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• Best practices for using namespaces in C++.

  - by Dima

  I have read Uncle Bob's Clean Code a few months ago, and it has had a profound impact on the way I write code. Even if it seemed like he was repeating things that every programmer should know, putting them all together and putting them into practice does result in much cleaner code. In particular, I found breaking up large functions into many tiny functions, and breaking up large classes into many tiny classes to be incredibly useful. Now for the question. The book's examples are all in Java, while I have been working in C++ for the past several years. How would the ideas in Clean Code extend to the use of namespaces, which do not exist in Java? (Yes, I know about the Java packages, but it is not really the same.) Does it make sense to apply the idea of creating many tiny entities, each with a clearly define responsibility, to namespaces? Should a small group of related classes always be wrapped in a namespace? Is this the way to manage the complexity of having lots of tiny classes, or would the cost of managing lots of namespaces be prohibitive?

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• How to expose game data in the game without a singelton?

  - by zardon

  I'm quite new to cocos2d and games programming, and am currently I am writing a game that is currently in Prototype stage. Everything is going okay, but I've realized a potentially big problem and I am not sure how to solve it. I am using a singelton to store a bunch of arrays for everything, a global list of planets, a global list of troops, a global list of products, etc. And only now I'm realizing that all of this will be in memory and this is the wrong way to do it. I am not storing files or anything on the disk just yet, with exception to a save/load state, which is a capture of everything. My game makes use of a map which allows you to select a planet, then it will give you a breakdown of that planets troops and resources, Lets use this scenario: My game has 20 planets. On which you can have 20 troops. Straight away that's an array of 400! This does not add the NPC, which is another 10. So, 20x10 = 200 So, now we have 600 all in arrays inside a Singelton. This is obviously very bad, and very wrong. Especially as the game scales in the amount of data. But I need to expose pretty much everything, especially on the map page, and I am not sure how else to do it. I've been told that I can use a controller for the map page which has the information I need for each planet, and other controllers for other items I require global display for. I've also thought about storing each planet's data in a save file, using initWithCoder however there could be a boatload of files on the user's device? I really don't want to use a database, mainly because I would need to translate NSObjects and non-NSObjects like CGRects and CGPoints and Colors into/from SQL. I am open to other ideas on how to store and read game data to prevent using a singelton to store everything, everywhere. Thanks for your time.

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• More Tables or More Databases?

  - by BuckWoody

  I got an e-mail from someone that has an interesting situation. He has 15,000 customers, and he asks if he should have a database for their data per customer. Without a LOT more data it’s impossible to say, of course, but there are some general concepts to keep in mind. Whenever you’re segmenting data, it’s all about boundary choices. You have not only boundaries around how big the data will get, but things like how many objects (tables, stored procedures and so on) that will be involved, if there are any cross-sections of data (do they share location or product information) and – very important – what are the security requirements? From the answer to these types of questions, you now have the choice of making multiple tables in a single database, or using multiple databases. A database carries some overhead – it needs a certain amount of memory for locking and so on. But it has a very clean boundary – everything from objects to security can be kept apart. Having multiple users in the same database is possible as well, using things like a Schema. But keeping 15,000 schemas can be challenging as well. My recommendation in complex situations like this is similar to a post on decisions that I did earlier – I lay out the choices on a spreadsheet in rows, and then my requirements at the top in the columns. I  give each choice a number based on how well it meets each requirement. At the end, the highest number wins. And many times it’s a mix – perhaps this person could segment customers into larger regions or districts or products, in a database. Within that database might be multiple schemas for the customers. Of course, he needs to query across all customers, that becomes another requirement. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• null values vs "empty" singleton for optional fields

  - by Uko

  First of all I'm developing a parser for an XML-based format for 3D graphics called XGL. But this question can be applied to any situation when you have fields in your class that are optional i.e. the value of this field can be missing. As I was taking a Scala course on coursera there was an interesting pattern when you create an abstract class with all the methods you need and then create a normal fully functional subclass and an "empty" singleton subclass that always returns false for isEmpty method and throws exceptions for the other ones. So my question is: is it better to just assign null if the optional field's value is missing or make a hierarchy described above and assign it an empty singleton implementation?

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• MiniMax not working properly(for checkers game)

  - by engineer

  I am creating a checkers game but My miniMax is not functioning properly,it is always switching between two positions for its move(index 20 and 17).Here is my code: public double MiniMax(int[] board, int depth, int turn, int red_best, int black_best) { int source; int dest; double MAX_SCORE=-INFINITY,newScore; int MAX_DEPTH=3; int[] newBoard=new int[32]; generateMoves(board,turn); System.arraycopy(board, 0, newBoard, 0, 32); if(depth==MAX_DEPTH) { return Evaluation(turn,board);} for(int z=0;z<possibleMoves.size();z+=2){ source=Integer.parseInt(possibleMoves.elementAt(z).toString()); System.out.println("SOURCE= "+source); dest=Integer.parseInt(possibleMoves.elementAt(z+1).toString());//(int[])possibleMoves.elementAt(z+1); System.out.println("DEST = "+dest); applyMove(newBoard,source,dest); newScore=MiniMax(newBoard,depth+1,opponent(turn),red_best, black_best); if(newScore>MAX_SCORE) {MAX_SCORE=newScore;maxSource=source; maxDest=dest;}//maxSource and maxDest will be used to perform the move. if (MAX_SCORE > black_best) { if (MAX_SCORE >= red_best) break; /* alpha_beta cutoff */ else black_best = (int) MAX_SCORE; //the_score } if (MAX_SCORE < red_best) { if (MAX_SCORE<= black_best) break; /* alpha_beta cutoff */ else red_best = (int) MAX_SCORE; //the_score } }//for ends return MAX_SCORE; } //end minimax I am unable to find out the logical mistake. Any idea what's going wrong?

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• How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

  - by Songo

  I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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• Which Game Engine to Use for an Angry Bird style game? [JAVA] [on hold]

  - by Arch1tect

  Our team is building an Angry Bird Style game, and we have only about ten days. The game is a little more complex than Angry Bird because there are two players, they each have a castle with pigs to protect(not destroy:)). And the goal is to destroy the other player's pigs. I wonder what Game Engine would help us finish this game most efficiently. We at least need a physics engine but I guess game engine is more helpful since it usually includes physics engine. Correct me if I'm wrong. (So I'm wondering which game engine I should use, if it's just physics engine, I'll use box2d) Networking may or may not be added later depend on time we have. Thanks in advance for any advice! EDIT: image looks small, I'll add one:

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• Relationships in a Chen ERD

  - by Nibroc A Rehpotsirhc

  I am working on a Chen ERD to model our organizations merchandise. Our central entity is a Style. We have supplemental entities of Color and Season. I am defining our assortment as the relationship between these three entities, and this relationship itself will have attributes and is defined by the three entities which participate in the mandatory relationship. The rules are; Many Styles can be offered in a Season, and a Style can be offered in many Seasons. Within a Season, a Style can be offered in Many Colors. I then have 2 other entities, one of which I believe is a weak entity, Climate, and the other may be weak, but I am not sure, this being Transaction Channel. I am thinking of these as relationships off of a relationship? Meaning, for a given Style/Color combination offered in a Season, it can be available through 1 or more Transaction Channels. Additionally, within a season, a given Style/Color combination can be intended for 1 or more Climates. Is it valid to have relationships off of relationships? Or does this requirement dictate that I should think of this Style/Color/Season relationship as an entity itself, and define the relationships to Climate and Transaction Channel off of this entity?

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• Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points?

  - by George

  One of the struggles I've always had in game development is deciding how to implement experience points attributed to gaining a level. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to gaining a level in many of the games I've played, so I assume they have a static dictionary table which contains experience points vs. the level. e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 175 3 280 4 800 5 ...There isn't a rhyme or reason why 280 points is equal to level 4, it just is. I'm not sure how those levels are decided, but it certainly wouldn't be dynamic. I've also thought about the possibility of exponential levels, as not to have to keep a separate lookup table, e.g. Experience Level 0 1 100 2 200 3 400 4 800 5 1600 6 3200 7 6400 8 ...but that seems like it would grow out of control rather quickly, as towards the upper levels, the enemies in the game would have to provide a whopping amount of experience to level -- and that would be to difficult to control. Leveling would become an impossible task. Does anyone have any pointers, or methods they use to decide how to level a character based on experience? I want to be fair in leveling and I want to stay ahead of the players as not to worry about constantly adding new experience/level lookups.

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• How to keep balance / Unlock items / achievement rules

  - by Mark Knol

  I'm working on an engine for a game, too learn javascript and just because its fun. I'm a flashdeveloper, I know how to build websites. Now making games is a different challenge, javascript is a challenge, but I'd love to learn how to structure code and what patterns are common. I dont mind if the game ever finish, I'm mostly interested in the programming part of it. I dont have a particular endresult in mind, so I'll see where it takes me. I currently have a system where you can buy items. The items cost a specified amount of gold, silver, diamonds etc. When you have selected and bought the item, it takes time before getting rewarded. When time is over, you are getting rewarded with other properties (gold, energy, diamonds). For example, you can buy an apple for 50gold, It takes a minute, you get rewarded with 75energy. Or if you take a run, it cost 50energy, it takes 5minutes, reward is 25gold and 25silver. These definitions is what i call actions. Currently I already have a system where this already works and I can define as much actions with as much properties as I want. The definitions I have kinda looks like this: {id:101, category:544, onInit:{gold:-75}, onComplete:{energy:75}, time:2000, name:"Apple", locked: false} {id:102, category:544, onInit:{gold:-135}, onComplete:{energy:145}, time:2000, name:"Banana", locked: false} {id:106, category:302, onInit:{energy:-50, power: -25}, onComplete:{gold:100, diamonds:2}, time:10000, name:"Run", locked: false} {id:107, category:302, onInit:{energy:-70, silver: -55}, onComplete:{gold:100}, time:10000, name:"Dance", locked: false} {id:108, category:302, onInit:{energy:-230, power: -355}, onComplete:{gold:70, silver:70}, time:10000, name:"Fitness", locked: false} Now, I would love to add a system where I can lock/unlock the actions using achievement rules. Lets say, if you buy 10 apples, you unlock a new action, like bananas which cost more, and reward more. In the future I maybe want to restrict achievements and actions to levels. I am kinda stuck how to structure this. I have 2 questions: Which patterns are used to define achievements? How/where are they defined? Should it be part of the action, or should it be a separate controller? Is it a good idea to register all completed actions to it? I think I want multiple types of achievement rules, Id love to hear some ideas how to develop it. How do you create/find a good balance, so the user does not get stuck or can cheat by repeat a pattern of actions to get too much rewards. I know there is not a simple answer and i'm lacking of a good game-concept, but I wonder if anyone created such a game and how you dealed and played with it.

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• what making a good soundtrack for social game

  - by Maged

  there are many successful social games in Facebook and other social sites like brain buddies, who has the biggest brain and word challenge.both of them have a great soundtrack while playing and in the beginning of the game . my question is how to find a good soundtrack or what's i should look for to find a good soundtrack like this that's help to attract the user specially for games that need concentration ?

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• Avoiding the Anaemic Domain - How to decide what single responsibility a class has

  - by thecapsaicinkid

  Even after reading a bunch I'm still falling into the same trap. I have a class, usually an enity. I need to implement more than one, similar operations on this type. It feels wrong to (seemingly arbitrarily) choose one of these operations to belong inside the entity and push the others out to a separate class; I end up pushing all operations to service classes and am left with an anaemic domain. As a crude example, imagine the typical Employee class with numeric properties to hold how many paid days the employee is entitled to for both sickness and holiday and a collection of days taken for each. public class Employee { public int PaidHolidayAllowance { get; set; } public int PaidSicknessAllowance { get; set; } public IEnumerable<Holiday> Holidays { get; set; } public IEnumerable<SickDays> SickDays { get; set; } } I want two operations, one to calculate remaining holiday, another for remaining paid sick days. It seems strange to include say, CalculateRemaingHoliday() in the Employee class and bump CalculateRemainingPaidSick() to some PaidSicknessCalculator class. I would end up with a PaidSicknessCalculator and a RemainingHolidayCalculator and the anaemic Employee entity as seen above. The other alternative would be to put both operations in the Employee class and kick Single Responsibility to the curb. That doesn't make for particularly maintainable code. I suppose the Employee class should have some initialisation/validation logic (not accepting negative alowances etc.) So maybe I just stick to basic initialisation and validation in the entities themselves and be happy with my separate calculator classes. Or maybe I should be asking myself if Anaemic Domain is actually causing me some tangible problems with my code.

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• When do domain concepts become application constructs?

  - by Noren

  I recently posted a question regarding recovering a DDD architecture that became an anemic domain model into a multitier architecture and this question is a follow-on of sorts. My question is when do domain concepts become application constructs. My application is a local client C# 4/WPF with the following architecture: Presentation Layer Views ViewModels Business Layer ??? Domain Layer Classes that take the POCOs with primitive types and create domain concepts (e.g. image, layer, etc) Sanity checks values (e.g. image width 0) Interfaces for DTOs Interface for a repository that abstracts the filesystem Data Access Layer Classes that parse the proprietary binary files into POCOs with primitive types by explicit knowledge of the file format Implementation of domain DTOs Implementation of domain repository class Local Filesystem Proprietary binary files When does the MyImageType domain class with Int32 width, height, and Int32[] pixels become a System.Windows.Media.ImageDrawing? If I put it in the domain layer, it seems like implemenation details are being leaked (what if I didn't want to use WPF?). If I put it in the presentation layer, it seems like it's doing too much. If I create a business layer, it seems like it would be doing too little since there are few "rules" given the CRUD nature of the application. I think all of my reading has lead to analysis paralysis, so I thought fresh eyes might lend some perspective.

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• Customer won't decide, how to deal?

  - by Crazy Eddie

  I write software that involves the use of measured quantities, many input by the user, most displayed, that are fed into calculation models to simulate various physical thing-a-majigs. We have created a data type that allows us to associate a numeric value with a unit, we call these "quantities" (big duh). Quantities and units are unique to dimension. You can't attach kilogram to a length for example. Math on quantities does automatic unit conversion to SI and the type is dimension safe (you can't assign a weight to a pressure for example). Custom UI components have been developed that display the value and its unit and/or allow the user to edit them. Dimensionless quantities, having no units, are a single, custom case implemented within the system. There's a set of related quantities such that our target audience apparently uses them interchangeably. The quantities are used in special units that embed the conversion factors for the related quantity dimensions...in other words, when using these units converting from one to another simply involves multiplying the value by 1 to the dimensional difference. However, conversion to/from the calculation system (SI) still involves these factors. One of these related quantities is a dimensionless one that represents a ratio. I simply can't get the "customer" to recognize the necessity of distinguishing these values and their use. They've picked one and want to use it everywhere, customizing the way we deal with it in special places. In this case they've picked one of the dimensions that has a unit...BUT, they don't want there to be a unit (GRR!!!). This of course is causing us to implement these special overrides for our UI elements and such. That of course is often times forgotten and worse...after a couple months everyone forgets why it was necessary and why we're using this dimensional value, calling it the wrong thing, and disabling the unit. I could just ignore the "customer" and implement the type as the dimensionless quantity, which makes most sense. However, that leaves the team responsible for figuring it out when they've given us a formula using one of the other quantities. We have to not only figure out that it's happening, we have to decide what to do. This isn't a trivial deal. The other option is just to say to hell with it, do it the customer's way, and let it waste continued time and effort because it's just downright confusing as hell. However, I can't count the amount of times someone has said, "Why is this being done this way, it makes no sense at all," and the team goes off the deep end trying to figure it out. What would you do? Currently I'm still attempting to convince them that even if they use terms interchangeably, we at the least can't do that within the product discussion. Don't have high hopes though.

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• How do I start correctly in building database classes in c#?

  - by e4rthdog

  I am new in C# programming and in OOP. I need to dive into web applications for my company, and I need to do it fast and correct. So even that I know ASP.NET MVC is the way to go, I want to start with some simple applications with ASP.NET Webforms and then advance to MVC logic. Also regarding my db classes: I plan to create common database classes in order to be able to use them either from WinForms or ASP.NET applications. I also know that the way to go is to learn about ORM and EF. BUT I also want to start from where I am feeling comfortable and that is the traditional ADO.NET way. So about my Data Access Layer classes: Should I return my results in datasets or arraylists/lists? Should my methods do their own connect/disconnect from the db, or have separate methods and let the application maintain the connection?

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• What's the best Wireframing tool?

  - by Strae

  I'm looking for something similar to iPlotz or Mockup. I've found the Pencil Project, but it requires xulrunner-1.9 (which seems to be incompatible with xulrunner-1.9.2) in order to run as a standalone application. It can be used as a firefox plugin... but it is a bit slower. The error on my desktop (Ubuntu 10.04) is: Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9.1 and 1.9.2.* Does anyone know other software? Edit: Open-source software is preferred, and it doesn't matter whether or not it's free.

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• Frames per Second and Updates per Second [on hold]

  - by matt murray

  So this is more a general resources question, as I am seeking knowledge on how best to conserve resources in a game (I am writing in Java, and please this is not a thread on what language I should write it in, I have already chosen Java) so that the updates and frames per second could be the highest they could be. In general I am just searching for any articles you may have, any personal experience, anything what so ever that could be of use to a pretty new Java game developer on the subject! Thanks in advance!

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• Why does Clang/LLVM warn me about using default in a switch statement where all enumerated cases are covered?

  - by Thomas Catterall

  Consider the following enum and switch statement: typedef enum { MaskValueUno, MaskValueDos } testingMask; void myFunction(testingMask theMask) { switch theMask { case MaskValueUno: {}// deal with it case MaskValueDos: {}// deal with it default: {} //deal with an unexpected or uninitialized value } }; I'm an Objective-C programmer, but I've written this in pure C for a wider audience. Clang/LLVM 4.1 with -Weverything warns me at the default line: Default label in switch which covers all enumeration values Now, I can sort of see why this is there: in a perfect world, the only values entering in the argument theMask would be in the enum, so no default is necessary. But what if some hack comes along and throws an uninitialized int into my beautiful function? My function will be provided as a drop in library, and I have no control over what could go in there. Using default is a very neat way of handling this. Why do the LLVM gods deem this behaviour unworthy of their infernal device? Should I be preceding this by an if statement to check the argument?

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• How can I selectively update XNA GameComponents?

  - by Bill

  I have a small 2D game I'm working on in XNA. So far, I have a player-controlled ship that operates on vector thrust and is terribly fun to spin around in circles. I've implemented this as a DrawableGameComponent and registered it with the game using game.Components.Add(this) in the Ship object constructor. How can I implement features like pausing and a menu system with my current implementation? Is it possible to set certain GameComponents to not update? Is this something for which I should even be using a DrawableGameComponent? If not, what are more appropriate uses for this?

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• What is the best way to generate income from mobile games?

  - by Thomas

  As the title states, what is the best way to get income from mobile games? (taking into consideration that creating the games only costs a lot of time and the games are relatively simple) As I see it, there are multiple ways of getting money from mobile games, Selling them for a fixed price (seems like a high threshold for potential buyers) In-game purchases (I can imagine this only works for several types of games, I don't see this working well for monopoly unless you like really fancy hotels ;) Ingame advertisements / sponsorships Which way will most likely bring the most profit?

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• Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?

  - by derphil

  I had a very stimulating and interessting discussion with a colleague about ORM and it's Pros and Cons. In my opinion, an ORM is useful only in the rarest cases. At least in my experience. But I don't want to list my own arguments at this time. So I ask you, what do you think about ORM? What are the Pros and the Cons? P.S. I've posted this "question" yesterday on Stackoverflow, but some of the user think, that this should better posted here.

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• How to approach big developer companies if I have a killer game idea? (for mobile devices)

  - by Balázs Dávid

  I have an idea for a game that has a potential, but I'm not a programmer. How to tell this to development companies without being my idea stolen? All I want from the company is first to watch a 3-minute long video presentation about my idea and if they see fantasy in it then we can talk about the details. I have already sent an e-mail to several big companies that have the expertise needed to code the game, they haven't answer me. Actually the idea is nothing fancy, no 3D, but fun and unique.

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• Does a mobile app need more access than the public API of a site?

  - by Iain

  I have a site with a public API, and some mobile app developers have been brought in to produce an iPhone app for the site. They insist they need to see the database schema, but as I understand it, they should only need access to the documented public API. Am I right? Is there something I've missed? I've told them that if there's a feature missing or data they require I can extend the API so that they can access it. I thought a web service API held to much the same principles as OOP object API's, in that the implementation details should be hidden as much as possible. I'm not a mobile app developer so if there is something I don't quite see then please let me know. Any insight or help will be much appreciated.

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• Real life example of an agile game development process

  - by Ken

  I'm trying to learn about applying agile methodologies to game development. But seems to be impossible to find real life examples. What I am looking for are things like; Initial user stories Final user stories (complete, covering the entire game requirements) Acceptance criteria Task list Sprint backlogs (before and after each sprint) The agile books seem to have some limited examples, many of which seem contrived. In this era of open source software, there must be an documented example of the process applied to a game that is publicly available. I am asking specifically about games because they are so different from normal applications. Regular applications are built to all users to complete specific tasks in order to get stuff done(book a room, print a report etc). People play games for much less tangible reasons, so I think the process is significantly different. [it doesn't have to be scrum, it could be any process, just needs to be a real life example game and be reasonably complete]

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• Vernon's book Implementing DDD and modeling of underlying concepts

  - by EdvRusj

  Following questions all refer to examples presented in Implementing DDD In article we can see from Figure 6 that both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of Banking Account BA 1. On page 64 author gives an example of a publishing organization, where the life-cycle of a book goes through several stages ( proposing a book, editorial process, translation of the book ... ) and at each of those stages this book has a different definition. Each stage of the book is defined in a different Bounded Context, but do all these different definitions still represent the same underlying concept of a Book, just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA? 2. a) I understand why User shouldn't exist in Collaboration Context ( CC ), but instead should be defined within Identity and Access Context IAC ( page 65 ). But still, do User ( IAC ), Moderator ( CC ), Author ( CC ),Owner ( CC ) and Participant ( CC ) all represent different aspects of the same underlying concept? b) If yes, then this means that CC contains several model elements ( Moderator, Author, Owner and Participant ), each representing different aspect of the same underlying concept ( just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA ). But isn't this considered a duplication of concepts ( Evan's book, page 339 ), since several model elements in CC represent the same underlying concept? c) If Moderator, Author ... don't represent the same underlying concept, then what underlying concept does each represent? 3. In an e-commerce system, the term Customer has multiple meanings ( page 49 ): When user is browsing the Catalog, Customer has different meaning than when user is placing an Order. But do these two different definitions of a Customer represent the same underlying concept, just like both BankingAccount and PayeeAccount represent the same underlying concept of a BA? thanks

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