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  • Parse text file on click and display

    - by John R
    I am thinking of a methodology for rapid retrieval of code snippets. I imagine an HTML table with a setup like this: one two ... ten one oneTwo() oneTen() two twoOne() twoTen() ... ten tenOne() tenTwo() When a user clicks a function in this HTML table, a snippet of code is shown in another div tag or perhaps a popup window (I'm open to different solutions). I want to maintain only one PHP file named utitlities.php that contains a class called 'util'. This file & class will hold all the functions referenced in the above table (it is also used on various projects and is functional code). A key idea is that I do not want to update the HTML documentation everytime I write/update a new function in utilities.php. I should be able to click a function in the table and have PHP open the utilities file, parse out the apropriate function and display it in an HTML window. Questions: 1) I will be coding this in PHP and JavaScript but am wondering if similar scripts are available (for all or part) so I don't reinvent the wheel. 2) Quick & easy Ajax suggestions appreciated too (probably will use jquery, but am rusty). 3) Methodology for parsing out the functions from the utilities.php file (I'm not to good with regex).

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  • Tips on how to notify a user of new features in your game

    - by brent777
    I have noticed a problem when releasing new features for a game that I wrote for Android and published on Google Play Store. Because my game is "stage-based" - and not a game like Hay Day, for example, where users will just go into the game every day since it can't really be finished - my users are not aware of new features that I release for the game. For example, if I publish a new version of my game and it contains a couple new stages, most of their devices will just auto-update the game and they don't even notice this and think to check out what's new. So this is why an approach like popping open a dialog that showcases the new feature(s) when they open the game for the first time after the update was done is not really sufficient. I am looking for some tips on an approach that will draw my users back into the game and then they could read more detail about new features on such a dialog. I was thinking of something like a notification that tells them to check out the new features after an update is done but I am not sure if this is a good idea. Any suggestions to help me solve this problem would be awesome.

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  • Designs for outputting to a spreadsheet

    - by Austin Moore
    I'm working on a project where we are tasked to gather and output various data to a spreadsheet. We are having tons of problems with the file that holds the code to write the spreadsheet. The cell that the data belongs to is hardcoded, so anytime you need to add anything to the middle of the spreadsheet, you have to increment the location for all the fields after that in the code. There are random blank rows, to add padding between sections, and subsections within the sections, so there's no real pattern that we can replicate. Essentially, anytime we have to add or change anything to the spreadsheet it requires a many long and tedious hours. The code is all in this one large file, hacked together overtime in Perl. I've come up with a few OO solutions, but I'm not too familiar with OO programming in Perl and all my attempts at it haven't been great, so I've shied away from it so far. I've suggested we handle this section of the program with a more OO friendly language, but we can't apparently. I've also suggested that we scrap the entire spreadsheet idea, and just move to a webpage, but we can't do that either. We've been working on this project for a few months, and every time we have to change that file, we all dread it. I'm thinking it's time to start some refactoring. However, I don't even know what could make this file easier to work with. The way the output is formatted makes it so that it has to be somewhat hardcoded. I'm wondering if anyone has insight on any design patterns or techniques they have used to tackle a similar problem. I'm open to any ideas. Perl specific answers are welcome, but I am also interested in language-agnostic solutions.

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  • How do you support your code post employment end?

    - by James
    What is the process for leaving a company (or even a group/division) in terms of code support? Is it best to handle all questions? Do you give the remaining developers access to yourself as a future resource? If so, is there a way to not give full access? I've experienced first hand where answers about the general software arthitecture from the initial developer would be invaluable. I understand that if serious assistance is needed, than it becomes a typical case of employment negotiation as a support contract. However, should serious assistance be required, what steps can you make to ease that process of contacting you? I was thinking of doing something like making a (YOUR_NAME)_codesupport @ (YOUR_FAVORITE_EMAIL_CLIENT).com address. My Situation Specifics: I'm a co-op student, and as such bounce around companies on 4-month stints. This means introducing myself to a lot of new code bases, as well as leaving a fair share of orphaned code behind when I leave a company. I feel bad if I leave junk code around.

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  • BizTalk Schema Validation

    - by Christopher House
    Perhaps this one should be filed under:  Obvious Yesterday I created a new schema that is going to be used for a WCF receive.  The schema has a bunch of restrictions in it, with the intention that we'd validate incoming messages against the schema.  I'd never done message validation with BizTalk but I knew the XmlDisassembler component had an option for validating, so I figured it would be a piece of cake.  Sadly, that was not to be the case.  I deployed my artifacts and configured my receive location's XmlDisassembler with what I thought to be the correct document spec name.  I entered My.Project.Name.SchemaTypeName for the document spec and started running unit tests.  All of them failed with the following error logged in the event log: "WcfReceivePort_BizTalkWcfService/PurchaseOrderService" URI: "/BizTalkWcfService/PurchaseOrderService.svc" Reason: No Disassemble stage components can recognize the data. I went to the receive port and turned on tracking, submitted another message, then went to the admin console and saved the message.  It looked correct, but just to be sure, I manually validated it against the schema in my project.  As expected, it validated correctly. After a bit of thinking on this, I realized that I probably needed to fully qualify my document spec name, meaning, include the assembly name, as well as the type name.  So, I went back to the receive location and changed the document spec to: My.Project.Name.SchemaTypeName, My.Project.Name,Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=xxxxxxxxx I re-ran my unit tests and everything was working as expected.  So, note to self:  remember to include the assembly name when setting the document spec.  If you need an easy way to determine your schema name and assembly name, find your schema in the admin console and go to it's properties.  On the property screen, look at the Name and Assembly properties.  Your document spec will be "SchemaName, AssemblyName"

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  • Three New Videos on Social Development

    - by Bob Rhubart
    By now it should be clear to even the most tenacious Luddite that the social media phenomenon is no mere fad. Those ubiquitous icons for Facebook and Twitter and other social networks are little beacons of disruptive change signalling yet again that the 20th century is over, dude. And that presents an opportunity for software developers with the necessary insight and expertise to tap into and expand social platforms for forward-thinking organizations. If you're a developer and you're interested in exploiting these emerging opportunities you'll want to check out three new videos that focus on software development for social platforms. Developing with Facebook: An Introduction to Social Design James Pearce, Facebook's head of Mobile Developer Relations, provides an overview of the Facebook platform and the underlying APIs that are available to the developer community. Building on the LinkedIn Platform: Content Amplified Adam Trachtenberg, Director of LinkedIn's Developer Network, discusses how you can make it simple for a professional audience to discover and distribute your content on LinkedIn. Emergence of the Social Enterprise Roland Smart, Oracle's VP of Social Marketing, shares Oracle’s vision for the social-enabled enterprise and highlights the role developers will play in the next phase of enterprise development. OTN has also created the Oracle Social Developer Community, a new Facebook page devoted to the promotion of community conversation and resources to support Social Developers. If you're working on a social development project, visit the page and tell us about it.

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  • Should you always pass the bare minimum data needed into a function

    - by Anders Holmström
    Let's say I have a function IsAdmin that checks whether a user is an admin. Let's also say that the admin checking is done by matching user id, name and password against some sort of rule (not important). In my head there are then two possible function signatures for this: public bool IsAdmin(User user); public bool IsAdmin(int id, string name, string password); I most often go for the second type of signature, thinking that: The function signature gives the reader a lot more info The logic contained inside the function doesn't have to know about the User class It usually results in slightly less code inside the function However I sometimes question this approach, and also realize that at some point it would become unwieldy. If for example a function would map between ten different object fields into a resulting bool I would obviously send in the entire object. But apart from a stark example like that I can't see a reason to pass in the actual object. I would appreciate any arguments for either style, as well as any general observations you might offer. I program in both object oriented and functional styles, so the question should be seen as regarding any and all idioms.

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  • Kubuntu 11.10 very slow during file I/O

    - by dko
    After updating to Kubuntu 11.10, my file I/O performance has slowly just gotten worse and worse. It is to the point where I'm getting 1 MB/s write/read speeds to the drive. If I download something, the whole machine becomes unresponsive for at times up to 30 seconds. This usually causes a timeout in the download and the download then stops. Even extracting archive files, while extracting the computer is just unusable on top of the terrible read/write speeds. It isn't the drive as I have Windows installed as well and when I boot to it I have no issues with the drive. I did not have this issue using Kubuntu 11.04 and am thinking of downgrading. However, I'd much rather help out the Ubuntu community by working through these issues. I'm starting to lean towards the new Linux Kernel is just not working well with file handles. During file I/O my system usage does pick up, but it is not 100% CPU usage. My system is as follows. Samsung 2 TB hard disk drive AMD Phenom II x6 1055 4 GB RAM (only one in use according to system monitor) ATI 5850 HD

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  • Understanding IDAT chunk of PNG file format

    - by DRapp
    From the sample image below, I have a border in yellow just for display purposes only. The actual .png file is a simple black/white image 3 pixels by 3 pixels. I was originally thinking to try as a 2x2, but that would not help trying to interpret low/hi vs hi/low drawing stream. At least this way, I would have two black, one white from the top, or one white, two black from the bottom.. So I read the chunks of data, get to the IDAT chunk, decode that (zlib) and come up with 12 bytes as follows 00 20 00 40 00 80 So, my question, how does the above get broken down into the 3x3 black and white sample... Also, it is saved in palette format and properly recognizes the bit depth of 1 and color palette of 2... color pallet[0] is RGBA all zeros. Palette1 has RGBA of 255, 255, 255, 0 I'll eventually get into the multiple other depth formats later, just wanted to start with what would expect to be the easiest. Part II. Any guidance on handling the other depth formats would help if anything special to be considered especially regarding alpha channel (which I am already looking for in the palette) that might trip me up.

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  • How bad would be to focus on iOS/Android development for an indie developer?

    - by kender
    After some time developing games for others I'm thinking of moving towards my own productions. My background is 10+ years of software development, with last 2 years spent on the iOS development (Objective-C and CoronaSDK). With my current experience in Corona I can quickly develop for iOS and Android systems. And this is something that I'm probably gonna do with several of the game ideas I have, at least for the prototype part. But - I'm wondering if it's not a bad idea to focus on those 2 systems only. After all there are other mobile platforms, there are PCs, Macs and Linux boxes... All of them having gamers using them. I was wondering if it wasn't a good idea to try some other SDK, giving me more flexibility when it comes to platform-independance. There's Unity3D (I think I can develop a 2D game in it though), there's MoAI from what I checked. I see a few options, not sure which one is best as I have little experience in this field (publishing own games): Stick with CoronaSDK for the whole time, release for iOS and Android platforms, screw other mobile devices and PCs, Use Corona for prototyping, then when the idea goes more into the "production" phase rewrite it in MoAI or Unity3D for more platforms support, Start with one of those 2 SDKs right now (which means the prototype phase will be delayed a bit, but after that I can jump right into real coding). Any clues here, what to do?

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  • My computer will not reboot after fresh install of ubuntu 12.04LTS

    - by user170715
    I bought a new computer yesterday and it came with Windows 8. When installing Ubuntu, i choose the erase and install option thinking that Ubuntu would install easily like it did for my old laptop... After a successful install and following the instructions telling me to reboot to finish installation and remove installation media. It worked and my computer booted fine, however once I began installing updates via update manager and activating additional driver {ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-release updates)} out of the following: Experimental AMD binary Xorg driver and kernel module ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (*experimental*beta) ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-release updates) Then reboot to finish making changes I reboot and get an error (Reboot and select proper boot device) At this point I was stuck, so I eventually reinstalled ubuntu and repeated the exacted same steps until right before i rebooted to finish making changes. However this time i used this Boot Repair tool sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair boot-repair After running the program i get a "boot successfully repaired" message. Then I try to reboot again and get the GNU Grub screen where it says would you like to boot: normal recovery memorytest Once it begins loading, you see the code moving across the screen then it pauses when it gets to and doesnt do anything. If someone could tell me how to fix this or get Windows 8 back soon, I'd appreciate it because like i said i just bought it yesterday and now i cant even use it.

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  • Estimate angle to launch missile, maths question

    - by Jonathan
    I've been working on this for an hour or two now and my maths really isn't my strong suit which is definitely not a good thing for a game programmer but that shouldn't stop me enjoying a hobby surely? After a few failed attempts I was hoping someone else out there could help so here's the situation. I'm trying to implement a bit of faked intelligence when the A.I fires it's missiles at a target in a 2D game world. By predicting the likely position the target will be in given it's current velocity and the time it will take the missile to reach it's target. I created an image to demonstrate my thinking: http://i.imgur.com/SFmU3.png which also contains the logic I use for accelerating the missile after launch. The ship that fires the missile can fire within a total of 40 degree angle, 20 either side of itself, but this could likely become variable. My current attempt was to break the space between the two lines into segments which match the targets width. Then calculate the time it would take the missile to get to that location using the formula. So for each iteration of this we total up the values and that tells us the distance travelled, ad it would then just need compared to distance to the segment. startVelocity * ((startVelocity * acceleration)^(currentframe-1) So for example. If we start at a velocity of 1f/frame with an acceleration of 0.1f the formula, at frame 4, would be 1 * (1.1^3) = 1.331 But I quickly realized I was getting lost when trying to put this into practice. Does this seem like a correct starting point or am I going completely the wrong way about it? Any pointers would help me greatly. Maths really isn't my strong suit so I get easily lost in these matters and don't even really know a good phrase to search for with this. So I guess in summary my question is more about the correct way to approach this problem and any additional code samples on top of that would be great but I'm not averse to working out the complete code from helpful pointers.

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  • How to manage Areas/Levels in an RPG?

    - by Hexlan
    I'm working on an RPG and I'm trying to figure out how to manage the different levels/areas in the game. Currently I create a new state (source file) for every area, defining its unique aspects. My concern is that as the game grows the number of class files will become unmanageable with all the towns, houses, shops, dungeons, etc. that I need to keep track of. I would also prefer to separate my levels from the source code because non-programmer members of the team will be creating levels, and I would like the engine to be as free from game specific code as possible. I'm thinking of creating a class that provides all the functions that will be the same between all the levels/areas with a unique member variable that can be used to look up level specifics from data. This way I only need to define level/area once in the code, but can create multiple instances each with its own unique aspects provided by data. Is this a good way to go about solving the issue? Is there a better way to handle a growing number of levels?

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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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  • How should I structure moving from overworld to menu system / combat?

    - by persepolis
    I'm making a text-based "Arena" game where the player is the owner of 5 creatures that battle other teams for loot, experience and glory. The game is very simple, using Python and a curses emulator. I have a static ASCII map of an "overworld" of sorts. My character, represented by a glyph, can move about this static map. There are locations all over the map that the character can visit, that break down into two types: 1) Towns, which are a series of menus that will allow the player to buy equipment for his team, hire new recruits or do other things. 2) Arenas, where the player's team will have a "battle" interface with actions he can perform, messages about the fight, etc. Maybe later, an ASCII representation of the fight but for now, just screens of information with action prompts. My main problem is what kind of design or structure I should use to implement this? Right now, the game goes through a master loop which waits for keyboard input and then moves the player about the screen. My current thinking is this: 1) Upon keyboard input, the Player coordinates are checked against a list of Location objects and if the Player coords match the Location coords then... 2) ??? I'm not sure if I should then call a seperate function to initiate a "menu" or "combat" mode. Or should I create some kind of new GameMode object that contains a method itself for drawing the screen, printing the necessary info? How do I pass my player's team data into this object? My main concern is passing around the program flow into all these objects. Should I be calling straight functions for different parts of my game, and objects to represent "things" within my game? I was reading about the MVC pattern and how this kind of problem might benefit - decouple the GUI from the game logic and user input but I have no idea how this applies to my game.

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  • suggestions for lonewolf dev setup

    - by d33j
    I'm looking for some suggestions for a better development setup. Background: I'm a crusty old software engineer (mostly java of late) and I have around 50 - 100 incomplete java projects scattered everywhere, usb keys, HDDs, and spanning across 5 or 6 computers etc, which have been put on hold for a few years (ie: family). I have no version control at home. I've been using IntelliJ for around 10 years, so that's the only constant. I'm thinking of nominating one machine as a headless server to put all my projects on, maybe a ubuntu box, that way It won't matter which device I'm on, all my projects can be accessed (and I don't have to waste time actually looking for them). I don't need to access code over the net. These are my own 'happy place' projects so I only work on them when I'm at home, however I can see the benefit of the tasking app being online, that way if I think of something while on public transport lets say, I can add it then & there, but it's not a requirement. I can wait until I get home to create tasks. Summary: So I need some sort of version control so I can rollback mistakes, and some sort of simple tasking software where I can assign tasks for myself later on when I get time. I use Subversion, Sonar, Jira and Crucible at work but I think it's a little bit of an overkill for me though. What do you suggest?

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  • Is there a cheaper non-express non-student, non-msdn version of Visual Studio 2010 that supports plugins in the US than the $710 Professional Edition?

    - by Justin Dearing
    I've never actually purchased a copy of Visual Studio myself. SharpDevelop and Express edition have always been good enough for my personal use, and my employers always furnished me with the IDEs I needed to serve them. However, I'm thinking of actually paying for a copy for my personal laptop. I need this mainly so I can open solutions that contain web projects. So my question is: Is there an edition cheaper than the $710 Pro edition on Amazon that will do what I need: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-C5E-00521-Visual-Studio-Professional/dp/B0038KTO8S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287456230&sr=8-2 ? What I need is defined as: Open up a solution with C#, Web App, VB.NET, and Web Projects. Install addins like resharper, testdriven.net, etc, SCM plugins, etc. Some level of db project support. At least to be able to open a dbproj. I only need that for SCM hooks. SSMS and SQLCMD are good enough for actually editing databases. Ability to install F#, IronPython, IronRuby etc. Now naturally I'm a fairly intelligent resourceful person so I realize I can get Visual Studio in a questionable manner. Thats not what I'm looking to do. I want a legal copy, I don't want a student copy, or an MSDN copy. I want a real copy, I just want to make sure I get the cheapest edition that serves my needs.

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  • Dedicated server: managed hosting or manage it myself?

    - by ddawber
    We're currently hosting a number of sites on a self-managed dedicated server. Some companies, however, offer a managed dedicated server hosting service. They offer: Roughly the same server spec Ticketing system support Managed daily backups Virtual firewall (but with a limit of 10 IP addresses allowed through at any one time) Now, this managed hosting is at extra expense - somewhere in the region of $500 per month, and the limit on the number of IP addresses they'll manage on the firewall is also a real pain. My thinking is it would be better and cheaper to Stay with the same host since the dedicated box is fine Get an Amazon AWS account and use their server to manage backups; there are a number of good tools that can be used to automate the process Configure iptables so that I have complete control of the firewall I want to know Is a managed virtual firewall likely to be more secure than me configuring iptables? Whether, in your opinion, it's best to let someone else take care of backups? If, from your experience, there's anything else i'm missing that warrants using managed hosting over a DIY service? I think there is some reluctance to not having managed hosting since a managed host in effect takes responsibility for your server, whereas any hardware or security issues with a server that we manage would mean we are forced to hold our hands up when a client site goes down. That said, I personally don't think a managed host does that much in the day to day running of your server (backups are automatic, OS updates are carried out with ease, etc.).

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  • How to change partitioning - may involve conversion of a partition from primary to extended

    - by george_k
    I am having trouble thinking through how I can achieve my partitioning goals. Now my partitions are: sda1 (winA) (primary) sda2 (winB) (primary) sda3 (/ for ubuntu) (primary) What I want to migrate into is (obviously partition numbers need not be exactly like that) sda1 (winA) (primary) sda2 (winB) (primary) sda3 (/boot) (primary) sda4 - extended which will contain sda5 (/home) sda6 (/ for ubuntu) sda7 (swap) I know I may be asking too much, but what would a way to do it? One way I have thought is Create a new primary partition for /boot and split it from the root partition into the new one. It shouldn't be too hard. Then the disk will have 4 primary partitions. Somehow convert the root ubuntu partition from primary to extended. Split that last partition in 3 extended partitions (root, /home, swap) and split the contents there. I am obviously stuck on the 2nd part. Another way could be (maybe easier): Create an extended partition (or two) Split /home there Somehow move everything except /boot to the extended partition. This way /boot will stay on the primary partition that exists now, and will be shrunk as needed, and everything else will end up to the extended partitions. This may sound better, but I'm not too sure how to do the 3rd part. Some details: The disk is almost empty, so I have space to move things around in it, shrink the ubuntu partition etc. I don't want to touch the windows partitions in any way. Reinstallation is not an option. Also using a different partitioning scheme with fewer partitions is not an option (for example not having a separate /boot) Any ideas?

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  • Deferred rendering order?

    - by Nick Wiggill
    There are some effects for which I must do multi-pass rendering. I've got the basics set up (FBO rendering etc.), but I'm trying to get my head around the most suitable setup. Here's what I'm thinking... The framebuffer objects: FBO 1 has a color attachment and a depth attachment. FBO 2 has a color attachment. The render passes: Render g-buffer: normals and depth (used by outline & DoF blur shaders); output to FBO no. 1. Render solid geometry, bold outlines (as in toon shader), and fog; output to FBO no. 2. (can all render via a single fragment shader -- I think.) (optional) DoF blur the scene; output to the default frame buffer OR ELSE render FBO2 directly to default frame buffer. (optional) Mesh wireframes; composite over what's already in the default framebuffer. Does this order seem viable? Any obvious mistakes?

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  • The battery indicator in Unity panel not showing up

    - by user61415
    I installed Ubuntu 12.04 with Wubi. Well after being completely dazzled with the amount of free content in the Software Centre, I decided to go deeper and start messing with settings. Well after changing the screen brightness the highest level I noticed that there wasn't an indicator for how much battery was left in my laptop. I looked up online on got 2 suggestions on how to fix: Right click on the Unity panel and add an indicator Set it to show in the power settings menu. Well I did both when I right click at the top menu nothing comes up and setting it to show does nothing either. Then I tried installing something in the Software Centre. I got something but when I activated it it said I had 0% power left even though I was charging and at %100 according the Light in the front of my laptop. So now I'm thinking that it doesn't even recognise my computer as a laptop which is weird because in the display settings it says my screen size is set to laptop. How can I install it? I don't know what version it is other then Ubuntu 12.04 and no matter what the icon does not appear with the

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  • Putting Together a Game Design Team?

    - by Kaia
    I'm attempting to put together a game design team that is willing to help me design/program, test, and somewhat produce the game we make to the public. I need anyone who knows anything about programming/coding, designing, etc. Once we get it up and running and out into the world (over dramatic maybe? haha) I have ideas of generating a profit from it so there is a possibility of payment. My thinking on it (so far) is this: 2D (possibly. I haven't decided if I want it 2D or 3D. It really depends on what is easier) 3rd person. Adventure (I want there to be a point to it, but like a point with no real end) I want there to be a story to it. If you've ever played Dofus, think like that. There is a story to the game, but no real end. I want (if possible) to include mini-games. These could end up becoming a possible way for a player to aquire in-game money, quest items, etc. If anyone is interested in helping me create the story line/script (which we will finsih first, before creating the game) please contact me. I want to get this completed as soon as possible.

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  • Thoughts on exception handling.

    - by AndyScott
    Was working on a windows form app (something I haven't done in a while), adding threading and logging so that it would work a little more smoothly and have a record of who did what.  I was just about at the point where I was going to check it into source control when I noticed that the Output window was showing "A first chance exception of type 'System.InvalidCastException' occurred in mscorlib.dll", so I googled it.  In reading some threads about the error, I came across the following comment and it got me thinking: "In addition, while they should be avoided if possible, exceptions are a quite legitimate part of program execution. It's their going unhandled that is a real issue, because that means crashy, crashy." How do you normally use exception handling?  I feel that exceptions are intended to handle errors in code (in my experience generally related to bad data making its way into the system).  Now don't get me wrong, I understand that exceptions happen and should be dealt with, but I feel that they are a "last resort" to keep a program from crashing, but should never be a way to pass data or continue logical processing that could be handled in standard code flow. I mention this, because I have seen it done. What do you think?

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  • How to determine the amount to spend per phrase on Adwords research?

    - by Anonymous -
    My company would like to start a PPC advertising campaign. Whilst I understand the concept and how to set everything up from a technical point of view, this is something I've never done before. Logically, we'd like to test out a wide range of keywords that we think would lead to conversions, which we've put together through brainstorming and with some help from Google's External Keyword Tool. Sub-question whilst I remember - am I correct in thinking that in Google's keyword tool, keywords that we think will perform well that have a low competition yet high monthly searches are good since there will be less advertisers, meaning our bid per click will be less? Is there a common benchmark or process of doing a round of tests with keywords? Should we wait for 100 clicks on each keyword, see which ones have lead to the most sales (or rather, sales that are sustainable with the cost per click of that keyword), then drop the ones which aren't converting and put that budget onto the converting keywords? We realistically have a few hundred keywords/phrases we would like to test, but spending $100 per keyword/phrase is going to work out as quite an expensive test. It would be nice to be able to spend $5-10 per phrase, but I don't think the sample size would be great enough to determine anything usefully reliable. Another approach might be to setup all the keywords, and those that bring the most sales within x hours/days would be the ones we use. What is the common procedure with things like this? I know there are a plethora of companies that specialize in exactly this, but this is something we anticipate doing a lot in the future, so it would make sense to do it in house if at all possible.

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  • What are some ways to separate game logic from animations and the draw loop?

    - by TMV
    I have only previously made flash games, using MovieClips and such to separate out my animations from my game logic. Now I am getting into trying my hand at making a game for Android, but the game programming theory around separating these things still confuses me. I come from a background of developing non game web applications so I am versed in more MVC like patterns and am stuck in that mindset as I approach game programming. I want to do things like abstract my game by having, for example, a game board class that contains the data for a grid of tiles with instances of a tile class that each contain properties. I can give my draw loop access to this and have it draw the game board based on the properties of each tile on the game board, but I don't understand where exactly animation should go. As far as I can tell, animation sort of sits between the abstracted game logic (model) and the draw loop (view). With my MVC mindset, it's frustrating trying to decide where animation is actually supposed to go. It would have quite a bit of data associated with it like a model, but seemingly needs to be very closely coupled with the draw loop in order to have things like frame independent animation. How can I break out of this mindset and start thinking about patterns that make more sense for games?

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