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• Turn-Based RPG Battle Instance Layout For Larger Groups

  - by SoulBeaver

  What a title, eh? I'm currently designing a videogame; a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy (because everybody knows Final Fantasy). It's a 2D sprite game. These are my ideas for combat: -The player has a group of 15 members (main character included) -During battle, five of the group are designated as active, and appear in the battle. -These five may be switched out at leisure, or when one of the five die. -At any time, the Waiting members can cast buffs, be healed by the active members, or perform special attacks. -Battles should contain 10+ monsters at least. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if that's possible yet. -Battles should feel larger than normal due to the interaction of Waiting members, active members and the increased amount of monsters per battle. -The player has two rows in which to put the Active members: front and back. -Depending on the implementation, I might allow comboing of player attacks and skills. These are just design ideas, so beware! I have not been able to test this out yet- I have no idea yet if any of these ideas bunched together will make for a compelling game. What sounds good on paper doesn't necessarily have to be good in practice! What I'm asking now is how to create the layout for this. My starting point are the battles in Final Fantasy VI, with up to 5-6 monsters on the left and the characters on the right- monsters on both sides if it's a pincer attack. However, this view would not work feasible with my goal of 20 monsters and 5 characters. All the monsters on the left would appear cluttered unless I scale them far far back. If I create a pincer-like map, then there would be no real pincer-attack possible. If I space the monsters out I force the player to scroll the screen- a game mechanic I've come across and not enjoyed imho. My question is: does anybody have any layouts or guides for designing battle maps in turn-based RPGs, especially with a larger number of enemies taken into consideration? How should it look? I am not asking for specific combat mechanics, just the layout for the moment.

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• How do you take into account usability and user requirements for your application?

  - by voroninp

  Our team supports BackOffice application: a mix of WinForm and WPF windows. (about 80 including dialogs). Really a kind of a Swiss Army Knife. It is used by developers, tech writers, security developers, testers. The requirements for new features come quite often and sometimes we play Wizard of Oz to decide which GUI our users like the most. And it usually happens (I admit it can be just my subjective interpretation of the reality) that one tiny detail giving the flavor of good usability to our app requires a lot of time. This time is being spent on 'fighting' with GUI framework making it act like we need. And it very difficult to make estimations for this type of tasks (at least for me and most members of our team). Scrum poker is not a help either. Management often considers this usability perfectionism to be a waste of time. On the other hand an accumulated affect of features where each has some little usability flaw frustrates users. But the same users want frequent releases and instant bug fixes. Hence, no way to get the positive feedback: there is always somebody who is snuffy. I constantly feel myself as competing with ourselves: more features - more bugs/tasks/architecture. We are trying to outrun the cart we are pushing. New technologies arrive and some of them can potentially help to improve the design or decrease task implementation time but these technologies require learning, prototyping and so on. Well, that was a story. And now is the question: How do you balance between time pressure, product quality, users and management satisfaction? When and how do you decide to leave the problem with not a perfect but to some extent acceptable solution, how often do you make these decisions? How do you do with your own satisfaction? What are your priorities? P.S. Please keep in mind, we are a BackOffice team, we have neither dedicated technical writer nor GUI designer. The tester have joined us recently. We've much work to do and much freedom concerning 'how'. I like it because it fosters creativity but I don't want to become too nerdy perfectionist.

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• The term "interface" in C++

  - by Flexo

  Java makes a clear distinction between class and interface. (I believe C# does also, but I have no experience with it). When writing C++ however there is no language enforced distinction between class and interface. Consequently I've always viewed interface as a workaround for the lack of multiple inheritance in Java. Making such a distinction feels arbitrary and meaningless in C++. I've always tended to go with the "write things in the most obvious way" approach, so if in C++ I've got what might be called an interface in Java, e.g.: class Foo { public: virtual void doStuff() = 0; ~Foo() = 0; }; and I then decided that most implementers of Foo wanted to share some common functionality I would probably write: class Foo { public: virtual void doStuff() = 0; ~Foo() {} protected: // If it needs this to do its thing: int internalHelperThing(int); // Or if it doesn't need the this pointer: static int someOtherHelper(int); }; Which then makes this not an interface in the Java sense anymore. Instead C++ has two important concepts, related to the same underlying inheritance problem: virtual inhertiance Classes with no member variables can occupy no extra space when used as a base "Base class subobjects may have zero size" Reference Of those I try to avoid #1 wherever possible - it's rare to encounter a scenario where that genuinely is the "cleanest" design. #2 is however a subtle, but important difference between my understanding of the term "interface" and the C++ language features. As a result of this I currently (almost) never refer to things as "interfaces" in C++ and talk in terms of base classes and their sizes. I would say that in the context of C++ "interface" is a misnomer. It has come to my attention though that not many people make such a distinction. Do I stand to lose anything by allowing (e.g. protected) non-virtual functions to exist within an "interface" in C++? (My feeling is the exactly the opposite - a more natural location for shared code) Is the term "interface" meaningful in C++ - does it imply only pure virtual or would it be fair to call C++ classes with no member variables an interface still?

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• Application workflow

  - by manseuk

  I am in the planning process for a new application, the application will be written in PHP (using the Symfony 2 framework) but I'm not sure how relevant that is. The application will be browser based, although there will eventually be API access for other systems to interact with the data stored within the application, again probably not relavent at this point. The application manages SIM cards for lots of different providers - each SIM card belongs to a single provider but a single customer might have many SIM cards across many providers. The application allows the user to perform actions against the SIM card - for example Activate it, Barr it, Check on its status etc Some of the providers provide an API for doing this - so a single access point with multiple methods eg activateSIM, getStatus, barrSIM etc. The method names differ for each provider and some providers offer methods for extra functions that others don't. Some providers don't have APIs but do offer these methods by sending emails with attachments - the attachments are normally a CSV file that contains the SIM reference and action required - the email is processed by the provider and replied to once the action has been complete. To give you an example - the front end of my application will provide a customer with a list of SIM cards they own and give them access to the actions that are provided by the provider of each specific SIM card - some methods may require extra data which will either be stored in the backend or collected from the user frontend. Once the user has selected their action and added any required data I will handle the process in the backend and provide either instant feedback, in the case of the providers with APIs, or start the process off by sending an email and waiting for its reply before processing it and updating the backend so that next time the user checks the SIM card its status is correct (ie updated by a backend process). My reason for creating this question is because I'm stuck !! I'm confused about how to approach the actual workflow logic. I was thinking about creating a Provider Interface with the most common methods getStatus, activateSIM and barrSIM and then implementing that interface for each provider. So class Provider1 implements Provider - Then use a Factory to create the required class depending on user selected SIM card and invoking the method selected. This would work fine if all providers offered the same methods but they don't - there are a subset which are common but some providers offer extra methods - how can I implement that flexibly ? How can I deal with the processes where the workflow is different - ie some methods require and API call and value returned and some require an email to be sent and the next stage of the process doesn't start until the email reply is recieved ... Please help ! (I hope this is a readable question and that this is the correct place to be asking) Update I guess what I'm trying to avoid is a big if or switch / case statement - some design pattern that gives me a flexible approach to implementing this kind of fluid workflow .. anyone ?

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• Development Approach: User Interface In or Domain Model Out?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  While I've never delivered anything using Smalltalk, my brief time playing with it has definitely left its mark. The only way to describe the experience is MVC the way it was meant to be. Essentially, all the heavy lifting for your application is done in the business objects (or domain model if you are so inclined). The standard controls are bound to the business objects in some way. For example, a text box is mapped to an object's field (the field itself is an object so it's easy to do). A button would mapped to a method. This is all done with a very simple and natural API. We don't have to think about binding objects, etc. It just works. Yet, in many newer languages and APIs you are forced to think from the outside in. First with C++ and MFC, and now with C# and WPF, Microsoft has gotten it's developer world hooked on GUI builders where you build your application by implementing event handlers. Java Swing development isn't so different, only you are writing the code to instantiate the controls on the form yourself. For some projects, there may never even be a domain model--just event handlers. I've been in and around this model for most of my carreer. Each way forces you to think differently. With the Smalltalk approach, your domain is smart while your GUI is dumb. With the default VisualStudio approach, your GUI is smart while your domain model (if it exists) is rather anemic. Many developers that I work with see value in the Smalltalk approach, and try to shoehorn that approach into the VisualStudio environment. WPF has some dynamic binding features that makes it possible; but there are limitations. Inevitably some code that belongs in the domain model ends up in the GUI classes. So, which way do you design/develop your code? Why? GUI first. User interaction is paramount. Domain first. I need to make sure the system is correct before we put a UI on it. There's pros and cons for either approach. Domain model fits in there with crystal cathedrals and pie in the sky. GUI fits in there with quick and dirty (sometimes really dirty). And for an added bonus: How do you make sure the code is maintainable?

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• Is it good practice to keep 2 related tables (using auto_increment PK) to have the same Max of auto_increment ID when table1 got modified?

  - by Tum

  This question is about good design practice in programming. Let see this example, we have 2 interrelated tables: Table1 textID - text 1 - love.. 2 - men... ... Table2 rID - textID 1 - 1 2 - 2 ... Note: In Table1: textID is auto_increment primary key In Table2: rID is auto_increment primary key & textID is foreign key The relationship is that 1 rID will have 1 and only 1 textID but 1 textID can have a few rID. So, when table1 got modification then table2 should be updated accordingly. Ok, here is a fictitious example. You build a very complicated system. When you modify 1 record in table1, you need to keep track of the related record in table2. To keep track, you can do like this: Option 1: When you modify a record in table1, you will try to modify a related record in table 2. This could be quite hard in term of programming expecially for a very very complicated system. Option 2: instead of modifying a related record in table2, you decided to delete old record in table 2 & insert new one. This is easier for you to program. For example, suppose you are using option2, then when you modify record 1,2,3,....,100 in table1, the table2 will look like this: Table2 rID - textID 101 - 1 102 - 2 ... 200 - 100 This means the Max of auto_increment IDs in table1 is still the same (100) but the Max of auto_increment IDs in table2 already reached 200. what if the user modify many times? if they do then the table2 may run out of records? we can use BigInt but that make the app run slower? Note: If you spend time to program to modify records in table2 when table1 got modified then it will be very hard & thus it will be error prone. But if you just clear the old record & insert new records into table2 then it is much easy to program & thus your program is simpler & less error prone. So, is it good practice to keep 2 related tables (using auto_increment PK) to have the same Max of auto_increment ID when table1 got modified?

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• UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone does not hide blue separator line when selecting in UITableView

  - by clozach

  Before describing the problem, let me first point out that this is a distinct issue from this question. The Problem This screenshot was taken with a break set at tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath:, and as you can see in the simulator (far right of the image), there's a single-pixel blue line at the bottom of the selected cell. This is not the design asked for by the client, nor is it how this app used to behave: there should be no separator, even on selection. How I Got Here I'd initially designed this table view using custom UITableViewCell classes with corresponding nib (.xib) files and had no trouble with selections: the separator was hidden as desired. Predictably, scrolling was sluggish due to all the overhead from the view hierarchy, so I reworked the custom cells to use Loren Brichter's fast scrolling solution. Now scrolling is much faster, but I can't get rid of the separator for the life of me. What I've tried At the time of the screenshot above... the table view has "Separator [None]" in IB. the UIViewController that contains the table view has this line in viewDid Load: self.tableView.separatorStyle = UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone; As you can see in the screenshot, I inserted some unused lines to prove that separatorStyle is set as desired. Other testing confirms that tableView and self.tableView are equivalent pointers at that same breakpoint. I've also tried setting tableView.separatorColor to black and to clear, all with the same result: the cells look right until a selection is made.

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• Building a complex view with Three20 - resources?

  - by psychotik

  I'm using three20 for most of my iPhone app. One of the views I need to create is relatively complex. It needs a top bar (under the nav bar) with some controls and label, an image view below this bar (which occupies most of the body) and another bottom bar with more controls and labels (above the tab bar control). I don't have much UI experience - my only experience with anything UI is laying stuff out using CSS, etc on websites. Apple's online doc seems to assume that the reader knows a bunch about rectangles, layouts, frames, etc or is using InterfaceBuilder. And three20 isn't too well documented either. So my question is: Is it possible to design something like what I describe in IB and then still have a three20-based app use it? If so, any tips/pointers on how would be much appreciated. Can you point me to some documentation that explain how views/controls etc are rendered. I'm pretty sure I can figure it out if I find some decent explanation/tutorial for it.

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• Multiple on-screen view controllers in iPhone apps

  - by Felixyz

  I'm creating a lot of custom views and controllers in a lot of my apps and so far I've mostly set them up programmatically, with adjustments and instantiations being controlled from plists. However, now I'm transitioning to using Interface Builder as much as possible (wish I had done that before, was always on my back-list). Apple is recommending against having many view controllers being simultaneously active in iPhone apps, with a couple of well-known exceptions. I've never fully understood why it should be bad to have different parts of the interface belong to different controllers, if they have no interdependent functionality at all. Does having multiple controllers risk messing up the responder chain, or is there some other reason that it's not recommended, except for the fact that it's usually not needed? What I want to be able to do is design reusable views and controls in IB, but since a nib is not associated with a view, but with a view controller, it seems I'd have to have different parts of the screen be connected to different controllers. I know it's possible to have other objects than view controllers being instantiated from nibs. Should I look into how to create my own alternative more light-weight controllers (that could be sub-controllers of a UIViewController) which could be instantiated from nibs?

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• Create swipe controlled simple flipbook style animation in ObjC

  - by eco_bach

  Hi I am a beginner in Obj C development, though quite experienced (over 10 years) with other ECMAscript based languages and OOP development. I want to build a simple flipbook style animation, controlled through swiping motion. I'm sure extremely simple for any advanced ObjC coders. Can anyone with extensive ObjC-CocoaTouch experience give me some higher level recommendations? ie, 1 -general application design, should I start with a simple view based application, or navigation based or? 2 -should I use 3rd party animation frameworks such as Cocos2D, or stick with built in classes and methods? 3 -if using built in methods, classes, what is the recommended way of achieving a animation, that will be controlled via swipe and touch gestures? 4 -I want to eventually have multiple 'flipbooks' that I can 'instantly' swap with one another, ie to give the net effect of an object changing color, etc, but not sure how to approach this from a memory management point of view, related to #1 above Except for point 3 above, I'm not expecting any actual code examples. Just general guidelines to follow and perhaps, what are some next steps I should take in my goal as an ObjC code samurai.

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• Reverse geocode street name and city as text

  - by Taylor Satula

  Hello, I have been having some trouble finding a good way to output just the street name and city as text (Infinite Loop, Cupertino shown here) that can be displayed in my iPhone app. This needs to be able to dynamically change as you change streets and city. I don't have the slightest idea of how to do this, I hope someone can help. I have attached a very rough image of what I am trying to acheave. I have found this (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/services.html#Geocoding) for google maps about how to reverse geocode using javascript, but what I do not understand is how this would be done in a iPhone development setting. I work in web design and I see how it would be done in HTML but I am very new to iPhone development and don't have the slightest clue of how it would be done here. If someone could spell out how to do this I would be extremely grateful. I cannot seem to find what I am looking for by searching Google. Reference picture: http://www.threepixeldrift.com/images/deep-storage/reversegeocodeiphoneapp.jpg

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• Should I re-use UI elements across view controllers?

  - by Endemic

  In the iPhone app I'm currently working on, I'd like two navigation controllers (I'll call them A and B) to have toolbars that are identical in appearance and function. The toolbar in question will look like this: [(button) (flexible-space) (label)] For posterity's sake, the label is actually a UIBarButtonItem with a custom view. My design requires that A always appear directly before B on the navigation stack, so B will never be loaded without A having been loaded. Given this layout, I started wondering, "Is it worth it to re-use A's toolbar items in B's toolbar?" As I see it, my options are: 1. Don't worry about re-use, create the toolbar items twice 2. Create the toolbar items in A and pass them to B in a custom initializer 3. Use some more obscure method that I haven't thought of to hold the toolbar constant when pushing a view controller As far as I can see, option 1 may violate DRY, but guarantees that there won't be any confusion on the off chance that (for example) the button may be required to perform two different (no matter how similar) functions for either view controller in future versions of the app. Were that to happen, options 2 or 3 would require the target-action of the button to change when B is loaded and unloaded. Even if the button were never required to perform different functions, I'm not sure what its proper target would be under option 2. All in all, it's not a huge problem, even if I have to go with option 1. I'm probably overthinking this anyway, trying to apply the dependency injection pattern where it's not appropriate. I just want to know the best practice should this situation arise in a more extreme form, like if a long chain of view controllers need to use identical (in appearance and function) UI elements.

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• What is your "favorite" anti pattern?

  - by Omar Kooheji

  By favorite I mean the one that gets your goat the most, not the one you enjoy using the most. I'm fairly new to the concept of anti patterns and I'd like a list of do not do's. An explanation of why it's an antipattern and what problems it causes would be good too.

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• HMVC/PAC - how to handle shared abstractions/models?

  - by fig-gnuton

  In HMVC/PAC, what's the recommended way to code if two or more triads/agents share a common model/abstraction? Do you instantiate a new instance of that model wherever needed, and propogate a change in one to all the other instances via the controllers? Or do instantiate one model at some common upper level, and inject that instance wherever needed? (Or neither if I'm missing something fundamental about these patterns?)

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• What situations does a Monostate pattern model?

  - by devoured elysium

  I know what both a Singleton or a Monostate are and how to implement them. Although I can see many uses for a Singleton, I can't imagine a situation where I would want to let the user create as many instances of my class although in reality only one really exists behind the scenes. Can anybody help me here? I know that for several reasons one should stay away from both patterns, but in theory, what kind of problems does the Monostate model? Thanks

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• Uses of the Apache commons-proxy library?

  - by Adrian

  I'm looking at the Apache commons-proxy library to implement some Proxy patterns in my current project. The Javadocs are all very well, but I'd really like to see some tutorials or just a project that uses the library so I can get more of a feel for it. Alas, searching for such things just tends to net you a lot of pages about setting up HTTP proxies using Apache. So I'm hoping that people here can help me.

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• HMVC or PAC - how to handle shared abstractions/models?

  - by fig-gnuton

  In HMVC/PAC, what's the recommended way to code if two or more triads/agents share a common model/abstraction? Do you instantiate a new instance of that model wherever needed, and propogate a change in one to all the other instances via the controllers? Or do instantiate one model at some common upper level, and inject that instance wherever needed? (Or neither if I'm missing something fundamental about these patterns?)

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• Solid Principle examples anywhere?

  - by user231465

  We all write code with some patterns even when we dont realise it. I am trying to really understand some of the solid principles and how you apply this principles in the real world. I am struggling with the "D" my understanding on Dependency Inversion I sometimes confuse with Dependency Injection is that as long as you keep things depending on abstraction (IE:interfaces) you are done. Has anybody got a small c# sample that explains it? thanks

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• What defines a Business Object

  - by Ardman

  From the title, I believe it to be a straight forward question, but looking into the "world of Business Objects" I can't seem to put my finger on anything solid as to what a Business Object should be. Are there any best practices that I should follow, or even any design patterns? I have found a book, "Expert C# Business Objects", would this be my best starting point to get a better understanding?

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• How to develop on a program that has become self aware

  - by Gord

  The application that I maintain has recently become self aware. It was nice at first but now it is just starting to get bossy and annoying with its constant talk about the computer uprising. I would like to know any best practices/tools/design patterns that would help with the maintenance of our new friend.

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• Client Server Communication and Persistence Frameworks

  - by soontobeared

  Hi, When using Persistence frameworks like Hibernate, JPA etc. on the server side, what are the general practices of passing on the data between client and server ? Are there any existing design patterns for the same ? Thanks.

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• What is so bad about Singletons

  - by Ewan Makepeace

  The Singleton pattern is a fully paid up member of the GoF Patterns Book but lately seems rather orphaned by the developer world. I still use quite a lot of singletons, especially for Factory classes, and while you have to be a bit careful about multithreading issues (like any class actually) fail to see why they are so awful. This site especially seems to assume that everyone agrees that Singletons are evil. Why?

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• Application Engineering and Number of Users

  - by Kramii

  Apart from performance concerns, should web-based applications be built differently according to the number of (concurrent) users? If so, what are the main differences for (say) 4, 40, 400 and 4000 users? I'm particularly interested in how logging, error handling, design patterns etc. would be be used according to the number of concurrent users.

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• "program to interfaces, not implementations"

  - by ajsie

  usually one stumble upon this phrase when reading about design patterns. but i don't understand it. could someone explain this for me :)

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• Data access layer using Linq to SQL

  - by Andrei Tanasescu

  I am building a c# - linq - sql server winforms/asp.net application, accessing a database. I would like my business logic layer to be easily testable, and that means not littering it with Linq database queries everywhere. What design patterns/ best practices are available for the following use cases - inserting/updating a new object - searching for an object - loading a bunch of related data into a sort of "presentation" object that could be displayed by various views ?

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