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• Issue with distinguishing levels in isometric game

  - by Konrad

  I'm working on an isometric game however I am having trouble visually distinguishing between levels in the game. Take the example below, the first image shows concrete blocks at ground level and the following images show an attempt to build a few blocks a level above. As you can see the level above is visually swallowed the one below. I've tried shading to make lower levels darker with respect to camera, but this doesn't work that well.. any ideas?

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• Why is Python slower than Java but faster than PHP

  - by good_computer

  I have many times seen various benchmarks that show how a bunch of languages perform on a given task. Always these benchmarks reveal that Python is slower then Java and faster than PHP. And I wonder why is that the case. Java, Python, and PHP run inside a virtual machine All three languages convert their programs into their custom byte codes that run on top of OS -- so none is running natively Both Java and Python can be "complied" (.pyc for Python) but the __main__ module for Python is not compiled Python and PHP are dynamically typed and Java statically -- is this the reason Java is faster, and if so, please explain how that affects speed. And, even if the dynamic-vs-static argument is correct, this does not explain why PHP is slower than Python -- because both are dynamic languages. You can see some benchmarks here and here, and here

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• S#arp Architecture 1.5.2 released

  - by AlecWhittington

  It has been a few weeks since S#arp Architecture 1.5 RTM has been released. While it was a major success a few issues were found that needed to be addressed. These mostly involved the Visual Studio templates. What's new in S#arp Architecture 1.5.2? Merged the SharpArch.* assemblies into a single assembly (SharpArch.dll) Updated both VS 2008 and 2010 templates to reflect the use of the merged assembly Updated SharpArch.build with custom script that allows the merging of the assemblies. Copys new merged...(read more)

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• What's the term for re-implementing an old API in terms of a newer API

  - by dodgy_coder

  The reason for doing it is to solve the case when a newer API is no longer backwards compatible with an older API. To explain, just say that there is an old API v1.0. The maker of this API decides it is broken and works on a new API v1.1 that intentionally breaks compatibility with the old API v1.0. Now, any programs written against the old API cannot be recompiled as-is with the new API. Then lets say there is a large app written against the old API and the developer doesn't have access to the source code. A solution would be to re-implement a "custom" old API v1.0 in terms of the new API v1.1 calls. So the "custom" v1.0 API is actually keeping the same interface/methods as the v1.0 API but inside its implementation it is actually making calls to the new API v1.1 methods. So the large app can be then compiled and linked against the "custom" v1.0 API and the new v1.1 API without any major source code changes. Is there a term for this practice? There's a recent example of this happening in Jamie Zawinski's port of XScreenSaver to the iPhone - he re-implemented the OpenGL 1.3 API in terms of the OpenGL ES 1.1 API. In this case, OpenGL 1.3 represents the "old" API and OpenGL ES 1.1 represents the "new" API.

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• Alternative to Game State System?

  - by Ricket

  As far as I can tell, most games have some sort of "game state system" which switches between the different game states; these might be things like "Intro", "MainMenu", "CharacterSelect", "Loading", and "Game". On the one hand, it totally makes sense to separate these into a state system. After all, they are disparate and would otherwise need to be in a large switch statement, which is obviously messy; and they certainly are well represented by a state system. But at the same time, I look at the "Game" state and wonder if there's something wrong about this state system approach. Because it's like the elephant in the room; it's HUGE and obvious but nobody questions the game state system approach. It seems silly to me that "Game" is put on the same level as "Main Menu". Yet there isn't a way to break up the "Game" state. Is a game state system the best way to go? Is there some different, better technique to managing, well, the "game state"? Is it okay to have an intro state which draws a movie and listens for enter, and then a loading state which loops on the resource manager, and then the game state which does practically everything? Doesn't this seem sort of unbalanced to you, too? Am I missing something?

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• Android in-game pause screen

  - by Max

  Right now Im calling a new activity with an xml-view when I pause my game, but Since I do this I need to use context in my real-time code, and this is causing a memory leak. Is there any preffered way to pause the game? By pause I mean if game is over, if I die, or if I press pause-button. Would a custom dialog work just aswell? this would mean I wont have to leave my main-activity while im in-game.

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• Procedural landscape generation but not just fractals

  - by Richard Fabian

  In large procedural landscape games, the land seems dull, but that's probably because the real world is largely dull, with only limited places where the scenery is dramatic or tactical. Looking at world generation from this point of view, a landscape generator for a game needs to not follow the rules of landscaping, but instead some rules married to the expectations of the gamer. For example, there could be a choke point / route generator that creates hills ravines, rivers and mountains between cities, rather than cities plotted on the land based on the resources or conditions generated by the mountains and rainfall patterns. Is there any existing work being done like this? Start with cities or population centres and then add in terrain afterwards?

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• Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?

  - by Vaibhav Garg

  I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by our team - meaning right from the start-up code to the end application code has either been written by the team, or at the very least, is thoroughly understood and maintained by us. Now, if we were to start developing more complex systems with complex peripherals, such as USB OTG et al. (think, low end cell phones), there are libraries and stacks available commercially and from chip vendors that reduce the task to just calling the right APIs and being able to use those peripherals. Now, from a habit point of view, this does not give me and the team a comfortable feeling, not being able to comprehend the entire code tree, with virtual black boxes at the lower layers. Is it reasonable to devote, and reserve, time getting into the details of how the APIs are implemented, assuming that the same would also entail getting into details of relevant standards (again, for USB as an example)? Or, alternatively, should a thorough understanding of the top level usage of the APIs be sufficient? This of course assumes that the source codes to all libraries are available, which they are, in almost all cases. Edit: In partial response to @Abhi Beckert, the documentation is refreshingly very comprehensive and meticulously maintained, AFAIK and been able to judge. I have not had a long experience with the same.

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• How to name an subclass that add a minor, detailed thing?

  - by Louis Rhys

  What is the most concise (yet descriptive) way of naming a subclass that only add a specific minor thing to the parent? I encountered this case a lot in WPF, where sometime I have to add a small functionality to an out-of-the-box control for specific cases. Example: TreeView doesn't change the SelectedItem on right-click, but I have to make one that does in my application. Some possible names are TreeViewThatChangesSelectedItemOnRightClick (way too wordy and maybe difficult to read because there is so many words concantenated together) TreeView_SelectedItemChangesOnRightClick (slightly more readable, but still too wordy and the underscore also breaks the normal convention for class names) TreeViewThatChangesSIOnRC (non-obvious acronym), ExtendedTreeView (more concise, but doesn't describe what it is doing. Besides, I already found a class called this in the library, that I don't want to use/modify in my application). LouisTreeView, MyTreeView, etc. (doesn't describe what it is doing). It seems that I can't find a name which sounds right. What do you do in situation like this?

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• What are the best resources for learning about concurrency and multi-threaded applications?

  - by Zepee

  I realised I have a massive knowledge gap when it comes to multi-threaded applications and concurrent programming. I've covered some basics in the past, but most of it seems to be gone from my mind, and it is definitely a field that I want, and need, to be more knowledgeable about. What are the best resources for learning about building concurrent applications? I'm a very practical oriented person, so if said book contains concrete examples the better, but I'm open to suggestions. I personally prefer to work in pseudocode or C++, and a slant toward game development would be best, but not required.

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• Dapper and object validation/business rules enforcement

  - by Eugene

  This isn't really Dapper-specific, actually, as it relates to any XML-serializeable object.. but it came up when I was storing an object using Dapper. Anyways, say I have a user class. Normally, I'd do something like this: class User { public string SIN {get; private set;} public string DisplayName {get;set;} public User(string sin) { if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(sin)) throw new ArgumentException("SIN must be specified"); this.SIN = sin; } } Since a SIN is required, I'd just create a constructor with a sin parameter, and make it read-only. However, with a Dapper (and probably any other ORM), I need to provide a parameterless constructor, and make all properties writeable. So now I have this: class User: IValidatableObject { public int Id { get; set; } public string SIN { get; set; } public string DisplayName { get; set; } public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext) { // implementation } } This seems.. can't really pick the word, a bad smell? A) I'm allowing to change properties that should not be changed ever after an object has been created (SIN, userid) B) Now I have to implement IValidatableObject or something like that to test those properties before updating them to db. So how do you go about it ?

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• When too much encapsulation was reached

  - by Samuel

  Recently, I read a lot of gook articles about how to do a good encapsulation. And when I say "good encapsulation", I don't talk about hiding private fields with public properties; I talk about preventing users of your Api to do wrong things. Here is two good articles about this subject: http://blog.ploeh.dk/2011/05/24/PokayokeDesignFromSmellToFragrance.aspx http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/03/28/encapsulation-youre-doing-it-wrong/ At my job, the majority a our applications are not destined to other programmers but rather to the customers. About 80% of the application code is at the top of the structure (Not used by other code). For this reason, there is probably no chance ever that this code will be used by other application. An example of encapsulation that prevent user to do wrong thing with your Api is to return an IEnumerable instead of IList when you don't want to give the ability to the user to add or remove items in the list. My question is: When encapsulation could be considered like too much of purism object oriented programming while keeping in mind that each hour of programming is charged to the customer? I want to do good code that is maintainable, easy to read and to use but when this is not a public Api (Used by other programmer), where could we put the line between perfect code and not so perfect code? Thank you.

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• Strategies for browser compatibility on web applications in a corporate environment

  - by TiagoBrenck

  With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 technology, web applications have gained a lot of new tools for a better UI (user interface) interaction, beautiful templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new technologies are required so the company can "follow" the IT evolution and their concurrent, but they also want that those new web applications supports old browsers. How should I deal with this situation? By one side we are asked to follow the the evolution of technology, create responsive layouts and use a lot of cool jQuery plugins. On the other hand, we are asked to support old browsers that do not support those new responsive features, plugins or components. I would like advice and strategies on how to create "modern" web applications that are also supported on old browsers. How does your company deal with this situation? Is it possible to have the same web application run well and beautifully on old browsers, and be responsive and interactive on newer browsers?

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• Best approach for a database of long strings

  - by gsingh2011

  I need to store questions and answers in a database. The questions will be one to two sentences, but the answers will be long, at least a paragraph, likely more. The only way I know about to do this right now is an SQL database. However, I don't feel like this is a good solution because as far as I've seen, these databases aren't used for data of this type or size. Is this the correct way to go or is there a better way to store this data? Is there a better way than storing raw strings?

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• 'Other' Features in a programming language

  - by user12960

  Online (i cant remember where) i saw someone mention he wishes programming language has more built in features for tools like documentation and source control. Now i dont understand what needs to be built in for source control since tools like git (sorry but i dont have much experience with others) has everything i need and is very easy to use. Documentation i can understand, perhaps the ability to generate remote procedures calls from source to some kind of IDL would be cool. But really i dont understand what features a programming language can/should have that isnt tied with code generation and syntax (except the two i mention when it comes to libraries). What ideas do you guys have? What is your wishlist?

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• A talk about observer pattern

  - by Martin

  As part of a university course I'm taking, I have to hold a 10 minute talk about the observer pattern. So far these are my points: What is it? (defenition) Polling is an alternative Polling VS Observer When Observer is better When Polling is better (taken from here) A statement that Mediator pattern is worth checking out. (I won't have time to cover it in 10 minutes) I would be happy to hear about: Any suggestions to add something? Another alternative (if exists)

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• Presenting Designing an SSIS Execution Framework to Steel City SQL 18 Jan 2011!

  - by andyleonard

  I'm honored to present Designing an SSIS Execution Framework (Level 300) to Steel City SQL - the Birmingham Alabama chapter of PASS - on 18 Jan 2011! The meeting starts at 6:00 PM 18 Jan 2011 and will be held at: New Horizons Computer Learning Center 601 Beacon Pkwy. West Suite 106 Birmingham, Alabama, 35209 ( Map for directions ) Abstract In this “demo-tastic” presentation, SSIS trainer, author, and consultant Andy Leonard explains the what, why, and how of an SSIS framework that delivers metadata-driven...(read more)

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• Is there a market for a Text-based empire-building game?

  - by Vishnu

  I am working on building a text-based in-browser empire building game. The screen will be split into a console and an EXTREMELY rough vector map of your empire (just squares in a bigger square). Commands such as building and expanding would be typed into the console and automatically reflected in the map. Would there be any market for such a game? Would anyone want to play? To clarify, it would be online and everyone's empire would be in the same 'world'.

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• SQL in the City (Charlotte) Wrap Up

  - by drsql

  Ok, it has been quite a while since the event, two weeks and a day to be exact, but I needed a rest before hitting Windows Live Writer again. Speaking is exhausting, traveling is exhausting, and well, I replaced my laptop and had to get all of my software back together. (Between Windows 8.1 sync features, Dropbox and Skydrive, it has never been easier…but I digress.) There are plenty of great vendors out there, but one of my favorites has always been Red-Gate. I have written half of a book with them,...(read more)

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• Factors to consider when building an algorithm for gun recoil

  - by Nate Bross

  What would be a good algorithm for calculating the recoil of a shooting guns cross-hairs? What I've got now, is something like this: Define min/max recoil based on weapon size Generate random number of "delta" movement Apply random value to X, Y, or both of cross-hairs (only "up" on the Y axis) Multiply new delta based on time from the previous shot (more recoil for full-auto) What I'm worried about is that this feels rather predicable, what other factors should one take into account when building recoil? While I'd like it to be somewhat predictable, I'd also like to keep players on their toes. I'm thinking about increasing the min/max recoil values by a large amount (relatively) and adding a weighting, so large recoils will be more rare -- it seems like a lot of effort to go into something I felt would be simple. Maybe this is just something that needs to be fine-tuned with additional playtesting, and more playtesters? I think that it's important to note, that the recoil will be a large part of the game, and is a key factor in the game being fun/challenging or not.

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• Is data integrity possible without normalization?

  - by shuniar

  I am working on an application that requires the storage of location information such as city, state, zip code, latitude, and longitude. I would like to ensure: Location data is accurate Detroit, CA Detroit IS NOT in California Detroit, MI Detroit IS in Michigan Cities and states are spelled correctly California not Calefornia Detroit not Detriot Cities and states are named consistently Valid: CA Detroit Invalid: Cali california DET d-town The D Also, since city/zip data is not guaranteed to be static, updating this data in a normalized fashion could be difficult, whereas it could be implemented as a de facto location if it is denormalized. A couple thoughts that come to mind: A collection of reference tables that store a list of all states and the most common cities and zip codes that can grow over time. It would search the database for an exact or similar match and recommend corrections. Use some sort of service to validate the location data before it is stored in the database. Is it possible to fulfill these requirements without normalization, and if so, should I denormalize this data?

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• Integration of routes that are not resources in an MVC REST style application

  - by Emil Lerch

  I would like to keep my application relatively REST-pure for the sake of consistency, but I'm struggling philosophically with the relatively few views (maybe just one) that I'll need to build that don't relate to resources directly, and therefore do not fit into a REST style. As an example, take the home page. Ruby on rails seems to bail on their otherwise RESTful approach for this very basic need of all web sites. The home page appears special: You can get it, but a get at the resource level is supposed to give you a collection of elements. I can imagine this being the list of routes maybe, but that seems a stretch, and doesn't address anything else. Getting the home page by id doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense - what's the element of a home collection? Again, maybe routes, but a get on a route would do what? Redirect? This feels odd. You can't delete it (arguably you could allow this for administrators) Adding a second one doesn't make sense except possibly if the elements were routes Updating it might make sense for administrators, but AFAIK REST doesn't describe updates on the resource directly, only elements of the resource (this article explicitly says "UNUSED" for PUTS on the resource) Is the "right" thing to do just to special case these types of things? At the end of the day, I can wrap my head around most of applications being gathered around resources...I can't think of another good example other than a home page, but since that's the start of an application, I think it warrants some thought.

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• Other games that employ mechanics like the game "Diplomacy"

  - by Kevin Peno

  I'm doing a little bit of research and I'm hoping you can help me track down any games, other than Diplomacy (online version here), that employ all or some of the mechanics in Diplomacy (rules, short form). Examples I'm looking for: Simultaneous orders given prior to execution of orders In Diplomacy, players "write down" their moves and execute them "at the same time" Support, in terms of supporting an attacker or defender "take" a territory. In Diplomacy, no one unit is stronger than another you need to combine the strength of multiple units to attack other territories. Rules for how move conflicts are resolved Example, 2 units move into a space, but only one is allowed, what happens. I may add to this list later, but these are the primary things I'm looking for. If you need clarification on anything just let me know. Note: I tried asking this on GamingSE, but it was shot down. So, I am unsure where else I could post this. Since I am researching this for game development purposes, I assume this post is on topic. Please let me know if this is not the case. Please also feel free to re-categorize this. Thanks!

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• SharePoint 2010 Workflow for Multiple Items (Architecture)

  - by erobillard

  I had the question today of whether SharePoint 2010 supports workflow on multiple items, since Groove's workflow apparently supported multiple items and that model disappeared when Groove Workspaces were amalgamated into SharePoint Sites and SharePoint Workspace (the client utility). It's a great question, the short answer is that yes, it's possible. You could brute-force it in 2007 and that strategy should still carry over to 2010, and 3 new features (that I can think of) support multi-item scenarios...(read more)

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• How could RDBMSes be considered a fad?

  - by StuperUser

  Completing my Computing A-level in 2003 and getting a degree in Computing in 2007, and learning my trade in a company with a lot of SQL usage, I was brought up on the idea of Relational Databases being used for storage. So, despite being relatively new to development, I was taken-aback to read a comment (on Is LinqPad site quote "Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?" accurate? ) that said: [Some devs] despise [SQL] and think that it and RDBMS are a fad Obviously, a competent dev will use the right tool for the right job and won't create a relational database when e.g. flat file or another solution for storage is appropriate, but RDBMs are useful in a massive number of circumstances, so how could they be considered a fad?

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