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• How to Use and Customize Google Chrome Web Apps

  - by The Geek

  Google announced their new Chrome Web Store today, with loads of web sites and games that can be installed as applications in your browser, synced across every PC, and customized to launch the way you want them to. Here’s how it all works. Note: this guide really isn’t aimed at expert geeks, though you’re more than welcome to leave your thoughts in the comments. What Are Chrome Web Apps Again? The new Chrome Web Apps are really nothing more than regular web sites, optimized for Chrome and then wrapped up with a pretty icon and installed in your browser. Some of these sites, especially web-based games, can also be purchased through the Chrome Web Store for a small fee, though the majority of services are free Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography Fun and Colorful Firefox Theme for Windows 7 Happy Snow Bears Theme for Chrome and Iron [Holiday] Download Full Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Game for Free Scorched Cometary Planet Wallpaper Quick Fix: Add the RSS Button Back to the Firefox Awesome Bar Dropbox Desktop Client 1.0.0 RC for Windows, Linux, and Mac Released

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• Suitability of ground fog using layered alpha quads?

  - by Nick Wiggill

  A layered approach would use a series of massive alpha-textured quads arranged parallel to the ground, intersecting all intervening terrain geometry, to provide the illusion of ground fog quite effectively from high up, looking down, and somewhat less effectively when inside the fog and looking toward the horizon (see image below). Alternatively, a shader-heavy approach would instead calculate density as function of view distance into the ground fog substrate, and output the fragment value based on that. Without having to performance-test each approach myself, I would like first to hear others' experiences (not speculation!) on what sort of performance impact the layered alpha texture approach is likely to have. I ask specifically due to the oft-cited impacts of overdraw (not sure how fill-rate bound your average desktop system is). A list of games using this approach, particularly older games, would be immensely useful: if this was viable on pre DX9/OpenGL2 hardware, it is likely to work fine for me. One big question is in regards to this sort of effect: (Image credit goes to Lume of lume.com) Notice how the vertical fog gradation is continuous / smooth. OTOH, using textured quad layers, I can only assume that layers would be mighty obvious when walking through them -- the more sparse they were, the more obvious this would be. This is in contrast to where fog planes are aligned to face the player every frame, where this coarseness would be much less obvious.

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• Need help in determing what, if any, tools can be used to create a free Flash game

  - by ReaperOscuro

  Yes I proudly -and sadly- declare that I am a complete nincompoop when it comes to Flash, and I have been fishing around the big wide web for information. The reason for this is that I have been contracted to create a game(s) for a website -the usual flash-based games caveat. Please I do not mean things like by those gaming generator websites, I mean small yet professional games- but the caveat, as always, is that impossible dream: it needs to be done all for free. The budget...well imagine it as not there. Annoyingly is that I am a game designer yes, but with a ridiculously tight deadline I haven't got much time to re-learn (ah the heady days of programming at uni) everything by the end of March, so I'd like to ask some people who know their stuff rather than keep looking at a gazillion different things. This is my understanding: with the flash sdk you can create a game, albeit you need to be pretty programming savvy. FlashDevelop helps there -yet I am not entirely sure how. Yet even FD says to use Flash for the animation/graphics. Yes its undeniably powerful but as I said there is the unattainable demand of no money. The million dollar question: what, if any, tools can I use to create a free flash game?

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• Open source clone for Starcraft

  - by sinekonata

  Two questions about a SC:Broodwar clone. Is there one yet? How likely is legal pursuit? Since almost all games I usually play now have an FOS alternative from alpha to way polished, I was wondering why can't I find one for SC, one of the biggest titans of the gaming community? So my first question is, is there a game that was made with the intention to emulate SC? Is it that I didn't look well enough? Could it really be that no one tackled what seems like a small effort compared to the creation of a game engine like Spring or games like Rigs of Rod or Minetest? And since SC is not being maintained at all shouldn't the incentive to see a bug free modable balanced version huge? What am I not getting here? In the event that there is none, is it a legal problem? Could it be that people expect Blizzard to release sources themselves? Or that developers don't see the point in having SC mechanics without the patented lore and aesthetics? And the trickier question, if I were to make SC an open source game, a total clone of it for the purposes of maintenance, modability, etc. Would Blizzard really sue a team of developer fans that just do them a favour knowing they don't lose any money from Korea broadcasts? Or would they do it not to set precedents. So thanks for reading all that, hope I'm not the only one to think it's weird that no one talks about it. See you.

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• Alternatives to a leveling system

  - by Bane

  I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

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• Windows Phone 7 Series &ndash; First Developer Information

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  The official developer story for Windows Phone 7 Series was finally announced at MIX10. You can review the recording of the Keynote at http://live.visitmix.com, also all the sessions will be available within 24hours of their posting. There is extensive list of presentations for Windows Phone listed here. You can start playing with these tools today! Official Silverlight site for Mobile Development: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/devices/windows-phone/  Channel 9 has a training information here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Learn/Windows-Phone-7-Series-Training/ Ok, and for the ones in the hurry, direct link: Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP                      Here is the overview summary of the announcements: End-to-End Mobile Development Platform: By combining Silverlight for rich internet applications and the XNA Framework for game development, developers and designers will be able to build visually stunning and immersive applications and games on the Windows Phone 7 Series. Free Windows Phone Developer Tools: Microsoft has released a free comprehensive tool support package for Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 Series, available for download. Expression Blend for Windows Phone and a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone will be also included as part of the download. Windows Phone Marketplace: Microsoft made available a new merchandising tool that will enable developers and designers to bring applications and games to market and increase the discoverability of applications with customers while supporting one-time credit card purchases, mobile operator billing and advertising-funded applications.

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• Too sell or give for free

  - by QAH

  Hello everyone! I am currently making a game that I was originally planning to sell. It is a simple 2D arcade style game for the PC. I've seen many indie games become popular and generate revenue from advertisements, but the game itself remains free. I need some advice on whether or not I should sell my game, release it for free with advertisements, or ask for donations and keep the game free. I feel that my game is fun, but of course the graphics aren't tip top because I am a programmer, not an artist. I just take screenshots of 3D models I get from Turbosquid and crop around it to make a sprite. Also, and I could be very wrong about this, it seems that there are more legal issues surrounding selling a game than making it free and generating revenue from advertisement, or asking for donations. If I am wrong, someone please correct me. Also, I am very interested in generating some revenue for my work, but that isn't at the very top of my list. I am in my last year of high school, soon to be going to college, and I am going to major in computer science/software engineering. So I am trying to gain some preliminary experience at home by coding stuff every day. One way of getting this experience is by making this game. So what do you think? What route should I take? What has worked well with other indie games? Thanks in advance.

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• What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

  - by Michael

  What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

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• Ruby: implementing alpha-beta pruning for tic-tac-toe

  - by DerNalia

  So, alpha-beta pruning seems to be the most efficient algorithm out there aside from hard coding (for tic tac toe). However, I'm having problems converting the algorithm from the C++ example given in the link: http://www.webkinesia.com/games/gametree.php #based off http://www.webkinesia.com/games/gametree.php # (converted from C++ code from the alpha - beta pruning section) # returns 0 if draw LOSS = -1 DRAW = 0 WIN = 1 @next_move = 0 def calculate_ai_next_move score = self.get_best_move(COMPUTER, WIN, LOSS) return @next_move end def get_best_move(player, alpha, beta) best_score = nil score = nil if not self.has_available_moves? return false elsif self.has_this_player_won?(player) return WIN elsif self.has_this_player_won?(1 - player) return LOSS else best_score = alpha NUM_SQUARES.times do |square| if best_score >= beta break end if self.state[square].nil? self.make_move_with_index(square, player) # set to negative of opponent's best move; we only need the returned score; # the returned move is irrelevant. score = -get_best_move(1-player, -beta, -alpha) if (score > bestScore) @next_move = square best_score = score end undo_move(square) end end end return best_score end the problem is that this is returning nil. some support methods that are used above: WAYS_TO_WIN = [[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5], [6, 7, 8], [0, 3, 6], [1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8],[0, 4, 8], [2, 4, 6]] def has_this_player_won?(player) result = false WAYS_TO_WIN.each {|solution| result = self.state[solution[0]] if contains_win?(solution) } return (result == player) end def contains_win?(ttt_win_state) ttt_win_state.each do |pos| return false if self.state[pos] != self.state[ttt_win_state[0]] or self.state[pos].nil? end return true end def make_move(x, y, player) self.set_square(x,y, player) end

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• Introducing Deep Fried Devcast

  - by Matt Christian

  I've been working on a new podcast for the game development community called the Deep Fried Devcast.  Currently we are in pre-production but should have some episodes up in the near future.  Here is a quick FAQ about the show: What is the Deep Fried Devcast? The Deep Fried Devcast is a bi-weekly show all about game development.  The show will feature developer interviews, a focus on the technical aspects of game development (programming, technical design), the business of team game development (time management, project management), and other areas focused around the actual development of games. Wait, no game design?  No game discussions?! Calm down, calm down.  Although the focus of the podcast is on the technical aspects of game dev, there will be episodes and content focused on all areas of the gaming industry, including discussion on design, story, recent game releases, games we've been playing, etc...  Anything could show up in the Deep Fried Devcast and nothing is off limits. How can I help? We're always looking for new content ideas, emails, and anything you want to send us (within some kind of reason!).  You can even be a guest host if you want!  Email us at: deepfrieddevcast [AT] gmail [DOT] com Where's the podcast?! We're still recording it!  Don't worry, it will be up soon.  Keep an eye on www.deepfrieddevcast.com for the latest updates (that will be up soon too!).

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• Should I go with OpenGL to see my future in Game Development industry? [closed]

  - by Priyank

  Possible Duplicate: Should I continue studying OpenGL or just switch to DirectX to give me a better chance of landing a job in the game industry? I tried Google but found quite old articles, so I am in search of an answer in context to year 2012. Hi all, I don't know if you will consider this question appropriate for this community but I am constantly searching for a perfect answer. What I have seen is that most of the games that are released these days are DirectX 1x based. Except for few games like Starcraft or Diablo which don't have high end graphics are using OpenGL. So I have few questions to ask. The platforms i would like to target are PC (windows), Xbox 360 and PS3 (must). Should I go with learning OpenGL to see my future in game development industry? Or should I shift to Directx? If I learn OpenGL first, will it be difficult to learn direcx then? Which API is most suitable for indie development? Which one of the two API's are better from coder's (programmer's) point of view? Like OOP and style of coding. Is openGL being cross platform should be the only reason to choose it over Directx? Even when vendors are not providing enough stable drivers for it. Thanks in advance. I have read this post, but I have few questions. Should I continue studying OpenGL or just switch to DirectX to give me a better chance of landing a job in the game industry?

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• How to protect your real time online shooter from potential bots

  - by Zaky German

  I'm looking to create a multiplayer top down shooter. While i've read about different topics, i can see them i've got some real challenges ahead, but i'm all up for it. One thing i can't understand is how am i supposed to be protecting the game from people who try to create bots? What i mean is, as far as i understand, it's impossible to protect the network traffic in a way that players won't be able to create programs that listen to what's going on and understand it. So what worries me is that people can create bots that listen to the current location of rival players, and send communication that mimic as if the player is shooting in the exact "perfect" location to win that match. So what kind of techniques are used to protect real time games from such bots? Also i'd like to mention that i've tried searching for discussions (as this sounds like something many people struggle with), but couldn't find anything about it specifically, only as a part of broader questions about networking in real time games. If i should have looked harder feel free to put me in my place :) Thanks alot!

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• E3 Booth Babes Display a Painful Lack of Video Game Knowledge [Video]

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you thought a prerequisite for manning a booth at an electronics expo was a passing knowledge of the electronics and games you were promoting, you were wrong. In the above video Chloe Dykstra puts a set of “booth babes” from the E3 2011 conference to the test by asking them simple questions about video games both new and old. If you’re a gaming fan and you can watch this video without laughing out loud you’ve got an iron will (or you’re shaking your head in disbelief that someone could work a gaming convention and not know the answers to these questions). We won’t lie, we were shaking our head when the one model admitted that she’d worked at GameStop for a year and still didn’t know any of the answers. What questions would you put on list? How about “Finish this sentence: ‘Your Princess is in another…’”, “Dimension?”. 5HP: Booth Babe Edition – E3 2011 [YouTube via Kotaku] How To Encrypt Your Cloud-Based Drive with BoxcryptorHTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)

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• Examples of 2D side-scrollers that achieve open non-linear feel?

  - by Milosz Falinski

  I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys/puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario/Braid/Pid/Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include: One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game-system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non-linear, offers multiple choices and side-stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top-down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note: I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios/Zeldas/Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.

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• Is there any simple game that involves psychological factors?

  - by Roman

  I need to find a simple game in which several people need to interact with each other. The game should be simple for an analysis (it should be simple to describe what happens in the game, what players did). Because of the last reason, the video games are not appropriate for my purposes. I am thinking of a simple, schematic, strategic game where people can make a limited set of simple moves. Moreover, the moves of the game should be conditioned not only by a pure logic (like in chess or go). The behavior in the game should depend on psychological factors, on relations between people. In more details, I think it should be a cooperation game where people make their decisions based on mutual trust. It would be nice if players can express punishment and forgiveness in the game. Does anybody knows a game that is close to what I have described above? ADDED I need to add that I need a game where actions of players are simple and easy to formalize. Because of that I cannot use verbal games (where communication between players is important). By simple actions I understand, for example, moves on the board from one position to another one, or passing chips from one player to another one and so on.

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• In the days of modern computing, in 'typical business apps' - why does performance matter?

  - by Prog

  This may seem like an odd question to some of you. I'm a hobbyist Java programmer. I have developed several games, an AI program that creates music, another program for painting, and similar stuff. This is to tell you that I have an experience in programming, but not in professional development of business applications. I see a lot of talk on this site about performance. People often debate what would be the most efficient algorithm in C# to perform a task, or why Python is slow and Java is faster, etc. What I'm trying to understand is: why does this matter? There are specific areas of computing where I see why performance matters: games, where tens of thousands of computations are happening every second in a constant-update loop, or low level systems which other programs rely on, such as OSs and VMs, etc. But for the normal, typical high-level business app, why does performance matter? I can understand why it used to matter, decades ago. Computers were much slower and had much less memory, so you had to think carefully about these things. But today, we have so much memory to spare and computers are so fast: does it actually matter if a particular Java algorithm is O(n^2)? Will it actually make a difference for the end users of this typical business app? When you press a GUI button in a typical business app, and behind the scenes it invokes an O(n^2) algorithm, in these days of modern computing - do you actually feel the inefficiency? My question is split in two: In practice, today does performance matter in a typical normal business program? If it does, please give me real-world examples of places in such an application, where performance and optimizations are important.

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• Using unordered_multimap as entity and component storage

  - by natebot13

  The Setup I've made a few games (more like animations) using the Object Oriented method with base classes for objects that extend them, and objects that extend those, and found I couldn't wrap my head around expanding that system to larger game ideas. So I did some research and discovered the Entity-Component system of designing games. I really like the idea, and thoroughly understood the usefulness of it after reading Byte54's perfect answer here: Role of systems in entity systems architecture. With that said, I have decided to create my current game idea using the described Entity-Component system. Having basic knowledge of C++, and SFML, I would like to implement the backbone of this entity component system using an unordered_multimap without classes for the entities themselves. Here's the idea: An unordered_mulitmap stores entity IDs as the lookup term, while the value is an inherited Component object. Examlpe: ____________________________ |ID |Component | ---------------------------- |0 |Movable | |0 |Accelable | |0 |Renderable | |1 |Movable | |1 |Renderable | |2 |Renderable | ---------------------------- So, according to this map of objects, the entity with ID 0 has three components: Movable, Accelable, and Renderable. These component objects store the entity specific data, such as the location, the acceleration, and render flags. The entity is simply and ID, with the components attached to that ID describing its attributes. Problem I want to store the component objects within the map, allowing the map have full ownership of the components. The problem I'm having, is I don't quite understand enough about pointers, shared pointers, and references in order to get that set up. How can I go about initializing these components, with their various member variables, within the unordered_multimap? Can the base component class take on the member variables of its child classes, when defining the map as unordered_multimap<int, component>? Requirements I need a system to be able to grab an entity, with all of its' attached components, and access members from the components in order to do the necessary calculations and reassignments for position, velocity, etc. Need a clarification? Post a comment with your concerns and I will gladly edit or comment back! Thanks in advance! natebot13

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• The best way to structure/design game code

  - by Edward

  My question is quite broad and related to the 2D game code design/architecture/structure. Usually the main game consists of the main loop where you update & render your world states. However, it's recommended for many purposes to separate rendering from the game-logic and so on. I am kinda confused about the whole situation. Many game engines/libs/sdks don't follow separation schema. They propagate a way where you define some scenes/stages and they contain some objects and the scene/stage controls the user input and so on. For example, in cocos2d(-x) and libgdx (stage2d) the games are usually done the way that the update logic happens at the same time/place as rendering. Also, the propagated way is to have a structure where an object knows how to draw itself - which is not a separation of updating & rendering. The same with Flash based games, they are usually done the way when an object (class) contains a swf or a texture and some data and holds some update logic itself, or updated from main Scene. And again this object already knows how to draw itself via "addChild". Also, some people recommend to use MVC pattern, which will require to completely obey the structure of those engines/libs/sdks. Maybe I am overthinking everything, but I am totally confused. I would be grateful if somebody could point me to a correct direction with the game code structures. What is your way of doing things in libgdx/cocos2d/flash?

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• Broad topics needed for teaching game development

  - by livingtech

  I am going to be doing a presentation on game development to an iPhone user group in the near(ish) future. My audience are iPhone developers, but not necessarily very experienced ones, and this is meant to be an introduction. My question is, what broad topics are needed to understand game development? I acknowledge that this is fairly subjective, but I really am hoping for a comprehensive list of high-level topics that apply to a broad enough swath of games that anyone interested in the topic SHOULD know about them. I would be ecstatic with some pointers to any resources that attempt to make a list such as this this. (I have looked, but my google-fu is failing me tonight.) Here's what I have so far: The Game Loop a sub-note about event driven games 2D Animation sprites/texture maps 3D Animation importance of frameworks modeling software Particles and particle effects hit detection AI Obviously I will not be covering all these topics with any depth, more like simply defining them so that after my talk, the audience will (hopefully) be able to wrap their heads around how any given game might be developed. What am I missing?

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• One Does Like To Code: DevoxxUK

  - by Tori Wieldt

  What's happening at Devoxx UK? I'll be talking to Rock Star speakers, Community leaders, authors, JSR leads and more.  This video is a short introduction.   Check out these great sessions: Thursday, June 12Perchance to Stream with Java 8by Paul Sandoz13:40 - 14:30 | Room 1 Making the Internet-of-Things a Reality with Embedded Javaby Simon Ritter11:50 - 12:40 | Room 4 Java SE 8 Lambdas and Streams Labby Simon Ritter17:00 - 20:00 | Room Mezzanine Safety Not Guaranteed: Sun. Misc. Unsafe and the Quest for Safe Alternativesby Paul Sandoz18:45 - 19:45 | Room 3 Join the Java EvolutionHeather VanCuraPatrick Curran19:45 – 20:45 | Room 2  Glassfish is Here to StayDavid DelabasseeAntonio Goncalves19:45 – 20:45 | Room Expo Here is the full line-up of sessions. Devoxx UK includes a Hackergarten, where can devs work an Open Source project of their choice. The Adopt OpenJDK and Adopt a JSR Program folks will be there to help attendees contribute back to Java SE and Java EE itself!   Saturday includes a special Devoxx4Kids event in conjunction with the London Java Community. It's design to teach 10-16 year-olds simple programming concepts, robotics, electronics, and games making. Workshops include LEGO Mindstorms (robotic engineering), Greenfoot (programming), Arduino (electronics), Scratch (games making), Minecraft Modding (game hacking) and NAO (robotic programming). Small fee, you must register. If you can't attend Devoxx UK in person, stay tuned to the YouTube/Java channel. I'll be doing plenty of interviews so you can join the fun from around the world. 

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• Compiz slow under proprietary nvidia driver

  - by gsedej

  Hi! I am using Ubuntu 10.10 and have problem with proprietary nvidia driver for my GeForce GTS 250. I have issue with poor Compiz performance. And there is also open-source "noueau" driver. Proprietary: I tried many versions but neither works fast on desktop. This means 30 FPS without heavy effects. Currently I am using version 270.18. Even normal desktop use feels bad (moving windows) In games (and 3D benchmark) it is really good! (Unigine Heaven works good!) Open-source "nouveau": Very fast on desktop with heavy effects (blur, ...). I have 300 FPS and more, even in Expo mode. Games were good but not as good as prop. And driver causes xorg to crash even the latest (ppa:xorg-edgers/nouveau), so I switched back to proprietary. I also have computer with Ubuntu 10.04, GeForce 8600GT and drivers around 185.x and Compiz works great there. There is similar question Nvidia proprietary driver performance in 10.10 Which version of nvidia (prop) driver is fast in Compiz in Ubuntu 10.10? How do you install a specific version of nvidia driver? Is it the case that each newer driver works slower on compiz?

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• Why isn't there a culture of paying for frameworks?

  - by Marty Pitt

  One of the side effects of the recent trend of "Lean" startups, and the app store era, is that consumers are more acclimatised to paying small prices for small games / products. Eg.: Online SAAS that charges ~$5 / month (the basecamp style of product) Games which are short, fun, and cheap ($0.99 from the app store This market has been defined by "doing one thing well, and charging people for it." DHH of Rails / 37 Signals fame argues that if your website isn't going to make money, don't bother making it. Why doesn't the same rule apply to frameworks? There are lots of software framework projects out there - many which are mature and feature-rich, which offer developers significant value, yet there doesn't seem to be a market or culture of paying for these. It seems that the projects which do charge money are often things like UI component toolsets, and are often marginalized in favour of free alternatives. Why is this? Surely programmers / businesses see the value in contributing back to projects such as Ruby, Rails, Hibernate, Spring, Ant, Groovy, Gradle, (the list goes on). I'm not suggesting that these frameworks should start charging for anyone who wants to use them, but that there must be a meaningful business model that would allow the developers to earn money from the time they invest developing the framework. Any thoughts as to why this model hasn't emerged / succeeded?

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• I am afraid that my University is not going to teach me enough information [closed]

  - by Muhklayne

  I attend a University and am a Computer Science major. I have barely entered into the major, as I am a sophomore. However, the coursework I am doing is extremely easy already and I feel as though this degree is going to lead me to a path of knowledge without knowing how to bring it all together. Therefore, I am coming to you to ask where I should begin learning on my own! I am willing to dedicate hours upon hours of learning to code outside of class, as it is truly my passion. I will begin by completing all work on http://www.codecademy.com, however I feel this will not be enough either. I would love to learn to integrate visual languages for video games such as NXA and C# combining it with C++ (as I understand video games can be created in this manner). I would also like to look into LUA and Python scripting. I am asking for advice as to where I should begin my personal studies of learning to program, as with my research it has become quite apparent that simply attaining a degree in Computer Science is quite frankly not enough. Thank you for your time!

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• Real life example of an agile game development process outputs

  - by Ken

  I'm trying to learn about applying agile methodologies to game development. But seems to be impossible to find real life examples. There seems to be plenty of material discussing how 'in principle' agile is applied to a game. But that is NOT what I am looking for. I have the Keith book. What I AMlooking for are real EXAMPLES of things like; Initial user stories Final user stories (complete, covering the entire game requirements) Acceptance criteria Task list Sprint backlogs (before and after each sprint) The agile books seem to have some limited examples, many of which seem contrived or limited. In this era of open source software, there must be a publicly available documented example of the process applied to a real game. I am asking specifically about games because they are so different from normal applications. Regular applications are built to all users to complete specific tasks in order to get stuff done(book a room, print a report etc). People play games for much less tangible reasons, so I think the process is significantly different. [it doesn't have to be scrum, it could be any process, just needs to be a real life example game and be reasonably complete]

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• How to cover the widest range of computers when publishing?

  - by DevilWithin

  When you plan a game, or even when you already made a game, and its time to publish, you wonder how much of your audience is covered by the game technology demands. I'm directing this essentialy to casual games, as I constantly see people having old laptops and being unable to replace them. Laptops with integrated cards whose OpenGL version doesn't even support textures larger than 1024x1024. These people may be avid gamers as well, and a reasonable share of the audience to consider giving them the chance to play casual games, once they cannot play any blockbusters. As I've seen happening, a very "noticeable" example is Angry Birds. It's gameplay is merely casual (I think nobody disagrees here) and still, it uses so high resolution textures that at least OpenGL 2.0 or around is needed, which blocks away a lot of people. So, the actual question is: what is a good tradeoff for this issue? Would it be better to just sacrifice the texture resolution for everyone, but have more supported hardware? Would it be better to keep the high quality and just slice the textures into smaller ones, sacrificing the performance a little bit? What else? Any ideas about this topic are welcome for discussion.

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