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• Techniques for separating game model from presentation

  - by liortal

  I am creating a simple 2D game using XNA. The elements that make up the game world are what i refer to as the "model". For instance, in a board game, i would have a GameBoard class that stores information about the board. This information could be things such as: Location Size Details about cells on the board (occupied/not occupied) etc This object should either know how to draw itself, or describe how to draw itself to some other entity (renderer) in order to be displayed. I believe that since the board only contains the data+logic for things regarding it or cells on it, it should not provide the logic of how to draw things (separation of concerns). How can i achieve a good partitioning and easily allow some other entity to draw it properly? My motivations for doing so are: Allow multiple "implementations" of presentation for a single game entity Easier porting to other environments where the presentation code is not available (for example - porting my code to Unity or other game technology that does not rely on XNA).

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• Best practice for designing a risk-style board game

  - by jyanks

  I'm just trying to figure out how to set up the code for a game like risk... I would like it to be extensible, so that I can have multiple maps (ie- World, North America, Eurasia, Africa) so hardcoding in the map doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense I'm a bit confused on how/where items should be stored/accessed. Here are the objects I see the game theoretically using: -Countries/Territories -Cities (Can be contained within territories) -Capitols -Connections -Continents -Map -Troops At the moment, I feel like: -A map should have a list of continents and countries. The continents would be more of a 'logical' thing where the continents would just be lists of countries that are checked for bonuses at the start of turns -Countries should have a list of countries that they're connected to for the connections What I can't figure out is: Where do I store the troops? Do I have an object for every single troop or do I just store the number of troops on a country object as an integer? What about capitols and cities? Do those just have a reference to the country they reside in? Is there anything I'm not seeing here that's going to screw me over in the long run with the way that I'm thinking about things now? Any advice would be appreciated.

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• Are programming languages pretty much "stable" for now?

  - by Sauron

  Recently i have looked at the "timeline" of Programming Languages and while a lot has changed in the past 5-10 years, there are a lot of languages that have pretty much "stayed" the same in their niche/use. For example, let's take C language. We don't really ever see much languages being developed (correct me if i'm wrong) to try to Unseat C. However, there are a lot of languages that try to do similar things (look at all the SQL/No-SQL languages) Scripting Languages, etc... Is there a reason for this trend? Or is it just because C was designed very well ? and there isn't really any need for new once?

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• Recommendations for a web-based help system

  - by ggkmath

  Hi Experts, I'm putting together a fairly large GUI. I'm a tech person, but more on the hardware side, not software. I'm wondering what software package would be best suited to enable me to generate a web-based help-system. Preferably it takes care of a lot of coding, allowing me to focus on the content. For example, the user would click on a link in the GUI when they have a question, that brings them to a web-based Help Guide, for example, providing an overview of how to use the GUI, perhaps a searchable index (key-word based index), table of contents, etc, for navigating through the Help Guide. My first thought was to program everything in XHTML using Dreamweaver, but my layout requirements are fairly modest (just figures and text, maybe a few equations), and I'd prefer not to spend a lot of time concentrating on the programming. Was wondering if any software existed that made generating web-based navigatable pages easy to create/publish. Again, I'm not really a programmer, so if there's something obvious out there, I'm probably not aware of it. Any advice much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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• Random/Procedural vs. Previously Made Level Generation

  - by PythonInProgress

  I am making a game (called "Glory") that is a top-down explorer game, and am wondering what the advantages/disadvantages of using random/procedural generation vs. pre-made levels are. There seems to be few that i can think of, other than the fact that items may be a problem to distribute in randomly generated terrain, and that the generated terrain may look weird. The downside to previously made levels is that I would need to make a level editor, though. I cannot decide what is better to use.

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• How do I set an event off when player is on certain tile?

  - by Tom Burman

  Here is the code I use to create and print my map to the canvas: var board = []; function loadMap(map) { if (map == 1) { return [ [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,3,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3,3,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2], [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2] ]; } } board = loadMap(1); enterfor (y = 0; y <= viewHeight; y++) { for (x = 0; x <= viewWidth; x++) { var theX = x * 32; var theY = y * 32; context.drawImage(mapTiles[board[y+viewY][x+viewX]], theX, theY, 32, 32); } } And here is the code I use for player movement: canvas.addEventListener('keydown', function(e) { console.log(e); var key = null; switch (e.which) { case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) playerX--; break; case 38: // Up if (playerY > 0) playerY--; break; case 39: // Right if (playerX < worldWidth) playerX++; break; case 40: // Down if (playerY < worldHeight) playerY++; break; } viewX = playerX - Math.floor(0.5 * viewWidth); if (viewX < 0) viewX = 0; if (viewX+viewWidth > worldWidth) viewX = worldWidth - viewWidth; viewY = playerY - Math.floor(0.5 * viewHeight); if (viewY < 0) viewY = 0; if (viewY+viewHeight > worldHeight) viewY = worldHeight - viewHeight; }, false); What I am looking for is a method for when the player lands on tile 3 he loses health. I have tried to use this in the player movement but it doesnt seem to work e.g the left movement: case 37: // Left if (playerX > 0) playerX--; if(board[x2 - 1] == 3) { health--; playerX--; }

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• Victory rewards in digital CCG

  - by Nils Munch

  I am currently polishing a digital CCG where people can play against friend and random opponents in a classical Magic the Gathering-like duel CCG. I plan to award the players with 20 ingame currency units (lets call them gold) for each hour they are playing, 50 for each day they are playing and X for each victory. Now, the X is what I am trying to calculate here, since I would prefer keeping the currency to a certain value, but also with to entice the players to battle. I could go with a solid figure, say 25, for beating up an opponent. But that would result in experienced players only beating up newly started players, making the experience lame for both. I could also make a laddered tier, where you start at level 1, and raise in level as you defeat your opponents, where winning over a player awards you his level x 2 in gold. Which would you prefer if you were playing a game like this. There is no gold-based scoreboard, but the gold is used to purchase new cards along the way.

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• Nested Entities and calculation on leaf entity property - SQL or NoSQL approach

  - by Chandu

  I am working on a hobby project called Menu/Recipe Management. This is how my entities and their relations look like. A Nutrient has properties Code and Value An Ingredient has a collection of Nutrients A Recipe has a Collection of Ingredients and occasionally can have a collection of other recipes A Meal has a Collection of Recipes and Ingredients A Menu has a Collection of Meals The relations can be depicted as In one of the pages, for a selected menu I need to display the effective nutrients information calculated based on its constituents (Meals, Recipes, Ingredients and the corresponding nutrients). As of now am using SQL Server to store the data and I am navigating the chain from my C# code, starting from each meal of the menu and then aggregating the nutrient values. I think this is not an efficient way as this calculation is being done every time the page is requested and the constituents change occasionally. I was thinking about a having a background service that maintains a table called MenuNutrients ({MenuId, NutrientId, Value}) and will populate/update this table with the effective nutrients when any of the component (Meal, Recipe, Ingredient) changes. I feel that a GraphDB would be a good fit for this requirement, but my exposure to NoSQL is limited. I want to know what are the alternative solutions/approaches to this requirement of displaying the nutrients of a given menu. Hope my description of the scenario is clear.

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• How should I structure my database to gain maximum efficiently in this scenario?

  - by Bob Jansen

  I'm developing a PHP script that analyzes the web traffic of my clients websites. By placing a link to a javascript on the clients website (think of Google Analyses), my script harvests information like: the visitors IP address, reference link, current page link, user agent, etc. Now my clients can view these statistics via a control panel that I have build. These clients can also adjust profile settings, set firewall rules, create support tickets and pay invoices. Currently all the the traffic is stored in one table. You can imagine that this tabel would become very large as some my clients receive thousands of pageviews per day. Furthermore, all the traffic data of each client would be stored in the same table, creating a mess. This is the same for the firewall rules currently, and the invoice and support system. I'm looking for way to structure my database in a more organized way to hold large amounts of data of multiple users. This is the first project that I'm developing that deals with so much data, and would like to hear suggestions and tips. I was thinking of using multiple databases to structure the data. The main database will store users data (email,pass,id,etc) admin/website settings. Than each client will have an unique database labeled prefix_userid, which carry tables holding their traffic, invoice, and support ticket data. Would this be a solution, and would it slow down or speed up overall performances (that is spreading the data over muliple databases). I have a solid VPS, but would like to safe and be as effient as possible.

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• Looping 3D environment in shmups

  - by kamziro

  So I was watching Ikaruga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj23K8Ri68E And then raystorm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4V0G5ykAg After looking at their 3D backgrounds for a little bit, it appears that they use a lot of repeated segments. How would one start with the development with such systems? Would there be editors that can be used (or at least help) with creating the environments? Perhaps a 3D map with splines describing the path of the ship, as well as events on the splines?

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• How URL Redirection affects SEO?

  - by Costa

  The following paragraph is from SEO Google Guide Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Some webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with this, we'd like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling issues with your site. What makes URL re-writing implementation incorrect for GoogleBot? I am using Asp.net 3.5 framework. Thanks

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• When module calling gets ugly

  - by Pete

  Has this ever happened to you? You've got a suite of well designed, single-responsibility modules, covered by unit tests. In any higher-level function you code, you are (95% of the code) simply taking output from one module and passing it as input to the next. Then, you notice this higher-level function has turned into a 100+ line script with multiple responsibilities. Here is the problem. It is difficult (impossible) to test that script. At least, it seems so. Do you agree? In my current project, all of the bugs came from this script. Further detail: each script represents a unique solution, or algorithm, formed by using different modules in different ways. Question: how can you remedy this situation? Knee-jerk answer: break the script up into single-responsibility modules. Comment on knee-jerk answer: it already is! Best answer I can come up with so far: create higher-level connector objects which "wire" modules together in particular ways (take output from one module, feed it as input to another module). Thus if our script was: FooInput fooIn = new FooInput(1, 2); FooOutput fooOutput = fooModule(fooIn); Double runtimevalue = getsomething(fooOutput.whatever); BarInput barIn = new BarInput( runtimevalue, fooOutput.someOtherValue); BarOutput barOut = barModule(BarIn); It would become with a connector: FooBarConnectionAlgo fooBarConnector = new fooBarConnector(fooModule, barModule); FooInput fooIn = new FooInput(1, 2); BarOutput barOut = fooBarConnector(fooIn); So the advantage is, besides hiding some code and making things clearer, we can test FooBarConnectionAlgo. I'm sure this situation comes up a lot. What do you do?

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• Service Layer - how broad should it be, and should it be used also on the local application?

  - by BornToCode

  Background: I need to build a main application with some operations (CRUD and more) (-in winforms), I need to make another application which will re-use some of the functions of the main application (-in webforms). I understood that using service layer is the best approach here. If I understood correctly the service should be calling the function on the BL layer (correct me if I'm wrong) The dilemma: In my main winform UI - should I call the functions from the BL, or from the service? (please explain why) Should I create a service for every single function on the BL even if I need some of the functions only in one UI? for example - should I create services for all the CRUD operations, even though I need to re-use only update operation in the webform? YOUR HELP IS MUCH APPRECIATED

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• Philosophy behind the memento pattern

  - by TheSilverBullet

  I have been reading up on memento pattern from various sources of the internet. Differing information from different sources has left me in confusion regarding why this pattern is actually needed. The dofactory implementation says that the primary intention of this pattern is to restore the state of the system. Wiki says that the primary intention is to be able to restore the changes on the system. This gives a different impact - saying that it is possible for a system to have memento implementation with no need to restore. And that ability of restore is a feature of this. OODesign says that It is sometimes necessary to capture the internal state of an object at some point and have the ability to restore the object to that state later in time. Such a case is useful in case of error or failure. So, my question is why exactly do we use this one? Is it to save previous states - or to promote encapsulation between the Caretaker and the Memento? Why is this type of encapsulation so important? Edit: For those visiting, check out this Implementation!

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• How can I gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

  - by ruslan

  One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting?

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• which style of member-access is preferable

  - by itwasntpete

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

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• What is meant by, "A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should."

  - by GlenPeterson

  The example used in the question pass bare minimum data to a function touches on the best way to determine whether the user is an administrator or not. One common answer was: user.isAdmin() This prompted a comment which was repeated several times and up-voted many times: A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should. Something being tightly coupled to a class doesn't mean it is a good idea to make it part of that class. I replied, The user isn't deciding anything. The User object/table stores data about each user. Actual users don't get to change everything about themselves. But this was not productive. Clearly there is an underlying difference of perspective which is making communication difficult. Can someone explain to me why user.isAdmin() is bad, and paint a brief sketch of what it looks like done "right"? Really, I fail to see the advantage of separating security from the system that it protects. Any security text will say that security needs to be designed into a system from the beginning and considered at every stage of development, deployment, maintenance, and even end-of-life. It is not something that can be bolted on the side. But 17 up-votes so far on this comment says that I'm missing something important.

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• Single or multiple return statements in a function [on hold]

  - by Juan Carlos Coto

  When writing a function that can have several different return values, particularly when different branches of code return different values, what is the cleanest or sanest way of returning? Please note the following are really contrived examples meant only to illustrate different styles. Example 1: Single return def my_function(): if some_condition: return_value = 1 elif another_condition: return_value = 2 else: return_value = 3 return return_value Example 2: Multiple returns def my_function(): if some_condition: return 1 elif another_condition: return 2 else: return 3 The second example seems simpler and is perhaps more readable. The first one, however, might describe the overall logic a bit better (the conditions affect the assignment of the value, not whether it's returned or not). Is the second way preferable to the first? Why?

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• Pattern for performing game actions

  - by Arkiliknam

  Is there a generally accepted pattern for performing various actions within a game? A way a player can perform actions and also that an AI might perform actions, such as move, attack, self-destruct, etc. I currently have an abstract BaseAction which uses .NET generics to specify the different objects that get returned by the various actions. This is all implemented in a pattern similar to the Command, where each action is responsible for itself and does all that it needs. My reasoning for being abstract is so that I may have a single ActionHandler, and AI can just queue up different action implementing the baseAction. And the reason it is generic is so that the different actions can return result information relevant to the action (as different actions can have totally different outcomes in the game), along with some common beforeAction and afterAction implementations. So... is there a more accepted way of doing this, or does this sound alright?

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• Algorithmic Forecasting and Pattern Recognition

  - by Ryan King

  Say a user could enter project data into my software. Each project has 2 variables "size" and "work" and they're related but the relationship is not known. Is there a way to programmatically determine the relationship between the variables based on previous data and forecast the amount of work provided if only given the size of the project in the future? For Example, say the user had manually entered the following projects. Project 1 - Size:1, Work: 4 Project 2 - Size:2, Work: 7 Project 3 - Size:3, Work: 10 Project 4 - Size:4, Work: x What should I look into to be able to programmatically determine, that Work = Size*3+1 and therefor be able to say that x=13?

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• Is game development Subcontracted?

  - by Darv

  I was having a conversation with someone who believed that components of a games code where subcontracted out to programmers in different countries where it would be cheaper, then assembled by the local company. I understand that people often use pre-built engines but I would think that making the actual game would require people to work closely in the same studio. I couldn't find much clear information on this when I looked, does anyone know?

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• Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?

  - by Chris Travers

  My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table. CREATE TABLE journal_line ( entry_id bigserial primary key, account_id int not null references account(id), journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later amount numeric not null ); I would then add "table methods" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$; Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example): CREATE TABLE journal_entry ( entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-( journal_id int not null references journal(id), date_posted date not null, reference text not null, description text not null, journal_lines journal_line[] not null ); Then a table method and and check constraints: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric language sql immutable as $$ SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$; ALTER TABLE journal_entry ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0)); ALTER TABLE journal_line ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id); And finally we'd have a breakout trigger: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$ BEGIN IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount) SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines); RETURN NEW; ELSE RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed'; END IF; END; $$; And finally CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout(); Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems: Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0 Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution....

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• Truly useful UML diagrams

  - by eversor

  UML has a jungle of Diagrams. Profile Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Package Diagrams... However, (IMH-and-not-too-experienced-O) I quite see that doing each and every diagram is overkill. Therefore, which UML Diagrams are more suitable in a web context, more expecificly a blog (we want to build it from scratchs). I understand that just because I used UML Diagrams does not imply that our code would be great and brilliant... but, it certainly would be better than just unplanified code...

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

  - by Codemonkey

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

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• Explicitly pass context object versus injecting with IoC

  - by SonOfPirate

  I have a layered service application where the service layer delegates operations into the domain layer for execution. Many of these operations need to know the context under which they are operation. (The context included the identity of the current user, culture information, etc. received from the caller.) For example, I have an API method that returns a list of announcements. The list is based on the current user's role and each announcement is localized to their culture. The API is a thin-facade that delegates to an Application Service in my domain layer. The Application Service method obviously needs to know the context of the current request/operation as another call to the same API from another user should result in a different list. Within this method, we also have logging that uses some of the context information so we a clear understanding of the context when the operation was performed (this is especially useful if something goes wrong.) While this is a contrived example, in the real world, my Application Services will coordinate operations with many collaborative components, any number of them also needing the context information. My choice is to pass the context to the Application Service which would then pass it with any calls to collaborators or have the IoC container satisfy the dependency the Application Service and any collaborators have on the context. I am wondering if it is considered good/bad, best practices/code smell, etc. if I pass the context object as a parameter to the domain methods or if injecting the context via an IoC container is preferred. (EDIT: I should mention that the context object is instantiated per-request.)

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