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• Starting out with 2D cross-platform game development [closed]

  - by Aran

  I am wanting to challenge myself to build a simple game, that has a character and a randomly generated world. If I get anywhere with it I may perhaps I'll develop it into something more, but the key challenge I want to tackle is cross-platform. I'd also want to have a go at creating engine myself, doing lighting and other bits. Is it worth me using a system like Unity or do I go down a more custom route? The game I would like to make is a 2D game so whether that changes the tools I should use, it would be great to know as well. Supporting mobiles isn't something I am worried about at moment, just looking for Mac and Windows for time being. In future I'll consider other platforms if I get anywhere with the development. So if anyone has any recommendations for a language, engine or system to use would love to her your thoughts.Including pros and cons would be helpful and appreciated and if you can do comparisons that would be awesome as well!

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• How should I model an economy-based game in code?

  - by Matthew G.

  I'd like to create an economy game based on an ancient civilization. I'm not sure how to design it. If I were working on a smaller game, like a copy of "Space Invaders," I'd have no problem structuring it like this: Main Control Class Graphics Class Player Class Enemy class I don't understand how I'd do this for larger projects like my economy game. Do I create a country class that contains a bunch of towns? Do the towns contain a lot building class, most contain classes of people? Do I make a path finding class that the player can access to get around?

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• Is premature optimization really the root of all evil?

  - by Craig Day

  A colleague of mine today committed a class called ThreadLocalFormat, which basically moved instances of Java Format classes into a thread local, since they are not thread safe and "relatively expensive" to create. I wrote a quick test and calculated that I could create 200,000 instances a second, asked him was he creating that many, to which he answered "nowhere near that many". He's a great programmer and everyone on the team is highly skilled so we have no problem understanding the resulting code, but it was clearly a case of optimizing where there is no real need. He backed the code out at my request. What do you think? Is this a case of "premature optimization" and how bad is it really?

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• Game Messaging System Design

  - by you786

  I'm making a simple game, and have decided to try to implement a messaging system. The system basically looks like this: Entity generates message - message is posted to global message queue - messageManager notifies every object of the new message through onMessageReceived(Message msg) - if object wants, it acts on the message. The way I'm making message objects is like this: //base message class, never actually instantiated abstract class Message{ Entity sender; } PlayerDiedMessage extends Message{ int livesLeft; } Now my SoundManagerEntity can do something like this in its onMessageReceived() method public void messageReceived(Message msg){ if(msg instanceof PlayerDiedMessage){ PlayerDiedMessage diedMessage = (PlayerDiedMessage) msg; if(diedMessage.livesLeft == 0) playSound(SOUND_DEATH); } } The pros to this approach: Very simple and easy to implement The message can contain as much as information as you want, because you can just create a new Message subclass that has whatever info necessary. The cons: I can't figure out how I can recycle Message objects to a object pool, unless I have a different pool for each subclass of Message. So I have lots and lots of object creation/memory allocation over time. Can't send a message to a specific recipient, but I haven't needed that yet in my game so I don't mind it too much. What am I missing here? There must be a better implementation or some idea that I'm missing.

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• What do you do when one thinks the code isn't complicated enough?

  - by Chris

  After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a "gut check" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, "this is not software engineering". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?

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• Why is Android VM-based? [closed]

  - by adib

  By about 2004, it was clear that ARM is the clear winner for mobile CPUs, beating out MIPS, SH3, and DragonBall. PocketPC (Windows Mobile) applications was natively-compiled (at least most of them - except for .NET compact and its competitors). Likewise, Apple's iOS (named iPhone OS at the time) prefers natively-compiled applications. Then why Android chose a virtual machine based system stack? (the Dalvik VM). Wouldn't it be simpler to just compile applications down to ARM code using GCJ or something? Is the decision influenced by the J2ME-way of doing things, or was just because it's "cool"? Perhaps like most things Java, the culture that prefers multiple levels of indirection and abstractions, they just added another layer of abstraction for "just in case"?

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• Architectural approaches to creating a game menu/shell overlay on PC/Linux?

  - by Ghopper21

  I'm am working on a collection of games for a custom digital tabletop installation (similar to Microsoft Surface tables). Each game will be an individual executable that runs full-screen. In addition, there needs to be a menu/shell overlay program running simultaneously. The menu/shell will allow users to pause games, switch to other games, check their game history, etc. Some key requirements of the shell: it intercepts all user input (mainly multitouch) first before passing it on to the currently running game (so that it can, for instance, know to pop-up at a "pause" command); can reveal on arbitrary portions of the screen, with the currently running (but presumably paused) game still showing underneath, ideally with its shape/size being dynamic, to allow for creation of an animated in/out drawer effect over the game. I'm currently looking into different architectural approaches to this problem, including Fraps and DirectX overlays, but I'm sure I'm missing some ways to think about this. What are the main approaches I should be considering? (Note the table is currently being run by Windows PC, but it could potentially be a Linux box instead.)

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• .NET DAL and arhitecture

  - by Parhs

  I have seen lots of articles but none really help me. That is because I want to use dapper as a DAL. Should I create repositories with special functions? Like getStaffActive()? If I use repositories I can implement with dapper-extension a generic crud I have no idea how to handle database connection. Where to open the connection? If I do this at every function then how am I supposed to use transaction scope? Somehow the repositories I work with should share a connection in order transaction to work. But how to do this? Openning connection in BLL? If I use queries and execute them directly then still the same thing.

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• Futures/Monads vs Events

  - by c69

  So, the question is quite simple: in an application framework, when performance impact can be ignored (10-20 events per second at max), what is more maintainable and flexible to use as a preferred medium for communication between modules - Events or Futures/Promices/Monads ? Its often being said, that Events (pub/sub, mediator) allow loose-coupling and thus - more maintainable app... My experience deny this: once you have more that 20+ events - debugging becomes hard, and so is refactoring - because it is very hard to see: who, when and why uses what. Promices (i'm coding in javascript) are much uglier and dumber, than Events. But: you can clearly see connections between function calls, so application logic becomes more straight-forward. What i'm afraid. though, is that Promices will bring more hard-coupling with them... p.s: the answer does not have to be based on JS, experience from other functional languages is much welcome.

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• Entiity System with C++

  - by Dono

  I'm working on a game engine using the Entity System and I have some questions. How i see Entity System : Components : A class with attributs, set and get. Sprite Physicbody SpaceShip ... System : A class with a list of components. (Component logic) EntityManager Renderer Input Camera ... Entity : Just a empty class with a list of components. What i've done : Currently, i've got a program who allow me to do that : // Create a new entity/ Entity* entity = game.createEntity(); // Add some components. entity->addComponent( new TransformableComponent() ) ->setPosition( 15, 50 ) ->setRotation( 90 ) ->addComponent( new PhysicComponent() ) ->setMass( 70 ) ->addComponent( new SpriteComponent() ) ->setTexture( "name.png" ) ->addToSystem( new RendererSystem() ); My questions Did the system stock a list of components or a list of entities ? In the case where I stock a list of entities, I need to get the component of this entities on each frame, that's probably heavy isn't it ? Did the system stock a list of components or a list of entities ? In the case where I stock a list of entities, I need to get the component of this entities on each frame, that's probably heavy isn't it ?

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• Debugging-Setting Consoles in Games

  - by ShrimpCrackers

  Right now I have the graphical and input portions of a console for my game (command parsing hasn't been implemented yet). I was wondering how you would go about making changes to properties in game objects. For example, if I typed in the console: skeletonMonster maxHP 20 That would change all of the existing in-game skeletons' max hit points to 20. After you parse this information what are some ways to change the value? How can I change the variable(s) without violating information hiding? I'd like to implement this so I don't have to change variables in the code and recompile every time while playtesting.

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• Advice on designing web application with a 40+ year lifetime

  - by user2708395

  Scenario Currently, I am apart of a health care project whose main requirement is to capture data with unknown attributes using user generated forms by health care providers. The second requirement is that data integrity is key and that the application will be used for 40+ years. We are currently migrating the client's data from the past 40 years from various sources (Paper, Excel, Access, etc...) to the database. Future requirements are: Workflow management of forms Schedule management of forms Security/Role based management Reporting engine Mobile/Tablet support Situation Only 6 months in, the current (contracted) architect/senior programmer has taken the "fast" approach and has designed a poor system. The database is not normalized, the code is coupled, the tiers have no dedicated purpose and data is starting to go missing since he has designed some beans to perform "deletes" on the database. The code base is extremely bloated and there are jobs just to synchronize data since the database is not normalized. His approach has been to rely on backup jobs to restore missing data and doesn't seem to believe in re-factoring. Having presented my findings to the PM, the architect will be removed when his contract ends. I have been given the task to re-architect this application. My team consists of me and one junior programmer. We have no other resources. We have been granted a 6-month requirement freeze in which we can focus on re-building this system. I suggested using a CMS system like Drupal, but for policy reasons at the client's organization, the system must be built from scratch. This is the first time that I will be designing a system with a 40+ lifespan. I have only worked on projects with 3-5 year lifespans, so this situation is very new, yet exciting. Questions What design considerations will make the system more "future proof"? What experiences have you had in designing such systems - both failures and successes? What questions should be asked to the client/PM to make the system more "future proof"?

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• does class reference itself static anti pattern in prism

  - by Michael Riva

  I have an application and my desing approach look like this: class Manager { public int State; static Manager _instance = null; public static Manager Instance { get { return _instance; } set { if (_instance == value) return; _instance = value; } } public Manager() { State = 0; Instance=this; } } class Module1 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } class Module2 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } class Module3 { public void GetState() { Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State); } } Manager class already registered in Bootstrapper like : protected override void ConfigureContainer() { base.ConfigureContainer(); Container.RegisterType<Manager>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()); } protected override void InitializeModules() { Manager man= Container.Resolve<Manager>(); } Question is do I need to define my manager object as static in its field to be able to reach its state? Or this is anti pattern or bad for performance?

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• "Time Control" in a 2d Platformer

  - by Woody Zantzinger

  I am making a 2d platformer where the player can press a button, and restart the level, only their previous character will also run the level at the same time, like they are traveling back in time. I know other games have done this before, and the way I have thought of doing it is to make the game character have a set of actions (Idle, Jumping, Walking Left etc.) and then detect changes in those actions and log them into a list along with the game time. So then when I need the character to run the level again on its own, I can just go through the list changing its actions at the right time. Is this the best way to do it? Does anyone have any experience in this? Thanks.

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• A generic Re-usable C# Property Parser utility [on hold]

  - by Shyam K Pananghat

  This is about a utility i have happened to write which can parse through the properties of a data contracts at runtime using reflection. The input required is a look like XPath string. since this is using reflection, you dont have to add the reference to any of your data contracts thus making pure generic and re- usable.. you can read about this and get the full c# sourcecode here. Property-Parser-A-C-utility-to-retrieve-values-from-any-Net-Data-contracts-at-runtime Now about the doubts which i have about this utility. i am using this utility enormously i many places of my code I am using Regex repeatedly inside a recursion method. does this affect the memmory usage or GC collection badly ?do i have to dispose this manually. if yes how ?. The statements like obj.GetType().GetProperty() and obj.GetType().GetField() returns .net "object" which makes difficult or imposible to introduce generics here. Does this cause to have any overheads like boxing ? on an overall, please suggest to make this utility performance efficient and more light weight on memmory

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• When should code favour optimization over readability and ease-of-use?

  - by jmlane

  I am in the process of designing a small library, where one of my design goals is that the API should be as close to the domain language as possible. While working on the design, I've noticed that there are some cases in the code where a more intuitive, readable attribute/method call requires some functionally unnecessary encapsulation. Since the final product will not necessarily require high performance, I am unconcerned about making the decision to favour ease-of-use in my current project over the most efficient implementation of the code in question. I know not to assume readability and ease-of-use are paramount in all expected use-cases, such as when performance is required. I would like to know if there are more general reasons that argue for a design preferring more efficient implementations—even if only marginally so?

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• When should an API favour optimization over readability and ease-of-use?

  - by jmlane

  I am in the process of designing a small library, where one of my design goals is to use as much of the native domain language as possible in the API. While doing so, I've noticed that there are some cases in the API outline where a more intuitive, readable attribute/method call requires some functionally unnecessary encapsulation. Since the final product will not necessarily require high performance, I am unconcerned about making the decision to favour ease-of-use in my current project over the most efficient implementation of the code in question. I know not to assume readability and ease-of-use are paramount in all expected use-cases, such as when performance is required. I would like to know if there are more general reasons that argue for an API design preferring (marginally) more efficient implementations?

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• Designing call center applications, what to consider.

  - by Espen Schulstad

  We have customers calling in to place orders. What sort of considerations should I make when building a call center application. Speed is a factor here. We had a powerbuilder application that was extremly fast for a trained user. We want to have the same sort of speed in our new production system. So some thoughts I've made are: Hotkeys are important. Is it faster to use a "wizard", step by step, or should I try to place everything important about the order logically on one sceen and have another screen where you do all searches, pertinent for that order?

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• Abstract skill/talent system implementation

  - by kiliki

  I've been making small 2D games for about 3 years now (XNA and more recently LWJGL/Slick2D). My latest idea would involve some form of "talent tree" system in a real time game. I've been wracking my brain but can't think of a structure to hold a talent. Something like "Your melee attack is an instant kill if behind the target" I'd like to come up with an abstract object rather than putting random conditionals into other methods. I've solved some relatively complex problems before but I don't even know where to begin with this one. Any help would be appreciated - Java, pseudocode or general concepts are all great.

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• A better alternative to incompatible implementations for the same interface?

  - by glenatron

  I am working on a piece of code which performs a set task in several parallel environments where the behaviour of the different components in the task are similar but quite different. This means that my implementations are quite different but they are all based on the relationships between the same interfaces, something like this: IDataReader -> ContinuousDataReader -> ChunkedDataReader IDataProcessor -> ContinuousDataProcessor -> ChunkedDataProcessor IDataWriter -> ContinuousDataWriter -> ChunkedDataWriter So that in either environment we have an IDataReader, IDataProcessor and IDataWriter and then we can use Dependency Injection to ensure that we have the correct one of each for the current environment, so if we are working with data in chunks we use the ChunkedDataReader, ChunkedDataProcessor and ChunkedDataWriter and if we have continuous data we have the continuous versions. However the behaviour of these classes is quite different internally and one could certainly not go from a ContinuousDataReader to the ChunkedDataReader even though they are both IDataProcessors. This feels to me as though it is incorrect ( possibly an LSP violation? ) and certainly not a theoretically correct way of working. It is almost as though the "real" interface here is the combination of all three classes. Unfortunately in the project I am working on with the deadlines we are working to, we're pretty much stuck with this design, but if we had a little more elbow room, what would be a better design approach in this kind of scenario?

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• Today's Links (6/27/2011)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  2011 Entrepreneurs of the Year, Northern California Region Drake Martinet reports on the new batch of entrepreneurs joining the ranks of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar as the Norther California Region winners of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurs of the Year awards. Technical Article: Caching Strategies for Oracle Service Bus 11g William Markito Oliveira illustrates how the right caching strategy can make a big difference in application performance. Kscope 11 - Day 1 and 2 Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele checks in from Long Beach. Kaleidoscope 2011: Sunday’s Symposium And so does Oracle ACE Director Marco Gralike. Yet another GlassFish 3.1.1 promoted build | The Aquarium "This version was carefully designed to be highly compatible with the previous 3.x versions," says Alexis, "thus leaving you with little reasons not to upgrade as soon as it comes out this summer." Using NoSQL database in your Java EE 6 Applications on GlassFish - MongoDB for now! "The NoSQL databases are not intended to be a replacement for the mainstream RDBMS," says Arun Gupta. I have a performance problem | Alan Hargreaves Good (and entertaining) advice from an Australian Solaris and Network Domain TSC* Principal Field Technologist.

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• How can I create an orthographic display that handles different screen dimensions?

  - by Piku

  I'm trying to create an iPad/iPhone game using GLES2.0 that contains a 3D scene with a heads-up-display/GUI overlaid on the top. However, this problem would also apply if I were to port my game to a computer and run the game in a resizable window, or allow the user to change screen resolutions... When trying to make the 2D GUI/HUD work I've made the assumption that all I'm really doing is drawing a load of 2D textured 'quads' on the screen and am trying to treat the orthographic projection as an old-style 2D display with 0,0 in the upper left and screenWidth,ScreenHeight in the lower right. This causes me all sorts of confusion when I rotate my ipad into Landscape mode since I can't work out what to put into my projection and modelview matrices to turn everything around the right way. It also gets messy if I want to support the iPad's large screen, an iPhone or a Retina display since I have to then draw three sets of textures for everything and work out which ones to use. Should I be trying to map the 2D OpenGL co-ords 1:1 with the screen? While typing out this question it occurs to me that I could keep my origin in the centre, still running -1/+1 along the axes. This would let me scale my 2D content appropriately on the different screen sizes, but wouldn't I end up with the textures being scaled and possibly losing quality? I'm using OpenGLES 2.0 and have a matrix library that has equivalents to the GLES1.1 glOrthof() and glFrustrum() calls.

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• Django - how should I implement generic apps that have dependencies on other generic apps?

  - by MikeRand

  Hi all, I'm using Marty Alchin's Django app that creates historical records (add, change, delete) based on models found in other Django apps (found in chapter 11 of Pro Django). Question: how do I implement this historical_records app into my other generic Django apps while still maintaining loose coupling? For example, I have a generic app (forecast) that manages a Forecast (of any other model). For one project, I'd like to use historical_records so that I can track changes to a Forecast instance. But I don't want to require all future projects that might want to use forecast to also use historical_records. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike

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• Triggering Data Changes in N-Tier

  - by Ryan Kinal

  I've been studying n-tier architectures as of late, particularly in VB.NET with Entity Framework and/or LINQ to SQL. I understand the basic concepts, but have been wondering about best practices in regard to triggering CRUD-type operations from user input/action. So, the arcitecture looks something like the following: [presentation layer] - [business layer] - [data layer] - (database) Getting information from the database into the presentation layer is simple and abstracted. It's just a matter of instantiating a new object from the business layer, which in turn uses the data layer to get at the correct information. However, saving (updating and inserting), and deleting seem to require particular APIs on the relevant business objects. I have to assume this is standard practice, unless a business object will save itself on various operations (which seems inefficient), or on disposal (which seems like it just wouldn't work, or may be unwieldy and unreliable). Should my "savable" business objects all implement a particular "ISavable" or "IDatabaseObject" interface? Is this a recognized (anti-)pattern? Are there other, better patterns I should be using that I'm just unaware of? The TLDR question, I suppose, is How does the presentation layer trigger database changes?

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• What is the architectural name for the set of data that enables UI choices?

  - by Richard Collette

  I have separate service methods that fetch business object data and the data for UI selection input such as radio buttons, check-boxes, combo-boxes, etc. I want to name my service methods that fetch the selection data appropriately. I am assuming that Model and ViewModel would not be part of the name because the selection data is but a portion of the Model or ViewModel. What might this set of data be named such that I can name my service method?

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