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• What is the best wrapping strategy ?

  - by Riduidel

  Hi, I'm planning to integrate an external tool (ffmpeg in my particular case, but it could be anything, in fact, as lolng as its tasks are long running ones). This tool has a lot of command-line parameters. For now, I've done to simple things with it, already requiring me a good bunch of class writing, to embed all the information it can return to me. I now face the even more complex task of having to send it a bunch of parameters and to handle possible errors. So, what is a best way for that ? Create classes containing all possible options Relying upon a reverse equivalent of commons-cli / CliBuilder / OptionParser Directly write all options from user input Obiwan Kenobi powers (or anything I don't even know about) Please notice I do it in an uncommon language (for the sake of me, don't ask me what it is, as it looks like a desperate and sterile union between CoffeeScript and lua), as a consequence, there can be no framework doing what I want in the language I use.

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• Is there a simple isometric graphical game engine (using vectors?) that could be used for a (multiplayer) crafting/farming game? [closed]

  - by Renier Wijnen

  Possible Duplicate: Good, free isometric game engine? With little game development experience (albeit having graphical skills and some programming knowledge) a group currently working on a game used to explain permaculture through interaction would like to create a simple concept game. Is there a specific engine or set of tools we could used to achieve this? Being able to make it an (online) multiplayer game would be much preferred. Thank you in advance for your input.

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• I have an "amoeba" game mechanic. Any idea on how to implement it?

  - by Jason

  Outside of a tetris clone, a crappy 2D top-down shooter, and some messing around with stuff like Unity and Flixel, I realize that I have yet to complete a single, polished, bells-and-whistles game. I want to change this, and I have an idea for my next project. The idea is that you're an amoeba. Amoebas have these eye-like cores (or something like that, I don't know biology), and you have two of 'em. You control one with WASD and the other with IJKL. There has to be a constant radius of stuff around each of the cores: And the area of the amoeba has to stay constant. So if you move a core in one direction, you increase the amoeba's area, but that increase is compensated by a decrease somewhere else: Aaaaaand I'd like to implement a vagination mechanic. You absorb things by engulfing them, like a boss. Maybe even an extra core, or a needle that pops you and causes all your inner stuff to start gushing out: But here's the problem: I don't know how to make this. However, I would like some ideas on how to implement it. Should I explore physics libraries like Box2D? Or maybe something involving fluid physics? Any help would be much appreciated. P.S. Feel free to steal this idea. I have plenty of ideas. If you do, please tell me how you made it so I can try it myself.

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• Anti aliasing problem

  - by byronyasgur

  I am auditioning fonts on google web fonts and one that I was discounting was Ubuntu because it looked a bit jagged ( screenshot below taken straight from google); however afterward I read an article where it was mentioned as a good choice, and there was a screenshot where it looked really good ( to me anyway ). I am using windows 7 and have tried looking at it in chrome and firefox. I notice the same thing with some other fonts but this one is a good example because it looks perfect in the screenshot but not so good when I look at it on their site. I know this essentially is a question about setting my computer, but I thought that this would be the best place to pose the question: Is there something wrong with the settings on my machine seeing as it's obviously not showing the font the same on my computer as it did when the article writer downloaded it and used it in an image. The screenshot from Google ... The screenshot from the article above ...

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

  - by willc2

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

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• How to handle monetary values in PHP and MySql?

  - by Songo

  I've inherited a huge pile of legacy code written in PHP on top of a MySQL database. The thing I noticed is that the application uses doubles for storage and manipulation of data. Now I came across of numerous posts mentioning how double are not suited for monetary operations because of the rounding errors. However, I have yet to come across a complete solution to how monetary values should be handled in PHP code and stored in a MySQL database. Is there a best practice when it comes to handling money specifically in PHP? Things I'm looking for are: How should the data be stored in the database? column type? size? How should the data be handling in normal addition, subtraction. multiplication or division? When should I round the values? How much rounding is acceptable if any? Is there a difference between handling large monetary values and low ones? Note: A VERY simplified sample code of how I might encounter money values in everyday life: $a= $_POST['price_in_dollars']; //-->(ex: 25.06) will be read as a string should it be cast to double? $b= $_POST['discount_rate'];//-->(ex: 0.35) value will always be less than 1 $valueToBeStored= $a * $b; //--> any hint here is welcomed $valueFromDatabase= $row['price']; //--> price column in database could be double, decimal,...etc. $priceToPrint=$valueFromDatabase * 0.25; //again cast needed or not? I hope you use this sample code as a means to bring out more use cases and not to take it literally of course. Bonus Question If I'm to use an ORM such as Doctrine or PROPEL, how different will it be to use money in my code.

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

  - by user1107412

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

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• Is having 'Util' classes a cause for concern? [closed]

  - by Matt Fenwick

  I sometimes create 'Util' classes which primarily serve to hold methods and values that don't really seem to belong elsewhere. But every time I create one of these classes, I think "uh-oh, I'm gonna regret this later ...", because I read somewhere that it's bad. But on the other hand, there seem to be two compelling (at least for me) cases for them: implementation secrets that are used in multiple classes within a package providing useful functionality to augment a class, without cluttering its interface Am I on the way to destruction? What you say !! Should I refactor?

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• Trying to Integrate Five9 and Apptivio [on hold]

  - by David Mitchell

  Five9 is a calling system application and Apptivio will be used to store client information for purchased products. Specifically what I need is an example code that will allow me to access Five9's CRM system using the access key and transfer a persons first and last name, for example, to Apptivio. The issue is I have never dealt with this type of system and I cannot find any information for it other than the Web2Campaign that was sent to me by Five9. Lets say this is the code from Five9 F9key=first_name&F9key=last_name&first_name=jon&last_name=smith Once this information is placed into Five9 I must update Apptivio with this information. I am lost as to how to send this information to Apptivio.

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• Using Dynamic LINQ to get a filter for my Web API

  - by Espo

  We are considering using the Dynamic.CS linq-sample included in the "Samples" directory of visual studio 2008 for our WebAPI project to allow clients to query our data. The interface would be something like this (In addition to the normal GET-methods): public HttpResponseMessage List(string filter = null); The plan is to use the dynamic library to parse the "filter"-variable and then execute the query agains the DB. Any thoughts if this is a good idea? Is it a security problem?

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• Could someone explain in detail simplex /or perlin noise?

  - by Ryan Szemplinski

  I am really interested in perlin/simplex noise but I am having a difficult time understanding it. I am not very good at math but I am willing to learn because it interests me greatly. If someone is willing to dedicate there time into this I would be immensely appreciative of this. To be more concise, an explanation of functions and some calculation inside the functions would be nice to understand. Thanks in advance!

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• Ubiquitous Language and Custom types

  - by EdvRusj

  Note that my question is referring to those attributes that even on their own already represent a concept ( ie on their own provide a cohesive meaning ). Thus such attribute needs no additional functional support and as such is self-contained. I'm also well-aware that even with self-contained attributes the custom types may prove beneficial ( for example, they give the ability to add new behavior later, when business requirements change ). Thus, my question focuses only on whether custom types for self-contained attributes really enrich Ubiquitous Language UL a) I've read that in most cases, even simple, self-contained attributes should have custom, more descriptive types rather than basic value types ( double, string ... ), because among other things, descriptive types add to the UL, while the use of basic types instead weakens the language. I understand the importance of UL, but how does having a basic type for a self-contained attribute weaken the language, since with self-contained attributes the name of the attribute already adequately describes the concept and thus contributes to the UL vocabulary? For example, the term person_age already adequately explains the concept of quantifying the number of years a person has: class Person { string person_age; } so what could we possibly gain by also introducing the term ThingAge to the UL: class person { ThingAge person_age; } thanks

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• generating maps

  - by gardian06

  This is a conglomeration question when answering please specify which part you are addressing. I am looking at creating a maze type game that utilizes elevation. I have a few features I would like to have, but am unsure as to some of the implementation. I have done work doing fileIO maze generation (using a key to read the file, and then generate the level based on that file), but I am unsure how to think about this with elevation in the mix. I think height maps might be a good approach, but don't know how to represent them effectively. for a height map which is more beneficial XML(containing h[u,v] data and key definition), CSV (item1 is key reference, item2 is elevation), or another approach that I have not thought of yet? When it comes to placing the elevation values themselves what kind of deltah values are appropriate to have it noticeable at about a 60degree angle while not really effecting gravity driven physics (assuming some effect while moving up/down hill)? I am thinking of maybe going to procedural generation at some point, but am wondering if it is practical to have a procedurally generated grid (wall squares possibly same dimensions as the open space squares), or if designing to a thin wall open spaces is better? this decision will effect the amount of work need on the graphics end for uniform vs. irregular walls. EDIT: game will be a elevation maze shooter. levels/maps will be mazes with elevation the player has to negotiate. elevations will have effects on "combat" vision, and movement

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• Is it a good approach to rely on 3rd party software ( not library )?

  - by gunbuster363

  We have program using a call to a winzip program or 7zip commandline tool to zip some files. Once I accidentally uninstall winzip on my computer and making one of our program( created by the programmer already left ) crashed. So we cannot uninstall the winzip program. Now I've come to a point which I need to decide a external tool for gzip in windows or I make a java program which I can call to gzip the file. Obviously a external tool such as 7z is convenient and we can avoid some extra coding with java. On the contrary, if 7z is uninstalled accidentally, our program will crash. What do you think?

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• Programming Language vs. Game Engine [on hold]

  - by hunteroatway17

  I understand that this question has been asked multiple times before. I am just asking this quick and simple question. I have been learning programming in C#, Java and C++ for the past 6 months; Just experimenting with each. I think that C++ is the one that I like most. What I would like to know and am wondering about is should I learn a programming language and use a 2D framework like Allegro; Or should I learn Unity and make 2D games in that because it is probably faster and easier. I want to learn something that I can get pretty good at, seeing as I am pursuing a career in indie game development. I also have a programmer's mind set and I am a left brain thinker so learning a language is not a issue. I just want to best and most future proof choice. Thanks.

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

  - by Gorky

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

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• How to copy or replicate a complex website to local file and modify then

  - by Andre Chenier

  I am not good at designing the visual side of a website. I found a website which I gave 10 over 10 because its functionality suits my aims and also it seems very esthetical. I know HTML, PHP, mySQL and some degree of CSS. I don't know JS, Ajax, Jquery. So I want to replicate this web site (save completely) on my local and then modify it. (content, colors, icons etc.) I saved this web site in Chrome and IE. After clicking the site from my local folder, a saw an ugly & non-working site. My aim is to understand the functions of the parts that I don't know. For example when I delete a js in its page what will happen as the result of the deletion operation. Since the page is too complex it has lots of css, js files to download inside. I don't want to deal it manually. Is there any alternative and easy way to get the web page completely to my local which also works like a charm from local? regards

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• Breaking up classes and methods into smaller units

  - by micahhoover

  During code reviews a couple devs have recommended I break up my methods into smaller methods. Their justification was (1) increased readability and (2) the back trace that comes back from production showing the method name is more specific to the line of code that failed. There may have also been some colorful words about functional programming. Additionally I think I may have failed an interview a while back because I didn't give an acceptable answer about when to break things up. My inclination is that when I see a bunch of methods in a class or across a bunch of files, it isn't clear to me how they flow together, and how many times each one gets called. I don't really have a good feel for the linearity of it as quickly just by eye-balling it. The other thing is a lot of people seem to place a premium of organization over content (e.g. 'Look at how organized my sock drawer is!' Me: 'Overall, I think I can get to my socks faster if you count the time it took to organize them'). Our business requirements are not very stable. I'm afraid that if the classes/methods are very granular it will take longer to refactor to requirement changes. I'm not sure how much of a factor this should be. Anyway, computer science is part art / part science, but I'm not sure how much this applies to this issue.

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• How do I deal with the problems of a fast side-scroller?

  - by Ska

  I'm making a side scrolling airplane game and when I begin going very fast I begin to experience some problems as a player: Elements are not distinguishable, like power-ups from bullets, etc I start to feel dizzy and uncomfortable There isn't enough time to see what's coming How can I sort this out? Do I use less details in all the grahpics? Tiny Wings has the same horizontal movement speed as in my game but it doesn't suffer from these problems. Are there any other really fast side-scrollers I could take as a reference?

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• How should compound words be handled when coding? Is there a definitive list of compound words? [closed]

  - by Ray

  QUESTION: How should you handle compound words when programming? Are there any good lists available online for developers of generally accepted technology-related compound words? I can see how this is highly ambiguous, so should I just use common-sense? EXAMPLE: I would be inclined to do this: filename NOT FileName or login NOT LogIn However, the microsoft documentation indicates that filename is not compound. So I wonder, is there a more definitive source? See also, this english.stackexchange discussion on filename. Under the section "Capitalization Rules for Compound Words and Common Terms" located here: Microsoft .NET Capitalization Conventions only offers a limited introduction into the topic, and leaves it up to the developer to use their intuition with the rest.

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• Should I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority?

  - by JonathonG

  Can I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority, and is it a good idea? Here's more info: I am about to begin work on porting a mid-sized game from Flash/AS3 to Java so that I can continue development with multi-threading capabilities. Here's a small bit of background about the game: The game contains numerous asynchronous activities, such as "world updating" (the game environment is constantly changing based on a set of natural laws and forces), procedural generation of terrain, NPCs, quests, items, etc., and on top of that, the effects of all of the player's interactions with his environment are programmatically calculated in real time, based on a set of constantly changing "stats" and once again, natural laws and forces. All of these things going on at once, in an asynchronous manner, seem to lend themselves to multi-threading very well. My question is: Can I build some kind of central engine that handles the "stacking" of all of these events as they are triggered, and dynamically sorts them out amongst the available threads, and would it be a good idea? As an example: Essentially, every time something happens (IE, a magic missile being generated by a spell, or a bunch of plants need to grow to their next stage), instead of just processing that task right then and adding the new object(s) to a list of managed objects, send a reference to that event to a core "event handler" that throws it into a stack of all other currently queued events, which then sorts them out and orders them according to urgency, splits them between a number of available threads for as-fast-as-possible multithreaded execution.

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• How do you save/export changes made in Firebug?

  - by blunders

  Using Firebug to edit CSS, how do I save/export changes made to the CSS? TOOLS: Firefox, Firebug MAJOR UPDATE: If you know of a way to lock the forward/back/refresh on a FireFox tab, please let me know. Otherwise, I've given up on using FireBug/FireDiff as an IDE for CSS, it's nice, but lol... press backspace at the wrong time and ALL your work is gone... funny. So, really like the browser highlighting to CSS/HTML in Firebug. Know any good CSS editors that do this? Really had hope FireBug would work, but for now only see it as being good for ad-hoc inspection and test; meaning using it for what it's made for. UPDATES: @Lèse majesté: Just as an update, "Web Developer add-on" does let you edit CSS, but it does not let you edit/save CSS changes made by Firebug. Meaning you use Firebug to ID and maybe test changes, but it does not let you save the changes from Firebug. Here's a "how to" covering how to use them together: FF + FB + WD @Lèse majesté: Still playing around with FireDiff. It works okay, found one bug already (although I'm just working around it), and there's no "how to" I've been able to find, so I'm just trying every feature and clicking around... (for example, to export a diff you must be over the last item in the list, right click, and select as "Save Diff". The ".diff" is just a text file, no idea why at this point the ext is .diff.

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• I need an approach to the problem of preventing inserting duplicate records into the database

  - by Maurice

  Apologies is this question is asked on the incorrect "stack" A webservice that I call returns a list of data. The data from the webservice is updated periodically, so a call to the webservice done in one hour could return the same data as a call done in an hour. Also, the data is returned based on a start and end date. We have multiple users that can run the webservice search, and duplicate data is most likely to be returned (especially for historical data). However I don't want to insert this duplicate data in the database. I've created a db table in which the data is stored (most important columns are) Id int autoincrement PK Date date not null --The date to which the data set belongs. LastUpdate date not null --The date the data set was last updated. UserName varchar(50) --The name of the user doing the search. I use sql server 2008 express with c# 4.0 and visual studio 2010. Entity Framework is used as the ORM. If stored procedures could be avoided in the proposed solution, then that will be a plus. Another way of looking interpreting what I'm asking a solution for is as follows: I have a million unique records in my table. A user does a new search. The search results from the user contains around 300k of the data that is already in the db. An efficient solution to finding an inserting only the unique records is needed.

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• Square One to Game Development

  - by Ian Quach

  How does someone even get into developing a game. What would they need to know, how would someone find the knowledge to program a game? I've always looked at game development as a future career. Now that I'm getting closer to university I was hoping to find a way to head start this future in game development. What would be the best place to start? I would love any help or tips from anyone. Thanks for reading this. :)

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• Creating a shared library that might be used with desktop applications and web projects

  - by dreza

  I have been involved in a number of MVC.NET and c# desktop projects in our company over the last year or so while also managing to kept my nose poked into other projects (in a read-only learning capacity of course). From this I've noticed that across the various projects and teams there is a-lot of functionality that has been well designed against good interfaces and abstractions. Because we tend to like our own work at times, I noticed a couple of projects had the exact same class, method copied into it as it had obviously worked on one and so was easily moved to a new project (probably by the same developer who originally wrote it) I mentioned this fact in one of our programmer meetings we have occasionally and suggested we pull some of this functionality into a core company library that we can build up over time and use across multiple projects. Everyone agreed and I started looking into this possibility. However, I've come across a stumbling block pretty early on. Our team primarily focuses on MVC at the moment and we have projects mainly in 2.0 but are starting to branch to 3.0. We also have a number of desktop applications that might benefit from some shared classes and basic helper methods. Initially when creating this DLL I included some shared classes that could be used across any project type (Web, Client etc) but then I started looking at adding some shared modules that would be useful in our MVC applications only. However this meant I had to include a reference to some Microsoft Web DLL's in order to leverage some of the classes I was creating (at this stage MVC 2.0). Now my issue is that we have a shared DLL that has references to web specific libraries that could also possibly be used in a client application. Not only that, our DLL referenced initially MVC 2.0 and we will eventually move onto MVC 3.0 for all projects. But alot of the classes in this library I expect to still be relevant to MVC 3 etc Our code within this DLL is separated into it's own namespaces such as: CompanyDLL.Primitives CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc CompanyDLL.Helpers etc etc So, my questions are: Is it OK to do a shared library like this, or if we have web specific features in it should we create a separate web DLL only targeted at a specific framework or MVC version? If it's OK, what kind of issues might we face when using the library that references MVC 2 in a MVC 3 project for example. I would be thinking that we might run into some sort of compatibility issue, or even issues where the developers using the library doesn't realize they need MVC 2.0 libraries. They might only want to use some of the generic classes etc The concept seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm starting to think maybe it's not really a practical solution. But the number of times I've seen copied classes and methods across projects because they are proven tested code is a bit unnerving to be perfectly honest!

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