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• SQLAuthority News – Resolution for New Year 2011

  - by pinaldave

  Today is the first day of the year so I want to write something very light. Last Year: 2010 Last Year was a blast; really traveled a lot. My family and I went on vacation. There I enjoyed being father, rolling on the floor and playing with my daughter. Here is the list of the countries I visited throughout 2010: Singapore (twice) Malaysia (twice) Sri Lanka (thrice) Nepal (once) United States of America (twice) United Arab Emirates (UAE) (once) My daughter who just completed 1 year on September 1, 2010 has so far visited three countries: Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where I have done lots of community activities. The list containing all my activities can be found at Pinal Dave’s Community Events. I have written nearly 380 blog posts last year. It would be difficult for me to pick a few. However, I keep a running list of all of my articles over here: All Articles on SQLAuthority.com. I have so far received more than 10,000 email questions during the year and consequently I have done my best to answer most of them. I strongly believe if one would Search SQLAuthority.com blog, they would have found the answer quickly. The best part of 2010 for me was working on SQL Server Health Check and SQL Server Performance Tuning. This Year: 2011 This year, I came up with two simple goals: 1. Personal Goal: Reduce Weight 2. Professional Goal: Stay busy for the entire year with SQL Server Performance Tuning Projects. (Currently January 2011 is booked with performance tuning projects and 40 other days are already booked throughout the year). Future The future is something one cannot exactly guess and one cannot see. I just want to wish all of you the very best for this coming New Year. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Efficient solution for multiplayer space partioning?

  - by DevilWithin

  This question is a little tricky, but I will try to make it clear, Lets say I am building an online game, not in a mmo scale, but gladly supporting as many players as possible, in a authoritative server approach, and I want really big worlds with lots of AI simulated enemies. I am aware of a few strategies to save server's CPU by subdividing the space and not processing what doesn't need processing. I 've already split the world by regions, that will require loading times and small transitions, which i think is important to mantain the quality of gameplay when playing locally (alone or even with a couple of friends) because the players won't normally be in more than one or two regions. But even a region can become pretty big, and have a lot of NPC simulating at a time, how do I handle this without screwing the player's experience? Approaches like one server per region and alike are not in the table. I am mainly looking for data structures to hold hordes of enemies, and even peaceful NPC. To finalize the question, please note that vehicles exist, therefore its considerably fast to travel within a region, influencing the "when" to cull areas. Sorry for the confusing question, thanks

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• Tell me what&rsquo;s wrong! &ndash; An XNA sample demonstrating exception handling and reporting in

  - by George Clingerman

  I’ve always enjoyed using Nick Gravelyn’s exception handling in all of my games. You’re always going to encounter those unhandled exception that your players are going to ferret out and having a method to display them rather than just crashing to the dashboard is definitely more of an elegant solution. But the other day I got to thinking…what if we could do more? What if instead of just displaying the error, we could encourage the players to send us the error. So I started playing with that an expanding upon Nick’s sample code to see what I could come up with. I got close to what I envisioned, but unfortunately there were some limitations to just what the XNA API could do. In my head I was picturing the players hitting “Send Message” and a 360 message would just be sent to the XBLIG developer. Unfortunately, you can only send messages in an XNA game to someone you’re currently in a network session with. Since I didn’t want to have a 360 server running all the time, virally connecting to players just to get error messages, I did the next best thing and just open up a 360 message and encourage them to manually enter the gamertag. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do that a little better, but this works for now. In the sample, players can hit the “A” button or key to generate in an exception. If the debugger is not attached, then the Exception message screen will be shown explaining what has happened and giving the player a chance to send a 360 message to the gamertag provided or maybe even just send an email. Nick’s code has been changed just a bit. It now accepts any PlayerIndex (no longer hard coded to just PlayerIndex.One) and it no longer uses a MessageBox to get the users selection. The code has also been modified so that it works both for the 360 and for the PC. Check out “Tell me what’s wrong!” and let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. I really do appreciate the feedback.

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• Mac OS ? Assembly Language Esoteria

  - by veryfoolish

  I've been playing around with assembly and object files in general on Mac OS ? and was wondering if somebody could provide some edification. Specifically, I'm wondering what the extra code GCC generates when compiling the C file in the following example does. I have a toy C program so I can comprehend the assembly output. int main() { int a = 5; int b = 5; int c = a + b; } Running this through gcc -S creates the following assembly: .text .globl _main _main: LFB2: pushq %rbp LCFI0: movq %rsp, %rbp LCFI1: movl $5, -4(%rbp) movl $5, -8(%rbp) movl -8(%rbp), %eax addl -4(%rbp), %eax movl %eax, -12(%rbp) leave ret LFE2: .section __TEXT,__eh_frame,coalesced,no_toc+strip_static_syms+live_support EH_frame1: .set L$set$0,LECIE1-LSCIE1 .long L$set$0 LSCIE1: .long 0x0 .byte 0x1 .ascii "zR\0" .byte 0x1 .byte 0x78 .byte 0x10 .byte 0x1 .byte 0x10 .byte 0xc .byte 0x7 .byte 0x8 .byte 0x90 .byte 0x1 .align 3 LECIE1: .globl _main.eh _main.eh: LSFDE1: .set L$set$1,LEFDE1-LASFDE1 .long L$set$1 LASFDE1: .long LASFDE1-EH_frame1 .quad LFB2-. .set L$set$2,LFE2-LFB2 .quad L$set$2 .byte 0x0 .byte 0x4 .set L$set$3,LCFI0-LFB2 .long L$set$3 .byte 0xe .byte 0x10 .byte 0x86 .byte 0x2 .byte 0x4 .set L$set$4,LCFI1-LCFI0 .long L$set$4 .byte 0xd .byte 0x6 .align 3 LEFDE1: .subsections_via_symbols The LCFI1 section seems to contain the actual logic for the program, but I'm not sure what the misc. other stuff is for... also, is there any scheme these labels are following? I'm sorry this is such a vague question. I'd appreciate anything, including being pointed to a resource where I can find out more about this. Thanks!

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• Problems with both LightDM and GDM using DisplayLink USB monitor

  - by Austin

  When I use LightDM, it will auto-login to desktop just fine. The only problem is Compiz doesn't work, and menus don't work. I can't right-click the desktop, and I can't select program menus in the top bar (I.e clicking "File" does nothing). When I use GDM, I only get a blank blue screen and the mouse cursor. I can't Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart, but I can Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Ctrl+Alt+F7 to switch modes. I don't think it's auto-logging me in, but I'm not sure. It plays the login screen noise. Will update with more information when I get home! EDIT: Okay, so I did a fresh install, just to ensure I hadn't borked something playing in the console. I reconfigured my setup as I did before, with the same results. Here's what I followed. The only difference is that instead of setting "vga=normal nomodeset" I set "GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX = text". Also I only have the DisplayLink monitor configured in my xorg.conf file. At this point I'm using the open radeon driver, although I used the proprietary ati driver before. I'm not sure if I'm having a problem with: - X configuration - Graphics driver - DisplayLink driver - Unity - LightDM - Compiz - Or something else The resolution of the monitor is 800x480, 16bit. I tried setting a larger virtual resolution of 1200x720 (because the real resolution is lower than the recommended resolution), but it causes Ubuntu to boot into low graphics mode. When I get home I'm going to install the fglrx driver and see if it enables virtual resolutions, which may further enable my window manager to function properly.

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• Jump and run HTML5 Game Framework

  - by user1818924

  We're developing a jump and run game with HTML5 and JavaScript and have to build an own game framework for this. Here we have some difficulties and would like to ask you for some advice: we have a "Stage" object, which represents the root of our game and is a global div-wrapper. The stage can contain multiple "Scenes", which are also div-elements. We would implement a Scene for the playing task, for pause, etc. and switch between them. Each scene can therefore contain multiple "Layers", representing a canvas. These Layer contain "ObjectEntities", which represent images or other shapes like rectangles, etc. Each Objectentity has its own temporaryCanvas, to be able to draw images for one entity, whereas another contains a rectangle. We set an activeScene in our Stage, so when the game is played, just the active scene is drawn. Calling activeScene.draw(), calls all sublayers to draw, which draw their entities (calling drawImage(entity.canvas)). But is this some kind of good practive? Having multiple canvas to draw? Each gameloop every layer-context is cleared and drawn again. E.g. we just have a still Background-Layer, … wouldn't it be more useful to draw this once and not to clear it everytime and redraw it? Or should we use a global canvas for example in the Stage and just use this canvas to draw? But we thought this would be to expensive... Other question: Do you have any advice how we could dive into implementing an own framework? Most stuff we find online relies on existing frameworks or they just implement their game without building a framework.

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• DopeWarz 2010

  - by Theo Moore

  A few (6?) weeks ago, I started a project that I've always wanted to do. I am doing a re-write of the old VB6 game DopeWars with a partner in crime. I loved that game and spent many, many hours wasting time playing it years ago. I liked it so much, I even registered it (it was $5...even then, that wasn't much to spend). The VB6 version itself was a port of the old DOS game DrugWars (never go to play that). I needed a game project to work on as it's been far too long since I've done any game work. There is surprising amount of logic built into the game (there is the way I'm writing it, anyway) with what is really a minimal interface. My design goal was to have an object model that could be easily adapted to any interface and so far, I've managed to do that. I am even considering a web-based version that could run via Facebook (no clue how to do that...yet). I've enlisted the help of one of my DBA buddies to work on the interface while I am working on the object model. So far, this arrangement has gone well. The logical separation of concerns allows for us to collaborate easily. Once we get to the Facebook step, it will be great to have a DBA "on staff" to help that part off of the ground. The object model is probably about 60% complete with quite a bit of testing to go. More on this as we go....

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• How exactly are textures drawn on faces of cubes?

  - by Christian Frantz

  Are they drawn from the lower left corner clockwise? I know how triangles are created, I'm not just sure if textures are the same way. The texture on my cube is skewed way off and after playing around with the U,V coordinates, I still can't get it right. //front left bottom corner ok vertices[0] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector2(1, 0))); //front left upper corner vertices[1] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 1, 0), new Vector2(1, 1))); //front right upper corner ok vertices[2] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 1, 0), new Vector2(0, 1))); //front lower right corner vertices[3] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 0, 0), new Vector2(0, 0))); //back left lower corner ok vertices[4] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 0, -1), new Vector2(0, 1))); //back left upper corner vertices[5] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(0, 1, -1), new Vector2(1, 1))); //back right upper corner ok vertices[6] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 1, -1), new Vector2(1, 0))); //back right lower corner vertices[7] = (new VertexPositionTexture(new Vector3(1, 0, -1), new Vector2(0, 0)));

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• Checkers AI Algorithm

  - by John

  I am making an AI for my checkers game and I'm trying to make it as hard as possible. Here is the current criteria for a move on the hardest difficulty: 1: Look For A Block: This is when a piece is being threatened and another piece can be moved in behind it to protect it. Here is an example: Black Moves |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| White Blocks |W| |W| |W| |W| | | |W| | | |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| |W| | | | | |W| | | | | | | | | |B| | | | | |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| |B| | | |B| |B| |B| |B| 2: Move pieces out of danger: if any piece is being threatened, and a piece cannot block for that piece, then it will attempt to move out of the way. If the piece cannot move out of the way without still being in danger, the computer ignores the piece. 3: If the computer player owns any kings, it will attempt to 'hunt down' enemy pieces on the board, if no moves can be made that won't in danger the king or any other pieces, the computer ignores this rule. 4: Any piece that is owned by the computer that is in column 1 or 6 will attempt to go to a side. When a piece is in column 0 or 7, it is in a very strategic position because it cannot get captured while it is in either of these columns 5: It makes an educated random move, the move will not indanger the piece that is moving or any piece that is on the board. 6: If none of the above are possible it makes a random move. This question is not really specific to any language but if all examples could be in Java that would be great, considering this app is written in android. Does anyone see any room for improvement in this algorithm? Anything that would make it better at playing checkers?

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• Stream.CopyTo() extension method

  - by DigiMortal

  In one of my applications I needed copy data from one stream to another. After playing with streams a little bit I wrote CopyTo() extension method to Stream class you can use to copy the contents of current stream to target stream. Here is my extension method. It is my working draft and it is possible that there must be some more checks before we can say this extension method is ready to be part of some API or class library. public static void CopyTo(this Stream fromStream, Stream toStream) {     if (fromStream == null)         throw new ArgumentNullException("fromStream");     if (toStream == null)         throw new ArgumentNullException("toStream");       var bytes = new byte[8092];     int dataRead;     while ((dataRead = fromStream.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length)) > 0)         toStream.Write(bytes, 0, dataRead); } And here is example how to use this extension method. using(var stream = response.GetResponseStream()) using(var ms = new MemoryStream()) {     stream.CopyTo(ms);       // Do something with copied data } I am using this code to copy data from HTTP response stream to memory stream because I have to use serializer that needs more than response stream is able to offer.

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• Exploring MDS Explorer by Mark Nelson

  - by JuergenKress

  Recently, I posted about my colleague Olivier’s MDS Explorer tool, which is a great way to get a look inside your MDS repository. I have been playing around with it a little bit, nothing much really, just some cosmetic stuff, but you might like to take a look at it. I made it format the documents nicely with proper indentation, and with line numbers and a nicer editor. It also will warn you if you are about to open a large document so that you know it has not crashed, but that you just have to be patient. And I added some icons and stuff. There is even a nice Dora the Explorer picture hiding in there for those who care to look for it . Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: MDS Explorerer,IDM,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress,Mark Nelson

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• Security in a private web service

  - by Oni

  I am developing a web site and a web service for a small on-line game. Technically, I'll be using Express (node.js) and MongoDB+Redis for the databases. This the structure I came up with: One Express server that will server as the Web Service. This will connect to the databases. One Express server that will provide the web site. It will connect to the Web Service to retrieve and push the information. iOS and Android application will be able to interact with the WebService. Taking into account: It is a small game. The information transferred is not critical. There will NOT be third party applications. At least for the moment. My concern is about which level of security I should use in each of the scenarios: Security of the user playing through web browser Security of the applications and the Web Server connecting to the WS. I have take a look at the different options and: OAuth and/or Https is too much for this scenario, isn't it? Will be a good option to hash the user and password with MD5(or similar) and some salt? I would like to get some directions and investigate by my own rather than getting a response like "you should you use this node.js module..." Thanks in advance,

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• Facebook like button for a Facebook feed item

  - by jverdeyen

  Here is what I do: When the admin of a website i'm creating adds a new 'news' item to his website, it directly posts the same item on the Facebook 'fanpage' of the website. This is done by an Facebook app with the permissions to post an item on the Facebook fanpage. So far so good. I'm getting the new post id from the facebook graph. Here is what I want to achieve: I'm adding a 'like' button on the original website, but when this is clicked it should be referenced to the same post item on the facebook page. So if someone likes the news post on the website he should also like the referencing facebook feed post. Which is exactly the same. Can this be done? I've been playing around with the href etc of the like button, without any success. When I hit the like button it likes the url given, but is doesn't recognizes that this is a feed post. Any idea? Thx in advance.

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• Friday Fun: Building Blasters 2

  - by Mysticgeek

  After dealing with unnecessary spreadsheets and TPS reports all week, it’s time to waste time playing a flash game. Today we take a look at Building Blasters 2 where you strategically place explosives to bring down structures. Building Blasters 2 You need to place explosives carefully to clear areas in the red level, keep bystanders safe, and manage your budget. After placing the explosives on the structure, you can set the amount of time that passes before they blow. This comes in handy when you reach advanced levels. When you’re ready to start the demolition click on the Detonate button and watch the buildings fall. If you don’t achieve the objectives, you will get the Demolition Error screen and can replay the level. After you’ve received enough money, you’ll get a message between missions telling you there is enough money to buy items in the shop. You can get enhanced destructive devices such as nitroglycerin, a wrecking ball, call in an air strike and more… If you’re sick of the pointy haired boss dragging you down all week, pretend the structures are the office building and destroy away. Building Blasters 2 is a great way to have fun and let off steam so you can enjoy your weekend. Play Building Blasters 2 For additional fun games to play, make sure and check out the How-To Geek Arcade. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Demolition CityFriday Fun: Cargo BridgeFriday Fun: Portal, the Flash VersionFriday Fun: VehiclesFriday Fun: Play Bubble Quod TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides

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• Scientists Demonstrate First-Person Shooter Games Improve Vision

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Need an excuse to log a few more hours playing Call of Duty or Medal of Honor? Scientists demonstrated improved vision in test subjects after daily doses of first-person shooter games. Scientists at McMaster University took subjects who, as the result of surgery correcting congenital cataracts, had less than 20/20 vision. Subjects played Medal of Honor for a total of 40 hours over the course of 4 weeks before having their vision retested. The results? The CBC reports: The participants found improvements in detail, perception of motion and in low contrast settings. In essence, players could now read about one to one-and-a-half more lines on an optometrist’s eye chart. “We were thrilled,” Lewis said. “It’s very exciting to open up a new world of hope for these people.” How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using? HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It

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• What to watch out for when writing code at an Interview?

  - by Philip

  Hi, I have read that at a lot of companies you have to write code at an interview. On the one hand I see that it makes sense to ask for a work sample. On the other hand: What kind of code do you expect to be written in 5 minutes? And what if they tell me "Write an algorithm that does this and that" but I cannot think of a smart solution or even write code that doesn't semantically work? I am particularly interested in that question because I do not have that much commercial programming experience, 2 years part-time, one year full-time. (But I am interested in programming languages since nearly 15 years though usually I was more concentrated in playing with the language rather than writing large applications...) And actually I consider my debugging and problem solving skills much better than my coding skills. I sometimes see myself not writing the most beautiful code when looking back, but on the other hand I often come up with solutions for hard problems. And I think I am very good at optimizing, fixing, restructuring existing code, but I have problems with writing new applications from scratch. The software design sucks... ;-) Therefore I don't feel comfortable when thinking about this code writing situation at an interview... So what do the interviewers expect? What kind of information about my code writing are they interested in? Philip

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• Creating a GTK theme, but Qt and Java apps are not affected, and title bar button layout is ugly

  - by Mr. Pixel

  I'm playing with a gtk2 / gtk3 theme which I use in the Mate desktop. Everything is looking well, even gtk3 apps, but I still have 3 important issues: Java apps ignore the theme QT apps ignore the theme I'm using those nice ubuntu 10 title bar buttons, but the problem is, when only the close button appears, the title bar looks ugly. Can I make it so that it shows the two other buttons, but disabled? I don't know how Ubuntu 10 handled this. Here's a screenshot showing the 3 problems (above is a small java app, below is a Qt app): Under my previous desktop environments, Unity and Cinnamon, both apps seemed to be taking the right theme correctly, but I did not use my custom theme yet. Cinnamon is based on gnome-shell by the way, and mate is a gnome2-fork. Please note that the shown java app explicitely tries to load the gtk theme at runtime. By default, java apps don't, but this one has the necessary code, which worked in unity and cinnamon. Any suggestions how I could make my theme better so these problems disappear? Thank you very much!

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• How do I get media players to play ripped dvd files using Handbrake?

  - by LibraryGeekAdam

  I want to rip my dvd collection to put on a server for my tv. I started this with trying 4 dvds using Handbrake. The first 3 ripped perfectly fine according to the directions I used from LifeHacker (http://lifehacker.com/5773000/how-to-rip-dvds-with-handbrake). The 4th dvd took about 2 secs to rip and then stopped saying it was complete. It was not. Now with the 3 files I have I tried to open and play with VLC and Miro. Neither one would play the file. It says its open but there is no sound or video and it doesn't actually show the movie playing in the progress bar. I ran it from the terminal and this is the error message I get. [0xb04c2f38] mp4 demux error: MP4 plugin discarded (no moov,foov,moof box) [mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0xa032980] moov atom not found [mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0xb0efd500] moov atom not found [0xb04c2f38] avformat demux error: Could not open ????e/boris/Videos/Movies/Taras Bulba 1962.m4v: Unknown error 1094995529 I have also changed a file name to end .mp4 instead of .m4v which is how I originally ripped them.

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• What are the advantages of Maven when it comes to single man, educational projects

  - by Leron

  I've spend a few hours playing around with Maven + reading some stuff on the apache official site and also a few random googled articles. By this I mean that I really tried to find the answers myself - both by reading and by doing things on my own. Also maybe worth to mention that I installed the m2e plugin so most of the time I've tried things out from Eclipse and not using the command line too much. However aside from the generated project that for example prevent me from using the default package I didn't see that much of a difference with the standard way I've created my projects before try Maven. In fact I've almost decided to skip Maven for now and move on to the other technology I wanted to learn more in-depth - Hibernate, but when I start with opening the official page the first thing I've read was the recommendation to use Hibernate with Maven. That get me confused and made me taking a step back and trying once more to find what I'm obviously missing right now. As it's said in the maven.apache.. site, the true strength of Maven is shown when you work on large projects with other people, but I lack the option to see how Maven is really used in this scenario, still i think that there are maybe advantages even when it comes to working with small projects alone, but I really have difficulties to point them out. So what do you think are the advantages of Maven when it's used for small projects writing from a single person. What are the things that I should be aware of and try to exploit (I mean features offered by Maven) that can come in handy in this situations?

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• How do graphics programmers deal with rendering vertices that don't change the image?

  - by canisrufus

  So, the title is a little awkward. I'll give some background, and then ask my question. Background: I work as a web GIS application developer, but in my spare time I've been playing with map rendering and improving data interchange formats. I work only in 2D space. One interesting issue I've encountered is that when you're rendering a polygon at a small scale (zoomed way out), many of the vertices are redundant. An extreme case would be that you have a polygon with 500,000 vertices that only takes up a single pixel. If you're sending this data to the browser, it would make sense to omit ~499,999 of those vertices. One way we achieve that is by rendering an image on a server and and sending it as a PNG: voila, it's a point. Sometimes, though, we want data sent to the browser where it can be rendered with SVG (or canvas, or webgl) so that it can be interactive. The problem: It turns out that, using modern geographic data sets, it's very easy to overload SVG's rendering abilities. In an effort to cope with those limitations, I'm trying to figure out how to visually losslessly reduce a data set for a given scale and map extent (and, if necessary, for a known map pixel width and height). I got a great reduction in data size just using the Douglas-Peucker algorithm, and I believe I was able to get it to keep the polygons true to within one pixel. Unfortunately, Douglas-Peucker doesn't preserve topology, so it changed how borders between polygons got rendered. I couldn't readily find other algorithms to try out and adapt to the purpose, but I don't have much CS/algorithm background and might not recognize them if I saw them.

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• I want to build a Virtual Machine, are there any good references?

  - by Michael Stum

  I'm looking to build a Virtual Machine as a platform independent way to run some game code (essentially scripting). The Virtual Machines that I'm aware of in games are rather old: Infocom's Z-Machine, LucasArts' SCUMM, id Software's Quake 3. As a .net Developer, I'm familiar with the CLR and looked into the CIL Instructions to get an overview of what you actually implement on a VM Level (vs. the language level). I've also dabbled a bit in 6502 Assembler during the last year. The thing is, now that I want¹ to implement one, I need to dig a bit deeper. I know that there are stack based and register based VMs, but I don't really know which one is better at what and if there are more or hybrid approaches. I need to deal with memory management, decide which low level types are part of the VM and need to understand why stuff like ldstr works the way it does. My only reference book (apart from the Z-Machine stuff) is the CLI Annotated Standard, but I wonder if there is a better, more general/fundamental lecture for VMs? Basically something like the Dragon Book, but for VMs? I'm aware of Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming which uses a register-based VM, but I'm not sure how applicable that series still is, especially since it's still unfinished? Clarification: The goal is to build a specialized VM. For example, Infocom's Z-Machine contains OpCodes for setting the Background Color or playing a sound. So I need to figure out how much goes into the VM as OpCodes vs. the compiler that takes a script (language TBD) and generates the bytecode from it, but for that I need to understand what I'm really doing. ¹ I know, modern technology would allow me to just interpret a high level scripting language on the fly. But where is the fun in that? :) It's also a bit hard to google because Virtual Machines is nowadays often associated with VMWare-type OS Virtualization...

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• Multiple audio sources on a single gameObject in unity

  - by angryInsomniac

  So, I have an audio system set up wherein I have loaded all my audio clips centrally and play them on demand by passing the requesting audioSource into the sound manager. However, there is a complication wherein if I want to overlay multiple looping sounds, I need to have multiple audio sources on an object, which is fine , so I created two in my script instantiated them and played my clips on them and then the world went crazy. For some reason, when I create two audio Sources in an object only the latest one is ever used, even if I explicitly keep objects separated, playing a clip on one or the other plays the clip on the last one that was created, furthermore, either this last one is not created in the right place or somehow messes with the rolloff rules because I can hear it all across my level, havign just one source works fine, but putting a second one on it causes shit to go batshit insane. Does anyone know the reason / solution for this ? Some pseudocode : guardSoundsSource = (AudioSource)gameObject.AddComponent("AudioSource"); guardSoundsSource.name = "Guard_Sounds_source"; // Setup this source guardThrusterSource = (AudioSource)gameObject.AddComponent("AudioSource"); guardThrusterSource.name = "Guard_Thruster_Source"; // setup this source // play using custom Sound manager soundMan.soundMgr.playOnSource(guardSoundsSource,"Guard_Idle_loop" ,true,GameManager.Manager.PlayerType); // this method prints out the name of the source the sound was to be played on and it always shows "Guard_Thruster_Source" even on the "Guard_Idle_loop" even though I clearly told it to use "Guard_Sounds_source"

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• What FOSS solutions are available to manage software requirements?

  - by boos

  In the company where I work, we are starting to plan to be compliant to the software development life cycle. We already have, wiki, vcs system, bug tracking system, and a continuous integration system. The next step we want to have is to start to manage, in a structured way, software requirements. We dont want to use a wiki or shared documentation because we have many input (developer, manager, commercial, security analyst and other) and we dont want to handle proliferation of .doc around the network share. We are trying to search and we hope we can find and use a FOSS software to manage all this things. We have about 30 people, and don't have a budget for commercial software. We need a free solution for requirements management. What we want is software that can manage: Required features: Software requirements divided in a structured configurable way Versioning of the requirements (history, diff, etc, like source code) Interdependency of requirements (child of, parent of, related to) Rule Based Access Control for data handling Multi user, multi project File upload (for graph, document related to or so on) Report and extraction features Optional Features: Web Based Test case Time based management (timeline, excepted data, result data) Person allocation and so on Business related stuff Hardware allocation handling I have already play with testlink and now i'm playing with RTH, the next one i try is redmine.

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• How do I properly use String literals for loading content?

  - by Dave Voyles

  I've been using verbatim string literals for some time now, and never quite thought about using a regular string literal until I started to come across them in Microsoft provided XNA samples. With that said, I'm trying to implement a new AudioManager class from the Net Rumble sample. I have two (2) issues here: Question 1: In my code for my GameplayScreen screen I have a folder location written as the following, and it works fine: menuButton = content.Load<SoundEffect>(@"sfx/menuButton"); menuClose = content.Load<SoundEffect>(@"sfx/menuClose"); If you notice, you'll see that I'm using a verbatim string, with a forward slash "/". In the AudioManager class, they use a regular string literal, but with two backslashes "\". I understand that one is used as an escape, but why are they BACK instead of FORWARD? (See below) soundList[soundName] = game.Content.Load<SoundEffect>("audio\\wav\\"+ soundName); Question 2: I seem to be doing everything correctly in my AudioManager class, but I'm not sure of what this line means: audioFileList = audioFolder.GetFiles("*.xnb"); I suppose that the *xnb means look for everything BUT files that end in *xnb? I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with my file locations, as the sound effects are not playing. My code is not much different from what I've linked to above. private AudioManager(Game game, DirectoryInfo audioDirectory) : base(game) { try { audioFolder = audioDirectory; audioFileList = audioFolder.GetFiles("*.mp3"); soundList = new Dictionary<string, SoundEffect>(); for (int i = 0; i < audioFileList.Length; i++) { string soundName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(audioFileList[i].Name); soundList[soundName] = game.Content.Load<SoundEffect>(@"sfx\" + soundName); soundList[soundName].Name = soundName; } // Plays this track while the GameplayScreen is active soundtrack = game.Content.Load<Song>("boomer"); } catch (NoAudioHardwareException) { // silently fall back to silence } }

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• While loop error?

  - by user134134

  I believe the problem with my code lies within my while loop. Admittedly, I'm rather new to Javascript programming. Does this look okay: <! DOCTYPE html> <head><title>title</title></head> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> alert("Hello, stranger. Please note that at this current moment, we do not have a save function. It might be a good idea to record your answers."); var preAnswer = 0; while (var preAnswer = 0) { var name = prompt("What is your name? Please capitalise it, for the sake of grammar.") if (name === "") { alert("What are you playing at? You didn't type anything."); var preAnswer = 0; } else { var preAnswer = 1 } } alert("Nice name, " + name + ", bro.") </script> </body> </html> I'm sure I've done something wrong, as it isn't functioning.

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