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• A* algorithm very slow

  - by Amaranth

  I have an programming a RTS game (I use XNA with C#). The pathfinding is working fine, except that when it has a lot of node to search in, there is a lag period of one or two seconds, it happens mainly when there is no path to the target destination, since it that situation there is more nodes to explore. I have the same problem when the path is shorter but selected more than 3 units (can't take the same path since the selected units can be in different part of the map). private List<NodeInfo> FindPath(Unit u, NodeInfo start, NodeInfo end) { Map map = GameInfo.GetInstance().GameMap; _nearestToTarget = start; start.MoveCost = 0; Vector2 endPosition = map.getTileByPos(end.X, end.Y).Position; //getTileByPos simply gets the tile in a 2D array with the X and Y indexes start.EstimatedRemainingCost = (int)(endPosition - map.getTileByPos(start.X, start.Y).Position).Length(); start.Parent = null; List<NodeInfo> openedNodes = new List<NodeInfo>(); ; List<NodeInfo> closedNodes = new List<NodeInfo>(); Point[] movements = GetMovements(u.UnitType); openedNodes.Add(start); while (!closedNodes.Contains(end) && openedNodes.Count > 0) { //Loop in nodes to find lowest cost NodeInfo currentNode = FindLowestCostOpenedNode(openedNodes); openedNodes.Remove(currentNode); closedNodes.Add(currentNode); Vector2 previousMouvement; if (currentNode.Parent == null) { previousMouvement = ConvertRotationToDirectionVector(u.Rotation); } else { previousMouvement = map.getTileByPos(currentNode.X, currentNode.Y).Position - map.getTileByPos(currentNode.Parent.X, currentNode.Parent.Y).Position; previousMouvement.Normalize(); } //For each neighbor foreach (Point movement in movements) { Point exploredGridPos = new Point(currentNode.X + movement.X, currentNode.Y + movement.Y); //Checks if valid move and checks if not if closed nodes list if (ValidNavigableNode(u.UnitType, new Point(currentNode.X, currentNode.Y), exploredGridPos) && !closedNodes.Contains(_gridMap[exploredGridPos.Y, exploredGridPos.X])) { NodeInfo exploredNode = _gridMap[exploredGridPos.Y, exploredGridPos.X]; Tile.TileType exploredTerrain = map.getTileByPos(exploredGridPos.X, exploredGridPos.Y).TerrainType; if(openedNodes.Contains(exploredNode)) { int newCost = currentNode.MoveCost + GetMoveCost(previousMouvement, movement, exploredTerrain); if (newCost < exploredNode.MoveCost) { exploredNode.Parent = currentNode; exploredNode.MoveCost = newCost; //Find nearest tile to the target (in case doesn't find path to target) //Only compares the node to the current nearest FindNearest(exploredNode); } } else { exploredNode.Parent = currentNode; exploredNode.MoveCost = currentNode.MoveCost + GetMoveCost(previousMouvement, movement, exploredTerrain); Vector2 exploredNodeWorldPos = map.getTileByPos(exploredGridPos.X, exploredGridPos.Y).Position; exploredNode.EstimatedRemainingCost = (int)(endPosition - exploredNodeWorldPos).Length(); //Find nearest tile to the target (in case doesn't find path to target) //Only compares the node to the current nearest FindNearest(exploredNode); openedNodes.Add(exploredNode); } } } } return closedNodes; } After that, I simply check if the end node is contained in the returned nodes. If so, I add the end node and each parent until I reach the start. If not, I add the nearestToTarget and each parent until I reach the start. I added a condition before calling FindPath so that only one unit can call a find path each frame (60 frame per second), but it makes no difference. I thought maybe I could solve this by allowing the find path to run in background while the game continues to run correctly, even if it takes a few frame (it is currently sequential sonce it is called in the update() of the unit if there's a target location but no path), but I don't really know how... I also though about sorting my opened nodes list by cost so I don't have to loop them, but I don't know if that would have an effect on the performance... Would there be other solutions? P.S. In the code, when I get the Move Cost, I check if the unit has to turn to perform the move, and the terrain type, nothing hard to do.

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• Application using JOGL stays in Limbo when closing

  - by Roy T.

  I'm writing a game using Java and OpenGL using the JOGL bindings. I noticed that my game doesn't terminate properly when closing the window even though I've set the closing operation of the JFrame to EXIT_ON_CLOSE. I couldn't track down where the problem was so I've made a small reproduction case. Note that on some computers the program terminates normally when closing the window but on other computers (notably my own) something in the JVM keeps lingering, this causes the JFrame to never be disposed and the application to never exit. I haven't found something in common between the computers that had difficulty terminating. All computers had Windows 7, Java 7 and the same version of JOGL and some terminated normally while others had this problem. The test case is as follows: public class App extends JFrame implements GLEventListener { private GLCanvas canvas; @Override public void display(GLAutoDrawable drawable) { GL3 gl = drawable.getGL().getGL3(); gl.glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); gl.glClear(GL3.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); gl.glFlush(); } // The overrides for dispose (the OpenGL one), init and reshape are empty public App(String title, boolean full_screen, int width, int height) { //snipped setting the width and height of the JFRAME GLProfile profile = GLProfile.get(GLProfile.GL3); GLCapabilities capabilities = new GLCapabilities(profile); canvas = new GLCanvas(capabilities); canvas.addGLEventListener(this); canvas.setSize(getWidth(), getHeight()); add(canvas); setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); //!!! setVisible(true); } @Override public void dispose() { System.out.println("HELP"); // } public static void main( String[] args ) { new App("gltut 01", false, 1280, 720); } } As you can see this doesn't do much more than adding a GLCanvas to the frame and registering the main class as the GLEventListener. So what keeps lingering? I'm not sure. I've made some screenshots. The application running normally. The application after the JFrame is closed, note that the JVM still hasn't exited or printed a return code. The application after it was force closed. Note the return code -1, so it wasnt just the JVM standing by or something the application really hadn't exited yet. So what is keeping the application in Limbo? Might it be the circular reference between the GLCanvas and the JFrame? I thought the GC could figure that out. If so how should I deal with that when I want to exit? Is there any other clean-up required when using JOGL? I've tried searching but it doesn't seem to be necessary. Edit, to clarify: there are 2 dispose functions dispose(GLAutoDrawable arg) which is a member of GLEventListener and dispose() which is a member of JFrame. The first one is called correctly (but I wouldn't know what to there, destroying the GLAutoDrawable or the GLCanvas gives an infinite exception loop) the second one is never called.

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• Entity System with C++ templates

  - by tommaisey

  I've been getting interested in the Entity/Component style of game programming, and I've come up with a design in C++ which I'd like a critique of. I decided to go with a fairly pure Entity system, where entities are simply an ID number. Components are stored in a series of vectors - one for each Component type. However, I didn't want to have to add boilerplate code for every new Component type I added to the game. Nor did I want to use macros to do this, which frankly scare me. So I've come up with a system based on templates and type hinting. But there are some potential issues I'd like to check before I spend ages writing this (I'm a slow coder!) All Components derive from a Component base class. This base class has a protected constructor, that takes a string parameter. When you write a new derived Component class, you must initialise the base with the name of your new class in a string. When you first instantiate a new DerivedComponent, it adds the string to a static hashmap inside Component mapped to a unique integer id. When you subsequently instantiate more Components of the same type, no action is taken. The result (I think) should be a static hashmap with the name of each class derived from Component that you instantiate at least once, mapped to a unique id, which can by obtained with the static method Component::getTypeId ("DerivedComponent"). Phew. The next important part is TypedComponentList<typename PropertyType>. This is basically just a wrapper to an std::vector<typename PropertyType> with some useful methods. It also contains a hashmap of entity ID numbers to slots in the array so we can find Components by their entity owner. Crucially TypedComponentList<> is derived from the non-template class ComponentList. This allows me to maintain a list of pointers to ComponentList in my main ComponentManager, which actually point to TypedComponentLists with different template parameters (sneaky). The Component manager has template functions such as: template <typename ComponentType> void addProperty (ComponentType& component, int componentTypeId, int entityId) and: template <typename ComponentType> TypedComponentList<ComponentType>* getComponentList (int componentTypeId) which deal with casting from ComponentList to the correct TypedComponentList for you. So to get a list of a particular type of Component you call: TypedComponentList<MyComponent>* list = componentManager.getComponentList<MyComponent> (Component::getTypeId("MyComponent")); Which I'll admit looks pretty ugly. Bad points of the design: If a user of the code writes a new Component class but supplies the wrong string to the base constructor, the whole system will fail. Each time a new Component is instantiated, we must check a hashed string to see if that component type has bee instantiated before. Will probably generate a lot of assembly because of the extensive use of templates. I don't know how well the compiler will be able to minimise this. You could consider the whole system a bit complex - perhaps premature optimisation? But I want to use this code again and again, so I want it to be performant. Good points of the design: Components are stored in typed vectors but they can also be found by using their entity owner id as a hash. This means we can iterate them fast, and minimise cache misses, but also skip straight to the component we need if necessary. We can freely add Components of different types to the system without having to add and manage new Component vectors by hand. What do you think? Do the good points outweigh the bad?

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• Silverlight Cream for February 04, 2011 -- #1040

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Shawn Wildermuth, John Papa, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Mike Wolf, Matt Casto, Levente Mihály, Roy Dallal, Mark Monster, Andrea Boschin, and Oren Gal. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Accept and Cancel Buttons Behavior in Silverlight" Matt Casto WP7: "Windows Phone 7 Runtime Debugging" Mike Wolf Shoutouts: Al Pascual announced a get-together if you're going to be in Phoenix on February 10 (next Thursday)... I just can't tell what time it is from the page: Phoenix Dev Meet-Up From SilverlightCream.com: Ten Pet Peeves of WP7 Applications Check out Shawn Wildermuth's Top 10 annoyances when trying out any new app on the WP7... if you're a dev, you might want to keep these in mind. Silverlight TV 60: Checking Out the Zero Gravity Game, Now on Windows Phone 7 John Papa has Silverlight TV number 60 up and this one features Phoenix' own Ryan Plemons discussing the game Zero Gravity and some of the things he had to do to take the game to WP7 ... and the presentation looks as good from here as it did inside the studio :) The Full Stack: Entity Framework To Phone, The Server Side Jesse Liberty and Jon Galloway have Part 6 of their full-stack podcast up ... this is their exploration of MVC3, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WP7... pair programming indeed! Life Cycle: Page State Management Jesse Liberty also has episode 29 (can you believe that??) of his Windows Phone From Scratch series up ... he's continuing his previous LifeCycle discussion with Page State Management this time. Windows Phone 7 Runtime Debugging Mike Wolf is one of those guys that when he blogs, we should all pay attention, and this post is no exception... he has contributed a run-time diagnostics logger to the WP7Contrib project ... wow... too cool! Accept and Cancel Buttons Behavior in Silverlight Matt Casto has his blog back up and has a behavior up some intuitive UX on ChildWindows by being able to bind to a default or cancel button and have those events activated when the user hits Enter or Escape... very cool, Matt! A classic memory game: Part 3 - Porting the game to Windows Phone 7 Levente Mihály has Part 3 of his tutorial series up at SilverlightShow, and this go-around is porting his 'memory game' to WP7... and this is pretty all-encompassing... Blend for the UI, Performance, and Tombstoning... plus all the source. Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 1 Roy Dallal completely describes how he used a couple easily-downloadable tools to find the root cause of his memory problems with is Silvleright app. Lots of good investigative information. How to cancel the closing of your Silverlight application (in-browser and out-of-browser) Mark Monster revisits a two-year old post of his on cancelling the closing of a Silverlight app... and he's bringing that concept of warning the user the he's about to exit into the OOB situation as well. Windows Phone 7 - Part #3: Understanding navigation Also continuing his WP7 tutorial series on SilverlightShow, Andrea Boschin has part 3 up which is all about Navigation and preserving state... he also has a video on the page to help demonstrate the GoBack method. Multiple page printing in Silverlight 4 Oren Gal built a Silverlight app for last years' ESRI dev summit, and decided to upgrade it this year with functionality such as save/restore, selecting favorite sessions, and printing. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Popular genres in Asian (non-Japanese) markets?

  - by mummey

  Hello, From time-to-time I've wondered what kind of games are popular in Asia (India, China, Korea, Singapore, etc...). I hear about developers in the US and UK who outsource work there, but what goes into the games they make for themselves? Related, you hear these days about how Japanese developers have been marketing their games more for American audiences these days (with mixed success). In what ways could American developers aim their development toward Asian audiences?

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• Any multiplayer webgame engine based on Flex

  - by Hongyu Ouyang

  My team is developing a multiplayer webgame (like a virtual world) in a short time(several months using after-school time), and I wonder if there are any webgame engine based on Flex. When I googled it I got many results related to HTML5, but I doubted if it is suitable for quick development. Do anyone have the experience of developing a webgame using A good engine? Are there any engine recommended? I prefer actionscript and flex to a javascript or HTML5 solution.

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• Sprite Animation Toolkits for iPhone

  - by Mike Eggleston

  Does anyone know of any good (and preferably free) Sprite Animation Toolkits/Libraries for iOS development? This library should be able to handle the collision detection and the movement of the sprites. Back in the 90's there was a Pascal library called Sprite Animation Toolkit by Ingemar Ragnemalm that handled a lot of the heft to create animations and the such. I am just wondering if there is anything like that in the iOS world?

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• Looping 3D environment in shmups

  - by kamziro

  So I was watching Ikaruga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj23K8Ri68E And then raystorm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4V0G5ykAg After looking at their 3D backgrounds for a little bit, it appears that they use a lot of repeated segments. How would one start with the development with such systems? Would there be editors that can be used (or at least help) with creating the environments? Perhaps a 3D map with splines describing the path of the ship, as well as events on the splines?

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• Best practices in managing character states

  - by TheBroodian

  While in development of a character, I feel like I'm digging myself deeper into a hole every time I add more functionality to him, creating more bugs and it seems like my code is tripping over itself all over the place. What are the best practices when managing character states for a character that has a large selection of abilities and actions that they can perform, without their abilities interrupting each other and creating a mess overall?

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• Best tree/heap data structure for fixed set of nodes with changing values + need top 20 values?

  - by user350139

  I'm writing something like a game in C++ where I have a database table containing the current score for each user. I want to read that table into memory at the start of the game, quickly change each user's score while the game is being played in response to what each user does, and then when the game ends write the current scores back to the database. I also want to be able to find the 20 or so users with the highest scores. No users will be added or deleted during the short period when the game is being played. I haven't tried it yet, but updating the database might take too much time during the period when the game is being played. Fixed set of users (might be 10,000 to 50,000 users) Will map user IDs to their score and other user-specific information. User IDs will be auto_increment values. If the structure has a high memory overhead that's probably not an issue. If the program crashes during gameplay it can just be re-started. Quickly get a user's current score. Quickly add to a user's current score (and return their current score) Quickly get 20 users with highest score. No deletes. No inserts except when the structure is first created, and how long that takes isn't critical. Getting the top 20 users will only happen every five or ten seconds, but getting/adding will happen much more frequently. If not for the last, I could just create a memory block equal to sizeof(user) * max(user id) and put each user at user id * sizeof(user) for fast access. Should I do that plus some other structure for the Top 20 feature, or is there one structure that will handle all of this together?

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• Granting administrator privileges to an application launched at startup without UAC prompt?

  - by iKenndac

  Background I've written a small C#/.NET 4.0 application that syncs various settings from a game installed in Program Files to and from other copies of the same game on different machines (think Chrome bookmark sync, but for this game). The sync itself is a relatively simple affair, dealing with files stored inside the game's Program Files folder. On my machine, this works fine without having to elevate my application through UAC. Windows 7 makes the game use Program Files virtualisation and my application works fine with that. However, on a lot of tester's machines, I'm getting reports that the application either can't work with the files and in come cases can't even see the game's folder! Having the user right-click and "Run as Administrator" solves the problem in every case. So, we just set the application's manifest to require admin privileges, right? That's fine (although not ideal) for when the user manually invokes the application or the sync process because they'll be interacting with the application and ready to accept a UAC request. However, one of the features of my application is a "Sync Automatically" option, which allows the user to "set and forget" the application. With this set, the application puts itself into the registry at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run to be run at startup and sits in the system tray syncing the settings in the background as needed. Obviously, I need to be smarter here. Presenting a UAC prompt as soon as the user logs in to their account or at random intervals afterwards isn't the way forwards. So, my question! What's the best way to approach a situation where I'd need to run an application at startup that needs administrator privileges? Is there a way to have the user authorise an installation that causes the system to automatically run the application with the correct privileges without a prompt at startup/login?

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• How to create sprites, programatically without using prefabs?

  - by DemonSOCKET

  I have different types of images for different sprites. and i am not certain that how much different sprites(images) i will have to show. So, i gotta create the sprites and apply textures programatically at runtime. Now, I defiantly can't use prefabs because it will restrict me with the number of different sprites i can use. and also, changing texture on one sprite prefab instance in game, will change all the sprites prefab, that's not acceptable in my case. Is there a way i can create sprites without having to create static prefab ? where ever i looked for the solution every time i got the same answer "create a prefab", which is what can not be done in my case.

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• Why is mesh baking causing huge performance spikes?

  - by jellyfication

  A couple of seconds into the gameplay on my Android device, I see huge performance spikes caused by "Mesh.Bake Scaled Mesh PhysX CollisionData" In my game, a whole level is a parent object containing multiple ridigbodies with mesh colliders. Every FixedUpdate(), my parent object rotates around the player. Rotating the world causes mesh scaling. Here is the code that handles world rotation. private void Update() { input.update(); Vector3 currentInput = input.GetDirection(); worldParent.rotation = initialRotation; worldParent.DetachChildren(); worldParent.position = transform.position; world.parent = worldParent; worldParent.Rotate(Vector3.right, currentInput.x * 50f); worldParent.Rotate(Vector3.forward, currentInput.z * 50f); } How can I get rid of mesh scaling ? Mesh.Bake physx seems to take effect after some time, is it possible to disable this function ? The profiler looks like this: Bottom-left panel shows data before spikes, the right after

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• Send regular keyboard samples OR keyboard state changes over network

  - by Ciaran

  Building a multi player asteroids game where ships compete with each other. Using UDP. Wanted to minimize traffic sent to server. Which would you do: Send periodic keyboard state samples every from client every to match server physics update rate e.g. 50 times per second. Highly resilient to packet loss and other reliabilty problems. Out of date packets disacarded by server. Generates a lot of unnuecessary traffic. Only send keyboard state when it changes (key up, key down). Radically less traffic sent from client to server. However, UDP can lose packets without you being informed. So the latter method could result in the vital packet never being resent unless I detect and resend this in a timely manner.

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• Unity AddExplosionForce not doing anything

  - by Zero

  Recently I've started learning Unity3D. I'm working on a game as an exercise in which you control a space ship and have to dodge asteroids. If you feel like it's getting a bit too much you can hit the space bar, emitting a blast in all directions that repulses nearby asteroids. To create this blast I have the following code: public class PlayerBlastScript : MonoBehaviour { public ParticleSystem BlastEffect; // Update is called once per frame void Update () { if (Input.GetKeyUp(KeyCode.Space)) { Fire(); } } public void Fire() { ParticleEmitter effect = (ParticleEmitter) Instantiate (BlastEffect, transform.position, Quaternion.identity); effect.Emit(); Vector3 explosionPos = transform.position; Collider[] colliders = Physics.OverlapSphere(explosionPos, 25.0f); foreach(Collider hit in colliders) { if (!hit) { continue; } if (hit.rigidbody) { hit.rigidbody.AddExplosionForce(5000.0f, explosionPos, 100.0f); } } } } Even though the blast effect appears, the asteroids are not affected at all. The asteroids are all rigid bodies so what's the problem?

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• Alpha issue with SharpDX SpriteBatch in WPF

  - by Kingdom

  .Hi devs, I'm coding a game using SharpDX in a WPF context. void Load() { sb = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); t2d = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Sprite.png"); } void Draw() { sb.Begin(); sb.Draw(t2d, new Rectangle(0, 0, 64, 64), Color.White); sb.End(); } I made Sprite.png, an object with pink color (alpha = 0%) for the background. The output show me my object but with the pink square at more or less 50% rate! So if I try to draw more sprites, it's like a little poney dream. Note If I apply Color.Black on the Draw method, the sprite is like expected :|

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• Podcast: The Invisible UI : Natural User Interfaces with Josh Blake

  - by craigshoemaker

  Josh Blake of Infostrat joins Pixel8 to discuss NUI development in .NET. Josh is the author of the upcoming book Multitouch on Windows from Manning. Reaching far beyond theory and the niche market of Microsoft Surface, NUI development is now possible with Silverlight and WPF development on Windows 7 and Windows 7 Mobile devices. Subscribe to the podcast! The Natural User Interface (NUI) was a prominent force at MIX10. What is NUI? Wikipedia defines it as: Natural user interface, or NUI, is the common parlance used by designers and developers of computer interfaces to refer to a user interface that is effectively invisible, or becomes invisible with successive learned interactions, to its users. The word natural is used because most computer interfaces use artificial control devices whose operation has to be learned. A NUI relies on a user being able to carry out relatively natural motions, movements or gestures that they quickly discover control the computer application or manipulate the on-screen content. The most descriptive identifier of a NUI is the lack of a physical keyboard and/or mouse. In our interview Josh demystifies what NUI is, makes a distinction between gestures and manipulations, and talks about what is possible today for NUI development. For more from Josh make sure to check out his book: and watch his MIX Presentation: Developing Natural User Interfaces with Microsoft Silverlight and WPF 4 Touch Resources Mentioned in the Show Check out the following videos that show the roots and future of NUI development: Jeff Han's Multi-Touch TED Presentation Microsoft Surface Project Natal MIX10 Day 2 Keynote A few times during our talk Bill Buxton’s work is mentioned. To see his segment of the MIX10 day 2 keynote, click below:

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• So LibGDX / Java or XNA / C# [on hold]

  - by Israel G.

  I am curious to know what will be better for me - LibGDX / Java or XNA / C#. I am on the same level with C# and Java (I am pretty advanced with both of them). I really want to get into game development, develop indie games and such. So what are the pros and cons of XNA and LibGDX, what do you prefer personally and why? Java - LibGDX is cross platform and uses OpenGL. C# - XNA is for windows only ( you can use monogame but it will hurt performance and other things), Unfortunately, XNA is not going to be supported anymore but I still see people that recommend it over libGDX. (XNA is more popular and has more tutorials then libGDX). So please help me to pick, I really don't know what to choose. Thanks a lot!

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• Compatibility between DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 shaders

  - by Delta

  I am a beginner to game development and as I am used to programming in C# I decided to go for XNA. I've been playing around with it for a while and now I am learning the basics of HLSL shaders, I have noticed in the MSDN documentation that there have been some syntax changes in HLSL between DirectX 9 and DirectX 10, for example, the Sampler type Since I am having some troubles with my desktop pc, I am using my laptop which video card only supports DirectX 9.0c. Then I'm gonna have to write my shaders using the DirectX 9 syntax, right? So I am wondering, will my HLSL shaders written using the DirectX 9 syntax work on a system running DirectX 10 (or higher)?

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• SQL SERVER – 4 Tips for ETL Software IDE Developers

  - by pinaldave

  In a previous blog, I introduced the notion of Semantic Types. To an end-user, a seamlessly integrated semantic typing engine significantly increases the ease of use of an ETL IDE (integrated development environment, or developer studio). This led me to think about other ease-of-use issues I have encountered while building ETL applications. When I get stumped while programming, I find myself asking the variations on these questions: “How do I…?” “Now what?” “Why isn’t this working?” “Why do I have to redo the work I just did?” It seems to me that a good ETL IDE will anticipate these questions and seek to answer them before they are even asked. So here are my tips to help software vendors build developer IDEs that actually make development easier. How do I…? While developing an ETL application, have you ever asked yourself: “How do I set up the connection to my SQL Server database?”,“How do I import my table definitions from Access?”, etc. An easy answer might be “read the manual” but sometimes product manuals are not robust or easily accessible. So, integrating robust how-to instructions directly into your ETLstudio would help users get the information they need at the time they need it. Now what? IDEs in general know where you last clicked or performed an action using an input device such as a keyboard; so they should be able to reasonably predict the design context you are in and suggest the next steps accordingly. Context-sensitive suggestions based on the state of the user’s work will help users move forward in ETL application development. Why isn’t this working? Or why do I have to wait till I compile to be told about a critical design issue? If an ETL IDE is smart enough to signal to users what in their design structures is left to be completed or has been completed incorrectly, then the developer can spend much less time in the designàcompileàerror-correct loop. Just-in-time validation helps users detect and correct programming errors earlier in the ETL development life cycle. Why do I have to redo the work I just did? In ETL development, schemas, transformation rules, connectivity objects, etc., can be reused in various situations. Using mouse-clicks to build and manage libraries of reusable design objects implies that the application development effort should decrease over time and as the library acquires more objects. I met a great company at SQL Pass that is trying to address many of these usability issues. Check them out at www.expressor-software.com. What other ease-of-use suggestions do you have for ETL software vendors? Please post your valuable comments. ?Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: ETL

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• Tulsa Azure Boot Camp

  - by dmccollough

  Windows Azure Boot Camp presented by HyperVize & TulsaTech When: Thursday July 1st and Friday July 2nd Registration: Click here. Where: TulsaTech Riverside Campus 801 East 91st Street Tulsa, Ok 74132-4008 Click here for a map. Summary Tulsa Windows Azure Boot Camp is a comprehensive 2 day training program for members of the development community in Tulsa Oklahoma. At the conclusion of this program, the attendees should have a deep understanding of Azure, BPOS, and advanced development techniques for both platforms. Who should attend: Web Developers, Backend Developers, SQL DBAs, Consultants, & IT Leaders who are interested in using Azure for development, data storage, or processing. Both days is suggested, but if you can't attend both days, contact us for a special one day pass. Schedule: Day one of the training sessions will be held from July 1st 2010 between the hours of 9AM and 4:30PM. Topics covered on day 1: Azure Basics, Web Development, & Data Storage. Day two of the training sessions will be held from July 2nd 2010 between the hours of 9AM and 4:30PM. Topics covered on day 2: Architecture, Business Value, SOA Development, SQL Azure, & Advanced Development. Pre-requisites: If you want to stay up to speed on the Windows Azure Labs you will need to install the tools and updates listed on the Windows Azure Boot Camp website: http://windowsazurebootcamp.com/whattobring Boot Camp Agenda Day 1 – July1st 2010:  · 8:30 – 9:00 - Registration · 9:00 – 10:00 - Module 1: Intro to Azure & Cloud Computing · 10:00 – 11:00 - Module 2: Using Web Roles · 11:00 – Noon - Lab 1 & workstation configuration · Noon – 1:00 - Lunch · 1:00 – 2:00 - Module 3: Blobs · 2:00 – 3:00 - Module 4: Tables · 3:00 – 4:00 - Module 5: Queues · 4:00 – ? - Q&A / Open Discussion Day 2 – July 2nd 2010: · 9:00 – 10:00 - Module 6: Building a business with Azure · 10:00 – 11:00 - Module 7: Cloud Scenarios · 11:00 – Noon - Module 8: SQL Azure · Noon – 1:00 - Lunch · 1:00 – 2:00 - Module 9: Basic Worker Roles · 2:00 – 3:00 - Module 10: Advanced Worker Roles · 3:00 – 4:00 - Module 11: Azure Diagnostics · 4:00 –    ??? - Module 12: App Fabric  

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• 3D Huge mesh rendering

  - by Keyhan Asghari

  I am writing a program, that as input, I have a huge 3d mesh (with mostly structured and cubic shaped elements), and I want to realtime render it, but not as real-time as a game. But speed of rendering is somehow important. The most important point is, I don't need any special lighting nor any shadows. Also, the objects to render are static, and they do not move. I've read about ray tracing methods, but I don't know if there is any good libraries for this purpose, or I have to implement everything by myself. Thanks a lot.

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• Mouse input not updating in custom XNA/Winforms panel

  - by ChocoMan

  I have a custom Panel residing within my WinForm. the custom Panel holds the XNA rendering. So far, I've rendered an 3D test model. What I'm doing now is trying to handle the input.Using a camera from another working game, keyboard input works fine moving the camera in all 6 directions. But when it comes to handling the mouse to yaw and pitch the camera, nothing happens. I've searched about to see if anyone has come across this problem, but found no testable solutions to my problem. Does anyone understand as to what may be causing the Mouse not to be called when moved? Within MainForm constructor: public MainForm() { InitializeComponent(); Mouse.WindowHandle = panel3D.Handle; } Panel3D.cs Custom XNA Panel class FreeCamera.cs FreeCamera class

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• Kansas City .NET UG March Meeting &ndash; Tonight!!!!

  - by John Alexander

  Meeting tonight!!! Food! Great giveaways including a full license of Infragistics for a year! See you there!! Meeting for March 23rd, 2010 WHERE: Centriq Training, 8700 State Line Road, Leawood, KS (Click WHEN: 6:00 PM TOPIC: Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle for Agile development Microsoft recently added secure development guidance for agile methodologies within their SDL. During this presentation, Nick will summarize the new guidance and discuss what makes this guidance successful for Agile development. SPEAKER: Nick Coblentz Nick Coblentz is a senior consultant within AT&T Consulting Services' Application Security Practice. He focuses on helping organizations build mature application security programs and secure development processes. Nick has provided consulting services to fortune 500 companies within the retail, financial services, banking, and health care sectors. SPONSOR: TekSystems TEKsystems® is the leading IT staffing and services company. Our capabilities span a wide range of services: from technical staff augmentation and direct placement services, to full management of IT projects and comprehensive workforce management solutions. With over 25 years of experience, we are experts at connecting technical professionals. Whether you are looking for the best IT talent, an experienced IT outsourcing partner, or a career in the IT industry, TEKsystems delivers.

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