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• Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?

  - by eagerMoose

  I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would "fit" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?

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• How to properly URL/domain forward

  - by NRGdallas

  No clue on a title for this, someone feel free to suggest an edit. I have a client that has a website. He owns around 200 domains, and wants each domain to contain content from the main website. The header, footer, and navigation bars will remain the same for each domain, but the actual page content will vary (obviously duplicate content issues, open to suggestions) He wants each individual page to be its own separate domain, rather than a url within the main domain. (page1.com page2.com etc - NOT site.com/page1.html, however the file is actually hosted at site.com/page1.html - all links will direct to site.com/whatever accordingly) What would be the best place to start reading / learning on how to do this, and what concerns/considerations should be taken into mind?

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• Confusion with Libgdx UI

  - by BrotherJack

  I've started with Libgdx and am currently stumbling about trying to understand how to set up the interface. I have generated the base projects in Eclipse ( < proj-name ,< proj-name -android, < proj-name -desktop, < proj-name -html), and can get the program to display a simple background, play a looping sound file, and draw a tank. I have been having some problems implementing the UI though. I want to make a collapsible interface bar at the bottom of the screen that would contain buttons for movement, and selecting weapons. I'm confused since there appears to be several ways of doing this and the documentation (or tutorials explaining it) tend to be obsolete. How would one go about this? Use a stage for the bar and actors for the widgets? I'm a little lost on this.

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• What the best way to wire up Entity Framework database context (model) to ViewModel in MVVM WPF?

  - by hal9k2

  As in the question above: What the best way to wire up Entity Framework database model (context) to viewModel in MVVM (WPF)? I am learning MVVM pattern in WPF, alot of examples shows how to implement model to viewModel, but models in that examples are just simple classes, I want to use MVVM together with entity framework model (base first approach). Whats the best way to wire model to viewModel. Thanks for answers. //ctor of ViewModel public ViewModel() { db = new PackageShipmentDBEntities(); // Entity Framework generated class ListaZBazy = new ObservableCollection<Pack>(db.Packs.Where(w => w.IsSent == false)); } This is my usual ctor of ViewModel, think there is a better way, I was reading about repository pattern, not sure if I can adapt this to WPF MVVM

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• Searching for entity awareness in 3D space algorithm and data structure

  - by Khanser

  I'm trying to do some huge AI system just for the fun and I've come to this problem. How can I let the AI entities know about each other without getting the CPU to perform redundant and costly work? Every entity has a spatial awareness zone and it has to know what's inside when it has to decide what to do. First thoughts, for every entity test if the other entities are inside the first's reach. Ok, so it was the first try and yep, that is redundant and costly. We are working with real time AI over 10000+ entities so this is not a solution. Second try, calculate some grid over the awareness zone of every entity and test whether in this zones are entities (we are working with 3D entities with float x,y,z location coordinates) testing every point in the grid with the indexed-by-coordinate entities. Well, I don't like this because is also costly, but not as the first one. Third, create some multi linked lists over the x's and y's indexed positions of the entities so when we search for an interval between x,y and z,w positions (this interval defines the square over the spatial awareness zone) over the multi linked list, we won't have 'voids'. This has the problem of finding the nearest proximity value if there isn't one at the position where we start the search. I'm not convinced with any of the ideas so I'm searching for some enlightening. Do you people have any better ideas?

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• Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example: User Permission UserPermission Action ActionPermission A "Permission" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I ToList() everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, User.Permissions is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to Include() everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal. Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?

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• Any technical references for game-oriented icons and symbols?

  - by willc2

  To make localizing easier, I'm using icons to show in-game information like achievements and bonuses. Coming up with good designs isn't easy, especially when it has to be integrated into the rest of the game's art style. Can I do better than looking at some random selection of existing games? Are there any reference books or sites that cover game graphics specifically? I'm looking for more theory and best-practices rather than pre-made graphics.

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• The danger of changing the domain of your portfolio

  - by Mervin

  So I have a online portfolio that is available at mervin-ux-portfolio.com but I am planning to change hosts since the current host I am hosting it with is hitting me with a very high yearly renewal rate. When I was inquiring about domain transfers ,,they told me that since I had not initiated the domain transfer within 14 days of the expiry of the domain ,they cannot do it immediately and it would take about two weeks to to release the domain name. Since I dont like the idea of my site being down for like 2 weeks ,I was wondering if I should start afresh with a new domain on a new host and what were the potential dangers of that ( I have the entire site backup,so creating a replica of the site on the new host wont be hard) I also wont be losing any business or work since I work full time currently but I was just wondering about the challenges in terms of getting my domain name back to the top of search results and basically getting it out there assuming I go the new domain name approach. I know this is strictly not an UX question but I was hoping people could give some suggestions on what I should do

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• How should I handle "real time" events in an online strategy game?

  - by Hojat Taheri

  Some online strategy games have real time events. For example when you send troops to attack somewhere, the attack happens at the right time in the future. Checking the database again and again to get the list of attacks happening each second would cause heavy load. Is there any technique to achieve this goal? Another example: You want to attack a village 3 hours away, you send troops and the attack occurs 3 hours later. Should there be an script to check the database at each second to run the query at the specified time?

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• Where to Start?

  - by freemann098

  my name is Chase. I've been programming for over 3 years now and I've made very little progress towards game development. I blame myself for it due to reasons. I have experience in many languages such as C++, C#, and Java. I have a little bit of knowledge in JavaScript/HTML and Python. My question is where to start on actually understanding jumping into game development. Whenever I watch game development tutorials it mostly makes sense until points of things like OpenGL or advanced topics that make no sense at all. An example is something like glOrhho Matrix or whatever. Videos either don't explain things like this or they're not explained very well. Do I not know enough basics? I find myself always copying code from a video but understanding very little of it. It's like i'm memorizing things I don't understand which makes it hard to program at all. If I were to want to get to the point where I could write my own game engine or just a game by myself in general in C++ using at the most documentation how would I start at mastering to that level. Should I learn C first, or get really good at basics in general with C++. I know there is a similar posted question on this site but it's not the same due to the fact the person asking the question has a well knowledge level in programming. I'm stuck in a loop of learning the same things but if I go farther I don't understand. I'm stuck in the same spot and need to make progress.

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• which style of member-access is preferable

  - by itwasntpete

  the purpose of oop using classes is to encapsulate members from the outer space. i always read that accessing members should be done by methods. for example: template<typename T> class foo_1 { T state_; public: // following below }; the most common doing that by my professor was to have a get and set method. // variant 1 T const& getState() { return state_; } void setState(T const& v) { state_ = v; } or like this: // variant 2 // in my opinion it is easier to read T const& state() { return state_; } void state(T const& v) { state_ = v; } assume the state_ is a variable, which is checked periodically and there is no need to ensure the value (state) is consistent. Is there any disadvantage of accessing the state by reference? for example: // variant 3 // do it by reference T& state() { return state_; } or even directly, if I declare the variable as public. template<typename T> class foo { public: // variant 4 T state; }; In variant 4 I could even ensure consistence by using c++11 atomic. So my question is, which one should I prefer?, Is there any coding standard which would decline one of these pattern? for some code see here

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• What are the common character animation techniques used in tile based hack&slash games?

  - by Gorky

  I wonder what kind of animation techniques are used for creature and character animation in modern hack&slash type tile based games? Keyframing for different actions may be one option. Skeletal framing may be another. But how about the physics? Or do they use a totally hybrid system of inverse kinematics supported with a skeleton,physics and mixed with interpolated keyframing for more realistic animations? If so, how and for what reasons? I can think of many different solutions for the issues below but I wonder what's used and best suited for issues like: Walking or moving on an uneven terrain Combat interaction, combat physics and collisions Attaching rigid items to character and their iteractions ih physics world Soft body dynamics like hair, vegetation, clothes and fabric in line with animations and iteractions.

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• What are some general guidelines for setting up an iOS project I will want to personally publish but sell in the future?

  - by RLH

  I have an idea for a personal iOS project that I would like to write and release to the iOS store. I'm the type of developer who enjoys developing and publishing. I want to write quality software and take care of my customers. Assuming that I wrote an application that had reasonable success, there is a fair chance that I would want to sell the ownership rights of the app to another party and I'd use the proceeds to develop my next personal project which, in turn, I'd probably want to sell in the future. With that said, what are some general guidelines for creating, making and publishing an iOS project that I will eventually want to transfer to another company/developer? I know this is a bit of a broad question, but I request that the given advice be a general list of tips, suggestions and pitfalls to avoid. If any particular bullet point on your list needs more explanation, I'll either search for the answer or post a new question specific to that requirement. Thank you! Note Regarding this Question I am posting this question on Programmers.SO because I think that this is an issue of software architecting, seeking advice for setting a new application project and publishing a project to the Apple iOS store-- all within the requirements for questions on this site.

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• Writing a Master's Thesis on evaluating visual scripting systems

  - by user1107412

  I am thinking to write my Master's thesis around theorizing, and then implementing a PlayMaker or Kismet-like (building game logic by visually arranging FSMs) tool in Unity. The only thing I am still concerned about is the actual research question that I should pose. I was kinda hoping that the more experienced game designers out there might know. Update: What about reducing the use of visual programming to graphically designing FSM-Action-Transition flows, which can then be attached to game entities (very much like http://playmaker.com does it)?

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• Is it a good idea to use a formula to balance a game's complexity, in order to keep players in constant flow?

  - by user1107412

  I read a lot about Flow theory and its applications to video games, and I got an idea sticking in my mind. If a number of weight values are applied to different parameters of a certain game level (i.e. the size of the level, the number of enemies, their overal strength, the variance in their behavior, etc), then it should be technically possible to find an overal score mechanism for each level in the game. If a constant ratio of complexity increase were empirically defined, for instance 1,3333, or say, the Golden Ratio, would it be a good idea to arrange the levels in such an order that the increase of overal complexity tends to increase that much? Has somebody tried it?

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• Where should the database and mail parameters be stored in a Symfony2 app?

  - by Songo

  In the default folder structure for a Symfony2 project the database and mail server credentials are stored in parameters.yml file inside ProjectRoot/app/config/parameters.yml with these default values: parameters: database_driver: pdo_mysql database_host: 127.0.0.1 database_port: null database_name: symfony database_user: root database_password: null mailer_transport: smtp mailer_host: 127.0.0.1 mailer_user: null mailer_password: null locale: en secret: ThisTokenIsNotSoSecretChangeIt During development we change these parameters to the development database and mail servers. This file is checked into the source code repository. The problem is when we want to deploy to the production server. We are thinking about automating the deployment process by checking out the project from git and deploy it to the production server. The thing is that our project manager has to manually update these parameters after each update. The production database and mail servers parameters are confidential and only our project manager knows them. I need a way to automate this step and suggestion on where to store the production parameters until they are applied?

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• What browser do you build in? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  Lately I have been using Chrome, but I am starting to think I should use FF. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various mainstream browsers (with an emphasis on Chrome and FF) when doing web development? Is it easier to start with clean code for a relatively conforming browser, and later add hacks/workarounds for acceptable display with less conforming browsers, or is it easier to work with a variety of browsers from the beginning, so we never have a page that's completely unacceptable with, for example, IE 6?

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• Serialized values or separate table, which is more efficient?

  - by Aravind

  I have a Rails model email_condition_string with a word column in it. Now I have another model called request_creation_email_config with the following columns admin_filter_group:references vendor_service:references email_condition_string:references email_condition_string has many request_creation_email_config and request_creation_email_config belongs to email_condition_string. Instead of this model a colleague of mine is suggesting that strong the word inside the same model as comma separated values is efficient than storing as a separate model. Is that alright?

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• Is there an antipattern to describe this method of coding?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have a codebase where the programmer tended to wrap things up in areas that don't make sense. For example, given an Error log we have you can log via ErrorLog.Log(ex, "friendly message"); He added various other means to accomplish the exact same task. E.G. SomeClass.Log(ex, "friendly message"); Which simply turns around and calls the first method. This adds levels of complexity with no added benefit. Is there an anti-pattern to describe this?

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• How to implment the database for event conditions and item bonuses for a browser based game

  - by Saifis

  I am currently creating a browser based game, and was wondering what was the standard approach in making diverse conditions and status bonuses database wise. Currently considering two cases. Event Conditions Needs min 1000 gold Needs min Lv 10 Needs certain item. Needs fulfillment of another event Status Bonus Reduces damage by 20% +100 attack points Deflects certain type of attack I wish to be able to continually change these parameters during the process of production and operation, so having them hard-coded isn't the best way. All I could come up with are the following two methods. Method 1 Create a table that contains each conditions with needed attributes Have a model named conditions with all the attributes it would need to set them conditions condition_type (level, money_min, money_max item, event_aquired) condition_amount prerequisite_condition_id prerequisite_item_id Method 2 write it in a DSL form that could be interpreted later in the code Perhaps something like yaml, have a text area in the setting form and have the code interpret it. condition_foo: condition_type :level min_level: 10 condition_type :item item_id: 2 At current Method 2 looks to be more practical and flexible for future changes, trade off being that all the flex must be done on the code side. Not to sure how this is supposed to be done, is it supposed to be hard coded? separate config file? Any help would be appreciated. Added For additional info, it will be implemented with Ruby on Rails

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• What technologies and tools would I need to create an advanced 3D game on Unreal Engine 3?

  - by BleakCabalist

  This is a purely hypothetical question. Let's say I already have the UE3 license and would like to create an advanced single-player FPS. What other tools/technologies would I need? For example for audio, animations, modeling and so on. I mean all of them. I've been looking for some time now and can't find any source, which would say what's needed from beggining to the end of game development cycle.

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• Making Modular, Reusable and Loosely Coupled MVC Components

  - by Dusan

  I am building MVC3 application and need some general guidelines on how to manage complex client side interaction between my components. Here is my definition of one component in general way: Component which has it's own controller, model and view. All of the component's logic is placed inside these three parts and component is sort of "standalone", it contains it's own form, data needed for interaction, updates itself with Ajax and so on. Beside this internal logic and behavior of the component, it needs to be able to "Talk" to the outside world. By this I mean it should provide data and events (sort of) so when this component gets embedded in pages can notify other components which then can update based on the current state and data. I have an idea to use client ViewModel (in java-script) which would hookup all relevant components on page and control interaction between them. This would make components reusable, modular - independent of the context in which they are used. How would you do this, I am a bit stuck as I do not know if this is a good approach and there is a technical possibility to achieve this using java-script/jquery. The confusing part is about update via Ajax, how to ensure that component is properly linked to ViewModel when component is Ajax updated (or even worse removed or dynamically added). Also, how should this ViewModel be constructed and which technicalities to use here and in components to work as synergy??? On the web, I have found the various examples of the similar approach, but they are oversimplified (even for dummies) or over specific and do not provide valuable resource or general solution for this kind of implementation. If you have some serious examples it would be, also, very helpful. Note: My aim is to make interactions between many components on the same page simpler and more robust and elegant.

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• Collaboration platforms

  - by Thomas

  Are there any good collaboration platforms for game development? This would include the following features: Easy way to find various people you need to build games (programmer, artist etc) and forming a team like for example codeplex Online portfolio for users where they can offer their services (either paid or free) Posibility to create a game specific blog or site with social media integration to show the world what's being created Easy way to manage game content / resources with sufficient online storage, version control and if possible source control Manage all phases of game development (startup, creating concept, finding a team, creating proof of concept, production phase etc) and publish specific information for each phase also on social media etc. Manage asset creation flow (request for specific content like a sound, production of sound, uploading the sound, notification to the requester, implementation of the file, retouching in several cycles etc)

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• Is this an acceptable approach to undo/redo in Python?

  - by Codemonkey

  I'm making an application (wxPython) to process some data from Excel documents. I want the user to be able to undo and redo actions, even gigantic actions like processing the contents of 10 000 cells simultaneously. I Googled the topic, and all the solutions I could find involves a lot of black magic or is overly complicated. Here is how I imagine my simple undo/redo scheme. I write two classes - one called ActionStack and an abstract one called Action. Every "undoable" operation must be a subclass of Action and define the methods do and undo. The Action subclass is passed the instance of the "document", or data model, and is responsible for committing the operation and remembering how to undo the change. Now, every document is associated with an instance of the ActionStack. The ActionStack maintains a stack of actions (surprise!). Every time actions are undone and new actions are performed, all undone actions are removed for ever. The ActionStack will also automatically remove the oldest Action when the stack reaches the configurable maximum amount. I imagine the workflow would produce code looking something like this: class TableDocument(object): def __init__(self, table): self.table = table self.action_stack = ActionStack(history_limit=50) # ... def delete_cells(self, cells): self.action_stack.push( DeleteAction(self, cells) ) def add_column(self, index, name=''): self.action_stack.push( AddColumnAction(self, index, name) ) # ... def undo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.undo(count) def redo(self, count=1): self.action_stack.redo(count) Given that none of the methods I've found are this simple, I thought I'd get the experts' opinion before I go ahead with this plan. More specifically, what I'm wondering about is - are there any glaring holes in this plan that I'm not seeing?

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• Help parsing long (3.5mil lines) text file, line by line and storing data, need a strategy

  - by Jarrod

  This is a question about solving a particular problem I am struggling with, I am parsing a long list of text data, line by line for a business app in PHP (cron script on the CLI). The file follows the format: HD: Some text here {text here too} DC: A description here DC: the description continues here DC: and it ends here. DT: 2012-08-01 HD: Next header here {supplemental text} ... this repeats over and over for a few hundred megs I have to read each line, parse out the HD: line and grab the text on this line. I then compare this text against data stored in a database. When a match is found, I want to then record the following DC: lines that succeed the matched HD:. Pseudo code: while ( the_file_pointer_isnt_end_of_file) { line = getCurrentLineFromFile title = parseTitleFrom(line) matched = searchForMatchInDB(line) if ( matched ) { recordTheDCLines // <- Best way to do this? } } My problem is that because I am reading line by line, what is the best way to trigger the script to start saving DC lines, and then when they are finished save them to the database? I have a vague idea, but have yet to properly implement it. I would love to hear the communities ideas\suggestions! Thank you.

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