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• Users can benefit from Session Tracking

  I use to work for a large Dental Plan marketing website a few years ago and they had a large customer-driven website that sold Dental Plans to consumers. Their website started tracking users as soon as they hit their web servers, and then they logged everything they could about the user. There are a lot of benefits for using session tracking for both the user and the website. Users can benefit from session tracking due to the fact that a website can retain pertaining information for the user so that they do not have to re-enter the same information repeatedly. In addition, websites can hold specific items in a cart for each user so that they can pay for all of their  items at once when they are ready to complete their purchases. Websites can also benefit from session tracking because they can determine where a specific user came from and which advertising partner gave them a sale. This information is very useful when deciding on where to spend an advertising budget. There is only one real disadvantage when it comes to session tracking, Users can not really control what is actually tracked by a website. Yes, they can disable cookies and this will help, but that means that no tracking can be done at all. Most sites require users to have cookies enabled in order for users to make purchases or login to their accounts.

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• How to implement a component based system for items in a web game.

  - by Landstander

  Reading several other questions and answers on using a component based system to define items I want to use one for the items and spells in a web game written in PHP. I'm just stuck on the implementation. I'm going to use a DB schema suggested in this series (part 5 describes the schema); http://t-machine.org/index.php/2007/09/03/entity-systems-are-the-future-of-mmog-development-part-1/ This means I'll have an items table with generic item properties, a table listing all of the components for an item and finally records in each component table used to make up the item. Assuming I can select the first two together in a single query, I'm still going to do N queries for each component type. I'm kind of fine with this because I can cache the data into memcache and check there first before doing any queries. I'll need to build up the items on every request they are used in so the implementation needs to be on the lean side even if they're pulled from memcache. But right there is where I feel confident about implementing a component system for my items ends. I figure I'd need to bring attributes and behaviors into the container from each component it uses. I'm just not sure how to do that effectively and not end up writing a lot of specialized code to deal with each component. For example an AttackComponent might need to know how to filter targets inside of a battle context and also maybe provide an attack behavior. That same item might also have a UsableComponent which allows the item to be used and apply some effect onto a different set of targets filtered differently from the same battle context. Then not every part of an item is an active part, an AttributeBonusComponent might need to only kick in when the item is in an equipped state or when displaying the item details page. Ultimately, how should I bring all of the components together into the container so when I use an item as a weapon I get the correct list of targets? Know when a weapon can also be used as an item? Or to apply the bonuses the item provides to a character object? I feel like I've gone too far down the rabbit hole and I can't grasp onto the simple solution in front of me. (If that makes any sense at all.) Likewise if I were to implement the best answer from here I feel like I'd have a lot of the same questions. How to model multiple "uses" (e.g. weapon) for usable-inventory/object/items (e.g. katana) within a relational database.

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• What are some ways of making manageable complex AI?

  - by Tetrad

  In the past I've used simple systems like finite state machines (FSMs) or hierarchical FSMs to control AI behavior. For any complex system, this pattern falls apart very quickly. I've heard about behavior trees and it seems like that's the next obvious step, but haven't seen a working implementation or really tried going down that route yet. Are there any other patterns to making manageable yet complex AI behaviors?

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• Is there such thing like a "refactoring/maintainability group" role in software companies?

  - by dukeofgaming

  So, I work in a company that does embedded software development, other groups focus in the core development of different products' software and my department (which is in another geographical location) which is located at the factory has to deal with software development as well, but across all products, so that we can also fix things quicker when the lines go down due to software problems with the product. In other words, we are generalists while other groups specialize on each product. Thing is, it is kind of hard to get involved in core development when you are distributed geographically (well, I know it really isn't that hard, but there might be unintended cultural/political barriers when it comes to the discipline of collaborating remotely). So I figured that, since we are currently just putting fires out and somewhat being idle/sub-utilized (even though we are a new department, or maybe that is the reason), I thought that a good role for us could be detecting areas of opportunity of refactoring and rearchitecting code and all other implementations that might have to do with stewarding maintainability and modularity. Other groups aren't focused on this because they don't have the time and they have aggressive deadlines, which damage the quality of the code (eternal story of software projects) The thing is that I want my group/department to be recognized by management and other groups with this role officially, and I'm having trouble to come up with a good definition/identity of our group for this matter. So my question is: is this role something that already exists?, or am I the first one to make something like this up?

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• Handling (many) multiple projects in Git in an enterprise environment

  - by Michael K

  One of the advantages of older version control systems such as CVS and SVN in enterprise development is that anyone can connect to source control and see all the projects that the company has. This can make it easier to get a high level view of what kid of development is happening outside your sprint and also keeps everything in one place and easy to find. However, distributed version control systems (Git, specifically) use the repository as their base unit. They work best with one project (or several closely related projects) per repository. This makes repository management more difficult in most enterprise environments where it is not unusual to have more than 25-50 projects to support. As far as I have been able to determine, you have to keep a list somewhere else of all the repos you have. There is software available, like GitHub, that help, but that still is an extra step beyond a single connection string and listing the contents of the repository. What is the best way to deal with the complexity of multiple repositories?

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• Making efficeint voxel engines using "chunks"

  - by Wardy

  Concept I'm currently looking in to how voxel engines work with a view to possibly making one myself. I see a lot of stuff like this ... https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/home/chunks ... which talks about how to go about reducing the draw calls. What I can't seem to understand is how it actually saves draw call counts on the basis of the logic being something like this ... Without chunks foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() With Chunks foreach chunk in mychunks DrawIfVisible() which then does ... foreach voxel in myvoxels DrawIfVisible() So surely you saved nothing ?!?! You still make a draw call for each visible voxel do you not? A visible voxel needs a draw call in either scenario. The only real saving I can see is that the logic that evaluates a chunk will be able to determine if a large number of voxels are visible or not effectively saving a bit of "is this chunk visible" cpu time. But it's the draw calls that interest me ... The fewer of those, the faster the application. EDIT: In case it makes any difference I will probably be using XNA (DX not OpenGL) for my engine so don't consider my choice of example in the link above my choice of technology. But this question is such that I doubt it would matter.

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• Circular class dependency

  - by shad0w

  Is it bad design to have 2 classes which need each other? I'm writing a small game in which I have a GameEngine class which has got a few GameState objects. To access several rendering methods, these GameState objects also need to know the GameEngine class - so it's a circular dependency. Would you call this bad design? I am just asking, because I am not quite sure and at this time I am still able to refactor these things.

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• Motivation for service layer (instead of just copying dlls)?

  - by BornToCode

  I'm creating an application which has 2 different UIs so I'm making it with a service layer which I understood is appropriate for such case. However I found myself just creating web methods for every single method I have in the BL layer, so the services basically built from methods that looks like this: return customers_bl.Get_Customer_Prices(customer_id); I understood that a main point of the service layer is to prevent duplication of code so I asked myself - well, why not just import the BL.dll (and the DAL.dll) to the other UI, and whenever making a change re-copy the dll files, it might not be so 'neat', but is the all purpose of the service layer to prevent this? {I know something is wrong in my approach, I'm probably missing the importance of service layer, I'd like to get more motivation to create another layer, especially because as it is I found that many of my BL functions ALREADY looks like: return customers_dal.Get_Customer_Prices(cust_id) which led me to ask: was it really necessary to create the BL just because on several functions I actually have LOGIC inside the BL?} so I'm looking for more motivation to creating ONE MORE layer, I'm sure it's not just to make it more convenient that I won't have to re-copy the dlls on changes? Am I grasping it wrong? Any simple guidelines on how to design service layer (corresponding to all the BL layer functions or not? any simple example?) any enlightenment on the subject?

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• How should game objects be aware of each other?

  - by Jefffrey

  I find it hard to find a way to organize game objects so that they are polymorphic but at the same time not polymorphic. Here's an example: assuming that we want all our objects to update() and draw(). In order to do that we need to define a base class GameObject which have those two virtual pure methods and let polymorphism kicks in: class World { private: std::vector<GameObject*> objects; public: // ... update() { for (auto& o : objects) o->update(); for (auto& o : objects) o->draw(window); } }; The update method is supposed to take care of whatever state the specific class object needs to update. The fact is that each objects needs to know about the world around them. For example: A mine needs to know if someone is colliding with it A soldier should know if another team's soldier is in proximity A zombie should know where the closest brain, within a radius, is For passive interactions (like the first one) I was thinking that the collision detection could delegate what to do in specific cases of collisions to the object itself with a on_collide(GameObject*). Most of the the other informations (like the other two examples) could just be queried by the game world passed to the update method. Now the world does not distinguish objects based on their type (it stores all object in a single polymorphic container), so what in fact it will return with an ideal world.entities_in(center, radius) is a container of GameObject*. But of course the soldier does not want to attack other soldiers from his team and a zombie doesn't case about other zombies. So we need to distinguish the behavior. A solution could be the following: void TeamASoldier::update(const World& world) { auto list = world.entities_in(position, eye_sight); for (const auto& e : list) if (auto enemy = dynamic_cast<TeamBSoldier*>(e)) // shoot towards enemy } void Zombie::update(const World& world) { auto list = world.entities_in(position, eye_sight); for (const auto& e : list) if (auto enemy = dynamic_cast<Human*>(e)) // go and eat brain } but of course the number of dynamic_cast<> per frame could be horribly high, and we all know how slow dynamic_cast can be. The same problem also applies to the on_collide(GameObject*) delegate that we discussed earlier. So what it the ideal way to organize the code so that objects can be aware of other objects and be able to ignore them or take actions based on their type?

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• Making a Living Developing Games

  - by cable729

  I'm in my last year of high school, and I've been looking at colleges. I'm taking a C++ class at a local community college and I don't feel that it's worth it. I could have learned everything in that class in a week. This had me thinking, would a CS degree even be worth it? How much can it teach me if I can learn everything on my own? Even if I do need to learn more advanced subjects, many colleges put their material online AND I can buy a book. Will companies hire me if I don't have a CS degree? If I have a portfolio will I stand a chance? What kind of things are needed in the portfolio? I want to live doing what I love - programming. So I will do it. I'm just not sure that a CS degree will do anything to me. In addition, if there is a benefit to getting a CS degree, what places are the best?

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• Which version management design methodology to be used in a Dependent System nodes?

  - by actiononmail

  This is my first question so please indicate if my question is too vague and not understandable. My question is more related to High Level Design. We have a system (specifically an ATCA Chassis) configured in a Star Topology, having Master Node (MN) and other sub-ordinate nodes(SN). All nodes are connected via Ethernet and shall run on Linux OS with other proprietary applications. I have to build a recovery Framework Design so that any software entity, whether its Linux, Ramdisk or application can be rollback to previous good versions if something bad happens. Thus I think of maintaining a State Version Matrix over MN, where each State(1,2....n) represents Good Kernel, Ramdisk and application versions for each SN. It may happen that one SN version can dependent on other SN's version. Please see following diagram:- So I am in dilemma whether to use Package Management Methodology used by Debian Distributions (Like Ubuntu) or GIT repository methodology; in order to do a Rollback to previous good versions on either one SN or on all the dependent SNs. The method should also be easier for upgrading SNs along with MNs. Some of the features which I am trying to achieve:- 1) Upgrade of even single software entity is achievable without hindering others. 2) Dependency checks must be done before applying rollback or upgrade on each of the SN 3) User Prompt should be given in case dependency fails.If User still go for rollback, all the SNs should get notification to rollback there own releases (if required). 4) The binaries should be distributed on SNs accordingly so that recovery process is faster; rather fetching every time from MN. 5) Release Patches from developer for bug fixes, feature enhancement can be applied on running system. 6) Each version can be easily tracked and distinguishable. Thanks

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• Creating an Interface To a Language's Standard Library?

  - by Nathan Arthur

  In the process of learning test-driven development, I've been introduced to dependency injection and the use of interfaces, and have started using these concepts in my own PHP code in order to make it more testable. There have been times when I've needed to test code that was doing things like calling the PHP time() function. In order to make these tests predictable, it seemed logical to create an interface to the standard PHP functions I use so that I can mock them out in my tests. Is this good software design? What are the pros and cons of doing this? I've found myself groaning at how quickly my PHP interface can stick its fingers into everything I do. Is there a better way to make code that relies on PHP-accessed state and functions more testable?

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• Core i7 with 4GB - go 64 bit or stay 32bit..?

  - by tommed

  I have a Core i7 laptop with 4gb ram. In windows, the disadvantage of using the 32bit OS would be that a single app could not use more than 2gb of ram (+ the 2gb shared kernel-space memory) except when setting a boot switch which reduces the amount of shared kernel memory, then it's 3GB max per app. What disadvantages/limitations would I have in Ubuntu for sticking to the 32bit OS? (If any?) - As I only have 4GB of ram, I can't see why I need to use the 64bit version?

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• When to unload graphics object from main memory?

  - by piotrek

  I writing my resource mangaer, and I consider about how it can work for graphics objects (like textures, meshes). I think about this : I want to load texture (in pseudocode): Texture t = resMgr.GetTex("image.png"); and GetTex make something like this: load texture from disk to main memory create texture object (load it to gpu memory) unload texture from main memory I consider about 3 step, does game engines that you know unload meshes/textures after load them into gpu memory ?

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• 2d, Top-down map with different levels

  - by Ktash

  So, I'm creating a 2d, top down, sprite based (tiled) game, and right now I'm working on maps (well, a map editor at the moment, but it will be creating my maps, so basically the same thing). The scenario So, I'm thinking about efficiency and creating a map in pieces. In each piece, I plan on having 'layers'. Basically, I plan on rendering it down to a 'below hero' level, and an 'above hero' level, with the hero rendered in between obviously. There will likely also be a 'on level with hero' layer, but I'm not quite there yet. Not even worrying about events or interaction yet. Just looking to get a hero on the screen. Now for movement, I obviously need to know what tiles can be moved and in what direction. My plan at the moment is each tile getting 8 bits (4 'can enter in direction' bits, 4 'can leave in direction'). This will allow me to limit movement and even allow one way directional movement. The dilemma This works great for a lot of scenarios. It will allow me to store a map in essentially 3 layers, a string, and gives me flexibility going forward. However, I can't create maps that themselves have layers. A good example is a bridge where the user can go under or over the bridge without invalid moves being allowed. I can't create a platform and allow movement underneath. These are things I would like to be able to include in my game. My idea In theory, I could allow multiple hero layers and then allow multiple sets of 'below' and 'above' layers (or sandwich layers). But this complicates my system, and makes movement between maps potentially tricky (If the hero is on the third layer at the edge of a map, but that corresponds to the second layer on the other map, how can I allow or disallow movement). My question Is there a better way to manage multiple maps with multiple levels like this where a users level may be 'connected' on different levels on different maps? Or even... Am I doing this the hard way? Is there a more standard way to handle top-down 2d tiled maps that I am just not aware of? Things to note or that might be helpful This will be done in Javascript (transferred around in JSON) State will need to be transferred quickly, so a map-id and x/y/direction should be enough to get me a boolean 'can move' value Maps will not be standard sized (though they will be in a certain number of tiles) Making an editor tool so that I can have others help, so something that I can create in a tool would be helpful 'Teleportation' locations will likely need to exist to get into building maps and to and from different map sets (which will not necessarily be connected), but have not been created yet (lumping in with events at the moment).

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• Any good stories or blog posts of a startup's server/stack evolving as they got bigger? [closed]

  - by user72245

  I know lots of startups often go for practical, simple, efficient. So maybe tossing a Ruby program on a basic Apache server. Get some users up and running, etc. Then Ruby starts to not be fast enough, so they throw more servers at the problem? And load balancing or something? And then when stuff gets REALLY crazy, language changes, etc? I'm looking for someone who has cleanly and simply told their own company's story like this. Are there any good ones?

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• Any recommended books/resources on component-based design?

  - by user1163640

  I come from a background with heavy use of the classical object-oriented paradigm for software development. The company I am a part of switched to Unity not too long ago, and we're all very excited to get started using it However, one aspect that have sparked my interested, and which I think will become a very important part of our future development, is Unity's approach to component-based design with scripting; with less focus on typical hierarchical aspect. Question I was wondering if anyone could recommend any good books on this subject? I have had trouble finding any books or books with reliable reviews, and was wondering if anyone more experienced here had something to say on the issue? Any other kind of resource would be excellent too, I'm just interested in getting to learn everything I can about it. This is not meant as a discussion about best books or resources on the topic, but simply a question regarding any resources that any of you find useful. Thank you all for your time!

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• Is it dangerous for me to give some of my Model classes Control-like methods?

  - by Pureferret

  In my personal project I have tried to stick to MVC, but I've also been made aware that sticking to MVC too tightly can be a bad thing as it makes writing awkward and forces the flow of the program in odd ways (i.e. some simple functions can be performed by something that normally wouldn't, and avoid MVC related overheads). So I'm beginning to feel justified in this compromise: I have some 'manager programs' that 'own' data and have some way to manipulate it, as such I think they'd count as both part of the model, and part of the control, and to me this feels more natural than keepingthem separate. For instance: One of my Managers is the PlayerCharacterManager that has these methods: void buySkill(PlayerCharacter playerCharacter, Skill skill); void changeName(); void changeRole(); void restatCharacter(); void addCharacterToGame(); void createNewCharacter(); PlayerCharacter getPlayerCharacter(); List<PlayerCharacter> getPlayersCharacter(Player player); List<PlayerCharacter> getAllCharacters(); I hope the mothod names are transparent enough that they don't all need explaining. I've called it a manager because it will help manage all of the PlayerCharacter 'model' objects the code creates, and create and keep a map of these. I may also get it to store other information in the future. I plan to have another two similar classes for this sort of control, but I will orchestrate when and how this happens, and what to do with the returned data via a pure controller class. This splitting up control between informed managers and the controller, as opposed to operating just through a controller seems like it will simplify my code and make it flow more. My question is, is this a dangerous choice, in terms of making the code harder to follow/test/fix? Is this somethign established as good or bad or neutral? I oculdn't find anything similar except the idea of Actors but that's not quite why I'm trying to do. Edit: Perhaps an example is needed; I'm using the Controller to update the view and access the data, so when I click the 'Add new character to a player button' it'll call methods in the controller that then go and tell the PlayerCharacterManager class to create a new character instance, it'll call the PlayerManager class to add that new character to the player-character map, and then it'll add this information to the database, and tell the view to update any GUIs effected. That is the sort of 'control sequence' I'm hoping to create with these manager classes.

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• Question about modeling with MVC (the pattern, not the MS stuff / non web)

  - by paul

  I'm working on an application in which I'm looking to employ the MVC pattern, but I've come up against a design decision point I could use some help with. My application is going to deal with the design of state-machines. Currently the MVC model holds information about the machine's states, inputs, outputs, etc. The view is going to show a diagram for the machine, graphically allowing the user to add new states, establish transitions, and put the states in a pleasing arrangement, among other things. I would like to store part of the diagram's state (e.g. the x and y state positions) when the machine information is stored for later retrieval, and am wondering how best to go about structuring the model(s?) for this. It seems like this UI information is more closely related to the view than to the state-machine model, so I was thinking that a secondary model might be in order, but I am reluctant to pursue this route because of the added complexity. Adding this information to the current model doesn't seem the right way to go about it either. This is the my first time using the MVC pattern so I'm still figuring things out. Any input would be appreciated.

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• Architecting persistence (and other internal systems). Interfaces, composition, pure inheritance or centralization?

  - by Vandell

  Suppose that you need to implement persistence, I think that you're generally limited to four options (correct me if I'm wrong, please) Each persistant class: Should implement an interface (IPersistent) Contains a 'persist-me' object that is a specialized object (or class) that's made only to be used the class that contains it. Inherit from Persistent (a base class) Or you can create a gigantic class (or package) called Database and make your persistence logic there. What are the advantages and problems that can come from each of one? In a small (5kloc) and algorithmically (or organisationally) simple app what is probably the best option?

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• Would opencv be a good choice for image colour summarization?

  - by codecowboy

  I would like to analyse a set of hundreds of thousands of product images (clothing, electronic goods etc) and retrieve the dominant colours in each. I'm only interested in the top 3 or 4 colours. The aim is to achieve a degree of certainty that x image is mostly red or image y is mostly orange and blue. The images are likely to be colour jpegs of reasonable quality and approximately 100kb in size. I would like to use C# and the solution should run on a Linux server, preferably using open source libraries. Would opencv be a good choice for this? What other libraries or specific algorithms might be helpful?

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• Starting with JMF

  - by Fasih Khatib

  I have recently downloaded JMF and don;t know where to start. Most online resources begin directly with programming and give no background of the JMF classes what so ever. So, I was planning on using a book or something that would give me ground-up knowledge of JMF. However, the books available on Amazon are of 1980's and 1990's. Can you please suggest any good books or references? Books preferred. Note: There was this one 2011 book available that was a print-on-demand collection of wikipedia articles on JMF but I decided not to opt for it because wikipedia articles should not be sold for money

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• Can all code be represented as a series of Map / Filter / Reduce operations?

  - by Mongus Pong

  I have recently been refactoring large chunks of code and replacing them with Linq queries. Removing the language bias - Linq is essentially a set of Map / Filter and Reduce operations that operate on a sequence of data. This got me thinking, how far would I theoretically be able to take this. Would I be able to rewrite the whole code base into a series (or even a single) of Map / Filter and Reduce operations. Unfortunately I get paid to do useful stuff, so I haven't been able to experiment much further, but I can't think of any code structure that couldn't be re structured as such. Side effected code can be dealt with via monads.. Even output is essentially mapping memory addresses to screen addresses. Is there anything that couldn't be (theoretically) rewritten as a Linq query?

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• Question about design

  - by lukeluke

  Two fast questions about two design decisions: Suppose that you are checking collisions between game elements. When you find a collision between object 1 and object 2, do you play immediately a sound effect or do you insert it in a list and, in a later a stage, do you process all sound effects? Same question as above for user input. When the user presses key 'keypad left' do you insert the event in a queue and process it later or do you update character position immediately? Thx

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• C++ Game Engine Book/Tutorial/Anything recent?

  - by TheNoob

  Before I get flamed, please understand that I have been looking for a while now. Yes, I have found a good amount of game engine tutorials...except filled with errors, out of date syntax, missing crucial information, and so on. Is there anywhere with a recent tutorial, or a book, anything at all? I'm not asking for an opinion in graphics API's, just a point in the right direction to get started on game engine development. I just want to make it clear, I have googled/stacked like crazy. Any help appreciated. Thank you.

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