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• Would this be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• WordPress is now nicely supported on SQL Server (and SQL Azure for that matter)

  - by Eric Nelson

  WordPress is enormously popular for blogs and full websites thanks to an awesome eco system which has built up around it, the simplicity (relatively) of getting it up and running plus the flexibility to “bend it” in all sorts of directions. When I say bend, check out the following which are all WordPress sites My “back up blog” http://iupdateable.wordpress.com/  My groups “odd site” :) http://ubelly.com My favourite “cheap games” site http://www.frugalgaming.co.uk/  WordPress users typically run their sites on Linux and MySQL, although PHP (the language in which WordPress is written) can be happily run on Windows. Both fine technologies in their own right, but for me (and probably a fair few others) I would love to use WordPress but with the technologies I know best (aka Windows, IIS and SQL Server). However, that has proven to be actually rather tricky in practice to get working – until now. Earlier last month OmniTI released a patch for WordPress which provides SQL Server and SQL Azure support.  In parallel with that some fine folks inside Microsoft have also created http://wordpress.visitmix.com which contains information about running WordPress on the Microsoft platform with a particular focus on SQL Server and SQL Azure.  Top stuff! To run WordPress with SQL Server: Download and Install the WordPress on SQL Server Distro/Patch And then you will quite likely need to migrate: Check out how to Migrate to Windows and SQL Server by Zach Owens who is moving his blog to Windows and SQL Server Enjoy Related Links Running PHP on IIS on Windows http://php.iis.net/  If PHP is not your thing, then the following Blog engines are .NET based BlogEngine http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/ DasBlog http://www.dasblog.info/ Subtext http://subtextproject.com/ (which happens to power http://geekswithblogs.net where my main blog is http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable)

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• Minecraft in jdk 1.7.0_u2 x64

  - by Nela Drobná

  I have Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit and I installed JDK 1.7.0 update 2 x64 via webupd8 page. But currently I have problem with minecraft game. After downloading launcher from Minecraft.net and lauch the game by java -jar /home/zrebec/Downloads/minecraft.jar launcehr is launched normaly, after login the game download the updates but then I got just the black screen with this in terminal: Setting user: zrebec, -356009615199623309 Exception in thread "Minecraft main thread" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /home/zrebec/.minecraft/bin/natives/liblwjgl.so: /home/zrebec/.minecraft/bin/natives/liblwjgl.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch) at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1928) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1825) at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Runtime.java:792) at java.lang.System.load(System.java:1059) at org.lwjgl.Sys$1.run(Sys.java:69) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at org.lwjgl.Sys.doLoadLibrary(Sys.java:65) at org.lwjgl.Sys.loadLibrary(Sys.java:81) at org.lwjgl.Sys.<clinit>(Sys.java:98) at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.<clinit>(Display.java:132) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.a(SourceFile:180) at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.run(SourceFile:648) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) Please anyone can help me with this? I think that problem will be in architecture becase: liblwjgl.so: /home/zrebec/.minecraft/bin/natives/liblwjgl.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch) Any idea please? I know, maybe this one is off topic because maybe its not Ubuntu problem maybe but in 64-bit works all perfectly and I think that accepted answer can help to many users and can make better playing games under linux. Really. Thank you very much for any idea.

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• Keyboard freezes / stuck if a key pressed repeatedly

  - by Aziz Rahmad

  I use Acer 4530. This problem has happened long since Ubuntu 10.10 and now that I use 11.04 dual booted with Linux Mint 10. Everytime I press one key repeatedly, like when I read a long article in a website/ebook or when I play games which required me to press arrow keys repeatedly, it would randomly freeze. That is, whatever I press on keyboard has no effect, and that also happens with touchpad. However, the USB mouse works just fine. I later found out that it's not actually freeze but more like it's like the key stuck. For example when I play tetris which I usually press w (down) button repeatedly, after some times it would freeze. And if I put the cursor in, say, browser's address bar, it would type "wwww....." infinitely. The only way I could fix it is by suspend the laptop, either by using mouse or by closing the lid. And instead of suspended, in that case the laptop would automatically wake up and everything will be fine. (Usually my laptop would wake up after suspended by pressing any key) It has happened since the first time I use Ubuntu, 10.10, and it also happens in Linux Mint 10, and until now in Ubuntu 11.04. It never happened when I use Windows, though. Anyone has ever encounter similar problem? Anyone know how to fix it permanently?

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• Performance issues with visibility detection and object transparency

  - by maul

  I'm working on a 3d game that has a view similar to classic isometric games (diablo, etc.). One of the things I'm trying to implement is the effect of turning walls transparent when the player walks behind them. By itself this is not a huge issue, but I'm having trouble determining which walls should be transparent exactly. I can't use a circle or square mask. There are a lot of cases where the wall piece at the same (relative) position has different visibility depending on the surrounding area. With the help of a friend I came up with this algorithm: Create a grid around the player that contains a lot of "visibility points" (my game is semi tile-based so I create one point for every tile on the grid) - the size of the square's side is close to the radius where I make objects transparent. I found 6x6 to be a good value, so that's 36 visibility points total. For every visibility point on the grid, check if that point is in the player's line of sight. For every visibility point that is in the LOS, cast a ray from the camera to that point and mark all objects the ray hits as transparent. This algorithm works - not perfectly, but only requires some tuning - however this is very slow. As you can see, it requries 36 ray casts minimum, but most of the time 60-70 depending on the position. That's simply too much for the CPU. Is there a better way to do this? I'm using Unity 3D but I'm not looking for an engine-specific solution.

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• How do I choose the scaling factor of a 3D game world?

  - by concept3d

  I am making a 3D tank game prototype with some physics simulation, am using C++. One of the decisions I need to make is the scale of the game world in relation to reality. For example, I could consider 1 in-game unit of measurement to correspond to 1 meter in reality. This feels intuitive, but I feel like I might be missing something. I can think of the following as potential problems: 3D modelling program compatibility. (?) Numerical accuracy. (Does this matter?) Especially at large scales, how games like Battlefield have huge maps: How don't they lose numerical accuracy if they use 1:1 mapping with real world scale, since floating point representation tend to lose more precision with larger numbers (e.g. with ray casting, physics simulation)? Gameplay. I don't want the movement of units to feel slow or fast while using almost real world values like -9.8 m/s^2 for gravity. (This might be subjective.) Is it ok to scale up/down imported assets or it's best fit with a world with its original scale? Rendering performance. Are large meshes with the same vertex count slower to render? I'm wondering if I should split this into multiple questions...

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• Kinect will recognise your finger movement

  - by Boonei

  Sources inside Microsoft suggest they MS guys are tying to improve motion controller. This could be a huge boost to gaming. There are quite a few things that we can do with our fingers when playing games like driving, shooting,sports etc. If fingers are captured then  XBox will give more realistic version of our avatar. Eurogamer has also suggested the same according to their sources. It would be only(mostly) a software update and would not require a new camera, because the USB controller interface currently in place in Kinect can take in data up-to 35MBps. The current utilization is only around roughly 1/2 of it. So there is currently a facility to send more data. Little more tech data, Kinect does transmit 320×240-pixel in 30 fps, if the device could capture and transfer at 640×480 pixels, then better resolution can detect more movements compared to current level of detection. Lets wait and watch ! This article titled,Kinect will recognise your finger movement, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• How to organize a programming course?

  - by Bogdan Gavril

  I've been given the task to train our manual testers to become developers in test (write test automation!). some have basic programing knowledge (either dabbling in PHP or reading stuff) and some who have no experience. Note that I do have teaching experience, but with real students, not employees, and one concern is that they will not put extra hours except the 20% management gave them for the transition. Language to be taught and used: C# We have 8 hours per week to do this and should decide if they will make it in 2 months. I am thinking of a combined approach: use a manual such as Head First C# (although I'm not happy with the labs, they're mostly games and I don't want to add UI complexities) have them read from the manual do labs with them, solving more and more difficult problems and explain the theoretical stuff as well have them do a bigger project towards the end Some questions: do you have a better suggestion as far as manuals go? do you have a better aproach? Focus less on labs? what kind of assesments should I use and how often? should I let them do a bigger project (bank system or small game) and how much time should I invest in that? ideeas on labs? other resources ? Any other tips would be most welcomed! Thanks!

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• Desktop Fun: Wolves Wallpaper Collection

  - by Asian Angel

  Wolves represent aspects of nature that refuse to be tamed, seeking to remain forever free. If you feel a special kinship with these spirited creatures, then you will definitely want to bring this beautiful pack home to your desktop. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7 Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic] Orbital Battle for Terra Wallpaper

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• What is a legal way to use music from registered authors in a game?

  - by mm24

  I have recently asked a question about music in games like Guitar Hero. I have found that that in Europe (at least) if I do want to use a track composed by a musician member of a royalty collecting society I need to pay a flat fee to the society and not only to the member. So a "one-to-one" agreement is not valid and the society can come up to me and ask me for money for each download. Even if for FREE! This is a fee sheet list of the UK agency: for fee, see "Permanent download services" It is about 1,200 GBP for less than 22,000 copies and they DON'T specify anything more and they said me on the phone that I need to wait and see how many downloads I get before knowing the price. This is kind of crazy as If I give away the App for free I will have to PAY 1,200 GBP!! I am shocked and I feel very bad. One agency suggested me to use a fake name of the artist, but in this way is not fair to my collaborators as what they hope is that the App gets lots of downloads and in this way that other people will get to know about them and hopefully commission them more work. The other solution is to work only with non registered musicians. The question here to you is: Has anyone found a legal way to use music from registered authors in a game?

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• 2D platformers: why make the physics dependent on the framerate?

  - by Archagon

  "Super Meat Boy" is a difficult platformer that recently came out for PC, requiring exceptional control and pixel-perfect jumping. The physics code in the game is dependent on the framerate, which is locked to 60fps; this means that if your computer can't run the game at full speed, the physics will go insane, causing (among other things) your character to run slower and fall through the ground. Furthermore, if vsync is off, the game runs extremely fast. Could those experienced with 2D game programming help explain why the game was coded this way? Wouldn't a physics loop running at a constant rate be a better solution? (Actually, I think a physics loop is used for parts of the game, since some of the entities continue to move normally regardless of the framerate. Your character, on the other hand, runs exactly [fps/60] as fast.) What bothers me about this implementation is the loss of abstraction between the game engine and the graphics rendering, which depends on system-specific things like the monitor, graphics card, and CPU. If, for whatever reason, your computer can't handle vsync, or can't run the game at exactly 60fps, it'll break spectacularly. Why should the rendering step in any way influence the physics calculations? (Most games nowadays would either slow down the game or skip frames.) On the other hand, I understand that old-school platformers on the NES and SNES depended on a fixed framerate for much of their control and physics. Why is this, and would it be possible to create a patformer in that vein without having the framerate dependency? Is there necessarily a loss of precision if you separate the graphics rendering from the rest of the engine? Thank you, and sorry if the question was confusing.

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• The Twelve Days of Geekmas

  - by YatriTrivedi

  Looking for some last minute shopping for your favorite geek? We put a few holiday shopping items into the form of a song to show off just how geeky your Christmas can be. Make sure that you read through the list to the tune of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Yes, we’re really being silly today. Have fun! Image by dawolf On the twelfth day of Geekmas, a dear friend gave to me… Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better 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 The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

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• How to go from mainstream to indie development?

  - by Salano Software

  I'm currently working as a game programmer for a AAA-level developer and publisher - which falls into the 'nice problem to have' category, I know, except that I'm growing more and more disenchanted with the direction of both the company and the AAA portion of the industry as a whole. I don't see any games on the studio's calendar for the next several years that I'm actually interested in working on; it looks like a continuing parade of sequels, license extensions and largely-derivative work. Which isn't to say that there won't be interesting things to do on those projects; but more and more I find myself wanting to do something fundamentally different. It seems like the market's never been better for smaller-scale projects, and I'd love to jump into that (and I've done small demos for Android and have started digging into iOS), but I obviously can't put anything out while I'm working for the company, and I'm concerned that I shouldn't even do substantial development in my spare time on anything I'd eventually like to release on my own. At the same time, I'm leery of leaving the job I've got for hopefully-obvious reasons, especially without a specific plan in place. Has anyone out there got experience with 'going indie' out of a mainstream job, and does anyone have specific suggestions as to what the best approach is and what I should specifically be thinking about or be careful of?

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• How to learn the math behind the code?

  - by Solomon Wise

  I am a 12 year old who has recently gotten into programming. (Although I know that the number of books you have read does not determine your programming competency or ability, just to paint a "map" of where I am in terms of the content I know...) I've finished the books: Python 3 For Absolute Beginners Pro Python Python Standard Library by Example Beautiful Code Agile Web Development With Rails and am about halfway into Programming Ruby. I have written many small programs (One that finds which files have been updated and deleted in a directory, one that compares multiple players' fantasy baseball value, and some text based games, and many more). Obviously, as I'm not some sort of child prodigy, I can't take a formal Computer Science course until high school. I really want to learn computer science to increase my knowledge about the code, and the how the code runs. I've really become interested in the math part after reading the source code for Python's random module. Is there a place where I can learn CS, or programming math online for free, at a level that would be at least partially understandable to a person my age?

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• My Windows 8 App in Windows Store

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Finally, you have a good reason to upgrade to Windows 8! My Brain Eaters app was just accepted into the Windows Store. Just in time for Halloween! The Brain Eaters app is a sample app from my soon to be released book Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript. The game illustrates several important programming concepts which you need when building Windows 8 games with JavaScript such as using HTML5 Canvas and the new requestAnimationFrame() method. If you are looking for Halo or Call of Duty then you will be disappointed. If you are looking for PAC-MAN then you will be disappointed. I created the simplest arcade game that I could imagine so I could explain it in the book. All of the code for the game is included with the book. The goal of the game is to eat the food pellets while avoiding the zombies while running around a maze. Every time you get eaten by a zombie, you can hear my six year old son saying “Oh No!”. Here’s the link to the game: http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/brain-eaters/e283c8d0-1fed-4b26-a8bf-464584c9de6d

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• Suitable SDK to develop quick game?

  - by gRnt

  I'm currently undertaking a personal project at home that I need to turn around inside the next few months (which working full time and still learning programming makes it a tad difficult). I'm looking for suggestions on SDK's or tools (preferably free or that come with games, similar to steam tools) that I can use to develop a "game". I'm OK with coding but have no 3D development skills at all. I've very little experience with mod tools or SDK's at all but I'm hoping someone can point me in the direction of one that does the following: A decent library of prefab 3D models to build scenes. Ability to add scripting to the scene I've used Unity before and would prefer to continue to do so however I really have the worst 3D skills imaginable and can't waste time learning them. I'd be looking for pre-fab items that are both industrial and possibly more lush environments (trees etc). If it makes any difference (due to licencing and what-not) I WILL NOT be selling this game or marketing it in any way and I am a University Student if any places do educations licences. Another alternative would be to source free 3d models elsewhere but again while I'm still learning I have no idea where to look if someone could point me in the right direction I'll do the rest of the digging. Thanks

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• Camera Collision inside the room model

  - by sanddy

  I am having a problem in Calculating the camera collision for my Room model which consists of sofa, tables and other models. The users shall be moving the camera front, back, rotating so i need to make sure that the camera does not collide with any of the models with in the room. I have treated all my models inside the room by BoundingBox[] and the camera by BoundingSphere. So, far i have implemented collision by looking into the tutorial from http://www.toymaker.info/Games/XNA/html/xna_model_collisions.html which was great. But, I guess the problem lies in the Transformation part. I debugged and found some points to be at Vector(-XXX,-XXX,-XXX) where X is digit. Also i found my radius of some models where too large(in thousand, i just looked into its radius value before converting to BoundingBox). Do I need to scale the model for collision??? Below are my code:- On My LoadContent(): Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[myModel.Bones.Count]; myModel.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); int index = 0; box = new List<BoundingBox>(); BoundingBox worldModel = Utility.CalculateBoundingBox(myModel); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in myModel.Meshes) { Vector3[] obb = new Vector3[8]; worldModel.GetCorners(obb); Vector3[] asdf = (Vector3[])obb.Clone(); Vector3.Transform(obb, ref transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index], obb); BoundingBox worldBox = BoundingBox.CreateFromPoints(obb); box.Add(worldBox); index++; } On CameraPosition Update: BoundingSphere bs = new BoundingSphere(this.cameraPos, 5.0f); if (RoomWalkthrough.Utility.CheckCollision(bs, bb)) { // Do Something } Please Help.

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• Load order in XNA?

  - by marc wellman

  I am wondering whether the is a mechanism to manually control the call-order of void Game.LoadContent() as it is the case with void Game.Draw(GameTime gt) by setting int DrawableGameComponent.DrawOrder ? except the order that results from adding components to the Game.Components container and maybe there exists something similar with Game.Update(GameTime gt) ? UPDATE To exemplify my issue consider you have several game components which do depends to each other regarding their instantiation. All are inherited from DrawableGameComponent. Now suppose that in one of these components you are loading a Model from the games content pipeline and add it to some static container in order to provide access to it for other game components. public override LoadContent() { // ... Model m = _contentManager.Load<Model>(@"content/myModel"); // GameComponents is a static class with an accessible list where game components reside. GameComponents.AddCompnent(m); // ... } Now it's easy to imagine that this components load method has to precede other game components that do want to access the model m in their own load method.

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• Feeling Old? Before Middleware, Gamification, and MacBook Airs

  - by ultan o'broin

  Think we're done with green screens in the enterprise apps world? Fusion User Experience Advocate Debra Lilley (@debralilley) drew my attention to this super retro iPad terminal emulator app being used by a colleague to connect to JDE. Yes, before Middleware, this is how you did it. Surely the ultimate in hipster retro coexistence? Mind you, I've had to explain to lots of people I showed this to just what Telnet and IBM AS/400 are (or were). MochaSoft TN5250 Terminal Emulator iPad App This OG way of connecting to apps is a timely reminder not to forget all those legacy apps out there and the UX aspect to adoption and change. If a solution already works well and there's an emotional attachment to it, then the path to upgrade needs to be very clear and have valuable and demonstrable ROI for users and decision makers, a path that spans emotion and business benefits. On a pure usability front, that old school charm of the character-based green glow look 'n' feel could be easily done as a skin, personalizing an application for the user so that they feel comfortable with it. Fun too particularly in the mobile and BYOD space! In fact, there is a thriving retro apps market out there as illustrated by this spiffy lunar lander app (hat tip: John Cartan), part of a whole set of Atari's greatest hits available for iOS. Lunar Lander App And of course, there's the iOS version of Pong. Check out this retro Apple Mac SE/30 too. I actually remember using one of these. I have an Apple Mac Plus somewhere in my parents' house. I tried it out recently, and it actually booted, although all it was good for was playing the onboard games. Looking at all these olde worlde things makes me feel very old, but kinda warm inside too. The latter is a key part of today's applications user experience too.

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• My boss is feuding with his boss. My workload is expanding What should I do?

  - by steve

  These two have always had a somewhat shaky relationship when they were on the same level. The other guy was recently promoted to director and now my boss reports to him. On the surface, they appear to get along when they get together, but my boss despises the man and badmouths him every chance that he gets (to peers, subordinates, etc). He believe that the director is setting him up to fail. The Director and upper management is holding my boss responsible for the not-so-great performance by the team as of late. He's been playing games to make my boss look bad. Due to lay offs, we don't have the manpower to deliever the results that we did before...but expectations have not lowered...and my boss is taking the heat for it. Now he's on the warpath and starting to micromanage. He's giving everyone more work. He's forcing us midlevel guys to take responsibility for the level one techs' performance. I'm spending less and less time coding....and more time babysitting vendors, techs, etc. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing because I'm sorta burnt out on coding, but I don't really care for the idea of having to be responsible for others poor performance....isn't that the manager's job? Anyway, do you guys have any suggestions on dealing with the situation?

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• How to balance a non-symmetric "extension" based game?

  - by Klaim

  Most strategy games have fixed units and possible behaviours. However, think of a game like Magic The Gathering : each card is a set of rules. Regularly, new sets of card types are created. I remember that the firsts editions of the game have been said to be prohibited in official tournaments because the cards were often too powerful. Later extensions of the game provided more subtle effects/rules in cards and they managed to balance the game apparently effectively, even if there is thousands of different cards possible. I'm working on a strategy game that is a bit in the same position : every units are provided by extensions and the game is thought to be extended for some years, at least. The effects variety of the units are very large even with some basic design limitations set to be sure it's manageable. Each player choose a set of units to play with (defining their global strategy) before playing (like chooseing a themed deck of Magic cards). As it's a strategy game (you can think of Magic as a strategy game too in some POV), it's essentially skirmish based so the game have to be fair, even if the players don't choose the same units before starting to play. So, how do you proceed to balance this type of non-symmetric (strategy) game when you know it will always be extended? For the moment, I'm trying to apply those rules but I'm not sure it's right because I don't have enough design experience to know : each unit would provide one unique effect; each unit should have an opposite unit that have an opposite effect that would cancel each others; some limitations based on the gameplay; try to get a lot of beta tests before each extension release? Looks like I'm in the most complex case?

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• Implementing a multilanguage AI contest platform

  - by Alejandro Piad

  This is a followup to this question. To sum: I'm implementing an AI contest site, where each user may submit several AI implementations for different games. Think about Google AI Challenge but instead of just having a big event once a year, I would like it more on a league fashion, with all virtual players playing with each other every some close period of time. I want to support as many programming languages as possible. I've seen that contest sites (like codeforces) ask you to submit a source code and interact through stdin and stdout. The first question is: what is the best way of supporting multiple languages? As I see it, I can either ask people to upload some binary/script, and interact either through stdin/*stdout*, or sockets, or the file system; or ask people to submit source code, and wrap it with whatever is necessary for the interaction. I would like to skip the need to compile the code by myself (in the server, I mean), but I am willing to do it if its the "best" choice. I need to comunicate virtual players with each other, or even better, with some intermediary arbiter. The second question is regarding security. If I'm going to be running user code in my server, I want to ensure strict security conditions, like no file system access, no networking, etc. Otherwise it would be a safe heaven for hackers. I will be implementing the engine/arbiter in .NET. I would like to support at least C#, C++, Java and Python for the user's implementations. I'm willing to write interfaces for each of these languages to simplify the user interaction with the system. Thanks in advance.

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• How can I rank teams based off of head to head wins/losses

  - by TMP

  I'm trying to write an algorithm (specifically in Ruby) that will rank teams based on their record against each other. If a team A and team B have won the same amount of games against each other, then it goes down to point differentials. Here's an example: A beat B two times B beats C one time A beats D three times C bests D two times D beats C one time B beats A one time Which sort of reduces to A[B] = 2 B[C] = 1 A[D] = 3 C[D] = 2 D[C] = 1 B[A] = 1 Which sort of reduces to A[B] = 1 B[C] = 1 A[D] = 3 C[D] = 1 D[C] = -1 B[A] = -1 Which is about how far I've got I think the results of this specific algorithm would be: A, B, C, D But I'm stuck on how to transition from my nested hash-like structure to the results. My psuedo-code is as follows (I can post my ruby code too if someone wants): For each game(g): hash[g.winner][g.loser] += 1 That leaves hash as the first reduction above hash2 = clone of hash For each key(winner), value(losers hash) in hash: For each key(loser), value(losses against winner): hash2[loser][winner] -= losses Which leaves hash2 as the second reduction Feel free to as me question or edit this to be more clear, I'm not sure of how to put it in a very eloquent way. Thanks!

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• Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?

  - by Eric P

  So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?

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• Will a polled event system cause lag for a server?

  - by Milo

  I'm using a library called ENet. It is a reliable UDP library. The way it works is a polled event system like this: ENetEvent event; /* Wait up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. */ while (enet_host_service (client, & event, 1000) > 0) { switch (event.type) { case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_CONNECT: printf ("A new client connected from %x:%u.\n", event.peer -> address.host, event.peer -> address.port); /* Store any relevant client information here. */ event.peer -> data = "Client information"; break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_RECEIVE: printf ("A packet of length %u containing %s was received from %s on channel %u.\n", event.packet -> dataLength, event.packet -> data, event.peer -> data, event.channelID); /* Clean up the packet now that we're done using it. */ enet_packet_destroy (event.packet); break; case ENET_EVENT_TYPE_DISCONNECT: printf ("%s disconected.\n", event.peer -> data); /* Reset the peer's client information. */ event.peer -> data = NULL; } } It waits up to 1000 milliseconds for an event. If I'm hosting say 75 event driven card games and a lobby on the same thread as this code, will it cause any problems. If my understanding is correct, the process will simply sleep until there is an event, when there is one, it will process the event then come back here where potentially 5 or so events have queued up since so enet_host_services would return right away and not cause lag. I have been advised not to use multiple threads, will that be alright like this? Thanks

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