in case it didn't process it completely yet). So, which resolution and encoding options I should use, if I want the large video player to have the sharpest possible video, retaining the original video quality as good as possible? I noticed that recording with 640x480, the video was sharper than with 1280x720, so I'm not sure what im doing wrong here; both were h264. Is it anyhow possible to prevent YouTube from re-encoding the videos? I just wonder how people can make so sharp videos, while mine are all blurry after upload, but before upload they looked fine. I also tried YouTube's suggested bitrates with h264, but it didn't work any better.

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• I want to learn to program in SDL C++where do i start? I want to learn only what i need to to start making 2d games [on hold]

  - by user2644399

  Lazyfoo of Lazyfoo.net of the SDL 2d tutorial wrote that in order for me to start game programming in SDL, I need to know these concepts well; Operators, Controls, Loops, Functions, Structures, Arrays, References, Pointers, Classes, Objects how to use a template and Bitwise and/or. I want to know the fastest way to learn as much as I need of basic c++ that would allow me to make 2d games. Thanks in advance.

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• Microsoft Visual Studio SDK DSL Tools - Any serious takers?

  - by amazedsaint

  We are considering Microsoft DSL toolkit for creating some abstract designers. I already did some POCs, but would like to get some opinions on the same. Any one here to share their experiences working with Microsoft DSL Toolkit and T4? Also, any pointers to open source DSL projects will help - Eg. Microsoft Service Factory modeling edition is heavily relying on DSL toolkit. As OSLO/Quadrant will take some time to get released, I think the only option we have is to rely on Microsoft DSL designer. (See Kieth's blog on the same) Also, here is some information I already have on DSL: 1 - A Nice Lab in MSDN on DSL tools 2 - A List of Projects in Codeplex using DSL toolkit

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• Android media thumbnails. Serious issues?

  - by Ralphleon

  I've been playing with android's thumbnails for a while now, and I've seen some inconsistencies that make me want to scream. My goal is to have a simple list of all Images (and a separate list for video) with the thumbnail and filename. Device: HTC Evo (fresh from Google I/o) First off: http://androidsamples.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-display-thumbnails-of-images.html That code doesn't seem to work at all, thumbnails are duplicated... some with the "mirror" effect and some without. Also some won't load and just display a black square. I've tried rebuilding the thumbnails by deleting the "alblum thumbs" directory from the SD card. HTC's gallery application seem to show everything fine. This approach seems to work: Bitmap thumb = MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.getThumbnail( getContentResolver(), id, MediaStore.Video.Thumbnails.MICRO_KIND, null); imageView.setImageBitmap(curThumb); where id is the original images id and imageView is some image view. This is great! But, strangely, way too slow to be used inside a SimpleViewBinder. Next approach: String [] proj = {MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails._ID}; Cursor c = managedQuery(MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, proj, MediaStore.Images.Thumbnails.IMAGE_ID + "=" +id , null, null); if (c != null && c.moveToFirst()) { Uri thumb = Uri.withAppendedPath(mThumbUri,c.getLong(0)+""); imageView.setImageURI(thumb); } I should explain that I feel the needed WHERE condition is required because there doesn't seem to be any guarantee that your uri will have the same ID for both a thumbnail and its parent image. This works for all of the current images, but as soon as I start adding pictures with the camera they show up as blank! Debugging shows a dreaded: SkImageDecoder::Factory returned null error and the URI is returned as invalid. These are the same images that work with the previous call. Can anyone either catch my logical failure or point me to some working code?

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