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• Offshoring: does it ever work?

  - by DanSingerman

  I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company where I was a dev manager wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme to see how well it would work. Of course it was a complete failure, although it is not completely clear to me whether this was down to the offshore devs being less talented, the process, or other factors (no doubt it was really a combination). I can see as a business how offshoring looks attractive (much lower day rate), but as far as I can see, the only way it could possibly work is if you do exceptionally detailed design up front, with incredibly detailed specifications; and by the time you have invested in producing that, you have probably spent as nearly as much as if you had written the actual code locally (which I think is an instance of No Silver Bullet) So, what I want to know is, does anyone here have any experience of offshoring actually working ever? Especially if there are any success stories of it working in a semi-agile way? I know there are developers here from all over the World; has anyone worked on an offshore project they consider successful?

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• If you have the full spec done, what is left for the developer to do?

  - by Leeho

  I'm working in a small company, started as a developer and coded pieces of a big system being provided with detailed specs. Over five years I moved towards analyst position. I know how existing parts of the system are build, so when we need a new subsystem I know how to connect it to the existing things. So I analyse requirements for a new subsystem to be done, design a new module, then code main parts of it. After that me with my colleagues who are proper analysts write detailed specs for junior developers to finish the module. The problem is that I don't see a new job for myself. I realise that jack-of-all-trades isn't considered to be good, and I don't see getting myself a job exactly like this in a big company. But if I look for a developer job, then I would be somewhat like junior again? Because if I will be provided with detailed description of what software has to do, all that seems to be left for me is merely translating spec to the code, which is plain boring. But developer is considered to solve problems, so which problems are those supposed to be? Only pure technical problems I can imagine is performance optimization. So basically my question is - what problems developers are supposed to face and solve, if all decisions of how application should work to meet customers needs are considered to be an analyst job? What problems do you solve at work?

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• Multiplayer online game engine/pipeline

  - by Slav

  I am implementing online multiplayer game where client must be written in AS3 (Flash) to embed game into browser and server in C++ (abstract part of which is already written and used with other games). Networking models may differ from each other, but currently I'm looking toward game's logic run on both client and server parts but they're written on different languages while it's not the main problem. My previous game (pretty big one - was implemented with efforts of ~5 programmers in 1.5 years) was mainly "written" within electronic tables as structured objects with implemented inheritance: was written standalone tool which generated AS3 and C++ (languages of platforms to which the game was published) using specified electronic tables file (.xls or .ods). That file contained ~50 tables with ~50 rows and ~50 columns each and was mainly written by game designers which do not know any programming languages. But that game was single-player. Having declared problem with my currently implementing MMO, I'm looking toward some vast pipeline, where will be resolved such problems like: game objects descriptions (which starships exist within game, how much HP they have, how fast move, what damage deal...) actions descriptions (what players or NPCs can do: attack each other, collect resources, build structures, move, teleport, cast spells) - actions are transmitted through server between clients influences (what happens when specified action applied on specified object, e.i "Ship A attacked Ship B: field "HP" of Ship B reduced by amount of field "damage" of Ship A" Influences can be much more difficult, yes, e.i. "damage is twice it's size when Ship has =5 allies around him in a 200 units range during night" and so on. If to be able to write such logic within some "design document" it will be easily possible to: let designers to do their job without programmer's intervention or any bug-prone programming validate described logic transfer (transform, convert) to any programming language where it will be executed Did somebody worked on something like that? Is there some tools/engines/pipelines which concernes with it? How to handle all of this problems simultaneously in a best way or do I properly imagine my tasks and problems to myself?

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• what languages are good selling points on resume? [closed]

  - by Thomas Galvin

  I have a good amount of experience with C# and Java at the moment but after education and whatnot I wish to be able in more than just 2 high-level, comparatively limited languages, and from what I've seen languages like C(++) or PHP are in demand at the moment. I've thought about learning the following: C. Very standard, lightweight and available on everything. However very old and mostly procedural. C++. Standard like C but I've read in some places that it encourages bad programming design and use of dodgy libraries - but similar things have been said about C too so I'll take that with a grain of salt. D. Quite new but looks promising, but will it be relevant or applicable in the future though? PHP. With the internet becoming ever more important I think this might be the one to go with, but the code itself isn't very intuitive. CoffeeScript (or plain JavaScript). With Microsoft's new idea of HTML5+JS for everything under the sun this doesn't look like a bad choice. However things do change and I wish to be primarily a software dev, not web dev. So out of the above list, or any others that you could suggest, what would you say I should begin to focus on? What is your opinion on staying with C#?

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• OPN Solutions Catalog Goes Mobile

  - by Meghan Fritz-Oracle

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Good news for our partners on this sunny Tuesday! Oracle PartnerNetwork is pleased to announce the launch of a mobile-ready OPN Solutions Catalog. Features include: A fluid search and browse experience regardless of device (phone, tablet, or desktop) Streamlined design and reorganized search facets, making it easier for customers to search and browse for partner profiles and their solutions The OPN Solutions Catalog is a free marketing tool for all active Oracle PartnerNetwork members. If you are an OPN partner… take advantage of it! To learn more about the new catalog, watch the Solutions Catalog Training which includes best practices and a demo on how to update your profile. Spend a few minutes with our experts to learn how you can expand your market reach and showcase your offerings to our customers, partners, and Oracle employees worldwide.Questions? Visit the Solutions Catalog Resource page or contact the Partner Business Center.

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• Why doesn't it seem to be any development in the field of 3D VR gear, especially with regard to gaming?

  - by neuviemeporte

  I remember that way back around 1995, there was this big craze with VR in the media, a whole bunch of (mostly mediocre) games labeled as "virtual-reality-interactive-movie (...)" were published. If I recall correctly, the first 3D VR helmet was called VFX-1 and was sold bundled with Descent and some dedicated joystick. I never owned one, and I read just one review which was mostly enthusiastic, but pointed to some weak points, like the eyes getting tired after an hour or so of playing. Then the whole thing basically flickered down and died. I suppose the main reason it wasn't successful was that the hardware of the day was not powerful enough, the VR gear's design wasn't perfected to make it comfortable and natural to use, and the companies that made it failed to market it successfully. What I can't understand is why isn't there any development in the field today. There is some vr-ish hardware mostly targeted at the consoles (Kinect, Wii remote, TrackIR), but all projects of creating some 3d head-mounted display system seem to be in early infancy, appear once in a trade show somewhere and aren't heard of again. I think it could work great with head tracking and some of today's shooters, flight sims (trackIR is nice but the movement scale translation is awkward) and other games with an FPP POV. Is there any technological reason why decent vr headgear can't be made today, or is it just that nobody really cares/everyone is scared to repeat the '90s failure?

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• How to code Time Stop or Bullet Time in a game?

  - by David Miler

  I am developing a single-player RPG platformer in XNA 4.0. I would like to add an ability that would make the time "stop" or slow down, and have only the player character move at the original speed(similar to the Time Stop spell from the Baldur's Gate series). I am not looking for an exact implementation, rather some general ideas and design-patterns. EDIT: Thanks all for the great input. I have come up with the following solution public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { GameTime newGameTime = new GameTime(gameTime.TotalGameTime, new TimeSpan(gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Ticks / DESIRED_TIME_MODIFIER)); gameTime = newGameTime; or something along these lines. This way I can set a different time for the player component and different for the rest. It certainly is not universal enough to work for a game where warping time like this would be a central element, but I hope it should work for this case. I kinda dislike the fact that it litters the main Update loop, but it certainly is the easiest way to implement it. I guess that is essentialy the same as tesselode suggested, so I'm going to give him the green tick :)

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• Why does my player stop when stepping onto a new tile?

  - by user220631

  Me and my friend are creating a game from scratch. He is in charge of art design and I am in charge of coding. I have done well so far with the code, but I have a collision detection problem when the character moves right: Once the player moves right, whenever a new block is encountered, the player stops. I don't know if this is a problem with collision or the player but I can't work around it. Here is the collision code: this.IsColliding = function(obj) { if(this.X > obj.X + obj.Width) return false; else if(this.X + this.Width < obj.X) return false; else if(this.Y > obj.Y + obj.Height) return false; else if(this.Y + this.Height < obj.Y) return false; else return true; } I also wanted to see if there as a way to make the player collide with the bottom of the block and the right side of the block instead of running through it.

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• Configuration Tips for better Performance with ADF Mobile Apps

  - by SRINI INDLA

  Some tips to keep in mind to make sure ADF Mobile application's performance is optimal: 1. Select release mode in deployment profile. This is perhaps the most important thing to remember to ensure best performance for ADF Mobile Apps. Selecting this option causes the deployer to package optimized JVM and minified JS libs with the mobile app there by significantly improving the over all performance of the application. 2. For iOS you do not need to do anything else other than selecting  release mode in deploy profile. However, on Android you have to create a keystore and configure it in JDev --> Tools --> Preferences --> ADF Mobile --> Platforms : Android as shown in the snapshot below 3. Steps for generating the Keystore for Android using keytool :  4. Logging level setting in logging.properties: Make sure the log level is set to SEVERE for both framework logger as well as the application logger as follows oracle.adfmf.framework.level=SEVERE oracle.adfmf.application.level=SEVERE 5. When using SOAP WebServices with WebService Data Control make sure you select the option to copy the WSDL. This will cause the JDev to download the WSDL and all the XSDs referenced by the WSDL from the server at design time and package them with the application during deployment. This way the application does not incur the cost of downloading these resources at run time from the device.

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• What would be a good topic for research on "edge of multiple processors / computers programming" topic?

  - by Kabumbus

  This is a subjective discussion so we can express our dreams and hopes here. A "topic" must be like a task with point to have as end result a software poduct. A "topic" must be mainly about "Software engineering", "Algorithm and data structure concepts" and perhaps "Design patterns". I mean let us try to look what is not already there? What can be developed in fiew month and give a breakthrue / start a new leap / show somethig not realized before in science of f multiple computers programming? What i see is already there: LAN / wire and other infrastractural programms for connecting on device level MPI/ Bit torrent/Jabber protocols / APIs / servers for messaging on top Boost and analogs on evry OS in most languages for multithreading there are lots of CUDA like on computer frameworks for fast calculating on computers GPUs What I personally do not see out there is a crossplatform framework for multiple processes interaction. Meaning one that would allow easy creation of multyple processes running in paralell inside one hoster app on one machine. In level not harder than needed for threads creation (so no seprate server apps - just one lib doing it all) Is there ny such lib and what can you propose for research topic?

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• Knowing state of game in real time

  - by evthim

  I'm trying to code a tic tac toe game in java and I need help figuring out how to efficiently and without freezing the program check if someone won the game. I'm only in the design stages now, I haven't started programming anything but I'm wondering how would I know at all times the state of the game and exactly when someone wins? Response to MarkR: (note: had to place comment here, it was too long for comment section) It's not a homework problem, I'm trying to get more practice programming GUI's which I've only done once as a freshman in my second introductory programming course. I understand I'll have a 2D array. I plan to have a 2D integer array where x would equal 1 and o would equal 0. However, won't it take too much time if I check after every move if someone won the game? Is there a way or a data structure or algorithm I can use so that the program will know the state (when I say state I mean not just knowing every position on the board, the int array will take care of that, I mean knowing that user 1 will win if he places x on this block) of the game at all times and thus can know automatically when someone won?

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• How to Assure an Effective Data Model

  As a general rule in my opinion the effectiveness of a data model can be directly related to the accuracy and complexity of a project’s requirements. For example there is no need to work on very detailed data models when the details surrounding a specific data model have not been defined or even clarified. Developing data models when the clarity of project requirements is limited tends to introduce designed issues because the proper details to create an effective data model are not even known. One way to avoid this issue is to create data models that correspond to the complexity of the existing project requirements so that when requirements are updated then new data models can be created based any new discoveries regarding requirements on a fine grain level.  This allows for data models to be composed of general entities to be created initially when a project’s requirements are very vague and then the entities are refined as new and more substantial requirements are defined or redefined. This promotes communication amongst all stakeholders within a project as they go through the process of defining and finalizing project requirements.In addition, here are some general tips that can be applied to projects in regards to data modeling.Initially model all data generally and slowly reactor the data model as new requirements and business constraints are applied to a project.Ensure that data modelers have the proper tools and training they need to design a data model accurately.Create a common location for all project documents so that everyone will be able to review a project’s data models along with any other project documentation.All data models should follow a clear naming schema that tells readers the intended purpose for the data and how it is going to be applied within a project.

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• Three New Videos on Social Development

  - by Bob Rhubart

  By now it should be clear to even the most tenacious Luddite that the social media phenomenon is no mere fad. Those ubiquitous icons for Facebook and Twitter and other social networks are little beacons of disruptive change signalling yet again that the 20th century is over, dude. And that presents an opportunity for software developers with the necessary insight and expertise to tap into and expand social platforms for forward-thinking organizations. If you're a developer and you're interested in exploiting these emerging opportunities you'll want to check out three new videos that focus on software development for social platforms. Developing with Facebook: An Introduction to Social Design James Pearce, Facebook's head of Mobile Developer Relations, provides an overview of the Facebook platform and the underlying APIs that are available to the developer community. Building on the LinkedIn Platform: Content Amplified Adam Trachtenberg, Director of LinkedIn's Developer Network, discusses how you can make it simple for a professional audience to discover and distribute your content on LinkedIn. Emergence of the Social Enterprise Roland Smart, Oracle's VP of Social Marketing, shares Oracle’s vision for the social-enabled enterprise and highlights the role developers will play in the next phase of enterprise development. OTN has also created the Oracle Social Developer Community, a new Facebook page devoted to the promotion of community conversation and resources to support Social Developers. If you're working on a social development project, visit the page and tell us about it.

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• Avoid overwriting all the methods in the child class

  - by Heckel

  The context I am making a game in C++ using SFML. I have a class that controls what is displayed on the screen (manager on the image below). It has a list of all the things to draw like images, text, etc. To be able to store them in one list I created a Drawable class from which all the other drawable class inherit. The image below represents how I would organize each class. Drawable has a virtual method Draw that will be called by the manager. Image and Text overwrite this method. My problem is that I would like Image::draw method to work for Circle, Polygon, etc. since sf::CircleShape and sf::ConvexShape inherit from sf::Shape. I thought of two ways to do that. My first idea would be for Image to have a pointer on sf::Shape, and the subclasses would make it point onto their sf::CircleShape or sf::ConvexShape classes (Like on the image below). In the Polygon constructor I would write something like ptr_shape = &polygon_shape; This doesn't look very elegant because I have two variables that are, in fact, just one. My second idea is to store the sf::CircleShape and sf::ConvexShape inside the ptr_shape like ptr_shape = new sf::ConvexShape(...); and to use a function that is only in ConvexShape I would cast it like so ((sf::ConvexShape*)ptr_shape)->convex_method(); But that doesn't look very elegant either. I am not even sure I am allowed to do that. My question I added details about the whole thing because I thought that maybe my whole architecture was wrong. I would like to know how I could design my program to be safe without overwriting all the Image methods. I apologize if this question has already been asked; I have no idea what to google.

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• How to refactor a myriad of similar classes

  - by TobiMcNamobi

  I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each of theses classes is about 50 lines of code which is not too much by itself. Still this is way too much duplicated code. I consider the following options: Writing tests for A1, ..., A100. Then refactor by creating an abstract base class AA. Pro: I'm (near to totally) safe by the tests that nothing goes wrong. Con: Much effort. Duplication of test code. Writing tests for A1, A2. Abstracting the duplicated test code and using the abstraction to create the rest of the tests. Then create AA as in 1. Pro: Less effort than in 1 but maintaining a similar degree of safety. Con: I find generalized test code weird; it often seems ... incoherent (is this the right word?). Normally I prefer specialized test code for specialized classes. But that requires a good design which is my goal of this whole refactoring. Writing AA first, testing it with mock classes. Then inheriting A1, ..., A100 successively. Pro: Fastest way to eliminate duplicates. Con: Most Ax classes look very much the same. But if not, there is the danger of changing the code by inheriting from AA. Other options ... At first I went for 3. because the Ax classes are really very similar to each other. But now I'm a bit unsure if this is the right way (from a unit testing enthusiast's perspective).

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• Oracle Worldwide Product Translation Group and Applications User Experience Working Together

  - by ultan o'broin

  The Applications User Experience (UX) Mobile team has been extending its ethnographic research to even more countries. Recently, the team conducted research in Sweden, and I am pleased to say I made the connection for the UX team with the Oracle's Worldwide Translation Product Group (WPTG) local (that is, in-country) language specialists. It struck me that WPTG's local market knowledge and insight that we heard about at an Oracle Usability Advisory Board meeting in the UK in 2011 would be very valuable to the UX efforts while, at the same time, UX could afford WPTG an opportunity to understand our design and development direction so that linguistic resources (terminology, style guides, translatability guidelines, and so on) for any translation of our mobile solutions could be prepared in advance. Brent White of the Mobile UX team takes notes as ethnography participant Capri Norman uses mobile technology to work in Stockholm. Pic credit: Oracle Applications UX. The UX team acknowledges Capri's kind permission to use this image. I'm told by Brent White of the Mobile UX team that the co-operation was a big success.  A WPTG Swedish language specialist joined a couple of ethnographic sessions, taking great notes and turning them around very fast for the UX team. And of course, a great local insight into Swedish culture and ways of working was provided too, along with some nice socializing!  More research in more countries is planned. Watch out for future blog posts and other communications about this great co-operation worldwide.

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• VS2012 Coded UI Test closes browser by default

  - by Tarun Arora

  *** Thanks to Steve St. Jean for asking this question and Shubhra Maji for answering this question on the ALM champs list *** 01 – Introduction The default behaviour of coded UI tests running in an Internet Explorer browser has changed between MTM 2010 and MTM 2012. When running a Coded UI test recorded in MTM 2012 or VS 2012 at the end of the test execution the instance of the browser is closed by default. 02 – Description Let’s take an example. As you can see the CloseDinnerNowWeb() method is commented out.  In VS 2010, upon running this test the browser would be left open after the test execution completes. In VS 2012 RTM the behaviour has changed. At the end of the test run, the IE window is closed even though there is no command from the test to do so. In the example below when the test runs, it opens 2 IE windows to the website. When the test run completes both the windows are closed, even though there is no command in the test to close the window. 03 – How to change the CUIT behaviour not to close the IE window after test execution? This change to this functionality in VS 2012 is by design. It is however possible to rollback the behaviour to how it originally was in VS 2010 i.e. the IE window will not close after the test execution unless otherwise commanded by the test to do so. To go back to the original functionality, set BrowserWindow.CloseOnPlaybackCleanup = false More details on the CloseOnPlaybackCleanup property can be found here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualstudio.testtools.uitesting.applicationundertest.closeonplaybackcleanup.aspx  HTH

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• Mobile Web Framework that will only control rendering and page transitions

  - by rlemon

  I have been using jQueryMobile for a bit now, and there are some things I like about it and others I do not. First I will give a bit of background. I have a light weight mobile application that has a few configurations and 6 pages. Ideally I Would like to load all pages into the DOM (they interact with each other quite often and pages will be switched in the same frequency). The application will post for some JSON every n seconds and refresh the values on the page (yes it is primarily a information display app). with the jQuery Mobile framework the only real thing I like is how easy it is to have a standardized UI a crossed all devices and browsers, I'm really not using too much else out of the framework other than the basic page navigation (if you are familiar with the framework; a bare-bone multi-page design is all i need). Why I want to step away from jQueryMobile is how weighty it is. Not only do you need to include the mobile library, but also the base jQuery libraries. This I do not like because I'm not using jQuery anywhere else on the site. Any suggestions on light-weight mobile frameworks that have a similar rendering as jQueryMobile?

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• Should I, and how do I incorporate microdata into my asp.net website with 47 pages?

  - by Jason Weber

  I have an asp.net (vb) with 47 pages. The problem is that it's in 10 different languages, although 98% just use English. I have 5 master pages. I've read Google Webmaster Tools, but I'm still confounded. I'm reading about how microdata is the way to go. Does this mean I should put itemtype and itemprop span and div tags in my master pages, or should I do all of my 47 pages (.resx resource files) separately? The main key phrase I want throughout search results is "machine vision". For instance, the first couple sentences on my "about.aspx" page are: <span itemprop="name">USS Vision Inc.</span> (USS) is a privately-owned company with headquarters in <span itemprop="locality">Detroit, Michigan, USA</span>. We design, engineer, produce, and integrate special machine vision error-proofing products and <a href="http://www.ussvision.com/services/" target="_self" itemprop="url">services</a> that create lean factories by improving the quality of manufactured products, and by significantly reducing manufacturing costs through advanced automation. Am I doing this right, or how would I do this if I'm not? Should I use the itemprop="url" or other rich snippets for every link in my website? I mean, do I need to add an itemprop to just about everything, or can I just alter my master pages? Any guidance in this regard to help improve my SEO and SERPS would be greatly appreciated!

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• How should I structure moving from overworld to menu system / combat?

  - by persepolis

  I'm making a text-based "Arena" game where the player is the owner of 5 creatures that battle other teams for loot, experience and glory. The game is very simple, using Python and a curses emulator. I have a static ASCII map of an "overworld" of sorts. My character, represented by a glyph, can move about this static map. There are locations all over the map that the character can visit, that break down into two types: 1) Towns, which are a series of menus that will allow the player to buy equipment for his team, hire new recruits or do other things. 2) Arenas, where the player's team will have a "battle" interface with actions he can perform, messages about the fight, etc. Maybe later, an ASCII representation of the fight but for now, just screens of information with action prompts. My main problem is what kind of design or structure I should use to implement this? Right now, the game goes through a master loop which waits for keyboard input and then moves the player about the screen. My current thinking is this: 1) Upon keyboard input, the Player coordinates are checked against a list of Location objects and if the Player coords match the Location coords then... 2) ??? I'm not sure if I should then call a seperate function to initiate a "menu" or "combat" mode. Or should I create some kind of new GameMode object that contains a method itself for drawing the screen, printing the necessary info? How do I pass my player's team data into this object? My main concern is passing around the program flow into all these objects. Should I be calling straight functions for different parts of my game, and objects to represent "things" within my game? I was reading about the MVC pattern and how this kind of problem might benefit - decouple the GUI from the game logic and user input but I have no idea how this applies to my game.

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• Easy to use JSON Web Service Hosts?

  - by Serguei Fedorov

  I saw this being used by someone in a college class once and cannot find anything that is analogous to it. I am not sure if this is the right place to ask about something like this, but hopefully I can get some direction. I want to write an app which uses web services that can obtain and push data back to the client apps. Right now I am gathering up the design and documentation of this app. Not having to code the web service myself would reduce development time by a lot; instead using an easy to setup web service that will be easy to setup and manage. Either XML based on JSON based is totally fine; though I would prefer JSON for its reduced overhead. Like I said I have seen this demonstrated before; you define the data structure to be stored and how it is treated. I cannot find the person who demonstrated this; hopefully maybe someone can suggest something? The service he used was free with a limited amount of requests allowed. EDIT: He was using an online service to do this not a script which is installed onto an existing web hosting account. Thank you!

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• I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?

  - by kmote

  I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: G2 -- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented "sludge" in the code itself. I will spare you the "politics" of the situation (there's always politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry-standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of The Pragmatic Programmer, or Fowler's Refactoring ("Code Smells", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most "bang for the buck". So that's my question: What would you include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?

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• Entity system in Lua, communication with C++ and level editor. Need advice.

  - by Notbad

  Hi!, I know this is a really difficult subject. I have been reading a lot this days about Entity systems, etc... And now I'm ready to ask some questions (if you don't mind answering them) because I'm really messed. First of all, I have a 2D basic editor written in Qt, and I'm in the process of adding entitiy edition. I want the editor to be able to receive RTTI information from entities to change properties, create some logic being able to link published events to published actions (Ex:A level activate event throws a door open action), etc... Because all of this I guess my entity system should be written in scripting, in my case Lua. In the other hand I want to use a component based design for my entities, and here starts my questions: 1) Should I define my componentes en C++? If I do this en C++ won't I loose all the RTTI information I want for my editor?. In the other hand, I use box2d for physics, if I define all my components in script won't it be a lot of work to expose third party libs to lua? 2) Where should I place the messa system for my game engine? Lua? C++?. I'm tempted to just have C++ object to behave as servers, offering services to lua business logic. Things like physics system, rendering system, input system, World class, etc... And for all the other things, lua. Creation/Composition of entities based on components, game logic, etc... Could anyone give any insight on how to accomplish this? And what aproach is better?. Thanks in advance, HexDump.

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• What's new at Oracle in Gamification?

  - by erikanollwebb

  It's been a crazy few weeks in Apps UX.  We are actively working on some gamification designs in now 4 different application product areas, as well as supporting some teams in other areas of Oracle.  Since that gets to be a pretty diverse group with a lot of resources and ideas, we've started a group in the Oracle Social Network on Gamification at Oracle.  That's limited to internal users at Oracle, but if you are interested in joining,  ping me directly for more information at [email protected]. We're planning another design jam like we did here at Oracle in May and at the Enterprise Gamification Forum in San Diego in September.  This time, we're taking the show to the UK, and hosting it with a group of customers on the Oracle Usability Advisory Board.  It should be a great event!   We're also actively designing some gamified flows which we'll be testing with users at the UKOUG to see what our customers think about some of our gamification ideas. We're looking at more feedback opportunities.  Internally, we surveyed 444 folks within Oracle about gamification and we'll be posting some of our findings on that here soon.  I'll be posting a blog on gamification for our customers at useableapps.oracle.com  in the next few weeks and I'll cross-post to here when it comes out.  So even though it's been quiet on this blog, we are busy and I'm hoping to push out more content in the next few weeks!  Would love to know what's most interesting to the folks reading so if there's something you especially want to see, feel free to comment or email me about it.

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• How to adjust the appearance of the Unity in 12.10?

  - by piedro

  Now I updated to 12.10 and would like to adjust the desktop, well unity, appearance. I know there is the theme setting, but I cannot adjust the symbol theme or windows decoration with the systemsettings. I used to use the tool "unsettings" but it doesn't work with 12.10 anymore. Ubuntu Tweak used to be an option but at this point many features are broken and a lot of settings seem to mess up my system or they don't change anything at all (I understand that there has been a design settings change - gsettings, dconf, something ...) myunity has some options to change stuff but I couldn't find it for 12.10 ... not to forget "gnome-tweak-tool" which seems to work for most settings but not for all, e.g. it doesn't change the mouse cursor and the windows decorations do not show some decorations I'd like to use and I am also afraid of messing things up because it is supposed to be used in gnomeshell ... actually as I found out right now it really messes things up: fonts get inverted, suddenly high contrast accessibility setings are used in some windows, nautilus has white fonts on white background and even the login manager is a mess now ... So: How can I adjust the theme, symbol, decorations, fonts for the normal user and for the desktop and for the applications including the applications started as sudo user? I should mention that I upgraded from 12.04 and that some applications like synaptic completely ignore any settings ... sadly it is a mess, there was a time when gnome theming was really well done and very adjustable, I wonder what happened ... Just now I read that further development of Ubuntu Tweak has been stopped. The developer announced that he won't go any further with the software and the online services ... That is sad and destroys my hope for easy appearance editing just by waiting ... has been such a nice tool for 12.04 ... r.i.p.

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