Search Results

Search found 14545 results on 582 pages for 'design patterns'.

Page 132/582 | < Previous Page | 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139  | Next Page >

• Calculating the "power" of a player in a "Defend Your Castle" type game

  - by Jesse Emond

  I'm a making a "Defend Your Castle" type game, where each player has a castle and must send units to destroy the opponent's castle. It looks like this (and yeah, this is the actual game, not a quick paint drawing..): Now, I'm trying to implement the AI of the opponent, and I'd like to create 4 different AI levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardcore. I've never made any "serious" AI before and I'd like to create a quite complete one this time. My idea is to calculate a player's "power" score, based on the current health of its castle and the individual "power" score of its units. Then, the AI would just try to keep a score close to the player's one(Easy would stay below it, Normal would stay near it and Hard would try to get above it). But I just don't know how to calculate a player's power score. There are just too many variables to take into account and I don't know how to properly use them to create one significant number(the power level). Could anyone help me out on this one? Here are the variables that should influence a player's power score: Current castle health, the unit's total health, damage, speed and attack range. Also, the player can have increased Income(the money bag), damage(the + Damage) and speed(the + speed)... How could I include them in the score? I'm really stuck here... Or is there an other way that I could implement AI for this type of game? Thanks for your precious time.

  Read the article

• When following SRP, how should I deal with validating and saving entities?

  - by Kristof Claes

  I've been reading Clean Code and various online articles about SOLID lately, and the more I read about it, the more I feel like I don't know anything. Let's say I'm building a web application using ASP.NET MVC 3. Let's say I have a UsersController with a Create action like this: public class UsersController : Controller { public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { } } In that action method I want to save a user to the database if the data that was entered is valid. Now, according to the Single Responsibility Principle an object should have a single responsibility, and that responsibility should be entirely encapsulated by the class. All its services should be narrowly aligned with that responsibility. Since validation and saving to the database are two separate responsibilities, I guess I should create to separate class to handle them like this: public class UsersController : Controller { private ICreateUserValidator validator; private IUserService service; public UsersController(ICreateUserValidator validator, IUserService service) { this.validator = validator; this.service= service; } public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { ValidationResult result = validator.IsValid(viewModel); if (result.IsValid) { service.CreateUser(viewModel); return RedirectToAction("Index"); } else { foreach (var errorMessage in result.ErrorMessages) { ModelState.AddModelError(String.Empty, errorMessage); } return View(viewModel); } } } That makes some sense to me, but I'm not at all sure that this is the right way to handle things like this. It is for example entirely possible to pass an invalid instance of CreateUserViewModel to the IUserService class. I know I could use the built in DataAnnotations, but what when they aren't enough? Image that my ICreateUserValidator checks the database to see if there already is another user with the same name... Another option is to let the IUserService take care of the validation like this: public class UserService : IUserService { private ICreateUserValidator validator; public UserService(ICreateUserValidator validator) { this.validator = validator; } public ValidationResult CreateUser(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { var result = validator.IsValid(viewModel); if (result.IsValid) { // Save the user } return result; } } But I feel I'm violating the Single Responsibility Principle here. How should I deal with something like this?

  Read the article

• Balancing game difficulty against player progression

  - by Raven Dreamer

  It seems that the current climate of games seems to cater to an obvious progression of player power, whether that means getting a bigger, more explosive gun in Halo, leveling up in an RPG, or unlocking new options in Command and Conquer 4. Yet this concept is not exclusive to video or computer games -- even in Dungeons and Dragons players can strive to acquire a +2 sword to replace the +1 weapon they've been using. Yet as a systems designer, the concept of player progression is giving me headache after headache. Should I balance around the players exact capabilities and give up on a simple linear progression? (I think ESIV:Oblivion is a good example of this) Is it better to throw the players into an "arms race" with their opponents, where if the players don't progress in an orderly manner, it is only a matter of time until gameplay is unbearably difficult? (4th Edition DnD strikes me as a good example of this) Perhaps it would make most sense to untether the core gameplay mechanics from progression at all -- give them flashier, more interesting (but not more powerful!) ways to grow?

  Read the article

• Which data structure you will use to for a witness list?

  - by mateen

  I'm making a game where the plot is a bank robbery. Lots of people witness that robbery. The game will load a list of suspects, while the players (witnesses) will have to identify the suspects of this robbery. The game should load a list of suspects to identify the one as quickly as possible. Admin can add/remove suspects in the lists and two or more lists of suspects can also be merged into one (to show it to the player). The question is which data structure will be suitable to develop the lists?

  Read the article

• When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in C#?

  - by Gulshan

  "Abstract class" and "interface" are similar type of ideas, while interface being more abstract. One need of abstract classes was to provide method implementations for the derived classes. But in C#, that need has also been reduced by lately introduced extension methods. So, in C#, when should we use abstract classes instead of using interfaces and extension methods associated with the interface? And now, we can use 'Properties' in interfaces also. A notable example of interface+ extension methods is the Heavily used IEnumerable and it's helper methods. You use Linq and it's all by this extension methods!

  Read the article

• How can I make an MMORPG appeal to casual players?

  - by Philipp

  I believe that there is a significant market of players who would enjoy the exploration and interaction aspects of MMORPGs, but simply don't have the time for the endless grinding marathons which are part of the average MMORPG. MMORPGs are all about interaction between players. But when different players have different amounts of time to invest into a game, those with less time to spend will soon lack behind their power-leveling friends and won't be able to interact with them anymore. One way to solve this would be to limit the progress a player can achieve per day, so that it simply doesn't make sense to play more than one or two hours a day. But even the busiest casual players sometimes like to spend a whole sunday afternoon playing a video game. Just stopping them after two hours would be really frustrating. It also creates a pressure to use the daily progress limit every day, because otherwise the player would feel like wasting something. This pressure would be detrimental for casual gamers. What else could be done to level the playing field between those players who play 40+ hours a week and those who can't play more than 10?

  Read the article

• Create Outlook Appointments from PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  I've been toying around with a script to create a special set of calendar objects in Outlook that show when my SQL Server Agent Jobs are scheduled to run. I haven't finished yet, but I thought I would share the part that creates the Outlook Appointments.I have yet to fill a variable with the start and end times, and then loop through that to create the appointments. I'm thinking I'll make the script below into a function, and feed it those variables in a loop. The script below creates a whole new Calendar Folder in Outlook called "SQL Server Agent Jobs". I also use categories quite a bit, so you'll see that too. Caution: If you plan to play with this script, do it on an isolated workstation, not on your "regular" Outlook calendar. Otherwise, you'll have lots of appointments in there that you don't care about!  # Add a new calendar item to a new Outlook folder called "SQL Server Agent Jobs" $outlook = new-object -com Outlook.Application $calendar = $outlook.Session.folders.Item(1).Folders.Item("SQL Server Agent Jobs") $appt = $calendar.Items.Add(1) # == olAppointmentItem $appt.Start = [datetime]"03/11/2010 11:00" $appt.End = [datetime]"03/11/2009 12:00" $appt.Subject = "JobName" $appt.Location = "ServerName" $appt.Body = "Job Details" $appt.Categories = "SQL server Agent Job" $appt.Save()   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• how to write high quality GUI software with qt?

  - by Opetmar

  I want to write a project using QT library, so after learning the library and mastering it how should I start, what other libraries or things that I should learn? are there any other tools that will help me during the development or tools well help the end user to install the software and using it? What are the things that I should be aware? what are the things that I should avoid so it can run efficiently?

  Read the article

• The next next C++ [closed]

  - by Roger Pate

  It's entirely too early for speculation on what C++ will be like after C++0x, but idle hands make for wild predictions. What features would you find useful and why? Is there anything in another language that would fit nicely into the state of C++ after 0x? What should be considered for the next TC and TR? (Mostly TR, as the TC would depend more on what actually becomes the next standard.) Export was removed, rather than merely deprecated, in 0x. (It remains a keyword.) What other features carry so much baggage to also be more harmful than helpful? ISO Standards' process I'm not involved in the C++ committee, but it's also a mystery, unfortunately, to most programmers using C++. A few things worth keeping in mind: There will be 10 years between standards, barring extremely exceptional circumstances. The standard can get "bug fixes" in the form of a Technical Corrigendum. This happened to C++98 with TC1, named C++03. It fixed "simple" issues such as making the explicit guarantee that std::vector stores items contiguously, which was always intended. The committee can issue reports which can add to the language. This happened to C++98/03 with TR1 in 2005, which introduced the std::tr1 namespace.

  Read the article

• Merge two different API calls into One

  - by dhilipsiva

  I have two different apps in my django project. One is "comment" and an other one is "files". A comment might save some file attached to it. The current way of creating a comment with attachments is by making two API calls. First one creates an actual comment and replies with the comment ID which serves as foreign key for the Files. Then for each file, a new request is made with the comment ID. Please note that file is a generic app, that can be used with other apps too. What is the cleanest way of making this into one API call? I want to have this as a single API call because I am in a situation where I need to send user an email with all the files as attachment when a comment is made. I know Queueing is the ideal way to do it. But I don't have the liberty to add queing to our stack now. So this was the only way I could think of.

  Read the article

• Conditions for a traditional friends system vs. open following system

  - by Dan

  I'm just curious for everyone who is developing social sites out there. When you build a method for connecting users, do you prefer to use a following-style system (follow me, you can see all of my information and I can just choose to follow you back), or instead do you choose to have a friends-style system (I have to allow you see all of my information on your homepage, even if it is open to the public, vise versa). Why and under what circumstances do you use each? How do you manage privacy between your users? Have you use another way to connect your users? Examples of what methods you've choose and how you manage the user's privacy (private by default vs open to the web) are awesome; it could show correlation and provides an actual look.

  Read the article

• UML - Class Diagrams Order -> Products

  - by Phorce

  I have a class diagram that is like this: < Order > (1) CAN HAVE (M) < products > But therefore "Order" has the following: Order_Id Customer_Id Order_date_day Order_date_month Order_date_yeah But I do not know how it would handle the Products? Because, I couldn't have "ProductID" because that would mean that each item in this class would have to have a separate instance for each product (E.g. someone ordered 100 products, but only placed 1 order). Could I have an Product object in class Order? If so, how do you represent that in UML? Thank you

  Read the article

• Why not expose a primary key

  - by Angelo Neuschitzer

  In my education I have been told that it is a flawed idea to expose actual primary keys (not only DB keys, but all primary accessors) to the user. I always thought it to be a security problem (because an attacker could attempt to read stuff not their own). Now I have to check if the user is allowed to access anyway, so is there a different reason behind it? Also, as my users have to access the data anyway I will need to have a public key for the outside world somewhere in between. Now that public key has the same problems as the primary key, doesn't it?

  Read the article

• What good books are out there on program execution models? [on hold]

  - by murungu

  Can anyone out there name a few books that address the topic of program execution models?? I want a book that can answer questions such as... What is the difference between interpreted and compiled languages and what are the performance consequences at runtime?? What is the difference between lazy evaluation, eager evaluation and short circuit evaluation?? Why would one choose to use one evaluation strategy over another?? How do you simulate lazy evaluation in a language that favours eager evaluation??

  Read the article

• Objective C - Aggro with Images

  - by Will

  I have three UIImageViews. enemy1, enemy1AggroBox and mainSprite. What I want to do is when mainSprite and enemy1AggroBox interect, I want enemy1 to start moving towards mainSprite. Basically creating aggro for a game. if(CGRectIntersectsRect(mainSprite.frame, enemy1AggroBox.frame)){ //Code here// } My plan would be to call this method in viewDidLoad. I'm not using any sort of framework like cocos2d or OpenGLES. If you need to see any more code just ask.

  Read the article

• Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services

  - by Songo

  Would simply using AWS to build an application make this application a distributed system? For example if someone uses RDS for the database server, EC2 for the application itself and S3 for hosting user uploaded media, does that make it a distributed system? If not, then what should it be called and what is this application lacking for it to be distributed? Update Here is my take on the application to clarify my approach to building the system: The application I'm building is a social game for Facebook. I developed the application locally on a LAMP stack using Symfony2. For production I used an a single EC2 Micro instance for hosting the app itself, RDS for hosting my database, S3 for the user uploaded files and CloudFront for hosting static content. I know this may sound like a naive approach, so don't be shy to express your ideas.

  Read the article

• Ideas for attack damage algorithm (language irrelevant)

  - by Dillon

  I am working on a game and I need ideas for the damage that will be done to the enemy when your player attacks. The total amount of health that the enemy has is called enemyHealth, and has a value of 1000. You start off with a weapon that does 40 points of damage (may be changed.) The player has an attack stat that you can increase, called playerAttack. This value starts off at 1, and has a possible max value of 100 after you level it up many times and make it farther into the game. The amount of damage that the weapon does is cut and dry, and subtracts 40 points from the total 1000 points of health every time the enemy is hit. But what the playerAttack does is add to that value with a percentage. Here is the algorithm I have now. (I've taken out all of the gui, classes, etc. and given the variables very forward names) double totalDamage = weaponDamage + (weaponDamage*(playerAttack*.05)) enemyHealth -= (int)totalDamage; This seemed to work great for the most part. So I statrted testing some values... //enemyHealth ALWAYS starts at 1000 weaponDamage = 50; playerAttack = 30; If I set these values, the amount of damage done on the enemy is 125. Seemed like a good number, so I wanted to see what would happen if the players attack was maxed out, but with the weakest starting weapon. weaponDamage = 50; playerAttack = 100; the totalDamage ends up being 300, which would kill an enemy in just a few hits. Even with your attack that high, I wouldn't want the weakest weapon to be able to kill the enemy that fast. I thought about adding defense, but I feel the game will lose consistency and become unbalanced in the long run. Possibly a well designed algorithm for a weapon decrease modifier would work for lower level weapons or something like that. Just need a break from trying to figure out the best way to go about this, and maybe someone that has experience with games and keeping the leveling consistent could give me some ideas/pointers.

  Read the article

• Java Desktop Application For Network users

  - by Motasem Abu Aker

  I'm developing a desktop application using Java. My application will run in a network environment where multiple users will access the same database through the application. There will be basic CRUD opreations (Insert, Update, Delete, & select), which means there will be chances of deadlock, or two users trying to update the same record at same time. I'm using the following Java Swing for Clients (MVC). MySQL Server for database (InnODB). Java Web start. Now, MySQL is centralized on the network, and all of the clients connect to it. The Application for ERP Purpose. I searched the internet to find a very good solution to ensure data integrity & to make sure that when updating one record from one client, other clients are aware of it. I read about Socket-server-client & RESTful web services. I don't want to go web application & don't want to use any extra libraries. So how can I handle this scenario: If User A updates a record: Is there a way to update User B's screen with the new value? If user A starts updating a record, how can I prevent other users from attempting to update the same record?

  Read the article

• Switch vs Polymorphism when dealing with model and view

  - by Raphael Oliveira

  I can't figure out a better solution to my problem. I have a view controller that presents a list of elements. Those elements are models that can be an instance of B, C, D, etc and inherit from A. So in that view controller, each item should go to a different screen of the application and pass some data when the user select one of them. The two alternatives that comes to my mind are (please ignore the syntax, it is not a specific language) 1) switch (I know that sucks) //inside the view controller void onClickItem(int index) { A a = items.get(index); switch(a.type) { case b: B b = (B)a; go to screen X; x.v1 = b.v1; // fill X with b data x.v2 = b.v2; case c: go to screen Y; etc... } } 2) polymorphism //inside the view controller void onClickItem(int index) { A a = items.get(index); Screen s = new (a.getDestinationScreen()); //ignore the syntax s.v1 = a.v1; // fill s with information about A s.v2 = a.v2; show(s); } //inside B Class getDestinationScreen(void) { return Class(X); } //inside C Class getDestinationScreen(void) { return Class(Y); } My problem with solution 2 is that since B, C, D, etc are models, they shouldn't know about view related stuff. Or should they in that case?

  Read the article

• Preffered lambda syntax?

  - by Roger Alsing

  I'm playing around a bit with my own C like DSL grammar and would like some oppinions. I've reserved the use of "(...)" for invocations. eg: foo(1,2); My grammar supports "trailing closures" , pretty much like Ruby's blocks that can be passed as the last argument of an invocation. Currently my grammar support trailing closures like this: foo(1,2) { //parameterless closure passed as the last argument to foo } or foo(1,2) [x] { //closure with one argument (x) passed as the last argument to foo print (x); } The reason why I use [args] instead of (args) is that (args) is ambigious: foo(1,2) (x) { } There is no way in this case to tell if foo expects 3 arguments (int,int,closure(x)) or if foo expects 2 arguments and returns a closure with one argument(int,int) - closure(x) So thats pretty much the reason why I use [] as for now. I could change this to something like: foo(1,2) : (x) { } or foo(1,2) (x) -> { } So the actual question is, what do you think looks best? [...] is somewhat wrist unfriendly. let x = [a,b] { } Ideas?

  Read the article

• Is extensive documentation a code smell?

  - by Griffin

  Every library, open-source project, and SDK/API I've ever come across has come packaged with a (usually large) documentation file, and this seems contradictory to the wide-spread belief that good code needs little to no comments. What separates documentation from this programming methodology? a one to two page overview of a package seems reasonable, but elegant code combined with standard intelisense should have theoretically deprecated the practice of documentation by now IMO. I feel like companies only create detailed documentation and tutorials because its what they've always done. Why should developers have to constantly be searching through online documentation in order to learn how to do things when such information should be intrinsic to the classes, methods and namespaces?

  Read the article

• Server-side Architecture for Online Game

  - by Draiken

  Hi, basically I have a game client that has communicate with a server for almost every action it takes, the game is in Java (using LWJGL) and right now I will start making the server. The base of the game is normally one client communicating with the server alone, but I will require later on for several clients to work together for some functionalities. I've already read how authentication server should be sepparated and I intend on doing it. The problem is I am completely inexperienced in this kind of server-side programming, all I've ever programmed were JSF web applications. I imagine I'll do socket connections for pretty much every game communication since HTML is very slow, but I still don't really know where to start on my server. I would appreciate reading material or guidelines on where to start, what architecture should the game server have and maybe some suggestions on frameworks that could help me getting the client-server communication. I've looked into JNAG but I have no experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really tell if it is a solid and good messaging layer. Any help is appreciated... Thanks !

  Read the article

• responsibility for storage

  - by Stefano Borini

  A colleague and I were brainstorming about where to put the responsibility of an object to store itself on the disk in our own file format. There are basically two choices: object.store(file) fileformatWriter.store(object) The first one gives the responsibility of serialization on the disk to the object itself. This is similar to the approach used by python pickle. The second groups the representation responsibility on a file format writer object. The data object is just a plain data container (eventually with additional methods not relevant for storage). We agreed on the second methodology, because it centralizes the writing logic from generic data. We also have cases of objects implementing complex logic that need to store info while the logic is in progress. For these cases, the fileformatwriter object can be passed and used as a delegate, calling storage operations on it. With the first pattern, the complex logic object would instead accept the raw file, and implement the writing logic itself. The first method, however, has the advantage that the object knows how to write and read itself from any file containing it, which may also be convenient. I would like to hear your opinion before starting a rather complex refactoring.

  Read the article

• Examples of Liskov Substitution

  - by james lewis

  I'm facilitating a session next week on the Liskov Substitution Principle and I was wondering if anyone had any examples of violations 'from the trenches'? I'm looking for something other than uncle Bob's rectangle - square problem and the persistent set problem he talks about in A-PPP (although that is a great example). So far I'm using the example of a (very simple) List and an IndexedList as the 'correct' use of inheritance. And the addition of a Set to this hierarchy as a violation (as a Set is distinct; strengthening the pre condition of the Add method). I've also taken this great example and it's solution from this question Both those examples are great but I'm looking for something more subtle and harder to spot. So far I've come up with nothing so if you've got a great, subtle example post it up. Also, any metaphors you've come across that helped you understand LSP would be really useful too.

  Read the article

• Object behaviour or separate class?

  - by Andrew Stephens

  When it comes to OO database access you see two common approaches - the first is to provide a class (say "Customer") with methods such as Retrieve(), Update(), Delete(), etc. The other is to keep the Customer class fairly lightweight (essentially just properties) and perform the database access elsewhere, e.g. using a repository. This choice of approaches doesn't just apply to database access, it can crop up in many different OOD scenarios. So I was wondering if one way is preferable over the other (although I suspect the answer will be "it depends")! Another dev on our team argues that to be truly OO the class should be "self-contained", i.e. providing all the methods necessary to manipulate and interact with that object. I personally prefer the repository approach - I don't like bloating the Customer class with all that functionality, and I feel it results in cleaner code having it elsewhere, but I can't help thinking I'm seriously violating core OO concepts! And what about memory implications? If I retrieve thousands of Customer objects I'm assuming those with the data access methods will take up a lot more memory than the property-only objects?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139  | Next Page >