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• T4 Template error - Assembly Directive cannot locate referenced assembly in Visual Studio 2010 proje

  - by CodeSniper

  I ran into the following error recently in Visual Studio 2010 while trying to port Phil Haack’s excellent T4CSS template which was originally built for Visual Studio 2008.   The Problem Error Compiling transformation: Metadata file 'dotless.Core' could not be found In “T4 speak”, this simply means that you have an Assembly directive in your T4 template but the T4 engine was not able to locate or load the referenced assembly. In the case of the T4CSS Template, this was a showstopper for making it work in Visual Studio 2010. On a side note: The T4CSS template is a sweet little wrapper to allow you to use DotLessCss to generate static .css files from .less files rather than using their default HttpHandler or command-line tool.    If you haven't tried DotLessCSS yet, go check it out now!  In short, it is a tool that allows you to templatize and program your CSS files so that you can use variables, expressions, and mixins within your CSS which enables rapid changes and a lot of developer-flexibility as you evolve your CSS and UI. Back to our regularly scheduled program… Anyhow, this post isn't about DotLessCss, its about the T4 Templates and the errors I ran into when converting them from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. In VS2010, there were quite a few changes to the T4 Template Engine; most were excellent changes, but this one bit me with T4CSS: “Project assemblies are no longer used to resolve template assembly directives.” In VS2008, if you wanted to reference a custom assembly in your T4 Template (.tt file) you would simply right click on your project, choose Add Reference and select that assembly.  Afterwards you were allowed to use the following syntax in your T4 template to tell it to look at the local references: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core.dll" #> This told the engine to look in the “usual place” for the assembly, which is your project references. However, this is exactly what they changed in VS2010.  They now basically sandbox the T4 Engine to keep your T4 assemblies separate from your project assemblies.  This can come in handy if you want to support different versions of an assembly referenced both by your T4 templates and your project. Who broke the build?  Oh, Microsoft Did! In our case, this change causes a problem since the templates are no longer compatible when upgrading to VS 2010 – thus its a breaking change.  So, how do we make this work in VS 2010? Luckily, Microsoft now offers several options for referencing assemblies from T4 Templates: GAC your assemblies and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name Use a hard-coded Fully Qualified UNC path Copy assembly to Visual Studio "Public Assemblies Folder" and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name.  Use or Define a Windows Environment Variable to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Use a Visual Studio Macro to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Option #1 & 2 were already supported in Visual Studio 2008, so if you want to keep your templates compatible with both Visual Studio versions, then you would have to adopt one of these approaches. Yakkety Yak, use the GAC! Option #1 requires an additional pre-build step to GAC the referenced assembly, which could be a pain.  But, if you go that route, then after you GAC, all you need is a simple type name or namespace reference such as: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Hard Coding aint that hard! The other option of using hard-coded paths in Option #2 is pretty impractical in most situations since each developer would have to use the same local project folder paths, or modify this setting each time for their local machines as well as for production deployment.  However, if you want to go that route, simply use the following assembly directive style: <#@ assembly name="C:\Code\Lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> Lets go Public! Option #3, the Visual Studio Public Assemblies Folder, is the recommended place to put commonly used tools and libraries that are only needed for Visual Studio.  Think of it like a VS-only GAC.  This is likely the best place for something like dotLessCSS and is my preferred solution.  However, you will need to either use an installer or a pre-build action to copy the assembly to the right folder location.   Normally this is located at:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies Once you have copied your assembly there, you use the type name or namespace syntax again: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Save the Environment! Option #4, using a Windows Environment Variable, is interesting for enterprise use where you may have standard locations for files, but less useful for demo-code, frameworks, and products where you don't have control over the local system.  The syntax for including a environment variable in your assembly directive looks like the following, just as you would expect: <#@ assembly name="%mypath%\dotless.Core.dll" #> “mypath” is a Windows environment variable you setup that points to some fully qualified UNC path on your system.  In the right situation this can be a great solution such as one where you use a msi installer for deployment, or where you have a pre-existing environment variable you can re-use. OMG Macros! Finally, Option #5 is a very nice option if you want to keep your T4 template’s assembly reference local and relative to the project or solution without muddying-up your dev environment or GAC with extra deployments.  An example looks like this: <#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> In this example, I’m using the “SolutionDir” VS macro so I can reference an assembly in a “/lib” folder at the root of the solution.   This is just one of the many macros you can use.  If you are familiar with creating Pre/Post-build Event scripts, you can use its dialog to look at all of the different VS macros available. This option gives the best solution for local assemblies without the hassle of extra installers or other setup before the build.   However, its still not compatible with Visual Studio 2008, so if you have a T4 Template you want to use with both, then you may have to create multiple .tt files, one for each IDE version, or require the developer to set a value in the .tt file manually.   I’m not sure if T4 Templates support any form of compiler switches like “#if (VS2010)”  statements, but it would definitely be nice in this case to switch between this option and one of the ones more compatible with VS 2008. Conclusion As you can see, we went from 3 options with Visual Studio 2008, to 5 options (plus one problem) with Visual Studio 2010.  As a whole, I think the changes are great, but the short-term growing pains during the migration may be annoying until we get used to our new found power. Hopefully this all made sense and was helpful to you.  If nothing else, I’ll just use it as a reference the next time I need to port a T4 template to Visual Studio 2010.  Happy T4 templating, and “May the fourth be with you!”

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• Design for complex ATG applications

  - by Glen Borkowski

  Overview Needless to say, some ATG applications are more complex than others.  Some ATG applications support a single site, single language, single catalog, single currency, have a single development staff, single business team, and a relatively simple business model.  The real complex applications have to support multiple sites, multiple languages, multiple catalogs, multiple currencies, a couple different development teams, multiple business teams, and a highly complex business model (and processes to go along with it).  While it's still important to implement a proper design for simple applications, it's absolutely critical to do this for the complex applications.  Why?  It's all about time and money.  If you are unable to manage your complex applications in an efficient manner, the cost of managing it will increase dramatically as will the time to get things done (time to market).  On the positive side, your competition is most likely in the same situation, so you just need to be more efficient than they are. This article is intended to discuss a number of key areas to think about when designing complex applications on ATG.  Some of this can get fairly technical, so it may help to get some background first.  You can get enough of the required background information from this post.  After reading that, come back here and follow along. Application Design Of all the various types of ATG applications out there, the most complex tend to be the ones in the telecommunications industry - especially the ones which operate in multiple countries.  To get started, let's assume that we are talking about an application like that.  One that has these properties: Operates in multiple countries - must support multiple sites, catalogs, languages, and currencies The organization is fairly loosely-coupled - single brand, but different businesses across different countries There is some common functionality across all sites in all countries There is some common functionality across different sites within the same country Sites within a single country may have some unique functionality - relative to other sites in the same country Complex product catalog (mostly in terms of bundles, eligibility, and compatibility) At this point, I'll assume you have read through the required reading and have a decent understanding of how ATG modules work... Code / configuration - assemble into modules When it comes to defining your modules for a complex application, there are a number of goals: Divide functionality between the modules in a way that maps to your business Group common functionality 'further down in the stack of modules' Provide a good balance between shared resources and autonomy for countries / sites Now I'll describe a high level approach to how you could accomplish those goals...  Let's start from the bottom and work our way up.  At the very bottom, you have the modules that ship with ATG - the 'out of the box' stuff.  You want to make sure that you are leveraging all the modules that make sense in order to get the most value from ATG as possible - and less stuff you'll have to write yourself.  On top of the ATG modules, you should create what we'll refer to as the Corporate Foundation Module described as follows: Sits directly on top of ATG modules Used by all applications across all countries and sites - this is the foundation for everyone Contains everything that is common across all countries / all sites Once established and settled, will change less frequently than other 'higher' modules Encapsulates as many enterprise-wide integrations as possible Will provide means of code sharing therefore less development / testing - faster time to market Contains a 'reference' web application (described below) The next layer up could be multiple modules for each country (you could replace this with region if that makes more sense).  We'll define those modules as follows: Sits on top of the corporate foundation module Contains what is unique to all sites in a given country Responsible for managing any resource bundles for this country (to handle multiple languages) Overrides / replaces corporate integration points with any country-specific ones Finally, we will define what should be a fairly 'thin' (in terms of functionality) set of modules for each site as follows: Sits on top of the country it resides in module Contains what is unique for a given site within a given country Will mostly contain configuration, but could also define some unique functionality as well Contains one or more web applications The graphic below should help to indicate how these modules fit together: Web applications As described in the previous section, there are many opportunities for sharing (minimizing costs) as it relates to the code and configuration aspects of ATG modules.  Web applications are also contained within ATG modules, however, sharing web applications can be a bit more difficult because this is what the end customer actually sees, and since each site may have some degree of unique look & feel, sharing becomes more challenging.  One approach that can help is to define a 'reference' web application at the corporate foundation layer to act as a solid starting point for each site.  Here's a description of the 'reference' web application: Contains minimal / sample reference styling as this will mostly be addressed at the site level web app Focus on functionality - ensure that core functionality is revealed via this web application Each individual site can use this as a starting point There may be multiple types of web apps (i.e. B2C, B2B, etc) There are some techniques to share web application assets - i.e. multiple web applications, defined in the web.xml, and it's worth investigating, but is out of scope here. Reference infrastructure In this complex environment, it is assumed that there is not a single infrastructure for all countries and all sites.  It's more likely that different countries (or regions) could have their own solution for infrastructure.  In this case, it will be advantageous to define a reference infrastructure which contains all the hardware and software that make up the core environment.  Specifications and diagrams should be created to outline what this reference infrastructure looks like, as well as it's baseline cost and the incremental cost to scale up with volume.  Having some consistency in terms of infrastructure will save time and money as new countries / sites come online.  Here are some properties of the reference infrastructure: Standardized approach to setup of hardware Type and number of servers Defines application server, operating system, database, etc... - including vendor and specific versions Consistent naming conventions Provides a consistent base of terminology and understanding across environments Defines which ATG services run on which servers Production Staging BCC / Preview Each site can change as required to meet scale requirements Governance / organization It should be no surprise that the complex application we're talking about is backed by an equally complex organization.  One of the more challenging aspects of efficiently managing a series of complex applications is to ensure the proper level of governance and organization.  Here are some ideas and goals to work towards: Establish a committee to make enterprise-wide decisions that affect all sites Representation should be evenly distributed Should have a clear communication procedure Focus on high level business goals Evaluation of feature / function gaps and how that relates to ATG release schedule / roadmap Determine when to upgrade & ensure value will be realized Determine how to manage various levels of modules Who is responsible for maintaining corporate / country / site layers Determine a procedure for controlling what goes in the corporate foundation module Standardize on source code control, database, hardware, OS versions, J2EE app servers, development procedures, etc only use tested / proven versions - this is something that should be centralized so that every country / site does not have to worry about compatibility between versions Create a innovation team Quickly develop new features, perform proof of concepts All teams can benefit from their findings Summary At this point, it should be clear why the topics above (design, governance, organization, etc) are critical to being able to efficiently manage a complex application.  To summarize, it's all about competitive advantage...  You will need to reduce costs and improve time to market with the goal of providing a better experience for your end customers.  You can reduce cost by reducing development time, time allocated to testing (don't have to test the corporate foundation module over and over again - do it once), and optimizing operations.  With an efficient design, you can improve your time to market and your business will be more flexible  and agile.  Over time, you'll find that you're becoming more focused on offering functionality that is new to the market (creativity) and this will be rewarded - you're now a leader. In addition to the above, you'll realize soft benefits as well.  Your staff will be operating in a culture based on sharing.  You'll want to reward efforts to improve and enhance the foundation as this will benefit everyone.  This culture will inspire innovation, which can only lend itself to your competitive advantage.

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• Augmenting your Social Efforts via Data as a Service (DaaS)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The following is the 3rd in a series of posts on the value of leveraging social data across your enterprise by Oracle VP Product Development Don Springer and Oracle Cloud Data and Insight Service Sr. Director Product Management Niraj Deo. In this post, we will discuss the approach and value of integrating additional “public” data via a cloud-based Data-as-as-Service platform (or DaaS) to augment your Socially Enabled Big Data Analytics and CX Management. Let’s assume you have a functional Social-CRM platform in place. You are now successfully and continuously listening and learning from your customers and key constituents in Social Media, you are identifying relevant posts and following up with direct engagement where warranted (both 1:1, 1:community, 1:all), and you are starting to integrate signals for communication into your appropriate Customer Experience (CX) Management systems as well as insights for analysis in your business intelligence application. What is the next step? Augmenting Social Data with other Public Data for More Advanced Analytics When we say advanced analytics, we are talking about understanding causality and correlation from a wide variety, volume and velocity of data to Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to achieve and optimize business value. And in some cases, to predict future performance to make appropriate course corrections and change the outcome to your advantage while you can. The data to acquire, process and analyze this is very nuanced: It can vary across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data It can span across content, profile, and communities of profiles data It is increasingly public, curated and user generated The key is not just getting the data, but making it value-added data and using it to help discover the insights to connect to and improve your KPIs. As we spend time working with our larger customers on advanced analytics, we have seen a need arise for more business applications to have the ability to ingest and use “quality” curated, social, transactional reference data and corresponding insights. The challenge for the enterprise has been getting this data inline into an easily accessible system and providing the contextual integration of the underlying data enriched with insights to be exported into the enterprise’s business applications. The following diagram shows the requirements for this next generation data and insights service or (DaaS): Some quick points on these requirements: Public Data, which in this context is about Common Business Entities, such as - Customers, Suppliers, Partners, Competitors (all are organizations) Contacts, Consumers, Employees (all are people) Products, Brands This data can be broadly categorized incrementally as - Base Utility data (address, industry classification) Public Master Reference data (trade style, hierarchy) Social/Web data (News, Feeds, Graph) Transactional Data generated by enterprise process, workflows etc. This Data has traits of high-volume, variety, velocity etc., and the technology needed to efficiently integrate this data for your needs includes - Change management of Public Reference Data across all categories Applied Big Data to extract statics as well as real-time insights Knowledge Diagnostics and Data Mining As you consider how to deploy this solution, many of our customers will be using an online “cloud” service that provides quality data and insights uniformly to all their necessary applications. In addition, they are requesting a service that is: Agile and Easy to Use: Applications integrated with the service can obtain data on-demand, quickly and simply Cost-effective: Pre-integrated into applications so customers don’t have to Has High Data Quality: Single point access to reference data for data quality and linkages to transactional, curated and social data Supports Data Governance: Becomes more manageable and cost-effective since control of data privacy and compliance can be enforced in a centralized place Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Just as the cloud has transformed and now offers a better path for how an enterprise manages its IT from their infrastructure, platform, and software (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), the next step is data (DaaS). Over the last 3 years, we have seen the market begin to offer a cloud-based data service and gain initial traction. On one side of the DaaS continuum, we see an “appliance” type of service that provides a single, reliable source of accurate business data plus social information about accounts, leads, contacts, etc. On the other side of the continuum we see more of an online market “exchange” approach where ISVs and Data Publishers can publish and sell premium datasets within the exchange, with the exchange providing a rich set of web interfaces to improve the ease of data integration. Why the difference? It depends on the provider’s philosophy on how fast the rate of commoditization of certain data types will occur. How do you decide the best approach? Our perspective, as shown in the diagram below, is that the enterprise should develop an elastic schema to support multi-domain applicability. This allows the enterprise to take the most flexible approach to harness the speed and breadth of public data to achieve value. The key tenet of the proposed approach is that an enterprise carefully federates common utility, master reference data end points, mobility considerations and content processing, so that they are pervasively available. One way you may already be familiar with this approach is in how you do Address Verification treatments for accounts, contacts etc. If you design and revise this service in such a way that it is also easily available to social analytic needs, you could extend this to launch geo-location based social use cases (marketing, sales etc.). Our fundamental belief is that value-added data achieved through enrichment with specialized algorithms, as well as applying business “know-how” to weight-factor KPIs based on innovative combinations across an ever-increasing variety, volume and velocity of data, will be where real value is achieved. Essentially, Data-as-a-Service becomes a single entry point for the ever-increasing richness and volume of public data, with enrichment and combined capabilities to extract and integrate the right data from the right sources with the right factoring at the right time for faster decision-making and action within your core business applications. As more data becomes available (and in many cases commoditized), this value-added data processing approach will provide you with ongoing competitive advantage. Let’s look at a quick example of creating a master reference relationship that could be used as an input for a variety of your already existing business applications. In phase 1, a simple master relationship is achieved between a company (e.g. General Motors) and a variety of car brands’ social insights. The reference data allows for easy sort, export and integration into a set of CRM use cases for analytics, sales and marketing CRM. In phase 2, as you create more data relationships (e.g. competitors, contacts, other brands) to have broader and deeper references (social profiles, social meta-data) for more use cases across CRM, HCM, SRM, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the amount of master reference relationships is constrained only by your imagination and the availability of quality curated data you have to work with. DaaS is just now emerging onto the marketplace as the next step in cloud transformation. For some of you, this may be the first you have heard about it. Let us know if you have questions, or perspectives. In the meantime, we will continue to share insights as we can.Photo: Erik Araujo, stock.xchng

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• Developer’s Life – Summary of Superhero Articles

  - by Pinal Dave

  Earlier this year, I wrote an article series where I talked about developer’s life and compared it with Superhero. I have got amazing response to this series and I have been receiving quite a lots of email suggesting that I should write more blog post about them. Currently I am not planning to write more blog post but I will soon continue another series. In this blog post, I have summarized the entire series. Let me know if you want me to write about any superhero. I will see what I can do about that hero. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Captain America Captain America was first created as a comic book character in the 1940’s as a way to boost morale during World War II.  Aimed at a children’s audience, his legacy faded away when the war ended.  However, he has recently has a major reboot to become a popular movie character that deals with modern issues. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is the Incredible Hulk The Incredible Hulk is possibly one of the scariest superheroes out there.  All superheroes are meant to be “out of this world” and awe-inspiring, but I think most people will agree with I say The Hulk takes this to the next level.  He is the result of an industrial accident, which is scary enough in it’s own right.  Plus, when mild-mannered Bruce Banner is angered, he goes completely out-of-control and transforms into a destructive monster that he cannot control and has no memories of. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Wonder Woman We have focused a lot lately on this “superhero series.”  I love fantasy books and movies, and I feel like there is a lot to be learned from them.  As I am writing this series, though, I have noticed that every super hero I write about is a man.  So today, I would like to talk about the major female super hero – Wonder Woman. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Harry Potter Harry Potter might not be a superhero in the traditional sense, but I believe he still has a lot to teach us and show us about life as a developer.  If you have been living under a rock for the last 17 years, you might not know that Harry Potter is the main character in an extremely popular series of books and movies documenting the education and tribulation of a young wizard (and his friends). Developer’s Life – Every Developer is Like Transformers Transformers may not be superheroes – they don’t wear capes, they don’t have amazing powers outside of their size and folding ability, they’re not even human (technically).  Part of their enduring popularity is that while we are enjoying over-the-top movies, we are learning about good leadership and strong personal skills. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Iron Man Iron Man is another superhero who is not naturally “super,” but relies on his brain (and money) to turn him into a fighting machine.  While traditional superheroes are still popular, a three-movie franchise and incorporation into the new Avengers series shows that Iron Man is popular enough on his own. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Sherlock Holmes I have been thinking a lot about how developers are like super heroes, and I have written two blog posts now comparing them to Spiderman and Superman.  I have a lot of love and respect for developers, and I hope that they are enjoying these articles, and others are learning a little bit about the profession.  There is another fictional character who, while not technically asuper hero, is very powerful, and I also think stands as a good example of a developer. That character is Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock Holmes is a British detective, first made popular at the turn of the 19thcentury by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The original Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective who could solve the most mind-boggling crime through simple observations and deduction. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Chhota Bheem Chhota Bheem is a cartoon character that is extremely popular where I live.  He is my daughter’s favorite characters.  I like to say that children love Chhota Bheem more than their parents – it is lucky for us he is not real!  Children love Chhota Bheem because he is the absolute “good guy.”  He is smart, loyal, and strong.  He and his friends live in Dholakpur and fight off their many enemies – and always win – in every episode.  In each episode, they learn something about friendship, bravery, and being kind to others.  Chhota Bheem is a good role model for children, and I think that he is a good role model for developers are well. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Superman I enjoyed comparing developers to Spiderman so much, that I have decided to continue the trend and encourage some of my favorite people (developers) with another favorite superhero – Superman.  Superman is probably the most famous superhero – and one of the most inspiring. Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Spiderman I have to admit, Spiderman is my favorite superhero.  The most recent movie recently was released in theaters, so it has been at the front of my mind for some time. Spiderman was my favorite superhero even before the latest movie came out, but of course I took my whole family to see the movie as soon as I could!  Every one of us loved it, including my daughter.  We all left the movie thinking how great it would be to be Spiderman.  So, with that in mind, I started thinking about how we are like Spiderman in our everyday lives, especially developers. I would like to know which Superhero is your favorite hero! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• Is there an established convention for separating Windows file names in a string?

  - by Heinzi

  I have a function which needs to output a string containing a list of file paths. I can choose the separation character but I cannot change the data type (e.g. I cannot return a List<string> or something like that). Wanting to use some well-established convention, my first intuition was to use the semicolon, similar to what Windows's PATH and Java's CLASSPATH (on Windows) environment variables do: C:\somedir\somefile.txt;C:\someotherdir\someotherfile.txt However, I was surprised to notice that ; is a valid character in an NTFS file name. So, is the established best practice to just ignore this fact (i.e. "no sane person should use ; in a file name and if they do, it's their own fault") or is there some other established character for separating Windows paths or files? (The pipe (|) might be a good choice, but I have not seen it used anywhere yet for this purpose.)

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• How do I pass W3 validation for Google checkout url?

  - by Dinesh

  When I do validate the page in W3 validation, I got few errors with below code, <input type="image" name="Google Checkout" alt="Fast checkout through Google" src="https://sandbox.google.com/checkout/buttons/checkout.gif?merchant_id=xxxxxxxxx&w=168&h=44&style=white&variant=text&loc=en_US" / Errors are as follows, 1.cannot generate system identifier for general entity "w" 2.reference to entity "w" for which no system identifier could be generated 3.general entity "h" not defined and no default entity 4.reference to entity "h" for which no system identifier could be generated 5.general entity "style" not defined and no default entity 6.reference to entity "style" for which no system identifier could be generated 7.general entity "variant" not defined and no default entity 8.reference to entity "variant" for which no system identifier could be generated 9.general entity "loc" not defined and no default entity 10.reference to entity "loc" for which no system identifier could be generated This is the only errors comes from the URL; is there way to pass W3 validation for this URL.

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• Virtual Economy Setup - Virtual currencies advice

  - by Sarah Simpson

  I'm trying to figure out how to build my virtual economy. It seems like some games have one currency and some of them have up to 3 and 4 different ones. The game is an action game which is currently single player but I'm planning on adding a tournament mode that allows users to compete against each other. The virtual goods that a user would be able to purchase would be either customization to the character or powerups and utilities that give the character more abilities in the game. The character is able to gain coins during game play. The advice I'm trying to get is whether or not it makes sense to set up more than one currency and more than two currencies? What are the pros and cons? Reference to some resources that indicate research would be great.

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• Should *'s go next to the type or the variable name? [closed]

  - by derekerdmann

  Possible Duplicate: int* i; or int *i; or int * i; When working in C or C++, how should pointers be declared? Like this: char* derp; or this: char *derp; I typically use the first method, because the variable is a character pointer, but I know that it can create confusion when declaring multiple variables at once: char* herp, derp; herp becomes a character pointer, while derp is just a character. I know it often comes down to coding style, but which one is "better?" Should I sacrifice clarity to eliminate potential confusion?

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• 3D Studio Max biped restrictions?

  - by meds

  I have a stock biped character in 3D studio max which has a jump animation. The problem I have with the jump animation is that there is actual y offset happening inside it which makes it awkward to play while the character is jumping since it's not only jumping in the game world but the jump animation is adding its own height offset. I'm tryuing to remove the jump animations height offset, so far I've found the root node and deleted all its key frames which has helped a bit. The problem I'm having now is that the character still has some height offset and if I try to lower it it has a fake 'ground' that isn't at 0 and the limbs sort of bend on the imaginary floor, si there a way to remove this restriction just for the jump animation? Here's what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/qoWIR.png Any idea for a fix? I'm using Unity 3D if that opens any other possibilities...

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• Typical collision detection

  - by marcg11

  I would like to know how is the typical collision detection of most games. For example, you control a character which can move in 2 dimensional directions (except up and down). Now lets asume he walks into a wall, most of the games depending on character angle and the BB normal face will only stop the player in one axis, but will continue moving in the other along the wall axis. How is that done? I've only managed to stop the character from going through the wall by seting the position to the last one in the past frame if the new position colllisions the bounding box. But this just makes the player stop sharply and unrealisticly.

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• dead keys not working in java app

  - by jippie

  The Arduino IDE is based on a java application called processing. While typing text into processing, it refuses to accept any of the characters under dead keys like " ' ^. As a work around I: Open another window (usually my browser or mail client); I type the character I need; Select and copy the character onto my clip board; Copy the character into processing. What do I have to do to make processing accept characters under dead keys? Disabling dead keys is not an option.

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• Accessing object property as string and setting its value

  - by ludicco

  Hello there, I have an object in csharp from the class Account each account have a owner, reference, etc. One way I can access an accounts properties is through accessors like account.Reference; but I would like to be able to access it using dynamic string selectors like: account["PropertyName"]; just like in javascript. so I would have account["Reference"] which would return the value...but I also would like to be able to sign a new value after that like: account["Reference"] = "124ds4EE2s"; I've noticed I can use DataBinder.Eval(account,"Reference") to get a property based on a string, but using this I can't sign a value to the property. Any idea on how I could do that? Thanks a lot

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• Converting kernel image from ELF to PE

  - by Frank Miller

  I am using Msys to build a home brew kernel that I wrote under Linux. Linux used ELF for its binary format and Msys uses PE. I have the source setup to allow it to be booted by Grub using the Multiboot spec. At the end of the build, I get some undefined symbols: init.o:init.S:(.text+0x14): undefined reference to `edata' main.o:main.c:(.text+0x121): undefined reference to `_alloca' main.o:main.c:(.text+0x126): undefined reference to `__main' ../../lib\libkern.a(mem.o):mem.c:(.text+0x242): undefined reference to `_end' ../../lib\libkern.a(mem.o):mem.c:(.text+0x323): undefined reference to `_end' These appear to be ELF oriented symbols. If anyone can advise me on how these should be dealt with in the PE world, e.g. if there are equivalents, it would help me out a lot!

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• EPM 11.1.2 - Issues during configuration when using Oracle DB if not using UTF8

  - by Ahmed A

  If you see issues during configuration when using Oracle DB if not using UTF8: Workaround: a. During configuration of EPM products, a warning message is displayed if the Oracle DB is not UTF8 enabled. If you continue with the configuration, certain products will not work as they will not be able to read the contents in the tables as the format is wrong.b. The Oracle DB must be setup to use AL32UTF8 or a superset that contains AL32UTF8. c. The only difference between AL32UTF8 and UTF8 character sets is that AL32UTF8 stores characters beyond U+FFFF as four bytes (exactly as Unicode defines UTF-8). Oracle’s “UTF8” stores these characters as a sequence of two UTF-16 surrogate characters encoded using UTF-8 (or six bytes per character). Besides this storage difference, another difference is better support for supplementary characters in AL32UTF8 character set.

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• Tile-wide extent tracing on a grid.

  - by Larolaro

  I'm currently working on A* pathfinding on a grid and I'm looking to smooth the generated path, while also considering the extent of the character moving along it. I'm using a grid for the pathfinding, however character movement is free roaming, not strict tile to tile movement. To achieve a smoother, more efficient path, I'm doing line traces on a grid to determine if there is unwalkable tiles between tiles to shave off unecessary corners. However, because a line trace is zero extent, it doesn't consider the extent of the character and gives bad results (not returning unwalkable tiles just missed by the line, causing unwanted collisions). So what I'm looking for is rather than a line algorithm that determines the tiles under it, I'm looking for one that determines the tiles under a tile-wide extent line. Here is an image to help visualise my problem! Does anyone have any ideas? I've been working with Bresenham's line and other alternatives but I haven't yet figured out how to nail this specific problem.

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• My first flash game bot, in java

  - by Dylan

  Okay so i love coming up with new programming challenges and ive discovered a new challenge. I would love to create a bot for a game that requires the user to click on a character and drag the mouse like a slingshot. Upon releasing the mouse the character flys across the game and hopefully lands in a scored spot(in my bot the highest score). the game looks like this an image of the game is here. http://i.stack.imgur.com/fThnG.jpg How would i go about calculating the location of the character and then the physics to know exactly where to drag the mouse to?

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• "Time Control" in a 2d Platformer

  - by Woody Zantzinger

  I am making a 2d platformer where the player can press a button, and restart the level, only their previous character will also run the level at the same time, like they are traveling back in time. I know other games have done this before, and the way I have thought of doing it is to make the game character have a set of actions (Idle, Jumping, Walking Left etc.) and then detect changes in those actions and log them into a list along with the game time. So then when I need the character to run the level again on its own, I can just go through the list changing its actions at the right time. Is this the best way to do it? Does anyone have any experience in this? Thanks.

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• Store and create game objects at positions along terrain

  - by Alex

  I have a circular character that rolls down terrain like that shown in the picture below. The terrain is created from an array holding 1000 points. The ground is drawn one screen width infront and one screen width behind. So as the character moves, edges are created infront and edges are removed behind. My problem is, I want to create box2d bodies at certain locations along the path and need a way to store these creator methods or objects. I need some way to store a position at which they are created and some pointer to a function to create them, once the character is in range. I guess this would be an array of some sort that is checked each time the ground is updated and then if in range, the function is executed and removed from the array. But I'm not sure if its even possible to store pointers to functions with parameters included... any help is much appreciated!

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• Cannot type '^' (caret) in native KDE apps

  - by nebukadnezzar

  I cannot type the caret character '^' in native KDE apps, such as plasmoids, editors (Kate, KWrite), etc. It worked in previous (older) versions of KDE (3.5, I think). I believe it may be related to the fact that I'm using a keyboard with a german layout, however, it would seem farfetched - I can type the caret character just fine in non-KDE apps (such as chrome, firefox, etc). I tried switching keyboard layouts, but no cigar. What's going on? What do I have to change to get the caret character back?

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• "Time Control" in a 2d Platformer

  - by Woody Zantzinger

  I am making a 2d platformer where the player can press a button, and restart the level, only their previous character will also run the level at the same time, like they are traveling back in time. I know other games have done this before, and the way I have thought of doing it is to make the game character have a set of actions (Idle, Jumping, Walking Left etc.) and then detect changes in those actions and log them into a list along with the game time. So then when I need the character to run the level again on its own, I can just go through the list changing its actions at the right time. Is this the best way to do it? Does anyone have any experience in this? Thanks.

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• Turn off depreciated errors php 5.3

  - by atwellpub

  Hello, My server is running php 5.3 and My wordpress install is spitting these errors out on me causing the my session_start() to break. Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 647 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 662 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 669 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 676 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 712 This is annoying, but I do not want to turn off on screen error reporting. How do I disable these bothersome depreciated warnings? Running Wordpress 2.9.2. Gracious!

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• 2D fighting bounding boxes

  - by user36420

  I'm prototyping a 2D platformer/brawler game for uni and I'm having some trouble with creating collision/bounding boxes. This is most likely going to end up on a Vita so I do have some library constraints as well as performance implications. None of this has yet been implemented but is all theory. My idea was to have the artist create a sprite sheet for the character animation and then a second identical sprite sheet with the corresponding collisions in a solid colour (e.g green for where the character can be hit and red for dealing damage, near the foot if kicking etc.) With this, I would then parse the collision sheet and generate the various collisions required storing them in the character model. This is the point I feel would be most inefficient. While I think this is a possible solution, I was wondering if there was a more standard way of doing this or a more efficient way as I feel this would have severe performance problems.

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• Set Position of multiple bodies

  - by philipp

  I have a character composed of five bodies which are tied together by a lot of joints. On of them is the overall chassis, to which all forces and impulses are applied to move the whole Character. All in all that works very fine, except one thing: I need to set the Position of the Character so that it get Beamed from one place to the other in one single frame. Unfortunately I cannot get this to work. I tried the following code, without any success… playerbodies.forEach(function (bd) { bd.SetLinearVelocity(new b2.Vec2()); var t = bd.GetTransform(); t.p.x -= 10; bd.SetTransform(t, bd.GetAngle()); }); How can I make that happen?

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• How can I imitate interaction and movement in Diablo II?

  - by user422318

  I'm prototyping a simple browser-based game. It's played from a top down perspective on a 2d canvas. You left-click on a point on the map, and your character will begin walking to it. If you click on a different point on the map, then your character will begin walking to the new point. It's similar to Diablo II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvDKt-To6K0&feature=related How can I best imitate this movement system for a player? Ideas... Track current coords and target coords If target coords are exactly up, left, right, or down, then increment appropriate direction until you get there Implied else: target coords are in a quadrant. To make this movement look natural, character will have to move diagonally. For example, pretend the target is to the northeast. For each game frame, alternate incrementing current coordinates in the north and then east directions.

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• Is it possible to give an animated GIF a transparent background?

  - by Phil

  I'm making a Fire Emblem-esque game. There are very cute 2D frames I made for each character, and, like a game like Fire Emblem, I want these characters to animate constantly. To circumvent the graphics programming involved I came up with a novel idea! I would make each character an animated gif, and only in special conditions ever halt their constant movement - in that case just change what image is being displayed. Simple enough. But I have a dilemma - I want the background of my .gifs to be transparent (so that the "grass" behind each character naturally shows, as per the screenshot - which has them as still images with transparent backgrounds). I know how to make a background transparent in numerous tools (GIMP, Photoshop). But it seems every .gif creator replaces the transparent background with something and I can't edit it back to transparent. Is it possible to have a .gif with a transparent "background"? Perhaps my knowledge of file formats is limiting me here.

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