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  • How do multi-platform games usually store save data?

    - by PixelPerfect3
    I realize this is a bit of a broad question, but I was wondering if there is a "standard" in the industry when it comes to storing save data for games (and is it different across platforms - Xbox/PS/PC/Mac/Android/iOS?) For example for a game like Assassin's Creed or The Walking Dead: They are on multiple platforms and they usually have to save enough information about the player and their actions. Do they use something like XML files, databases, or just straight binary dumps? How much does it differ from platform to platform? I would appreciate it if someone with experience in the game industry would answer this.

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  • Is throwing an error in unpredictable subclass-specific circumstances a violation of LSP?

    - by Motti Strom
    Say, I wanted to create a Java List<String> (see spec) implementation that uses a complex subsystem, such as a database or file system, for its store so that it becomes a simple persistent collection rather than an basic in-memory one. (We're limiting it specifically to a List of Strings for the purposes of discussion, but it could extended to automatically de-/serialise any object, with some help. We can also provide persistent Sets, Maps and so on in this way too.) So here's a skeleton implementation: class DbBackedList implements List<String> { private DbBackedList() {} /** Returns a list, possibly non-empty */ public static getList() { return new DbBackedList(); } public String get(int index) { return Db.getTable().getRow(i).asString(); // may throw DbExceptions! } // add(String), add(int, String), etc. ... } My problem lies with the fact that the underlying DB API may encounter connection errors that are not specified in the List interface that it should throw. My problem is whether this violates Liskov's Substitution Principle (LSP). Bob Martin actually gives an example of a PersistentSet in his paper on LSP that violates LSP. The difference is that his newly-specified Exception there is determined by the inserted value and so is strengthening the precondition. In my case the connection/read error is unpredictable and due to external factors and so is not technically a new precondition, merely an error of circumstance, perhaps like OutOfMemoryError which can occur even when unspecified. In normal circumstances, the new Error/Exception might never be thrown. (The caller could catch if it is aware of the possibility, just as a memory-restricted Java program might specifically catch OOME.) Is this therefore a valid argument for throwing an extra error and can I still claim to be a valid java.util.List (or pick your SDK/language/collection in general) and not in violation of LSP? If this does indeed violate LSP and thus not practically usable, I have provided two less-palatable alternative solutions as answers that you can comment on, see below. Footnote: Use Cases In the simplest case, the goal is to provide a familiar interface for cases when (say) a database is just being used as a persistent list, and allow regular List operations such as search, subList and iteration. Another, more adventurous, use-case is as a slot-in replacement for libraries that work with basic Lists, e.g if we have a third-party task queue that usually works with a plain List: new TaskWorkQueue(new ArrayList<String>()).start() which is susceptible to losing all it's queue in event of a crash, if we just replace this with: new TaskWorkQueue(new DbBackedList()).start() we get a instant persistence and the ability to share the tasks amongst more than one machine. In either case, we could either handle connection/read exceptions that are thrown, perhaps retrying the connection/read first, or allow them to throw and crash the program (e.g. if we can't change the TaskWorkQueue code).

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  • Push or Pull Input Data In the Game Logic?

    - by Qua
    In the process of preparing my game for networking I'm adding a layer of seperation between the physical input (mouse/keyboard) and the actual game "engine"/logic. All input that has any relation to the game logic is wrapped inside action objects such as BuildBuildingAction. I was thinking of having an action processing layer that would determine what to do with the input. This layer could then be set up to either just pass the actions locally to the game engine or send it via sockets to the network server depending on whether the game was single- or multiplayer. In network games it would make sense that the player's actions should be sent to the server, but should the game logic be pulling (polling?) the data through some sort of interface or should the action processing layer be adding the actions to an input queue in the game logic code?

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  • What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly smash a button?

    - by Michael
    What are some good examples of exuberant in-game instructions for telling the player to repeatedly and quickly press a button or perform an action? I'm especially interested in examples in retro games (e.g., from the NES, SNES, and 1980-90s arcade eras), and I would love to see examples with text, graphics, or both. To illustrate, here are a few examples of the type of instructions that I'm thinking of: Smash the A button to lift something heavy! Toggle the joystick back and forth to break free! Quickly press the button to build power in a meter! I'm working on a 2D iOS game with retro-style pixel art, and there's a point where I want the player to quickly tap on a sprite to complete an action. I have a serviceable starting point -- the word "TAP" flashing with an arrow repeatedly moving downward beneath it: But it still doesn't feel quite right. I would love to see some actual examples from the golden days of 2D gaming to use as reference material. I know examples abound, but I'm just struggling to think of any concrete ones at the moment. Can you think of any examples of this type of thing in old games?

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  • Making an interactive 2D map

    - by Chad
    So recently I have been working on a Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past clone, and I am wondering how I could handle certain map interactions (like cutting grass, lifting rocks, etc). The way I am currently doing the tilemap is with 2 PNGs. The first is the "tilemap" where each pixel represents a 16x16 tile and the (red, green) values are the (x, y) coords for the tile in the second PNG (the "tileset"). I am then using the blue channel to store collision data. Each tile is split into 4 8x8 tiles and represented by a 2 bit value (0 = empty, 1 = Jumpdown point, 2 = unused right now, 3 = blocking). 4 of these 2 bit values make up the full blue channel (1 byte). So collisions work great, and I am moving on to putting interactive units on the level; but I am not sure what a good way is to do it. I have experimented with spawning an entity for each grass and rock, but there are just WAY to many; FPS just dies even if I confine it to the current "zone" the user is in (for those who remember LTTP it had zones you moved between). It does make a difference that this is a browser-based JavaScript game. tl;dr: What is a good way to have an interactive map without using full blown entities for each interactive item?

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  • Java EE 6: How to get module name and app name

    - by user12798506
    Java EE 6??????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????[1] ?????????????JNDI???????????????????"java:module/ModuleName"?????? ?????"java:app/AppName"???????? InitialContext ctx = new InitialContext(); String moduleName = ctx.lookup("java:module/ModuleName"); // ?????? String appName = ctx.lookup("java:app/AppName"); // ????????? ???@Resource?????????????????????????????????????????? @Resource(lookup="java:module/ModuleName") String moduleName; // ?????????????????? @Resource(lookup="java:app/AppName") String appName; // ????????????????????? ???EAR???????Web????????EJB??????????????????AppName???????????????? ?????????GlassFish V3 (3.1.2.2)?WebLogic 12c (12.1.1)?JBoss AS 7 (7.1.1)?????????? ????????????????AppName???ModuleName??????????????? ?????????Web Profile??????????????????(GlassFish?JBoss?????Web Profile ?????)?????Apache TomEE (1.5.0)????????ModuleName???"localhost/<Web?????? >"?????????????????????????????????????? Java EE 6??????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????? ???Apache Tomcat 7.0?Servlet 3.0??????????????????????????????·??? ???????JNDI???????????????????????? ??:?Tomcat????????Java EE?????????????????????? [1] Java EE 6????(JSR 316)????????????? (pp.122-123): EE.5.15 Application Name and Module Name References A component may access the name of the current application using the pre-defined JNDI name java:app/AppName. A component may access the name of the current module using the pre-defined JNDI name java:module/ModuleName. Both of these names are represented by String objects.

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  • Is switch-case over enumeration bad practice?

    - by Puckl
    I have an enumeration with the commands Play, Stop and Pause for a media player. In two classes I do a switch-case over the received commands. The player runs in a different thread and I deliver the commands in a command queue to the thread. If I generate class diagrams the enumeration has dependencies all over the place. Is there a nicer way to deal with the commands? If I would change/extend the enumeration, I would have to change several classes. (Its not super important to keep the player extensible, but I try to write nice software.)

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  • Bachelor in Game Development [on hold]

    - by vandamon taigi
    At this moment, I'm in year 11 in Romania. I have started thinking about an university to go to and I am not really sure which should be my choice. I want it to be game development, but I also want it to be good and fun university.Thing is, I don't want to pay 30 grands a year or so for Cambridge or something like that. I am looking for a decent university at a decent price. I have in my hometown a University that is ranked 1613 world-wide which has a software development category. I need some advices and some possible options for decent universities ( Personal experience is greatly appreciated )

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  • Should all foreign table references use foreign key constraints

    - by TecBrat
    Closely related to: Foreign key restrictions -> yes or no? I asked a question on SO and it led me to ask this here. If I'm faced with a choice of having a circular reference or just not enforcing the restraint, which is the better choice? In my particular case I have customers and addresses. I want an address to have a reference to a customer and I want each customer to have a default billing address id and a default shipping address id. I might query for all addresses that have a certain customer ID or I might query for the address with the ID that matches the default shipping or billing address ids. I'm not sure yet how the constraints (or lack of) will effect the system as my application and it's data age.

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  • Inventory Management concepts in XNA game

    - by user1332755
    I am trying to code the inventory system in my first real game so I have very little experience in both c# and game engine development. Basically, I need some general guidance and tips with how to structure and organize these sorts of systems. Please tell me if I am on the right track or not before I get too deep into making some badly structured system. It's fine if you don't feel like looking through my code, suggestions about general structure would also be appreciated. What I am aiming to end up with is some sort of system like Minecraft or Terraria. It must include: main inventory GUI (items can be dragged and placed in whatever slot desired Itembar outside of the main inventory which can be assigned to certain items the ability to use items from either location So far, I have 4 main classes: Inventory holds the general info and methods, inventoryslot holds info for individual slots, Itembar holds all info and methods for itself, and finally, ItemManager to manage interactions between the two and hold a master list of items. So far, my itembar works perfectly and interacts well with mousedragging items into and out of it as well as activating the item effect. Here is the code I have so far: (there is a lot but I will try to keep it relevant) This is the code for the itembar on the main screen: class Itembar { public Texture2D itembarfull, iSelected; public static Rectangle itembar = new Rectangle(5, 218, 40, 391); public Rectangle box1 = new Rectangle(itembar.X, 218, 40, 40); //up to 10 Rectangles for each slot public int Selected = 0; private ItemManager manager; public Itembar(Texture2D texture, Texture2D texture3, ItemManager mann) { itembarfull = texture; iSelected = texture3; manager = mann; } public void Update(GameTime gametime) { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw( itembarfull, new Vector2 (itembar.X, itembar.Y), null, Color.White, 0.0f, Vector2.Zero, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 1.0f); if (Selected == 1) spriteBatch.Draw(iSelected, new Rectangle(box1.X-3, box1.Y-3, box1.Width+6, box1.Height+6), Color.White); //goes up to 10 slots } public int Box1Query() { foreach (Item item in manager.items) { if(box1.Contains(item.BoundingBox)) return manager.items.IndexOf(item); } return 999; } //10 different box queries It is working fine right now. I just put an Item in there and the box will query things like the item's effects, stack number, consumable or not etc...This one is basically almost complete. Here is the main inventory class: class Inventory { public bool isActive; public List<Rectangle> mainSlots = new List<Rectangle>(24); public List<InventorySlot> mainSlotscheck = new List<InventorySlot>(24); public static Rectangle inv = new Rectangle(841, 469, 156, 231); public Rectangle invfull = new Rectangle(inv.X, inv.Y, inv.Width, inv.Height); public Rectangle inv1 = new Rectangle(inv.X + 4, inv.Y +3, 32, 32); //goes up to inv24 resulting in a 6x4 grid of Rectangles public Inventory() { mainSlots.Add(inv1); mainSlots.Add(inv2); mainSlots.Add(inv3); mainSlots.Add(inv4); //goes up to 24 foreach (Rectangle slot in mainSlots) mainSlotscheck.Add(new InventorySlot(slot)); } //update and draw methods are empty because im not too sure what to put there public int LookforfreeSlot() { int slotnumber = 999; for (int x = 0; x < mainSlots.Count; x++) { if (mainSlotscheck[x].isFree) { slotnumber = x; break; } } return slotnumber; } } } LookforFreeSlot() method is meant to be called when I do AddtoInventory(). I'm kinda stumped about what other things I need to put in this class. Here is the inventorySlot class: (its main purpose is to check the bool "isFree" to see whether or not something already occupies the slot. But i guess it can also do other stuff like get item info.) class InventorySlot { public int X, Y; public int Width = 32, Height = 32; public Vector2 Position; public int slotnumber; public bool free = true; public int? content = null; public bool isFree { get { return free; } set { free = value; } } public InventorySlot(Rectangle slot) { slot = new Rectangle(X, Y, Width, Height); } } } Finally, here is the ItemManager (I am omitting the master list because it is too long) class ItemManager { public List<Item> items = new List<Item>(20); public List<Item> inventory1 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory2 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory3 = new List<Item>(24); public List<Item> inventory4 = new List<Item>(24); public Texture2D icon, filta; private Rectangle msRect; MouseState mouseState; public int ISelectedIndex; Inventory inventory; SpriteFont font; public void GenerateItems() { items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(0, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); items[0].name = "Grass Chip"; items[0].itemID = 0; items[0].consumable = true; items[0].stackable = true; items[0].maxStack = 99; items.Add(new Item(new Rectangle(32, 0, 32, 32), icon, font)); //master list continues. it will generate all items in the game; } public ItemManager(Inventory inv, Texture2D itemsheet, Rectangle mouseRectt, MouseState ms, Texture2D fil, SpriteFont f) { icon = itemsheet; msRect = mouseRectt; filta = fil; mouseState = ms; inventory = inv; font = f; } //once again, no update or draw public void mousedrag() { items[0].DestinationRect = new Rectangle (msRect.X, msRect.Y, 32, 32); items[0].dragging = true; } public void AddtoInventory(Item item) { int index = inventory.LookforfreeSlot(); if (index == 999) return; item.DestinationRect = inventory.mainSlots[index]; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].content = item.itemID; inventory.mainSlotscheck[index].isFree = false; item.IsActive = true; } } } The mousedrag works pretty well. AddtoInventory doesn't work because LookforfreeSlot doesn't work. Relevant code from the main program: When I want to add something to the main inventory, I do something like this: foreach (Particle ether in ether1.ethers) { if (ether.isCollected) itemmanager.AddtoInventory(itemmanager.items[14]); } This turned out to be much longer than I had expected :( But I hope someone is interested enough to comment.

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  • Making a game "resize-safe"

    - by CPP_Person
    It's one thing to get the graphics aligned perfectly, it's another to do this for every single resolution and not take too much time and/or make the code unreadable due to size. Games like Battlefield 3 and Minecraft seem to manage this. But what do they do to keep things from stretching or going off the screen? I don't know any algorithms to do this. I'd like some help on this topic. I've always programmed games that only handle a single resolution, so help would be appreciate.

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  • Sounds to describe the weather?

    - by Matthew
    I'm trying to think of sounds that will help convey the time of day and weather condition. I'm not even sure of all the weather conditions I would consider, and some are obvious. Like if it's raining, the sound of rain. But then I'm thinking, what about for a calm day? If it's morning time, I could do birds chirping or something. Night time could be an owl or something. What are some good combinations of sounds/weather/time to have a good effect?

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  • Game development: Pre-production stage

    - by piers
    I´m starting up a new project. It´s going to be a web browser game, developed using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. I have some general questions regarding the process of game developing. Should you know everything about your game by the time you start writing the first lines of code? I mean should you know all the details, all the things the player can and can not do? Basically: should you be done writing down new ideas before you begin coding? I understand the pre-production process is about documenting, doing research etc. What does that mean? Does it mean I should open up Word and write down everything about the game? For example what should happen when you click on different things etc. Thanks for your help!

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  • Gamification: designing cooperation in an RPG like game based on Scrum methodology

    - by Grzegorz Slawecki
    I have implemented with 3 friends a gamified system at my work (development company) which builds an fantasy rpg game over scrum project methodology. Generally, the tasks are the missions, each player is represented by a character. They earn XPs for completing tasks and they advance to the next levels which gives them badges, titles and (this is in planning phase) new privileges (e.g. priority in choosing tasks). Since the very beginning we try to do everything to avoid rivalisation between players because it would ruin the project if the players started to compete. There are no explicit leaderboards, we also plan to give bonuses for helping other players. I have a feeling that this is still not enough to really encourage cooperation. I would like to ask You for any ideas that come to Your mind that would help.

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  • Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language

    - by Ricky Stewart
    Here's the deal: I'm looking at designing my own scripting/interpreted language for fun. I'm only in the planning stages right now; I want to make sure I have a very strong hold on exactly how I will implement everything before I start coding. What I'm currently struggling with is concurrency. It seems to me like an easy way to avoid the unpredictable performance that comes with garbage collection would be to put the garbage collector in its own thread, and have it run concurrently with the interpreter itself. (To be clear, I don't plan to allow the scripts to be multithreaded themselves; I would simply put a garbage collector to work in a different thread than the interpreter.) This doesn't seem to be a common strategy for many popular scripting languages, probably for portability reasons; I would probably write the interpreter in the UNIX/POSIX threading framework initially and then port it to other platforms (Windows, etc.) if need be. Does anyone have any thoughts in this issue? Would whatever gains I receive by exploiting concurrency be nullified by the portability issues that will inevitably arise? (On that note, am I really correct in my assumption that I would experience great performance gains with a concurrent garbage collector?) Should I move forward with this strategy or step away from it?

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  • How to Set Background for Racing Game

    - by Nathiya
    I am new to game development and AndEngine. I have small query about racing game. I am going to develop a bike racing game. For bike racing game we will move the background or the player. I am tried with andengine autoparallax background. But I didn't got the correct answer. I need to do a background like these screenshots in SpeedMoto. Can anyone help me to set the background.

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  • Stuck at enemy movement

    - by Syed
    I am making a TD game in unity, Initially I made all of my enemy movements frame rate dependent say: I had a grid point1 at -22.65 and other at -21.1, diagrammatically: (-22.65) _________(-21.1)_______(-21.1+1.55) ...... so the distance on x axis between two points is 1.55, divided it by 25 jumps with each enemy jump of 0.062 of each frame. On reaching on next point of grid the enemy find again its path. All went fine until I have requirement of FastForward and Pause feature. I used timeScale property of unity but it wont work as they are frame dependent. I also tried double speed of enemy on clicking fast forward button at any time, it has some issues that enemy jumps are now less and it fails to reach on next grid point. Could someone suggest me solution to my problem. Do I need to change the enemy movement code to make it frame independent ?? I need the enemy to reach on the grid specific point I also need later to slow down any one enemy's speed when tower fires on it. Thnx

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  • Storing Attendance Data in database

    - by Ali Abbas
    So i have to store daily attendance of employees of my organisation from my application . The part where I need some help is, the efficient way to store attendance data. After some research and brain storming I came up with some approaches . Could you point me out which one is the best and any unobvious ill effects of the mentioned approaches. The approaches are as follows Create a single table for whole organisation and store empid,date,presentstatus as a row for every employee everyday. Create a single table for whole organisation and store a single row for each day with a comma delimited string of empids which are absent. I will generate the string on my application. Create different tables for each department and follow the 1 method. Please share your views and do mention any other good methods

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  • Developing an ELO like point system for a multiplayer gaming site

    - by Alejandro Piad
    I'm currently working on a gaming site where users will submit virtual players for different games, like Chess, Nash, Backgammon, Go, etc. The idea is that users don't compete themselves, but through their virtual players. There will be leagues, tournaments, and other competition formats. The question is which would be a good rating system for users in this environment. Take into account that every user may have many different virtual players playing in many different games. As a general guideline I would like to guarantee the following properties: Users who have a lot of mediocre players should not score higher than users with a few very good players. A user with a high rating should not be penalized if he adds a new bad player, until he has had enough time to improve his player. Users who don't play often should not score higher than users who play every day. Thanks in advance.

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  • When is a Use Case layer needed?

    - by Meta-Knight
    In his blog post The Clean Architecture Uncle Bob suggests a 4-layer architecture. I understand the separation between business rules, interfaces and infrastructure, but I wonder if/when it's necessary to have separate layers for domain objects and use cases. What added value will it bring, compared to just having the uses cases as "domain services" in the domain layer? The only useful info I've found on the web about a use case layer is an article by Martin Fowler, who seems to contradict Uncle Bob about its necessity: At some point I may run into the problems, and then I'll make a Use Case Controller - but only then. And even when I do that I rarely consider the Use Case Controllers to occupy a separate layer in the system architecture. Edit: I stumbled upon a video of Uncle Bob's Architecture: The Lost Years keynote, in which he explains this architecture in depth. Very informative.

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  • What would a database look like if it were normalized to be completely abstracted? lets call it Max(n) normal form

    - by Doug Chamberlain
    edit: By simplest form i was not implying that it would be easy to understand. For instance, developing in low level assembly language is the simplest way to can develop code, but it is far from the easiest. Essentially, what I am asking is in math you can simplify a fraction to a point where it can no longer be simplfied. Can the same be true for a database and what would a database look like in its simplest, form?

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  • How is game development different from other software development?

    - by Davy8
    For a solid general purpose software developer, what specifically is different about game development, either fundamentally or just differences in degree? I've done toy games like Tic-tac-toe, Tetris, and a brute-force sudoku solver (with UI) and I'm now embarking on a mid-sized project (mid-sized for being a single developer and not having done many games) and one thing I've found with this particular project is that separation of concerns is a lot harder since everything affects state, and every object can interact with every other object in a myriad of ways. So far I've managed to keep the code reasonably clean for my satisfaction but I find that keeping clean code in non-trivial games is a lot harder than it is for my day job. The game I'm working on is turn-based and the graphics are going to be fairly simple (web-based, mostly through DOM manipulation) so real time and 3d work aren't really applicable to me, but I'd still be interested in answers regarding those if they're interesting. Mostly interested in general game logic though. P.S. Feel free to retag this, I'm not really sure what tags are applicable.

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  • Notifying a separate application of an event

    - by TomDestry
    I have an application that runs through various tasks as an automated process. My client would like me to create a file in a given folder for each task as a way to flag when each task completes. They prefer this to a database flag because they can be notified by the file system rather than continually polling a database table. I can do this but creating and deleting files as flags feels clunky. Is there a more elegant approach to notifying a third-party of an event?

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  • What makes game sound effects "good"?

    - by you786
    I'm making a small game, and I've found some free sound effects that I'd like to use. The issue is that I can't get the sound effects to sound like they "belong" in my game. I don't know what to look for that can make sound effects match the rest of my game style. I have some ideas on what affects the meshing of audio with graphics. For example, I have a feeling that the current SFX I may be too "realistic" for my graphical style, which is pretty cartoon-like. Also, is there a golden standard for what volume various SFX should be at? (for example, I am thinking that footsteps or other common sounds should be at barely audible volumes, while enemy deaths or something that is a "big deal" should be louder). I found a similar question about graphics, I'm looking for a similar response with sound effects.

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  • What is the diffference between "data hiding" and "encapsulation"?

    - by john smith optional
    I'm reading "Java concurrency in practice" and there is said: "Fortunately, the same object-oriented techniques that help you write well-organized, maintainable classes - such as encapsulation and data hiding -can also help you crate thread-safe classes." The problem #1 - I never heard about data hiding and don't know what it is. The problem #2 - I always thought that encapsulation is using private vs public, and is actually the data hiding. Can you please explain what data hiding is and how it differs from encapsulation?

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