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• Playing NSF music in FMOD.net

  - by Tesserex

  So, as the title says, I want to be able to play NSF files using FMOD, because my project already uses FMOD and I'd rather not replace it. This will involve figuring out how existing players and emulators work and porting it. I haven't yet found an existing player that uses FMOD. My starting point is the MyNes source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/. There are two big steps between here and what I'm looking for. MyNes plays from a ROM, not NSF. So, I have to rip out the APU and get it to play NSF files. The MyNes APU uses SlimDX, so I have to convert that to FMOD.NET. I am really stuck about how to go about either of these, because I'm not that familiar with audio formats and it's hard finding resources online. So here are a few questions: From what I can tell from the NSF spec at http://kevtris.org/nes/nsfspec.txt, it's just contains the relevant memory section of the ROM, plus the header. If anyone can verify or correct this that would be great. The emulator APU uses data from the rest of the emulator to play, including things like cycle counts. I'm not sure what replaces this in a standalone player. Can't I just load all the music data at once into a stream and play it? Joining #1 and #2, does the header data from the NSF substitute for some of the ROM data in the emulator code? Using FMOD, will I be following the usercreatedsound example for loading a stream? And does this format count as PCM? Specifically MyNes says PCM8. Any tips on loading / playing the stream in FMOD are appreciated. As an aside, I don't really understand the loading / playing sections of the spec I linked at all. It seems to apply to 6502 systems / emulators only and not to my situation. I know it's a long shot for anyone here to have enough experience in this area to help, but anything you can provide is definitely appreciated. A link to an existing .NET library that does this would be even better, but I don't believe one exists.

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• Playing NSF music in FMOD.net

  - by Tesserex

  So, as the title says, I want to be able to play NSF files using FMOD, because my project already uses FMOD and I'd rather not replace it. This will involve figuring out how existing players and emulators work and porting it. I haven't yet found an existing player that uses FMOD. My starting point is the MyNes source from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mynes/. There are two big steps between here and what I'm looking for. MyNes plays from a ROM, not NSF. So, I have to rip out the APU and get it to play NSF files. The MyNes APU uses SlimDX, so I have to convert that to FMOD.NET. I am really stuck about how to go about either of these, because I'm not that familiar with audio formats and it's hard finding resources online. So here are a few questions: From what I can tell from the NSF spec at http://kevtris.org/nes/nsfspec.txt, it's just contains the relevant memory section of the ROM, plus the header. If anyone can verify or correct this that would be great. The emulator APU uses data from the rest of the emulator to play, including things like cycle counts. I'm not sure what replaces this in a standalone player. Can't I just load all the music data at once into a stream and play it? Joining #1 and #2, does the header data from the NSF substitute for some of the ROM data in the emulator code? Using FMOD, will I be following the usercreatedsound example for loading a stream? And does this format count as PCM? Specifically MyNes says PCM8. Any tips on loading / playing the stream in FMOD are appreciated. As an aside, I don't really understand the loading / playing sections of the spec I linked at all. It seems to apply to 6502 systems / emulators only and not to my situation. I know it's a long shot for anyone here to have enough experience in this area to help, but anything you can provide is definitely appreciated. A link to an existing .NET library that does this would be even better, but I don't believe one exists.

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• What are the best and worst policies you have seen used to run a programming team?

  - by Tesserex

  If I were to begin managing a team of programmers (which I'm not, I'm just asking out of curiosity) what are some of the office / team policies you have seen that are either particularly conducive or particularly prohibitive to productivity and teamwork? Some of the well known bad ones include regular overtime, micromanagement, not having admin rights, very strict hours, and endless meeting requirements. What else is there to avoid, and what interesting policies have you seen that do wonders for a team?

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• Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

  - by Tesserex

  I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to: refactoring of the code changed by the work item refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change. improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included: We plan for "padding" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing. Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work. If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done. You are in the best mental "context" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include: Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible. The sprint "padding" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just "nice-to-haves". If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog. There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say "those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?" which is like an hour, but they might say "Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?" And that takes a week. It "contaminates the crime scene" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless. In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?

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• Are there existing FOSS component-based frameworks?

  - by Tesserex

  The component based game programming paradigm is becoming much more popular. I was wondering, are there any projects out there that offer a reusable component framework? In any language, I guess I don't care about that. It's not for my own project, I'm just curious. Specifically I mean are there projects that include a base Entity class, a base Component class, and maybe some standard components? It would then be much easier starting a game if you didn't want to reinvent the wheel, or maybe you want a GraphicsComponent that does sprites with Direct3D, but you figure it's already been done a dozen times. A quick Googling turns up Rusher. Has anyone heard of this / does anyone use it? If there are no popular ones, then why not? Is it too difficult to make something like this reusable, and they need heavy customization? In my own implementation I found a lot of boilerplate that could be shoved into a framework.

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• Are there existing FOSS component-based frameworks?

  - by Tesserex

  The component based game programming paradigm is becoming much more popular. I was wondering, are there any projects out there that offer a reusable component framework? In any language, I guess I don't care about that. It's not for my own project, I'm just curious. Specifically I mean are there projects that include a base Entity class, a base Component class, and maybe some standard components? It would then be much easier starting a game if you didn't want to reinvent the wheel, or maybe you want a GraphicsComponent that does sprites with Direct3D, but you figure it's already been done a dozen times. A quick Googling turns up Rusher. Has anyone heard of this / does anyone use it? If there are no popular ones, then why not? Is it too difficult to make something like this reusable, and they need heavy customization? In my own implementation I found a lot of boilerplate that could be shoved into a framework.

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• What is the "default" software license?

  - by Tesserex

  If I release some code and binaries, but I don't include any license at all with it, what are the legal terms that apply by default (in the US, where I am). I know that I automatically have copyright without doing anything, but what restrictions are there on it? If I upload my code to github and announce it as a free download / contribute at will, then are people allowed to modify and close source my work? I haven't said that they cannot, as a GPL would, but I don't feel that it would by default be acceptable to steal my work either. So what can and cannot people do with code that is freely available, but has absolutely no licensing terms attached? By the way, I know that it would be a good idea for me to pick a license and apply it to my code soon, but I'm still curious about this. Edit Thanks! So it looks like the consensus is that it starts out very restricted, and then my actions imply any further rights. If I just put software on my website with no security, it would be an infringement to download it. If I post a link to that download on a forum, then that would implicitly give permission to use it for free, but not distribute it or its derivatives (but you can modify it for your own use). If I put it on GitHub, then it is conveyed as FOSS. Again, this is probably not codified exactly in law but may be enough to be defensible in court. It's still a good idea to post a complete license to be safe.

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• Are they asking too much of me?

  - by Tesserex

  Or am I just whining? Background: I work for a "startup," which I put in air quotes because the company has been around for 4 years. We have about 40 employees in three offices, 9 here plus some part time. We have a good amount of investment and bring in about 75% of what we spend (so not profitable just yet.) Standard work week is supposed to be about 60 hours, but they justify that as we have to be online when our international (Taiwan and Vietnam) offices are awake. When I started the job 6 months ago, I spent about a month prototyping an iphone app and did really well on my own. They also found out about my facebook applications and how many users they got. Putting 2 and 2 together (and winding up at -7) they realized 1. I'm independent and innovative (because I was able to use stackoverflow to answer my iOS questions instead of bugging my superiors) and 2. I must have an eye for marketing (since my fb apps grew totally organically without me doing any advertising), and assigned me to a project optimizing adwords campaigns. Today I got reviewed, and then chewed out, by our CEO for not totally rocking this project. Now I thought I was doing ok, but the CEO said the project is stagnant and they're expecting more from me. But since it's a startup, they play loose with job roles and I've had plenty of other things to do in the past three months. Every time I ask what's most important, I get conflicting responses depending who I ask, and the end result is that almost everything has equal priority - high. I could go on about how I don't think adwords is worthwhile for us since our profit margin is so slim, and how we should be trying to improve our website first, but that's not the point. I also have explained to the office director (who originally assigned me the project, not the CEO) that I don't actually know anything about marketing, I'm just a decent programmer, but they think my general smarts will prove capable of tackling this challenge. The CEO also clarified that he wants a more technical and algorithmic approach to the problem. So is there something I can do to address this? Combined with my existing and confusing workload, should I be raising an issue? Or should I do the grown up thing and give it my all, asking for help when I need it and hoping for the best? Sorry if this is very rant-ish.

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• dvcs - is "clone to branch" a common workflow?

  - by Tesserex

  I was recently discussing dvcs with a coworker, because our office is beginning to consider switching from TFS (we're a MS shop). In the process, I got very confused because he said that although he uses Mercurial, he hadn't heard of a "branch" or "checkout" command, and these terms were unfamiliar to him. After wondering how it was possible that he didn't know about them and explaining how dvcs branches work "in place" on your local files, he was quite confused. He explained that, similar to how TFS works, when he wants to create a "branch" he does it by cloning, so he has an entire copy of his repo. This seemed really strange to me, but the benefit, which I have to concede, is that you can look at or work on two branches simultaneously because the files are separate. In searching this site to see if this has been asked before I saw a comment that many online resources promote this "clone to branch" methodology, to the poster's dismay. Is this actually common in the dvcs community? And what are some of the pros and cons of going this way? I would never do it since I have no need to see multiple branches at once, switching is fast, and I don't need all the clones filling up my disk.

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• Separating logic and data in browser game

  - by Tesserex

  I've been thinking this over for days and I'm still not sure what to do. I'm trying to refactor a combat system in PHP (...sorry.) Here's what exists so far: There are two (so far) types of entities that can participate in combat. Let's just call them players and NPCs. Their data is already written pretty well. When involved in combat, these entities are wrapped with another object in the DB called a Combatant, which gives them information about the particular fight. They can be involved in multiple combats at once. I'm trying to write the logic engine for combat by having combatants injected into it. I want to be able to mock everything for testing. In order to separate logic and data, I want to have two interfaces / base classes, one being ICombatantData and the other ICombatantLogic. The two implementers of data will be one for the real objects stored in the database, and the other for my mock objects. I'm now running into uncertainties with designing the logic side of things. I can have one implementer for each of players and NPCs, but then I have an issue. A combatant needs to be able to return the entity that it wraps. Should this getter method be part of logic or data? I feel strongly that it should be in data, because the logic part is used for executing combat, and won't be available if someone is just looking up information about an upcoming fight. But the data classes only separate mock from DB, not player from NPC. If I try having two child classes of the DB data implementer, one for each entity type, then how do I architect that while keeping my mocks in the loop? Do I need some third interface like IEntityProvider that I inject into the data classes? Also with some of the ideas I've been considering, I feel like I'll have to put checks in place to make sure you don't mismatch things, like making the logic for an NPC accidentally wrap the data for a player. Does that make any sense? Is that a situation that would even be possible if the architecture is correct, or would the right design prohibit that completely so I don't need to check for it? If someone could help me just layout a class diagram or something for this it would help me a lot. Thanks. edit Also useful to note, the mock data class doesn't really need the Entity, since I'll just be specifying all the parameters like combat stats directly instead. So maybe that will affect the correct design.

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• Working with Git on multiple machines

  - by Tesserex

  This may sound a bit strange, but I'm wondering about a good way to work in Git from multiple machines networked together in some way. It looks to me like I have two options, and I can see benefits on both sides: Use git itself for sharing, each machine has its own repo and you have to fetch between them. You can work on either machine even if the other is offline. This by itself is pretty big I think. Use one repo that is shared over the network between machines. No need to do git pulls every time you switch machines, since your code is always up to date. Never worry that you forgot to push code from your other non-hosting machine, which is now out of reach, since you were working off a fileshare on this machine. My intuition says that everyone generally goes with the first option. But the downside I see is that you might not always be able to access code from your other machines, and I certainly don't want to push all my WIP branches to github at the end of every day. I also don't want to have to leave my computers on all the time so I can fetch from them directly. Lastly a minor point is that all the git commands to keep multiple branches up to date can get tedious. Is there a third handle on this situation? Maybe some third party tools are available that help make this process easier? If you deal with this situation regularly, what do you suggest?

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• Why is drawing to OnPaint graphics faster than image graphics?

  - by Tesserex

  I'm looking for a way to speed up the drawing of my game engine, which is currently the significant bottleneck, and is causing slowdowns. I'm on the verge of converting it over to XNA, but I just noticed something. Say I have a small image that I've loaded. Image img = Image.FromFile("mypict.png"); We have a picturebox on the screen we want to draw on. So we have a handler. pictureBox1.Paint += new PaintEventHandler(pictureBox1_Paint); I want our loaded image to be tiled on the picturebox (this is for a game, after all). Why on earth is this code: void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++) for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) e.Graphics.DrawImage(image, x * 16, y * 16, 16, 16); } over 25 TIMES FASTER than this code: Image buff = new Bitmap(256, 256, PixelFormat.Format32bppPArgb); // actually a form member void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e) { using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(buff)) { for (int y = 0; y < 16; y++) for (int x = 0; x < 16; x++) g.DrawImage(image, x * 16, y * 16, 16, 16); } e.Graphics.DrawImage(buff, 0, 0, 256, 256); } To eliminate the obvious, I've tried commenting out the last e.Graphics.DrawImage (which means I don't see anything, but it gets rid a call that isn't in the first example). I've also left in the using block (needlessly) in the first example, but it's still just as blazingly fast. I've set properties of g to match e.Graphics - things like InterpolationMode, CompositingQuality, etc, but nothing I do bridges this incredible gap in performance. I can't find any difference between the two Graphics objects. What gives? My test with a System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch says that the first code snippet runs at about 7100 fps, while the second runs at a measly 280 fps. My reference image is VS2010ImageLibrary\Objects\png_format\WinVista\SecurityLock.png, which is 48x48 px, and which I modified to be 72 dpi instead of 96, but those made no difference either.

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• Force float left with no line break no matter what

  - by Tesserex

  I'm guessing this isn't possible, but here goes. I have two tables, and I'm trying to get them to sit side-by-side so that they look like one table. The reason for this, instead of using one larger table, is that the data in the second table needs to be handled on a column basis, not row basis, for performance reasons like caching and AJAX-fetching data. So rather than have to reload the whole table for a single column, I decided to break the column out into a separate table, but have it visually seem like a single table. I can't find a way to forcibly put the second table next to the first. I can float them, but when the first table is too wide, the second one breaks to the next line. Here's the kicker: the width of the first table is dynamic. So I can't just set a huge width to their container. Well, I could set a huge width, like 1000%, but then I have a huge ugly horizontal scroll bar. So is there any way to tell the second table "Stay on that same line, no matter what! And line up right next to the previous element please!"

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• FMOD.net streaming, callback and exinfo parameters

  - by Tesserex

  I posted a question on gamedev about how to play nsf files (NES console music) in FMOD. It didn't get any results, but since then I made some progress. I decided that the easiest method was just to compile an existing player into a dll and then call it from C# to populate my buffer. The problem now is getting it to sound right, and making sure all my paremeters are correct. Here are the facts so far: The nsf dll is dealing with shorts, so the data is PCM16. The sample nsf I'm using has a playback rate of 60 Hz. Just for playing around now, I'm using a frequency of 48000. Based on 2 and 3, the dll calculates a necessary buffer size of 48000 / 60hz = 800. This means it will render 800 shorts worth of buffer for every simulated NES frame. I've so far got my C# code to play the nsf, at the correct pitch and tempo, but it's very grainy / fuzzy, which I'm attributing to the fact that the FMOD read callback is giving a data length of 1600, whereas I should be expecting 800. I've tried playing around with all the numbers and it either crashes, or the music changes pitch, tempo, or both. Here's some of my C# code: uint channels = 1, frequency = 48000; FMOD.MODE mode = (FMOD.MODE.DEFAULT | FMOD.MODE.OPENUSER | FMOD.MODE.LOOP_NORMAL); FMOD.Sound sound = new FMOD.Sound(); FMOD.CREATESOUNDEXINFO ex = new FMOD.CREATESOUNDEXINFO(); ex.cbsize = Marshal.SizeOf(ex); ex.fileoffset = 0; ex.format = FMOD.SOUND_FORMAT.PCM16; // does this even matter? It doesn't change my results as long as it's long enough for one update ex.length = frequency; ex.numchannels = (int)channels; ex.defaultfrequency = (int)frequency; ex.pcmreadcallback = pcmreadcallback; ex.dlsname = null; // eventually I will calculate this with frequency / nsf hz, but I'm just testing for now ex.decodebuffersize = 800; // from the dll load_nsf_file("file.nsf", 8, (int)frequency); // 8 is the track number to play var result = system.createSound( (string)null, (mode | FMOD.MODE.CREATESTREAM), ref ex, ref sound); channel = new FMOD.Channel(); result = system.playSound(FMOD.CHANNELINDEX.FREE, sound, false, ref channel); private FMOD.RESULT PCMREADCALLBACK(IntPtr soundraw, IntPtr data, uint datalen) { // from the dll process_buffer(data, (int)800); // if I use datalen, it usually crashes (I can't get datalen to = 800 safely) return FMOD.RESULT.OK; } So here are some of my questions: What is the relationship between exinfo.decodebuffersize, frequency, and the datalen parameter of the read callback? With this code sample, it's coming in as 3200. I don't know where that factor of 4 between it and the decodebuffersize comes from. Is datalen in the callback referring to number of bytes, or shorts? The process_buffer function takes a short array and its length. I would expect fmod is talking about shorts as well because I told it PCM16. Maybe my playback quality is bad for some totally different reason. If so I have no idea where to begin solving that. Any ideas there?

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• Programming tips for writing document editors?

  - by Tesserex

  I'm asking this because I'm in the process of writing two such editors for my Mega Man engine, one a tileset editor, and another a level editor. When I say document editor, I mean the superset application type for things like image editors and text editors. All of these share things like toolbars, menu options, and in the case of image editors, and my apps, tool panes. We all know there's tons of advice out there for interface design in these apps, but I'm wondering about programming advice. Specifically, I'm doubting my code designs with the following things: Many menu options toggle various behaviors. What's the proper way to reliably tie the checked state of the option with the status of the behavior? Sometimes it's more complicated, like options being disabled when there's no document loaded. More and more consensus seems to be against using MDI, but how should I control tool panes? For example, I can't figure out how to get the panels to minimize and maximize along with the main window, like Photoshop does. When tool panels are responsible for a particular part of the document, who actually owns that thing? The main window, or the panel class? How do you do communication between the tool panels and the main window? Currently mine is all event based but it seems like there could be a better way. This seems to be a common class of gui application, but I've never seen specific pointers on code design for them. Could you please offer whatever advice or experience you have for writing them?

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• Version control - stubs and mocks

  - by Tesserex

  For the sake of this question, I don't care about the difference between stubs, mocks, dummies, fakes, etc. Let's say I'm working on a project with one other person. I'm working on component A and he is working on component B. They work together, so I stub out B for testing, and he stubs out A. We're working in a DVCS, let's say Git, because that's actually the case here. When it comes time to merge our components together, we need to get the "real" files from my A and his B, but throw away all the fake stuff. During development, it's likely (unless I need to learn how to properly stub things) that the fakes have the same file names and class names as the real thing. So my question is: what is the proper procedure for doing version control on the fakes, and how are the components correctly merged, making sure to grab the real thing and not the fake? I would guess that one way is just do the merge, expect it to say CONFLICT, and then manually delete all the fake code out of the half-merged files. But this sounds tedious and inefficient. Should the fake things not go under VC at all? Should they be ripped out just before merging? Sorry if the answer to this should be obvious or trivial, I'm just looking for a "suggested practice" here.

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• Best practice - When to evaluate conditionals of function execution

  - by Tesserex

  If I have a function called from a few places, and it requires some condition to be met for anything it does to execute, where should that condition be checked? In my case, it's for drawing - if the mouse button is held down, then execute the drawing logic (this is being done in the mouse movement handler for when you drag.) Option one says put it in the function so that it's guaranteed to be checked. Abstracted, if you will. public function Foo() { DoThing(); } private function DoThing() { if (!condition) return; // do stuff } The problem I have with this is that when reading the code of Foo, which may be far away from DoThing, it looks like a bug. The first thought is that the condition isn't being checked. Option two, then, is to check before calling. public function Foo() { if (condition) DoThing(); } This reads better, but now you have to worry about checking from everywhere you call it. Option three is to rename the function to be more descriptive. public function Foo() { DoThingOnlyIfCondition(); } private function DoThingOnlyIfCondition() { if (!condition) return; // do stuff } Is this the "correct" solution? Or is this going a bit too far? I feel like if everything were like this function names would start to duplicate their code. About this being subjective: of course it is, and there may not be a right answer, but I think it's still perfectly at home here. Getting advice from better programmers than I is the second best way to learn. Subjective questions are exactly the kind of thing Google can't answer.

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• Problems running XNA game on 64-bit Windows 7

  - by Tesserex

  I'm having problems getting my game engine to run on my brother's machine, which is running 64-bit Windows 7. I'm developing on 32-bit XP SP2. My app uses XNA, FMOD.NET, and another dll I wrote entirely in C#. Everything is targeted to x86, not AnyCPU. I've read that this is required for XNA to work because there is no 64-bit xna framework. I recompiled FMOD.NET as x86 as well and made sure to be using the 32-bit version of the native dll. So I don't see any problems there. However when he tries to run my app, it gives an error which is mysterious, but not unheard of. A FileNotFoundException with an empty file name, and the top of the stack trace is in my main form constructor. The message is The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E) I found some threads online about this error, all with very vague, mixed, and fuzzy responses that don't really help me. Most remind people to target x86. Some say check that they have all the dlls necessary. I gave my brother Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll, but does he need to install the entire XNA redistributable package? When I take everything I sent him and stick it in a random directory, it still runs fine for me. I developed the game in VS2008, not in game studio, using XNA 3.0 and a Windows Forms control that uses XNA drawing which I found in an msdn tutorial. I would also like to avoid requiring a full installer if possible. Any insight? Please?

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• Effective communication in a component-based system

  - by Tesserex

  Yes, this is another question about my game engine, which is coming along very nicely, with much thanks to you guys. So, if you watched the video (or didn't), the objects in the game are composed of various components for things like position, sprites, movement, collision, sounds, health, etc. I have several message types defined for "tell" type communication between entities and components, but this only goes so far. There are plenty of times when I just need to ask for something, for example an entity's position. There are dozens of lines in my code that look like this: SomeComponent comp = (SomeComponent)entity.GetComponent(typeof(SomeComponent)); if (comp != null) comp.GetSomething(); I know this is very ugly, and I know that casting smells of improper OO design. But as complex as things are, there doesn't seem to be a better way. I could of course "hard-code" my component types and just have SomeComponent comp = entity.GetSomeComponent(); but that seems like a cop-out, and a bad one. I literally JUST REALIZED, while writing this, after having my code this way for months with no solution, that a generic will help me. SomeComponent comp = entity.GetComponent<SomeComponent>(); Amazing how that works. Anyway, this is still only a semantic improvement. My questions remain. Is this actually that bad? What's a better alternative?

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