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Articles indexed Monday March 19 2012

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  • getting started as a web developer [closed]

    - by kmote
    I have over 10 years of programming experience building (Windows-based) desktop applications and utilities (VC++, C#, Python). My goal over the next year is to start transitioning to web application development. I want to teach myself the fundamental tools and technologies that would be considered essential for building professional, online, interactive, visually-stunning, data-driven web apps -- the kind described in Google's recently released "Field Guide: Building Great Web Applications". So my question is, what are the primary, most commonly-used technologies that seasoned professionals will need in their tool belt in the coming years? My plan was to start coming up to speed in Javascript, HTML5, & CSS, and then to do a deep dive into ASP.NET and Ajax, along with SQL DBs. (I was surprised to not be able to find a single book at Amazon with a broad, general scope like this, which caused me to start second-guessing this approach.) So, seasoned professionals: am I on the right track? Are there some glaring omissions in my list? Or some unnecessary inclusions? I would welcome any book suggestions along these lines as well.

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  • Best tools to build an auction website

    - by Daniel Loureiro
    Can I get your feedback on the best tools to build an auction website with the following features: The site takes a commission (like 5%) on each transaction Each user can assign a rating (like 4.5 stars) to his completed transaction, and comment on the seller's profile. Accept payments in paypal and credit card I've been looking into Joomla! and JomSocial but they haven't convinced me much so far. I have some programming experience in C, Python and Java. If no CMS tools are of use I'd appreaciate if you could tell the best route to take in programming to get the auction site done.

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  • Where can I download list of all .com domains registered in the world

    - by John
    I just need registered .com domain names. I know this list is available at: http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-services/domain-name-services/grow-your-domain-name-business/tld-zone-access/index.xhtml ( looks like it could take 4 weeks for approval) http://www.premiumdrops.com/zones.html Also I can extract domain names using domain search API at domaintools.com Is there any other source where I can find this list?

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  • How to overcome fear to draw web-site template? [closed]

    - by Ricky
    I have some problem with web-site design. I can understand CSS, I use CSS grid frameworks, etc. But I can't realize my ideas. If I have some template, I can to translate it to HTML and CSS, but I don't understand how to begin with web-design for web-site from scratch. I think that I was afraid to draw or can't understand first steps. How to overcome this fear? May be some specific techniques like mind maps to streamline operations? or something else..? Or you can share what you are doing when begin. If any one have some ideas.. Thank you!

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  • Easiest Way To Implement "Slow Motion" and variable game speed in XNA?

    - by TerryB
    I have an XNA 4.0 game that I want to be able to switch into slow motion and back again to full speed every now and then. So if you kill an enemy the game switches into slow motion as they explode and then goes back to normal. What is the easiest way to do this in XNA 4.0 without having to alter all my existing code that relies on GameTime? I have some code that relies on the TotalGameTime, which will be wrong unless I get XNA to slow down. Is there anyway to avoid refactoring that code? Thanks!

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  • Need some advice regarding collision detection with the sprite changing its width and height

    - by Frank Scott
    So I'm messing around with collision detection in my tile-based game and everything works fine and dandy using this method. However, now I am trying to implement sprite sheets so my character can have a walking and jumping animation. For one, I'd like to to be able to have each frame of variable size, I think. I want collision detection to be accurate and during a jumping animation the sprite's height will be shorter (because of the calves meeting the hamstrings). Again, this also works fine at the moment. I can get the character to animate properly each frame and cycle through animations. The problems arise when the width and height of the character change. Often times its position will be corrected by the collision detection system and the character will be rubber-banded to random parts of the map or even go outside the map bounds. For some reason with the linked collision detection algorithm, when the width or height of the sprite is changed on the fly, the entire algorithm breaks down. The solution I found so far is to have a single width and height of the sprite that remains constant, and only adjust the source rectangle for drawing. However, I'm not sure exactly what to set as the sprite's constant bounding box because it varies so much with the different animations. So now I'm not sure what to do. I'm toying with the idea of pixel-perfect collision detection but I'm not sure if it would really be worth it. Does anyone know how Braid does their collision detection? My game is also a 2D sidescroller and I was quite impressed with how it was handled in that game. Thanks for reading.

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  • How should I unbind and delete OpenAL buffers?

    - by Joe Wreschnig
    I'm using OpenAL to play sounds. I'm trying to implement a fire-and-forget play function that takes a buffer ID and assigns it to a source from a pool I have previously allocated, and plays it. However, there is a problem with object lifetimes. In OpenGL, delete functions either automatically unbind things (e.g. textures), or automatically deletes the thing when it eventually is unbound (e.g. shaders) and so it's usually easy to manage deletion. However alDeleteBuffers instead simply fails with AL_INVALID_OPERATION if the buffer is still bound to a source. Is there an idiomatic way to "delete" OpenAL buffers that allows them to finish playing, and then automatically unbinds and really them? Do I need to tie buffer management more deeply into the source pool (e.g. deleting a buffer requires checking all the allocated sources also)? Similarly, is there an idiomatic way to unbind (but not delete) buffers when they are finished playing? It would be nice if, when I was looking for a free source, I only needed to see if a buffer was attached at all and not bother checking the source state. (I'm using C++, although approaches for C are also fine. Approaches assuming a GCd language and using finalizers are probably not applicable.)

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  • Giving a Bomberman AI intelligent bomb placement

    - by Paul Manta
    I'm trying to implement an AI algorithm for Bomberman. Currently I have a working but not very smart rudimentary implementation (the current AI is overzealous in placing bombs). This is the first AI I've ever tried implementing and I'm a bit stuck. The more sophisticated algorithms I have in mind (the ones that I expect to make better decisions) are too convoluted to be good solutions. What general tips do you have for implementing a Bomberman AI? Are there radically different approaches for making the bot either more defensive or offensive? Edit: Current algorithm My current algorithm goes something like this (pseudo-code): 1) Try to place a bomb and then find a cell that is safe from all the bombs, including the one that you just placed. To find that cell, iterate over the four directions; if you can find any safe divergent cell and reach it in time (eg. if the direction is up or down, look for a cell that is found to the left or right of this path), then it's safe to place a bomb and move in that direction. 2) If you can't find and safe divergent cells, try NOT placing a bomb and look again. This time you'll only need to look for a safe cell in only one direction (you don't have to diverge from it). 3) If you still can't find a safe cell, don't do anything. for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): place bomb at current location if (can find and reach divergent safe cell in current $(direction)): bomb = true move = $(direction) return for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): do not place bomb at current location if (any safe cell in the current $(direction)): bomb = false move = $(direction) return else: bomb = false move = stay_put This algorithm makes the bot very trigger-happy (it'll place bombs very frequently). It doesn't kill itself, but it does have a habit of making itself vulnerable by going into dead ends where it can be blocked and killed by the other players. Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve this algorithm? Or maybe I should try something completely different? One of the problems with this algorithm is that it tends to leave the bot with very few (frequently just one) safe cells on which it can stand. This is because the bot leaves a trail of bombs behind it, as long as it doesn't kill itself. However, leaving a trail of bombs behind leaves few places where you can hide. If one of the other players or bots decide to place a bomb somewhere near you, it often happens that you have no place to hide and you die. I need a better way to decide when to place bombs.

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  • Using XNA ContentPipeline to export a file in a machine without full XNA GS

    - by krolth
    My game uses the Content Pipeline to load the spriteSheet at runtime. The artist for the game sends me the modified spritesheet and I do a build in my machine and send him an updated project. So I'm looking for a way to generate the xnb files in his machine (this is the output of the content pipeline) without him having to install the full XNA Game studio. 1) I don't want my artist to install VS + Xna (I know there is a free version of VS but this won't scale once we add more people to the team). 2) I'm not interested in running this editor/tool in Xbox so a Windows only solution works. 3) I'm aware of MSBuild options but they require full XNA I researched Shawn's blog and found the option of using Msbuild Sample or a new option in XNA 4.0 that looked promising here but seems like it has the same restriction: Need to install full XNA GS because the ContentPipeline is not part of the XNA redist. So has anyone found a workaround for this?

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  • Objective C - Aggro with Images

    - by Will
    I have three UIImageViews. enemy1, enemy1AggroBox and mainSprite. What I want to do is when mainSprite and enemy1AggroBox interect, I want enemy1 to start moving towards mainSprite. Basically creating aggro for a game. if(CGRectIntersectsRect(mainSprite.frame, enemy1AggroBox.frame)){ //Code here// } My plan would be to call this method in viewDidLoad. I'm not using any sort of framework like cocos2d or OpenGLES. If you need to see any more code just ask.

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  • Using "screenshots" in a game, is it allowed?

    - by DevilWithin
    Lets say I have a game that is some kind of a quiz, and its questions are themed around gaming. For it to be interesting, I would need to make references to well-known games and game-related stuff. In a copyright infrigement sense, could I have problems with this? Imagine a question such as, "What was the currency used in game X?", or "Which company made game Y?". Also, the same applied to screenshots of known games, and have a question near it, such as "What game is this image from?". Toughts? Thanks

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  • Best way to handle realtime melee AI in authoritative network environment

    - by PrimeDerektive
    So i've been working on a multiplayer game for a bit; it's a co-op action RPG with real-time combat. If you've seen or played TERA, I'd say it's comparable to that, but not an MMO, heh. I'm currently handling the AI units authoritatively, the server calculates their pathing, movement, and pursue/attack logic, and syncs the movement to the clients 15x per second, and the state changes when they happen. When I emulate 200ms ping, though, the client can perceive being out of range to an AI's attack, but still take the hit, because on the server he hadn't moved that far yet. This also plays hell with my real-time blocking. I don't really want to allow the clients to be allowed to say "that was out of range" or "I blocked that", but I'm not really sure how else to handle it.

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  • Is it safe to set FPS rate to a constant?

    - by Ozan
    I learned from game class that in update function, every movements must be time dependent for the sake of linearity in movement. We made a simple game. Every move like going left, right or jump is written time dependent. But, in some other computers, our game is worked very differently. For example, our character jumps higher than it should be. I guess this is because each computer has different FPS rate according to its specification. My question is that what should we do to make this game work in same way in every computer? Setting FPS rate to a constant is a solution?

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  • Change alpha to a Frame in libgdx

    - by Rudy_TM
    I have this batch.draw(currentFrame, x, y, this.parent.originX, this.parent.originY, this.parent.width, this.parent.height, this.scaleX, this.scaleY,this.rotation); I want to apply the alpha that it gets from the method, but theres is not overload from the SpriteBatch class that takes the alpha value, is there some wey to apply it? (i did it this way, because this are animation, and i wanted to control them) in my static ones i apply sprite.draw(SpriteBatch, alpha) Thanks

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  • Strange and erratic transformations when using OpenGL VBOs to render scene

    - by janoside
    I have an existing iOS game with fairly simple scenes (all textured quads) and I'm using Apple's "Texture2D" class. I'm trying to convert this class to use VBOs since the vertices of my objects basically never change so I may as well not re-create them for every object every frame. I have the scene rendering using VBOs but the sizes and orientations of all rendered objects are strange and erratic - though locations seem generally correct. I've been toying with this code for a few days now, and I've found something odd: if I re-create all of my VBOs each frame, everything looks correct, even though I'm almost certain my vertices are not changing. Other notes I'm basing my work on this tutorial, and therefore am also using "IBOs" I create my buffers before rendering begins My buffers include vertex and texture data I'm using OpenGL ES 1.1 Fearing some strange effect of the current matrix GL state at the time of buffer creation I've also tried wrapping my buffer-setup code in a "pushMatrix-loadIdentity-popMatrix" block which (as expected) had no effect I'm aware that various articles have been published demonstrating that VBOs may not help performance, but I want to understand this problem and at least have the option to use them. I realize this is a shot in the dark, but has anyone else experienced this type of strange behavior? What might I be doing to result in this behavior? It's rather difficult for me to isolate the problem since I'm working in an existing, moderately complex project, so suggestions about how to approach the problem are also quite welcome.

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  • Changing balls direction in Pong

    - by hustlerinc
    I'm making a Pong game to get started with game-developement but I've run into a problem that i can't figure out. When trying to change the balls direction it doesn't change. This is the relevant code: function moveBall(){ this.speed = 2.5; this.direction = 2; if(this.direction == 1){ ball.X +=this.speed; } else if(this.direction == 2){ ball.X -=this.speed; } } function collision(){ if(ball.X == 500){ moveBall.direction = 2; } if(ball.X == 300){ moveBall.direction = 1; } } Why doesn't it work? I've tried many different ways, and none of them seem to work. The moveBall.direction changes though, since it alerts the new direction once it reaches the defined ball.X position. If someone could help me I would deeply appreciate it. I've included a JSFiddle link. http://jsfiddle.net/hustlerinc/y4wp3/

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

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

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  • How to customise search core results web part Part1

    - by ybbest
    In this post, I’d like to show you how to customise search core results web part. It is a quite simple, most of the times what you need to do is to change the xslt to perform the changes. Here are the steps: 1. You need to change the xslt to the following, so that you can see the raw xml. <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" > <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" /> <xsl:template match="/"> <xmp><xsl:copy-of select="*"/></xmp> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> a. To do so , you need to go to edit page>>Edit search core results web part >>Display Properties and then untick use Location Visualization b. Open the xslt editor and copy the existing XSLT code to your preferred xslt editor so that you can customise it. c. Now you can paste in the XSLT code above. 2.Perform the search after you have completed step1 and you will see the search results returned in raw xml <All_Results> <Result> <id>1</id> <workid>678</workid> <rank>100000000</rank> <title>Ybbest</title> <author></author> <size>137531</size> <url>http://ybbest</url> <urlEncoded>http%3A%2F%2Fybbest</urlEncoded> <description>Ybbest test site</description> <write>3/17/2012</write> <sitename>http://ybbest</sitename> <collapsingstatus>0</collapsingstatus> <hithighlightedsummary> <c0>Ybbest</c0> test site <ddd /> Add a new image, change this welcome text or add new lists to this page by clicking the edit button above. You can click on Shared Documents to add files or on the <ddd /> </hithighlightedsummary> <hithighlightedproperties> <HHTitle> <c0>Ybbest</c0> </HHTitle> <HHUrl>http://<c0>ybbest</c0></HHUrl> </hithighlightedproperties> <contentclass>STS_Site</contentclass> <isdocument>False</isdocument> <picturethumbnailurl></picturethumbnailurl> <popularsocialtags /> <picturewidth>0</picturewidth> <pictureheight>0</pictureheight> <datepicturetaken></datepicturetaken> <serverredirectedurl></serverredirectedurl> <fileextension></fileextension> <ows_metadatafacetinfo></ows_metadatafacetinfo> <imageurl imageurldescription="SharePoint Site Collection">/_layouts/images/siteicon_16x16.png</imageurl> </Result> <TotalResults>69</TotalResults> <NumberOfResults>50</NumberOfResults> </All_Results> 3. Then you can read what has been returned in the raw xml and start modifying the xslt to customise your search results page. 4.You can also link an external xslt to the web part.It can be set in the Miscellaneous of Web Part section. You can also set it pragmatically using a feature receiver , you can download the source code to do so here. References: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6548104/change-xslt-of-the-searchresultwebpart-during-the-featureactivated http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2010/04/05/a-quick-guide-to-coreresultswebpart-configuration-changes-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx http://www.tonytestasworld.com/post/2011/01/30/HowTo-display-SharePoint-Search-results-as-raw-XML.aspx

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  • using quartz with out the quartz plugin in grails

    - by user511875
    i'm trying to use quartz to schedule jobs in grails with out using the plugin. this is the code: RunMeTask.java package tt; public class RunMeTask { public void printMe() { System.out.println("Run Me ~"); }} resources.groovy (under conf/spring) import org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.JobDetailFactoryBean; import org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SchedulerFactoryBean; import org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerBean; import tt.RunMeTask beans = { runMeTask(RunMeTask){ } runMeJob(JobDetailFactoryBean){ targetObject = ref('runMeTask') targetMethod = "printMe" } simpleTrigger(SimpleTriggerBean){ jobDetail = ref('runMeJob') repeatInterval = "5000" startpDelay = "1000" } schedulerFactoryBean(SchedulerFactoryBean){ jobDetails = [ref('runMeJob')] triggers = [ref('simpleTrigger')] } } i get the following exception: Error Fatal error during compilation org.apache.tools.ant.BuildException: java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError: class org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerBean has interface org.quartz.SimpleTrigger as super class (Use --stacktrace to see the full trace) can anyone help?

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  • How to access fields in JSON object by index

    - by Stefan
    I know this isn't the best way to do it, but I have no other choice :( I have to access the items in JSONObject by their index. The standard way to access objects is to just wirte this[objectName] or this.objectName. I also found a method to get all the fields inside a json object: (for (var key in p) { if (p.hasOwnProperty(key)) { alert(key + " -> " + p[key]); } } (Soruce : Loop through Json object). However there is no way of accessing the JSONfields directly by a index. The only way I see right now, is to create an array, with the function above, get the fieldname by index and then get the value by fieldname. As far as I see it, the p (in our case the JSON file must be an iteratable array to, or else the foreach loop wouldn't work. How can I access this array directly? Or is it some kind of unsorted list? Regards, Stefan

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  • SVN - ignoring files already in repository

    - by Alex
    I have a configuration file in my project which needs to be in the repository (so new developers get it when they checkout the project). Each developer might change some values in the file locally - these changes should not be committed and I don't want them showing in the synchronization menu (I'm using eclipse and subversive if it matters). Note that I can't just set the svn:ignore property since it only works on files that aren't under version control - but I do want to keep a base version of the file in the repository. How can I avoid the file showing in synchronization without deleting it from repository? EDIT: A better description - what I actually need is to be able to set a "read-only" property on the config file, so it can't be changed in the repository as long as the property is on. Do you know anything like this? Thanks

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  • How to configure rime style in ICEfaces 3

    - by fresh_dev
    in icefaces 2 i was configuring rime style as follows: <h:head> <link href="./xmlhttp/css/xp/xp.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> </h:head> <h:body styleClass="ice-skin-rime"> </h:body> <h:outputStylesheet library="org.icefaces.component.skins" name="rime.css" /> and i was wondering how to configure it in icefaces 3 because i tried the following and it doesn't work <context-param> <param-name>org.icefaces.ace.theme</param-name> <param-value>rime</param-value> </context-param> please advise thanks.

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  • Sending data through POST request from a node.js server to a node.js server

    - by Masiar
    I'm trying to send data through a POST request from a node.js server to another node.js server. What I do in the "client" node.js is the following: var options = { host: 'my.url', port: 80, path: '/login', method: 'POST' }; var req = http.request(options, function(res){ console.log('status: ' + res.statusCode); console.log('headers: ' + JSON.stringify(res.headers)); res.setEncoding('utf8'); res.on('data', function(chunk){ console.log("body: " + chunk); }); }); req.on('error', function(e) { console.log('problem with request: ' + e.message); }); // write data to request body req.write('data\n'); req.write('data\n'); req.end(); This chunk is taken more or less from the node.js website so it should be correct. The only thing I don't see is how to include username and password in the options variable to actually login. This is how I deal with the data in the server node.js (I use express): app.post('/login', function(req, res){ var user = {}; user.username = req.body.username; user.password = req.body.password; ... }); How can I add those username and password fields to the options variable to have it logged in? Thanks

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  • Is there a special character in mySql that would return always true in WHERE clauses?

    - by rm.
    Is there a character, say, $, SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE firstName='Peter' AND areaCode=$; such that the statement would return the same as SELECT * FROM Persons WHERE firstName='Peter' i.e. areaCode=$ would always return always true and, thus, effectively “turns of” the criteria areaCode=... I’m writing a VBA code in Excel that fetches some rows based on a number of criteria. The criteria can either be enabled or disabled. A character like $ would make the disabling so much easier.

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  • Activity gets killed while executing the camera intent

    - by BlackRider
    In my app I call the system camera to take a picture, and then handle the result in onActivityResult. You know, the usual. It used to work, but now my calling activity gets killed while I'm taking the picture. Specifically, onDestroy() is called on my activity right after I press the camera shutter. The photo does get taken & saved (I've checked that the file gets written on the SD card). After I accept the photo, instead of returning to the calling activity and invoking onActivityResult, the previous activity in the activity stack gets called. I see no exceptions in the logcat. My custom exception handler doesn't get called. If it matters, my app also includes a service that listens to GPS updates, but I unregister all the receivers in onPause(). Here's the call stack for MyCallingActivity.onDestroy(): Thread [<1> main] (Suspended (breakpoint at line 303 in NewPlaceDetailsActivity)) NewPlaceDetailsActivity.onDestroy() line: 303 ActivityThread.performDestroyActivity(IBinder, boolean, int, boolean) line: 2663 ActivityThread.handleDestroyActivity(IBinder, boolean, int, boolean) line: 2694 ActivityThread.access$2100(ActivityThread, IBinder, boolean, int, boolean) line: 117 BinderProxy(ActivityThread$H).handleMessage(Message) line: 968 ActivityThread$H(Handler).dispatchMessage(Message) line: 99 Looper.loop() line: 130 ActivityThread.main(String[]) line: 3687 Method.invokeNative(Object, Object[], Class, Class[], Class, int, boolean) line: not available [native method] Method.invoke(Object, Object...) line: 507 ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run() line: 842 ZygoteInit.main(String[]) line: 600 NativeStart.main(String[]) line: not available [native method] This is how I start the camera activity, in case you're wondering: protected void startCamera() { createPhotoDirsIfNeeded(); String fileName = "temp.jpg"; ContentValues values = new ContentValues(); values.put(MediaStore.Images.Media.TITLE, fileName); m_capturedImageUri = getContentResolver().insert(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, values); m_photoFileName = APP_PHOTO_PATH + "/" + DateFormat.format(DATE_FORMAT, Calendar.getInstance().getTime()) + ".jpg"; File picFile = new File(m_photoFileName); if(picFile.exists()) { picFile.delete(); } // start the camera activity Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE); intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, Uri.fromFile(picFile)); startActivityForResult(intent, IntentHelper.REQUEST_TAKE_PHOTO); } How can I find out why does my activity get killed, AND removed from the stack instead of being created again?

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