will lennard - Developer IT

Making an AI walk on a NavigationMesh (2D/Top-Down game)

- by Lennard Fonteijn

For some time I have been working on a framework which should make it possible to generate 2D levels based on a set of rules specified by level designers. You can read more about it here as I won't go into details: http://www.jorisdormans.nl/article.php?ref=engineering_emergence Anyway, I'm now at the point of putting the framework to use and have trouble coming up with a solution for AI. I decided to implement a NavigationMesh in the generated levels as I already have that information to start with. Consider the following image (borrowed from http://www.david-gouveia.com/pathfinding-on-a-2d-polygonal-map/): When I run A* on the NavigationMesh, the red path would be suggested when I want to go from point A to B (either direction). However, I don't want my AI to walk that path directly and clipping corners, I'd rather want them to follow the more logical black path. How would I go about going from the Red path to the Black path, are there any algorithms for this. Which steps do I take? Is A* the proper solution for this at all? For some additional information: The proof-of-concept game is a 2D top-down game written in C#, but examples/references in any language are welcome!

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Symantec Backup exec 2012 for SBS - moving data to offsite drives

- by Will Lennard

Can anyone advise how best to run the following strategy, or even if it is possible/sensible strategy? I am looking to backup an SBS server using BE2012 where the data is backed up on a weekly full backup, with subsequent daily incrementals till the end of the week, a fresh full backup will then be taken the next weekend, and the cycle repeats for 4 weeks, thus 4 full backups with incrementals. This months worth of backups will then be moved off to an offsite store via USB drive for safe keeping. Is this viable, sensible, or am i just a bit crazy? All ideas are welcome.

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Android: chronometer widget and layout() method could not work well at the same time

- by Lennard

I write a test android app, in which there are only two views, a chronometer and a imageview. Using the layout() method of the imageview to dynamically change the position of it, I wish to implement drag-and-drop effect. It does work. However, each time the chronometer ticks, the imageview is always reverted to its original position, which seems that the whole screen is reloaded from the layout xml. So, does anybody know how to prevent the imageview from reverting to the original place, and let chronometer and drag-and-drop effect coexist? Thx

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OpenCL - incremental summation during compute

- by user1721997

I'm absolutelly novice in OpenCL programming. For my app. (molecular simulaton) I wrote a kernel for calculate intermolecular potential of lennard-jones liquid. In this kernel I need to compute cumulative value of the potential of all particles with one: __kernel void Molsim(__global const float* inmatrix, __global float* fi, const int c, const float r1, const float r2, const float r3, const float rc, const float epsilon, const float sigma, const float h1, const float h23) { float fi0; float fi1; float d; unsigned int i = get_global_id(0); //number of particles (typically 2000) if(c!=i) { // potential before particle movement d=sqrt(pow((0.5*h1-fabs(0.5*h1-fabs(inmatrix[c*3]-inmatrix[i*3]))),2.0)+pow((0.5*h23-fabs(0.5*h23-fabs(inmatrix[c*3+1]-inmatrix[i*3+1]))),2.0)+pow((0.5*h23-fabs(0.5*h23-fabs(inmatrix[c*3+2]-inmatrix[i*3+2]))),2.0)); if(d<rc) { fi0=4.0*epsilon*(pow(sigma/d,12.0)-pow(sigma/d,6.0)); } else { fi0=0; } // potential after particle movement d=sqrt(pow((0.5*h1-fabs(0.5*h1-fabs(r1-inmatrix[i*3]))),2.0)+pow((0.5*h23-fabs(0.5*h23-fabs(r2-inmatrix[i*3+1]))),2.0)+pow((0.5*h23-fabs(0.5*h23-fabs(r3-inmatrix[i*3+2]))),2.0)); if(d<rc) { fi1=4.0*epsilon*(pow(sigma/d,12.0)-pow(sigma/d,6.0)); } else { fi1=0; } // cumulative difference of potentials fi[0]+=fi1-fi0; } } My problem is in the line: fi[0]+=fi1-fi0;. In the one-element vector fi[0] are wrong results. I read something about sum reduction, but I do not know how to do it during the calculation. Exist any simple solution of my problem?

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