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• Code Clone Analysis on Rawr &ndash; Part 1

  - by Dylan Smith

  In this post we’ll take a look at the first result from the Code Clone Analysis, and do some refactoring to eliminate the duplication.  The first result indicated that it found an exact match repeated 14 times across the solution, with 18 lines of duplicated code in each of the 14 blocks.   Net Lines Of Code Deleted: 179     In this case the code in question was a bunch of classes representing the various Bosses.  Every Boss class has a constructor that initializes a whole bunch of properties of that boss, however, for most bosses a lot of these are simply set to 0’s.     Every Boss class inherits from the class MultiDiffBoss, so I simply moved all the initialization of the various properties to the base class constructor, and left it up to the Boss subclasses to only set those that are different than the default values. In this case there are actually 22 Boss subclasses, however, due to some inconsistencies in the code structure Code Clone only identified 14 of them as identical blocks.  Since I was in there refactoring the 14 identified already, it was pretty straightforward to identify the other 8 subclasses that had the same duplicated behavior and refactor those also.   Note: Code Clone Analysis is pretty slow right now.  It takes approx 1 min to build this solution, but it takes 9 mins to run Code Clone Analysis.  Personally, if the results are high quality I’m OK with it taking a long time to run since I don’t expect it’s something I would be running all that often.  However, it would be nice to be able to run it as part of a nightly build, but at this time I don’t believe it’s possible to run outside of Visual Studio due to a dependency on the meta-data available in the VS environment.

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• How to become more productive in design and programming

  - by aurel

  Usually whenever I see tutorial videos (apart from the main subject) I learn a lot from their working habits, for example; they way they have set up their folders, what shotcuts they use. The best example was (long time a go) I say a jquery video, and half way through the author said something like “by the way you could have a code library” – that’s the only thing I remember from that video (but the author said it as something he assumed people know about) So I was wondering if someone knows any tip or any website which goes other how other professionals work, how they have set up their programming habits to help them not waste time in repetitive tasks.

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• What are some techniques I can use to refactor Object Oriented code into Functional code?

  - by tieTYT

  I've spent about 20-40 hours developing part of a game using JavaScript and HTML5 canvas. When I started I had no idea what I was doing. So it started as a proof of concept and is coming along nicely now, but it has no automated tests. The game is starting to become complex enough that it could benefit from some automated testing, but it seems tough to do because the code depends on mutating global state. I'd like to refactor the whole thing using Underscore.js, a functional programming library for JavaScript. Part of me thinks I should just start from scratch using a Functional Programming style and testing. But, I think refactoring the imperative code into declarative code might be a better learning experience and a safer way to get to my current state of functionality. Problem is, I know what I want my code to look like in the end, but I don't know how to turn my current code into it. I'm hoping some people here could give me some tips a la the Refactoring book and Working Effectively With Legacy Code. For example, as a first step I'm thinking about "banning" global state. Take every function that uses a global variable and pass it in as a parameter instead. Next step may be to "ban" mutation, and to always return a new object. Any advice would be appreciated. I've never taken OO code and refactored it into Functional code before.

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• Interface design where functions need to be called in a specific sequence

  - by Vorac

  The task is to configure a piece of hardware within the device, according to some input specification. This should be achieved as follows: 1) Collect the configuration information. This can happen at different times and places. For example, module A and module B can both request (at different times) some resources from my module. Those 'resources' are actually what the configuration is. 2) After it is clear that no more requests are going to be realized, a startup command, giving a summary of the requested resources, needs to be sent to the hardware. 3) Only after that, can (and must) detailed configuration of said resources be done. 4) Also, only after 2), can (and must) routing of selected resources to the declared callers be done. A common cause for bugs, even for me, who wrote the thing, is mistaking this order. What naming conventions, designs or mechanisms can I employ to make the interface usable by someone who sees the code for the first time?

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• Interface hierarchy design for separate domains

  - by jerzi

  There are businesses and people. People could be liked and businesses could be commented on: class Like class Comment class Person implements iLikeTarget class Business implements iCommentTarget Likes and comments are performed by a user(person) so they are authored: class Like implements iAuthored class Comment implements iAuthored People's like could also be used in their history: class history class Like implements iAuthored, iHistoryTarget Now, a smart developer comes and says each history is attached to a user so history should be authored: interface iHistoryTarget extends iAuthored so it could be removed from class Like: class Person implements iLikeTarget class Business implements iCommentTarget class Like implements iHistoryTarget class Comment implements iAuthored class history interface iHistoryTarget extends iAuthored Here, another smart guy comes with a question: How could I capture the Authored fact in Like and Comment classes? He may knows nothing about history concept in the project. By scalling these kind of functionallities, interfaces may goes to their encapsulated types which cause more type strength, on the other hand explicitness suffered and also code end users will face much pain to process. So here is the question: Should I encapsulate those dependant types to their parent types (interface hierarchies) or not or explicitly repeat each type for every single level of my type system or ...?

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• Any good tutorials or resources for learning how to design a scalable and "component" based game 'fr

  - by CodeJustin.com

  In short I'm creating a 2D mmorpg and unlike my last "mmo" I started developing I want to make sure that this one will scale well and work well when I want to add new in-game features or modify existing ones. With my last attempt with an avatar chat within the first few thousand lines of code and just getting basic features added into the game I seen my code quality lowering and my ability to add new features or modify old ones was getting lower too as I added more features in. It turned into one big mess that some how ran, lol. This time I really need to buckle down and find a design that will allow me to create a game framework that will be easy to add and remove features (aka things like playing mini-games within my world or a mail system or buddy list or a new public area with interactive items). I'm thinking that maybe a component based approach MIGHT be what I'm looking for but I'm really not sure. I have read documents on mmorpg design and 2d game engine architecture but nothing really explained a way of designing a game framework that will basically let me "plug-in" new features into the main game and use the resources of the main game without changing much within my 'main game code'. Hope someone understands what I mean, any help will is appreciated.

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• Is there a design pattern that expresses objects (an their operations) in various states?

  - by darren

  Hi I have a design question about the evolution of an object (and its state) after some sequence of methods complete. I'm having trouble articulating what I mean so I may need to clean up the question based on feedback. Consider an object called Classifier. It has the following methods: void initialise() void populateTrainingSet(TrainingSet t) void pupulateTestingSet(TestingSet t) void train() void test() Result predict(Instance i) My problem is that these methods need to be called in a certain order. Futher, some methods are invalid until a previous method is called, and some methods are invalid after a method has been called. For example, it would be invalid to call predict() before test() was called, and it would be invalid to call train() after test() was called. My approach so far has been to maintain a private enum that represents the current stateof the object: private static enum STATE{ NEW, TRAINED, TESTED, READY}; But this seems a bit cloogy. Is there a design pattern for such a problem type? Maybe something related to the template method.

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• Which is the correct design pattern for my PHP application?

  - by user1487141

  I've been struggling to find good way to implement my system which essentially matches the season and episode number of a show from a string, you can see the current working code here: https://github.com/huddy/tvfilename I'm currently rewriting this library and want a nicer way to implement how the the match happens, currently essentially the way it works is: There's a folder with classes in it (called handlers), every handler is a class that implements an interface to ensure a method called match(); exists, this match method uses the regex stored in a property of that handler class (of which there are many) to try and match a season and episode. The class loads all of these handlers by instantiating each one into a array stored in a property, when I want to try and match some strings the method iterates over these objects calling match(); and the first one that returns true is then returned in a result set with the season and episode it matched. I don't really like this way of doing it, it's kind of hacky to me, and I'm hoping a design pattern can help, my ultimate goal is to do this using best practices and I wondered which one I should use? The other problems that exist are: More than one handler could match a string, so they have to be in an order to prevent the more greedy ones matching first, not sure if this is solvable as some of the regex patterns have to be greedy, but possibly a score system, something that shows a percentage of how likely the match is correct, i'd have no idea how to actually implement this though. I'm not if instantiating all those handlers is a good way of doing it, speed is important, but using best practices and sticking to design patterns to create good, extensible and maintainable code is my ultimate priority. It's worth noting the handler classes sometimes do other things than just regex matching, they sometimes prep the string to be matched by removing common words etc. Cheers for any help Billy

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• Is there a design pattern to cut down on code duplication when subclassing Activities in Android?

  - by Daniel Lew

  I've got a common task that I do with some Activities - downloading data then displaying it. I've got the downloading part down pat; it is, of course, a little tricky due to the possibility of the user changing the orientation or cancelling the Activity before the download is complete, but the code is there. There is enough code handling these cases such that I don't want to have to copy/paste it to each Activity I have, so I thought to create an abstract subclass Activity itself such that it handles a single background download which then launches a method which fills the page with data. This all works. The issue is that, due to single inheritance, I am forced to recreate the exact same class for any other type of Activity - for example, I use Activity, ListActivity and MapActivity. To use the same technique for all three requires three duplicate classes, except each extends a different Activity. Is there a design pattern that can cut down on the code duplication? As it stands, I have saved much duplication already, but it pains me to see the exact same code in three classes just so that they each subclass a different type of Activity.

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• How to force VS to react on a changing of an attached property in design time?

  - by sedovav

  Imagine, we have a wpf class library with a window1.xaml and a resource dictionary res.xaml defined in it. I know how to use styles that defined in the res.xaml for the controls that defined into the window: <Window x:Class="...Window1"> <Window.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="res.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> <\Window.Resources> </Window> So we can use the dictionary's styles for all elements into the window (except the window element... I don't know how to set the style from the res.xaml for the window :( ). I saw the article where describes how to create and use attached property to add resource dictionaries to a FrameworkElement.Resources.MergedDictionaries list. It's good! We can do the same as we done in the example above but we can use the window style now. It looks like this: <Window x:Class="...Window1" xmlns: resources="..." resources:SharedResources.MergedDictionaries="res.xaml"> </Window> That's good but VS2008 cannot recognize resources from res.xaml in design time. So we have a sad situation: all styles from res.xaml are available in run-time but in the design-time VS cannot display the window (it can't find the mentioned styles). Does anybody know how to fix this situation?

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• Is Using Tuples in my .NET 4.0 Code a Poor Design Decision?

  - by Jason Webb

  With the addition of the Tuple class in .net 4, I have been trying to decide if using them in my design is a bad choice or not. The way I see it, a Tuple can be a shortcut to writing a result class (I am sure there are other uses too). So this: public class ResultType { public string StringValue { get; set; } public int IntValue { get; set; } } public ResultType GetAClassedValue() { //..Do Some Stuff ResultType result = new ResultType { StringValue = "A String", IntValue = 2 }; return result; } Is equivalent to this: public Tuple<string, int> GetATupledValue() { //...Do Some stuff Tuple<string, int> result = new Tuple<string, int>("A String", 2); return result; } So setting aside the possibility that I am missing the point of Tuples, is the example with a Tuple a bad design choice? To me it seems like less clutter, but not as self documenting and clean. Meaning that with the type ResultType, it is very clear later on what each part of the class means but you have extra code to maintain. With the Tuple<string, int> you will need to look up and figure out what each Item represents, but you write and maintain less code. Any experience you have had with this choice would be greatly appreciated.

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• Database PK-FK design for future-effective-date entries?

  - by Scott Balmos

  Ultimately I'm going to convert this into a Hibernate/JPA design. But I wanted to start out from purely a database perspective. We have various tables containing data that is future-effective-dated. Take an employee table with the following pseudo-definition: employee id INT AUTO_INCREMENT ... data fields ... effectiveFrom DATE effectiveTo DATE employee_reviews id INT AUTO_INCREMENT employee_id INT FK employee.id Very simplistic. But let's say Employee A has id = 1, effectiveFrom = 1/1/2011, effectiveTo = 1/1/2099. That employee is going to be changing jobs in the future, which would in theory create a new row, id = 2 with effectiveFrom = 7/1/2011, effectiveTo = 1/1/2099, and id = 1's effectiveTo updated to 6/30/2011. But now, my program would have to go through any table that has a FK relationship to employee every night, and update those FK to reference the newly-effective employee entry. I have seen various postings in both pure SQL and Hibernate forums that I should have a separate employee_versions table, which is where I would have all effective-dated data stored, resulting in the updated pseudo-definition below: employee id INT AUTO_INCREMENT employee_versions id INT AUTO_INCREMENT employee_id INT FK employee.id ... data fields ... effectiveFrom DATE effectiveTo DATE employee_reviews id INT AUTO_INCREMENT employee_id INT FK employee.id Then to get any actual data, one would have to actually select from employee_versions with the proper employee_id and date range. This feels rather unnatural to have this secondary "versions" table for each versioned entity. Anyone have any opinions, suggestions from your own prior work, etc? Like I said, I'm taking this purely from a general SQL design standpoint first before layering in Hibernate on top. Thanks!

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• Interface contracts – forcing code contracts through interfaces

  - by DigiMortal

  Sometimes we need a way to make different implementations of same interface follow same rules. One option is to duplicate contracts to all implementation but this is not good option because we have duplicated code then. The other option is to force contracts to all implementations at interface level. In this posting I will show you how to do it using interface contracts and contracts class. Using code from previous example about unit testing code with code contracts I will go further and force contracts at interface level. Here is the code from previous example. Take a careful look at it because I will talk about some modifications to this code soon. public interface IRandomGenerator {     int Next(int min, int max); }   public class RandomGenerator : IRandomGenerator {     private Random _random = new Random();       public int Next(int min, int max)     {         return _random.Next(min, max);     } }    public class Randomizer {     private IRandomGenerator _generator;       private Randomizer()     {         _generator = new RandomGenerator();     }       public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator)     {         _generator = generator;     }       public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return _generator.Next(min, max);     } } If we look at the GetRandomFromRangeContracted() method we can see that contracts set in this method are applicable to all implementations of IRandomGenerator interface. Although we can write new implementations as we want these implementations need exactly the same contracts. If we are using generators somewhere else then code contracts are not with them anymore. To solve the problem we will force code contracts at interface level. NB! To make the following code work you must enable Contract Reference Assembly building from project settings. Interface contracts and contracts class Interface contains no code – only definitions of members that implementing type must have. But code contracts must be defined in body of member they are part of. To get over this limitation, code contracts are defined in separate contracts class. Interface is bound to this class by special attribute and contracts class refers to interface through special attribute. Here is the IRandomGenerator with contracts and contracts class. Also I write simple fake so we can test contracts easily based only on interface mock. [ContractClass(typeof(RandomGeneratorContracts))] public interface IRandomGenerator {     int Next(int min, int max); }   [ContractClassFor(typeof(IRandomGenerator))] internal sealed class RandomGeneratorContracts : IRandomGenerator {     int IRandomGenerator.Next(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(                 min < max,                 "Min must be less than max"             );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return default(int);     } }   public class RandomFake : IRandomGenerator {     private int _testValue;       public RandomGen(int testValue)     {         _testValue = testValue;     }       public int Next(int min, int max)     {         return _testValue;     } } To try out these changes use the following code. var gen = new RandomFake(3);   try {     gen.Next(10, 1); } catch(Exception ex) {     Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message); }   try {     gen.Next(5, 10); } catch(Exception ex) {     Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message); } Now we can force code contracts to all types that implement our IRandomGenerator interface and we must test only the interface to make sure that contracts are defined correctly.

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• Application Code Redesign to reduce no. of Database Hits from Performance Perspective

  - by Rachel

  Scenario I want to parse a large CSV file and inserts data into the database, csv file has approximately 100K rows of data. Currently I am using fgetcsv to parse through the file row by row and insert data into Database and so right now I am hitting database for each line of data present in csv file so currently database hit count is 100K which is not good from performance point of view. Current Code: public function initiateInserts() { //Open Large CSV File(min 100K rows) for parsing. $this->fin = fopen($file,'r') or die('Cannot open file'); //Parsing Large CSV file to get data and initiate insertion into schema. while (($data=fgetcsv($this->fin,5000,";"))!==FALSE) { $query = "INSERT INTO dt_table (id, code, connectid, connectcode) VALUES (:id, :code, :connectid, :connectcode)"; $stmt = $this->prepare($query); // Then, for each line : bind the parameters $stmt->bindValue(':id', $data[0], PDO::PARAM_INT); $stmt->bindValue(':code', $data[1], PDO::PARAM_INT); $stmt->bindValue(':connectid', $data[2], PDO::PARAM_INT); $stmt->bindValue(':connectcode', $data[3], PDO::PARAM_INT); // Execute the statement $stmt->execute(); $this->checkForErrors($stmt); } } I am looking for a way wherein instead of hitting Database for every row of data, I can prepare the query and than hit it once and populate Database with the inserts. Any Suggestions !!! Note: This is the exact sample code that I am using but CSV file has more no. of field and not only id, code, connectid and connectcode but I wanted to make sure that I am able to explain the logic and so have used this sample code here. Thanks !!!

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• Open Source WPF UML Design tool

  - by oazabir

  PlantUmlEditor is my new free open source UML designer project built using WPF and .NET 3.5. If you have used plantuml before, you know that you can quickly create sophisitcated UML diagrams without struggling with a designer. Especially those who use Visio to draw UML diagrams (God forbid!), you will be at heaven. This is a super fast way to get your diagrams up and ready for show. You can *write* UML diagrams in plain English, following a simple syntax and get diagrams generated on-the-fly. This editor really saves time designing UML diagrams. I have to produce quick diagrams to convey ideas quickly to Architects, Designers and Developers everyday. So, I use this tool to write some quick diagrams at the speed of coding, and the diagrams get generated on the fly. Instead of writing a long mail explaining some complex operation or some business process in English, I can quickly write it in the editor in almost plain English, and get a nice looking activity/sequence diagram generated instantly. Making major changes is also as easy as doing search-replace and copy-pasting blocks here and there. You don't get such agility in any conventional mouse-based UML designers. I have submited a full codeproject article to give you a detail walkthrough how I have built this. Please read this article and vote for me if you like it. PlantUML Editor: A fast and simple UML editor using WPF http://www.codeproject.com/KB/smart/plantumleditor.aspx You can download the project from here: http://code.google.com/p/plantumleditor/

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• Day 2 - Game Design Documentation

  - by dapostolov

  So yesterday I didn't cut any code for my game but I was able to do a tiny bit of research on the XNA Game Development Technology and the communities out there and do you know what? I feel I'm a bit closer to my goal. The bad news is today I didn't cut code either. However, not all is lost because I wanted to get my ideas on paper and today I just did that.  Today, I began to jot down notes about the game and how I felt the visual elements would interact with each other. Unlike my workplace, my personal level of documentation is nothing more than a task list or a mind map of my ideas; it helps me streamline my solutions quiet effectively and circumvent the long process of articulating each thought to the n-th degree. I truly dislike documentation (because I have an extremely hard time articulating my thought and solutions); however, because I tend to do a really good job with documentation I tend to get stuck writing the buggers. But as a generalist remark: 'No Developer likes documentation.' For now let's stick with my basic notes and call this post a living document. Here are my notes, fresh, from after watching the new first episode of Merlin second season! Actually, a quick recommendation to anyone who is reading this (if anyone is): I truly recommend you envelope yourself in the medium or task you're trying to tackle. Be one with moment and feel it! For instance: Are you writing a fantasy script / game? What would the music of the genre sound like? For me the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is frackin awesome. There are many other good CD's out there, which I listen to (some who even use medival instruments, but Conan I keep returning to. It's a creative trigger for me. Ask yourself what would the imagery look like? Time to surf google for artist renditions of fantasy! What would the game feel like? Start playing some of your favorite games that inspire you, be wary though, have some self control and don't let it absorb your time. Anyhow, onto the documentation... Screens, Scenes, and Sprites. Oh My! (groan...) The first thing that came to mind were the screens, I thought the following would suffice: Menu Screen Character Customisation Screen Loading Screen? Battle Ground The Menu Screen Ok. So, the thought here is when the game loads a huge title is displayed: Wizard Wars. The player is prompted with 3 menu items: 1 Player Game, 2 Player Game, and Exit. Since I'm targetting the PC platform, as a non-networked game to start, I picture myself running my mouse over each menu option and the visual element of the menu item changes, along with a sound to indicate that I am over a curent menu item. And as I move my mouse away, it changes back, and possibly an exit mouse sound. Maybe on the screen somewhere is a brazier alit with a magical tome open right beside it, OR, maybe the tome is the menu! I hear the menu music as mellow, not obtrusive or piercing. On a menu item select, a confirmation sound bellows to indicate the players selection. The Esc key will always return me to the previous screens or desktop. The menu screen must feel...dark, like a really important ritual is about to happen and thus the music should build up. 1 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) 2 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) Exit - > Back to Windows Notes: So the first thing I pick up here are a couple things: First and foremost, my artistic abilities suck crap, so I may have to hire an artist (now that i've said that, lets get techy) graphical objects will be positioned within a scene on each screen / window. Menu items will be represented grapically, possibly animated, and have sound / animation effects triggered by user input or a time line. I have an animated scene involving a brazier or fire on a stick IF I was to move this game to the xbox, I'd have to track which menu item is currently selected (unless I do a mouse pointer type thing.) WindowObject has a scene A Scene has many GameObjects GameObject has a position graphic or animation MenuObject is a GameObject which has a mouse in, mouse out, and click event which either does something graphically (animation), does something with sound, or moves to another screen.  Character Customisation Screen With either the 1 or 2 player option selected, both selections will come to this screen; a wizard requires a name, powers, and vestements of course! Player one will configure his character first and then player two. I considered a split screen for PC but to have two people fighting over a keyboard would probably suck. For XBox, a split screen could work; maybe when I get into the networking portion (phase 2 blog?) of this game I will remove the 2 player option for PC and provide only multiplayer and I will leave 2 player for xbox...hmm... Anyhow...I picture the creation process as follows: Name: (textbox / keyboard entry) - for xbox, this would have to be different. Robe Color: (color box, or something) Stats: Speed, Oomph, and Health. (as sliders) 1 as minimum and 10 as maximum. Ok, Back, and Cancel buttons / options. Each stat has a benefit which are listed below. The idea is the player decides if he wants his wizard to run fast, be a tank and ... hit with a purse.Regardless, the player will have a pool of 12 points to use. Ideally, A balanced wizard will have 5 in each attribute. Spells? The only spell of choice is a ball of fire which comes without question. The music and screen should still feel like a ritual. The Character Speed Basically, how fast your character moves and casts. Oomph (Best Monster Truck Voice): PURE POWAH!!! The damage output of your fireball. Health How much damage you can take. Notes: I realise the game dynamics may sound uninteresting at the moment; but I think after a couple releases, we could have some other grand ideas such as: saved profiles, gold to upgrade arsenal of spells, talents, etc...but for now...a vanilla fireball thrower mage will suffice for this experiment. OK. So... a MenuObject  may need to be loosely coupled to allow future items such as networking? may be a button? a CharacterObject has a name speed oomph health and a funky robe color. cap on the three stats (1-10) an arsenal of 1 spell (possibly could expand this) The Loading Screen As is. The Battleground Screen For now, I'm keeping the screen as max resolution for the PC. The screen isn't going to move or even be a split screen. I'm not aiming high here because I want to see what level of change is involved when new features / concepts are added to game content. I'm interested to find out if we could apply techniques such as MVC or MVVM to this type of development or is it too tightly coupled? This reminds me when when my best friend and I were brainstorming our game idea (this is going back a while...1994, 6?) and he cringed at the thought of bringing business technology into games, especially when I suggested a database to store character information and COM / DCOM as the medium, but it seems I wasn't far off (reflecting); just like his implementation of a xml "config file" for dynamic direct-x menus back before .net in 1999...anyhow...i digress... The Battle One screen, two characters lobing balls of fire at each other...It doesn't get better than that. Every so often a scroll appears...and the fireballs bounce off walls, or the wizard has rapid fire, or even scrolls of healing! The scroll options are endless. Two bars at the top, each the color of the wizard (with their name beside the bar) indicate how much health they have. Possibly the appearance of the scrolls means the battle is taking too long? I'm thinking 1 player controls: up, down, left, right and space to fire the button. Or even possibly, mouse click and shift - mouse button to fire a spell in the direction they are facing. Two player controls: a, s, d, f and space AND arrows (up, down, left, right) and Del key or Crtl. The game ends when a player has 0 health and a dialog box appears asking for a rematch / reconfigure / exit. Health goes down when a fireball (friendly or not), connects with a wizard. When a wizard connects with a scroll, a countdown clock / icon appears near the health bar and the wizard begins to glow. For the most part, a wizard can have only scroll 1 effect on him at a time. Notes: Ok, there's alot to cover here. a CharacterObject is a GameObject it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has sounds (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, whistling, other?) it has animations (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, idle, other?) it has a lifespan (determined by health) it is alive or dead it has a position a ScrollObject is a GameObject it carries a transferance of points "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it carries a transferance of "other" it is stationary it has a sound on impact it has a stationary animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by game) it is alive or dead it has a position a WallObject is a GameObject it has a sound on fireball impact? it is a still image / stationary it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it is dead it has a position A FireBall is a GameObject it carries a transferance of poinst "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has a sound it has a travel animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by caster) it is alive or dead it has a position As I look at this, I can see some common attributes in each object that I can carry up to the GameObject. I think I'm going to end the documentation here, it's taken me a bit of time to type this all out, tomorrow. I'll load up my IDE and my paint studio to get some good old fashioned cowboy hacking going!   D.

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• Low-level game engine renderer design

  - by Mark Ingram

  I'm piecing together the beginnings of an extremely basic engine which will let me draw arbitrary objects (SceneObject). I've got to the point where I'm creating a few sensible sounding classes, but as this is my first outing into game engines, I've got the feeling I'm overlooking things. I'm familiar with compartmentalising larger portions of the code so that individual sub-systems don't overly interact with each other, but I'm thinking more of the low-level stuff, starting from vertices working up. So if I have a Vertex class, I can combine that with a list of indices to make a Mesh class. How does the engine determine identical meshes for objects? Or is that left to the level designer? Once we have a Mesh, that can be contained in the SceneObject class. And a list of SceneObject can be placed into the Scene to be drawn. Right now I'm only using OpenGL, but I'm aware that I don't want to be tying OpenGL calls right in to base classes (such as updating the vertices in the Mesh, I don't want to be calling glBufferData etc). Are there any good resources that discuss these issues? Are there any "common" heirachies which should be used?

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• Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

  - by alvonellos

  Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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• Bootstrap responsive CSS [migrated]

  - by savolai

  I have a four column design and I am using Bootstrap. The design renders fine in a single column in mobile devices, but in "(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 979px)", I get four columns though there is room for only two. So clearly, the rows/spans setup would need to be rethought for those sizes. The only way I can imagine of doing this is to have semantic CSS classes used in the HTML and only including grid classes in the CSS using LESS, and then depending on screen size, including different grid classes to achieve four or two column layout. Not sure if this would work either though. Is this the way to go with, or am I thinking this too complicatedly? Thanks! Also at: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/twitter-bootstrap/R5jEp0oQ_-E

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• Platform Builder: Building Cloned Code from Multiple OS Versions

  - by Bruce Eitman

  My career goal is to delete more code than I write, and so far I have been fairly successful. But of course once in a while I need to clone code from the public tree which is contrary to my goal. Usually what follows is a new OS release. To help reach my goal, my team uses the same BSP code for multiple versions of the OS. That means that we need to handle the cloned code so that the correct code builds for the OS version that we are working on. To handle this we could use SKIPBUILD in the sources file, but that gets messy if the cloned code contains multiple folders. The solution that we use is to have a parent folder with subfolders that contain the OS version number. Example: PM |-PM500 |-PM600 |-PM700 The version number corresponds to the environment variable _WINCEOSVER. Then we have a simple DIRS file in the parent folder: DIRS=PM$( _WINCEOSVER) Which automatically selects the folder that goes with the OS version that we are building.   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• Lightweight PHP/HTML/CSS editor with code browser

  - by Nisto

  I'm looking for a freeware editor which has; syntax highlighting and a code browser (or code suggestions/hints). Preferably freeware license! I've tried out quite a few editors, but a lot of them are unfortunately very resource heavy and provides a lot more functions than I ever needed. So far, there's two editors that I really like, and is lightweight: jEdit and Notepad++. Although, unfortunately... Notepad++ doesn't have code browser support for both control structures and functions for PHP. Also, there's no code browser for HTML... I really liked jEdit as well, but there doesn't seem to be a code browser for it. Except for maybe Completion, but it's a bothersome plugin, and doesn't show the code browser unless you type something in and press CTRL+B. Other editors I've tried, but wasn't satisfied with: Adobe Dreamweaver CodeLobster PHP Edition Aptana Studio Komodo Edit EditPlus BlueFish PHP Designer 2007 - Personal PhpStorm Scriptly Eclipse UltraEdit Notepad2 EditPad Pro Rapid PHP EDIT I'm using Windows XP

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• Windows 8: Everything from design, build, and how to sell a Metro style app

  - by Thomas Mason

  For me, there are a lot of similarities between an application developed for Windows Phone and a Metro style app developed for Windows 8. A Windows Phone 7 application (rather than an XNA game) is built in .NET and XAML against a subset of the .NET framework and the application has a lifecycle which needs to be conscious of battery life and so is split out into foreground/background pieces. The application is sandboxed in terms of its interactions with the local device and is packaged with a manifest which describes those interactions. The app needs to be aware of network connectivity status and its work on the network is done asynchronously to preserve the user experience.The app is packaged and deployed to a Marketplace which the user browses to find the app, read reviews, perhaps purchase it and then install it and receive updates over time. Quite a lot of those statements are as true of a Windows 8 Metro style app as they are for a Windows Phone app and so a Windows Phone app developer already has a good head start when it comes to building Metro style apps for Windows 8. With that in mind, there is an event to help developers with a Windows Phone app in Marketplace to begin the process of looking at Windows 8 and whether you can get a quick win by bringing your Phone application onto Windows. The idea of the event was to provide a space where developers can get together over 2 days and take the time out to look at what it means to take their app from Windows Phone to Windows 8. Kicking off on Saturday 16th June at 10am, we are told they have plenty of power sockets, WiFi, whiteboards, drinks, pizza, games, prizes and some quiet space that you can work in. Including people on hand with Windows Phone and Windows 8 experience to help everything along the way. There will be an attendee-voted schedule of talks but we’ll keep these out of your way if you just want to get on and code. We’ll also provide information around submitting your app to the Windows Store If you have a Windows Phone app in Marketplace, now’s a great time to look at getting it onto Windows 8. Sign up. Bring your laptop. Bring your app. Bring Windows 8 and Visual Studio 11. And everyone will their best to help you get your app onto Windows 8. Location & Venue TBA but it will be in central London, accessible by major railway and underground transportation. Day 1 Saturday 16th June 10am – 9pm Day 2 Sunday 17th June 10am – 4pm

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• Seperating entities from their actions or behaviours

  - by Jamie Dixon

  Hi everyone, I'm having a go at creating a very simple text based game and am wondering what the standard design patterns are when it comes to entities (characters, sentient scenery) and the actions those entities can perform. As an example, I have entity that is a 'person' with various properties such as age, gender, height, etc. This 'person' can also perform some actions such as speaking, walking, jumping, flying, etc etc. How would you seperate out the entity from the actions it can perform and what are some common design patterns that solve this kind of problem?

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• C# Domain-Driven Design Sample Released

  - by Artur Trosin

  In the post I want to declare that NDDD Sample application(s) is released and share the work with you. You can access it here: http://code.google.com/p/ndddsample. NDDDSample from functionality perspective matches DDDSample 1.1.0 which is based Java and on joint effort by Eric Evans' company Domain Language and the Swedish software consulting company Citerus. But because NDDDSample is based on .NET technologies those two implementations could not be matched directly. However concepts, practices, values, patterns, especially DDD, are cross-language and cross-platform :). Implementation of .NET version of the application was an interesting journey because now as .NET developer I better understand the differences positive and negative between these two platforms. Even there are those differences they can be overtaken, in many cases it was not so hard to match a java libs\framework with .NET during the implementation. Here is a list of technology stack: 1. .net 3.5 - framework 2. VS.NET 2008 - IDE 3. ASP.NET MVC2.0 - for administration and tracking UI 4. WCF - communication mechanism 5. NHibernate - ORM 6. Rhino Commons - Nhibernate session management, base classes for in memory unit tests 7. SqlLite - database 8. Windsor - inversion of control container 9. Windsor WCF facility - for better integration with NHibernate 10. MvcContrib - and in particular its Castle WindsorControllerFactory in order to enable IoC for controllers 11. WPF - for incident logging application 12. Moq - mocking lib used for unit tests 13. NUnit - unit testing framework 14. Log4net - logging framework 15. Cloud based on Azure SDK These are not the latest technologies, tools and libs for the moment but if there are someone thinks that it would be useful to migrate the sample to latest current technologies and versions please comment. Cloud version of the application is based on Azure emulated environment provided by the SDK, so it hasn't been tested on ‘real' Azure scenario (we just do not have access to it). Thanks to participants, Eugen Gorgan who was involved directly in development, Ruslan Rusu and Victor Lungu spend their free time to discuss .NET specific decisions, Eugen Navitaniuc helped with Java related questions. Also, big thank to Cornel Cretu, he designed a nice logo and helped with some browser incompatibility issues. Any review and feedback are welcome! Thank you, Artur Trosin

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• How does whitespace affect Python code?

  - by Codereview

  I've started programming about a year ago, I've learned the C and C++ languages and bits of Java. Recently I've started to learn the Python language (Notable: I'm using the Eclipse IDE). I'm used to formatting my code with whitespace, placing statements a bit to the right of my code for easier readability. Since I started working with Python it seems whitespace is a problem, I get some unnecessary whitespace warnings, and my code gets underlined (In eclipse). After a while I figured Python is very restrictive about whitespace for some reason, so I've been looking for the effects of whitespace on Python code. How does it affect the code? Does the code work different with unnecessary whitespace?

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